As I understand it, we can never get outside of our blind skill and finally say what 'I know' means. We can and sometimes do use this blind skill to imperfectly articulate what's going on. I think Wittgenstein is doing that in the quotes above. And you are analyzing a use of 'I know' in context and doing a translation, a fresh creative act that relies on your blind skill with English.

At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.
...
Does a child believe that milk exists? Or does it know that milk exists? Does a cat know that a mouse exists?
...
Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?” — Wittgenstein

First of all, we learn language by interacting with others, and thus we can refer our private feelings to ourselves only after we have learned how to refer and how to distinguish between "private" and "public" in the first place. Thus the sense of what is private is derivative upon non-private communication, and there is, then, a holistic connection between any so-called private language and language's ordinary uses. Braver links this with Heidegger's holism in his description of tools in Being and Time, where the use of a tool, such as a hammer, presupposes a non-thematic understanding of an entire world of references within which the hammer functions, and this includes involvements with other human beings (other Dasein). In this regard, our existential being-in-the-world is our primary experience of everything, and it must simply be described rather than theoretically reconstructed, for such reconstruction would be a falsification. — link

https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/groundless-grounds-a-study-of-wittgenstein-and-heidegger/

I'm still not sure how to interpret 'showing.'

Would Descartes's statement about his existence ever apply to a computerized "brain?" — Frank Pray

'I think therefore I am.' What is this 'I'? A computer can learn this grammar, just as humans do, by learning from examples. If there is something more than a string of words here...if there is some 'meaning' to which we have direct access...then it seems to be quasi-mystical be definition. Obviously it's part of our everyday speech acts. 'Is he conscious?' is a sound that a human might make in a certain context. Does the human 'mean' something in a way that transcends just using these sounds according to learned conventions? That we take the experience of sense data for granted might just be part of our training. We just treat certain statements as incorrigible. Vaguely we imagine a single soul in the skull, gazing on meanings, driving the body. But perhaps this is just a useful fiction?

Psychological history of the concept subject: The body, the thing, the "whole," which is visualised by the eye, awakens the thought of distinguishing between an action and an agent; the idea that the agent is the cause of the action, after having been repeatedly refined, at length left the "subject" over.
...
"Subject," "object," "attribute"—these distinctions have been made, and are now used like schemes to cover all apparent facts. The false fundamental observation is this, that I believe it is I who does something, who suffers something, who "has" something, who "has" a quality. — Nietzsche

FWIW, I don't have a positive doctrine for sale. The situation is complex, and I think some of that complexity is swept under the rug of 'consciousness.'

I don't think any kind of 'brain in a box' simulation will answer these questions. The acid test would be genuine functional human simulacrum with more than just nominal autonomy. And I think such a mechanism is a long way off. — Pantagruel

Perhaps. But have we ever seen a human being with more than just nominal autonomy?

Syntax is not semantics. Machines can compute syntax (that's what "computing" is) but they don't have semantics, they don't know the meaning of what they're computing. They don't know anything. — Hallucinogen

Assuming that you are right, what makes us so sure as humans that we do ? To me it's not at all about AI mysticism. It's instead about demystifying human consciousness. To be sure, we have words like 'know' and we can sort of think of pure redness.

But how could I ever 'know' that I that understand the Chinese Room the way its author did or you do? This stuff is inaccessible by definition. In practice we see faces, hear voices, act according to social conventions, including verbal social conventions. (Maybe I should say that we point our eyes at people, etc.)

For the most part, the marks are arbitrary maybe. Some are not. A sign is always meaningful. Clouds are signs of rain when, and only when, a creature connects them. — creativesoul

Right. So the issue for me is: how is this connection manifested? I think (?) you'll agree that they act differently. Clouds affect the probability that they'll do this or that. In the human case, clouds might increase the probability of speech acts invoking 'rain.' Or of carrying along an umbrella.

Correlations are the basic building block of thought and belief... at every level. — creativesoul

I like to read this in terms of the world as a system of relationships (correlations as relationships.) Any comments?

Has anyone ever proven one or the other? All this does is rephrasing common opinions. From this foundational basis then "arguments" shall be made why that property can or cannot be present in which kind of machinery in a "wise platonic tongue".
This appeals to the attitude that led Turing to hiding which one was the machine in the test. — Heiko

I think I agree with your approach here. I used to think that 'it's all just switches.' In some sense I still think that. What's changed is the stuff I take for granted about human consciousness. Wittgenstein's beetle points out that we really don't know what we are talking about (in some sense) as we confidently invoke our own consciousness. We tend to think that we act appropriately in a social context because we understand. Perhaps it's better to think that 'understanding' is a complement paid to acting appropriately. The speech act of 'you understand' or 'I understand' is caught up in embodied social conventions.

I'd like to hear more about this 'wise platonic tongue.' Do you happen to like or have any thoughts on Derrida, also? I mention this because anti-AI talk seems connected to the assumption that humans have minds with 'direct access' to these critters called meanings. And that assumption has been challenged, I think, with some success.

I'm almost finished reading Being and Time. I think "care" is properly translated. Caring, or giving a fuck, is the essence of the world — Gregory

I do love the word 'care.' That is some strong English. We feel that word.

I haven't read every page of Being and Time. I have studied some of his other books completely, especially the lectures leading up to B&T, like the earlier versions of it, and I've read lots of secondary sources. In some ways it's an accident of history that that particular book became so central (his lectures leading up to it just weren't available, even if they are often clearer and one can follow the genesis of his thought.)

Anyway I think I could add something to an informal conversation. But I don't read German, so I'm definitely an amateur in that sense, doing the best I can.

Of course, you can use metaphorical philosophical terms to innovate or change the philosophical outlook. Existentialists and postmodernists are brilliant at this. Anxiety, being there, deconstruction... But there is a difference. — David Mo

To be sure, we have two words for a reason. Philosophy is not poetry in the everyday sense of the terms. I wouldn't even say that philosophy is 'really' poetry in some complicated way. I just claim what you yourself admit, that metaphorical philosophical terms change philosophy. I agree with Rorty that metaphors and images are even dominant as the background or framework for careful arguments.

Poetry doesn't analyze its own demolition of language. — David Mo

That's a strong statement which is true of some poetry.

This reminds me of Derrida:

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. — Eliot

There are more like this. Plenty of modern English poetry is not so easy to separate from philosophy. Poets arguably obsess over density. They want the 'music' and 'concept' to be fused together unforgettably. They are perhaps more willing to be suggestive. They aren't in the middle of a debate. So the social context is different, but stances on existence are captured.

I like Sartre. I like 'man is a useless passion.' It's grim. It's a powerful summary. I also think there are some killer lines in Existential Psychoanalysis. He uses the metaphor of a bird swallowing a rock for our relationship to scientific knowledge. We can and cannot claim it, even if we discover/create it. He writes about destruction as a form of appropriation, things like that. Perhaps you are familiar. Then there's Nausea. That's a great philosophical novel.

If someone writes a dry non-narrative paper on the ideas in Nausea, does it then become philosophy? If someone translates Plato into English iambic pentameter, does it cease being philosophy?

And then he explains this. That is, the analytical task. — David Mo

Typically, yes. Philosophers make a case, or at least elaborate. But that's a convention. Wittgenstein gave us remarks. And what about La Rochefoucauld ? We get lots of little aphorisms that have a cumulative effect.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9105/9105-h/9105-h.htm#linkmaxims

I'm not against the analytical task, just to be clear. I just don't think that's the only way to go. It's one more approach that analysis might put into question. Maybe as philosophers we realize that we have been dogmatic in our notion of what analysis is or how it should be done.

One point: the characteristic of philosophy is that it is a kind of thought that questions itself. How many books of scientists are there who ask themselves what science is?
This implies a first conclusion: there is no single philosophical method. — David Mo

We agree that there is no single method. I haven't studied physics since I was an undergrad, but I do know that Wittgenstein was influenced by some scientists who did wrestle with what they were doing.

http://wab.uib.no/agora/tools/alws/collection-9-issue-1-article-62.annotate

My view is that 'philosophy' has no exact meaning but can be thought of as the name of a genre. For historical reasons both Plato and Wittgenstein are 'philosophers' while Harold Bloom is not. I just read a sociology classic (The Social Construction of Reality) that might as well be philosophy. And is Marx a philosopher or a sociologist? Who cares, right? We all just read books. Loose classifications are only good for so much.

I think maybe we agree that philosophy is more about a kind of self-questioning thinking that is tangled up with large issues. I'm tempted to say that every thoughtful person does at least some kind of informal or amateur philosophy.

Scientific method (to the extent there is such a thing) develops from cultural and economic pressures on the one hand, and methodological disputes internal to the sciences on the other. — Snakes Alive

I enjoy your anti-philosophical posts, but to push the game along:

If you were to justify your origin story for science, would you do so by appealing to science?

Are these methodological disputes not philosophical simply because scientists are doing them? When do such disputes, if ever, become philosophy of science? Should we exclude the possibility of philosophy's influence on these methodological disputes?

But any argument about why to do things the scientific way instead of some other way is philosophy.

And the sciences spun off from natural philosophers investigating the kinds of things science investigates, and convincing each other as a discursive community (and enough of the rest of the world) that doing things the scientific way was the way to that kind of investigation. — Pfhorrest

This makes sense to me. Then, even on a personal level, a non-expert (maybe a professional musician) can take a general stance toward science, such as whether it is trustworthy and in what way. Then on a personal level both scientists and philosophers can (optionally) wring their hands over their status. Does science give us truth in some grand sense or just reliable technology? Does science touch the real in a way that philosophy or even poetry does not? What the fuck is the real ? What are we even talking about?

I think these embarrassing and 'useless' questions even have an indirect practical utility, though I don't like justifying them that way. To do so concedes too much. What do we mean by practical utility? If we quantify it, we still have to choose and frame those quantities.

Then there's philosophy as an important part politics, which involves all kinds of contentious terms, all kinds of trying to solve things by just talking (including appeals to science.)

I suspect that we're in agreement here on some basic level anyway... — creativesoul

I think so. I guess the challenge of complex conversation is getting a rough sense of how others are using their terms, which involves getting a rough sense of their big picture view.

The difference is that not all belief formation(drawing correlations) involves social convention. However, it is the commonality that is key to understanding. All social conventions consist - in large part - of common belief... shared meaning. Shared meaning is nothing more and nothing less than a plurality of creatures drawing correlations between the same things... — creativesoul

OK, I can work with this. A human on an island alone can learn new tricks, develop new private routines. With language we have public routines that you are correlating with private routines, it seems. I just stress the synchronized behavior and have neglected nonsocial behavior.

The only ...thing...I would mention is that what we recognize as things seems related to our social conventions. I mean we learn to break the world apart in different ways in different cultures. Do I see stacks spheres of snow with some junk on top or a snowman? That sort of thing. But I don't think that's news to you, and none of us can cough it all up at once.

Sure. I would not argue against that notion at all, aside from pointing out that our language is much more than noises and marks, but I suspect we're in agreement here as well. — creativesoul

Right. The definition focuses on noises and marks used conventionally, but clearly gestures and facial expressions are hugely important, as is practical context.

What does the phrase "by-definition subjective" refer to? It might be worth saying that I also reject the objective/subjective dichotomy... — creativesoul

Since you reject the dichotomy, it's not a stumbling block for us. But what I mean is the picture of the mind as the scene of 'pure meaning' or 'qualia' that some people envision. This mind stuff is radically private and philosophers worry about whether the qualia or sense data or universals correspond to something outside, something non-mental or physical.

I'm hesitant to talk in terms of 'caught up in' social conventions. When marks become one part of a correlation between the marks and something else, they become meaningful. Social convention is simply an agreement upon what else those particular marks ought be and/or will be correlated, associated, and/or otherwise connected to. — creativesoul

I guess I'm trying to figure out how you think of correlations. If I 'warn you about the flooded bridge' by making sounds...and you turn your car around...then the sounds I made only work because I chose the right sounds. And those sounds are the right ones because we were both trained to react that way to such sounds (ignoring the extra complexity of trust and so on for the moment.) Any sounds would do. The sign is arbitrary. We just happen to use those sounds.

This sounds like what you are saying above, if you picture correlation as there in our doings (which are not cleanly reducible to 'mental' or 'physical,' themselves signs in our doings.) Maybe you'll agree that the agreement you mention above can be and largely is implicit.

Well, how do you wish to go about putting into question the general conception that language is a medium? — TheMadFool

Since this thread has been abandoned by the OP, I'll just refer you to some of my other posts. Perhaps you can jump in on some of those other threads. Or, if you start one on the issue, I'd enjoy participating.

I’ve often wished that English had different words for “I” etc that referred to one’s id, ego, and superego, as it would make talking about certain kinds of self-experiences much easier to communicate. (E.g. if I-ego am talking to someone about what I-id want to do even though I-ego know better, or how I-superego am always berating my-ego-self for reasons I-ego know are unfounded). — Pfhorrest

Yup, and this is a great example of what I mean by thrownness. We just grow up using 'I' in a certain way that we don't think to question till much later, if even then. As I see it, we can never get 'above' or see clearly all of the blind skill that constrains us in this way. As you and I deconstruct this taken-for-granted 'I'-talk, we're bound to be taking for granted some other kind of talk as we do so. At the same time, it's only these taken-for-granted conventions/habits that allow us to communicate or think at all. So we are blinded by our own eyes in that sense. Yet here I am, absurdly hoping to see around my own eyes. I am time or history trying to slip out of its own skin. Do we want to look down on time from eternity? Metaphorically it's like climbing a mountain to see things whole and from above and yet questioning whether this mountain has a peak...or why I decided beforehand that the view up there is better.

***

Stephen in Joyce's Ulysses says 'History is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake.' I think that just sums up so much. While thinking about our conversation, I gave it a twist:

I am the history from which I am trying to awake.

This ties back to the thing I said earlier that you didn’t respond to: — Pfhorrest

Sorry, I should have responded to that. It's good stuff.

There ARE some who don’t acknowledge their biases and the impossibility of total objectivity, and some who do. Among those who do, there are those who try anyway, and those who just give up. Clear examples of the three are the naive religious folk who think God gives their lives meaning, the Absurd Hero of Camus, and the existential nihilist. — Pfhorrest

Yes, excellent stuff. Basically the ironic aphorist is (for me) close to the absurd hero. I'm not sure what to make of the existential nihilist. There is something deeply representational in us, so I do wonder if the recognition of bias 'must' include some concern with overcoming it. To know that I am biased is to know that I might be lying to myself. Are the people at piece with that? It might be a kind of modesty or playfulness is they say so. This goes back to whether we can cleanly separate the serious from the non-serious.

The critique of the earnest philosopher is that they aren’t self-critical enough. The critique of the ironic philosopher is that they are too cynical. But you can be critical without being cynical, which breaks this entire bipartite model. You can be neither the earnest stereotype saying “This is the objective truth” nor the ironic stereotype saying “Finding objective truth is hopeless”, but instead an “Absurdist Hero“ toward philosophy itself, saying “It may be hopeless, but I’m trying anyway”. — Pfhorrest

To me the ironic philosopher who bothers to read and argue philosophy is more or less implicitly the absurd hero. That said, I don't think that we as critical thinkers 'should' (by our own vague standards) take the representational paradigm for granted. In case I haven't emphasized it enough, I think one of the revolutionary ideas in philosophy moves beyond language as representation.

Instead of 'we will never quite mirror Ultimate Reality in words,' we get 'this whole framework of trying to mirror Ultimate Reality in words...is not the only option.' We can think of language as a tool that is not an eye or a mirror but instead a hand. If language is a blind hand that helps us cope, it's not a matter of correctness. It's a matter of more or less successful coping. What is success? We have to invent goals. We can also be representational in checking to see how well we've done in our pursuit of them. We don't have to reject the representational paradigm where it is effective. We don't have to represent it as impossible, though we may use the hand of language that way more or less consciously. To deconstruct frameworks requires inhabiting them to some degree, ironically or half-seriously.

And so I was asking your thoughts on a “totalizing system” of philosophy which is just that criticism applied systemically to everything, including itself. — Pfhorrest

Thanks. That's helpful. Yes, I like that. I do think that we can't genuinely doubt everything. Some beliefs are too basic in our culture, in our identity. For instance, we all just know that there is one soul or consciousness per skull. To what degree can I really question that without being locked up?
We use the word 'I' with a blind skill that we mostly don't notice. Critical thinking reveals that critical thinking can never be total.

...with the caveat about not being cynical either, in a sense that basically means giving things a chance, and not tearing them all down before you even begin. — Pfhorrest

I think I can meet you on this terrain. Your anti-cynicism seems close to my experimentalism. The issue with cosmic systems is that want to dominate the future from the present. They already know or pretend to know what will work or what is possible. As humans, we do want to neutralize the future. So such systems are comforting. And prediction and control is part of that. A metaphysical theory of philosophy (what it is and should) tries to neutralize the future of philosophy. It tries to foresee or dominate all that is possible in essence if not in detail.

From this angle, my objection to accusations of sophistry is that they are basically expressions of what you mean by cynicism. They'd like to rule out experiments ahead of time. Then we have philosophers in different traditions calling one another sophists. I've studied the clash of Derrida and Searle. I think Derrida is great but difficult and sometimes indulgent. It's because of some of his 'results' that his style is also more playful. If one breaks free from certain dogmatic assumptions (that form and content can truly be separated, that the serious/unserious distinction can and must be taken seriously), then one naturally explores new stylistic possibilities.

What 'mentalistic talk'? We can drop the "mental" qualifier if you like. I reject the mental/physical dichotomy anyway. It's not a problem.

Talk of correlations adds a framework inherently capable of taking proper account of non linguistic belief in so far as it's ability to set out the contents.

Talking of cheeps as though it is a strategy assumes what's in question.

Witt's beetle does not apply to what I'm claiming here. Not sure why you keep attempting to apply it. — creativesoul

Perhaps I've misunderstood you. Help me see where I have gone wrong. It does help to know that you also reject the mental/physical distinction.

Besides that, not all noises and marks are meaningful. Those which are count as language use if more than one creature has drawn correlations between the noises/marks and other things(whatever they may be).

That's how it works.

Noises and marks are inadequate for belief, whether it be linguistic or not. All belief is meaningful. Not all noises and marks are. — creativesoul

How do we know whether a group of creatures has drawn correlations? What's the difference between adaptive social conventions and drawing correlations?

I agree that my talk of cheeps was misleading in some sense. I think we agree that the bird doesn't need to know why it is cheeping. The bird needs no theory of the cat as a threat.

I was applying the 'beetle' because I imagined that you were thinking of correlations as essentially mental. I apologize if I've misunderstood that. I wonder if my use of 'conventions' is after all close to your use of 'correlations.'

path What if the whole of one's systematic, "totalizing" philosophy boils down to / elaborates upon a principle along the lines of "be critical, but not cynical", where those terms are rigorously defined, and that principle's application to an organized variety of questions then laid out? — Pfhorrest

It's not a bad philosophy of life, but do you not see how individual personality is manifested in the admonishment to not be cynical? Philosophy has often been quite cynical. For many its thrill is tangled up in demystification, which we might think of as an asceticism.

As far as being critical, I'm with you. At the same time, I'm really not sure that it's the best way to live (or that there is a best way to live.) I don't advise strangers to be critical. I don't talk people out of their religion or politics. On this forum it's different. An investment in being critical is presupposed. So I feel OK with being loud about my personal solutions-in-progress to the problematic opportunity of existence.

Are we speaking about the method of philosophy, is it not? — David Mo

Or the impossibility of such a method. The method of philosophy is like the ice of fire. It you want to call foundational abnormal discourse something other than philosophy, I guess you can.

Normal discourse (a generalization of Kuhn’s notion of “normal science”) is any discourse (scientific, political, theological, or whatever) which embodies agreed-upon criteria for reaching agreement; abnormal discourse is any which lacks such criteria. — Rorty

I was very conscious of using metaphors. I am not opposed to the use of metaphors, nor to ironies, unless the thought gets caught up in them. — David Mo

What I question here is this assumed 'clean' separation of thought from the metaphor and irony that otherwise taints it.

The problem is inconclusive thinking. Not because it is always possible to reach some port, but because the journey is meaningless if it does not go somewhere. — David Mo

I think humans creatively adapt to their natural and social environment. We seem to be an especially experimental species. Come back in 1000 years and who knows what we will be doing? On the other hand, sharks will probably be doing the same thing, assuming there's still an ocean.

Connected to this, we're also playful little monkeys. We like novelty, we like stimulation, we have vivid imaginations. Why should philosophy always already know where it is going? Why should philosophy not include experiments whose effects are not known ahead of time? Human nature is not fixed. It is not already here. As cultural, creative animals we are always a work-in-progress. We try new ways of talking about things. Some of them catch on. We get better at prediction and control and like to talk about it perhaps as getting closer to the truth...whatever that is supposed to mean beyond getting better at prediction and control.

Where are we going, we clever animals? As individuals we are going to the grave. As a species we are probably going gloriously and miserably to our extinction, be it one million years from now.

Is 'inconclusive thinking' just whatever isn't engineering ? But we can read even Nietzsche as an engineer, or at least as an inventor of new ways of talking. I don't think we can calculate the effect ahead of time of this or that verbal invention. Surely philosophy, when it catches on, has at least an indirect effect on ...conclusive thinking.

The problem with philosophy is that it gets bored with itself. The spleen. So much effort for what? No First Cause, no essence, no ideal world, no Being as Being, no synthetic a priori... What a frustration! You get tired of playing Captain Ahab, sailing tirelessly through the seven seas in search of a white whale that no one sees until it kills you. So we let ourselves be carried away by the paradoxes, the ironies and the beautiful metaphors. It is weak thinking, which is the end of philosophy dissolved in pure poetry - almost always bad poetry, I am sorry. — David Mo

But look how poetically you express this! And I enjoyed it. And is the above not a partial expression of your fundamental stance with respect to your existence? IMO, one's vision of what philosophy is and should be is a big part of that.

Thinking about noises and marks as behaviour is very misguided. Noises and marks are products(the result) of behavior, not equivalent to. Besides that, not all noises and marks are meaningful. Those which are count as language use if more than one creature has drawn correlations between the noises/marks and other things(whatever they may be).

That's how it works.

Noises and marks are inadequate for belief, whether it be linguistic or not. All belief is meaningful. Not all noises and marks are. — creativesoul

Ah, but that's just the idea I'm challenging! Meeting you half-way, I'd say that marks and noises become 'meaningful' as they are caught up in social conventions. To speak is to make a noise with the throat and the mouth. It is behavior. Of course we human beings are especially proud of this kind of behavior, which with our hands is how we became or like to think we became the lords and masters of nature.

This fundamental belief that there is 'meaning' in a 'mind' is like the belief of philosophy. Of course I am no stranger to such an intuition, such a habit of interpretation. Included in our linguistic conventions are tokens like 'meaning' which feel like they correspond or refer to a 'mind.' We can't stop participating in the everyday intelligibility of such tokens, but we can strive for some distance for their being so utterly taken for granted.

That is based upon the idea that it is possible to take something for granted that is otherwise completely unknown.

Makes no sense whatsoever to me. — creativesoul

Now is the time to try to answer this. Did you ever question whether you had a mind? Did you ever question that there was meaning? We already 'know' that we have a mind for meaning because it's caught up in our childhood training. It's as if we absorb some vague ontology that we never bother to articulate and criticize. I'm not saying that we don't have minds. I'm saying that we operate with vague ontologies that we don't even think to question until some weirdo like Wittgenstein comes along and shows that it has no explanatory function. 'It cancels out.'

If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means - must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?

Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.

That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant. — Wittgenstein

What matters is the synchronization of our doings (including our verbal doings) so that we adapt successfully as a group to our environment. While mentalistic talk is IMO part of that adaptation, as philosophers we can take a closer look and get some distance.

When one warns a friend with a distinct vocalization, and the warning is heeded/understood, then that shows us that both individuals have drawn correlations between the same things. — creativesoul

I agree that such a thing is suggested. That's how we tend to interpret the situation. But correlations are beetles in the box, explanatory hypothetical entities. Are we to understand correlations as something mental? But the mental is the inaccessible-by-definition beetle-in-the-box.

I would not deny that those particular circumstances seem to include the basic elements necessary in order for shared meaning to occur, in order for shared belief to emerge as a result, and as a result of all that, it's not at all a leap to conclude that a very rudimentary version of language use was on display. Very basic correlations being drawn by a plurality of individuals between the sound and a predator. — creativesoul

Right. But my issue is this: what does the mentalistic talk of correlations add to the situation? If a species uses and responds to noises as part of a social strategy that is trained into its young and/or is instinctual...and behaves in a self-preserving way...isn't that enough?

Can we not also see humans in this way? Can we think of human language as conventions for the making of marks and noises that help a community thrive? Clearly mentalistic talk is already part of our human conventions, and it's not going anywhere. So what interests me is just approaching the situation as a philosopher exploring what happens when we don't refer everything back to the by definition subjective.

Very sharp words, but the (non)curious thing is that Nietzsche believed that his truth about the truth was the true truth and he defended it so passionately that he went so far as to say true brutalities.
May the god of the philosophers save us from the relativists who only preach the relativism of others. — David Mo

I think you miss the point of 'ironic' in ironic aphorist. As one becomes intensely critically minded, one invariably turns this criticism back on itself. That's where the fireworks begin. And this is not even especially philosophical. We are all psychologists these days, suspecting others and even ourselves of rationalization. Are we masters in our own house? Is our evolved human brain fundamentally truth seeking? Or is it a tool 'for' survival and reproduction? What if knowing the truth (whatever that means exactly) was fatal? Isn't it more plausible that our noises and marks are more about useful than accurate representation? And is representation even the best way to think of the situation? Do other animals represent 'Reality' with the noises they make?

The philosopher must be committed to the truth, not to floral games. It is not bad at all that he calls our attention with beautiful phrases, but later, once we are awake, we better dedicate ourselves to see what is really behind the music. — David Mo

But what if the truth is that the truth is caught up in floral games, is inseparable from floral games? What if this distinction between form and content is something of a myth? A myth that comforts a certain type of person? Or keeps a certain class in power?

I've had to buy some Nietzsche's books twice because I'd unbind them from reading them so much. But sometimes I think it's pure poison.And there seem to be many people who swallow the poison happy if it is flavored with honey. And that's the danger of rhetoric and aesthetics. — David Mo

Note that you use metaphors of poison and honey here. I suggest that human cognition is largely metaphorical, or let's say meta-floral. In your speaking for pure Cartesian-ism...and against the poison/honey of rhetoric and floral games, you use figurative language.

What if a 'pure' non-figurative non-rhetorical language or rationality was a fiction from the very beginning?

In any case, I think it's cool that you read those books until they fell apart. I also think that they are honey-poison. Nietzsche (and philosophy like his) is thrilling and dangerous. That his work doesn't cohere, that we get the whole mess of his soul in its contradictory modes...is a virtue. Is he a creep, a saint, a mystic, a supremely critical mind? He's all of these things. He walked into the storm and forgot his umbrella.

On the 'I' that thinks and therefore is, here are some minimally floral comments:

Psychological history of the concept subject: The body, the thing, the "whole," which is visualised by the eye, awakens the thought of distinguishing between an action and an agent; the idea that the agent is the cause of the action, after having been repeatedly refined, at length left the "subject" over.
...
"Subject," "object," "attribute"—these distinctions have been made, and are now used like schemes to cover all apparent facts. The false fundamental observation is this, that I believe it is I who does something, who suffers something, who "has" something, who "has" a quality. — Nietzsche

Thanks!

To my eye the difference between them seems not* one of ignoring vs acknowledging, but of fighting vs giving in. The “earnest” philosopher can acknowledge that he is inevitably biased and that attaining complete objectivity is impossible, but still try to bracket out his biases and get as close to objectivity as he can. The “ironic” philosopher, on the other hand, sees that inevitability and impossibility as an excuse to not even try to do the best he can, and reads the “earnest” philosopher’s attempts as foolish or even arrogant. — Pfhorrest

Note how the ironic philosopher is interpreted as making excuses. That's the kind of folk-psychology I associate with 'sophistry.' We would like to install some Rational Method, but we are already being politicians to do so. It's this primacy of the sophistical or the political that I'm pointing at.

So, sure, the ironist is a lazy hipster. Then Mr. System is a square who fends off the impossibility of his project by re-describing objections as the rationalizations of a lazy hipster. As soon as the unconscious is introduced, we're already in Nietzsche's back yard. If my opponent can lie to himself, then why can't I? Why is my organ, my evolved brain, so reliable? Why is my quest for the 'objective truth' genuine and not self-serving or tribe-serving ? And if rationality is always self-serving and never pure, then how is this vision of impure reason to be trusted? 'I might be lying to myself.' I might decide later that I was missing something. I might decide even later that the previous decision was a temporary loss of nerve, that I was right the first time.

This is the drama of life for finite minds. There are books we will never read, some that are not yet written. So there are objections we'll never get to address, contradictions in our worldviews that we won't live long enough to notice. The totalizer denies that surrounding darkness. He might decide that everything is Information or whatever. One magic word to rule them all, which allows us to dominate or neutralize the future from the present in terms of a neutralized past. The past is 'neutralized' as we pretend it does not constrain us.

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

Are you suggesting language is more than what people think it is - nothing but a mode of communication. Do you feel that language isn't just a passive medium of exchanging information but actively modifies the information itself? I couldn't word it better so you'll have to make do with that. — TheMadFool

The idea that language is a medium is something I'm trying to put in question (following and paraphrasing my influences.) Is riding a bike with no hands a medium? Is chopping a carrot a medium? Why are we so quick to think of humans making noises and marks as a medium?

How sure are we that there is such a thing as meaning or information? Obviously these exist as tokens in human doings, but do we really know what we are talking about? Or do we use these words in the same way that we ride a bike? With a certain skill that we can't get clear about. (This also applies to words like 'know' and 'doubt' and 'really.')

This is what I was getting at with 'divine spark.' Feuerbach was a humanist, materialist, etc., but also influenced by Hegel. He's a strange brew, but fascinating. And I think he fits in here.

The proof of the proposition that the divine essence is the essence of reason or intelligence lies in the fact that the determinations or qualities of God, in so far as they are rational or intelligible and not determinations of sensuousness or imagination, are, in fact, qualities of reason.
...
Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of his is his God: the distinguishing of God from Nature is nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature. — Feuerbach

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/future/future0.htm
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/essence/ec10.htm

I was trying to connect our attachment to 'meaning' as something particularly human and more particularly something that haunts human marks and noises exclusively to the intuitively plausible gulf that I still want to challenge between non-linguistic belief and belief proper. We can if we like just think of socially and environmentally appropriate behaviors of varying complexities that are trained into us without worrying much about which organ is involved.
I'm not saying we should forget the distinction but only that we can relax it for a different perspective. By becoming more aware of its roots we can attain more distance from it and more control over it, perhaps.

In other words, we can try on being naturalists.

[To be a naturalist] is to be the kind of antiessentialist who, like Dewey, sees no breaks in the hierarchy of increasingly complex adjustments to novel stimulation—the hierarchy which has amoeba adjusting themselves to changed water temperature at the bottom, bees dancing and chess players check-mating in the middle, and people fomenting scientific, artistic, and political revolutions at the top. — Rorty

I am strongly asserting that we form, have, and hold beliefs long before language acquisition begins in earnest. — creativesoul

The idea I am playing with at the moment is very much in that direction. If belief is enacted, then 'language acquisition' is just further training in bodily behavior among others. I learn to step around the furniture, that the ball must be under the couch (it couldn't just vanish), and that 'hello' is an appropriate sound in this or that context. Of course our 'linguistic' behavior is extremely sophisticated, but need this sophistication tempt us to thinking it is different in kind? It's fascinating that what we do with our tongues and lips is taken for granted as meaningful in way that balancing on a bike is not.

(Like I said, I'm playing with this idea. But I'm not unserious.)

What makes you say that meaning is non-physical? — creativesoul

I'm not claiming that it is. In some ways I'm saying the opposite. But the bigger picture is putting the whole mental-versus-physical distinction on probation. As I see it, we have a whole army of distinctions like that which we can use with great skill more or less automatically in everyday life. But then as philosophers we are tempted to take them too seriously. I don't think we can or ever do know exactly what we mean by 'mental' or 'physical.' I don't think we can make our skill explicit. We can't cough it all up in propositions that finally get it right.

I would say that in order to take something for granted we must already have become familiar with it. — creativesoul

I see why you would say that, but I also think that the stuff we take for granted that is most constraining is the stuff we didn't know that we believed. We just enacted our inquiry from the beginning in an apparently 'natural' way. What is left of linguistic belief as opposed to prelinguistic belief if we think of noises and marks on the same plane with other behaviors? If a bird 'warns his friend' of a predator with a cheep, is that linguistic belief? We'd probably say know. If I warn you that the bridge is flooded, is it linguistic belief only because a human made the sounds? And is that connected to some ideal content we imagine attached to the sounds that makes them special?

'In the beginning was the Word, and...'

I have no clue whatsoever what you're talking about.

"The divine spark" is a name. To what does it refer? Make that connection for me, and we'll arrive at and/or have some shared meaning.

Describe this divine spark you talk about. — creativesoul

Sorry, it was another risky metaphor that didn't work out. What I'm getting at is our human attachment to seeing ourselves as radically distinct from nature. We think our language is far more 'meaningful' than the songs of birds. Other animals make noises. We make propositions and are in touch with a realm of universals or concepts. We think of our marks and noises as vehicles for something immaterial or ideal. Or I think we tend to think so.

I think there's a link there to why we love stories so much - they infuse our culture completely and seem to be almost entirely universal and cross-cultural. The 'Hero', the 'Villain', the 'Quest', from aboriginal Australians to Hollywood screenwriters. I think we've brought into being, or formalised, one of the mechanisms of social cohesion. Create a hero and villain (be this, don't be that), describe the quest (act like this). It's much more powerful a guide when embedded in a narrative than any dry set of moral rules could be - 'love thy neighbour' vs. 'be like Han Solo' - I know which was more powerful a guide in my playground. — Isaac

Yes, indeed. I'm glad to be on this page with you. This to me is why literature and philosophy are inseparable. Narratives are a basic to human cognition, it seems to me. Yes we can have technical arguments, but I think they happen against a background narrative. We all absorb a typology of intellectual heroes (to focus on people who argue here and not in Youtube comments.) One is tough-minded or tender-minded. Each hero implies a villain and the reverse. To choose one is to choose both. The story is all of a piece, just like a language.

I am of course enacting a version of the hero by taking a certain distance from this game, describing it as if from above. This is the heroic type of authors of The Social Construction of Reality too. IMV, philosophy, sociology, and psychology are all pretty close in the distance they take from their home culture. Individuals can take an intellectual transcendence of their personality as a target personality. Our conversation right now partakes in that spirit, I think.

I don't know if certain doses of rhetoric are necessary. But I think that turning philosophy into rhetoric is dangerous. Even if this is a parody, the outcome is to turn thought into tweets. Short and forceful discourses that let no space of calm thought. This is the new rhetorical for the 21th century. — David Mo

I understand your concern. I don't like the level of public discourse either. I'm just saying that even decent discourse (the kind we like) is not 'pure reason.' I don't think we have or ever will have mechanically certain standards for sorting the wheat from the chaff. We do have taste and skill, even if we can never perfectly articulate them.

I think we're talking about some good stuff, and I want to articulate my position so that you can see that it's not about correctness for me. There is something like a desire to win, but there's also a desire to keep the game going.

For me the ambivalent/ironic position is connected to a realization of thrownness, of how history lives in us, constraining us while making us possible.The earnest philosopher (the totalizer who has it all tied up in a nice little bundle, his existence and ours) ignores that he was shaped by a past that also limits what he can see and understand. For him there is no darkness. The other is falsely assimilated, creatively misunderstood. Now I think we all misunderstand and live in a certain darkness. The ironic and ambivalent aphorist just tries to work the 'laughter of the gods' into his aphorisms. Maybe they aren't universal truths for everyone. Maybe they are graffiti of uncertain utility to others, poems in the form of metaphysical propositions. Tristam Tzara comes to mind. Can we grind him into the dust of earnest, technical propositions? Or is he one more voices who opens various possibilities for us? Tone is crucial here.

Anyway, here's a nice quote that I relate to how our history shapes us, how we don't start from zero, how we wake up already invested and biased with particular tools in our hand to work with.

His point is that in as much as tradition serves as the condition of one’s knowledge, the background that instigates all inquiry, one can never start from a tradition-free place. A tradition is what gives one a question or interest to begin with. Second, all successful efforts to enliven a tradition require changing it so as to make it relevant for the current context. To embrace a tradition is to make it one’s own by altering it. A passive acknowledgment of a tradition does not allow one to live within it. One must apply the tradition as one’s own. In other words, the importance of the terms, “prejudice” and “tradition,” for Gadamer’s hermeneutics lies in the way they indicate the active nature of understanding that produces something new. Tradition hands down certain interests, prejudices, questions, and problems, that incite knowledge. Tradition is less a conserving force than a provocative one. Even a revolution, Gadamer notes, is a response to the tradition that nonetheless makes use of that very same tradition. Here we can also perceive the Hegelian influences on Gadamer to the extent that even a rejection of some elements of the tradition relies on the preservation of other elements, which are then understood (that is, taken up) in new ways. Gadamer desires not to affirm a blind and passive imitation of tradition, but to show how making tradition our own means a critical and creative application of it. — link

There's a gulf between the belief of non linguistic creatures and the belief of language users.

How does what you say here bridge that divide? — creativesoul

I think we take that gulf too much for granted. That gulf seems to depend on opposing some 'conscious' 'mental-stuff' to simple bodily movement. We invest the language we can perform 'in our heads' (interior monologue) with a sort of non-physical something called 'meaning.' For this reason, we think saying that the bridge is flooded is something more than just acting appropriately.

It's 'obvious' why we are tempted or rather almost always automatically talk/think this way. Our sign systems are far more complex, admittedly. But what if we think of speech acts as appropriate behavior ? Making the right sounds? What if we question the intuition of direct access to pure meaning? To universals or idealities?

In short, I suggest thinking in terms of a continuum of more and less complex social behavior, where some of this behavior is the marks and noises we call language. This is also us understanding ourselves as simply complex animals. Is that gulf you mention not connected in some way to the divine spark? Is meaning not functioning for us these days as the divine spark?

seems to be of discursive partners who are uninterested in discovering together what is or isn’t actually a correct answer to the questions at hand, but instead simply in WINNING: convincing everyone that they were right all along, whether or not they really are. — Pfhorrest

Well 'sophistry' is a token in our mostly automatic language games, so I won't pretend to dominate it by fiat from the outside, as we philosophers tend to do. That said, I do value dialectic, which involves a certain risk, if sincere. Where we may differ is in your assumption that there is a correct answer.
Life is not math. To be Socratic and know that one does not know is to never be complacently sure that one is on the a right path, or a less wrong path. Other, different paths might be equal or better. Maybe there is no Method that can save me from doubts about my 'final vocabulary.' Perhaps the torch that lights my way also necessarily blinds me. To be/see one world is to foreclose, ignore, fend off some other. And we always arrive too late for 'pure' reason.

Some nice quotes:

Over and against traditional conceptions of truth, Gadamer argues that truth is fundamentally an event, a happening, in which one encounters something that is larger than and beyond oneself. Truth is not the result of the application of a set of criteria requiring the subject’s distanced judgment of adequacy or inadequacy. Truth exceeds the criteria-based judgment of the individual (although we could say it makes possible such a judgment). Gadamer explains in the last lines of Truth and Method that “In understanding we are drawn into an event of truth and arrive, as it were, too late, if we want to know what we are supposed to believe” (490). Truth is not, fundamentally, the result of an objective epistemic relation to the world (as put forth by correspondence or coherence theories of truth). An objective model of truth assumes that we can set ourselves at a distant from and thus make a judgment about truth using a set of criteria that is fully discernible, separable, and manipulable by us.
...
In part II of Truth and Method Gadamer develops four key concepts central to his hermeneutics: prejudice, tradition, authority, and horizon. Prejudice (Vorurteil) literally means a fore-judgment, indicating all the assumptions required to make a claim of knowledge. Behind every claim and belief lie many other tacit beliefs; it is the work of understanding to expose and subsequently affirm or negate them. Unlike our everyday use of the word, which always implies that which is damning and unfounded, Gadamer’s use of “prejudice” is neutral: we do not know in advance which prejudices are worth preserving and which should be rejected. Furthermore, prejudice-free knowledge is neither desirable nor possible. Neither the hermeneutic circle nor prejudices are necessarily vicious. Against the enlightenment’s “prejudice against prejudice” (272) Gadamer argues that prejudices are the very source of our knowledge. To dream with Descartes of razing to the ground all beliefs that are not clear and distinct is a move of deception that would entail ridding oneself of the very language that allows one to formulate doubt in the first place. — link

https://www.iep.utm.edu/gadamer/#SH1c

So, your conception of radical doubt would be to doubt everything. If memory serves, Descartes did exactly that but came to realize he couldn't doubt the doubter for he couldn't deny the truth of experiencing doubt and neither can anyone else in my opinion. — TheMadFool

Well I guess I agree that we can't doubt the doubter in some sense. But why can we doubt the world if we can't doubt the doubter? What can doubt mean without a world? What's the difference between a dream and reality if there are no other people? I guess I'm saying that the doubter is only intelligible against the background of a shared world, that all of this is built-in to language in some sense.