I think the cult of the "genius" is something that we can do without, and arguably often holds back progress. — Janus

:up:

My only hesitation is that we may have evolved hero worship for a 'good reason.' In my dramaturgical ontology thread, I try to argue that the human entire personality is absolutely ontologically fundamental. The world is only given, so far as we know, to the hopefully harmonious system of such a personality. So me taking a hero is me taking on something that is already partially harmonic --- a proven, battlehardened life approach system. Very tempting for the young --- or at least my youth is full of my emulation of heroes, but not without the anxiety of influence. We resent/envy the dead less, and we can use them against living rivals. And we must make it new. Pound and Eliot were two of my earliest heros. Doesn't this from Eliot sound like Heidegger ?

Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, “tradition” should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to any one who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own contemporaneity.
...
What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

There remains to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition. It is in this depersonalization that art may be said to approach the condition of science.

Absolutely. So rationality is just a way of harnessing collision the collision variety. — plaque flag

I'd go further and say that absent rationality there could be no notion of collision in the first place.

A profound spiritual experience might also come up in a conversation as an explanation for why someone quit drinking or got rid of most of their property. — plaque flag

Of course that's true, but the experience itself cannot be definitively explained.

To me the 'real' esoteric stuff, which is important to me, is properly a secret in a circle of trust. — plaque flag

For me the esoteric can be, has been, interesting, but I think it is mostly, to distort Shakespeare, full of secret unsoundness and innuendo, signifying nothing. The ideas, as exercises of the imagination are useful only insofar as they are exoteric, out there.

The genius for the alienated beginner is a vague hope, a promise shining in the distance, a magical father figure, a gleaming token in the fallacy of argument from authority. — plaque flag

I think that's right. I like to misinterpret Bloom's notion of the "anxiety of influence" to explain why I don't like to read much into the complexities of others' thoughts: I am fearful of filling the mind with the thoughts of others. As per the quote you provided from T S Eliot, I acknowledge the importance of tradition as a repository of key ideas, allegories, possible worldviews...

I think the importance of major thinkers consists in just a very few insights central to the human condition, and the rest, all the arguments designed to justify those ideas are relatively tedious, obsessively driven filler. Of course, I am speaking only for myself.

When I read, and I do read a lot, but in a very scattered fashion, I read mainly for aesthetic pleasure. I need a story, rather than a complex argument, to hold my attention; I just have little confidence that following along, sloggin' it, with a complicated argument will yield any fruit worth the effort in the end. Life is short...









.

I think the importance of major thinkers consists in just a very few insights central to the human condition, and the rest, all the arguments designed to justify those ideas are relatively tedious, obsessively driven filler. Of course, I am speaking only for myself.

When I read, and I do read a lot, but in a very scattered fashion, I read mainly for aesthetic pleasure. I need a story, rather than a complex argument, to hold my attention; I just have little confidence that following along, sloggin' it, with a complicated argument will yield any fruit worth the effort in the end. Life is short... — Janus

This is very interesting to me. I tend to read to catch up with things and I think my reading for aesthetic pleasure is over for the time being.

My view of complex arguments and 'high theory' is that they make almost no difference to how I live my life. I am not an academic, nor do I feel the need to remain up to date. I also don't have the disposition to follow complex arguments across scores of intractable pages. I find I'm more interested in people's presuppositions rather than the vast edifices they often erect upon these foundations.

Of course that's true, but the experience itself cannot be definitively explained. — Janus

I completely agree. I'm tackling a related issue in Sensational Conceptuality. The idea is just that the inferential handles on concepts --- the kind that make a private language impossible from a structuralist point of view (beetles and boxes) --- aren't the entire referent. The inferential handles, which are indeed necessary for public sense, make a private referent 'exceeding' this handle possible. So 'my ecstatic vision' has a 'truly private' aspect, and that private aspect is likely to be by far what matters most to me. But this is also as mundane as the feel of hot water in the bathtub which is not itself just concept.

For me the esoteric can be, has been, interesting, but I think it is mostly, to distort Shakespeare, full of secret unsoundness and innuendo, signifying nothing. — Janus

I think we have a somewhat different conception of the esoteric. I'd include heraldry. I'd include stars-and-stripes, hammers-and-sickles, swastikas, muted post horns, any kind of excluding symbol. Even sexism has an esoteric aspect, brilliantly emphasized in Lynch's version of Dune. Race is often (usually?) discussed/experienced esoterically. My genitals, my skin, is a 'magical' organ, giving me transrational access to Insight ---at least for some who tilt this lance against universal rationality. So to me the esoteric is as big as the shadow cast by the ideal communication community, which is to say that it's the rule rather than the exception.

signifying nothing. — Janus

A little playfully but also seriously, I'd say the world itself is most entirelessly without substance.

I think the importance of major thinkers consists in just a very few insights central to the human condition, and the rest, all the arguments designed to justify those ideas are relatively tedious, obsessively driven filler. — Janus

To me the justifications are scaffolding that we can be rebuilt as needed. The main thing is to get it said.

I think you are right that there aren't that many necessary insights. 'Spiritually' I peaked (found all I really needed) at around 30. But I experience myself as a painter or composer in the world of concept, so I treasure the variety and the complexity. To me the web gets more and more vivid and fascinating with every new connection.

This is very interesting to me. I tend to read to catch up with things and I think my reading for aesthetic pleasure is over for the time being.

My view of complex arguments and 'high theory' is that they make almost no difference to how I live my life. I am not an academic, nor do I feel the need to remain up to date. I also don't have the disposition to follow complex arguments across scores of intractable pages. I find I'm more interested in people's presuppositions rather than the vast edifices they often erect upon these foundations. — Tom Storm

I also read to catch up on things; mostly science and issues like resource depletion, global warming, ecology, cosmology...The interesting difference between much of philosophy and science (and of course fiction) seems to me to be that the latter consists in stories. So, I can read a whole book about cosmology, ecology or natural history and some fiction, but I have always had difficulty sticking with major philosophical texts that are so systematic that the whole must be digested in order to understand the parts, or at least to see where they all fit in the greater scheme. I find the most salient parts interesting in themselves, and they can always be related to the body of my own experience it seems, even if only at the risk of misreading.

So, I like philosophical texts I can dip into; much of Nietzsche and some of Wittgenstein is like this for example.

I also like to read some poetry. Like you I am not, nor do I have any aspirations to be, an academic. I studied philosophy at the undergraduate level as part of an Arts degree, but I lost interest as soon as I had completed the courses that interested me and I had no use for the piece of paper, so I dropped out about half-way through...without regret.

I agree with you completely about the presuppositions and basic insights to be found in philosophical works being more interesting than the vast edifices...although I do understand that some people find those vast edifices aesthetically engaging, and may enjoy the challenge of mastering them...different strokes...

So 'my ecstatic vision' has a 'truly private' aspect, and that private aspect is likely to be by far what matters most to me. But this is also as mundane as the feel of hot water in the bathtub which is not itself just concept. — plaque flag

I can relate to that. All experience is really non-dual and cannot be adequately explained in (necessarily) dualistic language, So, our explanations are actually paltry tokens compared to what they attempt to explain...but I think that is so only provided we can be actively present to experiences...and for that I need an empty head rather than a full one...but that's just me and I acknowledge it can be different for others.

I think we have a somewhat different conception of the esoteric. I'd include heraldry. I'd include stars-and-stripes, hammers-and-sickles, swastikas, muted post horns, any kind of excluding symbol. Even sexism has an esoteric aspect, brilliantly emphasized in Lynch's version of Dune. Race is often (usually?) discussed/experienced esoterically. My genitals, my skin, is a 'magical' organ, giving me transrational access to Insight. So to me the esoteric is as big as the shadow cast by the ideal communication community, which is to say that it's the rule rather than the exception. — plaque flag

I think we are speaking about different things. I have in mind the idea that there is hidden knowledge which can be transmitted from master to acolyte. That said, I don't deny that people can, to a certain degree, be schooled in techniques that may assist in the art of waking up and becoming more present.

I think I can relate to the idea of "transrational insight"; if you mean that the ordinary sensual experiences may open up previously hidden doors and corridors of the imagination.

A little playfully but also seriously, I'd say the world itself is most entirelessly without substance. — plaque flag

As a great comedian once said, "I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less".

To me the justifications are scaffolding that we can be rebuilt as needed. The main thing is to get it said.

I think you are right that there aren't that many necessary insights. But I experience myself as a painter or composer in the world of concept, so I treasure the variety and the complexity ---to some degree but it's so satisfying to find the grand patterns in it and harmonize the chaos. — plaque flag

I can relate to that, too. There have been times in my life where I felt the attraction of the purely conceptual, and I can well understand how mathematicians may see their craft and its investigations as an art form. For me it's poetry, painting and music, all of which I see as being more sensorially and feeling oriented.

.

I think we are speaking about different things. I have in mind the idea that there is hidden knowledge which can be transmitted from master to acolyte. — Janus

:up:

Yes, your version is more prototypical, and mine is a generalization. To me the main is idea is the closure and exclusiveness.

***

I do think statements like God is love intend a truth about the world. I wouldn't call such a statement esoteric so much as ambiguous. What metaphor is isn't easy to say.

For me it's poetry, painting and music, all of which I see as being more sensorially and feeling oriented. — Janus

I do write some crazy stuff in a project with a friend inspired by Finnegans Wake. The main idea is to smash several layers of meaning together into an intentionally ambiguous-suggestive text object. It's like Dali's paranoiac-critical method in prose. The reader is encouraged to project their personal concerns/suspicions, be entangled with the text, etc.

the presuppositions and basic insights to be found in philosophical works being more interesting than the vast edifices. — Janus

To me so much of the good stuff is just that, and then the next person tries to go even deeper or more zoomed out...

Yes, your version is more prototypical, and mine is a generalization. To me the main is idea is the closure and exclusiveness.

***

I do think statements like God is love intend a truth about the world. I wouldn't call such a statement esoteric so much as ambiguous. What metaphor is isn't easy to say. I'd probably have to use metaphors. — plaque flag

It's interesting you say "closure and exclusiveness" because as you have also said, my everyday sensual experiences are exclusive to myself and closed to others. So, my focus in thinking about the esoteric is that my experience can be transmitted to others through touch or shock or befuddlement of the mind resulting in the shutting down of the internal dialogue; Zen exemplifies these kinds of ideas. So, enlightenment is seen as a state that an enlightened one can definitively, without any doubt, recognize in others. I am skeptical of that,,,although I acknowledge that it may be so, but even if it were, such a thing could never be demonstrated to be so either empirically or logically, so it would seem to be discursively useless.

Have to go and do some framing now, so will have to leave any further responses until later...

such a thing could never be demonstrated to be so either empirically or logically, so it would seem to be discursively useless. — Janus

:up:

I can't make sense of a simple binary state. And it can't be proven. And any kind of marketing or indiscriminate recruitment (for funding, say) speaks even more against such things. I don't believe in the free lunch. I might believe in some ladder in the internal abyss, but I'd only talk about it with some irony.

As a great comedian once said, "I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less". — Janus

I like that.

I mentioned in this in passing once before, but I continue to find it resonant. All is vanity is a translation of all is hevel. This Hebrew word is already richly metaphorical. One of its more literal shades of meaning is vapor. But it's close to emptiness and fog and ambiguity too.

To me this is fucking hilarious and beautiful. Hevel itself, as a concept/metaphor, is foggy and undecidable and elusive, empty of substance in the sense of definite center. So we have an infinite horizonal metaphor here. Performing its metaphoricity on two levels.

To me a certain transcendence is hard to distinguish from nihilism. To say all is hevel is like grasping the entire world as a dream with nothing behind it. It's all of reality, but we are the animal that can compare all of reality with some kind of nothingness. A show moist entirelessly without substance. We don't just see entities there. We see the there itself as the there. Anyway, a less unfolded version of omnia vanitas was what I settled on at around age 30. It didn't mean that things in the world were worthless. I didn't know exactly what it meant, but it expressed a sense of transcendence. It occurred to me earlier that the philosopher is a lucid dreamer. But all of reality is that 'dream.' (So dream is no longer dream but substanceless hevel.) This transcendence is a thin film of nothingness between the philosopher and the world.

So….it’s fine to disbelieve in Kantian transcendental logic, which presupposes a fair understanding of what it is, but how is Hegel’s logic any less transcendental?

Heh. You're asking the wrong person. Tobias would be a much more sympathetic voice if he's willing to pipe up on Hegel.

Hegel is certainly a German Idealist. — Moliere

I have not read all of the thread, actually only this question because of Moliere's mention. I do not know if it is relevant and if not just ignore the spam. There is a big difference between Kant and Hegel though. Kant considers that the world we see is a world shaped by our mind in the sense that the mind holds the categories by which we mould the manifold intuitions granted by sensibility. We do get these intuitions from somewhere though, even though we have no access to it. This 'noumenal world' remains hidden to us, it is the thing in itself.

Hegel on the other hand is an absolute idealist, meaning that there is no 'thing in itself', that is itself a contradictory idea. There is nothing laying 'behind' our sensibility and the distinction sensibility and understanding cannot be made. Instead the world as it is necessarily confirms to the world as we understand it. The understanding is what is the world (The rational is the real). That is oftentimes read as something very exalted or esoteric, but I think it means nothing less than that something can be a certain something at all is because the way we understand, perceive, handle, interact with that certain something. Saying for instance that a door knob is not really really a doorknob, but instead a bundle of intuitions from some noumenal world, is nonsense for Hegel. A doorknob is a doorknob is a doorknob. There are just no god given doorknobs, they are a product of our interaction with the world. That is not a transcendental but an immanent logic.

Hegel on the other hand is an absolute idealist, meaning that there is no 'thing in itself', that is itself a contradictory idea. There is nothing laying 'behind' our sensibility and the distinction sensibility and understanding cannot be made. ... Saying for instance that a door knob is not really really a doorknob, but instead a bundle of intuitions from some noumenal world, is nonsense for Hegel. A doorknob is a doorknob is a doorknob. There are just no god given doorknobs, they are a product of our interaction with the world. That is not a transcendental but an immanent logic. — Tobias

:100:

It's a relief that someone else gets it.

Zahavi interprets Husserl and Braver interprets Heidegger in this same general way, tho of course there are fascinating differences.

Husserl's discussion of how the spatial object is given, which Sartre paraphrases to kick off Being and Nothingness, is the whole idea, seemingly taken from Hegel, in a nutshell.

Relevant to the OP:

The so-called Münchhausen trilemma—that is, that all attempts to discover ultimate foundations result in either logical circularity, infinite regress, or an arbitrary end to the process of justification—can be overcome by moving from the level of semantic analysis to the level of pragmatics and recognizing that some presuppositions are necessary for the very possibility of intersubjectively valid criticism and argumentation. Similarly, he argues, even the "principle of fallibilism" (which holds that any claim can, in principle, be doubted) is only meaningful within an "institution of argumentation," where some pragmatic rules and norms are not open to question. Thus, contrary to the claim of critical rationalism, the principle of fallibilism does not exclude the notion of philosophical foundations and, Apel argues, certainly could not replace it as the basic principle of rational discourse (1998, chapter 4).
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/apel-karl-otto-1922

Hegel on the other hand is an absolute idealist, meaning that there is no 'thing in itself', that is itself a contradictory idea. There is nothing laying 'behind' our sensibility and the distinction sensibility and understanding cannot be made. Instead the world as it is necessarily confirms to the world as we understand it. The understanding is what is the world (The rational is the real). That is oftentimes read as something very exalted or esoteric, but I think it means nothing less than that something can be a certain something at all is because the way we understand, perceive, handle, interact with that certain something. Saying for instance that a door knob is not really really a doorknob, but instead a bundle of intuitions from some noumenal world, is nonsense for Hegel. A doorknob is a doorknob is a doorknob. There are just no god given doorknobs, they are a product of our interaction with the world. That is not a transcendental but an immanent logic. — Tobias

Thank you. I knew you'd be better at it :D

@plaque flag I'd note that the door knob example could be interpreted differently depending upon how we're setting Kant out --as a two-world theorist or a two-aspect theorist, and what we mean by both of those. The main thing I'd say is there is no doorknob-in-itself as I understand Kant's philosophy, that this is an empirically real object, and the transcendental object serves as a limiting concept for determination -- we only get to the two-aspect/world through the deduction of empirical reality and how it is we can know things a priori synthetically.

Which is to say that I've agreed that there is a kind of lazy Kantianism which relies upon the phenomena/noumena distinction, but I'd caution against attacking the distinction as much as the way Kant gets to the distinction.

Because then there'd be a reason to make a choice between two kinds of rationality -- one which relies upon a transcendental logic, and the other which relies upon Hegel's logic.

The so-called Münchhausen trilemma—that is, that all attempts to discover ultimate foundations result in either logical circularity, infinite regress, or an arbitrary end to the process of justification—can be overcome by moving from the level of semantic analysis to the level of pragmatics and recognizing that some presuppositions are necessary for the very possibility of intersubjectively valid criticism and argumentation. — plaque flag

I wouldn't rely upon the trilemma as much as the method I've already proposed -- we can come to see that philosophers start from different places through the humble method of comparison and contrast after having read the philosophers. And that's why I have doubts on ultimate foundations: seems like there's a lot of possible foundations to go around claiming as ultimate foundations. The task of the foundationalist, then, is to set out the ultimate foundation persuasively.

I should reiterate that I think Kant is a hero. The theory of the subject is, in my view, the essence of philosophy, and Kant pushed it even slightly beyond its limits. I don't pretend to be an expert on Kant, and it's clear that there are better and worse interpretations, but he occasionally writes very clearly.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52821/52821-h/52821-h.htm

...the senses never and in no manner enable us to know things in themselves, but only their appearances, which are mere representations of the sensibility, we conclude that 'all bodies, together with the space in which they are, must be considered nothing but mere representations in us, and exist nowhere but in our thoughts.' You will say: Is not this manifest idealism?

So even space itself is 'nowhere but in our thoughts.' They are 'mere representations in us.'
I am not in the world, the world is in me.

...things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i.e., the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses.

Kant takes the function of the sense organs for granted (a tacit-disavowed direct-realist foundation), yet the sense organs we can know anything about (the familiar eyes and ears of mundane life) are only given as appearance, and yet this appearance is made the source of ...this appearance and the world itself.

If space is 'just in our head,' why would we think sense organs mediate/represent an 'outside' (things-in-themselves, presensuous urstuff) ?

Kant takes the function of the sense organs for granted, yet the sense organs we can know anything about are only given in appearance, and yet this appearance is made the source of appearance. If space is just in our head, why would we think sense organs mediate an 'outside' (things-in-themselves, presensuous urstuff) ? — plaque flag

I'm pretty solid on Kant. @Jamal and @Mww have taught me much, but I done some reading on the guy.

It's not in the head, it's in the mind. At least, again, as I read it.

The Mind here isn't even necessarily human -- Kant speculates about other minds like ours from other creatures. The defining element of our mind is its possession of a sensible intuition which is defined with respect to the concept of an intellectual intuition.

"intuition" has a special meaning in Kantian philosophy, just to make things worse.

But what I intend by this is that the sense-organs are mere objects in the world of the sensible and as such are clearly as real as doorknobs, and that these are questions, at least according to Kant, for empirical psychology. With respect to the possibility of knowledge -- that's where his philosophy operates. How is it possible to know that the sense-organs are related to such-and-such an experience? Well because experience and the sense-organs are a part of the empirical world which is given to us through the combination of the categories through the schematism into the sensible intuition which we all share.

Which is to note, at least, it's not in your head as much as it is in our mind -- at least the transcendental necessities of our mind.

Just to be clear, I don't at all question your knowledge of Kant. I'm just pointing out what I find problematic in his work. I hope you experience the challenge as an opportunity for fun.

which is given to us through the combination of the categories through the schematism into the sensible intuition which we all share. — Moliere

My gripe against a tendency in Kant and a certain tendency in Husserl is what I see as their unwitting semantic cheating. What is sensible intuition supposed to be if not the 'input' of the sense organs ?

I leave to things as we obtain them by the senses their actuality, and only limit our sensuous intuition of these things to this, that they represent in no respect, not even in the pure intuitions of space and of time, anything more than mere appearance of those things, but never their constitution in themselves...

So the worldly experience of sense organs, along with the worldly social experience of normative-discursive subjectivity, making a unified stream of experience meaningful in the first place, are smuggled in to a theory that thinks it can construct the world from inside out. Hence my OP which makes the ICC* our glorious fundamental ontology's 'necessary being' --an enworldled community of 'ontologists' sharing its founding intention.

*The notion of an “ideal communication community” [ICC] functions as a guide that can be formally applied both to regulate and to critique concrete speech situations. Using this regulative and critical ideal, individuals would be able to raise, accept, or reject each other’s claims to truth, rightness, and sincerity solely on the basis of the “unforced force” of the better argument—i.e., on the basis of reason and evidence—and all participants would be motivated solely by the desire to obtain mutual understanding.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jurgen-Habermas/Philosophy-and-social-theory

Just to be clear, I don't at all question your knowledge of Kant. I'm just pointing out what I find problematic in his work. I hope you experience the challenge as an opportunity for fun. — plaque flag

Yeh :)

And cool. I just realized I was about to say things that were different from what you said of the man, so I wanted to note I'm not entirely ignorant in so saying. I could certainly be wrong! But I wanted to note that I was coming from a place of having-read.

My gripe against a tendency in Kant and a certain tendency in Husserl is what I see as their unwitting semantic cheating. — plaque flag

This is something I wonder about a lot: what is the relationship between language and Kant? And I don't think there's much there. In a way I'm tempted to update Kant by saying "Language is the categories", but I also doubt Kant and I know that this would make things yet even harder to point out so I don't.

What is sensible intuition supposed to be if not the 'input' of the sense organs ? — plaque flag

At the very least I think you'd have to say it's what all our sense-organs do with respect to a sensible-intuition. You've mentioned some of the ways we interact with the world that differ like color blindness. The sensible-intuition would still hold for people who have individual organ-sense differences. Which, given that color-blind people can use "red" and "green", has a certain appeal.

So the worldly experience of sense organs, along with the worldly social experience of normative-discursive subjectivity, making a unified stream of experience meaningful in the first place, are smuggled in to a theory that thinks it can construct the world from inside out. — plaque flag

It's important to remember that Kant begins in knowledge -- at least on paper. He has some cases of knowledge, namely math and physical science, which do not fit in with the problem of induction. They're simply better than what the problem of induction would indicate. And in favor of that I'd say Newton's Laws are still used in spite of finding exceptions. "How is it possible for the rules we make up to be true over time?" -- or more directly with respect to the text, how is it we know 7 + 5 = 12?

He's constructing the world from cases which don't make sense when he considers the philosophical problems of what he terms the rationalists and the empiricists, and attempting an explanation for both of them while at the same time securing a place for the sacred outside of scientific knowledge.

But I don't think he's as guilty of stepping out to construct the world as much as Hegel is.

Hence my OP which makes the ICC* our glorious fundamental ontology's 'necessary being' --an enworldled community of 'ontologists' sharing its founding intention.

*The notion of an “ideal communication community” [ICC] functions as a guide that can be formally applied both to regulate and to critique concrete speech situations. Using this regulative and critical ideal, individuals would be able to raise, accept, or reject each other’s claims to truth, rightness, and sincerity solely on the basis of the “unforced force” of the better argument—i.e., on the basis of reason and evidence—and all participants would be motivated solely by the desire to obtain mutual understanding.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jurgen-Habermas/Philosophy-and-social-theory — plaque flag

I don't think what I've said would go against this, actually. Philosophers start somewhere, and I generally prefer collective efforts so it makes sense to say that collectives of philosophers start somewhere.

It's just the "foundations" part I'm questioning.

At the very least I think you'd have to say it's what all our sense-organs do with respect to a sensible-intuition. — Moliere

In case it's unclear (and to further the conversation on fun stuff ) I'm a nondualist direct realist. I 'believe in' our sense organs. They are related inferentially and casually to all kinds of other entities in the one inferential nexus of a community's practice of demanding and offering reasons. To be clear, even prescientific communities give reasons, make excuses, promises, apologies. So the normative discursive self has been here since we started jabbering. It only obtains selfconsciousness progressively. Philosophy is a big part of that.

But I don't think he's as guilty of stepping out to construct the world as much as Hegel is. — Moliere

I should stress that I am miles away from being an orthodox Hegelian. But I love certain passages in him, but I largely enjoy him transformed and in some ways purified by Kojeve, Brandom, and Heidegger. Braver's A Thing of This World is a tale of the journey of ICS, the impersonal conceptual scheme, at it set sail from Kant and only got freer and looser and finally fused with the world, so that this conceptual scheme was simply the conceptual aspect of the lifeworld, not some mediating image internal to a person or even a community. In Hegel, who managed the fusion mentioned above, it was evolving toward a goal. In the later Heidegger, the fusion is maintained, but it (now the lifeworld's way of being) drifts aimlessly.

It's just the "foundations" part I'm questioning. — Moliere

Understandable, but who said you could question things ? I'm joking of course. The point is that autonomy really is almost apriori. Will you ask me to justify my claim that justification, in a context of freedom, is necessary or foundational ? Is this not merely enacting an ICC ? Is the state of peaceful tolerant conversation another way to put it ? Are we afraid to begin to explicate dogmatism (defining the ICC is the same as defining its negative) ? Will we dogmatically forbid such articulation ?

we can come to see that philosophers start from different places through the humble method of comparison and contrast after having read the philosophers. And that's why I have doubts on ultimate foundations: seems like there's a lot of possible foundations to go around claiming as ultimate foundations. — Moliere

Sure. To me what you are missing is your agreement with me. Which is to say that you yourself are offering a founding assumption. 'We should apiori rule out foundationalism.' The ICC is just a vision of maximum freedom, right to the edge it shares with potentially brutal esoteric anarchy. @Joshs seems to share your concern that any attempt to sketch rationality is somehow oppressive, but that itself is just occult superstition if not rationally supported.

The metaphor of foundation is, in this context, a metaphor for that which enables.

One of my motives for writing Against Method was to free people from the tyranny of philosophical obfuscators and abstract concepts such as “truth”, “reality”, or “objectivity”, which narrow people’s vision and ways of being in the world. Formulating what I thought were my own attitude and convictions, I unfortunately ended up by introducing concepts of similar rigidity, such as “democracy”, “tradition”, or “relative truth”. Now that I am aware of it, I wonder how it happened. The urge to explain one’s own ideas, not simply, not in a story, but by means of a “systematic account”, is powerful indeed.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/#AgaiMeth1970

In my view, we can either drag along the current notion of rationality uncritically, or we can make it explicit and refine it. Feyerabend shouldn't have felt bad about reaching for freeing concepts. Having no method at all is a fantasy that, in my view, evaporates with a grasp of our being as thrown projection. Reality is given perspectively to historically discursive beings. I 'am' the 'living past' that 'leaps ahead' as a set of interpretive habits/prejudices.

Jamal and Mww have taught me much….. — Moliere

Thanks.

In case it's unclear (and to further the conversation on fun stuff ) I'm a nondualist direct realist — plaque flag

I'm at least a realist. And I like direct realism in the phenomenological sense, but I wonder what's so direct about it if all I mean is that indirect realism is false?

The phenomenological argument is a hard one to pull off persuasively, and depending upon the phenomenologist we may not even be doing metaphysics but rather attempting to articulate the question of metaphysics as a kind of propaedeutic to the task of metaphysics. With Heidegger I like to point out that the original plan for Being and Time was this huge multi-book plan, but he wasn't able to get to a full articulation of the question of the meaning of being. He articulates the meaning of Dasein by equating Dasein with time, but never back to the original question. I say it's because he gets lost in his own hermeneutic circle, and then the romantic aspects of his philosophy got along all too well with the fascists for his and his philosophy's and his mentor's own good.

The point is that autonomy really is almost apriori. Will you ask me to justify my claim that justification, in a context of freedom, is necessary or foundational ? Is this not merely enacting an ICC ? Is the state of peaceful tolerant conversation another way to put it ? Are we afraid to begin to explicate dogmatism (defining the ICC is the same as defining its negative) ? Will we dogmatically forbid such articulation ? — plaque flag

I'm not forbidding articulation as much as pointing out that it's likely that we're not articulating an ultimate or singular foundation, even within an ICC. More like there are a multitude of communities which are bound together in various different ways. There's a sedimentation or a point of return, but it changes as we move to different communities. One of the distinctions for which I'd say this is clear is between academic scientists and academic historians. These two communities are already bound by rational norms and even in a kind of production of knowledge within the same institution, but the forms of the argument, what counts as evidence for what, what are the worthwhile questions to ask and how we answer them -- these differ between historical and scientific inference. And then if you throw philosophy into the mix we have yet another rationality within the same rational institution.

So we can legitimately ask -- which rationality? We can choose in a given conversation or at a given time, but there's a choice to be made. In which case we can rationally challenge rationality on the basis of choosing one of these rationalities -- do we accept the historical tale of human beings, or do we accept the scientific tale that we're creatures driven by evolutionary pressures? We can choose both and make a reconciliation, but there are certainly communities that don't try to choose both, that prefer, say, science over history as the more rational rationality.

It's that sort of thing that I'm dubious about. I'm not so sure there is a most rational rationality. We can, by appeal to the rational, make the case -- but there's something question begging about appeal to the rational to provide a foundation to the rational.

Sure. To me what you are missing is your agreement with me. Which is to say that you yourself are offering a founding assumption. 'We should apiori rule out foundationalism. — plaque flag

A posteriori -- only after reading and comparing. I certainly think we should read and compare philosophers in order to train our ability to think philosophically. Is it correct to say that reading philosophy books is foundational to philosophy, though? Maybe. And maybe I'm just reacting to "foundations" with its various associations.

But then there was Socrates, who was clearly a philosopher, and he didn't bother with all this.

The metaphor of foundation is, in this context, a metaphor for that which enables. — plaque flag

"That which enables" gets along with my notion of a multitude of rationalities. I think I can go with that: there are enablers to rationality, and what differentiates a rationality from another is the difference in enablers, or what I've been calling a jumping off point.

Having no method at all is a fantasy that, in my view, evaporates with a grasp of our being as thrown projection. — plaque flag

It's important to remember the context of Feyerabend's statement that anything goes in science -- in the face of asking for a total philosophy for all of science that is normative and able to discriminate between science proper and non-science from a single criterion we can note, through comparison of historical periods of science, that there's no single criterion between science proper and non-science.

But creating language-games with fellow researchers (methods)? Sure we need that! It's just not up to the task of the ontologist's concerns, I think. Which in a way gets along with the spirit of Kant: We have knowledge of the empirical world, but that knowledge doesn't touch upon the metaphysical totality which grounds it. Or, in knowledge's multiplicity, they're all self-grounding projects which we are free to take up or leave, but which we're not really sure how to relate that to ontological claims. Or, at the very least, I'm not sure how to relate knowledge, scientific or historical, to ontological claims.