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. — Joshs
Do you think your emotions determine what is true? — wonderer1
Well, there's your problem. "Same" and "similar" are not the same. Phenomenology will only add to such confusion.When I hear the word ‘same’ I read it as ‘similar’. — Joshs
Yes. That you are reading this, for example.Is there a fact of the matter about anything? — Joshs
Is there a fact of the matter about anything?
— Joshs
Yes. That you are reading this, for example. — Banno
Same" and "similar" are not the same. Phenomenology will only add to such confusion.
↪Joshs You specified that multiple people were to draw the same vase. Not similar vases. Each will draw a different drawing, have a different perspective, give a different interpretation, of the same vase. This is not the same as each drawing a different vase. — Banno
It sounds like you subscribe to a traditional ( and outdated) notion of emotion as a physiological mechanism peripheral to cognition. — Joshs
In the Philebus Plato addresses the question of the relation between language and world.
It raises the problem of what Aristotle called the “indeterminate dyad” . — Fooloso4
Ultimately, there is neither ‘this or that’ but ‘this and that’. The Whole is not reducible to One. — Fooloso4
I hope that, that you are reading this, now, is not something of which you need philosophical reassurance....rarified debates... — Tom Storm
...as if Joshs did not really mean there to be only one vase in the room.Same and similar are two of many species of difference. — Joshs
I hope that, that you are reading this, now, is not something of which you need philosophical reassurance. — Banno
Seems to me that there is a clear sense in which two folk can each draw a different picture of the same vase. Joshs seems to deny this. To me, that reeks of sophistry. — Banno
Seems to me that if one were to follow antirealist ideas into ethics, one would be setting aside any such ethical truths, just as for ontology. Putin, not Christ, is the consequent.Anyway, the question at hand is, do we ever arrive at an approach where genocide can't be seen as different to charity? — Tom Storm
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. — Moliere
But also that provides a clue into reading his philosophy: start with Heidegger, and then try and read what's different. — Moliere
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. — Moliere
The tone, though! What a difference! Heidegger the joyless and serious spiritual questor for a Truth long forgotten, vs. the joyful and playful linguist. — Moliere
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. — 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.
— 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.” — Joshs
I think he is saying in essence that reality is co-created and that we can't take any particular account for granted. — Tom Storm
Are you asking if we can dispense with morality? I think we do when we look at ourselves naturalistically, anthropologically. — frank
Seems to me that if one were to follow antirealist ideas into ethics, one would be setting aside any such ethical truths, just as for ontology. Putin, not Christ, is the consequent. — Banno
Well, as Searle points out in the podcast, even if we "can't take any particular account as granted", it does not follow that nothing we say is true! — Banno
The co-creation part comes in with the socially., culturally and linguistically mediated interpretations that produce the model we call "the external world". But let us not forget the more primordial biologically and semiotically mediated dimensions, which we have in common with other organisms. Shall we say that other organisms also co-create their Umwelts? — Janus
perhaps it is co-creation all the way down. :wink: — Janus
The other option is confusions all the way down. That seems fairly popular too. On a separate note, I did hear a philosopher (I forget who ) in a guided discussion on truth saying, 'What's wrong with endless recursion, anyway?' Not a notion we hear very often. I guess Rorty argues similarly by saying (my paraphrase) that all of our values are contingent on other values and so on forever, without the possibility of a final resting place or source. — Tom Storm
Differance, the idea that words only have their meaning in terms of other words which leads to the indefinite deference of meaning is, I think, either trivially true or just plain wrong — Janus
For of course there is a "right track" [une 'bonne voie "] , a better way, and let i t b e said i n passing how surprised I have often been, how amused or discouraged, depending on my humor, by the use or abuse of the following argument: Since the deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the skeptic-relativist-nihilist!) is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or the unity of meaning, in intention or "meaning-to-say, " how can he demand of us that we read him with pertinence, preciSion, rigor? How can he demand that his own text be interpreted correctly? How can he accuse anyone else of having misunderstood, simplified, deformed it, etc.? In other words, how can he discuss, and discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple enough: this definition of the deconstructionist is false (that's right: false, not true) and feeble; it supposes a bad (that's right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous texts, first of all mine, which therefore must finally be read or reread.
Then perhaps it will be understood that the value of truth (and all those values associated with it) is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. And that within interpretive contexts (that is, within relations of force that are always differential-for example, socio-political-institutional-but even beyond these determinations) that are relatively stable, sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism, and pedagogy. ( Derrida, Limited, Inc)
I was arguing that people seeing the same vase, when they paint it, and in support of that I made the point that people will agree on small and precise features of objects if questioned. You have not addressed that argument but have instead changed the subject — Janus
I guess Rorty argues similarly by saying (my paraphrase) that all of our values are contingent on other values and so on forever, without the possibility of a final resting place or source. — Tom Storm
I guess Rorty argues similarly by saying (my paraphrase) that all of our values are contingent on other values and so on forever, without the possibility of a final resting place or source.
— Tom Storm
That’s a cartoon version of relativism that Rorty often made fun of , and which is why he rejected the label of relativist. — Joshs
There is nothing to be known about anything except an initially large, and forever expandable, web of relations to other things. Everything that can serve as a term of relation can be dissolved into another set of relations, and so on for ever. There are, so to speak, relations all the way down, all the way up, and all the way out in every direction: you never reach something which is not just one more nexus of relations.
Within a given cultural , ethical or scientific milieu, there is a certain dynamic stability of shared values which makes possible agreement on matters of common concern. This is why scientists are able to reach consensus, technologists are able to build machines, there can be agreement on legal matters. — Joshs
It is just plain wrong , and it is not what Derrida is saying. First of all, differerance doesnt just refer to words, it refers to all forms of experience. Second , Derrida isnt arguing that the chain of referential meanings of words leads to an infinite regress. — Joshs
OK, I got the idea, but I want to know why and how they are philosophically important. If all he did was paraphrase Heidegger in even more obscure language, why would I bother to read him instead of Heidegger, since the latter would afford the same insights with less effort on my part? — Janus
I understand the difference between vorhandenheit und zuhandenheit, and I think that is a valuable phenomenological insight, but it is also an example of categorization. — Janus
Although I should point out that my understanding is that the former is a reflective presence, while the latter is not so much an absence as it is a transparence. The hammer becomes "invisible" when I use it, but it is there nonetheless. This is also foreshadowed by the ideas of the conscious and the unconscious, or the explicit and the implicit. I am not consciously or explicitly aware of the hammer as I use it, but its presence in my hand is unconscious and implicit.
Now, I can talk about these ideas in plain language, but I cannot think of any of Derrida's ideas that I could do the same with, unless they come to seem trivial. Differance, the idea that words only have their meaning in terms of other words which leads to the indefinite deference of meaning is, I think, either trivially true or just plain wrong. Logocentrism was foreshadowed by Klages, and the irony is that there is no philosopher more logocentric (or logorrheic) than Derrida. Are there any other of Derrida's ideas that can be explained in plain language, while remaining insighful and not becoming trivial? This is a genuine question since I have never penetrated far into the Derrida landscape, and so cannot claim to know that there could not be anything there that I've missed.
There is nothing to be known about anything except an initially large, and forever expandable, web of relations to other things. Everything that can serve as a term of relation can be dissolved into another set of relations, and so on for ever. There are, so to speak, relations all the way down, all the way up, and all the way out in every direction: you never reach something which is not just one more nexus of relations.
”…the intuition that we are making intellectual progress is simply the intuition that, in respect to self-consciousness and intellectual responsibility, we are getting farther and farther away from the cavemen; it does not need backup from notions like "closer to Reality" or "more nearly universally valid". This would be analogous to saying that the intuition that inquiry is in touch with reality is simply the intuition that it is constrained by reality; it does not need backup from notions like "corresponding" or "mapping.”
It's easy enough for a relativist to simply claim, without actually backing it up with an argument, that they are not a relativist, even though their works as interpreted certainly seem to fit the bill — Janus
On the other hand, love and hate give an example of what I've tentatively termed "an unnecessary dyad": — javra
... everything is reducible to Being and Not being, and Unity and Plurality; e.g. Rest falls under Unity and Motion under Plurality. And nearly everyone agrees that substance and existing things are composed of contraries; at any rate all speak of the first principles as contraries—some as Odd and Even, some as Hot and Cold, some as Limit and Unlimited, some as Love and Strife. And it is apparent that all other things also are reducible to Unity and Plurality (we may assume this reduction) .. (1004b)
Being qua Being has certain peculiar modifications, and it is about these that it is the philosopher's function to discover the truth.
p.s., yes, deep down, I'm sincerely philosophically minded about this issue of opposites. Though I'm not sure that if fits in with the thread's theme. — javra
But chance and spontaneity are also reckoned among causes: many things are said both to be and to come to be as a result of chance and spontaneity. (Physics, 195b)
Spontaneity and chance are causes of effects which, though they might result from intelligence or nature, have in fact been caused by something accidentally. (198a)
Are you asking if we can dispense with morality? I think we do when we look at ourselves naturalistically, anthropologically.
— frank
No, it was a provocation about the relativistic dimensions of postmodern thinking. But your point is interesting. — Tom Storm
:up: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. — Moliere
supposedly the differences between the drawings show that there never was only one vase, but instead a multitude of vase-phenomena. — Banno
I suspect these rarified debates about the nature of reality and how language functions are primarily for the benefit of the cognoscenti, a bit like Star Trek lore or stamp collecting. — Tom Storm
I suspect these rarified debates about the nature of reality and how language functions are primarily for the benefit of the cognoscenti, a bit like Star Trek lore or stamp collecting. — Tom Storm
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