Feel free to disagree, dear reader. — Arcane Sandwich

I guess I can't disagree. I would say that much of science, especially physics, is composed of objects and relationships that are not directly perceived. We need in most cases technological devices to be able to perceive their reality. And not only that, but much of the theoretical work specializes in theorizing according to the available technology. Today knowledge is completely subsumed in different types of mediations.

Hegel would say that we live the development of knowledge through the work of negativity.

Heidegger's critique of calculating reason.

We are in the age of the calculating technique in which nature is manipulated or at least has the power to do so. Man's eagerness to dominate in order to control and predict.

The calculating reason turns everything into an "available resource" losing the opening to the mystery of being according to Heidegger.

Heidegger a conservationist?

Heidegger was talking about a passive attitude towards the sending of being. Let us say that this is doing justice to nature.


I do not agree. A pure and passive experience of being is being under the view of immediacy. But how could there be justice without law? One cannot stay passive, one must make laws that protect nature, and why not, even more science so that violence does not repeat itself.

Wouldn't time perception be some sort of perceptive mechanism from the shared capability of mind? — Corvus

Well, yes. We have an internal time according to Kant with which we perceive time both in things that move and those that do not move.

At the end of the day, you have measured the intervals, not time itself. Would you agree? — Corvus

For me we do have time in itself, but time has different ways of appearing. one of them is measurable and discontinuous time. What we see in a watch are differences of times or differences of movements, different rhythms, proper of each thing. The time of a watch is the time of the mechanism that composes it, but we can change the mechanism and we have another time and rhythm, as when we go from seconds to thousandths.

That is also problematic. You say that an Unrelated thing is a thing to which time does not pass nor does it occupy space?

Now there’s an oxymoronic phrase! I’m forming the view that ‘the world independent of mind’ is precisely and exactly what the ‘in itself’ refers to. — Wayfarer

Well, you know what I said. The other is very close to me and invades me - even in my imagination.

Not at all. What I am saying is that, supposing that there are simple things at the end of the composition, these simple things are explained in essence by the whole of which they are a part. That is to say that their essence or identity is conditioned by the whole of which they are a part.

And as you have seen in this topic a confusion is made between the simple thing at the end of the composite and God. But if every simple thing that forms a whole is conditioned in its identity and essence by the whole, then no simple thing that is part of a whole can be God.

In other words, if God is part of the world then he is conditioned in essence and identity by the world. But if he is not part of the world then we are no longer talking about wholes and parts.

Is time a kind of perception of mental beings, or some concrete property of objects and motions in space? — Corvus

It is difficult for me to think that time is not something proper to external objects. Imagine a world independent of the mind in which time does not pass, our experiences would not be able to perceive the movement of things either, don't you think?

Do dogs perceive time? When you throw a ball in the air, the dogs could jump and catch it before it falls on the ground. Surely they notice the motion of the ball. Is the motion noticeable to the dog, because of time? Or time has no relation to the motion, because dogs are not able to perceive time? — Corvus

I would not say because of time. Time is not the cause of movement, but time is part of movement. For a dog it is obvious that time passes, but it has no concept of time. The important thing here is to understand that movement does not occur without time, because any movement can only be explained in a before and an after. But they are not the same thing: without movement we do not perceive time; but time passes even for a hypothetical motionless object, we call it persistence or duration.

Well, one of the things that makes Heidegger original is that he breaks down something like being-in-the-world, being-for-death, the authenticity, inauthenticity of his conception of temporality that he reinterpreted from Kant in "Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics."

Is there a Dasien/being-in-the-world binary in Heidegger's philosophy? — Arcane Sandwich

For Heidegger the subject-object relation consists in the theoretical attitude in which man tries to free himself from that which constitutes him (language, prejudices, culture, etc.) in order to reach an object also devoid of its being with man (for example when instead of using a hammer we ask what a hammer is and ask about its essence or objectivity). Being in the world is the way of being of man and things in which the theoretical attitude has not taken place or is secondary.

To me this fits into the American pragmatism of Dewey and so on. Only in transcendental terms

Yes, but then it would not be an argument from composition. There is a correlation between composing and being composed. A being that composes finds its function insofar as there is a composite being. Therefore its essence as a composing being is ontologically dependent (contingent). This terms comes from fundationalism.

In other words God must create the world in order to be God, which means that his essence (being God) is contingent upon the creation of the world. Therefore, God is essentially dependent on the world in order to be God. And God cannot have essential dependence on anything. Therefore, there is no possible argument of composition+fundation to demonstrate the existence of God.

But don’t you both believe that live is determinated by its relation to death?

I think that in another place I spoke to you about temporality in Husserl as a constituent of consciousness as self-affection. According to this view the present is determined by a difference with respect to the past and the future, implied by the absence that is given in them. The present is never identically present but always deferred and postponed (a la Derrida), that is, we cannot deny the absence and non-subjectivity that constitutes it.

That's why I have concerns about thinking of time as subjective or hyper-subjective if you will.

I totally agree. I should not have said objective but only transcendental. But it is still true with respect to another form of temporality which is linear. Let us recall how the temporality of Dasein is determined as ek-stasis in which a linear and discontinuous description has no place.

Heidegger argues, if I understood well, that time is not something external to Dasein, but constitutes its very existence. The temporality of Dasein is understood on the basis of its ek-static existence, that is, Dasein is always projected beyond itself, towards the future, rooted in its past and committed to its present.

I agree that there is irremediably a type of time that exists as Bergson points out. But I would not be so sure that it is something simply subjective. Thanks to Heidegger's analysis of Kant's work we have to say that the time we say is subjective is in fact constitutive of subjectivity itself, which determines it as objective or trascendental. This form of time I would say is more fundamental than the one provided by physics (because of the problems that arise when we think of time as a series of discontinuous points that follow one another).

We must be very cautious in introducing consciousness as an observer. The two things are not the same. The same has to be said about seeing and measuring, they are not the same.

Think of schrodinger's cat. it is not true that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time until we SEE it. Quantum decoherence has already taken place since it is not a completely isolated experiment; here the observer and the measurement is made by the environment as our apparatus. And it could not be otherwise: being perceived is not an act of physical interaction, that act of interaction is carried out by our technological devices or the environment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einselection

For Kant time is a pure intuition, i.e. it is an a priori structure that allows us to organize events.

The movement is as it is represented in physics, for example as a trajectory through time. Motion as we see it is the same, we see a before and an after of the thing moving, otherwise we would not notice the motion.

Time is already acting on the motion. A thing that moves is a thing that passes from one state to another, but then the difference we see between one state and another is different from the thing [cause we apply it to different things] , we call it temporal difference, a now with respect to a before.

When I think of a critique of empiricism I think of Kant. He criticized the idea of tabula rasa that persisted in empiricism. Hence his whole philosophy concerning the active position of the mind with respect to what we perceive.

Kant even introduced the forms of sensibility (space and time) as transcendental forms that apply to external things.

In the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787), Kant introduces the "Refutation of Idealism", where he argues that the existence of the external world is not just probable but necessary for self-consciousness.

Kant argues that the existence of external objects is a necessary condition for self-consciousness. His reasoning follows these steps:

1. We are aware of our own existence in time. We experience a continuity of thoughts and changes in our mental states.
2. To be aware of time, we need an objective reference point. Time is not something we perceive directly; we only understand it in relation to external events.
3. These external events must be stable and distinct from our minds. If only internal perceptions existed, we would have no fixed framework for organizing our experiences in time.
4. Therefore, the existence of an external world is necessary for self-consciousness.

This argument is based on the idea that we cannot be aware of ourselves without an external reference frame. The external world is not just an optional assumption. it is a prerequisite for our experience of the self to make sense.

Kant does not claim that we know things as they are in themselves (noumena), but he does assert that something external structures our experiences.

If I understand Putnam correctly, he says that a mind-independent world would explain the being of an external entity. But our language does not have that property, it only possesses words and signs that explain the being to the reference. So access to such a mind-independent world is problematic and rather illusory. Putnam believes that reference does not escape language and is trapped in it.

It is similar to saying that the thing we perceive does not escape perception, all the references we perceive are always being perceived.

For me antirealism is an almost irrefutable point of view. The only way out of idealist enclosure is a theory of the sign that can include the Non-perceivable, that can be extrapolated beyond language and that can be applied to experience itself.

The antirealism of the linguistic turn is a reflection of subjective idealism. What is present continues to dominate the notion of language that you see in the development of this topic.

In my view the simple thing, at the end of the series of composition is contingent upon the whole in terms of ratio cognoscendi:

"A simple thing by itself does not constitute a whole. Therefore, in order to constitute a whole, the simple thing must subordinate itself to the composition of the whole in order to function as a constituent thing."

This means that retroactively the whole (the parts) explains the simple thing that composes it qua superior explainer. Which in turn makes the simple thing contingent to the whole.


The counter-argument would be as follows


1. The composite things (the whole) exist contingently to their parts in order to be explained.
2. The simple thing at the end of the series of composition is, retroactively, contingent to the whole wich explains the cognoscendi superiority of the simple thing.
3. God cannot be contingent on anything (the whole), therefore we cannot relate a simple thing in a chain of composition to God.

It is. There is no exception to the contrary. — Arcane Sandwich

No proof, so I dismiss it.

I offered to do so, with the example of the iron sphere — Arcane Sandwich

You barely mentioned it. I can't consider it as an argument.

But you didn't show that. You merely asserted it. Basically, your "argument" is "I read Frege and Husserl's critique of psychologism. They convinced me. Therefore, anyone who disagrees with me is wrong. Why? Because I said so." — Arcane Sandwich

I have not taken the arguments from Frege and Husserl but from other sources. But the argument is there; it stands on the irreducibility of the theorem (which has the evidence of its meaning through different human beings understanding it) to cognitive processes that are individual. It is very simple, cognitive processes are individual and the theorem has been transmitted from human to human beyond such individuality. The theorem historically manifests properties of repetition and persistence which the cognitive processes not.

And I would say that what you just said there is a fallacy. — Arcane Sandwich

You will have to prove to me that all philosophy is expressed through syllogisms, premises and conclusions.

I already gave an argument. It's Bunge's argument — Arcane Sandwich

And I have refuted it. You will have to give me other arguments about fictionalism. But I sense that you don't want to give them.

If it's false, then you're wrong. — Arcane Sandwich

Again, the only argument you made is not yours and has been refuted.

How? Showing that the Pythagorean theorem transcends human cognitive processes. How do I show that it transcends them? By showing that such a theorem has universal properties and is not an individual cognitive processes, taking the example of the multitude of minds that understand the meaning of the theorem.

No, you haven't. This is what arguments look like in philosophy. You haven't done that — Arcane Sandwich

I would say that this is what an argument looks like in the philosophy you like. But obviously philosophy has a very broad style of expression. At least we can agree that you have to give arguments to prove a point which is what I have tried to do.

I have responded with arguments to what you have quoted from Mario Bunge. If you are not willing to defend it with arguments my point still stands.

False — Arcane Sandwich

I'm sorry but I can't take that as an argument. Saying it's false and nothing else doesn't make you right, nor does it mean I'm wrong. I invite you to give arguments against what I have said and argued.

Provide a supporting argument for that premise, or I'll simply deny it. — Arcane Sandwich

I have already done so. I think you're reading it wrong, I hope it's not on purpose. I said that such a premise is proven by the fact that several people know and understand the meaning of the Pythagorean theorem. Which implies that such a theorem transcends the individuality of cognitive processes like imagination.

Yes, I do. And I have written a paper comparing their critiques of psychologism, using Kusch's work as secondary literature. — Arcane Sandwich

Well, correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that Mario Bunge's position fits into the psychologism that both Frege and Husserl criticized (and I would say refuted).

I'm sorry but what you have said is formal juggling. And in no way have you validly refuted or counterargued. The argument is very simple :

Cognitive processes exist only individually (one cognitive process per person) . The Pythagorean theorem does not exist individually, it exists in a way that transcends the individuality of individuals (proven by multiple people understanding the Pythagorean theorem at once). And since the theorem exists in multiple persons invariably the cognitive processes are neutralized. Which proves that the Pythagorean theorem has existence independent of cognitive processes.

Do you know the critique of psychologism made by Frege and Husserl?

False, unless you can provide an argument that supports that statement as the conclusion of said argument. — Arcane Sandwich

That is easy to demonstrate. Think of the "inventor" of the Pythagorean theorem. Something like a theorem has survived and persisted in its existence beyond the inventor's cognitive processes. Not only that of the inventor but of many others. Which means that its existence as truth cannot be reduced to the cognitive processes of individuales (and only exist individuals cognitive process) . In each case, that is, in each person there is a neutralization of the genesis and such cognitive processes. Otherwise it is not possible to explain how a truth can transcend the minds of people and not disappear, for example, with the death of the inventor. In this sense, one can say: any other person could have discovered such a truth.

The text you quote from Mario Bunge seems to ignore what I said in the last part of my comment. That is, that the Pythagorean theorem remains true even if humanity disappears. It is a truth existing in an autonomous sense, which does not depend on the cognitive capacity of the human being. Think of a triangle formed in nature, or a triangular shaped object, it is a right triangle (you can find them by Google) . Is not the Pythagorean theorem realized in nature and in this natural triangle?

To say that the part is subordinate to the whole is to admit that the whole is real and independent of the parts; and I am not willing to accept that (I don’t think). It seems like, to me, parts make up wholes. — Bob Ross

That is something that does not follow from what I have said. I have said that a simple thing must subordinate itself to the whole in order to acquire its mereological function as a constituent simple thing. Which is obvious because something is not constituent of a whole before the creation of the whole: a piece of rock, the simplest and most indivisible, does not form a whole until it is related to other pieces of rock and forms a satellite. This makes the simple thing contingent on the whole and the relations in which it participates.

My argument debates the necessity, constitutive and superior level/role of simple and indivisible things. I show that, paradoxically, the simple and indivisible thing must subordinate itself to the whole (being contingent) in order to express its higher level with respect to other (lower order) things.

In other words: How does god relate to the world if it is only by forming a whole with the world (pantheism)? An absolutely simple thing cannot enter into relation with the world, because it would be, so to speak, too pure to subordinate itself to a relation that assigns to it its constituent function (superior level of thing) . Just as in Hegel the master must subordinate himself to the relation and to the slave in order to show his superiority, wich means the Master is not a pure and absolute Master.

When we think of a triangle and think of it together with the Pythagorean theorem as a property of certain types of triangles, it is difficult to say that they do not exist. Especially when they persist as something universal that transcends the human mind. We find laws, correlations, universal properties and the whole corpus of a science. How can we say that they do not exist? For me it is impossible to deny their reality. Humanity may disappear but the Pythagorean theorem will still remain.

In some philosophies they call it "third genera". The other two are the subjective genera and the physical genera.

HI,


A simple thing by itself does not constitute a whole. Therefore, in order to constitute a whole, the simple thing must subordinate itself to the composition of the whole in order to function as a constituent thing.

In this sense the simple thing becomes ontologically dependent on the parts and the whole. We must remember that we are speaking of parts and the whole. Therefore it can be said that a simple thing is contingent upon the whole of parts since otherwise we could not explain any mereological function of the simple thing.

In order to relate the contingent to the necessary the necessary must be part in a relation. This is the dialectic of the master and slave seen in Hegel. The master needs the recognition of the slave in order to be master, which reduces him to a slave of recognition itself.

Hi,

When we see a glass bottle in front of us, the bottle is related to us. However we cannot eliminate the bottle from the relation, because the bottle participates as an "other" different from the perception that cannot be eliminated as an "other". It is not an explanation, it is an ontological state of encounter between perception and its other. And for there to be a relationship there must be compatibility. So, if we call the bottle "matter" we must say that matter has something of perceivable and perception has something of material (and vice versa).

But "matter" as an "other" distinct from perception cannot be eliminated from the relation.

Even the self-relation presupposes the otherness that is me or my perception itself when it is taken as an objects.

When I say "I" it is at least two who speak (I and I as other). And this means that "the other" encompasses the "matter", but obviously this "other" is not reduced to "matter".

But it is not about the ethics of pain, nor is it about the significant whole. This is not an argument about ethics any more than Kant's Critique is about logic and logically solving cognitive puzzles. It is an apriori argument: What is there in an ethical matter such that in order to be ethical at all, this is an essential part to it being what it is. This is value, a structural feature of our existence, always already in our existence (Heidegger's care comes to mind, but he had little interest in ethics. Curious).What is value? "The good"? One thing is clear, remove value from the world, and ethics simply vanishes. It doesn't vanish incidentally, as when one removes the umbrella from above one's head, protection from the rain vanishes; it vanishes essentially: ethics becomes an impossibility. — Constance

What I have said before is also said of value. How could pain be thought of in a being like us, exempt from its valuation? It is not possible insofar as we are beings who react to suffering and pain according to positive and negative valuations, but in the response (be it by judgment or action) the sign already functions. How could the response not be related to pain and suffering? how could it not have effects on our constitution? Pain and suffering transcends to the extent that it is sign and resonates through our being. Its effects transcend its first moment, they are located in the memory, in the judgment, in the representation, in the response. Here pain and suffering is not the simple cause that can be distinguished from its effects, pain and suffering is its effects beyond the abstraction of a first and absolute moment.

Very much appreciate this passage here, "The temporality according to which this Ego is given refers to the constituent absence of the Ego since pain is also given as duration." Would you tell me where this comes from in the "Phenomenology of the internal consciousness of time"? I have it here but I can't find it. — Constance

You find it in Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal time, when he speaks of the three phases that constitute the temporality of consciousness: Retention, perception and protention. This temporality is presented in the epokhé, in which the difference of the "nows" constitutes the living present. But it is necessary to note the difference of the "nows", and how a present-now is immediately past, and gives way to a future-now. In both cases the absence is related and constitutes the living present. In our case, the living present of pain and suffering.

Consider for that moment as you stand before, say, a black plague victim and all the horrors, you proceed to explain that agency itself is negated by a proper analysis of the temporal construct of engagement, and so suffering is analytically without agency... so all is well. — Constance

It is the opposite. When you act in the face of another person's pain, that pain is not present to you. I claim that helping there is an act that transcends the central element of phenomenology (perception and evidence in the living present). You do not have the evidence that the other is suffering (the phenomenological evidence), but you still help the other person. This is what our act of compassion and empathy consists of: The evidence that I am an other for another. The evidence that I am not the only one and that non-presence is so "originary" is something that occurs in my most "isolated and solitary" moment in the reduction of reductions, in the transcendental reduction. It is necessary to be sufficiently other to help and assist in pain and suffering. One must embrace the possible absence of pain and suffering (the pain and suffering of the other is absent in me).

Right, but the questions I think his philosophy points to is: "from whence rules? Why are they useful? How do we come to understand them? Why are they natural to human behavior?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is a fragment in Philosophical Investigations that I remember in accordance with what you say:

258. 'Let us imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign "S" and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation. I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated. -- But still I can give myself a kind of ostensive definition. -- How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation -- and so, as it were, point to it inwardly. -- But what is this ceremony for? for that is all it seems to be! A definition surely serves to establish the meaning of a sign. -- Well, that is done precisely by the concentrating of my attention; for in this way I impress on myself the connection between the sign and the sensation. -- But "I impress it on myself" can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the connection right in the future. But in the present case I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can't talk about 'right'."

I would say that the possibility of following the rule, even in a self-imposed way, is given by repetition as meaning. That is, memory here plays a revealing function: at the moment I remember a sensation there is a repetition, not of the sensation itself, but a trace of it, something of that sensation that is repeated. Signs help us to remember and repeat. That is why the sign ("S" in this case given by Wittgenstein) is not an accident but a necessary possibility given by repetition and "being a trace", "being an indication". That is, memory and sensation function as a system of signs, whereby the external force of another system of signs (the conventional one) can be applied. But, beyond our will, the external force of signification is already operating at the moment of the sensation, the memory, and the sign of the example given by Wittgenstein. By repetition and force it is convention building within ourselves.

From this it follows that an individual and unconventional language is possible to the extent that even in our interiority the external element of language is already functioning. That is to say, when the system of signs [sensing - remembering - writing] is established, there is already an external imposition on the writer of "S"'s own will that senses and remembers. That is why the writer of "S" can understand the correctness (the imposed force) of having to refer to his sensations always as "S".

Accordingly we follow rules (rules are sign systems that function in a certain way but are imposed by force) because we are composed of sign systems and sign systems interact with each other as contending forces. That is, we are linguistic (or semiotic) animals, but at the level of composition, in our case at the level of how the relationship between sensation, memory and writing is given. But even beyond that, for example, at the biological level: Genetics, is not what Wittgenstein calls "forms of life" just the set of rules (system of signs) that make us common as a species? We are already made by rules and rule-process-constitutiing.

I agree that there must be some commonality that allows us to move between games. Obviously people can become fluent in new languages and cultures.

This is why I considered the idea of overlapping, and perhaps somewhat hierarchical "forms of life." Pace Wittgenstein, I think we can often understand Chinese gestures quite well. Hell, we can understand when a dog, lion, or badger is upset because mammals signal aggression in similar ways. The reason "reptilian" and "insect-like," have the negative connotations they do is because these animals don't signal their "emotions" to us in the same way, leading to them seeming unpredictable and alien.

I imagine coming to understand extraterrestrial or synthetic lifeforms capable of language would end up being a good deal more difficult than learning a new human language, although perhaps not impossible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Something I have wondered recently about what Wittgenstein calls "forms of life" is whether this is the limit of language to function. Isn't technology, computation and information the way in which language extends beyond organic life? In informational language we are constantly confronted with concepts and notions such as "code", "programming language", "transcription", "decoding", "information". I wonder whether or not it is correct to state that it is a given or a fact that language extends to reach the non-living and mechanical. From my point of view (which is that of a certain independence of signification-process that prevents it from being confined to intention, to context, and ultimately to forms of life), it is more than valid what computation (even artificial intelligence) can reveal to us about language and about what can perhaps be called "the freedom of the sign".

So on the contrary, I think nothing we do exceeds use. My interpretation is Wittgenstein I don't thing was creating a theory of meaning. But saying that what we think of as meaning is nothing above use and behavior. — Apustimelogist

What I say about use I can say a fortiori about the organic ends of the organism. At this point the power of language extends beyond the organism and is able to situate itself in the non-organic. This is the case, for example, with computation. But computation is a possibility of the signifier to function beyond organic context to the point of becoming autonomous in its production of signification (artificial intelligence). All this is something natural to the signifier since signification comes to analogize itself to the most mechanical reality in the sense of being composed of different systems of signs of different hierarchy and their relations. It comes to me the notion of "transcription" which expresses how different sign systems interact with each other extending signification beyond the human environment. A first system of signs affects a second system of signs, configures it, and unleashes different relations and movements in that second system. All this takes place to the extent that the signifier becomes unrooted from its current context and functioning (use) and opens itself to reinterpretation (even in interpretation in its most mechanical sense). "Things make signs of other things" is perhaps why language allows us to relate to the world; there is something in language that simply does not belong to us and maintains continuity with the world. Isn't this what the ancients called "Logos"?

I would say that at the level of the signifier there is an inability of use to master language and signification. For example, supposing that two cultures meet, the first thing we have in mind are the signifiers they utter. But how do we know that there is something beyond the sounds that another person utters? The use would not be given at once at the moment of uttering sounds. That is why a person can intuit that the other person speaks a language, because the signifier, the sign, in a certain sense, has been decontextualized, it appears decontextualized. The sign functions qua sign (signaling a meaning or a use) even when the context and use is not given or immediately present to an interlocutor.

And isn't this the possibility of communication, intercultural for example? If a person says "hola" to an English speaker, "hola" appears as just a signifier to the English speaker but devoid of its meaning and use. But it is precisely to the extent that "hola" has become unrooted from its context that it is possible for its context to be learned: the English speaker learns the use and meaning of "hola" from its own context. Only then is communication possible: To the extent that the sign refers beyond the given context and usage. Significance, the most proper of language, exceeds use but does not exclude it. It must be said that language has stopping points where signification slows down and that is what we call use and meaning. But signification always extends beyond these stopping points.

According to the above, meaning survives, for example interculturally, to the extent that one's own usage can be learned by a foreign culture. Because signification exceeds contexts. One cannot be a cultural relativist if meaning (even if understood as usage) transcends culture. Wittgenstein would not have taken into account the fact of the signifier that exceeds use and makes communication possible. In this sense two persons or two different animals (as in the cases of captive chimpanzees and humans) can understand each other insofar as there is signification. Did Wittgenstein have a theory of the sign?

Even if I were to grant that the experience of pain was memory contingent, this would not, nor can anything, undo or diminish the manifestation of the pain qua pain. — Constance

And I agree with that. But I consider that pain must be seen as part of a significant whole. In this sense pain is not only the sensation but the memory, the value, its interpretation, its representation, and so on. This, I believe, reveals to us an element of absence (non-presence, Husserlian non-evidence) in its ethical consideration. Hence, I cannot give primacy to my pain with respect to the pain of the other person. The value of presence and of the evidence of experience in phenomenology is surpassed by the value of absence in order to be able to pose the ethics of pain.

Husserl's is not a Cartesian cogito. It is a transcendental ego that stands in an intentional relationship with its object, and these relationships are not simply knowledge relationships, but include liking, disliking, anticipating, dreading, and so forth. But no matter. Note that that which is inscribed in a chain of signification is merely an "adumbration" of the experience. I recall that I sprained my ankle, but that recollection does not relive the pain of the sprain. The pain itself is transcendentally occurrent, meaning it issues from a "now" that is not discovered in the retention — Constance

I agree that Husserl's transcendental Ego is not exactly the same as the Cartesian Cogito. However the epokhe saves an Ego. Husserl's analyses of the temporality of that Ego in my opinion are irrefutable. The temporality according to which this Ego is given refers to the constituent absence of the Ego since pain is also given as duration, moments that are more intense than others, sometimes it passes, and sometimes it returns. It is impossible to detach pain from the temporality composed of "here and now" and therefore with the relationship with other "here and now" that are not present. Is this not the experience of the other? Another person who has experiences in relation to me is another "here and now" that I do not perceive. The pain of another person is given in a here and now that I do not perceive and is not an experience of mine.

This is confusing to me. Levinas said the opposite. One's own suffering translates into a knowledge of suffering that there is a metaethical grounding to one's compassion. The Other's suffering has always been understood empathetically, which places the nature of understanding always with the self. Transcending one's self begins with self knowledge: I see another suffering, and "it hurts; it hurts and I know it." This is the foundation of empathy. — Constance

That is why I am not "Levinasanian". The condition for there to be a pain or suffering of another person is that the value of the experience, the presence and the present of that experience is to be transcended by an absence. In this case the experience of the other that I do not perceive and that is given to me as absent. But in the end this absence is constitutive, even of the ethical consideration of myself and of the inscription of pain in a process of signification. The process of signification is like language: it functions with signs. And it is characteristic of a sign to function in different contexts. In this case pain is a sign, it can have existence in me or in another person, different organisms, different contexts, transcending the value of presence "here and now". It is the most common story of meaning: When we read a book we relive what a person thought in the "here and now" and captured it in ink (or in some data), but that "here and now" is completely absent at the moment when I read the book written by another person: I am another "here and now" also absent for the writer. But the meaning of the book "survives" transcends the experience and the evidence (Husserl's evidence) of both the reader and the writer.

Hello.

In my opinion any idea of minimal blocks of the universe to be valid or true must specify what those blocks are and carry out an effective reconstruction of the world (as we know it). And that is something that cannot be done. What the title of this topic asks for can also be interpreted as: Is it possible to reduce the universe to a few small objects that would explain everything we know about the world? Every reduction has a starting point, the universe as we know it; but to be valid the reduction must have a way back and forth.

For example, we can say that a geometrical object like the triangle is composed of atoms since the triangle is an idea, ideas are physical-chemical processes of the brain. But at the moment of saying this we must immediately ask ourselves if we can reconstruct the triangle with which we started with those atoms, their relations, compositions, etc. In the same way we reconstruct the triangle through the relations of three lines (which is a correct reduction, because you can reconstruct the triangle from three lines in an euclidian space).

The reason of why I identify the ego with the self is because the common core of both notions is unity in identity as self-relation excluding alterity and otherness.

However, I would not agree that one can be ignorant of the suffering of the world. First because I would not speak of the world but of persons and sentient beings; second because this process of projection is not knowledge but how the experience of suffering in general is given. But not only of suffering but of any experience (so I'm not a pessimist). It is not something that can simply be known or ignored but that already operates in us and in the way our perception works. In this sense no being can deny that it is possible for there to be another-suffering.

Hi,

In my point of view the suffering of other people is given to us (as a possibility) through a process of alterity that affects the self. This process forces us to project our suffering in others:

Our experience of suffering is inscribed in a chain of signification that the self, the ego, cannot dominate. That is why when we speak of suffering in a certain sense we do not speak only of our suffering but of a suffering-other. For the very moment that suffering takes place as something that happens to an "I" it is projected onto the form of a "here and now". All suffering takes place in a "here and now", but not all "here and now" are equal. This inequality in the "here and now" introduces in us the notion of another "here and now": the "here and now" of the possible other, of the other subject: Projection. I perceive myself then not as a simple self, but as an other for the other. Where do we get the idea that another person suffers? From our perception, which presents itself not as something absolutely mine, but already in a certain sense as something-other. Only in this way can we be able to say: I suffer as another suffers, because I am sufficiently other to myself.

I believe you are right about the way language constitutes the Being of what can be said. But not the Being of what cannot be said. When language is deployed to speak the world it encounters the impossible, that is, what is "exterior to itself. A toothache's ache is not a thesis. I put most emphasis on the value dimension of our existence which is so emphatically underscored in the existential declaration of what it is. This I hold to be evident beyond question: screaming agony, say, as the most poignant example, is NOT an interpretative phenomenon in the purity of its presence[...] — Constance

Here, I do not care if I am caught in the middle of interpretative necessity (after all, saying something is outside language is itself an occasion pf language) which have no limit in subsuming phenomena, and the "purity" of the pain. The screaming pain of this sprained ankle IS absolutely authoritative, and this sense of absolute IS aligned with the traditional sense of ontology, which Heidegger wants to ignore.

As to universal maxims being followed by humans, we take no issue with this. But the analytic of ethics/aesthetics (Wittgenstein says they are the same thing, and I agree) reveals a transcendental Reality that has nothing to do with the Kantian/Heideggerian ontotheology.

And God is, I argue, certainly NOT a cogito. This is a rationalistic perversion invented by logicians. — Constance

I claim that there is indeed a process of interpretation. As I said, suffering does not occur in the absolute singularity that you claim. And this is demonstrated in the exercise of the recognition of pain. What is the link between pain and memory? If pain were not part of a process of signification, we could not even say that memory, insofar as it has as its object of memory, is somehow related to pain. In this sense, what is it that memory brings out of pain? Meaning. Pain cannot be thought of without its inscription in a process of signification being already given at the very moment of its existence. That would be to make pain something absolute, but so absolute (absence of relation) that neither thought (nor memory) could relate to it.

This even occurs at the level of presence that you point out: Husserl's understanding of temporality. It is not convenient here to recall Husserl's analyses of temporality. Husserl refers us to a differentiated structure of the moment in which something presents itself to the cogito, and this moment is related to the traces that are retained (retention, protention) in this moment (such as the moment of pain). Thus the aforementioned presence of the experience is inscribed in a chain of signification. That to which I have constantly referred. It is not an absolute, and its meaning is not given from itself. Language, therefore, is not a mere accident that survives the experience, but a possibility that is given by essence insofar as the experience is imbricated and inscribed in the signification.

I claim that this transcendent reality of which you speak when you speak of pain belongs to what Heidegger calls Western ontotheology. And this is so insofar as you have referred to the absolute, to purity, and to authority about something like pain. That reference to purity, to the absolute, and to the presence of pain is the classical element of the unconditioned and that whose meaning and being is given from itself. But how do we make this compatible with ethics? Such an absolute makes impossible the recognition necessary for empathy and understanding of the pain of others. More ethical than "I suffer" is "the other suffers". And the suffering of the other is not my experience! Ethics at this point must challenge and transcend the value of presence and experience, just as memory and language do, and just as the process of signification in which pain is inscribed invites us to think.