I mean, it's one thing if they condemn you (or anyone) for 1000 years to push a damn boulder up the mountain. Then I can sort of understand being happy once you get the boulder to the top, because you defied the gods for that day.

But if the punishment is eternal, I cannot imagine a situation in which someone could be happy, even if Camus supposes this to be the case.

Is it no-thing? I would say it's something. It "is." — Xtrix

It's not a thing, it's a quality. It "is not", if predicated about the world, not about our way of interpreting it.

Reason is telling you one thing, that there is "the one", the senses are telling you there are many. When these are in conflict with each other, trust reason, no matter how absurd the consequences may be.

Today, we know that colours aren't in objects and that deep down, things aren't made of small impenetrable participles, but of probabilities and strange quantum vacuums. Our senses tell us this can't be right, just look at the world, but reason tells us to trust the evidence.

There's a lot more to say about this part, but that's the rough idea, as I understand it.

The only problem here is if you get stuck on the wrong idea, Einstein refused to believe QM was probabilistic, he had the wrong idea, though it's sensible, it's not correct.

"Red" isn't a thing? Of course it is. A thing is a being. Red, concepts, numbers, music, feelings, dirt, justice, words, Proust, and Boston are all beings. — Xtrix

Is red a thing? I think we can say there are red things, or I can say look at the red object or red landscape, but I'm unclear if red is a thing, if by "thing" we have in mind something in the world. Red is a quality. Is quality a thing? A quality is a quality. You can say a quality is a thing...

But, I don't recall someone saying "I saw a red" or "I saw a yellow", they add "thing" to it usually. Meaning that red, yellow, blue, etc. aren't thought of as things.

I remember that passage of Heidegger's. I think he makes interesting observations in his unique language.

I don't think it's necessarily "wrong" to separate the property "red" from the apple, but then we're off into secondary and primary qualities. Locke wasn't an idiot -- there's plenty of merit to this view. All I'm saying is that the term "being" certainly applies to all of this. — Xtrix

Yeah sure, Locke was no idiot. So essentially everything name-able is a being?

Yes indeed. How could it be otherwise? Unless, of course, we're taking "being" to mean something more restricted, like "empirically verified" or "physical" or something to that effect. But that's not how I'm using it. Any particular being has being. — Xtrix

It's too broad. I'm far from being a prescriptivist with language use, but if the word is used that amply, its meaning can lead to mistakes.

I think it can obscure the distinction between red as I perceive it in my own experience and the red attributed to the object. The object (so far as we know) has no colour. But it doesn't make much sense to me to say that the object has red being and that in addition to that or separate from that I have red being experience. The apple has no red being, we add that on to the apple.

You could say that what I'm doing is forcing the subject-object distinction on what we should take for granted, the world. But if we are, in addition to analyzing the world, also speak about word use, then this distinction is going to have to rise. Unless you can say why it's a wrong way to think about colour experience.

[thinking]...it defines the human being (rational animal, animal with reason/language) as a subject that thinks and the world (nature) as its object. — Xtrix

We have certain capacities to do something with the world. One kind of "thinking", whatever this may be, is to try and find what's the nature of the world, mind independently. The best approach we have for that are theories as postulated by the sciences, as (I believe remembering) you say.

But thinking goes way beyond the sciences. You only need to consider the arts and everything in it, which is an awful lot, and you can see all kinds of approaches.

As it currently stands we need a world for the subject. But not as a matter of principle. If we had enough intelligence to create a vat, we could stimulate the world exactly as we perceive it. That's important, I think.

Tables and rivers are beings. In that respect, they do indeed share a commonality: being. — Xtrix

Do ghosts have being? Does Winston Smith have being? What about that red colour I caught off the able, does that have being?

I'll use exist, for clarity. Tables and rivers exist, we interpret them as such. They do not have the commonality of existing absent people. And them existing, do not show what's common to "existing", for in a sense rivers were here before people, but not tables.

To associate Quine with pragmatism and oppose this to Heidegger somehow seems awfully strange to me. Heidegger is far more "pragmatic" than Quine in any sense of the word. — Xtrix

I'd agree actually. Sometimes Quine is lumped in with the pragmatists, I'm not sure why.

Not bad at all, more narrow, no implication on quality.

Yeah, she's right about Rorty.

I don't know Quine well either, but his focus seem to me to be more narrow than the traditional figures. Might be wrong about that though.

That's fair. And I also agree that B&T (and some of his lectures) is quite better than his Contributions and latter work, which I don't even get the point of.



You mean the Wittgenstein of the Investigations? Sure, pragmatism can be used for him too, and in some respects he could be one. Then again, that's stretching pragmatism a bit much.

They called Rorty a Pragmatist as well as Quine. I don't think Peirce or Dewey would've agreed with that. Not sure about James in this case.

As I interpret the topic, it's to try to give an account of lived "reality", in such a manner that what is taken for granted can be seen as a stupendous achievement of human beings capacity to order and structure this world.

What we take to be a simple rock depends on many factors, including language, social convention, perception, categorization, recurrence of experience on the same object and so on. We can, for instance, isolate as aspect of the rock, say it's grey colour (qualia) and somehow conclude that the colour is not fundamental to the existence of a rock.

Likewise, we predict this never before seen object, a rock, based on previous examples found in similar situations in which, based on our experience with such objects, we are able to conclude that this other object is a rock too. What's included? A certain texture, a consistency of the object, its location in our environment (it would be strange, but not impossible, to find a rock on top of a flower, for instance) as well as our use of it.

Do we use rocks as decorations, weapons and so on. If we have no conceivable use for an object, we probably could not categorize it as anything.

This can be thought of in the framework of "disclosure of being", or analyzing what's in "the given of experience" or consider that it is a construction of several categories, such as Peirce thinks it is. And so on, depending on which author you tend to think is on the right track.

That's the rough idea.

The classical ones. Probably more Peirce and Dewey than James.

I have in mind C.I. Lewis and am currently re-reading his Mind and the World Order. Instead of being, he speaks of the "given". It's a lot to say now and am currently working my way through it.

The point being that yes, he often complicates things without needing to do so.

Dreyfus' Being-in-the-World is quite good. He is pretty clear.

Another thing is if you find the whole account convincing. I used to be a huge fan, but less so now. Like Banno said, a lot of it is complicating simple things.

However, in fairness, I do think that on certain occasions his way of speaking about things is unique and special, in a sense that I can't explain if pressed.

In general the pragmatists do a better job, I think, though Joshs will very much disagree.

Yep, which is why with Heidegger one has to be a bit careful. He can be interpreted many ways, but sometimes some who read him pose questions that can have no answer, simply because the question isn't correctly articulated. One can, of course, form sentences that look like questions such as "what is here?" or "does being have being?", but that can lead you to word puzzles more than to phenomenology.



:up:

I think Dreyfus' Heidegger was interesting, but others just up his obscurity to the max and don't go far.

I agree, traditional pragmatism can help for a lot of these issues.

The "is" in this sentence is apparently referring to being, but being is presupposed with when using the "is." So it's almost like asking "What is 'is-ness'?" — Xtrix

Whatever else it may be, you are going to get stuck on the word "is" and try to find some "essence" or a common attribute common to the word which may not (dare I say it?) exist. "Is" can only make sense in relation to something else. So what is "is-ness" cannot be answered unless it's connected with something else.

The problem comes when you say what is it that you are saying "is". For as soon as you say this is a table or this is a river, you've shifted from the word "is" to a concept "table", "river". But you aren't going to find something common to "is" by saying that a table is or a river is.

You can't get out of your skin to a neutral perspective free of bias. In other words, we are irredeemably biased beings.

If the pain is too strong for that person, helping others won't be a consideration. If it's intermittent or less severe, then they can consider the benefits of helping others.

vast majority of people seem to find something in life — Shawn

They do. One common rebuttal is that they are deluded or fooling themselves. I say if they are, good for them. Likewise if a poor person goes all in on religion, if it makes life better great.

If it is true that empathy is the source of pain for a philosophical pessimist, then what's wrong with 'care'? Why does it have to seem so selfish to end ones life in a hurry rather than care for something such as ones life or another person? — Shawn

It looks as if the person has to measure how bad life is vs. how good it feels (or actually does) helping another person out.

In some rather clear instances, say, a super painful diseases or maybe even the most severe type of depression, in which you just can't stand life at all, no matter what you do, then I think suicide is an option and valid in these cases.

Well, I think it's an option for everybody, if we don't have control over our lives, what do we have control over? But that's besides the point.

One would have to consider the extent of the pessimism. A moderate amount of it can be helpful as in sobering. Too much is destructive.

One of his came out a week ago:

https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Homer-L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3-Krasznahorkai/dp/0811227979/ref=sr_1_1?crid=149FD2G9HHW6K&keywords=lazlo+krasnahorkai&qid=1636510031&s=books&sprefix=lazlo+kra%2Caps%2C197&sr=1-1

Ok.

Thanks for making the OP, it helped.

I didn't have in mind my own stuff, except in so far as I've been influenced by what I've studied. I don't mind "losing stuff" if I learn. ;)

I was not satisfied with how I phrased my conclusions, so a P and M monism is not something I'd likely use anymore. Either physical monism or natural monism, would be better.

Monism is very broad. I don't think reductionism gets you very far in understanding. I would have no problem with an essentially "triadic" reality, the monism I suscribe to simply says there is one fundamental kind of stuff. The natural is one kind of stuff and look at how many aspects is has.

What I was trying to point out is that if it requires so much effort to think this way, couldn't someone come along and say, no, 1sts 2nds and 3rds don't work? They could say "All you need is mind and reaction, mind takes care of 1sts and 2nds, reactions takes care of 3rds. 1stness is actually an unnecessary complication."

I don't believe what I just wrote above, just using it as an illustration.

He's upcoming for me later this year. I hear he's excellent.

Yet, you call it "unusual." Can you support your contention? — T Clark

As I see it, it focuses on a rather narrow area of the world - important, no doubt - that of "absolute presuppositions".

Other traditions, say, pragmatism, process philosophy, analytic philosophy, phenomenology, continental philosophy, etc., continue to see metaphysics as dealing with the nature of the world.

There are exceptions such as the logical positivists or Heidegger's destruction of metaphysics and some of the language philosophy folks who either took metaphysics to be empty or in need of replacement.

So in this sense it's unusual, focusing on meanings (presuppositions). But it's not wrong or bad or anything like that.

It's not about parroting, it's to gain an elementary understanding and then build up from that. I think you and aletheist have helped in that.

The logic of his categories has to be convincing, otherwise someone else can ask "why don't you follow Whitehead or Heidegger?" or anyone else.

I think the outline given is interesting, no doubt that about that.

Alright but, which of his writings do you consider to be helpful when looking into the categories. He wrote about them quite frequently, but are there like, a few essays or notes in which he talks about them sensibly?

Putting aside what I posted, of course.

It seems as if Collingwood is ignoring the world (the concern of metaphysics) and focusing instead on intended meaning.

Anyone can use the term "metaphysics" however they wish, but it is unusual.

:up:

Thanks for the clarification. I think I can start thinking about other cases now and find out how useful it could be to me.

It's what she uses as a way to connect sentences, it could be annoying to some, I thought it worked well. As for the subject matter, yes, it doesn't sound interesting at all, it actually surprised me that it was interesting.

I said "postmodern" in relation to Pynchon and Wallace which you were thinking about reading eventually. Good point about Don Quixote. Maybe challenging book might be a better term.

I can't say you'll enjoy it, it might turn out to be very boring for you, but given that you were talking about GR and IJ, difficult books or unique books in general. Now you know about it.

All my 'booky' friends are really into this. Rave reviews all around. I might read it in a decade or two. — StreetlightX

:lol:

Given the books you discuss, I'd say there's no hurry. I think David Graeber's upcoming book, is going to be really worthwhile.

Which pessimist argument? There's different varieties to choose from.

I guess we could say that a general statement could be life is not worth living, if we take this to follow from life is suffering and boredom in the extreme. Which is debatable.

A simple answer is, everybody dies, so this misery will end. And if you want to end sooner, there's a way out. A scary, likely quite painful, manner. It's an option, though not an easy one to make.

So either find something worthwhile now that you are here and life will take care of itself. Or speed the process up, drugs and alcohol and all that.

And if the pessimist feels empathy, which most do, then maybe see if you can help other somehow. What else?

It's difficult to separate, in fact probably not possible, our biological inclinations with our developed reflective nature. The tendency in nature of living beings, is to continue existing. The vast majority of everything has died, so those that remain must have some kind of "optimism" built-in, if not blind willing.

It doesn't refute anything. One can say that human nature affirms a tendency to go on living, but that's most of life.

Our experiences combined with our particular genetic makeup, is what creates our worldview.

Perhaps pessimism, to some degree, is an ability of considered reflection, as opposed to mere instinct.

Naive optimism is not better than hopeless pessimism. But there are degrees in all views. I think optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, is the best we can strive for. But not optimism of the intellect, world situations considered.

Ah, well once it gets off into mathematics I get lost.

Which is why looking for an epistemic-metaphical example suits my needs. If I can grasp that, the I can proceed to apply it to other areas, perhaps. But if I can't apply it to "ordinary experience", that is, lived everyday manifest reality, I can't work with it well. I think I begin to see a logic based on what you and aletheist are saying, though there are divergences.

You're saying that getting hit by a red ball is a firstness, aletheist says it's a 2ndness. Firstness for him, as I understand him in this example, would be the sensation of rubber I feel from the ball, but me getting hit would be a second.

Yours is broader, as I see it.

Damn man, Ducks Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann was an awesome book. 1000 pages, one sentence (yes, one.), stream of consciousness. Delightful, quirky, empathic, intelligent, demanding, insightful and more.

It might not be "postmodern", but surely a masterpiece. It will take considerable effort and you may not like it but, I must add to the "hard books worth reading".

@180 Proof @jamalrob @Deleteduserrc

You guys might want to consider checking it out, if you're up for the challenge. I can't vouch for it like I do for Novel Explosives, which is a must for philosophical-literature fans but, it's worth knowing about.

Yes, it does help quite a bit.

My doubt would be with 1sts then. If I "do away" with firsts, it would be a ball lacking colour "only"?

It's difficult to imagine 1sts without concrete instantiations of a quale, as in, I don't know if such things could exist: a quale or phenomenal properties without concrete instantiation.

Even just the brute impact of the ball on you is 2ns, independent of your sensation of it — aletheist

How can I register an impact without a sensation?

I think I get 2nds and 3rds better, but I'm having trouble with 1sts.

:clap:

Thanks for that very detailed post. I'll be sure to read it several times to make better sense of it. It covers a lot of ground.

Just as a general reply, I'll use the most simple example that comes to mind, which is Peirce's correspondence with Lady Webly, explaining the categories to her. He says that:

"Firstness is that mode of being of that which is such as it is, positively and without reference to anything else."

"Secondness is that mode of being of that which is such as it is, with respect to a second but regardless of any third."

Thirdness is is that mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing a second and third into relation with each other"

He says that "typical idea of firstness are qualities of feeling, or mere appearances. That scarlet... the quality itself ..." he also speaks about the idea of "hardness" being an example of firstness.

With secondness he speaks of "effort" as when one experience forces itself on you.

Thirdness is like tying together firstness and secondness. In a triadic relation, he says, "brute action is secondness, mentality is thirdness."

This is of course a gross generalization and simplification.

You appear to apply these categories as widely as possible, which was likely his intent.

I've always thought using an empirical example would be extremely helpful, as in, speaking about a red ball in a game of dodgeball so I can better visualize the categories:

For instance seeing the red of a ball is an instance of firstness, me reacting to someone throwing the ball at me and felling the rubber of the ball would be secodness and me thinking about whom to hit in this game would be thirdness.

And then I'd expand these categories to everything. Something like that.

Is that possible or is this situation too artificial to use as an example?

I think that we can put it aside and leave this thread as a general discussion of Parmenides, that way if someone wants to speak about him, whether his own Poem, or different articles, they can do that.

This is an interesting interpretation of Parmenides by Raymond Tallis. Just something to think about:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K9bes5UcjA

Yeah, this dialogue is just not fun. It's interesting in so far as it offers a critique of the theory of forms, but it assumes this type of "the one", which may not even exist. Is it a thing? A concept, maybe. But then the concept would be different from the one, but the one cannot have something different from itself, so it's part of the one.

I think the Sanford Encyclopedia on Parmenides is better than the dialogue.

In any case Parmenides is urging reason above sense data, which is a good point. Unless your reasoning clouds the way you interpret the world. In this case, his "the one" is a kind of trap. I can understand the appeal of this logic thousands of years ago, but today, there are better ways to articulate issues of monism and change or non-change.

Hah! You're sharp.

Better to push a boulder up a mountain for eternity, than hitting your head on the wall repeatedly.

Cheers.

That's fine and understandable.

The only issue you may have is that when people ask do we have selves or is the world ideal and the like, you'll find yourself in a situation in which you'll say "that's not metaphysics, metaphysics deals with propositions." That's not what Schopenhauer or Peirce would say.

It's difficult.

No no no. That won't do. Metaphysics is the stuff of the transcendent. Metaphysics is that which lies beyond the physics. Metaphysics is what Kant tried to ask how is it possible. Metaphysics is whatever Hegel said. And worldmaking, and interpreting physics, and seeing spirits and is gobbledygook and also profound.

It's pretty obvious.

I recall that the main point was being hammered over and over again, but that was a few years ago. I'll refresh my reading, if I get the same feeling again, then I'll just go with my impressions.

But good to know other people think the same.

https://www.amazon.com/Giants-Global-Power-Peter-Phillips/dp/1609808711/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3D30EJ0V165AY&keywords=giants+the+global+power+elite&qid=1636314271&s=books&sprefix=giants%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C138&sr=1-1

I had that book, but gave it to a friend. It's more of a kind of detective work than a straight out read. But you do get names.

It's more the .1%, technically.