I'm more a positive nihilist. A sad nihilist is trying, but failing to accept life on its terms. — frank

A vestige of science's physicalism, which kills the soul. Defining the world according to empirical discovery (which usually carries with it a philosophy of foundational physicalism) is such bad thinking. Hard to imagine taking it seriously.

But if you take Kierkegaard seriously, then there is a follow through that brings much of his thought to a greater fruition. Heidegger has a lot of Kierkegaard in his ideas, though he doesn't like to admit it (See Caputo on this in his Radical Hermeneutics). All 20th century phenomenology follows through on K in one way or another in this dialectic between eternity and finitude. Human Existence and Transcednence comes to mind (Jean Wahl) and Levinas' Totality and Infinity. The best I have read of K on this is The Concept of Anxiety where he discisses the notion of original sin, dismisses standard biblical and theological thinking, and brings the discussion into a historical context (from Hegel, who K famously said had forgotten that we exist): original sin is hereditary sin, inherited through the ages as a kind of deep enculturation where God is lost to distraction in culture's institutions and "habits". K thought that just being in this world is sinful. He thought we stand in alienation from God because we are more interested in all the things around us, so it's not Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Luther inspired, essentially), but distraction and attachment (Meister Eckhart wrote about attachment. I don't recall any specific reference, but it is hard to imagine k wasn't influenced by his sermons which were very much here-and-now theology).
I think I will read Jean Wahl for a couple of days. He started a lot of later Kierkegaardian thinking.

I say something simple, like, There is a sign post by the road. If anything is free of contradiction in ordinary affairs, I think it would be something like this. And in the situation where sign posts and sides of roads are taken for what they are unproblematically, agreement is enough: I see it, you see it, it's there by the road, and no issues emerge. But let's say I was being metaphorical, and I meant the sign post to be an augur of future events and the road meant to be the road of progressive living events. Or perhaps I was being ironic, referring to some blunder I made about sign posts earlier. The point is, for every meaning we can assign, we can imagine alternative ways the language can be taken, and in being taken differenly, the question of what it IS, has no final context, if you will, as if God were to declare once and for all that sign posts are just "this and only this". This "in and out" of identity undermines any thought of determinacy in what is being said. In the sentence, "There is a sign post by the road," I am now not referring to any actual sign post at all, but it is just the object language to my metalinguistic talk about the variability of language.
I am saying ALL language is like this. If contradictions are the gainsaying of what something IS, then contradictions are always already implicitly in the margins of whatever is said. They too, rise and fall, come and go. This is why nothing is sacrosanct, for the moment it is said, — Constance

Ok, but I pointed out that Rorty's theory is self-refuting in a quite specific way directly related to the very thing it is trying to explain. I am not sure how this makes such a self-refutation unproblematic.

Not absolutizing. Rather, Hermeneuticizing. Contradictions are confined to where they turn up.

They are just saying essentially two things: One, whatever is affirmed is spoken, written, gestured or otherwise affirmed in language. So it is a philosophically responsibility to give language analysis for the way meaning is handled. And two, the assumption that the world is received in some kind of mirror of nature of perception is, IF this assumption is grounded in naturalism or physicalism, demonstrably false. Brain's are not mirrors. But if this assumption is grounded in the phenomenon, the simple givenness of the what appears, then the "distance" between the perceiver and the perceived is already closed, and epistemology becomes a very different problem. — Constance

This seems to me like the same thing. It's simply affirming post-modern hermeneutics above all competitors as a sort of default, i.e., absolutizing it, and going from there. It seems to me that this is often done with phenomenology as well. A phenomenology that supports a metaphysics of sheer giveness and difference is affirmed, and alternative phenomenology (e g., Plotinus, the Scholastics from whence modern phenomenology gets its terminology, Hegel, and contemporary Catholic phenomenologists, etc.) are dismissed. Now, I won't claim that something like Hegel's argument that sheer giveness is actually contentless and that it is the higher levels of understanding (Absolute Knowing) that should be affirmed (rather than dismissed as "reification") is air tight against later "post-modern" phenomenology, but neither does it seem like the alternative has a decisive refutation of it. If anything, the issue seems undecidable, and metaphysics (acknowledged or not), aesthetics, and a commitment to certain notions of freedom seem to be driving the choice between the two.

I don't disagree with you about the "mirror of nature," but this seems to be another sort of argument of the form:

A or B
Not-A
Therefore B.

But there are many alternatives to the "mirror of nature" that don't involve Rorty's radical deflation of truth.

True in science, yes. But this truth is irrelevant in dry cleaning of knitting of bowling. A physicist can give a rigorous analysis using equations and specific language involved of knitting, perhaps, but this would require moving into another framework discussion. — Constance

Again, this just seems to presuppose the idea that truth is itself domain limited, the "hermetically sealed magisterium" (actually, such an idea is very old and was called Latin-Averrosim in the Middle Ages). But if truth is just whatever is popularly affirmed, such a view of truth as isolated by field is itself false.

Obviously, if we assume a view like Rorty's is true, we can justify it as true. Why should we accept it as true when it refutes itself though? Why should we accept it as true when most don't, given what it says about truth?

Heidegger has a lot of Kierkegaard in his ideas, though he doesn't like to admit it (See Caputo on this in his Radical Hermeneutics). All 20th century phenomenology follows through on K in one way or another in this dialectic between eternity and finitude — Constance

Less than you might think. It’s first necessary to understand the radical way in which Heidegger departs from K. You won’t find this in Caputo’s religious hermeneutical reading of Heidegger, since Caputo entirely misses this radical turn of Heidegger’s ( and Derrida’s as well. I highly recommend Martin Hagglund’s The Radical Evil of Deconstruction: a reply to John Caputo).

It's simply affirming post-modern hermeneutics above all competitors as a sort of default, i.e., absolutizing it, and going from there. It seems to me that this is often done with phenomenology as well. A phenomenology that supports a metaphysics of sheer giveness and difference is affirmed, and alternative phenomenology (e g., Plotinus, the Scholastics from whence modern phenomenology gets its terminology, Hegel, and contemporary Catholic phenomenologists, etc.) are dismissed. Now, I won't claim that something like Hegel's argument that sheer giveness is actually contentless and that it is the higher levels of understanding (Absolute Knowing) that should be affirmed (rather than dismissed as "reification") is air tight against later "post-modern" phenomenology, but neither does it seem like the alternative has a decisive refutation of it. If anything, the issue seems undecidable, and metaphysics (acknowledged or not), aesthetics, and a commitment to certain notions of freedom seem to be driving the choice between the two.

Obviously, if we assume a view like Rorty's is true, we can justify it as true. Why should we accept it as true when it refutes itself though? Why should we accept it as true when most don't, given what it says about truth? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think it misses the point to treat postmodern hermeneutics and phenomenology as making arguments designed to ‘refute’ or dismiss the opposition. Rather, they claim to offer a way of seeing that leaves intact the claims of alternative philosophies. You can keep your preferred metaphysics. What the hermeneuticist and phenomenologist want to know is, can you also adopt their peculiar stance which at the same time honors a realist , physicalist or foundationalist approach, and opens up a dimension not opposed to it but beneath it, running alongside it to enrich its sense? If you can’t adopt this stance, this doesn’t make your preferred philosophy incorrect. It is perfectly correct and true, as far as it goes and within the bounds it sets for itself.

Ok, but I pointed out that Rorty's theory is self-refuting in a quite specific way directly related to the very thing it is trying to explain. I am not sure how this makes such a self-refutation unproblematic. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not convinced that the theory is self-refuting in the way you described. As I wrote earlier:

Doesn't this objection misunderstand what Rorty means by truth? He is not saying that popularity or peer approval automatically makes something true; rather, truth emerges through ongoing practices, dialogue, and testing. Criticism of his ideas does not make them false, this is part of the very process through which we evaluate and refine our beliefs. It's the Conversation. In this sense, the theory is not self-refuting; it simply describes how truth is negotiated and maintained within human communities. The fact that Rorty often said snide things doesn't mean these should stand for his entire philosophy.

Isn't Rorty saying that what is “true” just means what makes the most sense with the best reasons right now. He doesn’t accept the idea of ultimate answers, he just updates his beliefs if or when better reasons come along.

So I don't think the “Not-A, therefore B” form represents his view view, because he’s not deducing B from the failure of A, he’s proposing a new way to talk about truth. Thoughts?

1. You say the theory doesn't allow that "anything goes," and this is because: "constraints" determine what we find useful and how human practices and beliefs develop. Is that a fair characterization?

Now either the italicized statement is true outside current human belief and practice (i.e., it is always true of all practices, regardless of what they currently affirm) or else it is only conditionally true, i.e., it is true just in case current belief and practice affirms this statement.

Here are the two horns of the dilemma. If the statement is always true of all beliefs and practices, then it is true regardless of (or outside the context of) current beliefs and practices. But this contradicts the claim that truth is just what is affirmed by current beliefs and practices.

If we grab the other horn and say that the statement is itself only conditionally true, then it is true just so long as current belief and practice affirms it. This means it can "become" false if belief and practice change such that it is no longer affirmed. Thus, the assertion we are relying on to prevent "anything" goes, turns out to be overturned just in case we all stop believing it, in which case it seems that "anything goes."

2. It is self-refuting. It is not a theory of truth that is currently widely accepted. Hence, if truth just is what is widely accepted vis-á-vis common practices, then the theory is false by its own definition. If we affirm the theory as true, we are forced to affirm that it is false, and so we contradict ourselves. To use Rorty's framing, if truth is "what our peers let us get away with," then Rorty's theory is false because it was harshly criticized from a number of different directions. His peers didn't let him get away with saying this, therefore his theory is false.

It leads to: "if A, then not-A" while asserting A essentially (the same problem with 1). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Poststructuralists, hermeneuticists, the later Wittgenstein and phenomenologists all recognize that there are certain assumptions in play when we lay out a truth-propositional statement. A central assumption is that the terms don’t change their sense as we attempt to build a chain of relations. When we add a predicate to a subject (A=A), we assume the sense of the first A doesnt change in the process of having it refer to the second A. The coherence of logical refutation depends on the continued self -identity of the elements of a proposition as we construct a whole out of the parts.

When you attempt to translate the idea that postmodern thinking “doesn't allow that "anything goes” because “constraints" determine what we find useful and how human practices and beliefs develop” into a truth propositional statement, you miss the essential point that the starting point for this assertion is not a view from nowhere, but the view from whoever is speaking , and the here and now of when they are speaking, what they are speaking about and how what they are speaking about shows up for them. The constraints are always discovered anew , with a new sense, in the actual immediate context of speech and thought. One doesn’t convey this in-context thinking as a set of self-identically fixed terms that are then glued together, and then recycled as a refied proof to be indefinitely referred back to as an established empirical truth.

The ‘proof’ of contextual constraints must be enacted over and over again in different contexts, each time producing a new sense of what it means to be a constraint and a truth. It may be hard to see how this amounts to anything more than ‘making stuff up’ while ignoring the real world, and it may be equally hard to see how any sort of stable understanding can be achieved such that scientific-technological and ethico-political progress is possible. But seeing movement and transformation of sense within the fixed terms of logic doesn’t keep them from doing what they are designed to do and show. Rather, it enriches our understanding of what we are doing when we create logical and empirical identities, categories and truths, and opens up paths of intelligibility unavailable otherwise.

Sorry, I must have missed that.

Doesn't this objection misunderstands what Rorty means by truth? He is not saying that popularity or peer approval automatically makes something true; rather, truth emerges through ongoing practices, dialogue, and testing. Criticism of his ideas does not make them false, this is part of the very process through which we evaluate and refine our beliefs. It's the Conversation. In this sense, the theory is not self-refuting; it simply describes how truth is negotiated and maintained within human communities. The fact that Rorty often said snide things doesn't mean these should stand for his entire philosophy. — Tom Storm

Sure, you can't reduce his theory down to his slogan: "truth is what our peers let us get away with," without losing a bunch. But I'm not sure how the added nuance changes the basic problem of self-refutation. It remains the fact that it isn't a widely embraced theory. It isn't what ongoing practices, dialogue, and testing have led to people tending to affirm, so in what sense is it true according to its own standards?

It seems like the claim should indicate that it is what we ought to affirm, or what we shall (if we keep to good epistemic and philosophical practices) end up affirming in the future (and indeed, this is how Rorty reads to me). However, such an "ought" claim, or such a prediction, would seem to require the notion that the theory is somehow "really true" in some sense. It "ought" to be affirmed because truth is better than falsity, or that it will end up being affirmed, because practice invariably leads towards its affirmation (presumably because it is truly the case). But these sorts of explanations assume a sort of "added truth dimension" outside the pragmatic.

Anyhow, I think the dilemma mentioned under point 1 is the more serious challenge, and it is relevant here:

1. You say the theory doesn't allow that "anything goes," and this is because: "constraints" determine what we find useful and how human practices and beliefs develop. Is that a fair characterization?

Now either the italicized statement is true outside the context current human belief and practice (i.e., it is always true of all practices, regardless of what they currently affirm) or else it is only conditionally true, i.e., it is true just in case current belief and practice affirms this statement.

Here are the two horns of the dilemma. If the statement is always true of all beliefs and practices, then it is true regardless of (or outside the context of) current beliefs and practices. But this contradicts the claim that truth is just what is affirmed by current beliefs and practices.

If we grab the other horn and say that the statement is itself only conditionally true, then it is true just so long as current belief and practice affirms it. This means it can "become" false if belief and practice change such that it is no longer affirmed. Thus, the assertion we are relying on to prevent "anything" goes, turns out to be overturned just in case we all stop believing it, in which case it seems that "anything goes." — Count Timothy von Icarus

If 1 can be dealt with, maybe there is some way to affirm that "constraints" will invariably lead towards the recognition of something like the idea that such a theory of truth ought to be affirmed, or will be affirmed by good practice in the long run. But 1 introduces a sort of self-refutation by contradiction in another register.

It may be hard to see how this amounts to anything more than ‘making stuff up’ while ignoring the real world, and it may be equally hard to see how any sort of stable understanding can be achieved such that scientific-technological and ethico-political progress is possible. — Joshs

It's more that it's hard to see how this answers the 1 or 2. And if the answer is just that "constraint" means something completely equivocal in every instance, that only seems to avoid the contradiction in 1 by making the the very "constraints" being invoked to prevent "anything goes" wholly arbitrary, since what is meant by "constraint" apparently changes in each instance.

Note however that univocal predication doesn't require that things be identical in every instance. When man is predicated of Socrates we need not suppose that all men are exactly the same or that Socrates is exactly at every moment. If all predication were to become equivocal in virtue such change than we essentially slip towards the Many pole of the Problem of the One and the Many and it is impossible to say anything about anything. Whereas, if some stability and unity is affirmed, that is simply the vehicle for univocal (and analogical) predication, e.g., that in virtue of which Socrates, Achilles, and Leonidas are all "men," such that "if all men are mortal," they are each mortal.

I think it misses the point to treat postmodern hermeneutics and phenomenology as making arguments designed to ‘refute’ or dismiss the opposition. — Joshs

Well, @Constance referred to alternative views as "disastrous," which I took to imply something like a refutation. But you are quite right, the aim normally isn't refutation, but that isn't my objection. My objection was to what seems like question begging and a self-contradiction absolutization, where criticisms are rebuffed by simply assuming the theory is true.

It is perfectly correct and true, as far as it goes and within the bounds it sets for itself. — Joshs

But most metaphysics do not set any boundaries for themselves. They speak to being qua being. So if they are all equally correct in their own domain (which is "everything") how is this not the affirmation of contradiction? More to the point maybe, if everything is "correct in its own context," how does this avoid pointing towards "anything goes?" And if some of these theories are right (their claims are affirmed) then the post-modern metaphysics of language and difference is wrong.

But this gets to point 3. "Truth" and "knowledge" seem to be being used equivocally here.

You say the theory doesn't allow that "anything goes," and this is because: "constraints" determine what we find useful and how human practices and beliefs develop. Is that a fair characterization?

Now either the italicized statement is true outside the context current human belief and practice (i.e., it is always true of all practices, regardless of what they currently affirm) or else it is only conditionally true, i.e., it is true just in case current belief and practice affirms this statement.

Here are the two horns of the dilemma. If the statement is always true of all beliefs and practices, then it is true regardless of (or outside the context of) current beliefs and practices. But this contradicts the claim that truth is just what is affirmed by current beliefs and practices.

If we grab the other horn and say that the statement is itself only conditionally true, then it is true just so long as current belief and practice affirms it. This means it can "become" false if belief and practice change such that it is no longer affirmed. Thus, the assertion we are relying on to prevent "anything" goes, turns out to be overturned just in case we all stop believing it, in which case it seems that "anything goes." — Count Timothy von Icarus

This criticism suggests that Rorty’s notion that “constraints determine what we find useful and how human practices and beliefs develop” must either be universally true or only conditionally true. But this seems to me to be a misunderstanding. Rorty doesn't claim it is always true outside the context of human beliefs and practices; the constraints are descriptive of tendencies in those practices, not eternal laws. Nor does the conditional nature of these tendencies mean “anything goes.” Even if beliefs shift, practices that fail to work or coordinate with the world will disappear, while useful practices will persist. Thus, the statement holds pragmatically without requiring universal or unchanging truth.

Interesting, I am, perhaps, a methodological naturalist but not a metaphysical naturalist. I doubt that human beings can access reality as it really is (whatever that is meant to mean).

When you take physicalist thinking out of the context of science's paradigms, and allow this to become the default thinking for philosophy, all is lost. Even thought itself is lost in the reduction. — Constance

I can see why you would argue this and I don't think this is an unfamiliar argument hereabouts.

Does this make you a mystic of some stripe? What is the role of philosophy in this space? Is there not a risk of lapsing into endless, unanswerable, abstruse theorizing?

But most metaphysics do not set any boundaries for themselves. They speak to being qua being. So if they are all equally correct in their own domain (which is "everything") how is this not the affirmation of contradiction? More to the point maybe, if everything is "correct in its own context," how does this avoid pointing towards "anything goes?" And if some of these theories are right (their claims are affirmed) then the post-modern metaphysics of language and difference is wrong.

But this gets to point 3. "Truth" and "knowledge" seem to be being used equivocally here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

A metaphysics IS a boundary, setting up criteria for correctness, and more importantly, for intelligiblity. A metaphysics speaks to being qua being via a stance on what it means to be. All stances are bounded. Metaphysical stances are ‘equally’ correct only in being differently correct. That is, the criteria and intelligibility of correctness changes from one metaphysical stance to the next. But we can’t choose to inhabit all stances at once , or observe them all from a sideways on or god’s eye perspective from nowhere.

Metaphysical stances don’t simply contradict each other. They are connected to each other by genealogical historical relations. New stances emerge
from older ones contingently , neither logically nor arbitrarily.

We ourselves inhabit a particular stance, from whose vantage we interpret history. This gives us skin in the game. But our perspective within that stance isn’t static, it is temporally extended. This means that "what is at stake" for us refers back to ongoing practices while remaining open to reinterpretation through future performances. The meaning of the stance we all participate in within a community is constantly extended, questioned and reinterpreted by each of us as we use it. So the existence of the partially shared social stance provides constraints on what matters to us and how it matters, what things mean and how they show up for us as intelligible, and prevents an ‘anything goes’ relativism, but the very use of the stance extends and redefines its basis.

If this is an equivocal use of truth and knowledge, then it also prevents either of these terms from being rooted in an essence.

Rorty doesn't claim it is always true outside the context of human beliefs and practices; the constraints are descriptive of tendencies in those practices, not eternal laws. — Tom Storm

I didn't say he did though. I said the appeal to constraints points outside current beliefs and practices. It seems to me that it has to, because it is prima facie possible that current belief and practice might deny what is being said about constraints. But presumably, constraints don't only restrain "what goes" just in case people currently believe that they do (otherwise, I'm not sure why it isn't "anything goes" so long as we believe that anything goes).

Even if beliefs shift, practices that fail to work or coordinate with the world will disappear, while useful practices will persist. — Tom Storm

What "fails to work" and what is "useful" is defined in terms of current beliefs, desires, and opinions, no? So, if "not anything goes" because only "useful" practices survive, but "useful practices" are just whatever practices just so happen to be affirmed as useful, I am not sure what sort of limit this is supposed to generate. What is (truly) "useful" is itself a function of current beliefs, right?

Not only does this undermine the ability for "usefulness" to function as a sort of constraint on truth, I think it clashes with our intuitions. It seems possible for everyone to be wrong about what is useful. But for it to be possible for everyone to be wrong about what is useful at some time, it cannot be the case that the truth about what is useful is posterior (dependent upon) whatever current practice and belief affirms as useful. There has to be a distinction between reality and appearances/beliefs.

Plus, the statement above still seems like a statement about what is true of all practices regardless of current beliefs. But if no one believed that "constraints" worked in this way, it hardly seems that it could still be "true" that they work this way (for all practice and opinion would deny it is so).

Nor does the conditional nature of these tendencies mean “anything goes.” — Tom Storm

With the above in mind, why not?

A metaphysics IS a boundary, setting up criteria for correctness, and more importantly, for intelligiblity. — Joshs

Yet this is itself a metaphysical position about the nature of intelligibility. If it is affirmed over competing understandings of intelligibility without argument, obviously that would be a sort of question begging. But to merely affirm it "alongside" other understandings without argument would still essentially do the same thing. Just because the position allows contrary positions to be "equally correct" doesn't mean it isn't contradicting them, for the opposing positions might themselves deny that both understandings are "equally correct" (because they deny this understanding of the grounding of intelligibility). Even the Protagorean relativist who asserts that "whatever anyone believes is true (for that person)" ends up making a claim that has implications for truth tout court.

Plus, it would seem to me that this particular metaphysical position should want to assert itself as "more correct" than others. Otherwise, wouldn't it fall victim to the criticism in the Theaetetus that, if it is impossible to be wrong, the sophist (as a profession, not a derogatory term) is the most useless sort of person, since teaching never improves our grasp of the truth?

(Note, that if the rebuttal is that we cannot each individually always be correct, because intelligibility is constructed communally, or in language games, or something to that effect, this would once again be another claim about the metaphysics of intelligiblity/truth/language. And I think the same dilemma appears. Either it has to be asserted over the contrary theory, or else the self-refuting relativism remains).

If this is an equivocal use of truth and knowledge, then it also prevents either of these terms from being rooted in an essence — Joshs

I'm sorry, I don't think I followed this part. Why would this be so?

But we can’t choose to inhabit all stances at once , or observe them all from a sideways on or god’s eye perspective from nowhere. — Joshs

Isn't this an assertion that contradicts (rebuts) some prior understandings of knowledge, intelligibility, and truth?

Rorty doesn't claim it is always true outside the context of human beliefs and practices; the constraints are descriptive of tendencies in those practices, not eternal laws.
— Tom Storm

I didn't say he did though. I said the appeal to constraints points outside current beliefs and practices. It seems to me that it has to, because it is prima facie possible that current belief and practice might deny what is being said about constraints. But presumably, constraints don't only restrain "what goes" just in case people currently believe that they do (otherwise, I'm not sure why it isn't "anything goes" so long as we believe that anything goes). — Count Timothy von Icarus

This seems to assume that for constraints to matter, they must exist independently of the practices they describe. Doesn't this misunderstand the pragmatist framework? Constraints function within practices, influencing which behaviors and methods tend to succeed or fail over time. Temporary denial or disagreement doesn’t undermine them, practices that fail to work or coordinate with reality naturally fall away, regardless of belief. Constraints don’t need to extend beyond human practices to be meaningful, and the worry that this leads to “anything goes” coudl be said to misunderstand how tendencies operate in a pragmatic context.

Even if beliefs shift, practices that fail to work or coordinate with the world will disappear, while useful practices will persist.
— Tom Storm

What "fails to work" and what is "useful" is defined in terms of current beliefs, desires, and opinions, no? So, if "not anything goes" because only "useful" practices survive, but "useful practices" are just whatever practices just so happen to be affirmed as useful, I am not sure what sort of limit this is supposed to generate. What is (truly) "useful" is itself a function of current beliefs, right?

Not only does this undermine the ability for "usefulness" to function as a sort of constraint on truth, I think it clashes with our intuitions. It seems possible for everyone to be wrong about what is useful. But for it to be possible for everyone to be wrong about what is useful at some time, it cannot be the case that the truth about what is useful is posterior (dependent upon) whatever current practice and belief affirms as useful. There has to be a distinction between reality and appearances/beliefs.

Plus, the statement above still seems like a statement about what is true of all practices regardless of current beliefs. But if no one believed that "constraints" worked in this way, it hardly seems that it could still be "true" that they work this way (for all practice and opinion would deny it is so). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Doesn't this misunderstand usefulness in a pragmatist sense? Usefulness isn’t defined by current belief or opinion, it’s about whether a practice reliably produces results and coordinates action in the world. An error or a disagreement doesn’t invalidate the capacity for effective practices to persist. Even if no one explicitly believes a constraint will operate, it manifests through the success or failure of practices in practice. Pragmatic constraints are more like tendencies, not absolute laws and they operate probabilistically. The possibility of error doesn’t imply “anything goes,” because practices that consistently fail are naturally filtered out over time. But perhaps our difference is ultimately in how are framing this. And I am certainly no expert in the subject.

Does this make you a mystic of some stripe? What is the role of philosophy in this space? Is there not a danger of lapsing into endless, unanswerable, abstruse theorizing? — Tom Storm

No, no. There is only the idea that an agency replete with all that extraordinary sound and fury of what we are doesn't really signify nothing. Look at it like this: that line of perceptual access to the world I mentioned is a line that dominates in general thinking, implicitly, the analytic of what it is know the world, and it localizes our subjectivity, confines it like an object is confined to its space. But while we allow talk about causal sequences to rule relations between objects, when the matter turns to epistemic relations, it is a categorical error because causal sequences don't produce the "aboutness" of things when we talk about them. I think this is a revelation, but only if you stare at it long enough to drive you out of complacency, a complacency that is almost what you could call hard wired into common sense.

Keeping in mind that we are talking about ethics: Once it is realized that this radical separation between objects and perception is a categorical error, there is a need for a new category such that this "aboutness" can actually be about something. Otherwise, the object remains hopelessly "distant" and by this term I don't mean physically distant, for this just affirms what is shown to fail; it is rather the distance that undoes the essential unity of the perceptual event. The way to restore unity is to drop distance. It is a useful term for handling physical affairs in the world, but complete wrong for discussing the ground presupposed by these affairs, for this ground has to be inclusive of the subjectivity that is doing the handling, and this is us, looking, understanding, anticipating, caring, desiring, affirming, and so on.

And now the gates of subjectivity are wide open, and these firmly marginalized features of the self, you know, the sound and the fury, flood into ontology. The entire conceptual apparatus that figures into the modern default thinking of a science's metaphysics called physicalism now is conceived in its "primordial unity" with, well, the magnificence of being human. The world is now magnificent. Odd to say, perhaps, but keep in mind the cost of modernity, the age of scientific reason: a repressive concept.

You are looking for simplicity (as am I, really), and the above I don't think is some jargony talk about phenomenology. To me, it is a momentous move: the world out there is, at a more basic level of analysis, not "out there" at all; it is immanent. The stone over there is in its "overthereness" right "here" because the perceptual act is "right here", and "I" am omnipresent in this world. The book IS the affirmation, the play against what is not a book, the "what the book will do", the idea of its continuity in the structure of its temporality: a subjective/objective unity, if you will.

So ethics. But first, what do you think? Because ethics is going to be about this extraordinary unity.

So ethics. But first, what do you think? Because ethics is going to be about this extraordinary unity. — Constance

Well, I am not a reflective type. I just intuit and act my way through life, and I almost always know what to do.

To me, it is a momentous move: the world out there is, at a more basic level of analysis, not "out there" at all; it is immanent. The stone over there is in its "overthereness" right "here" because the perceptual act is "right here", and "I" am omnipresent in this world. The book IS the affirmation, the play against what is not a book, the "what the book will do", the idea of its continuity in the structure of its temporality: a subjective/objective unity, if you will. — Constance

I'm not sure what this gives us. So experience is immanent, present within, inseparable from our experience of consciousness. And?

Perhaps I am the opposite of you. I bypass metaphysics in almost all things because I don’t see it as useful to my way of being. Whether there are implicit metaphysical assumptions built into my perspectives doesn’t matter (we all have those); the point is, I don’t deliberate. Except on a site like this, or in the occasional philosophical conversation with others.

Perhaps part of the problem for me is that I have never had a pressing need to seek an alternative method, since I have been content and have been 'rewarded' by my approach. I seems to me that philosophy often emerges from dissatisfaction.

I see morality as entirely social - a code of conduct - a way we manage power and relations - and, consequently, as a construct of cultural and linguistic practices. Attempting to get underneath this, as you suggest, would seem impossible and (for me) pointless. Where does it lead? But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in this perspective, nor does it mean I’m not open to changing my mind. I'm not hostile to differnt approaches and quite enjoy reading them. If I can follow people's syntax.

Your work seems based on phenomenology, which I find a very interesting strand of thinking. Many of the things I have read about it seem intuitively compatible with my views. But I’m not deep enough into it to follow it down the rabbit hole. If I found philosophy easier to read, I might have a different perspective. As it is, I find it difficult and hard to follow. It can take me a week to understand a paragraph of Heidegger, and that might still be a misreading.

Even if beliefs shift, practices that fail to work or coordinate with the world will disappear, while useful practices will persist.
— Tom Storm

What "fails to work" and what is "useful" is defined in terms of current beliefs, desires, and opinions, no? So, if "not anything goes" because only "useful" practices survive, but "useful practices" are just whatever practices just so happen to be affirmed as useful, I am not sure what sort of limit this is supposed to generate. What is (truly) "useful" is itself a function of current beliefs, right?

Not only does this undermine the ability for "usefulness" to function as a sort of constraint on truth, I think it clashes with our intuitions. It seems possible for everyone to be wrong about what is useful. But for it to be possible for everyone to be wrong about what is useful at some time, it cannot be the case that the truth about what is useful is posterior (dependent upon) whatever current practice and belief affirms as useful. There has to be a distinction between reality and appearances/beliefs. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Your point is relevant to certain readings of pragmatism, wherein ‘usefulness’ is measured in terms of conformity between a belief and ‘ how things are’. But this is not how ‘use’ functions for writers like Wittgenstein and Heidegger. They agree with you that we can only know whether a way of thinking is useful, does what we want it to, satisfies our goals, allows for clarity of understanding, corresponds to how things are, because we already bring to the situation a pre-understanding providing the criteria of usefulness. Their interest is in investigating where this pre-understanding comes from and how it changes.

That is, whether things turn out the way we plan, the world is always useful in that both our successes and failures, our validations and invalidations take place against the backdrop of a world which is fundamentally intelligible and familiar to us. They argue that this pre-understanding is not itself a belief that we measure against the way things are. Rather, it is already the way things are. That is to say, it is the overarching totality of relevance within which things can appear to us as correct or incorrect on the basis of particular criteria. It is not a question of a conformity between this overarching schema and some reality outside of it. The schema directly expresses a real world in a way that is as real as it gets, via patterns of pragmatic use.

A metaphysics IS a boundary, setting up criteria for correctness, and more importantly, for intelligiblity.
— Joshs

Yet this is itself a metaphysical position about the nature of intelligibility. If it is affirmed over competing understandings of intelligibility without argument, obviously that would be a sort of question begging. But to merely affirm it "alongside" other understandings without argument would still essentially do the same thing. Just because the position allows contrary positions to be "equally correct" doesn't mean it isn't contradicting them, for the opposing positions might themselves deny that both understandings are "equally correct" (because they deny this understanding of the grounding of intelligibility). Even the Protagorean relativist who asserts that "whatever anyone believes is true (for that person)" ends up making a claim that has implications for truth tout court.

Plus, it would seem to me that this particular metaphysical position should want to assert itself as "more correct" than others. Otherwise, wouldn't it fall victim to the criticism in the Theaetetus that, if it is impossible to be wrong, the sophist (as a profession, not a derogatory term) is the most useless sort of person, since teaching never improves our grasp of the truth — Count Timothy von Icarus

A human, a dog, a snake and a fish all inhabit their own behavioral niches. What if one thinks of these as akin to metaphysical positions? Leaving aside the evolutionary issues of long-term survival of lineages, does it make sense to say that the behavior niche the dog enacts , and the way its world is perceptually salient to it, is more correct than that of the fish? Each has their own functional norms of correctness (the behavioral criteria for the satisfaction of needs), so each species’ norms of correctness are equally adequate expressions of their mode of functioning. And what about the human? We set up cultural niches including sciences and technologies, and political and philosophical organizations. What would it mean to say that these knowledge niches are more correct than that of other species?

We know that our ability to represent stretches of time far into the past and future allows us to use language concepts in ways that other species can’t, but in what way is this better than what animals can do? In what way does this make us ‘higher’ animals? We could claim that we are capable of a complexity of social organization unavailable to other species, but what makes that better in a biological sense? Or we could argue that metaphysical positions can be ordered on the basis of complexity. We could add that a historical trajectory results in a kind of progress in social stability due to improvements in anticipatory understanding or some such. But making this claim would not require that we deem earlier stages of cultural evolution and their accompanying metaphysics as less ‘correct’, merely less advanced in the complexity of the niches they produce, but heading in the right direction. Key to claiming the superiority for one mode of thinking over others is that it include within itself the other modes of thinking in a kind of dialectical totalization ala Hegel

Such an assumption is problematic for writers like Deleuze, Foucault , Derrida and Heidegger. They argue that whatever criteria of progress we use, whether complexity, stability-survival, rationality, moral goodness or conformity to the way things are, such criteria are subject to continual changes in meaning. And yet one can discern an underlying criterion of progress for these writers that appears to maintain its stability of meaning throughout cultural shifts. They acknowledge the necessity of periods of stable cultural norms, but take delight in their deconstruction. One could say that betterment for them is tied to the most accelerative cycling between stability and radical change we can manage. Does this mean they consider their philosophies to be better than those of previous eras based on the criterion of accelerative self-transformation?

In a certain sense yes, but it is not as though they would then claim that the Medieval scholastic period was ‘better’ than the Greek era, the Enlightenment was better than the Scholastic period , the Modern period was even better than the Enlightenment, and postmodernism is better than all previous ways of thinking. Instead, they would argue that each metaphysical era exposes the limitations of what came before it, limitations that could only become apparent within a changed perspective. But the limitations attached to each era are unique to those periods. The ethical task of the postmodernists is defined by their relation to the limitations they expose in the thinking of their time. Every metaphysic holds within itself it’s own dangers, including postmodernism. Foucault wrote:

I would like to do the genealogy of problems, of problematiques. My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to a hyper- and pessimistic activism. I think that the ethico-political choice we have to make every day is to determine which is the main danger.

Sorry for the late reply. I have had a lot to do. I'm also sorry for the length and I hope the content is reasonably fair.

I think emotivism can meet the open question challenge. A straightforward response would be to cache it out in terms of degrees of belief. That is to say, one can have a strong, dubious or indifferent attitude towards a moral proposition. In any event, one can be humble (as you yourself advise) and keep an open mind. "I am strongly opposed to the death penalty, but I might be persuaded to change my attitude, or perhaps some future life event could effect such a change." — SophistiCat

I think this is a stronger version of anti-realism than I originally targeted. However, I'm not sure what you exactly mean.

First though, what kind of emotivism is it you have in mind? Talking in terms of "beliefs" and "moral propositions" suggests you take moral language to be truth-apt. Emotivists typically deny that. Are you some other sort of non-cognitivist?

Also, I think your response comes at the open-question-challenge from a direction that, while more sophisticated, misses my main concerns. Sure, one can have different degrees of attitudes towards moral propositions. The point I'm pressing with the question, "I believe the death penalty is wrong, but is it wrong?" is that crude subjectivism struggles with the semantic data. I don't think your re-interpretation of the question in theory-laden terms really fixes that problem.

A further problem is that it undermines deliberation. It seems like I'm asking myself a substantial question when I question my belief in such a manner. With the crude subjectivist reading, it would trivialize that deliberation.

I doubt that your current appeal to psychological prediction of possible change in attitude helps. Suppose I know a dystopian state will brainwash me into having a positive attitude towards the death penalty tomorrow. Your re-interpretation makes "I think the death penalty is wrong, but is it wrong?" map neatly onto that prediction, yielding an obvious "no" because I know my attitude will change tomorrow. But even in that scenario, the question appears more substantive than a trivial "no." So it seems like your re-interpretation struggles to capture what that original sentence means.

If you object that this is not what the question is asking, that you want to know whether it is "really" right or wrong, then you are begging the question against the anti-realist. — SophistiCat

I'm not assuming that the question is about what is "really" right or wrong. I'm pointing to semantic and linguistic evidence that disfavors subjectivist and emotivist readings. I don't think that is question-begging. What did you have in mind?

Most moral propositions are more-or-less universalizing. When I say "I oppose the death penalty," I am not just talking about my own value judgment. To hold a moral proposition is to believe that everyone ought to hold it as well. Accordingly, an emotivist will hold concurrent attitudes towards moral agreement (positive) and disagreement (negative). — SophistiCat

Sure, you can give an account for how emotivists could want to press the convergence of attitudes, saying something like: "Everyone, disfavor the death penalty!" That helps explain morally inspired conflict.

My problem with your response to disagreement is that it does not appear to solve the issue I have in mind. In genuine disagreements we aim at contradiction. Crude subjectivism predicts we shouldn't experience the exchange as a contradiction given what it says that "right" and "wrong" means, yet linguistically we do.

Compare with a truth-apt domain:

A: "The Earth is flat!"
B: "No, the Earth is not flat!"

B is negating A's declarative statement. Both can't be true.

Moral claims appear to frequently function the same way:

C: "Abortion is wrong!"
D: "No, abortion is not wrong!"

D seems to be negating C's apparent declarative statement. Once again, both can't be true.

Here are my attempted translations inspired by your comment:

E: "Boo to abortion! Everyone, disfavor abortion!"
F: "Yay for abortion! Everyone, favor abortion!"

or (another attempt):

G: "I have a positive attitude towards abortion. Everyone should have a positive attitude towards abortion."
H: "I have a negative attitude towards abortion. Everyone should have a negative attitude towards abortion."

There is no literal contradiction between E & F or between G & H, where as there seems to be between C & D. That gap is semantic evidence against crude subjectivism (and some non-cognitivist flavors). So I believe my original objections stand (for now). Still, even if one patches these points, I have further concerns.

Have I misunderstood you?

Is there any way to know for sure what is right and what is wrong?
— Truth Seeker

Observations on the circumstances with evidence, reasoning and logical analysis on the case are some tools we can use in knowing right and wrong. — Corvus

Vegans say that veganism is right and non-veganism is wrong. Non-vegans say non-veganism is right and veganism is wrong. They can't both be right. How do we decide whether veganism is right or wrong?

Vegans say that veganism is right and non-veganism is wrong. Non-vegans say non-veganism is right and veganism is wrong. They can't both be right. How do we decide whether veganism is right or wrong? — Truth Seeker

It sounds like both of the vegans and non-vegans are confused with the issue. It is not matter of right or wrong. It is matter of one's own preference and suitability for their taste and health conditions.

Just a couple things about Rorty. One is, on the matter of hermeneutics, the reason why he thought Hedegger was among the three most important philosophers of the 20th century is because of his commitment to finitude and hermeneutics and the strong presence of pragmatism in his concept of ready to hand. Plainly put, the concept of hermeneutics is itself hermeneutically positioned, not absolutely.You could call it an equiprimoridal pragmatism in which the idea of something being absolute is just nonsense. Language defers to other language, period; and truth is a pragmatic function (qualifiedly contra Heidegger's truth as alethea, which I don't think Rorty gives much thought to) grounded in the forward looking structure of dealing with things. There is no way out of this because there is no "out" (I have been meaning to read Gadamer for more depth on this) outside of the when and why and how you mean something and how this acknowledged by others. It is not closed because all that is within one's potentiality of possibilities is open: truth is made, not discovered, however, what is made is discovered IN a general context of a culture's existence, and this sits firmly in place, like a scientific paradigm is, as Kuhn tells us, a fixity until anomaly intrudes inexorably. Nothing like "anything goes" for Rorty or Heidegger, or the physicist. Culture has historical paradigms, as does the physicist.

The other is, following Dewey, Rorty is a naturalist, though a pragmatist first. He follows this naturalism down to its core. There was a standing argument he had with Hilary Putnam regarding whether or not Putman actually beheld his wife when she was present, with Rorty insisting that one could never exceed the delimitations of a brain and its physical systems. It is an uncompromising physicalism such that one no more "knows" the existence of another than a dented car fender knows the offending guard rail. I mean, if one is going to be a thoroughgoing naturalist, one has to accept this, right? Make the physicist to look closely at the implications of a scientific ontology, and this is what you get.

This seems to assume that for constraints to matter, they must exist independently of the practices they describe.

No, it assumes that, for constraints to constrain, the truth of their reality cannot be dependent on current belief and practice affirming that they truly exist. Presumably, current belief and practice might not affirm this, and yet you seem to be claiming that what you say about "constraints" will be true regardless of what current practice affirms throughout this post.

Consider:

P1. Truth just is whatever is affirmed by current belief and practice.

P2. It is possible that current belief and practice might not affirm the truth or existence of constraints in the way that has been specified.

C: Therefore, it is possible for it to be untrue that constraints exist and function in this way.

But if it was untrue that constraints function in this way, how exactly would they be constraining?

It seems like you need additional premises like:

A. What I assert about constraints is true of all practices regardless of what they themselves affirm.

Temporary denial or disagreement doesn’t undermine them, practices that fail to work or coordinate with reality naturally fall away, regardless of belief. — Tom Storm

Is this statement you've made always true of practices, or is it only true just in case this claim is affirmed by current belief and practice?

Either it is always true, in which case truth isn't just what current belief and practice affirms, or else it might cease to be true if current belief and practice don't affirm it.

I think there is an issue of equivocation here. It would be one thing to advance this theory as a description of how beliefs emerge. This sort of descriptive work is arguably what Wittgenstein limits himself to. Objections could be made here, but they are less obvious. But the claim that truth itself just is a function of belief and practice is a gnostic metaphysical claim. Rorty, for instance, doesn't limit himself to description in his comments on Wittgenstein, but thinks Wittgenstein's work supports a positive gnostic metaphysical claim about truth.

Now, if we say truth just is what practice affirms, then what you say about constraints simply cannot be true unless practice happens to affirm it. That's a consequence of the positive metaphysical claim about what truth essentially is. So too for questions as to the shape of the Earth. If truth itself is simply a function of practice (dependent upon it) then prior to the existence of man and his practices it follows that the Earth had no shape, or that it "had a shape" but that "it wasn't true that it had a shape." The absurdity of the latter shows how "truth" is simply being equivocated on here. It would be more straightforward to say: "there is no truth, but here is this other thing we tend towards, call it 'pragmatic affirmation.'"

Even if no one explicitly believes a constraint will operate, it manifests through the success or failure of practices in practice. — Tom Storm

The same issue turns up here. Is what you're saying always true of all practices, regardless of what those practices themselves affirm?

Note that "success" and "failure" require an end that is sought by which they can be judged as such (presumably one judged "useful."). All action reliably results in some consequences. For us to be wrong about what constitutes failure or success, or wrong about what is useful, presupposes that what is "truly useful" isn't simply what is believed to be useful. But if that's the case, I think it is obvious that "what is truly useful," cannot be "whatever current practice has come to affirm as useful."

So how exactly is the supposed to respond to the charge of self-refutation (and the ancillary issue of affirming contradictions)?

If the idea is that self-refutation and contradiction are avoided because what is meant by terms like: truth, correctness, constraints, etc. is always changing, and so always equivocal, then it doesn't seem that it can be saying anything at all. Every point in the discourse would be guilty of the fallacy of equivocation.

They acknowledge the necessity of periods of stable cultural norms, but take delight in their deconstruction. One could say that betterment for them is tied to the most accelerative cycling between stability and radical change we can manage. — Joshs

In virtue of what is this "better?"

It is not a question of a conformity between this overarching schema and some reality outside of it. The schema directly expresses a real world in a way that is as real as it gets, via patterns of pragmatic use. — Joshs

Well, it seems there was a time during which life did not exist, just as there was a time during which we each individually did not exist. During that time period, it seems that the Earth did exist. Is it not possible for the Earth to have existed or to have a determinant shape, etc. prior to the advent of life and its schemas? No doubt, the empiricist-analytic view of a "view from nowhere" is flawed, but it doesn't seem to me to follow that, if that view is flawed, then truth and intelligibility are dependent upon man and his practices (or life and its practices).

It does not follow, for instance, that because the view from nowhere is flawed, and because one needs language to say "the Earth was round before life existed on it," and a mind to know this, that Earth could have no shape prior to the "schemas" etc. that allow for this to be known by us.

Additional premises are needed for this, so too for claims that intelligibility is "created" by metaphysics. Intelligibility is arguably a prerequisite for understanding, not a product of understanding. But even if intelligibility is a product of understanding and will (pragmatic striving), I can think of no reason to think that it is a product of our act of understanding and willing (either individually or collectively) nor a product of the understanding and willing of life on Earth more generally.

Earlier notions of truth and intelligibility avoided the problem of the empiricist view because they did not posit a "mind-independent being" since knowledge and understanding were themselves simply thought's grasp of being, and truth being qua knowable (which obviously make no sense outside the context of thought and knowing). The divine was the anchor of intelligibility. Modernity lopped off the divine and was left with an incoherent notion of truth. Yet it's not clear to me that elevating man (or life generally, or a sort of panpsychic will, or primordial will-to-power) into the place of God resolves the problem. We are contingent, and what you end up with is intelligibility springing from sheer potency, which is ultimately arbitrary.

A sort of Euthyphro dilemma seems to hold here. Is what is willed (pragmatically striven for) willed because it is good, or is it good because it is what is willed? If it's the former, then what is striven for must already be intelligible as desirable (good) prior to the act of willing. If it's the latter, we have a sort of inchoate voluntarism where the direction of the will (the pragmatic drive) is ultimately arbitrary in that it is grounded in no prior intelligibility, and is itself contingent. A pragmatism that is not oriented towards some end is not so much pragmatism, as a sort of sheer willing that generates its own end.

But here’s what I’m struggling with: if everything reduces to the playing field of experience, how do we avoid collapsing into a kind of idealism? You say it’s not “all in the head,” but once we deny any perspective outside experience, what secures the distinction between the cup itself and my experience of the cup? Isn’t there a risk that “ontological foundations” become just redescriptions of phenomenology? — Truth Seeker

This is difficult, have you read Kant? Not because it is such a complex argument (though it is this when you read it), but because one needs personally to make a phenomenologically qualified Kantian Copernican Revolution. You see out there, in the field, the sun descending into the horizon: this is not going to be gainsaid at all with Kant. His transcendental idealism does not tell you that you are not really seeing a sunset, but only that this sunset is a representation. You're seeing a representation OF.....then Kant rather loses it. Now take the Kantian idea that space and time are only intuitions of the structure of experience and allow that nothing in the familiarity and habits of behavior and culture changes when you start talking about things being representations. Nothing. The world remains the world as it was prior to that annoying class you took on Kant. What Kant did was divide "the world" into appearances and reality, but the evidential ground for doing this must lie in the representation, otherwise it would be entirely impossible to think like this, and thus the move to posit the apriori necessity of pure reason can be found to be grounded in phenomenality. And hence, where is the need to argue for some impossible transcendental reality when the evidence for this lies here in phenomenality? So what is "pure" about phenomenality?

Givenness, The pure being there. The "otherness" of Kant's impossible reality (noumena) is immanent, IN the fabric of phenomenality, so to speak. Givenness is simply what appears, and now all eyes are on the appearing of the appearance. The deep mystery of noumena is now the mystery of appearance and philosophy is bound to a purely descriptive account of what this is. And metaphysics is now a threshold concept, where we give analysis to such enigmatic terms like being as such, vis a vis beingS, and epistemic "distance" and phenomenological space and time, and so on. Just like Kant, the world remains the world as we encounter it, but it is not "idea" or representation of anything. It IS what is.

This can be maddening to understand. An object is what it is, but at the level of ontology, it is a threshold event. The substantival view of the world at this level is absent. In place of this view there is openness, a standing on the brink of an unmade future, hence, freedom is found in the descriptive phenomenolgy. The problem of ethics: the value dimension of our existence is allowed to BE what it is, not reduced to a derivative of something else. This is the merit of phenomenology, the true positivism, as Husserl said, for the physicalist's material substrate is at least as bad as Kant's noumena: impossible to speak of and a hindrance to philosophical discovery. There is nothing "verifiable of falsifiable" about this concept. The phenomenon is verifiability itself!

Also, I’m not sure I fully grasp your critique of emergence. You suggest that calling subjective experience an “emergent property” is incoherent, because everything we can talk about is an emergent property. But doesn’t that simply mean “emergence” is a relational notion? Temperature emerges from molecules, but molecules emerge from atoms, and so on. If experience emerges from brain states, why isn’t that just one more layer in the same explanatory pattern, rather than a category mistake?

In other words, does your view amount to saying: experience is foundational, and any talk of emergence must be subordinated to that? If so, what does that mean for scientific realism? Can we still say that physics tells us something true about the world, or only that it gives us a useful way of describing how experiences hang together? — Truth Seeker

If you mean to say that emerging properties issue forth from the emerging properties, and really, there is no underlying finality from which all things emerge, that itself not an emerging anything, then we would be aligned, but the question as to this underlying finality would remain open. All we build upon in a category of knowledge can be said to be derivative within this category, and the category itself
intra-derivative in a system of thinking in general; consider the way Thomas Kuhn thinks of science and its paradigmatic evolvement. Truth as paradigmatic truth. All, you could say, equi-derivative. How does emergence occur? How about metaphorically? Meaning, discovery of a new paradigm that causes a revolution in science, is a borrowing from language from existing paradigms, a construct giving emergence to a new construct. For the ontological ground has to be where meanings come from that give forth possiblities, and these possibilities are already IN the established language, but again, borrowed from their paradigms to create a new paradigm. See how quantum physics reaches into standard physics to conceive of the quantum anomaly , and grounds it concept of indeterminacy out of this determinacy.

Useful? Clearly. But do emerging concepts reach "beyond" anything, or is it rather that any "beyond" is simply a metaphorical extension into alien contexts?

If the idea is that self-refutation and contradiction are avoided because what is meant by terms like: truth, correctness, constraints, etc. is always changing, and so always equivocal, then it doesn't seem that it can be saying anything at all. Every point in the discourse would be guilty of the fallacy of equivocation — Count Timothy von Icarus

You’re trying to run all these concepts through a propositional logic wringer, which, as I said before, presupposes that the terms we are comparing do not alter their sense in the very act of comparison. Without its dependence on the fixity of its terms, logic can’t produce its laws, and you’re clinging to these laws as the ground for your attempt to refute certain philosophical approaches as self-contradictory. If you start from a ground of identiy and then explain difference as emerging from or dependent on identity, then you will always be able to use propositional logic to ‘refute’ philosophies which claim to ground identity in difference.

They acknowledge the necessity of periods of stable cultural norms, but take delight in their deconstruction. One could say that betterment for them is tied to the most accelerative cycling between stability and radical change we can manage.
— Joshs

In virtue of what is this "better?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Forcing intricately and intimately flowing experience into the artificial straitjacket of reified conceptual schemes takes us out of our intimate engagement with others. This is because the fact that experience is constantly on the move doesn’t mean that we cannot approach it in terms of familiar, recognizable patterns and regularities. But the patterns must be permeable , open to variation without crumbling. The unethical is closely tied to treating morality in terms of laws, essences, facts or real foundations that flatten and thus do violence to the contextually unfolding way that situations present us with ethical issues. The more fluid, open and permeable to change our thinking is, the more we do justice to the real.

it seems there was a time during which life did not exist, just as there was a time during which we each individually did not exist. During that time period, it seems that the Earth did exist. Is it not possible for the Earth to have existed or to have a determinant shape, etc. prior to the advent of life and its schemas? No doubt, the empiricist-analytic view of a "view from nowhere" is flawed, but it doesn't seem to me to follow that, if that view is flawed, then truth and intelligibility are dependent upon man and his practices (or life and its practices).

It does not follow, for instance, that because the view from nowhere is flawed, and because one needs language to say "the Earth was round before life existed on it," and a mind to know this, that Earth could have no shape prior to the "schemas" etc. that allow for this to be known by — Count Timothy von Icarus

Here we can make use of the work of agential realists like Joseph Rouse and Karen Barad, as well as Deleuze. So far I have been talking about the way the world appears to us as a result of how we interact with it, and that the contingently changing nature of this interaction precludes notions of the way things really are independent of our participation in the world ( even the notion of subject -independence is itself dependent on perspective). They argue that , indepdenent of human involvement, things in the world don’t pre-exist their interactions. Just as human culture achieves a relative normative stability without needing to rely on notions of fixedly real things, so the world outside our involvement with it interacts with itself via configurative patterns which produce a relative stability for periods of time which gives it characteristics which we are tempered to interpret in abstractively fixed ways.

Intelligibility is arguably a prerequisite for understanding, not a product of understanding. But even if intelligibility is a product of understanding and will (pragmatic striving), I can think of no reason to think that it is a product of our act of understanding and willing (either individually or collectively) nor a product of the understanding and willing of life on Earth more generally.

A sort of Euthyphro dilemma seems to hold here. Is what is willed (pragmatically striven for) willed because it is good, or is it good because it is what is willed? If it's the former, then what is striven for must already be intelligible as desirable (good) prior to the act of willing. If it's the latter, we have a sort of inchoate voluntarism where the direction of the will (the pragmatic drive) is ultimately arbitrary in that it is grounded in no prior intelligibility, and is itself contingent. A pragmatism that is not oriented towards some end is not so much pragmatism, as a sort of sheer willing that generates its own end. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The ‘will’ doesn’t begin inside and then point outward toward a world; it is neither inside nor outside but in-between the two. We find ourselves willing in that we find ourselves moved, affected, motivated by the way things appear to us. This isn’t a stimulus-response model. We anticipate forward into new experience based on previous experience, and this anticipatory stance sets up constraints on how things emerge as what they are for us. But what emerges as the things we encounter always involves a dimension of surprise and novelty alongside recognizability.
The things we encounter strike us as funny, sad, boring, undesirable. Our own thoughts come to us in this same way. We don’t will to think what we think, we find ourselves already thrown into the thoughts. To want something is to sap we oneself wanting it. The desire arrives to one from an ourside, not from an inside.

So where do good and bad, better and worse come in here? We find ourselves desiring and striving, which simply means that we find ourselves ‘aiming. toward’ the fulfillment of what was anticipated. Emotional cries are crises of meaning and relevance. To anticipate into the next moment and be rewarded with an experience which is unfamiliar and incoherent is a kind of loss of self, and we call this loss of self , this being plunged into the emotional darkness of chaos and confusion, the ‘bad’. We don’t choose the good over the bad so much as find ourselves in situations of relative intelligiblity or incoherence and label the finding after the fact as what we ‘willed’.

Why wouldn't the murder of 80 billion sentient land organisms and 1 to 3 trillion sentient aquatic organisms per year by non-vegans and for non-vegans be morally wrong when it is possible to make vegan choices which prevent so much pain and death?

Thank you for this rich reply. I see more clearly now how you’re situating Kant’s “noumenon” inside the fabric of phenomenality itself - turning the supposed “otherness” of reality-in-itself into what you call givenness. That does help explain why phenomenology insists that we don’t need to posit some unreachable metaphysical substrate; the phenomenon is already the site of verification.

But here’s where I still feel some tension. If noumena are reinterpreted as “the mystery of appearance,” are we actually dissolving the distinction between appearance and reality, or are we simply redescribing it in a way that keeps philosophy “within the field” of what is given? In other words: does phenomenology abolish the metaphysical question, or only defer it?

Your remarks on emergence were also illuminating. I like the idea that “all is equi-derivative,” and that paradigm shifts in science are themselves a kind of metaphorical emergence. Still, I’m left wondering: if all emergence is intra-paradigmatic and metaphorical, doesn’t that undermine the very notion of an independent reality that science aims to describe? Physics then becomes not so much about “what the world is” but about “how our descriptions evolve.” That seems coherent, but it sounds close to a kind of conceptual idealism.

So maybe my question back to you is: do you think phenomenology, in the end, commits us to giving up on scientific realism as a metaphysical claim? Or is there still room in your view to say that physics, while mediated by paradigms, does latch onto structures of the world that exist whether or not we describe them?

I'm more a positive nihilist. A sad nihilist is trying, but failing to accept life on its terms.
— frank

A vestige of science's physicalism, which kills the soul. Defining the world according to empirical discovery (which usually carries with it a philosophy of foundational physicalism) is such bad thinking. Hard to imagine taking it seriously. — Constance

I'm not sure what you're talking about. My baseline view is Neoplatonic, not physicalist, although I think one ontology is as good as another.

Sorry, I don’t recall what we were talking about. I’ve forgotten the original point that led us into this. Wasn’t it simply me saying that I can't see how we have access to reality or metaphysical truth? And therefore right and wrong are always human perspectives. Or something like that?

P1. Truth just is whatever is affirmed by current belief and practice.

P2. It is possible that current belief and practice might not affirm the truth or existence of constraints in the way that has been specified.

C: Therefore, it is possible for it to be untrue that constraints exist and function in this way.

But if it was untrue that constraints function in this way, how exactly would they be constraining?

It seems like you need additional premises like:

A. What I assert about constraints is true of all practices regardless of what they themselves affirm. — Count Timothy von Icarus

P1 - Saying “truth just is whatever is affirmed by current belief and practice” makes it sound like anything people believe is true. Rather, truth is tied to beliefs that work, are successful, or are coherent within practice.

Even if current belief or practice doesn’t recognize a constraint, it can still “push back” in practice. For example, ignoring a physical limitation like gravity will have consequences, and those consequences will shape future practices. The “truth” of the constraint is not independent of us; it is defined by how it operates within our ongoing interactions with the world.

Doesn't your argument assume that constraints must exist independently of our beliefs and practices to truly constrain? But this isn’t necessary. Constraints exist and function because our practices enact them so their “reality” is tied to their effects in practice. If practices change, the constraints may change too.

But maybe it would help me if you gave me an example of a constraint which tells us something about the nature of reality. I'm not denying the existance of an external world but we only know it through human practices. Isn't what we call truth a measure of what works in the context of our experience?

Note that "success" and "failure" require an end that is sought by which they can be judged as such (presumably one judged "useful."). All action reliably results in some consequences. For us to be wrong about what constitutes failure or success, or wrong about what is useful, presupposes that what is "truly useful" isn't simply what is believed to be useful. But if that's the case, I think it is obvious that "what is truly useful," cannot be "whatever current practice has come to affirm as useful." — Count Timothy von Icarus

So your argument asserts that success and failure require an independently defined standard, and that we can only be wrong about what is useful if there is some notion of “true usefulness” existing outside of practice. That right?

But doesn't this assume a metaphysical standard of usefulness that a pragmatist wouldn't recognise? In reality, actions always produce consequences, and “success” is judged relative to the goals and expectations of the community. There's no call for a separate idea of what is “truly useful”. What current practice affirms as useful is what matters, because usefulness is determined by how practices function and coordinate behaviour. The claim that “what is truly useful cannot be whatever current practice affirms” is imposing an external measure that pragmatism wouldn't recognize.

Why wouldn't the murder of 80 billion sentient land organisms and 1 to 3 trillion sentient aquatic organisms per year by non-vegans and for non-vegans be morally wrong when it is possible to make vegan choices which prevent so much pain and death? — Truth Seeker

Some plant and fruit lovers might say to you that how could you kill the plants pulling them out from the field, cut and boil or fry them, and eat them? You are killing the innocent living plants. Same with the corns and fruits. They were alive and had souls. But you took them from the fields, cut them and boiled them, and ate them killing them in most cruel manner. The panpsychic folks believe the whole universe itself has consciousness and souls. Even rocks and trees have mind. What would you say to them?

But here’s where I still feel some tension. If noumena are reinterpreted as “the mystery of appearance,” are we actually dissolving the distinction between appearance and reality, or are we simply redescribing it in a way that keeps philosophy “within the field” of what is given? In other words: does phenomenology abolish the metaphysical question, or only defer it? — Truth Seeker

And again you touch upon the pulse of this problem. What is the nature of the divide in our existence? If one is committed to the final authority of pure manifestness--just what is there in the whole of the givenness of being-in-the-world, then we have to observe boundaries, and try to bring these into ontology, that is, explaining what these ARE. And this manifestness is phenomenological singularity, just as logic was for Kant's deduction to pure reason. When he talked about a thing and its analytic possiblities, he was committed the logicality of the whole which subsumed science, ethics, art, (which I haven't read much of, I mean his third Critique) "the world", only Kant was a rationalist and only interested in a logical formalism, essentially skipping the world's palpable existence with dismissive terms like 'sensible intuitions' and 'matter' and 'first stimulus'. With Kant, we have one recourse for everything he says: it is all representation, even "the work Critique of Pure Reason" has this representational ontology; there are no "pure forms" for this is just an analytic term for transcendence. Again, the turn toward phenomenology qualifiedly drops this representation and allows the world to be what it IS with no compromised status. The feel of the keys as I type ARE the noumenality Kant put out of touch, as it were.

So the distinction between appearance and reality occurs within this essential manifestness, and so now, what is the nature otf the division in, not just our existence, but in being as such? Your question has its answer here: Ontology requires language. This is paramount, for thinking has to deal with the thinking that articulates the problem in the first place, and of course, there is Kant again with analysis of thought qua thought, but Kant was essentially dealing with an abstraction. Here we take the entirety of being-in-the-world (the familiar sound of this, of course, comes from Heidegger), and we realize that logic and the principle of sufficient reason (from Liebniz, as I read Heidegger Ground of Reason) have a deeper ground, which is ontology; the "laying out in words" is going to be IN the nature of the most basic analysis of being.

Language is what gives Being difference, and language is a LOT more than just mere signifiers in predications of everydayness, as Kant showed us. Language structures, "brings being to" (Heidegger) existence, and a thing being a thing is not so much a discovery as it is a making (though this making is IN the unity of Being, and so a line is not going to be drawn so easily at this level of analysis. Kant tried to draw a line between noumena and phenomena, but really it is a line drawn UPON noumena, delimiting noumena, which is nonsense), or better, it is a making IN a discovery (alethea, unhiddenness, more Heidegger) for being is a unity, 'making' is a term issuing forth in this unity and has its ground, its essential manifestness, in the unity where all distinctions fall away, and so the apparent paradox: distinction within being, aka, no distinctions, it's a kind of nothingness to the understanding (See Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety). So the foundational ontology has no divisions--being as pure manifestation IS ITSELF an ontological concept. You see: this is Kant's noumena IN the fabric of phenomena. Only conceptually will one discover anything, and yet this "discovery" is grounded IN the groundlessness of being which "stands as its own presupposition" or is manifestness itself, and terms like this arising nowithstanding the division inherent in the language conceives them.

The objection comes fast on the heels of all this talk. There is no purity in manifestness, because the concept is haunted by the contingency of the language that speaks it, and the historicity which engendered this language. And this is right. To speak of a foundational unity called Being is terrible question begging, and this objection it perfectly right: being, that is being-as-such, is vacuous. That is until the matter of ethics and aesthetics come into play. Early on, I claimed that ethics is really metaethics in the ontology of ethics, the asking "what IS ethics?"

The division sought for at the outset is this separation: the ontological necessity of articulating so something can even "come up" at all against the fullness of being there. In the everydayness of being, we discover/make a world of beingS. There were no cats or dogs prior to the language that brought them into existence. There was "something" but then, imagine what a cat or a dog IS TO a cat or a dog. There is no articulation there; there are sniffs and aversions, but these are not sniffs and aversions at all TO a dog. There is no language to articulate being into beingS. Language makes the world come into manifestness, yet it is also what provides for the analytic of the revelation of what is not language, and it does this apophatically. As I read Derrida, (I am struggling a bit through Derrida's Metaphysics of Violence, which is a critique of Levinas' Totality and Infinity, along wiht other things, like White Mythology. He is thick with interplay, but he does grow on you, and his thought becomes less enigmatic the more you read), it becomes apparent that being and manifestness, which I have been trying to make out as the "ground of all grounds" is a kind of "wholly other" in discovery, and the wholly other made manifest IS value, or metavalue, the value of value, the second order of analytic language that stands apart from
the first, in which the transcendental essence of value is made apparent.

This is square one. Metaethics refers us to the world, the tout autre, of manifestness itself, and this manifestness is NOT vacuous at all. It is non formal value (Scheler arguing against Kant); it is importance as such (Von Hildebrandt); the "value of value" that early Witgenstein told us was nonsense because it is nonsense to speak it (..thereby one must be silent), because, plainly put, the pain in my ankle is not language, not a vacuous concept like primordial being as such, but note, this "as such" never was value-free. Such talk is like a Kantian abstraction. The wholeness of manifestation is inherently OF what we call by the analytic terms, good and bad.

That is a lot to take in. My current fascination is Michel Henry and Jean Luc Marion. Still working on this philosophy and will be for some time. As I mentioned to Tom Storm, the point of all this is to restore the sound and the fury of our existence to ontology, that is, to basic analytic of the world that philosophy has so stupidly ignored in anglo american thinking.

On your comment re. emergence......