Even bored out of our skulls, we are constantly re-characterizing what time is. Even when we are most burdened by time unchanging, we are exhibiting its being change. — Gary M Washburn

Husserl wrote that the grounding of logic and mathematics depends on an idealization of the object. In order for there to be an object with extension, duration and magnitiude there has to be some aspect which is countable, calculable, measurable, mathematizable.
And in order fro this to be the case , an object has to resist time , it has to be present to itself , self-identical over time. Only this way can things appear ‘in’ time, as if time were an empty container. But Husserl shows that there is nothing primordially self-identical in experience. In order to construct the notion of a real object that persists as itself ‘in’ time , we must forget, ignore , disregard the fact that we are inventing this self-sameness out of an experiencing that in actually is presenting us with senses , aspects, perspectives of the world that change to moment to moment. We decide to intercept all of these flowing changes as a single ‘this’ and not notice we have done so.

Not enduring is unendurable. Extension without change is a myth we create to make being bearable. To forfend loss. After all, or before after all, death is the completest term of the articulation of the worth of time. The trick is to reduce that completeness to the infinitesimal. But what if the infinitesimal is the most extensive term of time? Yup, Husserl spent a lifetime trying to eliminate it. He failed.

Existentialism seems illogical — SteveMinjares

Well, that's probably the main thing within your point: existentialist philosophy actually denies logical necessity and the Kantian-Hegelian domination in philosophy, for these have reduced Life to pure systematisations and inquiries concerning reason and necessity.
Shestov praises possibility against the sterility of pure rationality; Heidegger criticises the course of Western philosophy for its preference for the ontic research, made possible by the oblivion of Being due to the inflation of reason; Kierkegaard suggests returning to the absolute relation between the subject and the Absolute in the face of the reduction of men to mere rational immanent categories...
The thing is that Existentialism literally already opposes itself to the mastery of reason within Life from the very beginning.

From where does logic receive its terms? Once it has them it can only manipulate them reductively. That is, by dividing what is said in them between 'is' and 'is not' into ever more finely drawn categories. But the rules applied in this have no ultimate truth or "self-evidence" other than our ability to recognize in each other the honesty and discipline of judgement and respect for each other in that judgement. That is, there is no synthetic reason. This opens the way for some to just make stuff up, as logicians do routinely, and call it truth. But they have to rig the conditions in order to get away with this. Existence cannot be rigged. For instance, the law of contradiction is only true a priori under the auspices of pertinent quantifiers. Some are - none are, all are, one is not, and so forth. But this is truth by definition, a circular argument, and the subject and predicate are irrelevant. What "A is B" might really mean, logically, is a complete and total mystery. Unless, that is, the ultimate product of the reductive function logic always is is the complete transformation, even if only in the minutest nuance to our ability to sustain our commitment to it, of all terms. That revision of the terms of reason is a drama subterranean to the conventional laws of reason. But if it comes as product of keeping faith with that law it cannot be untruth. And if it is the only real source of terms, if it is the only valid synthesis, it is hardly illogical to put in the effort to understand it, even though that effort is fraught with error and misdirection. But nothing can be more conducive to error and misdirection than to apply a patently invalid standard as the measure of being reasonable. The fact of the matter is there is no validity in experience and there is no truth in logic. We cannot validly derive anything from experience without appealing to the rational, and logical extensions are only valid or invalid, there is no truth in logic. We need both, and we need each other, to do either. We need existentialism to be logical.

I suspect that the first music made by early humans was improv. — Tom Storm

I wish I could attend some of those concerts. I imagine that they scared themselves.

..., and the first great art form was spitting at our hands...

The fact of the matter is there is no validity in experience and there is no truth in logic. We cannot validly derive anything from experience without appealing to the rational, and logical extensions are only valid or invalid, there is no truth in logic. — Gary M Washburn

It’s certainly the case that there is no validity to experience if by validity we mean formal logical validity. But there can be a pragmatic validity or pragmatic rationality , which simply amounts to discovering that subsequent events are inferentially compatible with our prior anticipations . Our expectations have then been validated, but not in a formal logical sense.

Bit of crib, aint it? I mean, this simply elides the dependence between reason and experience. Pretending it all happens by some ineffable means, so long as we make no effort to understand it, doesn't make it invulnerable to inquiry. The worst bet to make is when you're on a roll. Or, the sword aint fallen yet, but that doesn't mean it wont. I suppose you're referencing Hume. His history of England is great fun, best jokes in the notes. But patterns of experience are a dangerous standard to the user. Like the soldier (Baldric, in Blackadder iv) who put his name on a bullet thinking he would be safe in the trenches with that in his pocket. But it's not what you think you are, but what you know you do not deserve to be that determines the worth of your ideas. Theatetus concludes that knowledge is true perception plus a coherent explanation, Socrates, however, says that knowing that you do not know, knowing what it means that yo do not know, is the essence of knowledge, and truth.

this simply elides the dependence between reason and experience. Pretending it all happens by some ineffable means, so long as we make no effort to understand it, doesn't make it invulnerable to inquiry. T — Gary M Washburn

There is more than one way to understand reason and rationality, as Husserl showed. The motive force behind his phenomenology is the striving for fulfillment of unity. Intentionality mnaifests this at all levels of constitution via associative synthesis , which is based on the linking of the new with the past on the basis of similarity, concordance, commonality , harmony. This is how reason manifests itself in his model.

it's not what you think you are, but what you know you do not deserve to be that determines the worth of your ideas. — Gary M Washburn

I would say it is the usefulness of your ideas in making sense of new events concoedanrly with previous expectations that determines the worth of your ideas.

"unity" "concordance"! Listen to yourself! These are quantifiers! Worth is qualifying. Meaning is qualification. Language is its intimation. We resort to quantifiers because because reason is reductive. The only way to reach the synthetic term is the exhaustion of analysis. But so exhausted, all terms alter. though, again, if only in the dynamic nuances of our sustaining our convictions. It is precisely through our effort to be consistent that all terms change. Because time is the intimation of the moment of its worth.

unity" "concordance"! Listen to yourself! These are quantifiers! Worth is qualifying. Meaning is qualification. Language is its intimation. We resort to quantifiers because because reason is reductive. The only way to reach the synthetic term is the exhaustion of analysis. — Gary M Washburn

These are only quantifiers if they refer to a quantifiable quality , something with an aspect that can be counted and measured. But in the hands of phenomenologists like Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty , and Nietzsche, intimacy of relation from one moment to the next is not subject to measurement and quantification.
If an event is like a previous one , if they share a dimension of similarity , than by implication they also differ from one another. This is how experience can continue in a thematic direction as continuing to be the same differently. One could even say that the entire world as it is experienced is reinvented from scratch as a new quality every moment, that I am reinvented from
scratch every moment , that my history is reinvented from
scratch every moment , and yet maintain that to experience is to recognize , on the basis of similarity and difference, the new in relation to the old. Absolute qualitative difference is no no experience at all.

It is precisely through our effort to be consistent that all terms change — Gary M Washburn

Terms are always changing.That is the precondition for Husserlian intentionality , Heidegger’s Dasein , Derrida’s difference and Nietzsche’s value systems. The aim is not to stop change but to move through change more aggressively, consistently , to embrace the new fluidly. As heidegger puts it, authentic being is directed toward one’s ownmost possibilities of being. Derrida celebrates
the multiplication of differences. Absolute , unassimilable novelty isnt change at all, but stagnation, just as is quantifiable change.

Can't difference be shared? If the paradigms of reason just don't quite cut it, isn't difference more "primordial"? And if so, contrariety is more foundational than contradiction. That is, we are more potently contrary to the inadequacies of reason if we discover that contrariety in contrariety to each other. In doing so we become a community in contrariety. But, naturally, that community only extends in dissipation of the moment of it, its worth is lost, and we are set upon a new dialectic of reduction and intimation. That is, we may never agree, but the terms of our discourse fully emerge.

We know we do not teach children to speak. Trying to only makes a hash of it. And when the child does speak he or she is already made him or herself native to that language. Language is only born fully grown. It is intimated, not taught or learned. A second language is never the same, and multilingual people are notoriously inarticulate.

A second language is never the same, and multilingual people are notoriously inarticulate. — Gary M Washburn

Vladimir Nabokov notwithstanding. It's an interesting claim. Where did you crib it from?

The aim is not to stop change but to move through change more aggressively, consistently , to embrace the new fluidly. — Joshs

For what reason?

@Gary M Washburn

Sure, the argument is only valid because we mark it as so; but so what?

If we mark it as so, the the argument is valid!

Sure, these are only quantifiers if we so choose; but so what?

If we mark it as valuable, then it is of value!

You state the obvious as if it were hidden.

The aim is not to stop change but to move through change more aggressively, consistently , to embrace the new fluidly. — Joshs

For what reason? — Tom Storm

To stay one step ahead of the bill collector. Who says philosophy isn’t practical?

Also , because I’m assuming it is the human condition that we find ourselves always already in motion. The world around us will never be the same from one moment to the next. If we cannot find ways, channels of construing this flow such that it makes recognizable sense to us in its endless new variations , then our experience will be one of stagnation. stuckness , constriction of possibilities , withdrawal and depression.
So my referring to aggressive experiential change is another way of conveying the idea of richly intimate change, for instance in flow experiences. If the balance of novelty and familiarity is too skewed in the direction of novelty, then in fact one cannot change , because one cannot even fully absorb what one is encountering. A fog of chaotic , confused incidentals doesn’t amount to much substantive experience at all.

So what? it's an argument that serves as long as all are in agreement, I suppose, but it aint much of a response to a different view. Maybe my views are flawed, but "So what?" doesn't add or detract.



Not him. Am I wrong? It's just something I've noticed over the years, and maybe why there are so few good translators. Don't recall ever finding anything pertinent in Nabokov. I suppose learning two or more languages as an infant is almost the same, but not thereafter. The introduction to the world, and to a facile ease of speaking one's native tongue, is a one-time deal. And no, it aint "wired-in" either.

If the paradigms of reason just don't quite cut it, isn't difference more "primordial"? And if so, contrariety is more foundational than contradiction. That is, we are more potently contrary to the inadequacies of reason if we discover that contrariety in contrariety to each other. In doing so we become a community in contrariety. But, naturally, that community only extends in dissipation of the moment of it, its worth is lost, and we are set upon a new dialectic of reduction and intimation. That is, we may never agree, but the terms of our discourse fully emerge — Gary M Washburn

I certainly agree that difference is primordial. This sounds a bit like Jean-Luc Nancy’s Inoperative Community, a community of differences in which the whole never commands or encompasses
the many.

it's an argument that serves as long as all are in agreement... — Gary M Washburn

My favourite Existentialist Comic:

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/58

Camus and Sartre's disagreement is, for de Beauvoir, an entertainment.

So, please - you, @Tom Storm, @Joshs - do continue... !

Which is the more completed moment? When you suddenly realize what you thought to be a friend, even a lover, is a betrayer, or when the stranger you meet in a land strange to you suddenly shows himself to be a welcoming friend?

When a child is born i is a unique presence in the universe untested of its boundless capacity to intimate the worth of it. It's parents, however, are bound to a life of putting boundaries upon it. That is, upon the intimation of the worth of time. The infant struggles to reconcile that boundlessness with that boundedness. That reconciliation, initially, can only be wholesale. Once boundless, but become forever bounded. That transformation is the intimation. I do not mean "closeness". And I do not mean change that we can anticipate or pursue. I mean change as complete as the awakening of language in childhood, always completest at its inception, and always tempered differences we discipline each other in.

Don't recall ever finding anything pertinent in Nabokov. — Gary M Washburn

Does this not make an assumption that you have a talent for identifying pertinence? If we don't see something is it because it is not there, or because we are unable to apprehend it? I ask myself this daily.

The world around us will never be the same from one moment to the next. — Joshs

I've never found this to be particularly true to my experience. But I don't live in Afghanistan...

So my referring to aggressive experiential change is another way of conveying the idea of richly intimate change, for instance in flow experiences. If the balance of novelty and familiarity is too skewed in the direction of novelty, then in fact one cannot change , because one cannot even fully absorb what one is encountering. A fog of chaotic , confused incidentals doesn’t amount to much substantive experience at all. — Joshs

Sorry Josh your wording is a bit unclear to me here. It sounds like you are essentially saying, go with the flow but with some qualifier?

The world around us will never be the same from one moment to the next.
— Joshs

I've never found this to be particularly true to my experience. But I don't live in Afghanistan... — Tom Storm

I’m talking about a very subtle phenomenon. But notice your perceptual world as an example. There isn’t a single object you can pay attention to right now that will appear exactly the
same when you turn your attention back to it a minute from now. Everything that goes into your perception of it, your bodily stance as anger of view , the lighting , the color , and also your affective attitude, all these subtly change. It doesn’t seem to have much relevance in such a small time frame , but becomes much more
significant when we compare greater stretches of time.

It sounds like you are essentially saying, go with the flow but with some qualifier? — Tom Storm

I guess what I’m saying is that there will not be much of a flow to go with , or at least not as a reliably regular part of one’s life, if one doesn’t take active steps to explore different ways of construing situations in response to feelings of stuckness , puzzlement and anxiety. A relentlessly experimental attitude toward
one’s presuppositions, especially when they no longer seem to be useful ( which is what negative feelings warn us of) , can help us to orchestrate the preconditions for confident, joyful flow. Flow doesn’t just drop into our lap , it’s a certain attitude toward a situation that we have to work to achieve.

Some things really do just have to be left to personal discretion. How I spend my study time is one of them. Just answering your inquiry. No, Nabokov was no influence. Sorry if that troubles you, but there it is...

No, Nabokov was no influence. Sorry if that troubles you, but there it is... — Gary M Washburn

Interesting that you assume I care about Nabakov. I was more interested in the justification of your somewhat lofty pronouncement/s. So are you saying you often operate by discretion? Is this a reliable pathway to truth?

So why bring him up? I don't waste a lot of time on fiction, not even Sartre's. I've tried to write some, but I'm not at all happy with the results. It feels like pulling a fast one on the reader, and a thinker should speak for himself. I assumed there must be something in Nabokov you thought resembled my views, and maybe that he was an influence. The only influence I feel comfortable with is Plato, but, unfortunately, the literature is dead against me. Lofty? Maybe, but only if I don't have the goods to back it up. But these discussions preclude prolixity. We look at each other's mind through a keyhole and expect to grasp the horizon.