Thank you for the charming response. You make me want to study Spinoza closely. I mostly just know what Durant writes about him in Story. Durant adores him and paints an amazing personality, but your response to him suggests that he deserves a careful reading in the original (well, in translation.)

Thanks also for admitting that you too like some sophists. I'm pretty stuck on the idea that it's the poetic core of thinkers that does the heavy lifting.

If Heidegger is right, and our current understanding is a "technological-nihilistic" one, then we're in bad shape indeed. You can see the results all around you.

So it's not that the questioning of "being" has no relevance to the current political or social world; it does.

Worth pointing out. — Xtrix

It's a good point. I think Heidegger is insightful on our current situation. It sucks that he acted on his insights then the way that he did, but we can still raid him for parts (like Caputo does.)

Because of influences that are older than his thought, he came to the conviction that what is visible and prominent, what is right in the middle, lives from the inconspicuous preparation of assistants backstage and in the wings.

I love this. Thanks!

Was the state good or bad? It's hard to say. I can imagine AI being used for something like population control for allocating immigrants, for sentencing, for distribution etc, until we don't know how to live without it. At each crisis, we cede more power to it, until, a few generations down the road, it just, in-your-bone-feels, like a universal force (like god, or the market) that you don't question. And then how it progresses from there? — csalisbury

Right, and I'm in interested in 'false necessity,' what we learn as children to take for granted, as if the nature of things and not some invention that become dominant. I'm ambivalent about AI, really. You mention some creepy possibilities, but even their use in targeting ads is already disturbing. I'm not crazy about the automatic panopticon. We may end up treating ourselves the way we treat pigs (or do so even more intensely.) But I'm no saint. I had pork for dinner, even if I didn't buy it. It's complex navigating relationships with humans and animals at the same time. I think the way we treat animals is part of a taken-for-granted inheritance that might one day gross out our descendants (well not mine, but somebody's).

Regarding AI, I think we should think of it less as a potential 'also-dasein' and more in the sense we relate animals to cells (or, more precisely, whatever facilitates the organization of cells into animals) ...But we tend to think of AI as a potential 'agent' or 'consciousness' on the same level as us. It seems to me that AI, for better or for worse (I'm terribly torn on this) is less 'another dasein or non-dasein entity' than a potential skeleton, or fusing spirit. — csalisbury

This is a deep issue, which is maybe two issues.
On the mirror issue, I have coded some neural nets and I really personally don't see them becoming daseinlike unless Issue B becomes important. For me they are currently rhetorical devices or mirrors for showing us that we don't know what we are talking about with 'consciousness' and so on. I do think there is some kind of beetle in the box, but we can't ever say it clearly, outside of all conventions. I can't prove that you exist on the other side of your posts, but I 'know' it. But this knowledge is somewhat ineffable, and 'I know' only signifies within conventions. So this Issue A is for me all about pointing out how loose and slippery language is, that it's not anchored to the ineffable beetle in any calculable or master-able way, despite the wishes of a metaphysical Polonius (a type) who won't admit that he really doesn't know except 'mystically' or 'ineffably.' Metaphysics won't admit that it's poetry !

Issue B is just the thought that somehow the stuff that we are made of (hydrocarbons and whatnot) became 'conscious' or daseinlike. Are zygotes conscious? Most don't think so. So somehow a fertilized egg becomes daseinlike, which by Issue A is an ineffable or 'mystical' thing. So from this angle it seems possible that some brain-analogous but non-bio structure becomes 'self-aware,' whatever that 'really' or 'ineffably' means. I don't think about this much, but maybe some kind of panpsychic stuff is happening and we just don't know it. I can't really act on this or take it seriously. But I have to admit that I don't see how it's ruled out, given the strangeness that we are daseinlike bags of water. I also love animals. My cat has a soul of some kind. Do rocks? Maybe I just can't handle the truth or have any access.

Reality is right there, but you can't see it unless you can process the objections to it that have gotten to you. Reason, in this mode, is a bully. The meaning of reality, and of being, is just what it was before something snuck into your head and scrambled everything, like the sound of a coin in a washing machine. — csalisbury

If you mean the meaning of life, then I think I agree. To me there's enough 'enlightenment' in just getting back in that state of immersed play. The coin in the washing machine annoys us into a 'lower' state of troubleshooting (which is sometimes good for us in the long run.)

There have always been beetles in boxes, before the bully showed up, only what you did was play with one another to express or articulate the beetles, thereby creating something new (and the beetles themselves were shaved off from a common space, they were both outside and inside, which is what allows the play) Convention - which is important and has its place- develops from this sort of thing, but then afterwards turns back and says : 'there is nothing important to say that we haven't all already decided upon - consider the language of laying slabs.' — csalisbury

Yes indeed. I do ultimately believe in the beetles, however ineffable. So I don't know if belief is the right word. 'Since feeling is first,...' And we live a kind of inside-outside. If I do bully people in the Hegelian style, it's often against hardened complacent convention --against other bullies who invoke common sense as a kind of law. Sarl is an annoying dad, who refuses to understand his arty son, and he panders to other annoying dads, Polonius to Polonius. I'm Hamlet of course. Who else?

What you have to do is figure out how to handle both aspects - if there's bullies, there's bullies and you have to meet them on their level. But meeting them on their level is not the whole point - it's the very beginning.

The questions: does life has a meaning? What is meaning? etc only make sense if you have some backdrop sense of what 'meaning' is in order to show that it doesn't. In other words: you can only think life has no meaning, if you already know what meaning is, but you've lost it. The question of meaning is more like: can you remember? Can you play again? — csalisbury

I like all of this. I can't know for sure exactly what you mean, but it sounds right. That backdrop sense of meaning is what I try to point out by talking about 'myth,' however awkwardly. We are always already invested, never coming from nowhere. We are after something, have some orientation, as we join the conversation. So the angtsy nihilist just wrestling with the death of god is a tender heart. He's sort of identifying with his tormentors as he cast away all beliefs and restraints (only in his imagination, thankfully.)

but I'd like to bury the hatchet, if you would also like to. — csalisbury

Of course! You are too valuable a conversational partner to abandon.

I've long thought the beginning of Hegel's Phenomenology (say what you mean) has the flavor of a kind of bullying. You point to the thing, it's this. The responding voice: but what is this? This is just "this", it has nothing to do with what you're pointing to. And so forth through Sense-Certainty- 'now'? But now it's not when you said 'now'! You can see the bullied kid thinking: no, I'll show and tell them what I mean! — csalisbury

I like the way you frame this. I'm no expert on the conflict, but I think of Hegel mocking Schelling (the mystic) for the night in which all cows are black. I think the basic idea was that 'all is one.' The world was a mystic blob of subject-object, something like that. But Hegel found it all too easy and mushy. It had to be made Conceptual and Scientific. So he mocked a friend in his first book and ruined the friendship forever. Then Schelling came back on the scene later and spoke some mystic stuff about the blindness of systems. That's my imperfect memory, without leaning on sources. Feuerbach also was really annoyed with Hegel about this. Feuerbach stressed sensation and emotion, the stuff that is not in thought, or not 'directly' in thought, not in the 'pure' Conceptual Science. But all of them were mystics! in the sense that they had a sense of the meaning of life, were basically (anti-)priests. (I know the least about Schelling, but I've been impressed by some of his quotes.)

Had to look some up, and found some good ones:

One is almost tempted to say that the language itself is a mythology deprived of its vitality, a bloodless mythology so to speak, which has only preserved in a formal and abstract form what mythology contains in living and concrete form.
...
Nothing upsets the philosophical mind more than when he hears that from now on all philosophy is supposed to lie caught in the shackles of one system. Never has he felt greater than when he sees before him the infinitude of knowledge. The entire dignity of his science consists in the fact that it will never be completed.
...
This is the incomprehensible basis of reality in things, the irreducible remainder which cannot be resolved into reason by the greatest exertion but always remains in the depths. Out of this which is unreasonable, reason in the true sense is born. Without this preceding gloom, creation would have no reality; darkness is its necessary heritage.
...
All rules for study are summed up in this one: learn only in order to create. — Schelling

When a cat stands in front of it's treat bowl immediately after hearing the sound of the plastic treat bag being opened, looks up and meows at the caretaker, you're claiming that that cat's behaviour is not putting it's own expectation/belief on display?

Really? — creativesoul

No, I'm not claiming that at all. In ordinary terms it's the cat displaying its expectation, absolutely. So maybe it's a trivial point --- but one more time:

If expectation is referring to the cat's consciousness, it's plausible but a bit like a beetle in the box.I can't tell if expectation for you is in the 'mind' of the cat or only in its behavior. If it's not in the mind, then in what ways is expectation more than the visible behavior? Food open, looks up, meows.
To me that 'more than' is our human interpretation, which is fine. We could talk about that interpretation as human thoughts or be a behaviorist about them too. Food open, cat looks up, meows, human does a speech act involving 'expectation.'

Do you agree that language less creatures form, have, and/or hold belief? — creativesoul

Yes, especially in the context of our conversation, where I am trying to be a 'behaviorist' even about our human speech acts. If we think of human speech acts as 'not language' (put them on a plane with other bodily movements), then we too are languageless creatures that have 'beliefs'...which are correlations between our behavior and the environment (including the behavior of our fellow 'languageless' primates.). 'Beliefs' are something like predictable responses to stimuli, including the stimuli of words like 'expectation' and 'stimuli.' But also of course to the sound of food being opened or thunder. My dog hides in (goes to) the closet when it storms.

(I know that we have language, but I'm trying to treat our words as complicated meows.)

That's music to my ears. We 'bind time.' We are cumulative beings, increasing in complexity.

As once seen, and understood, there can be left only an impression of awe at its majesty, at the character of fullness and refinement of that wondrous system upon which we depend; — Vessuvius

Indeed. Or I like when I can get into a mode of praising God reality. The shit-show is majestic. What do we do with this disastrous opportunity ? What are days for?

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields. — Larkin

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48410/days-56d229a0c0c33

Thanks for this - so I didn't have to. — 180 Proof

You are quite welcome! I'm thinking you know though that I chose that infamous gem precisely as an easy target in order to rescue it somewhat.

FWIW, I like your criticisms of Heidegger. I still don't see a problem in raiding his texts for spare parts. I think we both love Nietzsche, and to me it's not clear why Nietzsche is any less of a target for a certain uncharitable reading than Heidegger, Hegel, or Derrida. To me it's a matter of what we make of their traces, how we weave them here and now into our discussions.

I see that we have only so much time and that we have to make choices. We decide to set some writer down, having seen enough. But when is the story finished? Who knows ahead of time how things might be re-contextualized? In any case, I think it's great that you elaborated on Heidegger. I always enjoy your posts, even if you call some of my favorite thinkers sophists.

Eventually the taboo will be lifted, and we can in a sense "engineer" human beings. I think that's probably the next stage of our evolution. — Xtrix

I'll just make one last comment. In The Possibility of an Island, we get to see the 'neo-humans' who drink sunlight through their green skin. Yes, it's likely enough that we will do it. This is a great issue indeed. [This is not to say that we should do it.]

Philosophy and politics in some ways seem like polar opposites, but are connected in very clear ways. — Xtrix

Indeed, I am even tempted to speak of the primacy of the political and the embedded-ness of any philosophy within a contentious history.

They have belief systems. Thought systems, perspectives, in which they interpret the world and set their agenda. Much is tied up with values, and the values with "religions," but I'd argue they are really philosophical at bottom (even the Christian "ontology" in the sense of a worldview). — Xtrix

Right! And beyond their conscious ideologies I think there are 'enacted' non-linguistic comportments. I also see the philosophy in Christianity. I like to generalize either religion or philosophy to something like 'form of life' or 'spirit of the times.' We enact a stance on our existence that is only to some degree verbalized or self-aware. In some stances we see a critical tradition (philosophy proper) that allows for a kind of endless bonfire (yet quietly constrained nevertheless by throwness.)

[Have to go get some work that pays done, but I'll be back for more!]

From my reading I don't see him saying there is no "inside" or "outside," but that indeed there is an "inner" and that "inner concepts" can't be really linked to objects. But I don't know the full context of Wittgenstein to be confident in that reading. — Xtrix

Yanked out of context like that, the passage is far from conclusive. Surely I am reading into it also. But if the beetle in the box plays no role, then that's revolutionary. Hegel made a similar point in his first book. A crude empiricism wants to point 'here' and 'now.' 'Look! Reality is right there.'

Some kind of ineffable direct access is vaguely taken for granted and yet plays no role. This is why the question of being is related to the question of meaning and the question of consciousness for me.

I have a strong sense that I'm always still finding words to say in new ways that we human beings don't know what we are talking about. Now obviously we get along practically. So I'm exaggerating as a rhetorical device in order to make something visible. This helps me relate to Heidegger trying to awaken the question of being. I am still trying to figure out how the question of meaning and the question of being relate, beyond the straightforward way (what does it mean to say something is?)

Is it the same-enough question? I think AI connects to this, not because (at all) I project some mystical capacity on AI. Rather because AI is a kind of a mirror for us. Whatever we think that AI can never be is related to whatever meaning is or being is. Just to emphasize, I don't have answers. With Heidegger, I just want to light up a question, drag our 'ignorance' or hazy preinterpretation into the light.

It's basically a thrust against complacent chatter that has no choice but to work within that chatter.

Again so there's no huge mystery: I think the key to the future isn't space travel and artificial intelligence as far as technology goes, but eugenics (not in the Nazi sense!), and in terms of spirituality (in the philosophical-artistic sense) in the most general sense. — Xtrix

I agree that tech won't save us. If something can save us, I (also) think it will be spiritual in the philosophical-artistic sense, which will manifest politically. 'Only a god can save us' is legit if interpreted a certain way. The eugenics theme is fascinating. Elaborate if you feel like it.

This happens far more often on this forum than I would have expected, even for "amateur" philosophy people. It's just ego I suppose. — Xtrix

Yeah. I studied the clash of 'sec' and 'sarl' (Derrida and Searle) closely in Limited Inc. Even at the top level there's the same kind of nasty and impish combat. (I know that you are currently a Derrida skeptic, but in this context Derrida might as well be Heidegger. He's trying to do a strong thinking that is being opposed rhetorically by appeals to the obvious and the familiar.)

On this forum in particular I have often seen two exceptionally intelligent people do their best to tear one another to shreds, paint the other (clearly bright) as an idiot. It's not the same two people each time but a recurring pattern. (I follow many conversations that I never participate in.)

To me the names Anaximander, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Chomsky are the most relevant and interesting, — Xtrix

I haven't studied Anaxmander or Chomksy closely, but the others have been important to me.

I think there's personal reasons involved perhaps, but also the question should be asked: What is most useful not only to me now (and to the current world), but the future world? — Xtrix

As I grow older I become more aware of how much I do care about the human future. I think we all do, and that to be intellectual is even to implicitly enact the 'we.' We get bored with our idiosyncrasies. We want to connect with something larger. I suggest that we have transferred traditionally religious passions into a secular humanism that can criticize itself. Instead of the afterlife, we think of how future generations might benefit from our efforts.

[Criticizing secular humanism might include getting some distance from our anthropocentrism and the willful subject.]

I love this. Exactly right. I know it gives me pause. In the same way that a good friend who knows your taste makes a recommendation for a place to travel or a book to read or a movie to see -- something I may have otherwise considered garbage, and therefore ignored, now I'm much more likely to want to take a look at. — Xtrix

Thanks! Indeed, that's just how I hopped from poet to poet, novelist to novelist. Someone wins your trust. It could be a friend, or it could be a philosopher. I really got into Rorty, and he led me to taking difficult Heidegger and Hegel seriously enough to read the originals (and other secondary sources).

Rorty I found by chance at the public library. I just loved his easy style. I also found Kojeve this way, and he fused Hegel and Heidegger into something that really blew my mind.

Better to reserve judgment or acknowledge your superficial engagement, rather than feign expertise. — Xtrix

Yeah I like that. I haven't always lived up to it, but yes. And we can question the notion of expertise beyond its vague relative use. I've read passionate disputes between Heidegger scholars (Sheehan and Farin). Even the experts can't agree...on the basic message!

Is there such a thing as Heidegger in the singular? Are we ever done figuring out any thinker? I think Heidegger is first rate. But even a second-rate thinker can't be mastered, perhaps. By 'mastered I mean assimilated with a kind of assured finality. This is often associated with a sense of knowing what so-and-so was 'really getting at.' I have this sense myself at times. Gadamer thinks its essential to reading. We constantly project a vague total meaning as we read and constantly adjust this projection. Perhaps it eventually stabilizes, giving us a sense of relative mastery.

Here's an infamous line, yanked out of context, that I'd like to re-contextualize.

Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. — Heidegger

A thinking is 'strong' if it questions the very framework ('vocabulary','method') that is currently taken for granted (enacted 'blindly' and automatically). If I work within the taken-for-granted framework or vocabulary or method, then I'm just doing more 'normal discourse.' This is sub-philosophical or at most 'weak' philosophy. At this level we can argue as if our terms and method were fixed, which is to say pseudo-mechanically. To say that we are thrown is to say that we are always already operating in such unnoticed, inherited frameworks. As being-in-the-world, we are mostly no one or the one enacting the form of life.

If a 'strong' thinking comes along and intervenes against the vocabulary or the tacit assumptions of a conversation, then it is 'unintelligible' from 'within' that conversation. The sacred current vocabulary is being rudely fucked with! Our bold boy is talking nonsense ! Our initial reaction 'must' be a misreading that tries to tame such deviation by re-assimilating or refuting it in the currently dominant vocabulary.

Also... our would-be strong philosopher or thinker has no choice but to use the currently dominant vocabulary even as he seeks to undermine it. We just are the history that we're trying to wake up from. To abandon this thrust against our throwness (the project of dragging our constraining prejudices into the light) is to abandon 'strong' philosophy to fly around in the same old bottle.

Okay. But how do you get reliable information from the world if not through the senses systematized into scientific knowledge? Pure reason? A sixth philosophical sense? Doesn't ring a bell. — David Mo

I also reject pure reason and value the scientific method. I think it's OK, though, to question the representational paradigm. What do you think of instrumentalism, by the way? Optionally we can understand science as a central way of coping with our human situation. The equations and prosy background are a practical tradition for getting shit done. It's OK that we are endlessly hazy on our terms, because the gear works. That's enough for us, but we also like to dress it up as something more, as a kind of substitute for lost religion.

We should also do justice to its open-mindedness, its exposing itself to criticism. But these are also philosophical virtues.

I trust science when I want to know what a galaxy is and I add philosophy when I want to analyze the scientific method. Where is the problem? — David Mo

There is no practical problem. The philosopher can always try to get clearer about what we as humans even mean by 'knowing' and 'is.'

I suggest that the prestige of science is largely about its practical power. We can fly through the air at hundreds of miles per hour. We can talk with people across oceans. All of this is clear enough for us to respect the discourse associated with this. We are primarily practical beings, and science allows us to be 'lords and masters of nature.' Fair enough! But a philosopher can ask if we aren't just reacting to increased prediction and control by pasting on a hazy metaphysics.

To be clear, I know that we as practical creatures value technology that works more than a 'useless' pointing out of the haziness of our otherwise effective thinking. I myself earn money by working with technology. I'm paid for an 'exact' thinking that doesn't bother to question its position in a larger context. All of this connects to our current economic arrangement, which encourages a 'technical interpretation of thinking.'

Its study fosters a desire to know, to understand, that is almost child-like in intensity. Which in some sense, would correspond to the retention of a certain trait that is little apparent in those of adulthood, and which deserves to be cherished for all time.

Forever the instrument(s) of a young mind, we are. — Vessuvius

Well said, my friend!

I like your metaphor. We are the instruments of a young mind. I like to think of us individuals as 'neurons.' Together we form a brain. We work with symbols-in-common. We weave and reweave a conversation that preceded and will outlast us. 'I' am just the hazy unification of pieces of an inherited conversation. Obviously we have individual brains. But our hardware is designed to be networked. So metaphorically speaking (as if there were some purely literal alternative!), the ever-young species speaks thru us. The generations come and go, adding to an ever-young conversation that works only with the traces left by those who came before. We are whirlpools in such traces, scratching new patterns in the old patterns.

The Chinese Room (and the chips and dip?) just (or partly) cautioned against conflating the mere production of tokens with the actual pointing of them.

The fact there is no 'actual' about it is what makes the social game of pointing so sophisticated. (imv.) — bongo fury

Yeah, I think we are on the same page. 'Intentionality' is more more token after all. We can't even point out what pointing out is. We can just use 'pointing out' in social contexts and see if we keep our job, get blank stares.

If that means trying to explain our sense of consciousness as a natural effect of our thinking and conversing in symbols, then hooray, cool. — bongo fury

Yeah, it's along those lines. The social conventions are in some sense to prior to the subject. Sociologists make similar points. The reactionary fantasy is a kind of pure subjectivity that participates in pure meaning-stuff, apart from all worldly contingency.

Minds have to exist on certain material. — Forgottenticket

In some ways I'm suggesting something similar. At the same time, the notion of 'material' is just as foggy as the notion of 'mind.' As I see it, we have this useful but vague distinction...and then we are tempted to build a metaphysics on such fog.

For what it's worth, I'm not saying that we are zombies or denying consciousness. I could be accused of suggesting that a certain hazy way of looking at consciousness has some serious problems that we mostly ignore. You might say that I'm trying to shine some light on the fog as such.

the mind is supposedly an equation. — Forgottenticket

That reminds me of trying to see minds as the place where universals hang out. The mind is viewed as a spiritual eye that gazes at eternal truths, equations for instance. For this to work, all contingency has to be washed off of the actual languages we 'think' in (talk to ourselves in.) We have to imagine a 'pure' thought-content that lives 'behind' its vehicle. If I can translate Lolita into Italian, then some pure Lolita-in-itself is set upon a new vehicle. But I'd argue that translation isn't perfect...that even the meaning of Lolita in English is not stable. We might talk about identity and difference, the impossibility of a pure repetition. We treat things as the same when they are not when they are the same enough for this or that purpose.

[More can always be said. When I read this next week it won't 'mean' what it 'means' to me now, tho it might be the same-enough for me to plausibly elaborate on it.]

The worlds onto which our lives are so often projected, are self-contained, and hence inaccessible to most if their workings are not rendered explicit. I am however curious, as to what particularities can be found, beneath the surface of yours. — Vessuvius

Thanks!

On the basis of behavior, we do have a pattern, both individually and in sum, of resigning ourselves to the familiar, and the already known. I would imagine it to be the reason for which life seldom borders on the thrilling. — Vessuvius

Indeed. I think one of the reasons we philosophize is for the thrill.

This is the desire to be as polymorphous in our adjustments as possible, to recontextualize for the hell of it. — Rorty

Neotony, play. Philosophy keeps us young ?

I fail to see whether there lies a need to deprive ourselves of a discussion of the subjective, to further expound over our source of understanding, and the faculties through which the whole of the world, in representation, is mediated. — Vessuvius

OK, but my employer doesn't see any need for me to philosophize at all. In worldly terms, I should be attending to something else right now. Why am I so addicted to philosophy?

queries of the sort that disconsider the subject, in full, neglect a tenet that remains fundamental to all forms of human experience, — Vessuvius

To reiterate, we couldn't get rid of the 'subject effect' if we wanted to. We can't disconsider it. Not us anyway. In 1000 years humans may manage it, but they might be neo-humans with green skin who live on sunlight, water, and minerals. What we can do is intervene in today's routine hazy intelligibility and use it against itself to reveal our being entrapped in it as false necessity. We can see that we were dominated by metaphors without realizing it. We can see that we had strangely been satisfied with mud and fog (what everybody knows), because it was familiar mud and fog.

This can also hurt, so I don't know if it's a good idea for others. I can't help myself it seems.

I think this actually connects to the OP. But it also extends the post above.

Tell me if the below doesn't sound one hell of a lot like Heidegger (who does acknowledge the influence, for what that's worth.)

According to Yorck, the analysis and evaluation of the contemporary intellectual-historical situation is integral to philosophy—all the more so if philosophy self-reflexively grasps its ineluctably historical nature, which in itself is one of Yorck's main philosophical objectives. The basic idea for the historicity of philosophy is straightforward. For Yorck, as for Dilthey, philosophy is “a manifestation of life” [Lebensmanifestation] (CR, p. 250), a product or an expression in which life articulates itself in a certain way. But all life is intrinsically historical. Life is inconceivable without its historical development.
...
Consequently, Yorck rejects from the start the transcendental method in philosophy as insufficient for grasping lived historical reality. Transcendental philosophy reduces historical life to the merely “subjective,” which misses the genuine characteristic of Geist, spirit or mind, namely its real, historical extension and connection.
...
Yorck's primary category of historical life does not only challenge transcendental philosophy as too-narrow a foothold for philosophy. A fortiori, it also challenges the entire metaphysical tradition, which presupposes or searches for an ultimate objective reality (being, idea, substance, and so on), divorced from the ground of the always shifting historical life. Yorck rejects claims to “knowledge” sub specie aeternitatis. For Yorck, metaphysics is a flight from the historical reality ‘on the ground.’ By making historical life primary, Yorck effectively aims to dismantle the predominance of Greek metaphysics, including the modes of thought of modern science derived from it.
...
In the condensed and all too general format of the Correspondence with Dilthey, Yorck develops the practical “application” of philosophy in only the most fragmentary fashion. Its most important part is the actual clarification of the contemporary situation, the determination of the given historical possibilities, and the avenues for implementing some of them. Yorck holds that since the Renaissance and through the works of such thinkers as Galileo, Descartes, and Hobbes, the self-interpretation of life has found its centre of gravity in the cultivation of the theoretical understanding [Verstand]. The primacy accorded to theoretical understanding and what it projects as objective, unchangeable, and ultimate reality (metaphysical & physical) has ushered in “the natural sciences,” “nominalism,” “rationalism,” and “mechanism,” (CR, pp. 68, 63 & 155). But this has come at the exclusion of the full thematization, expression, and appreciation of human affectivity [Gefühl], including the underlying feeling of human connectivity through a shared life in history. Blocked-out are questions which affect the temporal, historical and personal existence of human beings, or what Yorck once calls “existential questions” [Existenzialfragen] (CR, p. 62), which relate to the life-goals human beings strive after, the recognition of dependency, and the awareness of human mortality, finitude, and death (CR, p. 120). The relative sidelining of these aspects in the psychology of human beings lies at the bottom of Yorck's diagnosis of the increasing self-alienation of modern man and the crisis of his time. — link

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/

It's more a question of where the soil seems most fertile. — Banno

Yeah, I agree. It's hard to be a mortal with only so much time and decide which soil is more or less fertile. Time and chance lead us all to different thinkers in a different life contexts.

Perhaps we focus too much on the authors and not enough on the intensity of reading. I'm used to people hating on Nietzsche, because Nietzsche can be outright obnoxious. But if one stays with Nietzsche and grows up while reading Nietzsche...one uses Nietzsche to criticize Nietzsche.

I can probably think of something objectionable about every philosopher that I have learned from. I'm guessing that many of us feel that we are beyond taking this or that talkative mortal as our guru. We're all lighting matches in the dark, which doesn't mean we don't also act with a certain confidence.

If the context is everything, then it's not a context. — Banno

On this side of the pond, we say that 'X is everything' for 'X is important.' I agree that all distinctions break down when pushed to extremes.

That's the trouble: insisting on telling us details of the ineffable. — Banno

What did Witt say about wanting to grunt? But then that grunt or conspicuous silence becomes a token in the game. (Heidegger also talked of conspicuous silence.)

This context thing is basically historicism. 'Meaning' is cumulative. We have to 'read ourselves in' to a certain intellectual community. Hegel, for instance, could take a certain jargon for granted. He was writing for his contemporaries. They wanted their Jesus and Progress rolled into one. How could it be made scientific? How could a certain tension in their form of life be resolved? So to study philosophy (if that means reading the famous dead) is also to study history. We try to feel our way into a form of life. This is a big theme in the Dilthey draft, as one might expect given its nickname.

To be sure, I can't choose the right words, the perfect words. What makes communication possible (inherited conventions) makes perfect communication impossible. The words aren't tied down to Platonic meanings. They drift as we keep using them in new ways and forgetting to use them in the old ways. If meaning is use, then use is unstable.

What remains still as philosophy is demarcated from science in that while philosophy relies only upon reason or evidence to reach its conclusions, rather than appeals to faith, as an activity it does not appeal to empirical observation either, even though within philosophy one may conclude that empirical observation is the correct way to reach conclusions about reality. It is precisely when one transitions from using empirical observation to support some conclusion, to reasoning about why or whether something like empirical observation (or faith, or so on) is the correct thing to appeal to at all, that one transitions from doing science to doing philosophy.

I do see the advantages of this approach, but can we ever live this ideal separation of reason from empirical observation? Consider Hume's problem of induction. In terms of something like pure reason there is no apparent reason to trust experience at all. We live and seemingly can't help living a kind of animal faith in the uniformity of nature. To me, Hume made that animal faith visible to us. That's just one example.

To me it makes more sense to think of philosophy as concerned with the world or existence as a whole and then understand science as part of that world. They don't run side by side, each doing their own job. Philosophy in the strong sense places determines not only what science is but constantly tries to clarify its own task. It's the identity crisis of human existence. Any philosophy that can define itself would in that sense also die. Philosophy is always already metaphilosophy and meta-metaphilosophy, to put it aphoristically.

Of course Heidegger had such things right. That makes the obscurity of his writing more culpable. "Existence is being-in-the-world" is itself senseless, but he pretends otherwise. — Banno

I agree that the phrase you mentioned is senseless out of context. As Hegel stressed, you can't offer summarized results in philosophy. The meaning isn't there in the words. It's distributed in everything that lead up to such a summary and in the form of life that makes the book intelligible in the first place. I know that Hegel is a pain in the ass too, by the way.

I do think English translations of Heidegger are often obscure and ugly. I don't know if it's the fault of the German. Probably to some degree. At the same time, lots of philosophers may be anti-poetic enough to prioritize accuracy over a new living book in English.

‘Physical reality’ is ‘what is described by physics’. ‘Physicalism’ is ‘the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on the physical‘ (SEP). The essay I referred to is questioning physicalism, it’s not trying to defend it. — Wayfarer

Saying exactly what the 'physical' is supposed to be is the same problem IMV as saying exactly what 'consciousness' is supposed to be. In both cases we have a practical know-how with the words. But it's all pretty foggy...and the purer one wants these words to be the more foggy. In both cases one sees futile gestures toward the ineffable. So the positions criticize each other well but miss their own 'emptiness.'

Is there anything meaningful apart from social convention? Isn't this simply relativism - 'the doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and have no inherent reality?' — Wayfarer

As I said, we walk in darkness. So I will never be done answering this kind of question. Disclaimer aside, all the familiar 'meaning effects' are still here as before. The world in its richness remains. We just take certain interpretations less for granted.

Also 'social conventions' is a dry way to put what it 'means' for us to be in this world together. The idea stresses how radically social it is for us as humans. There is no self apart from others, or the individual self in his or her uniqueness is only intelligible in a social context.

I'll grant that the notion of inherent reality starts to look pretty foggy upon close examination. I don't think anyone can specify what they 'mean' by it. It's just a beetle in the box. If we are radically private subjects gazing at meanings and have to cross some gulf of 'physical' stuff to communicate, then we're never able to check. Why isn't that relativistic? Or solipsistic? Such a position seems to imply that the world is my dream. So the shared world has to be built up as overlapping dreams. Does that help us? Protect us from wandering in the darkness?

If there is no outside, there is no inside. I suspect you would agree, but given your sympathy for Heidegger... — Banno

I do agree, but so does Heidegger. That's kind of his deal. Existence is being-in-the-world. The inside/outside talk is Cartesian confusion, Cartesian oblivion. FWIW, I find lots of Heidegger almost impossible to enjoy. But check out the first draft of B&T ('the Dilthey review').

Or look into Braver's fusion of Witt & Heid in Groundless Grounds. I'm not saying you need it. You'll probably agree and not be much moved.

To me it's hard to understand how someone can like later Witt and hate early Heid.

philosophy is systematically structured so that it can always make use of one of the tiresome rhetorical tricks in its small box, and so will never seriously critique itself. — Snakes Alive

That sounds like personality in general to me. That's us, foolish mortals talking shit. That's what philosophy struggles against being. 'I am the history from which I'm trying to awake.'

I'd enjoy seeing you argue against yourself, seriously critique yourself. I find your posts fascinating, and I'd genuinely enjoy seeing what you'd come up with.

Something I've wondered, could our most advanced neural net be performed on our oldest computer, albeit at an extremely slow pace? — Forgottenticket

The problem would be insufficient memory as I understand it. If my network has 10 billion parameters, then I have to store them somewhere. During training I have to be able to update them as the data come in...

This sounds so obviously true that it simply has to be the problem. I perceive myself as living being with a material form. The abstraction of the epistemological subject already is ideal. So is the concept of "observation". If one derives the "blank mind floating over the world in souvereign supremacy" you are already far away from what defines your being in first place. — Heiko

Yes indeed. That 'white mythology' is taken for granted. What goes along with this is the assumption of some kind of pure meaning that isn't dependent upon social conventions. There is some ideal subject in touch with ideal meaning, and then one can try to construct the world from this, awkwardly.
Like how does the word 'bird' attach to the same meaning in my headspace and his headspace? The assumption that there is some identical meaning is taken for granted. That we even know what we are talking about beyond trading speech acts appropriately is taken for granted. We don't even know that we don't even know what we mean...

There's a fairly recent essay on exactly this at Aeon, The Blind Spot, which I happen to think is a tremendously important essay. (I got lot of flak on this forum for posting a discussion of this essay a year ago when it came out.) — Wayfarer

This framework faces two intractable problems. The first concerns scientific objectivism. We never encounter physical reality outside of our observations of it. — Blind Spot link

FWIW, I'm questioning that whole paradigm. 'Physical reality' is just the shadow cast by some mysterious mental substance. It's two sides of the same coin. IMV the great 20th philosophy was an attempt to break free or at least get some distance from this way of framing the situation.

But, are there any standards? Or are the standards now 'what I deem acceptable'? That argument is a kind of sleight-of-hand, which can be used to rationalise, or rather relativise, any ethical claim whatever. — Wayfarer

Yes, those are valid concerns. Today's standards may look crude and stupid tomorrow. I also agree about rationalization. That's always a threat or a risk. We could always be lying to ourselves. That cuts both ways. I could be lying to myself that you are lying to yourself and so on.

I've often been presented with the beetle-in-the-box argument, but I've never seen the point of it. I think the reality of empathy is such that we naturally see ourselves in others, and others in ourselves, unless there's something that interferes with that, like sociopathology (which it often does.) — Wayfarer

It's not really about empathy. It's about meaning, which cannot be grounded in a subject but rather distributed via enactment within a community.

I agree that we just 'naturally' see ourselves in others. Which is to say that it's there without us understanding it. It's automatic. I addressed this earlier in the thread, and I think it's a fascinating issue.

We regard respect for the subjective as being a kind of anthropomorphic sentimentality, — Wayfarer

Where I will agree with you is that my philosophical questioning of the subject or consciousness is up against an anthropocentric sentimentality among other things. IMV, no one can genuinely doubt to the 'effect of the subject' or the loose routine intelligibility of 'I'-talk or 'consciousness'-talk. We couldn't forget this training if we wanted to, and we can only criticize the limits of this training from within this training. FWIW, some of my influences actually found religious significance in abolishing the subject this way. In their view it was egoistic sentimentality that clung to the private subject. That doesn't have to play a role here. But anti-egoistic spiritual talk could even embrace the kind of ideas I'm exploring.

which are the accidental byproduct of an essentially fortuitious process - just the kinds of processes that science now assumes. But our judgement regarding this process is itself a product of the modern scientific outlook, so spot the circularity. — Wayfarer

Indeed, and if our brain has evolved for survival rather than truth, then maybe the theory of evolution is a useful tool and not a truth, etc. This could be put with more subtlety, but it's an issue. But I don't think we are saved with dogmatism or just asserting some pure source of knowledge. Instead some people just ignore problems like this because no one pays them to address them. We walk in darkness. Yeah we get along practically, but we leave all kinds of contradictions or ambiguities unaddressed. Is it relativism to stress our ignorance? To point out how foggy our foundations are? We start within some hazy routine intelligibility, immersed in making a living, etc. We don't know that we don't know, because we know what everyone knows. I see philosophy as (among other things) a knowledge of ignorance.

Speaking of circles: 'An entity for which, as being-in-the-world, its being is itself an issue, has, ontologically, a circular structure.' (Heidegger, of course.)