I'm not sure whether Heidegger himself used 'reality' in that way to imply his promotion of aletheia. Afterall, his use of Existenz was restricted to the operational 'being' of humans which seems to indicate that all his terminology was anthropocentric.

As far as 'things prior to us' is concerned. in so far that it denotes a 'useful' concept for current humans as an imagined scenario, then 'such things existed'. However since both 'prior to' and 'us' are concepts which are candidates for deconstruction at other levels of analysis, the italicised phrase implies contextual relativity for that use of exist

Not a report 'after' if even the assignment of 'thinghood' is verbal.

The first level of all measurement is 'nominal' i.e. 'identifying and naming a thing' That necessarily involves directed focal interaction of an observer with a selected aspect of what is considered to be 'the world'. That is why physicists call 'things' - 'repetitive events'

I don't define it. It is a concept which denotes 'utility' of another concept and the utility of all concepts is relative to human needs. Some concepts imply expectance of lasting physicality and others do not. Concepts are denoted by 'words' whose abstract permanence suggests permanence of "objects' relative to human experience. But concepts are all we've got !

:grin:

"Man is the measure of all things" Protagoras
"All we call observation is verbal" Maturana
"Language speaks the Man" Heidegger ( not vice versa !)

Have fun.

The problem with 'common sense' is that it assumes language to be representational of 'extant permanent objects', which is fine for daily transactions, just like a geocentic model is still useful for gardeners. However, 'common sense' is at odds with scientific paradigms with not only usurp normal 'logic', question 'causality', speak of sub atomic particles 'popping in and out of existence', and eliminate 'time' as fundamental parameter . 'Common sense' would not have given us computers or satnavs, or led to the discovery of 'black holes'.
I refer you back to the OP point about the Einstein Bohr debate. Einstein took a basic step,away from 'common sense' in his deconstruction of lay views of 'time', but as a 'realist' he could only go so far, and refused to accept quantum theory 'illogical' notions like 'nonlocality' which he called 'spooky'. It turns out he was emprically 'wrong'.
Finally, I ask you what 'common sense' would make of Brian Cox's sub-title for his book on 'Quantum Physics'....'Whatever CAN happen, DOES happen !'

'Reality'...? That is just another word used in social contexts to denote agreement about 'what is the case'. The fact that humans have much physically, psychologically and socially in common, implies they are often in agreement. Actually, the word tends not to arise at all except when potential disagreement occurs.

You are using 'existence' as an absolute. The thesis here is that 'existence' is a word used by humans regarding what is 'a useful concept'....nothing more ! Time is a 'useful concept' in social contexts but not in frontier physics which demotes it to a 'psychological construct'. Similarly 'science based' comments can be made wbout concepts like 'mind', phenomenon' and even 'causality'.

IMO we need a dump a whole bunch of axioms about 'existence' which might require moving from 'definitions' to 'neologisms' (as emplified by Heidegger's attempt).

NB According to Rovelli, we have got things wrong about 'time'.

I take the nonrepresentationalist view. Words construct what we contextually accept as 'reality' and contexts are transient.
(Your logic above appears faulty...' That much is undeniable.'.....No, that doesn't make sense from the relativistic pov....Things require thingers)

Back later.

Only on the hasis that 'time' is a psychological construct that matters to us.

...not quite....to 'exist' is to 'matter to us'.

The implictations for religion are negative in that they are limited by contrived 'absolutes'.
For 'free will', 'meaning' etc they do not apply since there are no limits to the contexts in which they occur.

I think we share a hymn sheet.

Insofar that humans have similar bodies, whose experience may form the bedrock of 'metaphor', they may share the same 'reality'.
Wittgenstein: "If a lion could speak, we would not understand him".

Attempted 'visualization' is criticised by the pragmatists who argue that this is a bias inherited from Greek philosophy. (Rorty 'Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature')
More useful might be Lakoff's views on 'metaphor' which he relates to bodily experience.

This is my last comment to you.

Organized religion has historically been a rationale for tribalism, and ensuing genocide. But more pernicious are pompous tin pot orators like you, ( the self styled 'Greatest I Am'), who lay claim to 'the truth', whether that 'truth' be given the label 'religious', 'political' or 'national'.

I should have spotted that 'body parts' probably constitute a special case as they are part of the observer domain. However, at the most basic level of analysis, 'particles' are considered to be shifting nodes of reinforcement of interfering 'matter waves'. The fact the we experience conglomerates of them as 'solid' is the result of the interaction of our micro-transient physicality with an object's micro-transient physicality. Without the observer there would be no 'solidity' !

Have a look at your logic. Of course 'things' don't 'flux' because 'thinghood' equates to persistent utility. The thing coined by the words 'your hand' remains functionally your hand despite the multiple dynamic changes occurring including blood flow, nail growth and skin loss.

I leave all absolutes, particularly 'truth', in the hands of religionists.

I don't intend to summarize Rovelli's book about 'reality is not what it seems' . Suffice to say, since 'all is in flux', including the status of atoms in surfaces, the sub particles of atoms themselves, and the perceptual states of observers. It follows that 'persistent utility' relative to human needs and time scales, coupled with the abstract permanence of words, is the sub text for the emergence of lay concepts of independent 'things'. The 'flux' point eliminates the need for an axiom of 'things interacting'.

Well we can keep going round in circles here. Neuroscientists claim words like 'consciousness' are too nebulous to deal with. That claim is made on the back of historical advances in other sciences which have deconstructed 'folk concepts' like 'the humours' or even 'time'. It could all be merely a matter of optimism versus pessimism.

LATER EDIT: I Should have re-iterated that 'causality' may also be 'a folk concept'

Then we agree to differ. I refer you to my opening post involving statements about physicists that 'things' are merely 'interaction events'. Physicality, (or materiality) is just one possible characteristicc of those events which involve human physiology.

In terms of the relativist thesis, 'minds' exist insofar that 'mind' is a useful concept in human interactions. So 'existence' is a word associated with 'utility' not 'a state of being'. By adopting this thesis, I am avoiding the category mistake (Ryle) of treating 'mind' as either a subjective or objective 'entity'.
So phrases like 'he changed his mind' is a semantically useful way of conveying 'he altered his position about something'. A proposed concept of 'mental substance' has no utility for me, even if it does for you. So it 'exists' for you but not me. At this point, consensus might be sought to establish utility.

I take on board your interest in embodiment, and I admit that I was over generalizing with my comment 'all religions are nonsense' (I should have said deism). It was stylistically useful to take a devils advocate stance when presenting the thesis, but other than scepticism, I don't think there is much that 'philosophers' can say against 'advances' in neuroscience, and I'm a sceptic myself !

No...'Emergence' worthy of levels of discourse in systems theory.

Yes. I did know about the Buddhist connection but I put that down to the holistic, 'self ' dissipation ethos surrounding autopoiesis.
BTW. I don't think I placed this in the 'Philosophy of Mind ' section as I consider it antithetical to such a label. Nor do I agree that my usage of 'life' is a platitude since I am not playing the language game 'that's life', I am citing a particular concept of life proposed by the Santiago movement. This point would tend to displace 'reason' with 'rationality'.
(Note too that I did switch from 'reasoning' to 'rationality' in the opening paragraph )

Not obvious to me! On the contrary, just looking at this forum, many threads appear to me to be little more than a bit of 'intellectual dancing'. Cynically, it could be argued that 'philosophy' is an intellectual hobby for those of us fortunate to have time on their hands.

The point about 'neuroscience' is that it tends to deflate 'thinking' as an epiphenomenon of 'neural activity'. We resent this, of course, but we cannot argue with some of the empirical research on which it is based. And it is that empiricism which sets it apart from other iconoclastic movements.

Sorry, I don't know what you mean by 'mind is existence'. For me 'mind' and 'existence' are two words that have meanings in other contexts but not when equated.

I don't agree that 'reason is sovereign'....'Life' is. What we call 'reason' facilitates that aspect of human life concerned with 'prediction and control'. Of course you might argue that this points to an infinite regress involving 'reasoning about what life is', but it seems there may be an ultimate backstop to this with the concept of life as an 'autopoietic structure'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis
It might be useful to consider this with respect to Von Glasersfeld's comments on circular language'.
http://vonglasersfeld.com/125.2

To All,

Thankyou for your thoughts over night (UK)
My question still stands...are we witnessing 'the demise of philosophy as we know it' ?
Or to put it another way, is 'neurophilosophy' any more iconoclastic than the issues raised by Wittgenstein, the Pragmatists, or the Post Modernists.

I see your point about 'existential anxiety', but is that any more significant than an atheist (like me) saying 'all religions are nonsense'?
As for 'the explanation of explanation', that may turn out to rest on a 'nested systems' approach, in which 'life processes as dissipative structures' (Maturana) can be applied at many levels, from the cell, to the society. From that pov, the languaging we call 'explanation' might be adressed at the level of 'co-ordination of co-ordination' between nesting levels. After all, without getting into formal systems theory, we are already aware that the language employed in 'individual thinking' has been socially acquired.

Yes. I agree with Rorty on that 'supercedence'...that 'philosophy' has nothing authoritative to say about epistemology(Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature)

Hmm..the issue raised by neurophilosophy is what constitutes 'the problem', rather than 'the solution'.
That is why they reject Chalmers' 'hard problem' as a pseudo-problem.
But I agree that 'domains of discourse' (perspectives) can be useful for the larger picture of philosophy with the proviso that those domains are not mutually exclusive. For example, it is clear from a neurologifal pov that what we call 'the exercise free will' has its roots in 'unconscious processes'. But since 'free will' has social importance, and its exercise can be modified, (learning=restructuring of neural circuitry). The 'problem' may turn out to be 'ethical' rather than epistemological.

Everything does have a function..that is what 'thinghood' boils down to.
Properties of 'things' are expectancies of potential functional interaction with them.

The claim that 'thought is not a behavior' implies that 'being animate' is not a necessary condition for thought. 'Thought involves 'brain activity' with or without overt bodily movement. In fact from the pov of 'embodied cognition' (Varela et al) both brain and body are both essential tor 'thought'.
The alternative is to advocate dualism.

Yes. All,that matters, is what happens next, from a 'structural integrity' pov.

I disagree. We 'know' what 'a behavior X' is, if we understand the function of X, and the essential components of X which contribute to that function. I suggest this is not the case for 'thought'.

Nah, its nothing to do with physics. We can all 'turn the sound off in our mind's eye'. The 'observation' has still been made. There is no way we cannot observe 'the forest devoid of humans', and it Is arbitrary whether the sound is on or off in that imagined scenario.