Rorty badly misread Derrida and Heidegger this way, It's a typical Anglo-American weakness. We tend to be threatened by the thoroughness of a continental style, having only our own thinner emprically-parasitic intellectual traditions to fall back on. You sound like Rorty, exhorting us to abandon philosophy for other endeavors now that metaphysics is out of fashion.
At the same time that we pat ourselves on the back for avoiding the supposed errors of the overly theoretical continentals, we haven t figured out a way to think anti-foundationalism without falling back on the crutch of empiricism. They have, and we fault them for our inability to read them well enough. Their abstractness is no match for our anti-intelectualism. — Joshs

That is a tempting reading. You've located the crux. Is it anti-intellectualism or good sense to be suspicious of Derrida, Heidegger, & co. I'm familiar with accusations that Rorty misread D & H. Having looked into D & H after being steeped in Rorty, I agree. But he went in through the front door. He was conspicuously recontextualizing other thinkers. He took what he liked and gently mocked the rest. Whether one prefers Heidegger to Rorty seems to some degree to be an expression of a fundamental attitude. Heidegger was just tuned to present himself as a little wizard, and I do enjoy the magic show. Rorty was cool like Hume and friendly like James.

We don't need to 'think' anti-foundationalism. We just learn to live without some top-level metaphysical justification of our doings. Or we learn that we are already doing so.

There's no way to prove that X has or has not been read well enough. It's not as if the professionals agree. I've followed petty squabbles in Heidegger scholarship between two important translators for instance. They accuse one another of fundamentally misunderstanding the thinker that both specialize in. How are we to interpret this failure of consensus?

For me it's not a binary response. I think a person can enjoy a thinker like Heidegger without losing the ability to criticize and doubt him. Indeed, I'd say that we ultimately synthesize our own philosophy appropriate to our own particular existence. I face my life and death alone in some sense. The fine phrases of others can help, but I like working up my own fine phrases...in the context of this help.

I'm not sure that any proposed profundity conquers death and the risk of being an individual. I think death is death, the end of me. I don't see how the human species can avoid extinction forever either. 'Death is god' I scrawled on my copy of Hegel's shorter Logic. There are the little deaths of the evolving personality and the big death that threatens all this progress with absurdity. Is Plato wiser than the teen aged suicide? Does the philosophy professor really have something better than the annoying sophomore who suspects that it's all bullshit on some level? In this or that practical context, we can make a case. In some grandiose narrative of human progress, we can make a case.

But philosophy is also gallows's humor. Heidegger, to his credit, gave his attention to this. I like Heidegger the existentialist. Is he my guru? No. I'm doing my own version on this forum. Who couldn't? Who isn't already doing so? And maybe Bukowski is a better philosopher than Derrida. Our obsession with academic chatter may be pretentious and artificial in the first place. By all means let's include it, but perhaps the professionalization of philosophy is also to some degree its castration or transformation into a mostly irrelevant game or masked politics.

Most people get the stuff that matters (their living philosophy) somewhere else.Some of us work the high-brow stuff into a fusion with everything else.

Do you agree with Bacon that there is such a thing as THE scientific method , and if so, what is it?
When you say that Popperian falsification cant be verified , does that mean you disagree with the whole claim he is making? Have you read Thomas Kuhn? Do you prefer Popper to Kuhn? — Joshs

I like Popper. Like many crystallizations of an intuition, it enriches us. But it's the working technology that I prefer to any theology of science. Texts /sentences are machines too, but some texts only work if you believe in them. The sentences associated with technology that works for everyone are lifted by the reliability and power of that tool. This is almost bestial, such is our pre-theoretical response to stuff that works.

I have only browsed Kuhn himself, but I have been exposed to his ideas, which I think are great. I have read many pages of Popper and have quite an affection for him. If I pick favorites, it'll be largely circumstantial. He was a crusty old man, which amuses me.

Could you do me a favor and offer some comment concerning my philosophy of science questions? I would like to understand better what you mean when you say you are anti-foundational. Explain to me what makes your anti-foundationalism different than "accusations of feeble readings can be answered with further accusations of feeble readings."
Great, so what's your alternative? Is it closer to Popper, Kuhn or neither? — Joshs

As I mentioned, we can try to formalize/crystallize our intuition of what makes science science, even if the word has no essence. Falsifiability is good. Technology that works without our faith in it is also good. What is science? What is knowledge? What is justice? What is meaning? These questions aren't ridiculous and have even been useful, but there's a limit to how seriously we should take this game. After all, we've put human feet on the moon without the profound philosophers managing to come to a consensus.

I also dodge materialism, physicalism, idealism, etc. I don't worry about the ontological status of the real numbers or what the entities of physics 'really' are. I don't think we need a crystalline theory. We know how to get shit done, without knowing exactly how we know how. If the philosophers could somehow answer this convincingly, I'd want to hear their answer. I've lended a few thousand ears by now. But usually the philosophers are less sophisticated than the same blind know-how they must rely on to construct their philosophy. Obviously I'm expressing opinion here. You asked and I improvised an answer with some of that blind know-how. I didn't know what I would write beforehand. See how we glide.

What I aim to do is to get as precise an understanding of the other's worldviews as possible , from their perspective, so that I can effectively summarize back to them their ideas. I'm not out to win anything but demonstrating to myself that I was able to subsume another's worldview to their satisfaction. — Joshs

I like this goal. I hope my cynicism wasn't too offensive.

I don't think this is an easy project. Why should every position fit in a living way in one personality? I suggest that we understand best what we were once or are currently passionately invested in. It's not just ideas. It's the feel of a personality.

Pre-theoretical knowhow, the laugher of the gods, and a respect for technology that works without the help of our faith in it....That's an improvised theme summary of my philosophy, if you are curious and really want to assimilate what they mean to me.

Try to see it my way. I generally try to avoid quoting. I prefer to just paraphrase. But intellectuals like to drop names. Maybe it's a ritual where we convince one another that we've actually read something.

Braver interprets Wittgenstein and Heidegger in a way that pleases me. I don't see the appeal to authority in merely bothering to interpret so-and-so. It's just that academics seem to often define themselves in terms of more famous academics. If everyone is obsessed with X, then one might as well express one's own view in terms of a reaction to or interpretation of X.

Of course if everyone is talking about X, that'll also inspire curiosity. The implication is that they are the most profound fellows around. Why miss out? Sometimes they live up to the hype. Sometimes not. I say we sculpt our personae in terms of those more famous (for intelligibility and as shrewd marketing). Magazines usually only put celebrities more famous than the magazine on the cover for the same reason.

I no more expect you to be dazzled by my anonymous perspective than I am automatically dazzled by yours. Despite our little clash here, I find you a worthy opponent. Very little persuasion happens on these forums as far as I can tell. Personalities tend to settle and harden. I wouldn't even say that one of us has to be right or wrong on what I regard as spiritual matters. As I see it, we are publicly performing the game of personality. So of course the gods are chucking. I like to think that we are leaving a nice stain for passersby.

My antifoundationalism is focused around the inexplicit or automatic knowhow that I keep mentioning. Lee Braver focused on this theme in both Wittgenstein and Heidegger in Groundless Grounds. His view is close to mine. Rorty's view is also close to mine. An important difference is that Rorty was constrained by being a professor (one wrong tweet and you are history.) He also takes politics more seriously than I do. I don't have to pretend to have a cure for the individual or the species or justify my income in the same way. All is vanity and this world is a great stage of self-important fools, including of course the self-important fool rude enough to point such a thing out. But that's just spiritual music. It's a joke and a reminder.

Also I don't reject Heidegger for the usual whiny reasons that he was a Nazi once. I mention the controversy to make the point that his claims are not obviously binding, however occasionally spellbinding. I don't pretend to authority on spiritual matters, nor am I quick to grant such authority to others (to put it mildly.) I'd like to both not be rude and at the same time be sincere. It's tough when it comes to a critical attitude toward what others have woven into their persona. Our heroes are something like our spiritual substance. I like dorky Stirner for trying to root out every such vulnerability in himself. He never organized or purified his message (which is concisely offered as 'the irony' in Hegel's lectures on esthetics), but he worked the theme for hundreds of pages.

But no one saddled with that accusation would argue that there is no way , in any sense, to distinguish better and worse , more or less correct. — Joshs

I agree, and I've criticized the style of statements that I otherwise value for being exaggerations.

The quote from Derrida below is I think representative of how so-called radical relativists would argue against your claim. — Joshs

I'm familiar with that quote. I don't think Derrida comes off all that well there. Accusations of feeble readings can be answered with further accusations of feeble readings. You can accuse me of a feeble reading of Derrida and/or Heidegger and/or Nietzsche. I can accuse you of the same. After all, my criticisms of pomo are largely inspired by pomo.

You question my antifoundationalism, but I'd say that it's largely inspired by Heidegger. I like Groundless Grounds by Lee Braver. Language is mostly ready-to-hand. To read metaphysics into this automatic knowhow is to stretch the word to the point of uselessness. If everything is metaphysics, then nothing is metaphysics.

Heidegger called the basis of modern science onto-theology because he recognized that worldly objective claims are founded on metaphysical pre-suppositions that link it to the history of Christianity.
IN a fundamental sense, the claims of objectivity are inherently spiritual claims. — Joshs

But Heidegger's claim is itself (arguably) a spiritual claim. He makes a case, gives reasons. Does he achieve a Science above science? Who's to say? Some consider him profound, others can't believe that the ol' swastika lover is taken seriously. I was myself intensely impressed and influenced by some of his early stuff, but I don't feel the need to quote him much and I am consciously against appealing to such a controversial figure as an authority --which you seem to do implicitly.

What I sense here is the same old projection of an explicit metaphysics on automatic knowhow. The philosopher is endlessly tempted to cast the non-philosopher as a failed philosopher. When the non-philosopher decides to play the philosphical game, he's likely to underperform. But the non-philosopher is mostly not playing the philosophical game but instead just living in the pretheoretical knowhow that we philosophers rely on when we aren't performing a certain role for one another (and the mirror.)

Not only Walt Whitman could write "who touches this book touches a man." The books of all the great philosophers are like so many men. Our sense of an essential personal flavor in each one of them, typical but indescribable, is the finest fruit of our own accomplished philosophic education. What the system pretends to be is a picture of the great universe of God. What it is—and oh so flagrantly!—is the revelation of how intensely odd the personal flavor of some fellow creature is. Once reduced to these terms (and all our philosophies get reduced to them in minds made critical by learning) our commerce with the systems reverts to the informal, to the instinctive human reaction of satisfaction or dislike. — James

That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are—how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in short, how childish and childlike they are,—but that there is not enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest manner. They all pose as though their real opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk of "inspiration"), whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices, which they dub "truths,"—and VERY far from having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule. — Nietzsche

I agree with both quotes. For me this is a fundamental experience. We take ourselves quite seriously and jockey for the status of the most profound, critical, educated, authentic, hip, creative, etc. In my view it's naive to think that the master thinkers aren't caught up in such a game.

I play and enjoy this game myself, but another part of me sees the ridiculousness of claiming to know that which is most important or authoritative or primordial or sophisticated. The gods laugh at us pretentious mortals, and sometimes we can laugh with them. I think Nietzsche is great in the way that Dostoevsky is great. Heidegger and Derrida, despite what I like about them, were also longwinded academics. Could they afford to get real ? I think Rorty hinted at the darkness now and then in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. His style and tone were post-metaphysical too.

What I would want to try to disabuse you of is the notion that you have found any refuge from the risk of noise and nonsense by enveloping yourself in the supposed solidity of the pragmatic. — Joshs

I never claimed an escape from angst altogether. We are mortal. And your talk of disabuse lapses back into the objectivity that some of your pomo taken earnestly would deny. If there are no facts but only interpretations, there's no reality for me to see incorrectly. It's this kind of performative contradiction that I strive to avoid by cutting back on some of the rhetorical habits of thinkers I otherwise value.

I think you're also being a little deaf here in terms of our interpersonal situation. I'm not here as it were looking for your approval. I'm probably as arrogant as you are. I just take it for granted that we intellectual dudes are generally pretty sure that we are more profound, etc., than one another. That's part of the comedy. And that's why a conspicuous attachment to critical thinking is disarming. If the other person doesn't even expect doubt, then I have to question their own possible credulousness.

*This isn't meant as an insult. It's almost common sense. In another thread a religious person is outraged by skepticism directed toward spiritual experiences, as if the OP hadn't noticed the ubiquity and danger of unchecked wishful thinking. He'd be far more credible as someone who has had a spiritual experience if he opened by emphasizing how ridiculous he may sound.

Some of us pride ourselves more on being reliably correct than on any particular profound viewpoint. This pride is its own kind of 'spirituality.'

What I like about Heidegger was his tearing apart the supposed distinction between 'bodily' and conceptual. — Joshs

I like that too, but pointing out the limits of a distinction doesn't destroy its utility. I relate my reading of Heidegger to Wittgenstein through the idea of automatic knowhow. One of the reasons I don't quote the masters much is because this sometimes shifts real talk into academic chatter. Participants switch out of their automatic knowhow and ordinary words lose their transparency.

I think what you're getting at is that you are more comfortable with applied fields because they suit your style of thinking better. — Joshs

It's complicated. I love pure theory, but this love sometimes looks to me like a vice. I am wary of human pretentiousness and self-deception. The gap between theory and application is also philosophically fascinating. The prestige of science seems technological and ethical. The ethical prestige is in its humility. Popper's notion of falsification has an ethical appeal. I don't see how it can be justified. Just as Turing machines are one way to make the intuitive notion of an algorithm definite, so falsifiability is an attempt to crystallize a sense of what makes science science. I think that technology and its supporting theory that works whether or not one believes in it is another good candidate.

No one modality takes preference over others(not the scientific-technological) in terms of something like rapidity of progress or better access to truth. Each modality of culture depends on all the others in complex reciprocal ways in articulating truths of an era within their own vocabularies. Persons working within a particular modality can confuse their own biases and preferences for some universal priority of their discipline. Heidegger thought poetry could articulate Being better than any other modality, Some physicists still think their field is the queen of the sciences and that the
sciences are superior modes of access to truth and progress than other modes. Some mathematicians believe their field is grounded in Platonic universals and is protected from the contingencies of empirical science. There are musicians and artists who prioritize an affective-intuitive language of expression over empirical or philosophical. — Joshs

I largely agree, but I apply this to Heidegger and gang too. As illuminating as they can be, I don't find them authoritative. Maybe Dostoesvky or Heller is better. What's missing from so much philosophy is divine malice, laughter. I love Nietzsche on these themes. We are mortals. The species itself is mortal. All our fine talk is ridiculous to the gods. Sometimes we can laugh with them at all of our poses. Does academia welcome this kind of divine malice? If I used the slang I think in, I'd get in trouble. This is the slang of comedians and rappers and our taboo selves behind all the masks we wear in this world.

My own bias is that the best philosophers of an era tend to act as a crystal ball, anticipating ahead of the rest of culture to ways of thinking that unfold eventually as new empirical discoveries and artistic movements. — Joshs

I agree, but I don't see why philosophers should always be the leaders. Sometimes it may be the artists or the engineers. And sometimes maybe philosophy is in the way.

And still, my personal preference is Nietzsche, for the incomparably rich language. — Joshs

I love Nietzsche too. If I had to pick a single thinker who affected me most, it might be Nietzsche. Some of that is circumstantial. I happened on him early in my 20s. Did you ever read Kojeve? He also deeply impressed me.

There may be a group of people discussing a fictional book and be passionately involved in understanding it. There may be people diving into the complexities of what Schopenhauer or Camus, or Heidegger said in various terms like "Will", "absurd", and "ready-at-hand". There may be religious discussions delving into the complexity of Leviticus or Matthew, etc. etc. But these are all put by the wayside when it comes to "real" daily living. — schopenhauer1

To me this is an important point. It's the down-to-earth wisdom that cautions against forgetting ourselves in those spiritual complexities that makes us deaf to the speech of daily living. This doesn't make those complexities less meaningful. Instead some of us can share in an investment in critical thinking. We differentiate between spiritual claims and worldly, objective claims.

A difference between @Joshs and myself might be that I find claims like 'there are no fact but only interpretations' more spiritual than objective, even as they attempt to abolish the distinction. I don't see how this difference can be methodically resolved. This is part of the angst of personality. I can always decide that I was lying to myself by underrating or overrating some thinker. At moments of manic investment I can look back at more sober moods as a failure of nerve. In moments of appreciation of others who have never looked into various famous intellectuals, I might think that these famous intellectuals functioned for me more spiritually than practically. They entertained me with grand abstractions about grand abstractions and made me feel like I was one of the few no longer in the matrix.

It is precisely those most adept at solving daily problems ("getting shit done") that might say, "I am the one who gets the most meaning, as I am dealing with life at its most necessary and useful functional level. I am the one solving the problems of inventing and maintaining tools that we rely upon as a species through daily life.. — schopenhauer1

They might say that. More reasonably they might enjoy the feeling that they are less likely to decide that they have been lying to themselves. Their work is also intelligible to everybody, not the details but its value. Those who can do something are definitely skilled, definitely intelligent. On the other hand an atheist may find theology fundamentally absurd and deceived. The newfangled religious type may find some kind of scientism to be fundamentally blind. Then in politics the other side is often simply demonized. Practical power convinces everyone. In war it sometimes 'convinces' them by removing them altogether. Talk is cheap and yet poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Using language to deceive does not completely destroy meaning, if meaning is use. — Metaphysician Undercover

I tend to agree with you here. Deception is a successful communication of meaning. In my view, it's better to read 'meaning is use' not as a theory (which is tempting) but rather as one of many pointers toward our automatic knowhow. Meaning as use, if taken too seriously, is one more metaphysical theory of meaning.

Noise is an unfortunate but necessary byproduct of difficult ideas. — Joshs

Sure, but you don't do much to acknowledge the possibility that some difficult ideas are just smoke. You mention substanceless syncophants, but what about master thinkers who are ultimately faddish footnotes?

If you want to escape noise , choosing one side over another isn't the answer. — Joshs

I don't see myself as having chosen one side over the other, though I have chosen one career path over the other. I spent many years on music, art, lit, and philosophy. I still love all of these things. Still I insist upon the distinct charm of what I see as the least controversial forms of specialist knowledge (for instance, math.)

IF you want to read the best new approach to the empirical understanding of visual perception, you can do no better than Alva Noe. — Joshs

I'm not not interested in that (I've looked into Noe briefly already), it's just that I'm more into (and more likely to be paid for) understanding the guts of a convolutional neural network for computer vision. Also my sense is that the world won't reward me much for being the intellectual tourist I might prefer to be. As far as phenomenology goes, Heidegger was great, but there is also just living more in one's body. Books are great, but let's not forget old fashioned experience.

I'm not sure who you are describing. — Luke

Wasn't aimed at you, just to clarify.

I don't think that he has a philosophical "system" to speak of in the PI, either. If anything, he gestures at the futility of engaging in metaphysics and philosophical systems, and demonstrates that many traditional philosophical problems can be dissolved by remembering how language is typically used in actual situations, that we are taught how to use language by other people and likewise enculturated into a community of speakers, etc. While a lot has seemingly been made of the younger Wittgenstein's use of 'meaningless' or 'senseless' in the Tractatus, his usage in the PI is a return to the rough ground. — Luke

I tried, but I just can't find anything to disagree with here.

Yes, it looks like we agree more than we disagree. Thanks for clarifying. — Luke

Thanks, and we do indeed seem to be on the same page, which is nice.

Indeed. Why not? I'm open to that. But this is also the problem with pomo insight. Anyone can accuse anyone of confusion. Yet at the same 'there are no facts, but only interpretations.' So what is there to be confused about?

This is why I value technology that works whether one believes in it or not. The game of 'you're confused no you're confused' is interminable if the players are foolish or amused enough to persist. It's exactly this kind of noise that I want and use philosophy for cutting through : hype, bluff, pose, and the endless wishful thinking that inflates and deceives itself, my own included.

Note that I am not accusing you of these things. I'm saying that critical minds are by definition on the lookout for bullshit. Which claims should I trust in a world where so many claim so much? I look at what their talk can help accomplish not only without the help of faith in such talk but even against such faith.

Thanks for the reply. We probably agree more than we disagree. By 'spiritual' I meant something like a matter of character. For instance, I am an atheist for 'spiritual' reasons. I'll try to clarify what I mean by superscience and the profound reading.

This 'linguistic endeavor' (innocent sounding, right?) has been associated with philosophers calling the statements of other philosophers meaningless. But that's about as 'metaphysical' or 'superscientific' as it gets. Our linguistic metaphysicians claim a position so lofty that they don't even have to argue. Their system assures them that there is nothing there to argue with.

This is the 'profound' reading that I find questionable. It repeats the mistake of logical positivism (crystallizing good sense into the 'nonsense' it hopes to control). Instead of appealing to a theory of what's meaningful or not, I prefer to just respond on a case by case basis, with the same automatic knowhow that gets me through the rest of life. For me PI is one book among others that encourages this attitude, but Wittgenstein was a complex personality, and other interpretations will tempt others.

Because I prefer to read the book as a return to 'automatic knowhow,' I frame it more in terms of unlearning than learning, so that it's more anti-profound than profound. The difference is that a profound book makes you feel smarter than those who haven't read it, while an anti-profound book makes you feel like other people who maybe haven't read it are smarter than you wanted to give them credit for. This hurts at first but feels like progress later. This is the spiritual junk I had in mind.

Well, I guess we've come full circle, because I'm basically going to repeat what I first said about this issue. The problem is in how this all relates to striving for the ideal. Striving for the ideal is a beneficial way of proceeding, it's an attitude of recognition that we are less than perfect, thus allowing ourselves to be bettered. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree. I'd say that the ideal in this case (from my reading) is 'spiritual' or a matter of character. Who wants to be pretentious? Who wants to be bewitched by language? I see no escape from the ideal. All that varies seems to be its representation. Is it cooler to chase after a superscience or let go of what may come to look like a pseudo-scientific or pretentious pursuit and get real?

I don't at all claim to have an authoritative answer. Personality is a risk. I'd say that some philosophers present their own personalities for possible emulation. The arguments may be secondary to their example as a creative revelation of possibility. If so-and-so is religious but ashamed to be unscientific, he may come up with a system of words that allows him to have his cake and eat it too. Or maybe an artistic/visionary personality finds scientism cramped and one-eyed. Same deal. If this system is slick, he may become an intellectual celebrity. Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche..Their value is not perhaps reducible to propositions and arguments.

They are in a mix of flow and halting frustration until they have solved it. Either way, whether flow or grindingly exhausting work, they produce the things that "get the job done" so the rest of us can have a seemless tool that is "ready-at-hand".
— schop

Yeah that seems about right. I will say that it offer artistic pleasure if a person is designing something. Coding is building a machine more or less out of ideas. The computer will do all the boring stuff for you if you can figure out to tell it how.

Thus objects in the world naturally seem to relate with us and us to them in a ready-at-hand way. However, we have learned to abstract objects to the point of present-at-hand more frequently and readily. Philosophy has overstepped its bounds by taking the present-at-hand as the natural stance, when in fact our existence is usually related to the world in a ready-at-hand fashion. [Let me know if that interpretation seems wrong to you. I've never had anyone explain Heidegger very well without using self-referencing neologisms which don't help. Try to avoid that if you do want to explain a better interpretation. ] — schopenhauer1

For what it's worth, that's sounds about right to me, on that one issue anyway. And I think the later Wittgenstein is making the same kind of point when it comes to language. The alternative is centuries of analysis of the word 'know?' In the meantime, somehow the people who don't even 'really' know what 'know' means erect skyscrapers and land on the moon.

Who are you r anti-foundationalist heroes, those who you believe have avoided whatever excesses you are trying to point out? — Joshs

I suppose excess is relative to time and place. If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, we are here talking about James, Rorty, Heidegger, Derrida. I was blown away by Nietzsche in my 20s, and part of that was because of his exciting style. Beyond Good and Evil! Those are rock lyrics. What Wittgenstein means is endlessly debatable, but I read some anti-found. into them. I also very much like some of Heidegger (some of the early pre-B&T stuff, cuz' I'm a hipster.)

For me anti-foundationalism has a significant anti-philosophical charge. To live antifoundationalism might just be to do excellent work in something besides philosophy.

Neither Derrida, Heidegger nor Nietzsche would say foundational metaphysics is worthless. They would instead say that it doesn't understand its basis. I would not call Heidegger and Derrida anti-metaphysical. Derrida in particular says that we can never simply escape metaphysics. He calls what he does quasi-transcendental. — Joshs

I agree with what you say about Heidegger and Derrida, but I'm not sure I agree with them on this. While we are all enmeshed in a contingent culture, To say that we can't escape metaphysics is, in my view, one more dramatic overstatement. Instead of metaphysics being impossible, we have with Derrida that not metaphysics is impossible. Not a huge difference in style, but this inverts logical positivism as supposedly Nietzsche inverts Plato. Sure the uneducated person who's never touched a philosophy book has his prejudices, but why call them metaphysical? It stretches the word in a way that may inflate the relevance of the guy who happens to have studied metaphysics all his life (an academic like Derrida or Heidegger.)

Nietzsche stands out in important ways from both, but he wrote in obscurity (having scared off his peers), and he was amazingly honest and naked on the whole. He captured the ups and downs of godlessness, and he's something like the Coca-cola of critical mystics. *

*I mean this as a compliment.

What if showing is transforming? What if representing is an an altering interaction? What if the constraints imposed by reality are normative constraints that are only relevant and coherent within a contingent scheme of understanding? Do you support Kuhn's anti-foundationalism or do you think he goes too far? — Joshs

I think the common concepts of interpretation and bias already demonstrate a general awareness that representation is transformation. I also think that schemes are contingent. Moreover I'm down with holism.

I haven't read Kuhn directly but got him mostly through Rorty. I don't think he goes too far, from what know.

Yes, I already went through this with old. The problem is that when we attempt to get down to that crystalline purity, or what old called the kernel of meaning, in analysis, (look behind the door where it might be) it's not there, and all that is left is this attempt to find it.
Wittgenstein seems to want to do this, retreat with a gaping hole in the structure of meaning. — Metaphysician Undercover

What if it's as simple as coming to see a certain style of argumentation as no longer cool? No longer the way to go? What if there's no gaping hole because for the most part we get along just fine? What if a certain habit is just made to look slightly ridiculous? Perhaps we not only don't miss that habit but are even slightly embarrassed that it was ever ours and that we were ever so pretentious.

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that that's a tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell them: "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy." — Wittgenstein

The temptation might be to say ' I know that that's a tree we are only doing philosophy' (that metaphysics is metaphysically impossible) in a way that makes Wittgenstein something more than the tone of this 'only.'

Something related in my mind is logical positivism. I think that logical positivism was right in spirit but erred in practice by insisting on an impossible foundation for their otherwise good sense.

The argument goes something like this: "If your claim is that no metaphysical ground for reality can justify itself, then isn't your very claim a sort of ground in itself"?

It would be unfair to answer this question by suggesting that it is only an issue when one has failed to understand the nature of a thinking that frees itself from foundationalism. — Joshs

You can probably tell from what I've written already, but I'll emphasize that I'm coming from an anti-foundationalist position in my criticism of certain excesses of the pomo style. As I suggested in the Wittgenstein thread, the danger in a profound reading is that it repeats what is being criticized. I find this tension in the personality of Wittgenstein himself, who seem to wrestle with the angel of his own massive and lovely pretentiousness. Because the TLP is fascinating, it's easy to forget how absurd it is. Who but Wittgenstein could wring a PhD out of something so indulgent? Institutions aren't exempt from seduction and fads, and this contributes to the wariness toward lines like 'science doesn't think' or 'woman does not exist.' The same people who mock Jordan Peterson (which is fine with me) sometimes embrace Zizek as an essentially different animal. I'm not so sure, at least not if pseudo-science is the issue. I'll see your Jung and raise you a Lacan.

I have to confess I'm not sure how you want to define reality. — Joshs

It's not a huge issue, but I'll try one more time. I don't claim to be able to define reality. Consider what it would mean for me to do so. I'd be showing or making known what reality is, what reality 'really' is. I connect this to:

"...statement means pointing out. With this we adhere to the primordial meaning of logos as apophansis: to let beings be seen from themselves." — Joshs

The beings are there. Reality is there. Language reveals and points out. It is aimed away from itself.

If I may make use of Richard Rorty here instead of Heidegger, the postmodern pragmatist sees 'reality' as resting on the idea of truth as the mirror of nature, a correspondence between human constructions and an external world. — Joshs

I know the work of that ol' snake Rorty. I learned much from him. He did pomo with a minimum of stylistic bluff. His work is full of important insights , and I embrace the anti-foundationalism. But I don't think he shattered the mirror of nature unless it's the mirror of certain fussy foundationalists. If he did shatter that mirror, after all,...then he also didn't. And he also neither did nor didn't. My talk and his talk about that mirror corresponds to nothing. It's just marks that help me get what I want and feel good about myself. But it's also not that, because nothing is really there and reality is superstition. And yet superstition is a superstition too, for that very distinction corresponds to nothing. Clearly our mild-mannered liberal Rorty is a nice fellow who's just trying to soften up an unhip scientism (or something like that), which is fine.

they show us that the notion of "accurate representation" is simply an automatic and empty compliment which we pay to those beliefs which are successful in helping us do what we want to do." — Joshs

Note that they show us. They represent the notion of accurate representation (accurately, one would hope) as an 'automatic and empty compliment.' Let me emphasize that I like the spirit of this statement. I also like the spirit of logical positivism. Certain anti-metaphysical positions can't resist becoming meta-physicians themselves as they try to prove (metaphysically) that metaphysics is impossible or worthless. James was disliked empty talk that went nowhere. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. As James wrote, his pragmatism was (in its guts) old as the hills. IMV it's as much an unlearning as a learning, and I connect it with the later Wittgenstein's insights. A live 'spiritual' option is presented, and that's the possibility of taking a certain kind of thought less seriously.

I value Heidegger as a philosopher and think there are important ideas in what you quoted, but I don't feel that the issue I raised is being addressed. I also hope to avoid talking more about Heidegger than reality.

When we determine the presence of a thing in terms of a propositional subject-object statement we cut off our experience of something from its context of use and ossify it as what it is in itself. — Joshs

Let me borrow that structure: When we determine the presence meaning of a thing word in terms of a propositional subject-object statement metaphysical investment, we cut off our experience of something this word from its context of use and ossify it as what it is in itself and mishear it as an opposed metaphysical investment to be corrected by our own.

I do agree that we focus on objects and left them from their context and that they are something like ossifications. This perspective has its uses, but so does that ossification. This doesn't seem to address the issue of (as I see it) a 'primordial' reality that we can't help talking about. For instance, to deny that there even is something like reality is to say something about reality as I intend it here.

Great posts. You helped me see climbing in a new way. I also agree with the attitude expressed below.

Does it get in the way of other things? Sure! What doesn't? Are we neurotics? More than hard-working businessmen? More than philosophers?

Consider that all the accusations made about bodybuilders and their self-obsession, vanity, inability to feel okay with themselves without such a physique, and so on, could be leveled at just about anyone who does just about anything with enthusiasm and persistence.

Why do philosophers feel such a need to be intelligent? Why can't they be satisfied with everyday ideas and levels of understanding? Why all the reading of obscure and difficult books and performing their understanding for others? Why all the posing? Why all the pretense of profundity? Something to prove? Some sense of inadequacy? Oh, they are all driven by a pure sense of wonder or a pure pursuit of the good, are they? — petrichor

I agree with what I think is your notion that our motives are often mixed. We do this or that to some degree for its own sake and to some degree for status. Smarter, stronger, sexier, richer, more righteous,....

And here:

There is pleasure in excellence in all its forms. — petrichor

Thought most primordially, Dasein doesn't 'use' or 'depend on' tools. Dasein is always already in between, in transition, in creative engagement with a world, prior to its being a subject. — Joshs

Hello again. I don't say that the quote above is wrong or is meaningless. In fact I like Heidegger. I even relate my criticisms of Heidegger to things I've learned from him. But I do think this is an example of a certain excessive style. We don't use tools? We don't depend on tools? This kind of statement seems to rely on ripping 'use' and 'depend' away from their ordinary use and re-framing them as complicated metaphysical commitments.

The notion of objectivity and reality, as derivative ways of thinking, are not necessary to explain technological invention. — Joshs

I suggest that the notion of reality is not derivative. For me the assertion that it is derivative... relies on some kind of reality that it asserts something about. 'The reality is...that the notion of reality is derivative.' 'The fact is...that there are no facts.' The philosophical elaboration of reality is one thing and a more primordial sense of being in a world together is another.

Let's say you disagree with me. Fine. But what then am I wrong about ? if not something like this world or reality?

Thanks for the mention, looks a good read! Interesting author, also. — Wayfarer

My pleasure. One good thing about this book is that it pays attention to why philosophers caught on or not in their time. The main idea and its mood seems to have been more important than its careful justification for nonspecialists. Presentation (of a new, living option) seems to trump justification, though of course some support is needed for what also just appeals to and creates the spirit of the time.

I certainly agree that if students are not engaged (interested being the main component) then learning will suffer. And it does seem that high school English classes turn more people off of reading than they do create life-long readers. — ZhouBoTong

It's a complicated issue. I loved literature at that age, and some of what was taught was good. But given the depth of the good stuff, the Learning Outcome Factory can be wrong for it.

The pushing aside is meant to have a look for yourself. If someone is guarding a door, and claiming there is nothing behind that door, so don't even bother trying to look, doesn't it make you want to have a look for yourself? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah, I'd want to look. The guard says it all. I just wanted present the anti-profound reading as a current favorite that I didn't already see on the thread. I'm always looking for better words, a slight further clarification. I'm glad I joined the conversation.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I still think you might be projecting some theory of 'mind-independence' on me, but it's a small issue. Nevertheless, I'd just emphasize that a counter theory that accepts the divorce of 'mind,' 'fact', 'object', ... from their typical use misses the point. I guess I'm doing something like defending (the good part of) common sense against the excesses of intellectual hipsters, for my own hipster reasons. I'm endlessly looking for the perfect intellectual selfie. The lighting is never quite right.

Thanks for the suggestions. At the moment I'm mostly focused on learning technical skills. After spending years in the rabbit hole, the experience has been as important as any book. It enriches the books that preceded it and helps me test them. Philosophy is great and necessary as a zoomed-out view of our situation, but I'd say that it just can't substitute for a struggle with the details. Some know-how is learned in the trenches and can't be squeezed into concepts. Call it vanity, but I want to do a non-academic philosophy here, synthesizing 'official' philosophy with other valuable influences.

Thanks! That's very kind.

I might be trying to knock him down a few notches, but that's my approach to every philosopher, look for weaknesses as well as strengths, to me that's what philosophy is. And when it's a philosopher with high esteem, much appeal, the challenge is just as much to find the weaknesses as it is to understand the strengths. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree. I guess a certain suspension of disbelief is necessary in order to feel the strengths of a philosopher, but then an arrogance or restlessness is useful for not being caught in the mystique of a persona in a way that halts progress and further exploration. Of course just getting older helps too. The real world doesn't care much about flavors of opinion but rather about what one can do and refrain from doing. Then there's the realization that plenty of people who have never read the great philosophers are undeniably wise and impressive.

I hear you, and I have been down that rabbit-hole. I've also read and enjoyed many of your posts. Lately I've just been pulling back from what I now see as a certain stylistic excess in some of our mutual influences.

The question is what it means to say that something is mind-independent. Or more generally, what an object is. — Joshs

As an abbreviation for my feeling about that rabbit role (and not as an authority), I mention the later Wittgenstein. I can't 'prove' the futility of that rabbit hole in the language of that rabbit hole in the same way that I can't prove the God doesn't exist. I can suggest that the what-X-means game seems to have a built-in futility the further away it is from practice. Roughly, I suggest that ordinary language use is something like the base of the pyramid. We understand one another quite well without knowing exactly how we manage it. After-the-fact philosophical analyses strike me as tending to be artificial. What Joe means by 'object' when he uses it successfully may have little to do with Kant or Heidegger.

We can thank Aristotle, Galileo, and Descartes among others for our carving up experience into the abstractions we call objects. — Joshs

The concept of the object within philosophy no doubt has its history, but surely humans have been experiencing and talking about objects since long before the philosophers made things complicated without many of them doing much to actually help in managing those objects. I may sound a little bit anti-philosophy here, but I learned my suspicions of philosophy from philosophy in the first place, so I do value the genre.

What something is is a function of what we need it for, what we do with it, how we interact with it. And that changes not only from person to person but from instance to instance when we look at something, If we place a man from 30,000 years ago in front of a bus, how will that person's eyes track the vehicle? It depends on many things. Will they see it as a single thing or a collection of parts? And what is the significance of these parts for them?
Are they seeing the same bus as we are? — Joshs

These are good points. I see no easy answer for that last question, especially given your first sentence. What something is is a function of what we need it for, what we do with it, how we interact with it. I'm not saying I accept that sentence as a fact, but I agree with its emphasis on context and purpose. I'll also grant that many useful distinctions can still break down or have fuzzy boundaries. A tool doesn't have to always work to be worth passing on as a way we do things around here.

This a good example of the disadvantages of thinking of facts as mind-independent. If you believe that, you will be forced, as many are today, to disparage and attack those who are , in a thoroughgoing way, interpreting those supposed facts in profoundly contradictory ways relative to your understanding. Thus the endless accusations of fake news, brainwashed or lying, ethically compromised politicians and duped citizens.

An understanding of facts that sees them as interpretive from top ti bottom will , instead of questioning the integrity of others, seek to unfold their interpretive framework for their perspective. — Joshs

I understand the kind of rigid-mindedness you are cautioning against. I can relate to that. But note that the denial of fact altogether dissolves the boundary between news and fake news. There is only news that I don't like and new that I do without fact, as far as I can tell. And the word 'news' loses its force altogether.

Do you have any comment on whether it is a fact that 'there are no facts'? For context, I've defended ideas like that before. Philosophy can embrace itself as a paradoxical sophistry that is nevertheless good. I like the Tristan Tzara and other dada theorists.

The issue is largely a matter of taste. Hyper-clever philosophy, as it wanders away from application, sometimes strikes me as a kind of critical mysticism. Something 'profound' is achieved, but it still often enough just looks like words that make a small group feel good about itself, a romantic'reaction to philosophy losing prestige to science and technology for instance.

I like to think that I've read enough of these writers to criticize 'my' group from the inside. On the other hand, the whole thing is so disconnected from practice and being tested that there's no clear way to establish who really understands Heidegger (for instance) profoundly enough to be worthy of criticizing him. To me this further supports the 'not even wrong' judgment or attitude. If there are no facts, but only interpretations, then I seem to only risk a 'boo' or a 'you're don't get it, dude' in reply to these concerns. I say that I mostly do get it but that it's nice to be able to turn it off and speak with the vulgar when appropriate.

That the kernel is a fuzzy kernel is a cop-out, a refusal to acknowledge the reality of the situation, that there is no such thing as the kernel, and seeking the kernel is a lost enterprise. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree (with reservations below), yet you write as if I'm purveying some theory of the non-fuzzy kernel. My position is roughly that it's not worth the trouble to try to create or appeal to a superscience of meaning. This is not to say that such a thing is impossible, for that would be to fall right back into linguistic metaphysics. Instead one can just market a different approach which is not justified in terms of the old approach. Just as a certain kind of atheist doesn't take the God issue seriously enough to debate about it, so an anti-profound 'Wittgensteinian' might no longer bother engaging in a stripe of theorizing.

That's why you need to push Wittgenstein aside, look behind that door yourself, contemplate the kernel of meaning for yourself, and truly realize that there is no such thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

I tend to agree, especially with pushing Wittgenstein aside. I quoted Graham to emphasize the possibility that the later Wittgenstein is something like a representative of ordinary wisdom who happened to make explicit within philosophy what others implied by not taking a certain kind of philosophy seriously in the first place. To sell Wittgenstein as a must-read guru looks like more linguistic metaphysics. If Wittgenstein is profound and difficult, then I increase my own status by translating him for the mystified.

As for realizing that there is no such thing, I mostly agree there too, but I'd be careful not to frame it as the result of a method (like a 'theologically' justified atheism.) This is why I think it important to emphasize the wisdom of ordinary 'dummies' who aren't caught up in the game in the first place. It's the same with Taoism. If it's only possible with some particular book or the word 'Tao,' then it's bogus. To 'unknow' some kind of silliness is not to learn a secret but to stop pretending that one has one. (In vague terms like this we're already knee-deep in remystification. Maybe that's the risk of aphorism.)

The point is that he uses "perfect". — Metaphysician Undercover

I hear you, but I don't think anything is going to be proved in either direction. It seems like you want to knock Wittgenstein down, which is fine. But isn't it also valuable to understand his appeal? Gellner's attack seems related to yours.

One might say that G.E. Moore is the one and only known example of Wittgensteinian man: unpuzzled by the world or science, puzzled only by the oddity of the sayings of philosophers, and sensibly reacting to that alleged oddity by very carefully, painstakingly and interminably examining their use of words. . . The philosophical job is to persuade us of the adequacy of ordinary conceptualisations. It is the story of Plato over again–only this time it is the philosopher’s job to lead us back into the cave. — Gellner

An exaggerated/profound reading of the underlined phrase is suspiciously easy to criticize. Give the people that like W some credit, after all. It's unlikely that they're all dummies. It's not that the fuzziness of our talk should never be improved. Wittgenstein was doing that himself. What he criticized was the leap from often possible improvement to the postulation of some non-fuzzy kernel of meaning, an idea that tempts philosophers away from better uses of their time.

Better for whom? It's a value judgment, a matter of character. Those wrapped up in a game that depends on the non-fuzzy kernel (who think that some kind of superscience of meaning is possible) are naturally going to resist his project. Others who want philosophy to hurry on to the good stuff might agree and stop pretending that they can't hear one another. I think you're getting hung up on a single word and missing the big picture. For me Wittgenstein is useful for helping one not do that. Arguments probably won't resolve much though, no more than those between theists and atheists. There's a certain amount of boo/hooray on a gut level in play with a writer like Wittgenstein.

I get you, but all of these nonsense and unnecessary noise relies on the underpinnings of technology. How do they communicate their blather? From the products of the technocratic MMs. — schopenhauer1

But why do they care about the products? Because they (we) live for that blather to the degree that they (we) are not just animals.

Specializing does not matter to the MM, they are problem-solving and immersed in their specialized world. — schopenhauer1

Actually it's a bit painful to come to terms with specialization. Or it was for me. If there's an itch for God, then there's a similar itch to know everything, from first principles if possible. But life is too short. Science is too complicated. Now I'm just glad to have chosen something that not only appeals to me aesthetically but is actually in demand. It's not a religion, but it's better than waiting tables.

If you don't minutia-monger, you are simply babbling fantasy nonsense and unnecessary noise out of your mouth hole. You are here to contribute to the techno-economic system. — schopenhauer1

This 'system' is just lots of individuals though. From the guy at Best Buy they want the new smartphone. From the cutie on Tinder they want sex. From their dealer they want some good weed. From their politician they want...all kinds of things. Throw us altogether and we get a system, with no one really in control, despite some having far more influence than others.

'Contributing to the system' pretty much means convincing someone to give you their money, a company or a customer. Some people get rich selling their own personality. They monetize the live narrative of their life, curated to emphasize a bittersweet glamour. A person can get rich selling detailed conspiracy theories. Technology is one product among others, despite its obvious importance.

Yes, that is it. When you want to talk about "big boy" things, you talk about the "work" you do. — schopenhauer1

I mostly agree, but wouldn't a younger person rather be a famous athlete or movie star? If tech people sell the shovels to the gold miners, some of those miners actually strike gold. Who has higher status? Beyonce' or some random coder making 80K? The 'big boy' theme is at least as entangled with money and fame as it is with science. I think it's only some philosophical types who struggle with science envy. If only their deep truths could have the prestige of shallow truths of sciences...Others just want their gear to work so well as to become invisible, along with its creators. I struggled with this envy myself once and ...put on my big boy pants and studied science. Or rather I studied a little part of it, quickly learning that there's just too much knowledge for any single mind. One has to specialize. So philosophy remains valuable as an attempt to make sense of the big picture and not drown in the details.