My world is a private language? — Tom Storm

Logic underlies both the facts of the world and language. Language represents states of affairs.

Why can't the man simply write clearly? Why the fucking riddles and bloody obtuse prose style? — Tom Storm

It certainly seemed that way to me when I first read him. It took me a lot of time and work to see that there is a clarity to his style.

The motto attached to the Tractatus says in translation:

... and whatever a man knows, whatever is not mere rumbling and roaring that he has heard, can be said in three words.

Of course he says a lot more than three words, but like his work in architecture what he says is without ornament. In the preface he says:

The whole sense of the book might be summed up in the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.

He links what a man knows to what is heard or said. The penultimate statement of the Tractatus is:

He [that is, "anyone who understands me] must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. (6.54)

What one who understands him gets from the book is a way of seeing in distinction from something said to be known.

... the gods themselves must conform to human values. — plaque flag

For Homer and Hesiod the gods were willful and capricious. Plato demoted the gods, but I think would would argue that it was not to conform to human values but to the just, the beautiful or noble, and the good. At the same time rather than conform to human values as they were shaped by the poets he sought to reform or transform human values. The Euthyphro is a key text in this regard.

This leads to Feuerbach and others grasping that the divine predicates are of course just the kinds of things we humans like, so that God is an idealized human (and a tribal god is an idolized tribe member, which would not be a human in our nowcommon global or generic sense.) — plaque flag

The question in the Euthyphro is: what is piety?

Socrates proposes that the pious is what is just. (11e) The gods as well as men are to be held to the standard of the just.

Given the role an ethical system might have on the suffering of conscious creatures can we say they are precisely the same thing? — Tom Storm

The Tractatus is a rejection of ethical systems.

This one is like trying to make sense of the Tao Te Ching. — Tom Storm

He makes a distinction between the world and my world. The world is the world of facts. He denies any values in the world of facts. (6.41)

I am my world. (The microcosm.) (5.63)

My world is solipsistic. It is mine alone. It is the world as I see it. As I experience it.

5.632:
The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world.

5.633:
Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be noted?
You say that this case is altogether like that of the eye and the field of sight. But you do not really see the eye.
And from nothing in the field of sight can it be concluded that it is seen from an eye.

This explains in what sense the world becomes a completely different world. How the world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man. The facts of the world do not change, but how I experience it does. To be happy is to be in accord with the world, to not set one's will against the world.

I need to follow this up. — Tom Storm

Here are some relevant statements from the Tractatus:

6.41:
In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.

6.42:
So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics.
Propositions can express nothing that is higher.

6.421:
It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)

6.422:
There must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they must reside in the action itself.
(And it is also clear that the reward must be something pleasant and the punishment something unpleasant.)

6.43:
If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the
world, not the facts—not what can be expressed by means of language.
In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to
speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.

There seem to be two different definitions of definitions at play. The first is a matter of making clear what one means by a term. The second is to set the boundaries of a concept. Roughly, the first tells us what someone means when she says "X". The second tells us what "X" is. It is often the case that on the road from the former to the latter we hit a road block, an aporia.

I remember once talking to an emeritus professor of religion and Nietzsche came up. — Tom Storm

Once for exams I had to defend Nietzsche in front of a bunch of Jesuit priests at Boston College. It was a long time ago. I don't recall what I said, but they seemed satisfied or maybe just placated. To my advantage, they are the bad boy trouble makers of the Catholic Church. I think I probably argued along the lines of seeing his attack on Christianity as something for Christian critical self-examination.

Descartes is up next on my re-read list, so once I finish that I may be able to answer some of the questions you pose. — Manuel

It has been a while since there has been a thread on Descartes. Looking forward to hearing what you have to say. What will you be reading?

Can those immersed in the philosophical tradition tell me if aesthetic reasoning is used to justify positions on morality and meaning? — Tom Storm

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein treated morality as an aesthetic rather than intellectual matter. A matter of what one sees and experiences, of how one stands in relation to the world.

it is kind of nebulous — Manuel

I think it is important to consider Descartes' rhetoric. He uses the terms 'I', soul, and self interchangeably.

As he explicitly states, Descartes removes himself from the world for the purpose of his Meditations.

The "I" is a mark of mind ... — Manuel

As I understand him, it is not a mark but the thing that thinks. The 'I' asserts itself. Claims its place and authority.

The issue for me is, was he aware, maybe inexplicitly, that the self is a creation of the mind ... — Manuel

Does he make this distinction between self and mind?

The "I" is a construct, I am re-reading Descartes soon, but I believe he was aware of this. — Manuel

The 'I' is the usurper of the Church's authority. The 'I' is the thing that thinks, that reasons, that chooses, that decides, and wills.
.

In Socrates' defense he was not looking for definitions but accounts, and this for the sake of inquiry.

For example, in Plato's Republic Socrates defines justice as minding your own business. A deeply ironic definition.

We all have some sense of what justice means. What Socrates is asking is that we go further. The problem is not resolved by definition. Whatever definition is proposed we can always ask whether this is what justice is? Does this determine what is and is not just in a particular case?

Don't try to bring science in the woo woo land of your definitions sir. — Nickolasgaspar

I know that Gaspar has been banned, but I would like to point out that I have not provided any definitions. My point is simple: there is no consensus on any definition, including his own.

This does not mean I endorse "woo". I am agnostic, but I suspect that whatever progress is made it will be through the study of living organisms.

Here is Gaspar's definition:

Again, when a definition is based on the description of the phenomenon...there is consensus. i.e. "Consciousness is an arousal and awareness of environment and self, which is achieved through action of the ascending reticular activating system" this is a description based on what we can objectively verify as the phenomenon to be conscious. — Nickolasgaspar

Note how he slips from a phenomenal description to a causal theory.

Gaspar points to Mark Solms as an authority. This is what Solms says in a podcast about the reticular activating system and consciousness.

If it is present there is good reason to believe the creature is conscious, but:

not only is it possible through convergent evolution that there may be some other mechanism other than the reticular activating system which also makes a creature capable of consciousness. Not only is it possible and plausible its even more so possible and plausible that there is some sort of proto reticular activating system, some sort of primordial arrangement that precedes the evolution of the reticular activating system which may have given rise to some form of proto consciousness interestingly in the mammalian brain stem and the vertebrate brain stem.
...
There may also be entirely different arrangements ... the nervous system of the octopus ...

I constantly post the link of the definition I use so you have no excuse — Nickolasgaspar

Once again, there is no consensus on the definition of the terms. Without such consensus the claim remains ambiguous.

It is ironic that you say:

trying to hide behind vague and undefined terms — Nickolasgaspar

when you make claims about these undefined terms. Giving a definition does not settle anything.

Don't take my word for it. Anil Seth says:

Despite a revival in the scientific study of consciousness over recent decades, the only real consensus so far is that there is still no consensus.

Is he wrong? If some neuroscientists say that consciousness is X and others Y and still others Z, how are we to evaluate your claim? It is not the case that consciousness is what you define it to be because you have defined it that way. What it is remains ambiguous.

I have posted many times a specific scientific definition of the term. — Nickolasgaspar

First of all, it is two terms. Second, your posting a definition of one of them, even a scientific definition, does not mean that the terms are not ambiguous. Contrary to what you may believe, there is no widespread scientific agreement as to what either consciousness or the self is. No consensus on a scientific definition of consciousness and no scientific definition of the self.

I think this overstates the case. The first quoted passage seems to argue against your claim. There are two parts, where we begin and where we aim to end:

In philosophy one must not imitate mathematics by starting from a definition ...

... In a word, in philosophy the definition, as involving rigorous distinctness, must con­clude rather than begin the work. — Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B758

If the definition concludes the work then surely it has a place.

Our consciousness is the author of our self. — Nickolasgaspar

Claiming the one conceptually ambiguous concept is the author of another conceptually ambiguous concept gets us nowhere, and fast.

Pistis - trust. On the divided line is trust in 'things' around us.

Noesis - knowledge of things that are as they are.

Doxa - opinion or belief. It does not appear on the divided line.

"Then it will be acceptable," I said, "just as before, to call the first part knowledge, the second thought [Dianoia], the third trust, and the fourth imagination; and the latter two taken together, opinion, and the former two, intellection. And opinion has to do with coming into being and intellection with being; and as being is to coming into being, so is intellection to opinion; and as intellection is to opinion, so is knowledge to trust and thought to imagination ..."

(Republic (533e -534a)

The will of God means either the will of man vested by man with absolute authority, or what happens beyond our ability to comprehend, as in the story of Job.

Dude, psychologising Plato is a big ask — unenlightened

It is not a matter of psychologising but contextualizing. The Republic is a political dialogue. Politics of the soul and politics of the city. In both there is the importance of education.

"Next, then," I said, "make an image of our nature in its education and want of education, likening it to a condition of the following kind. See human beings as though they were in an underground cavelike dwelling ..."

(514a)

Images play a central role in this image of our education. The images on the cave wall are shadows of puppets. What the cave dwellers see are the images created by the puppet masters. They are the poets, the makers (the Greek poiesis means to make) of images. The poets were the educators. Through their images of gods and men, they were teachers of what is just and noble and good.

The Greek term for Form is eidos. It is transliterated in English as idea. Eidos also means the shape or look of something, what something looks like. The poets or image makers give us our ideas of what it looks like to be just or noble or good.

Plato too is an image maker. A poet in competition with the others to shape the images we see, that is, to shape our opinions. With his play of images the Forms play another role. The philosopher seeks to know not simply what something looks like but what it is. This is the escape from the cave of opinion.

The image of knowledge of the just itself, the beautiful itself, and the good itself, remains just that, an image. Something to aspire to. We do not escape the world of opinion but we can be aware of the opinion makers and that we live in a world of opinion. We can discuss what things look like to us and why this opinion is better than that without mistaking our opinions for truth and knowledge.

Why do you think he does that? In other dialogues he says something different.

I know people often talk about how when they’re “in the zone,” it feels like they’re not in control, etc. — Mikie

On the other hand, it does not feel like I have lost control, that I need to gain control.

The thing to frustrates a lot of musicians is not being about to get in the zone. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. You can't make it happen, but I think there are ways to allow it to happen more often.

I am sorry you feel that way, but I am surprised. I have no intention of trying to trip you up. I am trying to address the question of wu wei. It is nothing personal. I have said nothing against you. You on the other hand tell me I should be ashamed of my arguments.

I am puzzled by what wu wei means in practice. It seems to me that there is something more to it than you have said. For one, the cultivation of skills. For another, a way of seeing. What in another context might be called an "expert eye".

There is a great deal of effort behind effortless action. This often goes unrecognized. I brought up Cook Ting because it addresses this and the opposite of effortless action, what he calls hacking. Forcing one's way through rather than, so to speak, seeing the joints and spaces, the natural divide of things.

When I post I have in mind others who might be reading. Even if not everything I say applies to you someone else might be interested.

[Added: See my next post.]

Seems a quibble. — fdrake

As I see it, this is what is at issue:

Actions arise spontaneously from within without reflection. — T Clark

I don't doubt that this happens, but simply acting spontaneously without reflection is not what wu wei is about, otherwise someone without impulse control or someone experiencing road rage or anyone with a cleaver could butcher an ox as long as they did it without reflection.

I am not claiming that this is what Clark is claiming, but that there is more to it than what is stated.

:snort:

I have no objections to the version you provided. It doesn't change the meaning of the verse. — T Clark

Why the snort? The best translations are being done by scholars who have studied the language, the history, and the philosophies of China and the West. The virtues of their translations may not be readily apparent to you based on a single story.

Note "spontaneously performed skill — T Clark

It cannot be spontaneously performed without skill. The skill comes first and it takes practice to go beyond skill.

Reread what I wrote. I never said Lao Tzu had no plans or intentions for writing the Tao Te Ching and I don't know of anywhere it says he didn't. — T Clark

You said:

the idea of "wu wei," acting without acting, without intention, without purpose, is central to the teachings. — T Clark

and:

That's the essense of wu wei - following intuition with no plans or intentions. — T Clark

I pointed out that:

.. there are Taoist teachers and authors. There is certainly intention and purpose in what they do. — Fooloso4

and:

Whatever wu wei means, and there is nothing close to a consensus on this, it does not exclude the plans and intentions of the authors of the Tao Te Ching to commit to putting things into words. — Fooloso4

In response, first you said:

whether plans and intentions are required to act is the question on the table. — T Clark

but then:

If Lao Tzu lived in accordance with the Tao, then, no, no plans or intention were requried. — T Clark

and in response to my comment that it did not happen spontaneously:

According to the Tao Te Ching, it did. — T Clark

You still have not provided the evidence to back that up.

Another observation about Cook Ding:

In the opening paragraph:

... every move was in rhythm. It was as though he were performing the Dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping to the beat of the Constant Source music.

And when he is done:

I stand with knife raised and face all four directions in turn, prancing in place with complete satisfaction.

(In Ziporyn's translation he just stands there)

There is a sense of motion and rhythm, of dancing.

It should also be noted how Zhuangzi's stories are of ordinary people teaching those of a higher social rank.

“How fine!” said Lord Wenhui. “Listening to the words of Cook Ding, I have learned how to nurture life!”

When I first started playing guitar, I needed to think about what I was doing and where my fingers went, etc. After years of playing, I don’t have to do that any more. — Mikie

When I play sometimes the experience is what I would describe as wu wei. Other times I can't get out of my own way. On occasion it is as if I am watching myself play. But that is the result of many years of study and practice. It involves muscle memory which would not have developed without plans and intentions.

... we don’t have to pretend that it’s magic to talk about it. — Mikie

But I have to admit that sometimes it feels as if it is.

There are better translations. Here is one. [Added: chapter 3.2]

Cook Ding says:

At the beginning, when I first began carving up oxen, all I could see was the whole carcass.
After three years I could no longer see the carcass whole ...

It is because he had been dividing oxen for three years that he could no longer see the carcass as a whole. He saw that it is made up of parts. He say now:

I follow the natural form slicing the major joints I guide the knife through the big hollows ...

The ability to guide his knife takes skill developed through practice. But this is not the difference between him and a good cook:

What your servant loves, my lord, is the Dao, and that is a step beyond skill.

Going beyond skill does not mean to bypass skill. The cultivation of skill is an essential step.


I would still like to know where you found the claim that the Tao Te Ching occurred spontaneously.

If Lao Tzu lived in accordance with the Tao, then, no, no plans or intention were requried. — T Clark

There is general agreement that Lao Tzu is not the sole author. There is less agreement as to whether he was an actual person.

According to the Tao Te Ching, it did. — T Clark

Really? Can you cite a reference?

Almost certainly. — T Clark

The story says otherwise.

A few scattered comments

In The Gay Science he asks:

Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

From Epicurus the idea of gods as blessed being who are unperturbed.

From Marcus Aurelius the soul as the inner citadel.

From Epictetus:

Don’t ask for things to happen as you would like them to, but wish them to happen as they actually do, and you will be all right.

but whether plans and intentions are required to act is the question on the table. — T Clark

The question is too general. Were plans and intentions required to compile and organize the work called the Tao Te Ching? It did not happen spontaneously. Are plans and intentions required to read and attempt to understand the Tao Te Ching?

Consider Zhuangzi's Cook Ting. Did he learn his butchering skill without plans or intentions? His knife does not get dull because he does not hack. He cuts between the spaces in the joints.

It is not just what a lot of Taoist teachers and authors have said but what the teachers and authors of the Tao Te Ching have said. Whatever wu wei means, and there is nothing close to a consensus on this, it does not exclude the plans and intentions of the authors of the Tao Te Ching to commit to putting things into words.

But I don't know the actual philosophy conservatives hold in their own minds. — Vera Mont

I don't think there is one. There is a great deal of conceptual drift. Some appeal to tradition, but not always the same tradition. It might be some form of Liberalism, or some religious group, but the identity of these is not fixed.

Some tie it to the notion of limited government, but many who call themselves conservative are in favor of the government deciding reproductive rights, or transgender rights, or what books are permissible in public schools. Some who call themselves conservatives claim that the US is a Christian nation founded on Christian values. As such the limits of government extend to what goes on in the bedroom behind closed doors as well as what is permissible to say and do in public.

@Mikie

To put things in perspective, there are Taoist teachers and authors. There is certainly intention and purpose in what they do.

The problem with this is that it prescinds not only from what politicians do and say but what they attempt to do, and the efficacy with which they can get it done.

I believe it is time to re-evaluate your priorities and focus on your life and making it better instead of directing your anger and other negative emotions towards people you probably don't even know personally. — AntonioP

It is the focus on one's own life and the concern to make it better that is at the root of the issue. I do not have to know someone personally to know what he or she is doing as an elected official.

This is why Socrates was both revered and hated. Even back then there was the equivalent of the internet guy.

I think this is one reason why Plato wrote dialogues. If the interlocutor is to benefit he must first come to see that he does not know what he thinks he knows. But the character of the person may stand in the way of his seeing this. Put differently, Socratic philosophy is not impersonal

Socrates the mid-wife points out that whatever ideas he helps someone give birth to, however deformed, it is hard for someone to abandon what is his own.

Chomsky is a skeptic in the original sense of the term - one who inquires but does not know. But this is not to say he is a member of any school of skepticism. He simply doubts that the universe is intelligible to us given the limits of the human mind.

avoiding the topic in an obvious way. — Eugen

He does not avoid the topic, he puts it in a larger framework. In part it can be summarized by the saying, "shut up and calculate". Kuhn thinks that we get closer to the truth. Chomsky thinks we develop intelligible theories that predict what will happen, but our theories always leave something unexplained.

The failure of the mechanistic model, he points to gravity, means the failure of intelligibility. We do not know what is going on, how it all works together. This is not to say that the world is not intelligible but that it is not intelligible to us. If the world is not intelligible to us the mind and consciousness is not intelligible to us.

Put differently, the more you know the more there is to know.

What does it mean to be divine?