• Teleology and Instrumentality
    ↪T Clark
    Well, without the value of the vision of the goal, the goal itself has no value. So it is the idea that creates the value that realizes the goal.
  • Conceptualizing Cosmic Consciousness
    ↪Alkis Piskas
    So Nagel feels that the fact of consciousness stands on its own as hard evidence that requires a non-materialist explanation. I think that pretty much sums up my (his) response to both those issues. Evidence is by definition a mental function or feature. Features of objective reality are not evidence, unless they are evidence for someone of something....
  • What does it feel like to be energy?
    ↪Benj96
    :100:

    Very much in line with 'research program' I'm pursuing.

    If you haven't already read Nagel's Mind and Cosmos I'd highly recommend it. It's a short book.
  • What does it feel like to be energy?
    So I see matter as a stable or "pent up/locked up" form of energy — Benj96

    Precisely. And you can also view complex systems as being more elaborate instances of this phenomenon. Systems can store energy in any of its variety of forms, chemical, mechanical, etc. etc.. Moreover, I would say that, when energy is stored in a more complex system, it cannot be directly quantified and compared to energy stored in less complex system. The energic footprint of organic matter is equivalent to the total footprint of all the various energies contained within its constitutive systems, ranging from the quantum to the chemical to the organic levels. I'm not sure we can even make a good estimate as to what is the true energic footprint of consciousness.
  • Conceptualizing Cosmic Consciousness
    We don't know if consciousness has been produced as part of the biological life. — Alkis Piskas

    Correct. It's the central question of the book I'm currently reading, Mind and Cosmos. Nagel is evaluating the differences between 'reductive' approaches (which entail panpsychism) and emergent approaches, which leave something of an explanatory gap regarding the meaning of emergence.

    What else could there be? I don't know of anythings physical producing something non-physical. — Alkis Piskas

    Per the above, it is possible that there non-physical aspects to the physical, proto-conscious features, in a reductive interpretation. Of course you are begging the question when it comes to consciousness, which is the entire point.

    These are attempts to compromise non-compromisable things, find middle-solutions, etc. And they are of course totally theoretical, existing in a frame, context of their own — Alkis Piskas

    I don't know if you noticed, but all of the most advanced physics is entirely "theoretical". The question as to what is/isn't "hard evidence" is itself psycho-social.
  • Conceptualizing Cosmic Consciousness
    OK, but this is just a literal-etymological analysis. This is not an answers to What does "trans-physical" mean? I, on the other hand, brought up the definition from two dictionaries. If you don't know yourself what it actually means, you shouldn't talk about it and waste people's time. — Alkis Piskas

    Even if the mechanisms that produced biological life, including consciousness, are, at some level, the same as those that operate in the evolution of the physical universe, it does not follow that those mechanisms are physical...Perhaps some transphysical and transmental concept is required to capture both mechanisms.... (Tom Sorell, Descartes Reinvented)

    All speech is "just" literal-etymological in nature (i.e. arising through historical-contextual usage). You think that "definitions" in dictionaries represent the sine qua non of meaning? Well, maybe at a very rudimentary stage of learning that is true.
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    I just read Thomas Nagel's endorsement of Jaegwon Kim's view of the nature of metaphysics, with which I also "am very much in sympathy":

    Metaphysics is the domain where different languages, theories, explanations, and conceptual systems come together and have their mutual ontological relationships sorted out and clarified.

    In other words, metaphysics is a project whose aim is to study and elaborate the nature of the connections between apparently discrete domains. If you are a reductive materialist (is anyone anymore) then you consciously reject metaphysics. If you credibly believe that the universe exhibits mental as well as physical aspects, then you embrace metaphysics.

    So I guess, if you believe that mental phenomena are imaginary, then you reject the validity of metaphysics. However, since your rejection of metaphysics would itself be a mental phenomenon, I don't where that would leave you.
  • What does it feel like to be energy?
    ↪Benj96
    Consciousness certainly directs energy in a meaningful way, which is the basis of the phenomenon of teleology. So if consciousness directs energy, it interacts with energy. Basically, you can see matter as just that, viz. a mechanism for energy interaction. It appears to have more in common with energy than "inert" matter (dynamism, direction). But then no matter is really inert, since it all exists in systems of one form or another, which are temporally dynamic, i.e. contain energy.
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    My definition of metaphysics is that is the study of that which is beyond the possibility of experience, — Bob Ross

    The nature of experience is that it expands with knowledge. Compare the experience of the human, versus that of the single-celled creatures from which we sprang. Consider the experience of a symphony by a trained musician versus someone with no musical knowledge. Thomas Nagel stresses the point that our tools for comprehending reality are limited, but those limits are constantly evolving.
  • How do we know that communism if not socialism doesn't work?
    ↪Tom Storm
    :up:
  • How do we know that communism if not socialism doesn't work?
    The fact that democracy hasn't yet worked doesn't mean that it couldn't.....
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    ↪Bob Ross
    But the point is that it doesn't tell the whole story. Rather, it raises a whole host of questions about the relationships between "properties" and events, and why some configurations are "preferred" by the universe versus others. Science is one colour on the palette. Metaphysics is about the palette, and the picture, and the painter, and the model.
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    ↪Bob Ross
    If you start trying to wrap your head around the emergence of physical properties as the manifestation of pointer states in the process of the decoherence of quantum superposition from the web of entanglement it is hard not to think that you're thinking in metaphysical terms. From a purely operational perspective. Imagination certainly enters into it as there's not much resemblance to any 'ordinary' descriptions of reality, but it also apparently involves what we experience as consciousness and the nature of the universe. I'd say metaphysics pretty much sums it up, for now.
  • Currently Reading
    Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
    by Thomas Nagel

    Catriona: Being Memoirs of the Further Adventures of David Balfour at Home and Abroad
    by Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Metabiology of the mind
    ↪Wolfgang
    Yes, you definitely reiterate that with some force. My take is that there is a similarity between his differentiating mind and matter and your differentiating life and matter and that maybe there is a sense in which these are two different versions of the same thing.
  • Metabiology of the mind
    The need for a biological metatheory is obvious. Even if physics takes care of biological processes, it only ever does so on parts of an organism. These parts, however, are lifeless in themselves, they only come to life in interaction with the entire organism. Life is not a single concept, it is a structural concept that describes a structure — Wolfgang

    Are you familiar with Laszlo's theory of biperspectivism? This sounds quite similar. The physical and the non-physical each have their own metaphysical foundation, but exist within a common explanatory framework which is essentially systems theoretic in nature (dynamic equilibrium, autopoeisis, etc).
  • Currently Reading
    Kidnapped
    by Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Currently Reading
    ↪Jamal
    I thought the ending the best part of the book. For me, there was too much meta-commentary throughout. I like my fiction to be either transparent, or poetic. The device of the socket finally humanizing labour didn't fully make sense to me either. But the ending was rewarding. I'm curious about his other works.
  • Metabiology of the mind
    Information is then no longer just a rigid physical concept, but can be described in terms of density and thus in terms of causal force, which gains influence over areas of lower density by means of information or structural gradients. — Wolfgang

    I agree. I have been working in this direction for several years now. The concept of instrumentality-tools seems applicable. A tool is essentially an information-dense artefact, and illustrates the instrumentality of knowledge/information.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    ↪Joshs
    For the record, my personal view is that ethics is not Heidegger's primary focus. I concede its "relative absence" in the interest of ongoing discussion. Either way, I don't think it is central to the thesis of the OP.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    To ignore the ethical dimension of human being is to make what he intends to make transparent opaque. We are not only social animals, we are ethical animals, even if we do not always speak or act that way. — Fooloso4

    I totally agree with this assessment. However, at best we can call this neglect. I don't believe it invalidates his thinking, however it certainly is a major flaw. One should definitely read Heidegger with an awareness of this caveat. Sometimes people are most blind to what they most need to see. Often.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    ↪Fooloso4
    It's a reasonable assessment. Not every philosophy purports to an ethical dimension. That doesn't entail philosophical nihilism. I'm certainly not a philosophical nihilist. I believe philosophy should aspire to actualization. I believe in the instrumentality of the awareness of truth.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    His philosophy is amoral — Fooloso4
    :up:
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    He supported it though. The Fuhrer and the extermination of Jews and others was, in line with his Protestant provincialism, fated. It is the sending or giving of Being, to which the authentic Dasein must hearken. The German people are Heidegger's chosen people, doing God's work on Earth. — Fooloso4

    Yes, your use of the term "support" is sufficiently vague to endorse what I've been saying. I don't doubt he was a representative of a certain set of ideologies alive at that time. I have not seen any damning citations that implicate him as a sinister architect, nor any indication that his philosophy is polluted, which is the real issue.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    Does one's sense of right and wrong have to be fine grained and absolute to know that the extermination of human beings was wrong in the twentieth century? — Fooloso4

    Nope. And Martin Heidegger wasn't personally culpable for that. The people who were were tried, convicted, and punished. And there have been (and continue to be) lots of other modern genocides resulting in millions of deaths. For context.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    The Nazi death camps is not something that occurred two centuries ago and was not a widely embraced social norm. However reprehensible slavery was, to be a slave was not to be put to death. The rejection of slavery as a social norm was an acceptance of the inherent value of human life. — Fooloso4

    I'm glad you have such a fine-grained sense of absolute moral right and wrong. You are to be congratulated.

    As I said, debating some particular moral decision of Heidegger's, ok. Otherwise, I let the man's work speak for what it is, which is what it is designed to do. I've read my fair share of Heidegger, I don't feel like I've been morally polluted by any suspect ideologies. I do feel like the man has some valuable insights. Your mileage may vary. Perhaps he was transformed by the experience. Lots of saints started out as sinners. The study of saints (hagiography) recognizes the conversion to the opposite as a common theme, what Jung called enantiodromia. Who is to say? The human experience is complex.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    That's because rocketry and philosophy are not the same thing. You seem to be implicitly admitting that Heidegger's work is like rocketry, and has no moral worth, no? — Leontiskos

    That's a complete leap.

    However he certainly isn't an ethicist and doesn't pretend to be I think. And arguably, rocketry is one whole hell of a lot more ethically important than philosophy. So, whichever direction you wanted to go with that, ok.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    Joseph Margolis told R.W. Sleeper Dewey made the remark after Margolis asked him to read some of Heidegger's work. — Ciceronianus

    I wonder if anyone has ever made a comment to someone about someone else couched in intimate terms the meaning of which was not meant for general translation?
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    There were plenty of Germans in Heidegger's time who did not fall for the Nazi foolishness, and if Heidegger is to be held up as a paragon of human brilliance I don't think this argument holds water. — Leontiskos

    Making the decision to abandon or accept Nazism certainly is a moral choice, not an intellectual one. Nicolai Hartmann even defied Nazism actively as a prominent professor who refused to allow Nazi pledges at the start of class. So should those who fled not have stayed and stood their ground with Hartmann?

    So Heidegger certainly can be morally evaluated for that one decision. As we all can. Werner von Braun the father of modern rocketry doesn't seem to have problems with his good name.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    ↪Joshs
    Yes. I don't favour social context but I have to maintain a respectful awareness of the extent of its influence. The ongoing risks of our social susceptibility to the influences of the charismatic leader are evident, in light of current events. The more desperate a social need the more susceptible it is of manipulation.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    There's a kind of magnificence in your extravagant, blithe dismissal of Heidegger's support for attempted genocide and a Germanic master race. If you read or listen to Wolin's book, by the way, you'll find that these positions have their basis in his philosophical musings (primarily in the Black Notebooks and his letters to his brother). As for his philosophy, such as it is, it seems to me that Dewey's alleged observation that Heidegger "reads like a Swabian peasant trying to sound like me" describes whatever is of worth in it, by my understanding, if we subtract H's mysticism and Romanticism. — Ciceronianus

    Two centuries ago slavery was a social norm widely embraced and even more widely tolerated. So whom from that time period should we exempt from moral censure? Anyone today who espoused slavery would be rightly seen as a monster. Social contexts create themselves as norms. Sometimes extremely dubious things get realized as social contexts, it's the nature of the beast. Man can be a very ugly animal. As unpleasant a fact as social reality is, it is a reality. You downplay your awareness of the exigency of the social context at your own risk. Your outrage is far more of a social than an intellectual response, anyone can see that. If it were intellectual, then it would only be a matter of letting Heidegger's writings speak for themselves, wouldn't it?
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    given the brilliance of Dewey. — Joshs

    The alleged brilliance of Dewey. I'd love to know the alleged source of the alleged allegation. But nothing like a good ad hominem to brighten up the day.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    The question is whether his philosophy and his Nazism are two different and unrelated things. — Fooloso4

    Yes, which is what I said. I've read Being and Time five times and never found it suggestive of any kind of antisemitism or fascism. To those who dismiss it, no skin off my nose. Your loss.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    Ah. Now we learn Hitler wasn't that bad a fellow, after all. Loved dogs, they say. — Ciceronianus
    Non sequitur. Because someone is worse doesn't mean someone else isn't bad.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    To acknowledge and face the problem is to neither demonize nor ignore him nor to deny his importance. — Fooloso4

    Exactly what "problem"? Is Heidegger culpable for something, or of something?

    And I didn't mean we demonize to ignore Heidegger. We demonize one thing in order to ignore other instances of that thing that are still going on. Atrocities are perpetrated daily in the name of economics. I'd as soon excoriate those responsible for that as Heidegger. And those guilty of standing by and letting that happen.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    It is a grave mistake to assume that the two are separate. — Fooloso4

    I would never assume that. However philosophy, by its very nature, is a kind of intellectual idealization. If the philosophy is explicitly a philosophy of how best to live life (e.g. Stoicism) then attempting this kind of analysis might have merit. I would definitely see Heidegger within the context of the historical events, and as symptomatic of a global malaise. However there are people walking around today committing atrocities that would make Hitler blush. We demonize in order to ignore. Let's focus on the living crises of human conduct that we at least have some hope of addressing.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    the ontology thesis presented in Being and Time is worthy of being studied as an ontology thesis regardless of significant moral shortcomings on the part of the author. — Arne

    I think this sums up whatever substantive merit the OP contains: should we allow situational moral issues to to dictate philosophical interpretation. Do people frequently fail to embody their own ideals? Forsooth.

    It's always easier to moralize than it is to be moral.
  • Currently Reading
    developing a personal prejudice is still a broadly structural phenomenon. — fdrake
    Yes. Sounds very illuminating. It's very hard to escape social context.
  • Currently Reading
    Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies
    Noam Chomsky
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    ↪180 Proof
    If the thread was titled "The extent of National Socialist ideology in the writings of Heidegger" I wouldn't have said a thing. It was called "Heidegger's Downfall" and developed along that thematic line. It's a normative criticism masquerading as philosophical commentary.
Home » Pantagruel