I think you're getting lost through fidelity to your theory. People play basketball together. They all see a hoop. They all see a basketball. Do you sincerely doubt this? (And please please please that these hoops and basketballs could be unsubstantial projections is implicit here)

I think the similarity is exaggerated

Yeah prob. But you can only exaggerate if there's something to exaggerate. Otherwise it's fabrication, not exaggeration.

I think you're getting lost through fidelity to your theory. People play basketball together. They all see a hoop. They all see a basketball. Do you sincerely doubt this? (And please please please that these hoops and basketballs could be unsubstantial projections is implicit here) — csalisbury

Let's bracket the question for a moment and ask a more basic one. Instead of 'do they,' ask 'would they need to?' If not, then of course the fact that they play isn't necessarily evidence that they do.

Now ask, do symbiotic creatures need to see 'the same things' to interact, or even depend on each other to live? You can fee a squirrel an acorn -- does a squirrel see acorns?

Let's bracket the question for a moment and ask a more basic one. Instead of 'do they,' ask 'would they need to?' If not, then of course the fact that they play isn't necessarily evidence that they do.

Yeah, maybe they don't. (Hopefully there's no reporter with a shit assignment who asks each one to describe what the basketball game was like afterward. The variances would be wild. Or I guess you could do that thing of maybe what I see as orange, you see as purple. Maybe what I experience as playing basketball, you experience as masturbating in the desert while v scary ghosts try to stop you bc unejaculated semen powers their memory-wars...But we both describe those different experiences using words like 'hoop' and 'basketball') I'm going to ask you point blank: Those childhood memories of playing basketball - Do you think the other players saw a hoop, saw a basketball? Or was it just you? Can you please honestly answer this question?

Now ask, do symbiotic creatures need to see 'the same things' to interact, or even depend on each other to live?

Definitely not. And?

Definitely not. And? — csalisbury

What makes the basketball players so different from the symbiotes?

I'm going to ask you point blank: Those childhood memories of playing basketball - Do you think the other players saw a hoop, saw a basketball? Or was it just you? — csalisbury

How could I know? And what does it matter?

How could I know? And what does it matter?

I'm going to ask you again, point blank, do you think the other players saw hoops and basketballs? If you don't want to answer that, that's fine. But if you're not willing to share your actual beliefs, I don't think I can honestly engage you in this conversation.

I'm going to ask you again, point blank, do you think the other players saw hoops and basketballs? If you don't want to answer that, that's fine. But if you're not willing to share your actual beliefs, I don't think I can honestly engage you in this conversation. — csalisbury

I don't know. There's no point in denying it under any pubic circumstances, but I don't see how I could have any idea.

I don't know. There's no point in denying it under any pubic circumstances, but I don't see how I could have any idea.

But what do you believe?

I edited my post above, earlier, after you may have already read it. It's possible you're the only one who experienced the game of basketball as a game of basketball, with hoops and balls. That people describe similar experiences - whether in literature or journalism - seems to me a good indicator we share similar experiences. Though, again, it's possible, I guess, that each soldier who fought in Normandy had a wildly different understanding of what was going on (one was fighting a mantis to protect his eggs, one was hiding Salvia in a gatorade bottle from an art-class substitute, one was skateboarding in an abandoned warehouse, one was storming a beach under heavy gunfire). And the words those soldiers used to recount wildly different private experiences, despite sounding similar, had nothing to do with a shared experience. Maybe. It's possible.

But what do you think, in your heart of hearts. When you were playing basketball with the other ppl, did they see a hoop, a basketball. What do you believe?

When you write on philosophy forums, do you think you're talking to other people who use the words you write in similar ways? Do you think you can communicate with them? If not, why do you do it?

What do you believe? Do the other players see a hoop, see a basketball?

That people can describe, in literature or reporting, similar experiences seems to me a good indicator we share similar experiences. — csalisbury

Why, though? Think about it.

What do you believe, tgw, did the other players see a hoop, a basketball?

But what do you think, in your heart of hearts. When you were playing basketball with the other ppl, did they see a hoop, a basketball. What do you believe? — csalisbury

Nothing, really -- I'm checked out for the most part. I guess I have a kind of faith in my family members, the rest of it is hard to care about. Why have a belief? It can't change anything, not even action -- you'd have to behave the same way regardless, so who cares?

Part of philosophy as I see it, in the Socratic tradition, is a devaluing of belief.

Philosophy, in the socratic tradition, requires shared experience which renders possible the discussion and critique of various particular beliefs. You can't have a socratic dialogue if you don't have multiple people who understand the same language. There's no 'Republic' if Socrates and whats-is-name don't have that mutual understanding of being-wealthy which sparks the whole thing.

I don't believe you believe the other players didn't see the ball, the hoop. You can say that's beside the point. Well. I can argue I'm the only conscious being in the world and there's no such thing as inter-affectivity and coercion and the blind fountain or any of that. How can you argue against that?

Philosophy, in the socratic tradition, requires shared experience which renders possible the discussion and critique of various particular beliefs. You can't have a socratic dialogue if you don't have multiple people who understand the same language. There's no 'Republic' if Socrates and whats-is-name don't have that mutual understanding of being-wealthy which sparks the whole thing. — csalisbury

The Socratic tradition requires that ideas be tested internally on their own merits. If what you said were true, then the discussions had in the Theaetetus could not have happened, or to the audience would seem unintelligible. But they aren't.

Well. I can argue I'm the only conscious being in the world and there's no such thing as inter-affectivity and coercion and the blind fountain or any of that. How can you argue against that? — csalisbury

I don't think you can argue it. You can say it, which is not arguing it.

[quote}The Socratic tradition requires that ideas be tested internally on their own merits. If what you said were true, then the discussions had in the Theaetetus could not have happened, or to the audience would seem unintelligible. But they aren't. [/quote]
That they're able to collaboratively test arguments on their internal merits at all, requires that they be able to communicate.

I don't think you can argue it. You can say it, which is not arguing it.

I wanted to know how it's possible for a basketball game to take place, where different players see the same ball, the same hoop. You have a hard time saying whether you believe different players see balls and hoops. You believe people sometimes play basketball with one another but you can't quite go the whole hog of thinking they all experience hoops and basketballs.

If you wanted to talk to someone about coercion and inter-affectivity they could, at any time, simply deny the existence of others. You could lay down sophisticated theories of intersubjectivity to which they can reply, 'oh that's all very true, that's exactly how i'm able to (quite unconsciously, naturally) to create the sense of there being other people.' Love-proxies for the infant and basketball-robots - there doesn't have to be anyone but you tgw. Your move that maybe people don't all see a basketball and a hoop when they play basketball is the same thing as the solipsist's move that all people are his projections. If you need proof, I guess we can really laboriously go through the drama of you explaining your theory of intersubjectivity to me while I pretend to be a solipsist.

A solipsist is boring because (barring mental illness) he pretends to deny what he in truth believes - that there are others - in order to defend a theory. Your hand-wringing over basketball is boring in exactly the same way.

If you wanted to talk to someone about coercion and inter-affectivity they could, at any time, simply deny the existence of others. — csalisbury

I don't think this option is open, because the position being outlined here isn't compatible with solipsism. Solipsism is a transcendental position, which is against the spirit of the sort of 'outside' and blindness I'm talking about. This is something that it shares with realism, as many authors note. Ignorance, even systematic ignorance, is not the same as denial.

Love-proxies for the infant and basketball-robots - there doesn't have to be anyone but you tgw. — csalisbury

But there does, because as I said, I'm utterly dependent on what's beyond my control. What there doesn't have to be, and what you seem to want their to be, are other people on my terms -- that is, the 'not really other people' of the realist, other people who are reducible to me and have to be common to me.

Work me through " I think other people see basketballs and hoops when I play basketball with them" -> "I want people to be reducible to me."

I don't think this option is open, because the position being outlined here isn't compatible with solipsism. Solipsism is a transcendental position, which is against the spirit of the sort of 'outside' and blindness I'm talking about. This is something that it shares with realism, as many authors note. Ignorance, even systematic ignorance, is not the same as denial.....But there does [have to be others], because as I said, I'm utterly dependent on what's beyond my control.

Sure there's your pathe blob over which you have little control. And there's no one else with pathe blobs.

Work me through " I think other people see basketballs and hoops when I play basketball with them" -> "I want people to be reducible to me." — csalisbury

The irony in your position is that you can't fathom other people existing unless they are like you, so much so that the idea that other people might be different form you in substantial ways makes you think of solipsism.

What's troubling to me is that you can't conceive of sharing without it becoming engulfment - and this to the point where you can't give a straight answer about whether you actually believe other people see basketball and hoops.

That the other people see hoops and basketballs hardly means we are basically the same people. There's all sorts of distance between us in a million ways. But when we play basketball we still see basketballs and hoops.

It's worth saying that from childhood to high school, the idea of my being like other people was incomprehensible. I always struggled to interact. I had plenty of friends but really only felt comfortable with them when we were playing video games or something like that. It got worse in high school where I used hallucinogens and experienced periodic bouts of non-hallucinogen related derealization and depersonalization. I wrote a lot of short stories then, and in my early twenties, about enclosed worlds where people behaved according to strange rules, and in dialogue made strange associations - all of which was meant to suggest their having some dark but inaccessible understanding, but never showing quite what that was. Have you ever seen that movie Dogtooth? College was difficult because so many of my classmates were wealthy upper-middle class types who seemed to get each other and how to interact with each other in a way I never could.

That there exist insurmountable gaps between people was an emotional axiom for me long before it became a philosophical one, which it remains. It's precisely that giant gulf between everyone that makes the ability to share things so interesting.

You were wrong -- those other people never got each other. That feeling of fundamental separation isn't special to you or anyone else. Talk to any person long enough, and it'll come around to that. Every single one. People who are social losers just express it more outwardly because they have no success and so no distractions.

If there is something people share, it's that.

Oh, I agree, though it took me a while to understand that. I went through a thing of reading everything David Foster Wallace wrote (except for Broom of The System, which was boring to me.) And then talking to other people about DFW. And that drove it all home.

But sometimes people do get each other, briefly, and that comes from collaboration. And, sure, even getting-each-other, in these situations, contains a distance. As you say, this allows for novelty.

But as lonely as all the basketball players may be, they still see basketballs and hoops.

For me this isn't the goal (everyone is the same and we all see the exact same things so there is no loneliness), but a starting point. This makes me interested in understanding how people come to share, briefly, certain environments. Or how they're able to engage in each other in conflict.

I'm having a hard time trying to outline what your debate is about. Would you be able to break it down in more plain English? You two seem to have a kind of inside language that I am not quite grasping. I hope by mentioning "inside language" I am not bolstering anyone's argument about the idea of language and separateness!

As far as I can see TGW views human experience as isolated and unrelatable. csalisbury views language as at least intersubjective. I think TGW has a point in some regards, in that at the experiential level, it may be the case that humans have very unique subjective experiences that language cannot capture accurately. This was an argument I made for why it is hard to really measure someone else's suffering based on one's own experiences. There may be nuances that cannot be expressed. At the same time, I don't think language is completely devoid of creating a feeling of community. It does let you into the minds of others, though not necessarily with complete verity.

Language is a funny thing because it works as a poor man's way to get one's own experiences across to others. It can never tell the whole story and it can be distorted and misinterpreted by both the story teller and the story listener. No one can "really" know what it is like to be you, and perhaps much frustration in dealing with others is their lack of understanding of what it's like to be you. However, I'm sure there have been moments when you have truly empathized with someone's experiences and they have truly empathized with yours. This is the phenomena when you hear what someone is conveying and you feel exactly the same way about the situation, and it has a ring of truth to it. This can come close to shared experience. The nuances will be varied in the two people's actual experience, but it is probably in the ball park.

Yeah, this just another chapter in a discussion TGW & I have been having for years which might account for the feeling of an inside language. I agree that there's a lot - a whooole lot - of personal experiences more or less impossible to convey to others. But I think there are shared things, otherwise we couldn't interact with one another in the ways we do.

TGW has a model or metaphor of being which I understand as something like a churning stew of passions (TGW uses the term 'pathe.')Pathe always have a 'mineness.' I only experience my pathe. Over time these pathe are painstakingly, and largely unsconsciously, molded into the 'world' phenomenologists speak of. The 'world' I experience (think also of Schop's world-as-idea subjected to the PSR) is nothing but my molded passions and as such has no reality of its own. Its kind of an iceberg-tip that many people forget relies on an iceberg base. I think this is mostly good but that it's difficult to get from this to people sharing - to limited extents - worlds. I think the answer is that the world-forming of our passions is largely sculpted by others, and that this begins with the infant-caregiver relationship.

At this point TGW seems to me to be avoiding the problematic of the shared by saying its possible - in principle - that that when people do stuff like play basketball not all of them actually see balls and hoops. They are in "sync" but, in their own experience, are doing wildly different activities. I agree that this is perhaps possible in principle but have trouble taking it seriously, in the same way I have trouble taking solipsism seriously.

I agree wholeheartedly about those empathetic conversations. I live for those.

TGW has a model or metaphor of which I understand as something like a churning stew of passions that are only painstakingly, and largely unsconsciously, molded into the 'world' phenomenologists speak of. The 'world' (think also of Schop's world-as-idea subjected to the PSR) is nothing but molded passions - the word TGW uses is "pathe" - and as such has no reality of its own. Its kind of an iceberg-tip that many people forget relies on an iceberg base. — csalisbury

Thank you for your clear response that lays out your main arguments. I have a question that is sort of tangential but related. I have been curious as to how Schopenhauer accounts for the world-as-idea-that-is-subjected-to-PSR in a world that is "actually" Will. TGW's interpretation of this seems to be an illusion of sorts. Then he tried to explain this further, but I sort of had trouble understanding his explanation of how an illusion of world-as-idea does not need to be explained. Anyways.. that might be an interesting place to start to try to circle back and answer the more specific question of language and intersubjectivity.

I sort of had trouble understanding his explanation of how an illusion of world-as-idea does not need to be explained

He's gestured toward an explanation in that we gain a modicum of mastery over our pathe by instrumentally externalizing them. He's also gestured toward an emotional/traumatic explanation of externalization as a way of evading our inner turmoil. But these are just gestures and, though I have a lot of sympathy for these ways of looking at things, I don't think such broad indications constitute adequate explanations.

I don't know if you've read all of this thread, but I cited a study in which infants deprived of human contact are severely developmentally disabled. They seem to have trouble mastering their pathe. That's why I think the caregiver-infant relationship is a good place to begin investigating how the world-as-idea comes about (for an individual at least.)

(FWIW My way of approaching the issues of world-generation stems philosophically from a base of Kant, Hedeigger, Deleuze & Zizek, but more specifically from my current engagement with the work of (the contemporary german philosopher) Peter Sloterdijk. I admire Schop's lucidity, elegance & eloquence but I personally get more from Kant+Schelling, where, crudely, the former is world-as-idea and the latter is world-as-will. I like Hegel a lot too, but he takes a lot of effort, and I've barely scratched the surface. My approach stems experientially from my current participation in transference-based therapy, where transference is purposefully triggered in the purpose of dismantling it in order to create a shared space)

I admire Schop's lucidity, elegance & eloquence but I personally get more from Kant+Schelling, where, crudely, the former is world-as-idea and the latter is world-as-will. I like Hegel a lot too, but he takes a lot of effort, and I've barely scratched the surface. My approach stems experientially from my current participation in transference-based therapy, where transference is purposefully triggered in the purpose of dismantling it in order to create a shared space) — csalisbury

Yes but I am just wondering where the PSR fits into World as will. If world is Will, how does space, time, and causality exist as a structure outside of this? Again, I'm guessing it has something to do with illusion, but that then has to be accounted for as something else besides Will. Why is there this double aspect and not just Will proper?

This website is a good summation of Schopenhauer's reasoning for why Idea exists in relation to Will:
From http://philosophycourse.info/lecsite/lec-schop-will.html:

Therefore, destined originally to serve the will for the achievement of its aims, knowledge [what I've called consciousness] remains almost throughout entirely subordinate to its service; this is the case with all animals and almost all men. — Schopenhauer

That is, almost all humans have only enough consciousness, or mind, to help them meet their will's needs.

Based on the website I quoted above, it makes sense how it is that Idea exists in order to fulfill the Will's needs, but I guess my question is more fundamental in that, if Idea is created from Will, then why does Idea take the form that it does?
If Idea is created from Will, Why need it be structured with time/space/causality in the first place?
Or, If Idea is not created from Will but is its double aspect, why is it that it takes this on this world of multiplicity as mediated by the PSR?

In either conception (Idea created by or Idea as double aspect of Will), the question is still essentially the same. If Will is beyond space and time, then why must it also have the double aspect of also being an idea mediated by space and time the way it does?

Don't get me wrong, I love Schopenhauer and think his writing has more wisdom than most philosophers and men of letters that I have read. However, I still have certain questions which he may have answered but I am missing, or simply was not written about.

Here are some questions for Schopenhauer:
1) Just as the realist/materialist must account for how mind is tied with matter, Schopenhauer's idealism has to explain how it is matter is from mind (Will). Why is it that a fourfold PSR tied together through time and space (a pretty hefty package) is tied with Will at all?

2) Schopenhauer seems to go back and forth as to whether boredom and survival is the route of almost all human motivation, or whether it is more instinctual. There is kind of an underlying wavering between Will as free in its listless boredom or Will as tied to instinct. It specifically is rather contradictory when it comes to attraction/sex/love/procreation. Is the human experience to want to have union with someone (both physically and emotionally) a manifestation of our existential loneliness or is it from some sort of unconscious instinct to mate? I have an easier time believing the former but not as much for the latter.

The whole evolutionary biological approach to human behavior seems a bit too mechanistic from my own individual experiences. Boredom to me rings true as a motivation for almost anything outside of quelling the basic survival needs of hunger and maintaining relative comfortable living environment. Attraction is probably more cultural than our faux-science pop-cultural evolutionary psychology literature wants to admit.

It is hard for people to see their lives as just escaping boredom. I can imagine a usual Westerner response: "No no..wait all my exercise, gardening, video gaming, and reading is for um um... self-improvement???" People cannot except that boredom is simply driving them to get caught up in something. Society's job is to then mold that boredom motivation to be geared towards what it deems as productive. What is deemed as productive is based on factors like what has kept the society surviving from the past, whatever seems useful for survival. Some societies add in all sorts of freedoms for how to be productive, but just because there is more relative freedom in choices, doesn't mean that through structural institutions, subtle coercive measures, and education, it is not being shaped to a particular format which is itself contingent on historical circumstances.

What I never understood about Schopenhauer's idealism is that if the Idea is the result of the Will, and the Will is an unrelenting, striving force, then why is the world not even worse than it is? We certainly do "will" towards things, but then again we can tame this will. We can meditate, look at aesthetics, sublimate into projects, hang out with good friends, etc. Why are we able to do this? And why are we even able to understand the Will (for understanding leads to attempts to reject the Will - the exact thing the Will would not want).

If there really is a Will, then I wonder why the world is not just an exponentially-growing pit of never-ending slavery to desire, with the inhabitants literally dragging their feet on the ground as they attempt to cope with the desire but ultimately unable to reflect upon it.