How much does philosophy talk about Racism? That's kind of relegated into the English Department- Cultural studies I think. — Jonah Tobias

Good question. I'm not sure. And when it is talked about it is often a little fake sounding. It is pre-politicized. On reddit you can see the real thinking going on. I'm a liberal on social matters, etc., but I am not excited about certain trends, certain shrill voices on the left. The real thinking is indeed happening, but I'm guessing that high theory will have to be parasitic on outsider thought. You almost have to be anonymous to really talk about race in all of its complexity, I think. If you say 'I oppose racism' but confess that you have to fight certain racist tendencies to strive toward this ideal, I don't think it would go over well. 'I don't agree with racism, but I understand it.' Taboo things are not for understanding. Politics has a fundamental shallowness most of the time. Tribal chest-beating, the repetition of unquestionable mantras, etc. A wasteland. Does my distaste for it figure into the equation of power? Sure. One irresponsibly and selfishly tunes out.

You mention serpeant and dove. One way of looking at rap or a kid from the hood- compared to abstract philosophy and where ever we're from... is Chakras. Whether you believe in one system or whatever- just the general idea that when you listen to someone's voice- some people speak from their belly- some the top of their head. Some are more rooted- some more airy. What part of a persons self is activated and where are we still sleeping. They say Hip Hop was born when people began imitating the drums with their voice rather than the melodies. Its the rhythm. And Rhythm is the lower chakras. Are the lower chakras lower? Only if you prize the mind greater than the soul. — Jonah Tobias

All of this is great. There's the old idea that racism is about projection too. Whatever white consciousness did not want to find in itself it had to project on the other. Same with women. Those repressed aspects of consciousness must exist somewhere. They are just displaced. Boy don't cry. But then they need women who will to feel complete. Same with whiteness and rap. But we get strange scenes. I was in a hip music store once (before the digital revolution wiped it out) and everyone in there was listening to the speakers blast a word that none of them could say themselves --not even in the same joyous, affirmative tone.

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Pondering whether one should or can obey these directions involves keeping them together as they were given as an answer to the legal expert who asked: "Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?" — Valentinus

Good point, and what does this relationship hint at it concerning God? Is God a current running through all of us? If so, the words don't matter and the traditions don't essentially matter and the atheist is one with the theist. A wise 'theist' would be an 'atheist' from the perspective that an external God would be an idol and therefore a false God. The commandments can be understood as 'given' by our own higher nature. That the ones in the book are maybe not perfect for our lives today might just mean that the transcription is never perfect. It doesn't feel good to steal, to murder, to lie, etc., tho we must give sin its due. How about soft laws? Imperfectly revealed? And as descriptions of our own nature in pictorial language for less conceptually developed times?

Can you communicate your philosophy to a kid from the hood? — Jonah Tobias

That is my fantasy --to write high ideas in the language of the street. I am torn though. If I am too folksy and insufficiently pretentious here for instance, then maybe I will be under-rated. So my vanity urges me to talk about as fancy as I can manage at high speed.

But I listen to some nasty rap when the mood strikes, and that is true modern poetry. Danny Brown's 'Monopoly' for instance. That is pure Nietzsche in some sense. It's a mocking assertion of superiorty and transcendence. Rap is the truth about the rest of our culture, the truth of capitalism, let's say. (Oversimplification alert!) We love and hate it. At the center of it all is a word that only some of us are allowed to say, which is fascinating. Rap tells one side and the politicians with their euphemisms tell the other. IMV one of the goals of thinking is to unite this kind of split consciousness. I am good and evil, high-minded and just a vain beast. Oh but I've said too much. Surely these things can't intimately coexist? A knowledge of profound evil and profound good? The wisdom of the serpent and the gentleness of the dove?

Amen indeed. I have these little moments in my life. People I work with. Friends-at-work. There is a restrained tenderness in smiles exchanged. 'Love hides.' The world ain't so dead. We just have learned caution, those who are tuned in in some kind of vague way to what it vaguely is all about. And I think that is all of us sometimes. And that maybe there is a natural tendency toward getting better at that. 'Philosophy...is an activity.' It's not a set of dead propositions, etc. Books are treasures, but the First Book is life itself.

One thing I must throw in is that this is no denial or what is evil or terrible about existence. Blah blah. We love in spite of that, and not without hating at moments too. Obvious things, but any kind of positive spiel looks naive to those not currently plugged in to a sense of wonder. Sometimes it's not cool to not know and to know that one doesn't know in a knowing way. Complex stuff, and people are devilishly complex, too complex for their own understanding of themselves except in terms of a few general principles perhaps.

There are things that we derive meaning from that are and never will be subject to appraisals. Like the Mona Lisa or Bach's Sheep May Safely Graze. I used to be a utilitarian; but, setting up the criteria upon which we could appraise value is a hopeless and soullessness task. — Posty McPostface

Yeah, well said. Trying to fit everything into a scheme and calling that the height of being human seems wrong to me. Or not wrong but just an inferior music. For me the goal is vaguely to turn the music up, light more candles, live with more depth and flow. Philosophy is just one way to do that better, a way focused on the conceptual aspect of existence. Since I love the conceptual, it's at the very top --right next to music and of course being with others in the best kind of way.

Check out Heidegger. I don't really think the high idea of philosophy is dead. He's not the only name, but I think you'll find him at the roots of this kind of not-giving-over to science.

The limits of my language are the limits of my world; but, then I learn something new and expand on those limits. — Posty McPostface

I agree. The circle. We push against its limits and stretch it.

There's something divine and mystical about reason and logos, noesis, and such. — Posty McPostface

But to me that's the passion! Passion is not just sexual lust and hunger. There is a passion for something lofty, call it what we will. That's why pragmatism can be such a turn off, though some pragmatists found a way to grasp at the higher with it. (For me the higher is mostly a feeling that we strive to attain and hold onto.) Philosophy is from that perspective a music of concepts.

My pleasure. I appreciate the openness and sincerity of your post.

I would say in the positive that it is mysticism of sorts. Often interpreted as sophistr — Posty McPostface

Yes, and maybe it is both. The words alone can only point. My question for you: do you think philopshy seeks something higher ? Do you feel any sort of religious passion in your thinking? One wants truth not to pay the bills but just because. Something is trying to articulate itself. Life is being lived in a high way in the conceptual realm, unfolding itself, finding words for a vision of the world....of itself as this finding of the world in the world. Whatya think?

Yeah, the seventh proposition of the Tractatus is intense. Does it lead to philosophical quietism? — Posty McPostface

I see how it could. On the other hand, I find an ecstasy in that which I feel I have come to understand. Not all the time (life has its ups and downs) but again and again. So for me it's a beautiful thing to try to find liberating words, words that open situations instead of closing them, words that point beyond getting trapped in words. IMV this stuff was already in the tradition mixed with other elements. What was Hegel pointing at? Something dynamic and alive. Something that always moved beyond categories toward the whole. Why did Diogenes mock the cobwebs of the dialecticians? Why did Democritus laugh? Who was Pyrroh really? (Behind the goofy myths.) And what were the negative theologians trying to say?

This is one of my favorite 'spiritual' passages of philosophy that connects a certain understanding of language with more than just conveniently avoiding the waste of time.

This faith does not formulate itself—it simply lives, and so guards itself against formulae. To be sure, the accident of environment, of educational background gives prominence to concepts of a certain sort: in primitive Christianity one finds only concepts of a Judaeo-Semitic character (—that of eating and drinking at the last supper belongs to this category—an idea which, like everything else Jewish, has been badly mauled by the church). But let us be careful not to see in all this anything more than symbolical language, semantics[6] an opportunity to speak in parables. It is only on the theory that no word is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya,[7] and among Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse[8]—and in neither case would it have made any difference to him.—With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit”[9]—he cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth,[10] whatever is established killeth. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He speaks only of inner things: “life” or “truth” or “light” is his word for the innermost—in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, all nature, even language, has significance only as sign, as allegory.—Here it is of paramount importance to be led into no error by the temptations lying in Christian, or rather ecclesiastical prejudices: such a symbolism par excellence stands outside all religion, all notions of worship, all history, all natural science, all worldly experience, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology, all books, all art—his “wisdom” is precisely a pure ignorance[11] of all such things. — Nietzsche

So far no one else has ever said to me: Yeah, that speaks to me too! This passage has always just hung there when I posted it. But I feel this music in good moments. And I think Nietzsche's Christ is very close to Nietzsche's own transcendence. Beyond all his penetrating paragraphs there is a thrust into the beyond of all that has become dead and fixed for him. We might say that he reaches for beings in order to never-really-say becoming.

Is this philosophy, mysticism, religion? The words break down. The categories fail, especially if we add to this portrait a familiarity with sophisticated thought that doesn't get trapped in it. This 'ignorance' is an ignorance revealed by striving against ignorance. It is a mystery painfully-at-first revealed to those who would demystify.

I realised I was choosing when to be happy or mad. And that I could choose not to let things affect me negatively. In fact, I realised, everything has it's ups and downs, things change. But it is my decision to choose how I react to it all. — NotesOfAMan

Thanks for sharing. And I quoted what I also consider an important realization --that one is responsible or might as well act as if responsible for one's own mental states --excluding being expected to smile with a compound fracture, etc.

Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must remain silent. My favorite quote by Witty. — Posty McPostface

Yeah, he's on to something. That's what I love about him. He was grossed out by people trying to make a science of the highest things. That approach betrays them. He really wanted these things given some respect with silence. (?) To me the endlessly mechanical approach to life in its fullness is somewhat small and sad. 'I am correct-bot 2040. Please input facts. There are no interpretations, only facts. Thank you. '

It's a utilitarian grasping with no openness. Instead it's obsessed with power, correctness, language policing, etc. It tries to fit the object (God or the transcendent or the unnameable or the mystery or love or beauty) to the method. The method is too small, and the method is maybe even a form of cowardice. We are terrified of being wrong, or being mortal. We want to invent a machine that keeps us safe on the surface. [This is an oversimplification, etc. But everything is....]

What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar”. When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something valid, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. — Hegel

This is the attitude I have toward the usual categories. They become bland and lifeless. They keep us on the surface, bickering over nothing really (at worst) and confusion earnest inquiry (at best.)

Hmm. So, does that imply some form of idealism? — Posty McPostface

'Idealism' is caught up in the storm. 'Idealism' has no more local meaning than 'two.' It's not false to find idealism in it but this 'idealism' would be one more failure to finally say it. It's the explicitness that brings with it fragility. A chandelier. All of our explicit attempts interfere with another. Hegel wrote somewhere that all philosophy was idealism. I think there's some truth in that. But don't nail that down as a kind of math.

What is most worth saying cannot be said clearly and ultimately. Thus spoke macrosoft --and who knows how many others.

Now you are feeling my vibe. Look for local meaning. Try to catch it. Fail. Discover that meaning is global or distributed and we can't even say what it is globally either --or we can never quite say it. We can't quite say what makes our doomed attempt to finally say it possible.

I'm with you on this one. Otherwise what would we be talking about? Does the name "two" denote anything? — Posty McPostface

In certain contexts it's the name of a number.

How is a horse different than a Pegasus for someone who has seen neither but seen pictures of both?

There is a difference, of course. I suspect that we could talk about this difference endlessly.

I think the point is that the correspondence theory of truth is bunk when talking about empty names. Therefore, what can we substitute to qualify empty names as meaningful content? — Posty McPostface

Does 'empty name' even make sense? Can there be a name that doesn't point at something? Would we still call it a name?

I find myself in the weird situation of thinking that I have something important to communicate and share in the world of philosophy. At this point I'm convinced that I do. Even if you disagree you can just play along with a- "supposing you did have something new to communicate..."

It's the "what now". Can I meet some professor and partner with him and have him do all the dirty work because he's chosen a career in academia anyways? Is that a kind of shortcut for me? Is that realistic.

Or should I just keep plugging away at this animated thing and try to reach a broad market.

The Acedemic world or the popular world?

What do you do with a problem like Maria?

If this was Athens I would walk into the town center and debate with Socrates I suppose.... — Jonah Tobias

I think it highly unlikely (though possible) that you could get someone to do the dirty work IMO. That's just my sense of human nature. An academia is a busy place.

And then the dirty work is the work itself. Better IMV to just write a book, sell it if possible or just put out a pdf.

I've thought about writing a book, but I end up having more fun just talking on forums. And here we are, published, warts and all, in the living conversation.

So I come on to this forum as a- hmmm. its been 10 years lying dormant all these thoughts. And I feel like they have legs. I feel like they should go somewhere. Even if every single thought within this has been said before- its something of a new center. I've searched for it in writings and I've seen parts and pieces here and there, etc. But the big picture of it- the central thrust of it- It feels like Nietzsche to me but it doesn't sound like Nietzsche at all. It echoes Bergson, Deleuze, Rorty, so many, so many others of course. But its got its own identity. — Jonah Tobias

To me this is a familiar situation. I think passionate and thoughtful people always end up being somewhat novel fusions of what they have been exposed to and come up with on their own. I come hear myself to develop my own philosophy, find new metaphors for old ideas, and maybe every once in a while a truly new fusion. I've though about writing it all up, but it just doesn't feel the same away from conversation. In some ways this is already the perfect medium. I would just ask for more people on this forum, 10 times as many active participants.

In ordinary life I know highly educated technical people on the one hand and musicians and artists on the other. Neither group really reads the kind of stuff that we read. That's fine. In a way it's even nice. I get to live whatever it is I think I have learned with appealing to little passwords. If I am becoming brighter and wiser, it should show in the way I interact with people without me having to drop abstractions on them. And it does flow. But it took time to mostly live in this flow. So much knowledge is pre-conceptual, like riding a bike. And then just actually liking people gets most of the job done. I guess philosophy keeps one's eye on the mystery and the beauty in even the small things that might bore the less open and curious. So it's easier to be amused, happy, and then to like others. One finds oneself in everyone, at least a little.

So philosophy- truth- all these things become more important than ever. And one thing I like about my perspective on things is that it helps breed a philosophical humility. TLDR- we're just animals bro... animal brains. We only see from our own tiny perspective. Respect and love differences, etc, etc yadadya- And at the same time- Demistify your intellectual concepts on God that think they KNOW to make room for the mystery of true spirituality. — Jonah Tobias

Nice. Pretty much my view too.

For me a lot of this came from discussions of being and becoming and questioning how it is that I experience time... as well as Bergson's theorem that when we say time we're really talking about space. Love me some Bergson! — Jonah Tobias

I really want to get around to him, since I have the impression he speaks to this. Yes, time as space! That seems a good way to think of clock time. We use a spatial number system (the real number line) to model time without really giving it consideration or looking inward.

All my talk of Being and Becoming has got to cue you in that I'm down for the difficult language of philosophical thought. In my demand that philosophy talk in common language as well- there's a deeper demand there. — Jonah Tobias

I'm all for the simplest language possible, at least when one is trying to communicate the idea and not having fun with language for its own sake. But sometimes the philosophers didn't do a great job or don't yet know exactly what they mean but have a hunch that something is there.

Philosophy has got to lead to something! — Jonah Tobias

I can relate. But why can't it just lead to more light, more music? Just generally upward and opening? A widening spiral of meaning.

But I really think philosophy is something to be embodied and lived. It has to enter into our conversations. Its like a new eyeball. When you're describing this eyeball to someone- it may be very difficult language and very scientific. But when they've learned it they put this eyeball in their head- and now they see things differently. Once we've expanded our meaning of concepts like truth, etc- we don't need to explain them again each time. We just use them with a different sense. — Jonah Tobias

I agree. Well said. At some point the difficult and the new becomes easy and obviously shared so that there's no need for prefaces. That would be the living past, in my view. It's become subliminal, automatic, but at one time is was difficult, uncertain, conscious.

Basically what I'm really getting at here is- Philosophy for what? How come? Why philosophy at all? — Jonah Tobias

Yeah, that is the question. Some have said that man is philosophy --inasmuch he is beyond the (other) animals. An arrow flying over the horizon. A quest for the infinite or to see things whole. A quest to unveil, unveil, unveil. Revelation itself incarnate.

But more than that- because of those punctuated moments of truth! Epiphany! And Truth changes our world- our lives. — Jonah Tobias

Wow. Yeah that gets the experience. It's ecstasy. It's depth. Words that embarrass people who want philosophy to be a little science of some kind that smart people can be bored with because they know lots of little games. Being bored with philosophy is being bored with being. Bad philosophy bores, no doubt, but because bores are bleating and bleeding it.

When I look at the world around us- politics in america and the world- the "liberal elites" of the media- the ones who used to protect us from our own worst instincts- and subject us to theirs- they've been rocked by the populism of social media and the flattening of information in general. Its a more populist world of information. So we can't rely on protection anymore from those who "know better'. The democracy is a more true democracy- which means just as dumb as its people. — Jonah Tobias

That's how I see it to. All decorum is gone (well, I guess we could have a presidential sex tape to really go all the way, but I won't be watching that one. ) Public discourse is largely as rude and crude and stupid as Youtube comments. I understand conspiracy theory in terms of a fantasy that someone is actually in control. I understand why even dark theories have appeal, because I think no one is really driving (that power is not quite that concentrated) and I would be scared if I wasn't always thinking instead about ....philosophy. So I guess there's a certain kind of escapism in philosophy for me. I wouldn't use 'escapism,' but others might. I'd say I focus on aspects of reality that allow me to thank it for being around. Still reality, just not the barks and squeals of politics.

Hmm. I think the correspondence theory of truth fails us here. What does Pegasus correspond to? — Posty McPostface

That's a good question. I'd say to a shared image/notion. To me it's cleaner to just grant existence to all of these things(the horse and the horse with wings). They just exist in different ways, with different intensities of publicness, different possibilities in terms of our purposes.

Love thy neighbor as thyself" Do we must do it or no? What do you think about it? — Artie

If it's experienced as a command or a self-conscious project, then I think it's highly questionable. But it also reminds me of a description of higher states of feeling. Our sense of self can expand. Yes, we are still in our body and they are in theirs, but the sense of otherness can break down. Let's say your neighbors house catches on fire and they are trapped inside. Imagine that you run in to help not because you think have to but because you feel that you have to. You want to, even if you are also scared. You feel for them. You take care of them the way you would want someone to look out for you.
(I'm not saying it would be easy for me or that I am even often so loving of neighbors. But in high states of feeling I do sometimes feel that what is good in me is the same that is good in others. My best self is no longer localized. )

It seems like the theoretical isn't definitive enough without empiricism. — BrianW

If theory depends on metaphor and passion, then it would seem to require a significant world to theorize about. If it intends to be true, then it would seem to need other people in that world. Since theory is part of language, we might look into what we implicitly affirm even as we question --the possibility of a listener for one thing and the strange what-it-is-ness of intelligibility.

Don't all theories aim at providing practical value? — BrianW

While this is plausible, I'm not so sure anymore that things are that simple. What about dark philosophical theories like pessimism? I can't remember his name at the moment, but there was a lesser known pessimist who committed suicide as soon as he published his pessimistic philosophy. Death (and our ability to jump into the grave early or to choose war over safety) complicates practical value.

If not, then what is their significance? — BrianW

That seems like a deep question to me. What is significance? What does it mean for something to mean? I don't know, but I think it's a worthy question that opens life up somehow.

I'd never use "transcendent" and especially not "authentic" to describe any artwork.

I don't think there's anything inferior about jingles, production music, etc.--and I've done some of both myself. — Terrapin Station

OK. That may connect to some of our variations of perspective. To be clear, it's not about shaming jingles. It's about paying tribute to the feelings we are capable of as human beings. 'Stairway to Heaven' is itself a Stairway to Heaven if one is in the right mood for it. Sadie, Coltrane, Patti Smith, Warpaint, Bach, and others you might name are definitely offering something to me that this is not:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNddW2xmZp8

I would not say that some fixed system of categories is ever going to do the situation justice. But I've been writing against naively held fixed systems of categories for many posts now. Loose categorization can usually succeed given enough shared experience. It's the same with God. An 'atheist' and 'theist' may very quickly discover that they have more in common than two 'atheists' or 'theists.' This can happen because they aren't trapped in that particular categorization. And sophisticated religion has perhaps even been profoundly aware of the sterility of certain categorizations before philosophy proper was. (The distinction of religion and philosophy is itself questionable in certain cases.)

I invite anyone to reply.

While it's fascinating to try to pin down what proper names are, I think it's at least noteworthy that seems to be like trying to pin down the infinite system of language down in a few finite paragraphs. Can we exhaust what it is to name? No doubt we can brighten the space of the question.

Sometimes discussions on language remind me of a knight who goes to fight a dragon without his shield, thinking he has only to deal with a chameleon. With language we get massive complexity and flexibility, mostly automatic. Somehow the words pour out and somehow we understand this pouring. We understand 'proposition' in context. We can replace it with other words ('statement','judgment'). But if we keep going we find that we are chasing the meaning of 'one' word across the vast space of the language as a whole.

I am all for "meaning(s) which cannot be made sufficiently explicit"; poetry, music, visual arts, the arts generally. I'm not sure there are such meanings in mathematics though; maybe in intuitive feelings some may entertain about mathematics and its relation to reality, I guess — Janus

I'm surprised to hear you say this. Is it meaningless to you that a set of n elements has 2^n subsets? Would a proof of this just be a string of dead symbols for you? Or would something like 'getting it' occur? I am assuming that a set of n elements and its powerset also had some kind of intelligibility for you just then.

For me those kinds of 'meanings" are purely affective and any attempt to derive something propositional from them is doomed to incoherence. — Janus

If you are saying that we can't get away with an undisciplined appeal to intuition in mathematics, then I agree. The formalist epistemology is a kind of hygiene. In math we really can build concepts that only expand and never shift at their foundations. What the calculus student learns about continuous function remains true for the student of topology.

But there will always be those who believe in a pure intellectual enlightenment in some such manner as Plato is usually interpreted to hold, and mathematics often seems to be held as the exemplar of that. — Janus

I'd say that mathematics has two faces which are often seen from a distance as one. Its epistemology is (ideally if not practically) computable. In theory a proof can be converted to machine code and checked for correctness. But the whole enterprise is pursued sometimes without obvious worldly applications because there is some internal meaning beyond that. Such internal meanings are much like the meaning of everyday activities shorn of their concrete details so that only structure remains. For instance, our notion of a set functions informally in everyday life. I think both the epistemology and the intuitive content speak to a desire for something timeless. Really they need one another, because no one cares about an eternity of finite strings of ones and zeros that a meaningless program happened to accept. And intuition is kept social by being channeled through certain publicly embraced rules. In math we really can control the language, though we mostly do so where something is actually being said.

I left that exaggeration by itself for dramatic effect. I mean that objects get their being from the network gets its being from the objects. Kinda-sorta-something-like-that.

Exhaustive explain/describe the house next door to me and you have explained/described all of reality. Why? You will need history, and also to give an account of your own explanation's possibility. And maybe even then the mystery won't have been touched.

Yes, logical space is just a two-dimensional coordinate system where relations between objects designate their meaning, contextually speaking. — Posty McPostface

I guess my concern is that I don't believe in objects.

Logical space means a state space where meaning is shared. — Posty McPostface

Well, I'm glad we agree that there is some kind of shared space, however we elaborate upon it.

I'm an astute Wittgensteinian, meaning that I believe that the Tractatus was a preface to the Investigations. One is supplementary to the other. Wittgenstein wanted for both works to be published alongside one another. I think I'm on point in this regard. — Posty McPostface

I agree that he wanted them together and that they are part of a continuous journey, but I think that journey is dialectical. It's exactly because Wittgenstein thirsted for a sort of perfection that he was also one of the first to come up against its limits (just a theory I'm tossing off, offered non-authoritatively). He ran fastest and found the obstacle earlier than most. Don't get me wrong. The TLP has great value. At least for me it's no big deal if part of an approach seems wrong, especially if it's the 'mistake' of a genius. And much is not cancelled out by further reflection.

And would you elaborate on what it means for you?

I think I do. It's a state space for atomic propositions to be understood. Wittgenstein referred to it as 'logical space'. The ontology of it is still a mystery to me; but, understanding the world as the totality of facts and not things, is illuminating to my mind. — Posty McPostface

IMV, that is a beautiful spider-web, one more attempt to grab the phenomenon in concepts. How do you make sense of Wittgenstein himself abandoning his youthful vision?

Why "somewhat"? — Posty McPostface

If I give you a proposition like 'the mental is public,' then that suggests an explicitness that betrays my own message. That suggests that I want to do math with concepts that have significant meaning crammed into cute little tokens like 'mental' and 'public.'

That said, I'd they there is something like a continuum. If the mental were purely public, then you would have no need to ask me to elaborate. If the mental were not at all public, then you would not bother to ask, since we would share no meaning space in which such an elaboration were possible.

To be clear, I don't know exactly what 'meaning space' is. One of my theses is that we can't make certain things explicit without betraying them. As we try to make them explicit, we find that our spiderwebs are fragile. They don't play nice with other such spiderwebs. For instance, I think we live in a shared world. What is it for something to be true about this 'world'? I'd say something like 'true-for-us and not just true-for-me.' But I'm not saying 'X' is in everyone's head. That's too explicit. Too much baggage comes along with it. Because we could debate about my theory of truth to find out whether it was true for us without anyone having an explicit theory of this other kind of truth used in-explicitly to judge my conceptualization. We 'live' a faith in this elusive sense of truth. Or 'truth' doesn't have a crystalline meaning, despite its importance to us.

So, your talking about understanding, having a mind, and intention here? Have you heard of the Chinese Room Argument? — Posty McPostface

Yes, and Yes, I like it.

Yes, I think that empty names refer to concepts and ideas. But, does that make meaning only mental? Isn't there cases when we have sensical, nonsensical, and senseless propositions? — Posty McPostface

I don't think saying meaning is only mental address the phenomenon exhaustively. We share meaning. So the mental is somewhat public. All these terms are connected. They are caught up in that same field of shared meaning. 'Mental' has no fixed meaning apart from context. The shared meaning space is 'one' in some sense, and all the usual dichotomies are threatened by this semantic holism. I can only talk about the in-explicit ground by constantly distancing myself from the atomistic dichotomous thinking that is so natural for us and exactly what I am trying to point beyond. [And I'm really just paraphrasing interpretations of the folks who really made these leaps, so I don't claim some novel philosophy here.]

Philosophy almost exclusively deals with known unknowns and unknown unknowns. I think go about this issue epistemologically is the only way forward. Once known unknowns and unknown unknowns become known then the issue is settled through dialogue or in a dialectical manner, and hopefully Rogerian agreement. Am I sounding pragmatic? — Posty McPostface

For me the question is right there in what it means to 'become known.' What is it for something to become known? Before we can plug a thesis into the argument machine, it has to born in someone's mind. And then the argument machine can't just be a dead machine operating on syntax. So how does what we argue about exist for us? How we can argue about the 'same thing' from different skulls. What I have in mind in the mystery of language, the 'house of being.' We tend to obsess over building the right machine, a sort of god surrogate as method. That's fine, but it's mostly politics in disguise, a play for authority and utility.

I am steeped in pragmatism, but I think there is something in humans that is not so interested in utility or consensus. We are the 'animals' that throw our lives away for causes, etc. What does it mean that we can commit suicide in cold blood? How does this complicate utility? Even if we explain it away in genetic terms, there is still the issue of how being human exists for us, from the inside. A predictive model is not what we are looking for inasmuch as we don't just want utility.

In a figurative sense we only have access to our conscious persona, when in reality we're much more complex than just our day to day conscious aspect of being. Think unconscious, super-ego, ego. — Posty McPostface

The tripartite idea at least introduce complexity. I'd say that we are mostly flowing and reactive as we move through life. We 'live' the 'unconscious.' It's hidden in plain sight. It's our retrospective narrow accounts that betray that complexity.