Lyotard has a really interesting engagement with Wittgenstein - it's a bummer he (Lyotard) is mostly known, if at all, in relation to the term 'postmodern.' I think that makes a lot of people assume he's another Derrida, or worse, when he's anything but. He (Lyotard) has one book, Libidinal Economy that's very much in the style associated with postmodern excess, but everything else is very fastidious and, imo, absolutely brilliant. I feel like he has the cognitive approach of an AP guy, a focus on the themes of the continentals, and a sharp, precise prose-style that's all his own.

Lyotard, talking about something similar to the convo so far:

Yeah I had a really good time with everyone on the discord, esp voice chat - but unfortunately, it became a kind of crack for me, really accelerating my belligerent tendencies. You can be mean and contrarian and get an immediate response, instead of waiting. Speaking of which, sorry @Snakes Alive the latter half of my comments were pretty rude.

I think it probably has some feeling though, however simple.

For me socratic wonder is very much a military bombardment. Or maybe its that the space of wonder is guarded by artillery, so i want to get there but can't without going through a seemingly endless prepatory reconnaissance phase.

I don't think its that way for everyone, but it seems to characterize a lot of canonical philosophers. I think some of the sturdier, more grounded athenians may have taken a less-complicated pleasure in Socrates' thought. Idk about Socrates, he talked to himself, wandered around scrapping for fights, related to basically everyone ironically and seems to have been an alcoholic (how else would he have outdrank everyone, and remained conscious, in the symposium?)

What does this mean? That philosophizing is an aberration? Like pedophilia for the moderns, or the anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy period? Or, the bright gleam of the bowers built by the Bower bird? An animal, which, however, it seems, is not quite aware of its own work as work. — InternetStranger

more like the bower bird, and yeah I'd give a shiny nickel to be able to feel what the bower bird feels as it sets about making its bower, without, probably, a clear understanding of the end-product.

Repetition compulsion is a psychological phenomenon in which a person repeats a traumatic event or its circumstances over and over again. This includes reenacting the event or putting oneself in situations where the event is likely to happen again [...]

' Repetitions of traumatic events for the purpose of achieving a belated mastery...seen first and most clearly in children's games',although the 'same pattern occurs in the repetitive dreams and symptoms of traumatic neurotics and in many similar little actions of normal persons who...repeat upsetting experiences a number of times before these experiences are mastered.Such traumatic repetitions could themselves appear in active or passive forms. In a passive form, one chooses his or her most familiar experiences consistently as a means to deal with problems of the past, believing that new experiences will be more painful than their present situation or too new and untested to imagine. In the active, participatory form, a person actively engages in behavior that mimics an earlier stressor, either deliberately or unconsciously, so that in particular events that are terrifying in childhood become sources of attraction in adulthood. For instance, a person who was spanked as a child may incorporate this into their adult sexual practices; or a victim of sexual abuse may attempt to seduce another person of authority in his or her life (such as their boss or therapist): an attempt at mastery of their feelings and experience, in the sense that they unconsciously want to go through the same situation but that it not result negatively as it did in the past.
— wikipedia

(my bolding)

Fear of uncertainty, I would bet. — Wayfarer

I'd say the opposite. Philosophers, in general, seem more fearful of the uncertain than most. That's why they're always cautiously circling around it, with state-of-the-art tools to tame it.

I philosophize because I have a kind of obsessive neurosis and I can't not. One side-benefit of this neurosis is that a lot of philosophy is sincerely beautiful - and I get to experience that. But the trade-off is the same neuroses that have led me to a place where I can appreciate certain kinds of beauty have barred me from other types of beauty, which I often suspect are more beautiful. There are a lot of ways to roar! If others don't take to philosophizing, thats ok

One can't say stuff about the ineffable - but we do anyway. How does that work? Talk about the ineffable must be showing. — Banno

Very much in agreement with this.

One of my all-time favorite quotes from literature - its in my bio - deals with this, I think. He (William Gaddis) is obviously using language artistically (like the use of 'truth') but I think he's touching on something very similar:

"When people tell a truth they do not understand what they mean, they say it by accident, it goes through them and they do not recognize it until someone accuses them of telling the truth, then they try to recover it as their own and it escapes."

I think this captures the relationship between showing and saying well (and esp what happens when saying tries to be showing)

It seems like you're trying to strike a difficult balance where mental states can be understood wittgensteinally (and id agree) while also saying that, yes, in fact, 'mental states' are the atomic constituents of the mind.

This doesn't make sense to me.

(Unless youre just doing a game, for the sake of it, of 'if you speak of it, then its effable [and nothing is left out in the effing]' Which is basically a lingustic stove's gem, isn't it?)

yikes. I was three sheets and borderline incoherent. mental states are, of course, related to the 'ineffable stuff' despite my confused protests (not sure what my 'editorial' meant).

What I meant was that 'mental states' aren't a thing - they have no ontological heft. The meaning of 'mental states' boils down to complex patterns of behavior and linguistic usage. Or almost: its also grounded in the hodgpodge of values, insitutional, ethical etc, that ground those patterns.

So yes they're effable, mental states, because their substance is effability. They're a way of organizing our speech and behavior in the face of whatever is the cause of that speech and behavior (as mediated by the socio-linguistic game of 'mental states')

(Note that this isn't relativism. You can be wrong in ascribing a mental state, even if mental states don't 'exist'. Linguists talk about felicitous usage. That way of framing is right, here. The ability to tag something correctly, in the right way, in a complex tagging-environment is different than saying something that corresponds or doesnt to a real referent.)

\ sure and everything you quoted would indicate I agree.

Nor am I.

I would point out that if someone's mental state is ineffable, then it is pointless to discuss it.

But then we do discuss mental states - with a degree of ambiguity or uncertainty.

Hence, mental states cannot be ineffable.

How does that sit with you? — Banno

I think you've missed me from the get-go then

I strove- strove - to indicate how the use of things like 'mental states' is unrelated to the people to whom those states are attributed.

[editorial: real people who suffer are not grist for bad linguistic philosophy, they aren't examples for shallow wryness}

but -

youre a diamond in the rough bb

i already responded to that point, thoroughly.

talk to you in the morning, if then

So I agree, but that was my whole point. We're accustomed to think our experiences are "of" things, but there's no reason to think that's so. I take Descartes just to have noticed this.

Before we go further, I just want to make sure I understand. Your ultimate response to the idea that 'seems' talk is based on 'is' talk is to challenge the idea that experiences are experiences 'of' something? Is that fair?

I'd say that we're accustomed to thinking that the sun is large and out there. But I'm not trying to be difficult. I went to post something in agreement, but it's too significant a thing to smudge.

[edit] oh, unless your point was that there's no reason to think the sun is large and out there?

I was just puzzled by why you thought my comments were irrelevant, since they have to do with the topic discussed in the OP exactly. Maybe you wanted to talk about something else, not the OP, and were disappointed the conversation didn't steer the way you wanted? — Snakes Alive

Here's the post you're referencing:

It's true that that's how we're accustomed to think of it by default. I don't think there's any possible way to answer transcendent questions about whether that way of seeing it is the right way.

The point is that the Cartesian turn allows one to see it the other way – a way that one initially does not even understand that one can see it. In that sense, it's not like learning a new true proposition, but being able to see where once one was blind. You get a new ability. The Cartesian is also right that in some sense this is the way it was 'all along.' You can of course choose to ignore this new ability and have faith that it is just an aberration, and the old way of seeing things is the 'right way.' But it's just that – faith.

I sincerely - I'm not saying this rhetorically - don't know what this post means. I can't connect it to the broader discussion.

Well, then post on here. I was being tongue-in-cheek, it's not that bad. I feel like the thing you said about posts being bad was weirdly placed. It seemed to say something like: I don't need to respond to you, because this is a lame place!


Maybe, maybe. But then you're between a rock and hard place. And I don't know where to direct you

Look to discord. forums are the past.

Deal (sounds like you oughta find a better forum?)

you either - we're at an impasse!

shake hands and be done with it?

The point is that the Cartesian turn allows one to see it the other way – a way that one initially does not even understand that one can see it. In that sense, it's not like learning a new true proposition, but being able to see where once one was blind. You get a new ability. The Cartesian is also right that in some sense this is the way it was 'all along.' You can of course choose to ignore this new ability and have faith that it is just an aberration, and the old way of seeing things is the 'right way.' But it's just that – faith. — Snakes Alive

Wait, but none of this has anything to do with the Cartesian turn, at all. I don't mind rhetoric - i love rhetoric, - but only when its wedded to good argumentation. This is just a lot of rhetoric anchored on a phrase' cartesian turn' that , far as I can see, has no relation to any of the talk.

I don't even think you're playing foul, but this isn't....

But this whole metaphor relies on an autocorrection of visual data in order to furnish a true picture of the world. It's not true that the sun is small and here. It's large and out there. etc

It doesn't seem like a good metaphor to me. In fact, in seems like the opposite. We adjust our perceptions in order to fit them to a world we know is the real one. We'll make our perceptions fit the world we live in, before we discard them.

And, moreover, we're right to do so.

Based on my experience, the wisest people I know have little concern for wisdom. Or, at least, they learned what they now have to impart without considering how having that knowledge to impart would redound to their sense-of-self.

As an incorrigibly vain person, I envy that. My sense is that knowing this characteristic of people I consider to be actually wise will severely hobble me in my attempt to emulate them.

I agree with most of what you say, by the way.

But it's strikingly at odds with your metaphysics.

So the best we can do is grow to be pragmatically wise. And that will be such a sediment of habits that we are exposed if circumstances are changed radically. Like happens all the time in nature. — apokrisis

Of course one's metaphysics can be separated from one's practice. If your passion is [non-metaphysical-x] all the more power to you - but your passion seems to be metaphysics, no?

I think it's the case because it just happens, in the same way that we see distances, and so on. It's in the structure of experience, if you like. — Snakes Alive

When we see distances, we understand that the thing we're seeing is 'there', not 'here but small.'

When we see veridically (building on your analogy) we understand that the thing is real instead of not-real?

I mean, maybe. It seems like a strange analogy. I'm open to persuasion, but persuasion is needed.

I don't think we 'come by' a sense of veridicality. It's just how we're hardwired to think about things. There can't ever be 'evidence' ultimately that a perception is veridical. — Snakes Alive

When you say we're 'hardwired' - what do you mean by that? Why do you think that's the case?

That makes sense; the fact that we can conceive infinity can only be on account of the existence of an infinite being, a fact which, if true, guarantees the existence of God, and then God's benevolence guarantees the veracity of our perceptions. So strangely, it does look like our ability to conceive infinity, according to Descartes, guarantees the veracity of our empiric (finite) perceptions. It's curious; I'd never though about it like that before! :cool: — Janus

Right? I do disagree with him, but it's still a pretty exquisite thought-thing. Just conceptually-aesthetically, :ok:

Just did a reread. You're right that the guarantee is based on benevolence, but the benevolence is definitely based on the infinity stuff. Something like this: We could only conceive of infinity through our faculties were those faculties given to us by an infinite being. Therefore an infinite being exists. An infinite being would have no reason to deceive us (as deception is something like: subterfuge used to correct a bad state of affairs that is causing one to suffer--- this sort of thing would never apply to an infinite being.)

I'll have to have another read of the relevant section, but iirc the benevolence was secondary to the infinity thing, not vice-versa. (i.e. God's perfectly good, because of the infinity stuff.)

So we've generalized an explanation of the form "seems y because is x, in circumstance z" that helps us understand/cope with particular cases of perceptual error. Even if we posit something akin to desire as a prime mover within the dynamics of experience, why take the next step and universalize the formula to all possible experiences? Is it desire pushing us to look for an explanation where none exist? Or is it just bad metaphysics? — Aaron R

To answer well, I'd have go back and reread (or sufficiently read for the first time) Leibniz, Locke and Hume, among others.

All I can do is speculate, based on what I do remember. I'll probably get a lot wrong. That said:

Descartes guarantees the validity of our perceptions by reference to our ability to conceive of infinity (this is what 'god' for him boils down to.)

Locke et al disagreed with Descartes on this, yet retained the primacy of sense impressions for knowledge.

Let this marinate a while, and you get Hume. How can we connect impression x to impression y? Isn't this just habit?

And then Kant. Kant, as you probably know, doesn't substantialize the noumenon, despite rumors to the contrary - but the way in which he talks about the noumenon still gives some clues, maybe?

He talks a lot about how reason, necessarily, seeks the unconditioned. Seeks the unconditioned despite being dependent on the understanding and so being limited to the conditioned.

The infinity of Descartes, long-repressed, reappears here. But it's a little different. Kant's 'understanding' allows the interrelation of all phenomena in a legible conceptual web. Reason, on the other hand, seeks to ground the web itself. Kant is well-aware that it can't. But he's also aware that it can't help itself. So the Infinity of Descartes is pushed into the ethical (critique of moral reason) and the aesthetic (critique of judgment.)

I guess none of this answers your question though. Something about how reason needs to take everything as a whole, but needs that whole to be based on a ground. And how that is complemented by a different tendency to take everything as separate, but has no way of figuring out how those separate things hold together.

I'll try to take another stab tomorrow, a little soberer.

So? — Snakes Alive

It has much to do with the other part of my post.

again:

We need some sense of what veridicality means. Where can we come by such an understanding? — csalisbury

Sure, but who doubts this? Not Descartes. And it implies nothing about our epistemologically 'starting with' veridicality, or having had any veridical experiences. — Snakes Alive

I guess I'd respond by asking the same question again:

We need some sense of what veridicality means. Where can we come by such an understanding? — csalisbury

---

So if I seem to see a witch, I must have seen something similar to a witch? — Snakes Alive

I think you misread me here

To say that the non-veridical relies on the veridical is not to say that the seeming of any particular thing must rely on a prior veridical perception of some similar thing. — csalisbury

(bolding added)

How I could answer has nothing to do with epistemology, but again with syntax of language. It's perfectly possible that there are no veridical experiences whatsoever – that veridicality, however we are attuned to it, is a transcendental illusion of which we're doomed to make use. — Snakes Alive

I'm asking for conceptual unpacking without reference to 'is-talk', not that you don't use 'is' in your sentence. There's another way to say this: If it was 'seems' all the way down, even the 'evil demon' would make no sense as a cause. To talk of an evil demon causing whatever is to revert back to is-talk. If its 'seems' all the way down, 'seems' is lost. It 'seems' (ha!) like we're talking about something when we talk about the total absence of veridical experiences, but we're always smuggling them in, somewhere, as backdrop.

Hegel pointed out the thing-in-itself to be an abstraction. What gets abstracted away is every concrete form of existence leaving the mind with an existence-operator without any predicates following. It is nonsense that this empty form of existence would make up for reality. It is a consequence of contradictions between reality and assumptions that were made. From this the mind extrapolates that any assumption could come into conflict with reality and ends with: nothing. But this extrapolation - again - is not real, it is thought. — Heiko

Yes, exactly. But also an abstraction generated by the working of thought right? The impossibility of unifying the perceptual/sensual diversity of things into individual 'ones' forces us into the structure of explanation - explaining perceptual reality as the outcome of behind-the-scene forces. But then the same conceptual tendency that wanted - but failed - to unite the variety of perceptions into single 'things' leads to us to point to a united 'thing' in the invisible suprasensible realm.

Yeah 'Desire' is a little loaded, borrowed that from Hegel as well. I'm as confused desire-wise (probably more) as the next guy. A more neutral descriptor might be 'need for a conceptual anchor' where the need is less a personal need of the thinker that something impersonally generated from within the conceptual game. A prime-mover once we've jettisoned God, maybe.

I do think the conceptual analysis holds, as a kind of historical-philosophical narrative, even if you strip out the desire stuff, but I'm not sure.

Either way, mostly saying what you said in your last paragraph. I think the noumenal, treated as a something that 'is', is a smokescreen over something like 'ontological openness' - its a things-can-always-surprise-us rather than a stable second world behind the scenes.

Not so. Compare: it can seem like there is a witch, when there isn't. Must we have veridical witch-perceptions against which to 'compare' for this to be so? No, because it can seem like there are witches (perhaps it even has), yet there are none and have not been (let us assume). — Snakes Alive

Sure, but we need some sense of what it would mean were there such things as witches. In other words, we need some sense of what veridicality means. Where can we come by such an understanding?

To say that the non-veridical relies on the veridical is not to say that the seeming of any particular thing must rely on a prior veridical perception of some similar thing.

There is no 'as opposed to.' Something that seems to exist can actually exist, or it can not. — Snakes Alive

In explaining why there's nothing opposed, you immediately made recourse to existence and its negation i.e "is-talk". Could you answer another way without doing this?

This. Yes. The mental state is exhibited, apparent in the doings of the individual. — Banno

I would only add that the beliefs, emotions (ineffable other being-a-person things) etc of the person to whom the mental state are ascribed are totally real, just slip through the mesh of 'mental states' and any other linguistic net one might try to cast.

In other words, I'd agree that 'mental states' have a socio- behavioral meaning, but also say the fact that one can correctly use 'mental state x' indicates that there's an iceberg-beneath-the-tip level of stuff allowing this.

I'm not sure if we're on the same page in this regard?

Nothing about epistemology follows from that fact that 'seem' statements are syntactically more complex than statements not containing 'seem.' — Snakes Alive

It wasn't that 'seem' statements are syntactically more complex. It's that 'seem' statements can't be understood unless one first understands 'is' statements.

That from this one can conclude that one must 'start' with veridical perceptions in any way, in the sense that one has to have had any, is nonsense – this would imply that any phenomenon that people say seems to exist must have been met with actually existing, which is not the case. Existence proofs would then be very easy – it something seemed to exist, it would!

Not at all. It only means that non-veridical perceptions can only be understood as non-veridical against the backdrop of a web of other, veridical perceptions. If one were to say that all perceptions were non-veridical, but couldn't explain what he meant by 'veridical', then he'd literally be talking nonsense.

Put another way

this would imply that any phenomenon that people say seems to exist must have been met with actually existing

Let me take your perspective for a moment and subtract 'actually existing' from your sentence. What, then, are you saying?

again

Existence proofs would then be very easy – it something seemed to exist, it would!

If something 'seemed' to exist, as opposed to what?

I haven't read EPM in a long time (not since the reading-group thread here) so I can't remember if (and if so, how) he talks about this:

It seems to me like the noumenal "is" Hanover's discussing is an entirely different thing than "is" as we normally use it. Which is fine except that the discussion around the noumenal "is" often treats it as though we're talking garden-variety "is", if that makes sense.

I'm drawing on Hegel here, but it feels like what's happening is that a general structure of explanation ( 'seems y because is x, under circumstances z')is precipitated from the vast variety of local, specific explanations. Once this general structure crystallizes into view, and we become conscious of it, we mistakenly treat it as itself something to be explained, rather than as the immanent texture of knowledge,. So now we have "the realm of explanation" where all appearances are explained by something else, and we seek to explain that realm, taken in its entirety, by reference to... a mirror-world - where other, realer, *things* cause ( 'explain') the things we experience (I think this is what Hegel's getting st in the analysis of the 'topsy-turvy')

A step further is to admit that this supra-world is in essence unknowable while nevertheless retaining the void where it would remain, if it were knowable. But this confuses things. This is a matter of desire, not knowledge. It's wanting the (quasi-platonic) constants we use to know reality to have their own *substantial* reality; then: denying that they can, but still judging reality for failing to be the other kind of reality, when that other 'reality' is nothing but the asynchronous nature of knowledge reified.

It's desire in knowledge's clothing.

Here, I agree with apo:

But who would damn you for a life devoted to accumulating practical wisdom?

So why not focus on that? — apokrisis

Only thing I would change is the language - not 'accumulating' practical 'wisdom' - but just finding a way to live practically.

Cut-and-paste stew of Rilke's duino elegies:

Yes, the Spring-times needed you deeply.
Many a star must have been there for you so you might feel it. A wave lifted towards you out of the past, or, as you walked past an open window, a violin gave of itself. All this was their mission.
But could you handle it? Were you not always,
still, distracted by expectation, as if all you experienced, like a Beloved, came near to you? (Where could you contain her, with all the vast strange thoughts in you going in and out, and often staying the night.)

[...]

Ah, who then can we make use of? Not Angels: not men, and the resourceful creatures see clearly
that we are not really at homein the interpreted world. Perhaps there remains some tree on a slope, that we can see again each day

[...]
Show him with love a confident daily task
Lead him near to the Garden
Give him what outweighs those nights.