I tell ya what Sapientia. — creativesoul

Oh shit, deadnamed :scream:

The expression of pain is not pain. I cry out or grimace - the expression - because I am in pain. I can make that same expression even when I'm not in pain.

That seems to make as little sense as all of the other examples when conflated.

Even Wittgenstein claimed that the word "pain" does make reference to a sensation (not an expression). But he didn't think that it described it.

I don't know where you're getting this from or why you think it. — S

Yeah, I can understand how this could be confusing. Let me expand a little, with reference to this :

Some people on the forum deny certain distinctions. They claim that a rule is the expression of a rule, or that an orange is the appearance of an orange. The opening post reinforces the distinction, and shows why it matters. They say things like all rules are expressed in language, and that there is nothing but appearance. — S

As I understand it, the common thread linking the examples in the OP is a particular tripartite structure.

For example, with expression, you have

(1) the thing expressed (say, a meaning)
(2) the expressing (say, the writing down of the word)
(3) the expression itself (say, a word)

Expression is taken as a particular example of a more general structure:

(1) something
(2) Something that happens to that something
(3)something else.


But, being charitable, it seems to me that if people have been talking about rules in the way you describe, what they mean is that a rule simply is an statement about what's allowed, what's prohibited etc etc. They are denying that there is an antecedent (1) that undergoes a (2) to become a (3). (I'm not saying I agree - I don't - but I think this is what they must mean.)

Likewise, the idealist (or one type of idealist) is saying the apple is its appearance. There is not some antecedent thing, which then appears. The idealist probaly wouldn't say 'you're not eating an apple, you're eating its appearance' in the same way a nonidealist wouldn't say 'you're not eating an apple, you're eating its being'. They'd say 'you're eating an apple.' (Again, I'm not taking a stance here.)

Any talk of expression butts up, ultimately, against some kind of bedrock - otherwise you have a situation where everything is an expression of something else. Some things must be primitive - they may or may not be expressed, but they are not themselves expressions. Another way to say this would be that they only express themselves. It seems like these people talking about rules consider rules to be things of this sort. Idealists consider appearance to be something of this sort. (I was talking about pain in this way, as well.

Ah ok, but I don't think it's the same logic behind each example. Some things are their expression. Pain is the canonical example. And a mashed potato isn't an expression of a potato in the way a rule made explict expressed the rule. The move from potato to orange juice to rules seems to rely on the linguistic quirk that one meaning of 'expression' is squeezing out.

Trying to parse the op:

A mashed potato is a potato that's been physically modified.

We can express (a very specific meaning of express) an orange to produce orange juice.

Meaning can be expressed in language.

Idealists think that mind is necessary for the existence of a thing.

[the thrust of the post? I'm lost here]

Alright,my bad.

but I don't say the absurdities associated with this bad sort of philosophy which uses, or rather exploits, the science to say things like, "rocks don't exist". — S

This doesn't evince a very good understanding of idealism.

I think one approach that could be helpful - and this is why I was bristly about the origin question - is to move away from overly-tidy constructions and focus on examples in the wild. One convenient way to do that would be to take lnguage use as it occurs on the forum. You could focus on the shared languge - everyday english - people bring, the terminology borrowed from other philosophers, or the shared shorthand thats developed over time on here. I think in every case you'll see a communal process that exceeds any one speaker - so "subjective" isn't quite it, though of course the lived experience and activity of individual speakers is part of that.

Many people have spoken of philosophy as an ongoing conversation, with no royal road. You become acquainted with various pieces by listening-in and only slowly become conversant yourself. Whatever language is, this aspect of it seems key.

I'm asking what kind of thing a set of rules is, fundamentally. What kind of thing is a set, fundamentally? What kind of a thing is a rule, fundamentally? What kind of thing is language? What kind of thing is meaning? What do they consist of, on a fundamental level? Physical? Mental? Abstract? Concrete? Objective? Subjective? Location? No location? Is location a category error? How does interaction work? How does it all tie together to result in language use? — S

Alright, I've vented my weekly spleen, and I'll admit that it is an interesting and worthwhile topic. I wouldn't know where to begin though. It seems irreducible to all of those categories.

So, what the heck is a set of rules, ontologically? What's what? How do the ontological relations work? — S

Alright, so, bracketing genesis, and given that a language exists --- a set of rules is a set of rules. Ontologically? I guess the being of a set of rules is the being of a set of rules?

Are you asking if rules have heft?

The clue is in the title. It says "Ontology", not "Origins". — S

Am I dense for focusing on the text of the OP rather than the title? All the 'ontology' here is bound up with 'origins.' There's no mystery here. That's how the OP was structured. It's a poisoned well.

Well that is your judgement to make. I will defend and deny my identity by not arguing either way. Indeed, I am not arguing against competition and zero sum games. I'm just saying that when I was a kid, we used to go to the beach and build a sandcastle, and pick up some pretty wet stones and go for a swim. and nobody won, and nobody lost, and everyone got a prize of an ice cream. And that was an exciting wonderful day, even though when the stones dried out they looked rather dull. And once a year, there would be a ploughing competition, and someone would win and the others lose, but the rest of the time folks would just plough as needed, and it would be good enough. — unenlightened

I am rarely sincere, or direct on here. So this won't sound like it's either of those things.It will sound rhetorical. It isn't, but I can't prove that.

I think about these kinds of memories a lot, I have a few important ones I return to. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said that all I ultimately care about is getting back to the feeling I think you're describing.

And it also isn't a rhetorical thing when I say that I'm realizing more and more that I've unconsciously edited out the negative parts of these memories. Kids are dicks, kick over other kids sandcastles. Perfect memories usually are founded on near-perfect repressions. These idylls feel uncomfortably close to the idylls of nostalgic germans or russians circa when its relevant

We all make mistakes. But I think you were suggesting a very specific kind of situation, and are backing out w/ plausible deniability.

Why not play slow and tight with your words, instead of putting them out there in a way that almost guarantees misinterpretation? I think you meant exactly what you said, terrapin's 'origination' thing nonwithstanding.

Alright, enlighten me then, smarty-pants. Gimmie the lowdown. — S

Baden beat me to it.

I'm gonna quote in it full, only because I don't know how to link to a post:

It's trivially true that language originated in humans, but it was not "invented" as if there was some conscious effort at design involved. Language develops organically. The world's most recently developed language, Nicaraguan Sign Language, is a case in point. The route from creole to full language occurred through the children of parents who used the creole and added grammatical complexity spontaneously.

So the process there is something like rudimentary tools of communication being automatically transformed into a language, which allows for more advanced communication and from which rules are retroactively inferred and codification occurrs. The communication comes first then becomes more complex. And only at that point can you start to talk about a set of rules which defines how the language functions.

So, the quote

With English, in a nutshell, it seems to me that people invented the language, made up the rules, agreed on them, started speaking it, started using it as a tool for communication
— quoted in the OP, unattributed

is senseless from a linguistic point of view (and really from any point of view to the extent it implies people invented and debated rules with each other before using language as a tool for communication).

It's true we don't know for sure how quickly or gradually language developed (there are competing theories), but there does seem to be an in-built capacity that kicks in with children to the extent that they can unconsciously create complex linguistic form. It's important though to stress the lack of purposeful design / agreement.

That more or less covers what I was gonna say.

Well, that is one person or one author.. and there are thousands of others. But for it to become ubiquitous, for it to be a motivator (or demotivator rather). For it to actually affect people in their daily lives- not just some interesting topic of literature and the arts in general. — schopenhauer1

Alright, but give me the Von Hartmann argument for why that's likely to happen in the future, even tho it hasn't in the past.

How is it you are equating that with the vanities I was discussing :D? I'm more interested in how someone perseveres through a workday where they do minutia all day and then go home and do other minutia all day. — schopenhauer1

Monologue from Trainspotting:

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself. — trainspotting

It's in the same genre as your post. It's also, in a modified form (the gormless bachelor, rather than the complacent suburbanite) the type of thing Houellebecq fixates on, especially in his early novels.

But as we get more "advanced" in our introspection, our technology, our understanding, perhaps it won't? Perhaps truly all will be vanity? — schopenhauer1

I see no reason for thinking that since, again, we already reached that introspection in Ecclesiastes which was 900 thousand years ago (give or take.)

What is this? — schopenhauer1

It's Trainspotting, or a Houellebecq novel - both of which are filled to the gills with sex, or obsession with it.

It's also ecclesiastes.

That's what I'm saying. People aren't going to stop procreating because all is vanity. It has been for a long time and the human race is still going strong.

This thread seems as good a place as any to bring this up. Been thinking about this for a while.

There's a way of talking about idealism that most of us on the forums are familiar with. It's a no-nonsense wryness. It's meant as a corrective to out-there thought that's lost its grounding. & that can be a good thing.

Here's the problem:

Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as river. — Qingyuan Weixin

The wryness only really works for the transition from non-mountain back to mountain. It doesn't work if you never understood the 'more intimate knowledge' to begin with, if you've always only seen mountains as mountains. Kurt Vonnegut went to war, Mark Twain was knee-deep in life, before retiring from it to reflect ironically. Their wryness was earned.

What I see in this thread, and many thread like this, is common sense masquerading as a knowing wryness, one it hasn't earned. It's mimicry, a borrowed veneer of knowingness.

Alright, but I'm having trouble seeing anything essentially new in what you've introduced via Von Hartmann. It seems like it's just a cipher for: there is a tradition that sees history as moving toward some happy end point, but that won't happen. Why? .... Basically the same schopenhauerian analysis, no?

Ok, then would you say there is a difference between this "understanding" I have that is constantly arriving at the same place, and the usual economic cycle, or the daily worklife, or the hunting and gathering? — schopenhauer1

Well, yes, but it's a broad question. Many differences, many similarities. Isn't the essential characteristic of will that it is in-itself one, but presents itself as multiple?

Well, that is a very Schopenhaurean suggestion, but probably not a life I could live in a dedicated way to. I'm more interested in the "great outdoors" of society and understanding its ends. Micro-decisions like procreation have such profound implications. What is the point of bringing another person into the world? What are we here for in the first place? I wish this was more of a focus rather than, the darned TPS reports.. .This economic system keeping things going, but we don't know what it's going for. Look at modern life. We can have illusions it can be different, but von Hartmann had some interesting insights in this regard- the illusion is that happiness can be had in the present, the hereafter, or a future utopian state. So where does that leave us if indeed he is correct? Pretend, for a minute that he is correct. Where does that leave us? — schopenhauer1

It leaves us where we've always been doesn't it?

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. — Ecclesiastes

Appetite can take all forms, and the appetite for 'wisdom' of this sort is itself as vain as anything else. Appetite becomes addiction when the addict returns to the same thing, again and again, trying to derive the same kick. When you say you wouldn't pursue meditation, because you're more 'interested' in the understanding society and it's ends - who or what really is speaking here? In what way are you interested in understanding society and its ends? Please understand I mean no offense when I say it seems you arrived at a final understanding a long time ago.

How would you characterize a drive that keeps you chasing after something, and always arriving at the same place, tho in slightly varied guise?

I am not sure what philosophy is or would be apart from the problem of learning who we are and what helps us live. — Valentinus

It depends on what's meant by the term 'philosophy.' Logical positivism, for example, seemed relatively unconcerned with the problems of living. And, just so I'm not just picking on analytic philosophy, Husserl didn't spill too much ink over those problems either. It's that way with any thought that focuses primarily on logos and dialectic. Philosophy lends itself to this tendency, even if it doesn't necessitate it.

" If dignity is a zero sum game... ", I said in my second post. And since then there has been a fruitless discussion of whether it is or it isn't.

As if there were a fact of the matter. :roll:

There is no fact of the matter because it is a social construct and can be constructed either way. And that was the point of mentioning its featuring on television, a major means of social construction. — unenlightened

'can be constructed either way'

One part of me - the sensitive, sad - really wants this to be true. Another part - the agonistic, eristic - doesn't. The reflective part of me isn't sure, but skews pessimistic.

Reading groups can be collaborative, a community of the mutually dignifying, but only if they keep out those who get in the way of collaboration. Access has to be regulated, some must be excluded.

Who gets access? Even if someone's not intentionally sowing seeds of discord, they may still have an unsavory tendency to try to steer conversation toward the 'wrong' topics. 'I think Melville was trying to say the same thing I was in My Theory of Why Time is an Illusion....I think Conrad was trying to say the same thing I was in My Theory of Why Time is an Illusion.... 'I think you raise a good point, Mike, i think it helps illustrate how Austen seems to have a sense that time isn't what it seems.'

But how do we know that we aren't as misguided as that guy? He's so in it, he has no way to get outside it to see himself. There's no way around it - we have to take into account the reactions of those in the group. But if they react the same way to everyone, how can we tell what's real and what's mere politeness? One of my earliest threads on the old forum was something like- Are movies Hegelian sublations of sublations? A: No, what does that mean, seems unlikely you've actually read Hegel, you're trying too hard. The only way to determine where we're at (barring some innate, infallible inner-genius) is to see who gets shown respect and who gets shown the door.

But is it that stark? What if, for those who show genuine good-will, we have a multitiude of different groups where each person will have a place appropriate to what they want to discuss? All good, as long as no one feels like they're not being excluded from a certain group not merely because its simply a bad fit, but because they're not up to those standards. Competition arises organically. TV Producers, like tribal leaders, make use of that. Plato frames the true/false in terms of claimants. Before that, in China, leaders clamored to prove they had the mandate of heaven.

Just as you differentiate yourself by being the one who both (1) understands what others were saying about the banned poster but (2) has an additional understanding of the underlying dynamic of humiliation, I try to differentiate myself with regard to your post in the same way. Rich (or socially established) whites maintain their identity by denying it and decrying identity in general. So too maintaining and denying dignity-through-de-dignifying.

Is it escapable? In the vale of tears?

Question is addressed to S. I apologize, but I've no desire to engage in discussion with you.

Oops, fixed that, attributed now. It's from the OP and seems to be laid out there as a kind of foundation for the rest of the discussion.

Edit: Oh, tho I guess the OP itself quoted it, unattributed. So maybe I've incorrectly attributed it.

With English, in a nutshell, it seems to me that people invented the language, made up the rules, agreed on them, started speaking it, started using it as a tool for communication. — quoted in the OP, unattributed

The same way apes invented humans, agreed on their traits, and then started being them?


Why does the genesis of english seem this way to you? Most (all?) historical linguists would profoundly disagree (unless you're playing extremely fast and loose with 'invent', 'agree' etc.) Your account sounds a little bit like Rousseau's idea that the original humans must've been running around, on their own, until they got together and decided to have a society.

It seems counterproductive to try to come up with an ontology of meaning beginning with a speculative reconstruction that is disconnected from- and seemingly unconcerned with - research on what actually happened.

Self-care seems really important to me, but I'm not very good at it. I also think virtue ethics seems like the most excellent kind of of ethics. I'm more and more skeptical, tho, that reading and doing philosophy helps with either self-care or becoming virtuous, and in many cases can be detrimental. At least philosophy taken on its own, not well-integrated into - and balanced with - some broader life-practice.

Interesting.. I read a little of some passages from Gravity's Rainbow in a Google search.. Interesting. What I saw, the Herero were choosing not to procreate and die off rather than live in their conditions. But, I'm probably missing a lot of the context being that I just read a small part. — schopenhauer1

Yeah, in the book its a tribal suicide. The context is pretty complicated & its been a decade since I read it - but as I recall, its something like a mandala of stances toward life, each part of which powers a Rocket (which can be read as death or mystical union or enlightenment or stillness, or gnostic awakening etc. depending). The idea of collective suicide (through ceasing procreation) is one part of the mandala. (I'm probably butchering this though.)

But, back to your OP. Since actually ending procreation is impractical, and since you seem to be putting less emphasis on realizing that goal, and more on mission and community - what about joining a meditation community? To work on stilling your own desire, helping and being helped by others?

Of course I do.. I think it's poetic like a MAD comic :D — schopenhauer1

It also calls to mind canto VII of the Inferno. Here's John Ciardi's gloss on the "sullen" in the fifth circle:

Virgil also points out to Dante certain bubbles rising from the slime and informs
him that below that mud lie entombed the souls of the Sullen[...]in death they are buried
forever below the stinking waters of the Styx, gargling the words of an endless chant in a grotesque parody of singing a hymn. — Ciardi

On a more sympathetic note, you might find the section on the "otukungurua" in Gravity's Rainbow interesting

A bit of an afterthought -- I first wrote on this, but then thought it better just to mention instead -- If anyone can tell others what is right or wrong, it would be the ubermensch: breaker of tablets, master of the self, inspirer of slaves to write future tablets. But the ubermensch is not an ideal, nor is it something we even could aspire to -- she cannot even help but to be an ubermensch. — Moliere

Tangetial, but definitely related (I think.) Its interesting that when Wittgenstein is introduced in a conversation, its rarely to reference a formal argument of his. He's almost always brought in to try to communicate a superior mode of philosophical valuation. An idiosyncratic - but powerful - way of selecting which philosophical problems are worth posing, and which aren't.

Its funny how the good, the true, and the beautiful run together here. It seems almost a law that things work like this. A new time, a new figure (or group of figures) and then a lot of working out implications. and filling in gaps. Ethical progress definitely seems to follow this pattern too.

That said, there is a danger here. Shame and the need for self-respect can be weaponized by skilled manipulators, who use people's moral sense against them, in service of their own ends. People can even be taught to do this to themselves, and experience this as their own intuition. So people are on guard against this kind of thing. That makes things trickier.

Well we don't need to tell others what to do, mostly. But if we find our lives intertwined with theirs, sharing some moral situation - I think we'd appeal to their better angels through historical or fictional examples or discussing what's at stake --- in general, directing them, in whatever way, toward the values that they do, in fact, hold - when they aren't lost in abstraction.

To play devil's advocate (and part of this devil's in me) : Sure but what about SLAVERY? Lot of firm intutions there as well, self-evident to some as the hand in front of them.

Or, more to the point : what if the puppys kicked as part of a ritual?

Where are you going in this thread tho?

Aren't Wittgenstein's therapeutics or 'bedrock' the paradigmatic targets of 'too easily satisfied' responses?

But I'm serious. What more can be added? What would it even look like? Any why does anything even need to be added? What kind of satisfaction is being pursued?

In the interest of furthering conversation, a question:

But Banno, if what is right is found by intuition, then there's no way for a person to distinguish between something actually being right and it merely seeming right to that person?

The knights will not suffice. — Banno

Why not?

Closer to that. But without the high heroic trappings. It's too high a standard to hold any actual person to. The totalitarian true believer is the knight of faith in a dark mirror. I'm thinking of something a little more modest, and human. Like : you know what's right, and you do your reasonable best to act accordingly, without worrying about whether these convictions are metaphysically justified.

Isn't that covered by the fideism part? Maybe the belief in God is simply a manifestation of the will to power, but the believer has faith it isn't.

Another way to put it would be the mapping both facilitates power and absorbs it both intra- and interpersonally. — Baden

Definitely, I've noticed it even in the hierarchical chains of a call center. But it seems less insidious there, where there's little pretense of being neutral purveyors of knowledge.

But Banno, if what is right is found by intuition, then there's no way for a person to distinguish between something actually being right and it merely seeming right to that person. — Banno

I think a moral fideism is reasonable. Have moral convictions, be resolute. Persuade others of these convictions when necessary.