@apokrisis@wonderer1

I've deleted that exchange. Kindly desist.

I've never quite known if they go as far as the critics suggest. :wink: I think they are probably an easy target... relativism this... relativism that... blah, blah blah. Like Chomsky I find them too complex to formulate a clear understanding, and I've never had the time. But I have to say, what I do know I find fascinating.

When I read Rorty, I am sometimes stuck by the romanticism underpinning the thinking - 'My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.' — Tom Storm

The postmodernist who best represents the obscurity I have in mind is Derrida; his idea of the endless deference of meaning I find unconvincing and his writing generally impenetrable on account of the ambiguity and arcane references. When his philosophy is boiled down to its central ideas, it seems neither groundbreaking nor insightful.

So, I would say " too obscure" rather than "too complex", and I doubt it is possible to formulate "a clear understanding", and even if it were I doubt it would be worth the effort, since it seems to be mostly sophistry. I know what you mean by "finding it fascinating"; it does have a kind of poetic fascination in its eccentric wordplay, and perhaps the language can be enjoyed just for its own sake.

From the little I have read of their work; I find Foucault and Deleuze are much more philosophically interesting. I am yet to read Rorty; I have had Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature on my shelves for years and am yet to get around to reading it.

I like the utopic vision expressed in the quote; probably a pipe dream, but a nice one, nonetheless.

:up:

Joshs seems to be arguing that we paint differently, therefore there are no truths. — Banno

Yes, or that we don't see the same things, which I guess amounts to the same thing.

There's a well-worn anecdote in linguistics about Eskimos having 39 different words for snow. I seem to recall reading that it's been disputed, but the point of the story is that, due to their environment, Eskimos had many more ways of differentiating the qualities of snow and ice than English does. This was said to be a result of, and have bearing on, many aspects of their day-to-day lives, applicable to hunting activities and many other facets of Eskimo life. (Now I look, there's a rather good Wikipedia entry on the topic.) The point being to illustrate the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity, that languages both reflect and influence our perception of the world.

I noticed that some of the innate characteristics of English carry philosophical or perhaps meta-linguistic implications which are barely noticed by speakers, as it's woven into their way of speaking.

One example arises from the propositional structure of the language which differs from the inflected languages like Latin, where the declensions of verbs are given in the verb suffix rather than distinct particles 'I', 'we', 'they' etc. The effect of this is seen, for example, in the expression 'it is raining', which suggest 'an object which rains'. (This is something I remember Alan Watts commenting on.) What is the 'it' that rains? Really there is no such object, there is simply 'raining' but the structure of our language is such that it has to be expressed in those terms. This underlying structure tends to make English a rather transactional language, comprising objects, subjects and activities, which reflects a somewhat 'atomised' conception of reality, rather than imparting a sense of flow or union which is suggested in other languages.

In a more general sense, I often reflect on the paucity of current English for dealing with what I consider some essential philosophical ideas and distinctions, particularly in the area of metaphysics and philosophy of religion. Indeed, both those are nowadays 'boo words' which carry a lot of historical baggage and provoke the associated responses. Another such word is 'spiritual', which is used in a very broad sense to denote a kind of non-specific religious sensibility. But I know from Buddhist studies that there's actually no word corresponding to 'spiritual' in Buddhism, and likewise that many of the key words in the Buddhist lexicon (dharma, dukkha, saṃsāra, vijnana, many others) have no single-word equivalent in English. Instead they are mapped against what are thought to be their equivalents, often derived from the Christian lexicon, against which they're really not a good fit.

The way I have come to understand it is that there are domains of discourse within which words derive their meaning. I don't know if there is anything like a universal language in that sense (although maths and physics would come close, but they're not languages in the sense being discussed.) Hence the significance of hermeneutics, which is mainly aimed at understanding language within its particular domain of discourse.

@Joshs examples seem to have a common problem, which I think is the one addressed by Austin in Sense and Sensibilia. There's something very odd in supposing that a group all look at the same vase, and yet all see it differently, but to then concluding that therefore they did not all look at the same vase, that there was somehow a different vase fro each of the,

Well, no; they all looked at the same vase, but it looked different to each of them.

If the subject were a still life with flowers, vases, glasses and fruit, for example, and the instruction to represent every item, I have no doubt that most people would do that, which shows that people see the same things. — Janus

Have you seen how 15th century Japanese, Chinese or Indian artists conveyed “photographic reality”? You might say they preferred not to render the world with photo realism, but then what about early Western art? Such inventions as perspective , unifying a scene via a single light source , the understanding of the interaction of color, human proportionality( not rendering children to look like miniature adults) were not incorporated in older periods of art. You might say that artists came to understand how to convey the ‘real world’ more accurately over time, whereas I’d say that their pictorial constructions of the world changed not by better approximating it but by shifting their worldview to accord with changing purposes.

Well, no; they all looked at the same vase, but it looked different to each of them — Banno

Where do we have an example of ‘ same’ , of ‘identity’, to draw from in coming to that conclusion? What is the origin of this understanding of ‘sameness’?

:up:

You might say that artists came to understand how to convey the ‘real world’ more accurately over time, whereas I’d say that their pictorial constructions of the world changed not by better approximating it but by shifting their worldview to accord with changing purposes. — Joshs

I'd say that people came to understand the principles of perspective and to explore image-making in accordance with these newfound principles, and then later came to deliberately represent things in ways that contravene those principles. Photographs do not contravene the principles of perspective, though, and those principles do best formulate how we normally see things.

If we want to discover whether people see the same things and features of things all we have to do is ask. It is a commonplace fact that people do see the same things including relatively insignificant features of things, and this can easily be proven if they are asked to look closely and report what they see.

What is the 'it' that rains? Really there is no such object, there is simply 'raining' but the structure of our language is such that it has to be expressed in those terms. — Wayfarer

It's obvious; the sky rains.

The way I have come to understand it is that there are domains of discourse within which words derive their meaning. — Wayfarer

You're leaving out half of the picture: it's not just domains of discourse, but the domains of experience which give the domains of discourse sense. You cannot have a language game without the commonality of experience that provides something to talk about.

Where do we have an example of ‘ same’ , of ‘identity’, to draw from in coming to that conclusion? What is the origin of this understanding of ‘sameness’? — Joshs

Simply the bit where you specified in your own example that they looked at the same vase:

Ask them to paint the ‘same ‘ vase of flowers as accurately as possible. — Joshs

We do this sort of thing all the time, without problem. You read the same post I wrote. You are on the same forum as I am. You seem to think it problematic, and hence the scare quotes. But in doing that, you are presuposing the problem you think you are arguing for.

What is the 'it' that rains? Really there is no such object, there is simply 'raining' but the structure of our language is such that it has to be expressed in those terms.
— Wayfarer

It's obvious; the sky rains. — Janus

The it = It is the case that it is raining? :wink:

One example arises from the propositional structure of the language which differs from the inflected languages like Latin, where the declensions of verbs are given in the verb suffix rather than distinct particles 'I', 'we', 'they' etc. The effect of this is seen, for example, in the expression 'it is raining', which suggest 'an object which rains'. (This is something I remember Alan Watts commenting on.) What is the 'it' that rains? Really there is no such object, there is simply 'raining' but the structure of our language is such that it has to be expressed in those terms. This underlying structure tends to make English a rather transactional language, comprising objects, subjects and activities, which reflects a somewhat 'atomised' conception of reality, rather than imparting a sense of flow or union which is suggested in other languages. — Wayfarer

That's an interesting example worth noting.

The way I have come to understand it is that there are domains of discourse within which words derive their meaning. I don't know if there is anything like a universal language in that sense (although maths and physics would come close, but they're not languages in the sense being discussed.) Hence the significance of hermeneutics, which is mainly aimed at understanding language within its particular domain of discourse. — Wayfarer

This echoes what Richard Rorty says about truth as being the product of a domain of discourse rather than attached to 'reality'. Which potentially brings us back to Lawson's point about language not being connected in a discernable way to reality.

Which may lead one to thinking this (Rorty this time):

To drop the idea of languages as representations, and to be thoroughly Wittgensteinian in our approach to language, would be to de-divinise the world. Only if we do that can we fully accept the argument I offered earlier – the argument that since truth requires sentences, since sentences are products of vocabularies, and since vocabularies are made by human beings, so are truths. For as long as we think that ‘the world’ names something which we ought to respect as well as to cope with, something which is person-like in that it has a preferred description of itself, we shall insist that any philosophical account of truth save the ‘intuition’ that truth is ‘out there’. This intuition amounts to the vague sense that it would be hubris on our part to abandon the traditional language of ‘respect for fact’ and ‘objectivity’ – that it would be risky and blasphemous not to see the scientist (or the philosopher, or the poet, or somebody) as having a priestly function, as putting us in touch with a realm which transcends the human.

Antirealists point out that for "The kettle is boiling" to be true, we need "The", "kettle", "is" and "boiling". And seem to stop there.

But we also need a boiling kettle.

The postmodernist who best represents the obscurity I have in mind is Derrida; his idea of the endless deference of meaning I find unconvincing and his writing generally impenetrable on account of the ambiguity and arcane references. When his philosophy is boiled down to its central ideas, it seems neither groundbreaking nor insightful — Janus

Try Heidegger then.

“I believe that, indeed, as was said in the 1980 Cerisy conference, there is a point at which between what I am attempting and what Heidegger did, there is no difference in terms of content. One can very well retranslate the entirety-I'm speaking hypothetically here-one can retranslate the entirety of the thinking of the trace or of writing into the thinking of being. One can do this translation. At that point, only one difference will remain, which some may deem extrinsic, namely, a difference in style, tone, gesture, manner, pathos. But from the point of view of content, if it could be isolated, one can translate one into the other, and so reduce everything I'm doing to one paragraph in Heidegger's work... This gesture would consist, obviously, would presuppose the erasure of questions of tone, language, posture, gesture, as secondary questions. Ok. And of idiom! Of linguistic idiom, as well.. Which I, for one, would not be ready to do so easily…” (Derrida on Heidegger)

So, I would say " too obscure" rather than "too complex", and I doubt it is possible to formulate "a clear understanding", and even if it were I doubt it would be worth the effort, since it seems to be mostly sophistry. I — Janus

It’s not sophistry, it’s highly rigorous philosophy. I’m sorry you dont understand him but don’t blame the messenger for your failure to understand the message.

The it = It is the case that it is raining? :wink: — Tom Storm

Yes, that's another way of looking at it. But it remains true that when it is raining it is the sky or the cloud, if you like, that is raining.

Which may lead one to thinking this (Rorty this time): — Tom Storm

He is thinking only of truth or falsity as attributes of propositions or sentences. There is a more ancient understanding of truth as actuality or "alethia". Heidegger revives this idea. Also, there is the idea of truth as "hitting the mark" and in that sense our perceptions can be true or not.

Antirealists point out that for "The kettle is boiling" to be true, we need "The", "kettle", "is" and "boiling". And seem to stop there. — Banno

Do they? I thought they were more crafty. I thought they were more likely to accept that there is empirical justification for holding that (in this example) something is happening, subject to a contingent activities and discourse. A kettle and boiling would work in English and pragmatically if you are steaming a hat or making tea, etc. But what do I know?

If we want to discover whether people see the same things and features of things all we have to do is ask. It is a commonplace fact that people do see the same things including relatively insignificant features of things, and this can easily be proven if they are asked to look closely and report what they see — Janus

Psychologists have tools for this , such as Rorschach tests. They reveal how striking different one person’s sense of the relevant meaning of a thing is from another person’s. Dont confuse conventional language, which is designed to hide these differences, from the differences themselves.

Antirealists point out that for "The kettle is boiling" to be true, we need "The", "kettle", "is" and "boiling". And seem to stop there.

But we also need a boiling kettle. — Banno

Nah. A deflationary account of truth is compatible with either realism or anti-realism.

As usual I don't know what Derrida is trying to say there (if in fact he is trying to say anything).

It’s not sophistry, it’s highly rigorous philosophy. I’m sorry you dont understand him but don’t blame the messenger for your failure to understand the message. — Joshs

Right, I already know that is your opinion. It's not mine. Is there a fact of the matter as to whether Derrida's work is "highly rigorous philosophy"? If he is, then you should be able to explain in clear language just what he is saying in that passage you quoted.

I have no problem with ambiguity in poetry; in fact, I would say it is a hallmark of good or interesting poetry. I don't think the same way about philosophy. I have no trouble understanding (early) Heidegger, Kant or Hegel, Husserl, Foucault, Deleuze, Wittgenstein or Merleau Ponty, but Derrida is a different beast. Even Foucault said (in a conversation with Searle) that much of what Derrida writes is gobbledygook.

Do they? — Tom Storm

I'll take my previous comment in this post back, seeing as how we don't really need another pissing competition, and just say that I find the antirealist arguments difficult to follow.

Psychologists have tools for this , such as Rorschach tests. They reveal how striking different one person’s sense of the relevant meaning of a thing is from another person’s. Dont confuse conventional language, which is designed to hide these differences, from the differences themselves. — Joshs

It has nothing to do with language except insofar as we use language to report. And I'm not talking about "relevant meanings" either. Find any complex object with many distinct features and invite a friend to tell you just what she sees at the precise locations you point to on the object. You will find that she sees just the same features that you do.

Whether she sees them in just the same way you do, and if not, how does it differ is another question altogether: and one for which there can be no definitive answer, since comparison is obviously impossible. Since you and she are different organisms, we can safely assume that there will be differences, even if we cannot say what they are.

I'll take a plain language stab at it @Janus

Derrida is saying, at a minimum, that "tone, language, posture, gesture," are philosophically important -- else he wouldn't have written what he wrote, since Heidegger already wrote it.

But also that provides a clue into reading his philosophy: start with Heidegger, and then try and read what's different.

On the surface, at least, they both seem to share a certain suspicion of categorization. The present-at-hand and presence perform similar roles in that they have a non-visual complement -- the ready-to-hand and absence, which are meant to show how our phenomenology and language rely upon not just the metaphysics of presence, but this other unexamined side as well.

The tone, though! What a difference! Heidegger the joyless and serious spiritual questor for a Truth long forgotten, vs. the joyful and playful linguist. And in a way this makes sense with the above because tone, language, posture, and gesture are the absent components of writing in looking at language from the perspective of the metaphysics of presence.

We do this sort of thing all the time, without problem. You read the same post I wrote. You are on the same forum as I am. You seem to think it problematic, and hence the scare quotes. But in doing that, you are presuposing the problem you think you are arguing for — Banno

When I hear the word ‘same’ I read it as ‘similar’. I find
Husserl’s phenomenological analyses of the construction of empirical objects helpful here. According to Husserl, in my perceptual experience of the world, my empathetic connection with an intersubjective community in the form of apperception of alter egos leads to an ‘objective’ social space in which each individual believes himself to be living in the same world, in which his own perceptions are mere appearances of the identical things that everyone else experiences. But this sense of my own perception as mere appearance of what is factually the same for everyone is the appearance for me of what can never be actually identical. The ways in which I apperceptively fuse others perceptual contributions to the constitution of objects with my own perceptual adumbrations will always provide me with constituted appearances of things which are unique to my own construing, even as I calls these personally construed appearances a mere representation of the true world, identical for everyone.

“If one attends to the distinction between things as "originally one's own" and as "empathized" from others, in respect to the how of the manners of appearance, and if one attends to the possibility of discrepancies between one's own and empathized views, then what one actually
experiences originaliter as a perceptual thing is transformed, for each of us, into a mere
"representation of" ["Vorstellung von"], "appearance of/' the one objectively existing thing. From the synthesis these have taken on precisely the new sense "appearance of," and as such they are henceforth valid. 'The" thing itself is actually that which no one experiences as really seen, since it is always in motion, always, and for everyone, a unity for consciousness of the openly endless multiplicity of changing experiences and experienced things, one's own and those of others.” (Crisis Of European Sciences)

Is there a fact of the matter as to whether Derrida's work is "highly rigorous philosophy"? If he is, then you should be able to explain in clear language just what he is saying in that passage you quoted. — Janus

Is there a fact of the matter about anything? I can explain Derrida in clear language but that doesn’t mean you’ll understand it. Clarity follows conceptual apprehension rather than preceding it. Look, if you tell me you dont get Derrida because his style of writing is too aleatory or digressive or whatnot, I can respect that. I also think his style is too aleatory and digressive, and that he has less to say than Heidegger. But at least add a qualifier if you’re going to claim he is just a sophist with nothing substantive to say, something like ‘I worry that his work may be not more than sophistry’.

You say you have no trouble understanding early Heidegger. Here’s your chance to prove it. Have you read Derrida’s deconstruction of Heidegger in ‘Heidegger and the Question?’ He lays out a clear series of points of disagreement with Heidegger, on Animality, questioning and oppositional thinking. These critical remarks have had quite an influence on Heidegger scholarship. Do they amount to just sophistry? Heidegger may have been the more original thinker, but I do think Derrida went beyond him. And since I think Heidegger was the greatest 20th century philosopher, that says a lot.

I find
Husserl’s phenomenological analyses of the construction of empirical objects helpful here. According to Husserl, in my perceptual experience of the world, my empathetic connection with an intersubjective community in the form of apperception of alter egos leads to an ‘objective’ social space in which each individual believes himself to be living in the same world, in which his own perceptions are mere appearances of the identical things that everyone else experiences. But this sense of my own perception as mere appearance of what is factually the same for everyone is the appearance for me of what can never be actually identical. The ways in which I apperceptively fuse others perceptual contributions to the constitution of objects with my own perceptual adumbrations will always provide me with constituted appearances of things which are unique to my own construing, even as I calls these personally construed appearances a mere representation of the true world, identical for everyone. — Joshs

But this doesn't go beyond the realm of speculation. Notice that you're giving an account of the nature of reality, but you don't have the transcendent vantage point implied by the narrative.

It has nothing to do with language except insofar as we use language to report. And I'm not talking about "relevant meanings" either. Find any complex object with many distinct features and invite a friend to tell you just what she sees at the precise locations you point to on the object. You will find that she sees just the same features that you do. — Janus

Why aren’t you talking about relevant meanings? Is there such a thing as a neutral meaning, divorced from relevance? This is crucial to understanding how we construct sense and language. Heidegger’s thesis in Being and Time centers around the fact that how things matter to us is not separable from what they are in themselves. Extracting a neutral fact of the matter is “an artificially worked up act.”

“The most immediate state of affairs is, in fact, that we simply see and take things as they are: board, bench, house, policeman. Yes, of course. However, this taking is always a taking within the context of dealing-with something, and therefore is always a taking-as, but in such a way that the as-character does not become explicit in the act. The non-explicitness of this “as” is precisely what constitutes the act's so-called directness. Yes, the thing that is understood can be apprehended directly as it is in itself. But this directness regarding the thing apprehended does not inhibit the act from having a developed structure…
Acts of directly taking something, having something, dealing with it “as something,” are so original that trying to understand anything without employing the “as” requires (if it's possible at all) a peculiar inversion of the natural order. Understanding something without the “as”—in a pure sensation, for example—can be carried out only “reductively,” by “pulling back” from an as-structured experience. And we must say: far from being primordial, we have to designate it as an artificially worked-up act. Most important, such an experience is per se possible only as the privation of an as-structured experience. It occurs only within an as-structured experience and by prescinding from the “as”— which is the same as admitting that as-structured experience is primary, since it is what one must first of all prescind from."(Logic,The Question of Truth,p.122)

“The kind of being of these beings is "handiness" (Zuhandenheit). But it must not be understood as a mere characteristic of interpretation, as if such "aspects" were discursively forced upon "beings" which we initially encounter, as if an initially objectively present world-stuff were "subjectively colored" in this way. Such an interpretation overlooks the fact that in that case beings would have to be understood before hand and discovered as purely objectively present, and would thus have priority and take the lead in the order of discovering and appropriating association with the "world." But this already goes against the ontological meaning of the cognition which we showed to be a founded mode of being-in-the-world. To expose what is merely objectively present, cognition must first penetrate beyond things at hand being taken care of. Handiness is the ontological categorial definition of beings as they are "in themselves.“ (Being and Time)

But this doesn't go beyond the realm of speculation. Notice that you're giving an account of the nature of reality, but you don't have the transcendent vantage point implied by the narrative — frank

It’s a phenomenological analysis based on what actually appears to me, using the method of the epoche, or bracketing, of presuppositions concerning the empirically factual world. From a naive vantage, I see empirical objects existing in the same world as others,but from a more rigorous vantage, after having bracketed what is contingent and relative in my experience of the world, what remains for me are synthesizing processes that correlate never-repeating elements of experience based on patterns of perceived similarities.

It’s a phenomenological analysis based on what actually appears to me — Joshs

Sure. And that kind of data can be interpreted in a thousand different ways. There's no way to determine which is correct. It's fun to work on philosophical projects, but that fun is as far as it goes.

From a naive vantage, I see empirical objects existing in the same world as others,but from a more rigorous vantage, after having bracketed what is contingent and relative in my experience of the world, what remains for me are synthesizing processes that correlate never-repeating elements of experience based on patterns of perceived similarities. — Joshs

And that doesn't get you to a transcendent vantage point. When phenomenology pretends to become ontology, it's language on holiday.

And that doesn't get you to a transcendent vantage point. When phenomenology pretends to become ontology, it's language on holiday. — frank

Rather than transcendence or correctness, such a method can bring us to an awareness of what appears to remain invariant throughout the changes in experience. If through this process we repeatedly discover that all specific contents are relative and contingent, then what remains invariant may be empty formal structures such as the synthetic relation between past, present and future. At the same time, such an awareness doesn’t render conventional views of empiricism, objective truth and faith in a same world for everyone as incorrect. It simply allows us to enrich such concepts by revealing a basis for them that they are not explicitly aware of. In other words, by dropping the focus on truth as correct match between subject and world in favor of truth as the invariant features of our constructions of experience, we enrich concepts like material reality with the dimensions of self-reflexivity and interactive reciprocity.

When I hear the word ‘same’ I read it as ‘similar’. — Joshs

So, when you read the word 'same' you hear it as 'different'? Is that possible without some notion of 'same' that maintains the distinction between 'same' and 'similar'?

It simply allows us to enrich such concepts by revealing a basis for them that they are not explicitly aware of. — Joshs

That would require a transcendent vantage point which is unavailable. There's no basis for perception being revealed, but just a parade of myths, metaphors, and speculations, which is fine. It's just not ontology.

In other words, by dropping the focus on truth as correct match between subject and world in favor of truth as the invariant features of our constructions of experience, we enrich concepts like material reality with the dimensions of self-reflexivity and interactive reciprocity. — Joshs

We should have long since dropped "truth as a correct match between subject and world." That's correspondence theory. It has a infinite regress at its sprouting point. If you're looking for something rigorous, look into the ways logician's have demolished correspondence as the measure of truth, and the same rigor would do away with any other theory, including that truth is the invariant features of our constructions of experience.

This is what I'm saying, you've arrived at the crossroads of AP and continental philosophy. What do you do next?

There is a more ancient understanding of truth as actuality or "alethia". — Janus

There is also the sense of true as straight. Carpentry uses the term in this way. Related to this is 'orthodoxy' - straight opinion, and 'orthodontry' - straight teeth. There is also the distinction in the Hebrew Bible between those whose ways and words are straight or crooked. The root of the word 'crook'.

So, when you read the word 'same' you hear it as 'different'? Is that possible without some notion of 'same' that maintains the distinction between 'same' and 'similar'? — Fooloso4

As you know, ‘similar’ is a species of difference, as is disparate, homologous, analogous, synonymous, opposite. Identity and same are also species of difference. Unlike similar, people tend to use the concepts of identity and same in circumstances (A=A) where difference goes unnoticed even when it implicitly forms the basis of the comparison. This is typically because subtle changes in sense and relevance are considered as peripheral to the meaning of the objects being compared. They are dismissed as just subjective colorations which can be ignored when doing logic and ascertaining empirical truth.