One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
by Herbert Marcuse

Everything lacks something. — Kenosha Kid

Only from a normative perspective.

So you're saying that the properties of a generalised set can be used to infer the properties of any member of that set simply by virtue of its membership? — Isaac

No, I never made that claim anywhere. I said that ex nihilo nihil fit doesn't explicitly refer to consciousness, nor should it, that isn't it's role in the syllogism. I'm not going to repeat myself a fourth time. If you don't like the structure of the argument that's fine. Nevertheless, that is my argument, and it is the basic form of a syllogism, general premise, specific premise.

Quid pro quo isn't about what's being exchanged, so we woudn't expect it to tell us. Ex nihilo nihil fit is about {all the things}, so we'd expect it to tell us about one of the things. — Isaac

They are both generalizations. This, that. Something, nothing. Your categorization seems spurious to me Isaac.

I was referring to your first premise, as I had hoped was made clear by me quoting your first premise. — Isaac

Well, a premise contains what it contains, so saying that ex nihilo nihil fit doesn't refer to consciousness is like say quid pro quo doesn't tell you what is being exchanged.

Ex nihilo nihil fit is intuitively, logically, and scientifically satisfying.

What did I exclude?
— Pantagruel

Consciousness.

You either knew all along that it didn't come from nothing, or your premise "nothing comes from nothing" is speculative because there exists a known thing whose origin is unknown. — Isaac

Actually the final premise was cogito ergo sum. So far from excluding consciousness, it was (is) integral to the argument.

If not, then how have you reached your premise despite knowingly excluding some 'things' from your gathering of evidence? — Isaac

What did I exclude?

The important part here is not that they are common (ordinary) words (@Pantagruel); the point of OLP is that words "embody" the unconscious, unexamined ordinary criteria (not made-up, or philosophically-important criteria)--all of the richness that is buried in them of all the different ways we live. — Antony Nickles

If ordinary dialogue does not reflect ordinary content then I don't know what else would. This sounds like a discontinuity between means and ends.

Anyway, clearly this is a "special technical" usage which doesn't carry the force of meaning of "ordinary dialogue" as it really exists, so I'll leave it at that. Perhaps it should be called "Strawson's method" or "Wittgenstein's way" or the "epoche".

It only makes sense that an inquiry into the nature of ordinary language usage should be an application of the principles of ordinary language. In any dialogue, there is always a "meaning differential" whose resolution is "conversational." The inquiry into meaning is conducted casually and the ongoing conversation is itself the mutual consensus as to ordinary usage.

Edit. Hence Nietzsche as an exemplary ordinary language philosopher. His tone is always highly critical or exhortative, like an animated and passionate conversation. It is rhetoric, powerful rhetoric. The longer he engages your mind, the more you are drawn into the consensus he creates.

The key characteristic of Austin's approach is the seeking of wisdom within our everyday language. — Banno

This is exactly what I am talking about.

This is why I initially quoted Collingwood:

The business of language is to express or explain; if language cannot explain itself, nothing else can explain it.

You either use language in its most fundamentally expressive way, or you don't. OLP may be a good way of identifying what is not ordinary language, but the best way of discovering what is is through the use of...ordinary language. As I mentioned elsewhere, there is the typical, and there is the exemplary. And both are in a sense ordinary. But they are also different.

without saying it in the way he does. — Antony Nickles

Right, it is genuine. There must be both "poor" and "good" ordinary usages. You can't do such an analysis without some kind of normative dimension.

Ordinary Language Philosophy is characterised by close analysis of key words in terms of their entomology and interrelationship. — Banno

So you use complex analysis to discover ordinary usage? Kind of like using a microscope to view an elephant?

Could there be an experience of the brain dying? I guess that is the question.

we are explicating and opening and expanding our ordinary criteria — Antony Nickles

So, making them less ordinary?

The kind of things that "happen" to consciousness are experiences. In fact, everything that "happens" to consciousness is an experience by definition. It is not like my consciousness is a soccer ball, that can get kicked around by external forces while I remain oblivious to them. If it "happens" to me, then I experience it. If I don't experience it, then it didn't happen to me.

So what happens when you die is you have an experience. When you stop having an experience, then things stop happening. But there cannot be any transition between the two, otherwise, that would be an experience and so, still happening....

..but it's not style that counts here; it's method. — Banno

Exactly my point. If you characterize something as "ordinary language" and then you modify that meaning to abandon one of its fundamental characteristics, then you turn "ordinary language" into exactly the kind of philosophical construct it criticizes.

Including Nietzsche renders the list too irregular - a list of one's favourites, not a list of philosophers with a common approach. — Banno

Nietzsche's style could certainly be characterized as more ordinary language than those philosophers for whom it is a methodology.....

So what is ordinary then? If there is a universe of discourse with a vocabulary of, say, 100,000 words. There is probably a core vocabulary of, say, 5,000 words that are well-known by 90 percent of the population. Maybe another 5,000 words that are well-known by another 9 percent of the population (in addition to the core set). From there, the vocabulary-groups begin to splinter into parallel factions associated with increasingly specific topics. So some experts know an additional 10,000 words in a certain area, some in another. Etc.

So does ordinary usage mean resolving more expansive universes of discourse down to less expansive, but therefore more universal, ones? Or can vocabulary be said to be of ordinary usage, even though it resides with a universe of discourse which, owing to its high degree of specificity, is itself not "ordinary"?

Nietzsche with his hyperbolic claims, often ending in exclamation points, mixed with rhetorical questions, and brimming with certainty, is more a philosophical rabble-rouser than physician. — Ciceronianus the White

I guess you could ask yourself, does ordinary mean typical? Or exemplary? Perhaps Nietzsche was not typical. Could he be exemplary?

Hmm. I thought OLP was all about what words actually mean in everyday use. As opposed to artificially constructed types of contexts which create the problems which they then try to solve.

Both Collingwood and Habermas agree on the ultimate importance of ordinary language versus technical.

Collingwood says that "technical terms" are not fundamental within language because they require explanation, and:

The business of language is to express or explain; if language cannot explain itself, nothing else can explain it.

Habermas says that our communicative actions derive from a massively shared lifeworld (lebenswelt). This is a background set of assumptions so fundamental that they resist analysis. His observations on specialized languages are that the value of special theoretical domains can only be measured to the extent that they manage to re-integrate themselves into the universal community. Therefore, they must eventually find a way to communicate in everyday language. In fact, Habermas says that everyday language is the best meta-language. I'd agree.

Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge by Karl Mannheim
Looking forward to these. Structures of Thinking was a tour de force

But you can never know modern technology fully. — schopenhauer1

Exactly. And that is why you need to comprehend the use of technology within the scope of society as an organic whole. It is all about interdependence, and it applies to everyone. No man is an island.

I would say, attempting to restrict someone whose actions are not restricting anyone else.

On the other hand, if someone's actions do negatively constrain a great number of other people, then constraining that person actually contributes to individual autonomy at the collective level. As when small groups of people co-opt public resources.

But Is that really so? People throughout history have climbed the ladder of culture. An individual does not have to comprehend culture in its entirety to benefit from it, or contribute to it. Your description suggests a schism between the individual and the (social) world (s)he inhabits.

"You imply disparity where none exists"

Can you define those terms in layman's speak :D? I have not read prior definitions that would make me understand it any better than if I just made it up and nodded my head.. — schopenhauer1

Yes, the anthropological perspective is a little bit...messy I guess you would say. It is like philosophy wrapped up in flesh and blood, simultaneously highly theoretical and yet with all the layers of culture, tribalism, organicism.

I was hoping the description would be evocative. It really just speaks to the way that human ideas are instantiated though symbolic media, and how technology is just a very advanced manifestation of this. Per my comment, we don't need to understand technology to use it - and yet technology is really a kind of hypostatization or reification of knowledge, knowledge made tangible.

None of these aspects can grasp the whole of the technology.. We are a drops in the bucket of much larger networks of infrastructure and information far beyond what we can ever know fully. — schopenhauer1

Interesting. There is an additional question as to the instrumentality of knowledge in general. Machines somehow transform and inject human knowledge into the natural order. And yet we don't actually require that knowledge (in some cases) to utilize the instrumentality. I read a passage in Levi-Strauss this morning which nicely described this in the context of driving an automobile:

It is neither men nor natural laws which are brought exactly face to face but systems of natural forces humanized by drivers' intentions and men transformed into natural forces by the physical energy of which they make themselves the mediators. It is no longer a case of the operation of an agent on an inert object, nor of the return action of an object, promoted to the role of an agent, on a subject dispossessing itself in its favour without demanding anything of it in return; in other words, it is no longer situations involving a certain amount of passiveness on one side or the other which are in question. The beings confront each other face to face as subjects and objects at the same time;

One of the most fascinating descriptions of the interaction of mind and matter that I have encountered, the junction point of symbolic instrumentality and instrumental symbolicity I guess you could say.

Do you think that the pandemic will have any impact on capitalism? I have wondered if it will make an even greater divide between the wealthy and the poor, or whether it could cause such chaos, to make money obsolete. Have you any view or ideas about this? — Jack Cummins

I think practically everything that happens tends to increase the divide between the wealthy and the poor, Jack. That's the trend that we have to start reversing.

I have no beef with capitalism per se, but it has to be regulated, just like everything else in this world. Otherwise it just becomes an outlet for the most materialistic of human motives.

I think the pandemic is potentially a huge wake-up call. If we somehow manage a cohesive response, the pandemic could well teach us our true power as a coordinated collective. Great things could come of that. Unfortunately I see that opportunity daily slipping away.

I think that a significant part of the de-stabilization in our world (that precipitates unfortunate responses from individuals) comes from unregulated capitalism. Large corporations, following their nature, just naturally apply pressure upon governments and through media. This ends up recruiting a lot of dissatisfied individuals to get behind the corporate agenda.

I think rather than try to reconcile disparate ideologies we should just focus on a pragmatic governance platform oriented around reducing national debt, for example. Then the number one opportunity for large gains in that direction is through progressive regulation of corporations. Take away their privileges and make them accountable. I think that is the key to stabilizing both the economy and society.

I have always maintained that the only conspiracies are conspiracies of human greed and conspiracies of human stupidity.

The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of Exchange, Kōjin Karatani
— 180 Proof

Sounds interesting! — Maw

It does.

I agree again regarding the interpretation, but please elaborate a little regarding your conclusions.

For me, the conjunction of a universe biased to self organize, and Capra's unit of cognition contain the emotion and cognition elements necessary for a model of consciousness, long before life arose — Pop

Strictly from the primitive ontological statements I infer/intuit the continuity of consciousness with some kind of historical consciousness that preceded this "phase" and some kind of future consciousness that will follow. Without being too explicit about the nature of that more "expansive" consciousness. Perhaps it won't be "me", but it will be "composed" of me in some sense, I suppose.

To doubt that the external world, and even his physical body exist, because perhaps, a demon may be deceiving him is unreasonable, not least because - it implies a much more complex explanation than the apparent reality; — counterpunch

And yet, today, as computer technology describes, the "brain-in-a-vat" hypothesis (which is what Descartes' deceptive demon amounts to) is more plausible than ever. I think it was just an excellent metaphor symbolizing the type of doubt Descartes wanted to describe.

So I don't think it was an unreasonable premise. I think it was an accurate depiction of a subjective experience, translated into publicity.

I guess what you are getting at is that consciousness cannot be immaterial , and normally I would agree. BUT quantum entanglement, tunneling, superposition, and uncertainty are not really what we normally understand to be material, and patterns of these are likely to play a role in consciousness. Perhaps they require their own category to enable us to articulate this situation a little better. — Pop

I think our concept of materiality, or more specifically, the presumed dichotomy between mind and matter, is archaic, given everything we have discovered about the nature of reality. The post is a kind of syllogism. with the conclusion left open to emphasize the way that thought "Fills in the gaps" in our symbolic presentations; thought is more than just information. Everyone brings a different interpretive context to any statement they read. For me, the conjunction of ex nihilo nihil fit and cogito ergo sum is compelling.

But there's also this thing about higher order decisions such as choosing a college course, getting married, deciding to have kids, etc... These are decisions that require tons of planning and so a lot more "agency" is involved. — 8livesleft

Yes, I agree that the degree to which "long-term" as opposed to immediate goals or stimuli influence our decisions is a key element in the will-phenomena.

edit: thought about it some more.
Undoubtedly there is some basic empirical truth to determinism in thought - we are subject to various stimuli, we react to them. But that in itself doesn't contradict the subjective reality of ideas. So perhaps will does consist in allowing ourselves to be more influenced by our own ideas rather than immediate, external stimuli. And perhaps the quality of those ideas, the standards to which we hold our own beliefs, also contributes to the efficacy of the will?

People need to be prosecuted over this. — Wayfarer

Wouldn't that be Trump? Isn't inciting this pretty much in direct contravention to his oath of office?

lol. No biggie. Mind you, it is such a subjective phenomena, I don't know if you can ever provide a sufficient objective description, IMO. We know that there IS a line where we exercise our willpower, but between unanticipated situations where our responses are totally spontaneous and rote situations where perhaps we labour under a delusive self-perception, describing the exact placement of that line isn't straightforward. I do think we each have an intuitive awareness of it though....

I did. I don't agree example 2 is a case of willpower, it is simply utilitarian calculation. I think actual willpower applies to situations where one is "teetering on the edge" so to speak.

Interesting examples. I think you are correct in couching them in terms of temptation. We are tempted always to take the easy route, the path of least resistance. Which is why I like Aristotle's conception of wisdom as grasping "what is hard and not easy" to understand (as I mentioned in the other thread).

I think the examples have a bit of a "cooked-up" quality however. Most people aren't on the verge of being tempted to steal. If they are, they've already made up their minds and so example 2 isn't really about willpower, it's just a utilitarian calculation. Case 1 for me characterizes willpower. I interpret it along the lines of Kant's idea of "self-legislation". We are nowhere more free than where we circumscribe our own powers, or desires.