These were direct quotes from the text. — Fooloso4

You added what the text didn't say. You quoted something, then you said other stuff not in the text that you gleaned from the text.

The text said:

4.01 A proposition is a picture of reality.

2.223 In order to tell whether a picture is true or false we must compare it with reality.

4.05 Reality is compared with the proposition.

4.06 Propositions can be true or false only by being pictures of the reality.

I didn't see anything about empirical observation. I am sure of it, he did discuss that elsewhere and that is what he means here, thus completing his self-referential circle of himself to himself but just saying, there are authors who explain themselves and ones where you explain them. This is the latter apparently.

True propositions are those that accurately picture reality, propositions that state the facts. — Fooloso4

That is either saying nothing or saying something so obvious as to be not worth saying, "Ok, and anything of significance?". Each person describing reality thinks they are accurately picturing reality. He is giving his preference for observation of events in the world as this "accurate picture". And so what of this preference?

Here's example of things that do have some explanatory worth (or at least have that potential) perhaps:

Chomsky's theory of language aqcuisition device. It explains how language derives from a small set of inputs. Now, it could be completely wrong by future empirical evidence to the contrary. But it is trying to explain something.

Tomasello's theory of language from social learning: It explains how language derives from children having the capacity for common ground and showing a shared reference that is not directly about wanting the item. It may be refuted or revised with further experiments and observations but it is trying to explain something.

Wittgenstein's theory of atomic facts and propositions: It doesn't explain how language is derived. Ok. It doesn't explain how words get their meaning. Ok. It doesn't explain why observation and empirical evidence is more important than intuition, feeling, immediate sensation, abstractions of imagination, etc. It just asserts something (observed objects are what reality is). But he doesn't explain this. He just asserts this. He just says, observed objects are reality. He doesn't explain why this is the case. He just starts with it. And then, once we have this assertion, what of it? What is it proving? Not much except about common sense ideas like, "If you observe that an apple is on the table, there must be a fact that the apple is on the table". Not blowing me away here.

It should be noted that Wittgenstein is neither affirming or denying metaphysical beliefs, he is attempting to draw the limits of what can be said. And what can be said is what has a sense, what can be determined to be true or false.

6.53 The right method of philosophy would be this: To say nothing except what can be said,
i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy:
and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate
to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would be unsatisfying to the other—he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy—but it would be the only strictly correct method. — Fooloso4

How is this proven? This is just a preference for discussing things observed. It explains nothing. It advances nothing. It is just preference-writ-large and then self-referential ideas circling this same preference over and over.

Edited the above post a bit.

You have provided the answer: observation and empirical investigation.

4.01 A proposition is a picture of reality.

2.223 In order to tell whether a picture is true or false we must compare it with reality.

4.05 Reality is compared with the proposition.

4.06 Propositions can be true or false only by being pictures of the reality. — Fooloso4

So it's neat that you interpreted him this way (that he means by pictures of reality- empirical observation or whatnot), but let's say this is the correct interpretation, what does this add? He thus proclaimed something as thus. Other than the fact that he uttered a statement that he believed to be true, what exactly does this progress in the conversation, other than defining pretty self-explanatory things (that there is the world, and we create propositions about the world).

It doesn't tell us what true propositions are or anything like that, so I don't quite see the significance here of his project.

He's basically saying, "Anything beyond atomic facts and their combinations is nonsense". But without explaining what makes something true, this is just a preferential or prejudicial statement about what statements/propositions are meaningful. Something he saw clearly as an error in his later work.

Here's another statement, but in this case it is I who will utter them (a person that is not Wittgenstein, who is apparently given great significance to his words):

"What is really meaningful is what we can intuit". Why is that true or false? I don't know, but it is on par with the utterance "What is really meaningful is what is observed". Ok, so where does that get us? Nowhere. I can build systems on any utterance I thus have.

That’s precisely my question and doesn’t seem Wittgensteins enterprise here. He doesn’t really go into a thorough investigation on how to determine true propositions other than the circular understanding that it’s atomic facts, deduction of these atomic propositions and some remarks about observation and empirical investigation.

Following the Tractatus, there is a distinction between facts, which are a combination of objects (2.01), and statements of facts which are propositions. — Fooloso4

What value does any of this obviousness have? The important part is figuring out the true propositions.

Just saying that there are states of affairs and we can make propositions that are true or false (about these states of affairs) just seems not adding anything.

The problem is atomic propositions are an a priori assumption. He never identifies an elementary proposition. Without elementary propositions we cannot get started. — Fooloso4

I pointed that out a long time ago and was chastised for not just allowing Wittgenstein to get away with it.

It’s just the fact that the definitions must be learned from convention in the first place. If a society has no marriage, it may have no concept of bachelor and thus has no word for “bachelor”. @RussellA appropriately referenced this idea at the beginning of this thread when he discussed the performative “christening” (Kripke’s idea), though I think Kripke’s set of words were limited to proper names and kinds, the distinction being words that are true in all possible worlds (proper names and scientific kinds) and ones that are not (most other words / ones where meaning is from convention and use).

I’m not sure that’s what Chomsky had in mind for “empirical evidence” though.

Rey quotes Chomsky as suggesting that it is an issue for empirical analysis. — Banno

What is your interpretation as to what "empirical analysis" entails here for understanding analyticity?

4 out of 5 men believe unmarried males are bachelors. The rest are just the cheaters :rofl:.

**Did I just do a polysemous? :chin:. To be a bachelor or to act like a bachelor. So I guess not. One is the thing, one is only like the thing. A bank on the river would be more like a polysemous.

Chomsky and Gould hypothesize that language may have evolved simply because the physical structure of the brain evolved, or because cognitive structures that were used for things like tool making or rule learning were also good for complex communication. This falls in line with the theory that as our brains became larger, our cognitive functions increased. — RussellA

I find the part about the evolution of language fascinating, especially the speculation surrounding it. The FoxP2 gene, mirror neuron system, plasticity and memory, pre-frontal cortex, and subcortical connections can help us understand how language evolved. It is likely that language initially evolved through exaptation and was later co-opted for further adaptation in parts of the brain.

Regarding Chomsky's position, there are three main camps in the language acquisition debate. The fully nativist camp (Chomsky, Fodor) believes that language acquisition is almost entirely innate, with syntax and semantics generated without the need for social or cultural conventions. The fully conventional camp (Wittgenstein et al) believes that language acquisition is almost entirely conventional and arises from how it is used in a community of language users. The mix of both camp (Tomasello et al) believes that language acquisition has some innate aspects that need to be in place but heavily relies on social cues, particularly aspects like shared attention.

In terms of the synthetic and analytic distinction, my interpretation of Chomsky's view is that the innate language acquisition device of the brain can automatically compute analytic statements, which are true by definition. However, synthetic statements require environmental learning to produce, so while they may use the language rules generated by the LAD, it is not the LAD itself that produces them. I am not sure if this is completely accurate or if this view has changed over time. For example, I know that certain LAD components have been admitted to be no longer necessary for language generation. Now I believe, "merge" is the only function viewed as necessary. How this relates to evolving view of analytic and synthetic, I am not sure though.

References that are useful:
Tomasello's theory of social cooperative origins based much more on evolutionary and developmental psychology experiments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46IrwGZpDQ4

Chomsky's theory, based much more on "optimal interface" and internal mental thought than on cooperative origins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0DiRj5Bud8&t=349s

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-chomsky-s-theory-of-language-learning/

https://amp.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2015/nov/05/roots-language-what-makes-us-different-animals

https://languagedebates.wordpress.com/2017/12/19/chomsky-or-tomasello-katie-oregan-tries-to-avoid-sitting-on-the-fence-in-the-language-learning-debate/

There is no a priori knowledge of "the triangle" until it has been baptised in a performative act. There is only a posteriori knowledge of the word "the triangle" after it has been baptised in a performative act. — RussellA

I think Chomsky (or at least some nativists) might argue that the very ability of the performative act is some sort of innate language acquisition capability.

See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_(linguistics)
Also here:

Minimalism is an approach developed with the goal of understanding the nature of language. It models a speaker's knowledge of language as a computational system with one basic operation, namely Merge. Merge combines expressions taken from the lexicon in a successive fashion to generate representations that characterize I-Language, understood to be the internalized intensional knowledge state that holds of individual speakers. By hypothesis, I-language — also called universal grammar — corresponds to the initial state of the human language faculty.

Minimalism is reductive in that it aims to identify which aspects of human language — as well the computational system that underlies it — are conceptually necessary. This is sometimes framed as questions relating to perfect design (Is the design of human language perfect?) and optimal computation (Is the computational system for human language optimal?)[2] According to Chomsky, a human natural language is not optimal when judged based on how it functions, since it often contains ambiguities, garden paths, etc. However, it may be optimal for interaction with the systems that are internal to the mind.[3]

Such questions are informed by a set of background assumptions, some of which date back to the earliest stages of generative grammar:[4]

Language is a form of cognition. There is a language faculty (FL) that interacts with other cognitive systems; this accounts for why humans acquire language.
Language is a computational system. The language faculty consists of a computational system (CHL) whose initial state (S0) contains invariant principles and parameters.
Language acquisition consists of acquiring a lexicon and fixing the parameter values of the target language.
Language generates an infinite set of expressions given as a sound-meaning pair (π, λ).
Syntactic computation interfaces with phonology: π corresponds to phonetic form (PF), the interface with the articulatory-perceptual (A-P) performance system, which includes articulatory speech production and acoustic speech perception.
Syntactic computation interfaces with semantics: λ corresponds to logical form (LF), the interface with the conceptual-intentional (C-I) performance system, which includes conceptual structure and intentionality.
Syntactic computations are fully interpreted at the relevant interface: (π, λ) are interpreted at the PF and LF interfaces as instructions to the A-P and C-I performance systems.
Some aspects of language are invariant. In particular, the computational system (i.e. syntax) and LF are invariant.
Some aspects of language show variation. In particular, variation reduces to Saussurean arbitrariness, parameters and the mapping to PF.
The theory of grammar meets the criterion of conceptual necessity; this is the Strong Minimalist Thesis introduced by Chomsky in (2001).[5] Consequently, language is an optimal association of sound with meaning; the language faculty satisfies only the interface conditions imposed by the A-P and C-I performance systems; PF and LF are the only linguistic levels. — Minimalist Program

The deepest truths often lie at the surface, while the shallowest lies can sink to the depths.


Here's another: ""One cannot truly see the world until one realizes that the world is what one sees.""

tease out — Pierre-Normand

Why this?

The limits of my language are not the limits of my conceptual inflation.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should speak at great length and in convoluted prose.

A proposition is meaningless if it cannot be inflated beyond recognition.

Language games are not just for fun, but for overblown speculation.

The solution to any philosophical problem is to inflate it beyond all recognition.

To clarify a concept is to inflate it with enough hot air to reach escape velocity.

Language is like a virus, infecting us with meaningless concepts that we inflate to great heights.

The meaning of a word is not its use, but its potential for inflation.

The value of a philosophical idea is not in its coherence, but in its ability to be inflated beyond all coherence.

The truth is not that which can be stated plainly, but that which can be inflated beyond all recognition.

The Concept of Mind) were arguing against: scientism, operationalism, reductive behaviorism, and some strands of cognitivism — Pierre-Normand

I’m very familiar with the homuncular fallacy. Why is this linked with Wittgenstein?

Are there really modern sophisticated theories that don't take into account how language used in context of environment shapes how it's used? I call horse shit on a stinking straw man.

And since when did Wittgenstein deal with matters outside of language? He was a cognitive scientist or philosopher of mind now? Talk about streeeetccching. Wittgenstein is stretched to fit everyone's needs. In the name of WITT GEN STEIN!

Yes, we all have our preferences. — Fooloso4

Including Wittgenstein. All preference no philosophy, he is. “I don’t like discussing metaphysics. Now here’s some obscure aphoristic text you need to try to interpret.” Oh the irony. Maybe he’s just trolling.

Not just his own and Russell's work, but the more common assumption that is found in much of philosophy and religion. — Fooloso4

Just too damn broad. It's like Wittgenstein doesn't do the heavy-lifting of identifying his targets so everyone has to do it for him. Lame sauce. I too can be obtuse and have adherents say what I was "really" saying. Same as Nietzsche, etc. I prefer philosophers who were clear and very much explaining themselves. Schopenhauer is a great example of someone who at least explains his ideas and doesn't have his adherents try to grasp at his "greatness". He had aphorisms but they weren't obfuscatory in its supposed "simplicity" or simply self-referential to one's own work, for example. Wittgenstein didn't follow that when he tried to also foray into aphoristic writing. It's just Wittgenstein fan-club interpretation rather than Wittgenstein philosophy, every time I have to deal with his ideas.

Here we come up against a remarkable and characteristic phenomenon in philosophical investigation: the difficulty–I might say–is not that of finding the solution but rather that of recognizing as the solution something that looks as if it were only a preliminary to it. “We have already said everything.–Not anything that follows from this, no, this itself is the solution!”

This is connected, I believe, with our wrongly expecting an explanation, whereas the solution of the difficulty is a description, if we give it the right place in our considerations. If we dwell upon it, and do not try to get beyond it.

The difficulty here is: to stop.
(Zettel 314)

To look for an explanation is to look away from what an apt description calls our attention to. Consider, for example, 'forms of life'.

God grant the philosopher insight into what lies in front of everyone’s eyes. — Fooloso4

This isn't saying much either.

Let's take the problem of mind. Imagination- you turn a three dimensional cube in your mind's eye. "WHAT" is that which is being turned around? What is this "mind's eye" even? And here you get many many words about hard problem or neuroscience, etc. But you see, it is explanatory to the degree necessary to provide an answer to that problem. What else can you do otherwise? I cannot present "mind" to you on a platter. Rather it is indeed dialectic. And that is indeed all we can expect from "philosophy". It never was anything but this.

Certainly, there are philosophers who obfuscate with neologisms that are not easy-to-understand, but that is simply about lack of writing skills. That however, doesn't seem like anything more insightful than be clear in your writing.

I will say, Wittgenstein's greatest contribution seems to be the idea of "word games". As long as philosophers can make it easy for other philosophers to play along with their dialectic and word-games, then they are at least acting out of good faith and are on the way of (potentially) doing "good" philosophy. So that I can get on board with. However, anything like, "Don't discuss what isn't readily apparent" is just revealing about philosopher's preferences and nothing more profound about the world. It is just the anti-version of what the jargony philosophers are doing. Both are wrong in their approach then.

Wittgenstein is critical of two attempts to get at something hidden. The first is analysis. That if we break things down to what is most simple and fundamental we will discover an underlying reality. See these quotes cited earlier. — Fooloso4

Ah, as expected, he's just railing against his own previous work and basically Russell. As usual in these Wittgenstein vignettes, on closer inspection, just an insular debate between either his own ideas or at most, a few (close) adherents or collaborators (of his).

The second is to construct what lies hidden beneath what is obvious. Such conceptual constructs do the opposite of what they intend. They direct us to look elsewhere - arche, ground, Mind, God, Being, the hyperuranion, language ... — Fooloso4

His obvious is not obvious though. Can you explain this? If it is how I interpret your interpretation of him, then it is basically, "don't debate about things we cannot empirically investigate". Well, the point of discussing the things like hard problem of consciousness, or metaphysics is to at least understand the question of what the problem is. Just cutting it off as "VERBODEN!" from the start is ridiculous "preference-for-the-ordinary-writ-large".

I am unsure what viewpoint you are describing here. — Pierre-Normand

Thats exactly my point to you. You present these ideas of Wittgenstein and Sellars without context of what ideas and who they are arguing against. So who and what ideas are they against here? People like Freud or others who believe in some non-linguistic thought (like an unconscious)?

In any of these debates, I think it is wise to explain not only the theory, but what and who it is opposing. Wittgenstein was opposing "Blank person with blank idea". Otherwise, the theory on its own seems rather common sense. Language is shaped by how we use it. That shouldn't be controversial. Language shapes how we view reality. That to me, isn't that controversial either. There are no concepts prior to language. That is verging on controversial. That is the part I would explore. What are concepts? What is language? Is language simply a token that rides on top of the concept or is the concept itself constructed from language? I believe those are the main arguments here. But these things to me are more the realm of empirical psychology, and not so much philosophy.

I think we are actually committing a Wittgensteinian sin by not defining our word games properly. Otherwise we are speaking in self-referential nonsense and not a fruitful game.

=============================================================================
Nothing is hidden, in this context, is the denial of dualism. The ontology here is flat and holist in the sense that all entities are linked inferentially and practically in a single 'nexus.' No finite thing has genuine being, in this context, means that no isolated or disconnected entity makes sense. What is called 'consciousness' is just the world for a discursive self. Instead of consciousness, we just have [the being of ] the world --- seen, of course, with many pairs of eyes, and smelled with many noses, ... — plaque flag

This is sort of akin to Schopenhauer, no? "Will" is a monistic entity that is "felt" as if disunified. Of course, how the many is one, and why the feeling of difference is an "illusion" is a bit tricky and can be quite hard to really prove.

The world is all that is the case, in this context, means the embrace of rationalism. The world is described or articulated or disclosed by our true claims. In different words, the world is that minimal something that a self can be wrong about. This underspecification is not an oversight. What is the case is endlessly revisable. We fix Descartes by socializing him. Philosophers plural are given. This means, however, that a minimally specified world and a shared language are also given. This language includes the 'liquid logic' of evolving semantic and inferential norms. Such norms are appealed to in order to instigate their modification. That's what philosophers do. What cannot be sensibly disputed --- by the truth-intending philosopher as such --is the 'primordial situation' of philosophers-in-the-world-with-language. This is because any denial presupposes what it denies. — plaque flag

You lost me a bit here. We use language and language is an ever-evolving process in how it is used and reused. Is that basically it? If so, what is so impactful about this? What idea is this claim aimed against?

Maybe you're trying to say that "facts" are in fact always subject to language usage? Thus no "there" there, just nominal word-usage. Extreme pragmatism (in the philosophical sense, not the common usage of that word). Truths are only functional in this view. We can never get beyond the narrative.

The opposite of this would be something like a realist who would point out that truths must revolve around what the world discloses us. The world is giving us something, and it is simply our job to interpret correctly.

The other view would retort something like, the world discloses, but it is never without a person it is disclosing to who is always in the equation thus interpreting it. Thus, we can never get out of the fact that we are in the equation and our new language usage, perhaps, opens up more revelations about the world that would not be there otherwise.

I think it is interesting that we often take the models for the reality. This might be what I call, "the quagmire of realism". People are so ready to refute non-realism that they reify concepts into reality, the map for the territory. Thinking about animal cognition, similar to the exercise represented by Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?" might combat this. That is to say, echo-locating creatures without conceptual cognitive faculties have a way-of-life that can never be disclosed to us merely by describing a bat in our terms. The same with quantification of scientific laws of matter, energy, space, and time. It gets at the world in a methodology but is not the world.

Hello Professor Chomsky,
Do you think that the debate between theories of "innate cognitive structures" (like the "merge" function), and theories of social and cultural transmission, as represented by Michael Tomasello can be reconciled? Can the "nativist" and "empiricist" views be reconciled? Is there starting to be a consensus in the linguistic and cognitive science departments regarding these views?

To me the self (poor ghost held responsible for the operation of his machine) is perhaps our oldest piece of technology. — plaque flag

I can agree with that. It is a necessary construct. Hunter-gatherers are more communal but they are not completely different minds. They are not the borg or hive mind, or whatever neo-Noble Savage we can put upon them to make the tragedy some sort of YOU thing problem not an US thing problem.

The idea, I think, is that the protagonist of this tragedy is a social construction. — plaque flag

Yes, but not a social fiction. There's a difference. It is at the least entailed in our species, not our culture.

I'd like Debord and Marshall McLuhan to come back and see the internet's role in this world. — plaque flag

Eerie how their description fits the internet age so well.

But your quote spoke of an epistemic trauma and your own complaint is of an ontological trauma.

Shome category error shurely? — apokrisis

Not category error. Similar conclusions perhaps. There is something about human consciousness which is tragic. You are saying that the tragedy is a fiction brought on by Enlightenment (and then perhaps balked and thought perhaps civilization). I said that the tragedy is democratic and afforded to all people with deliberative, self-reflecting brains.

Actually I'm already a reader of Zizek and Debord. I wish I kept my copy of The Sublime Object... I did keep my Debord. Also read his weird autobio, cool stuff. — plaque flag

Sorry to go over well-trodden ground. Just keeping up with the thread.. Although I guess it's not really Zizek's "consciousness" theory as much as his epistemology of politics.

I think it's cool. It's paradoxical Romantic metaphysical psychoanalytic poetry. — plaque flag

I think Guy Debord is similar there with his idea of The Spectacle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle

As it says here:

Debord traces the development of a modern society in which authentic social life has been replaced with its representation: "All that once was directly lived has become mere representation."[2] Debord argues that the history of social life can be understood as "the decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing."[3] This condition, according to Debord, is the "historical moment at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life."[4] — Wiki

Zizek is a continental guy. Schopenhauer, Hegel, Marx, Lacan, Kierkegaard, are all on his radar. It's the well he draws from.

There's a strong tradition of pessimistic thought there. Critiquing the power structure regarding things out of our power to control. The Real is what is out of our power, eludes symbolic interpretations and answers.

Schopenhauer is the philosopher of the Real, of the traumatic kernel that resists symbolization, of the traumatic encounter with the Thing that cannot be represented" — The Sublime Object of Ideology

But in general, his philosophy acknowledges the play between authenticity and power structures that help us internalize habits of thought.. Things that I was emphasizing earlier about us being an animal that has habits but can also break free of those habits.. A being with the self-awareness understanding bad faith....

Sure, but they couldn't enjoy it. Youth is wasted on the young. — plaque flag

That is how they enjoy(ed) it. The enjoyment is not knowing. The Tao and Nirvana and Flow state we are always seeking. Broken tool man.

There is no "you" having these thoughts without the romantic response to be the "unrequested self behind the forced social mask" that has a social history going all the way back to Ecclesiastes and Gilgamesh, as you so triumphantly proclaim.

But let's not derail another thread with your persistent Pessimism. That wasn't the subject here. — apokrisis

Zizek might not agree. Anyways, pessimism goes part and parcel with being human. while our cultural and social environment may shape the way we understand and express our self-awareness, it doesn't necessarily negate the fact that self-awareness is an innate aspect of human consciousness.

Caveman and hunter-gatherers have access to doing things they would not want to do and suicide. But even if that were not true, the fact that we are a species with this capacity (exaptation though it might be), is still the case, however it formed. You can't banish self-awareness because you thus said "No this wasn't how it started!". Doesn't work like that.

is a given. It's a possible, even reasonable, attitude, but other attitudes are also possible and reasonable.

That's basically all I've been saying/ — Janus

No, I don't think you do because you are cutting out the rest of my quote, and it seems deliberate. In other words, how is this not a Cthulu god, one beyond "good and evil"? But don't even use that, use the quote I originally sent you as I said it better. OFten here I have to repeat myself and the repetition is just a mere shadow of my original :D.

Eden and that break were created at the same time. — plaque flag

Eden = no self-awareness. No ability to be uber-deliberative and to thus be existential. There was a time when there was no break.

The asymmetry or injustice or radical break certainly exists. But – as is always the case – it is entropic.

The human journey is about bumbling into whatever is the next entropic bonanza that makes itself available to our evolving intelligence. — apokrisis

I am explaining what it's like to be the creature that can do things it doesn't want to and can do things existentially driven (suicide). Even other apes, and complex mammals and birds don't have that kind of self-awareness.

Perhaps some bonanza will be there. I don't doubt it. I am just saying what it is to be this embodied break (asymmetry if you want) from the rest of nature.

Argument by non sequitur. — apokrisis

I think it is definitely sequitur.

Assertion rather than argument. "Move to dismiss, m'lud." — apokrisis

Correcting wrong characterization from your non sequitur.

More coming hold on..

Science is eating up all your 18th C "romantic reaction to the industrial revolution" dialectical "truths". — apokrisis

You give too much credence to this romantic notion of the romantic reaction to the industrial revolution. It was there in Ecclesiastes and Gilgamesh.

Every step in the human journey can be seen as completely natural once you have the proper theory of nature. — apokrisis

I didn't say how we got here wasn't inevitable based on evolutionary trajectory. I am explaining the current conditions. There is no justification and that is indeed a large asymmetry with the rest of nature. No other animal has that degree of abstraction, deliberation, and thus self-awareness. This creates the problem of doing things one wouldn't "want" to do. Of knowing there is X negative and doing it anyways. One can do otherwise. One can commit suicide. One can hate and do. One HAS to do X otherwise Z. But it's not that, it's KNOWING that. It does represent an exile from Eden of sorts. A break.

Justification is part of the way humans cooperate and compete, it seems to me. — plaque flag

It's all self-motivated though. I choose to internalize as much as it is habitual. That line is much greyer than both camps like to admit.

Using @apokrisis holism, and not being reductionist, we can say that choosing to habituate into someone is also a choice. It is possibly a unquestioned assumption (as to if, what, and how) to habituate someone else in the first place. As people develop their own identity, they can then break free of the constraints if they so choose...But then they encounter the dilemma of bad faith and authenticity.

Either that or I’m actually competent in the maths and metaphysics of statistical thought. That is my unfair advantage. :grin: — apokrisis

I never said you don't understand statistical mechanics, but as I said to plaque:

Never said we weren't part of nature, but just a really asymmetrical one that is out of sorts with the other parts. There is no justification for why we must do anything, yet we act as if we do! And here we have the tensions of PoMo and Evo Devo. We have human development and language.. The "constraints" of the system, but then order takes shape, but then this creates the ultimate disorder of NO JUSTIFICATION. As a deliberative language-bearing ape, is one that cannot escape having no justification at the end of its long journey. You don't have to work. You can die. You can fear death, but you can do go beyond what you fear. You can get by doing any number of things. — schopenhauer1

I agree with you to some extent but then you try to put the order where there is disorder.. symmetry where there is a large break in symmetry.

But we are nature. We were implicit in Nature, which had to give birth to its wickedest and most beautiful child. — plaque flag

Never said we weren't part of nature, but just a really asymmetrical one that is out of sorts with the other parts. There is no justification for why we must do anything, yet we act as if we do! And here we have the tensions of PoMo and Evo Devo. We have human development and language.. The "constraints" of the system, but then order takes shape, but then this creates the ultimate disorder of NO JUSTIFICATION. As a deliberative language-bearing ape, is one that cannot escape having no justification at the end of its long journey. You don't have to work. You can die. You can fear death, but you can do go beyond what you fear. You can get by doing any number of things.

I offered a Brandom quote above that focused on unstable impersonal conceptual schemes that increase in complexity and comprehensiveness. For Kojeve's Hegel, this 'is' time (as the movement of the embodied 'software' coming to understand itself and what knowledge is.) — plaque flag

It all goes back to the Zapffe's break in nature. Talk about a break in symmetry! Humans have created a huge asymmetry. When meaning itself can not be justified, yet we "fear" the consequences of this or that, something went askew.

@apokrisis relies too much on the comforts of statistical norms as somehow "telling", but discredits the idea of bad faith. The logic of letting the egg lay the chicken. You buy into the statistical norm, it becomes the norm.