I do agree that we are, in general, excessively prone to rigid categorization; however I think different people settle for different things, and so the hope for some collective settling-for in the future seems somewhat dim.

Yes indeed. That hope is dim. I waste no time on it. For lack of a better word, I experience the quest for clarity on these matters as a private 'spiritual' project, as a sort of 'rational' religious practice. It just feels good to occasionally find others who can more or less relate to one's private project. It also just feels good to share the words one finds for the situation. I don't know exactly what I want from such sharing. I suspect that overhearing one's self in public discourse helps keep the words 'honest.'

Emotional intelligence comes to mind. For instance, I know some people whom I truly respect who haven't read the so-called great philosophers. To me these people understand better than various others who can parrot the famous words. It's in their eyes. It's in their comportment. They have lived and suffered and managed to stay beautiful, aware, curious. They aren't bricked in by some favored little vocabulary or by some fantasy of themselves as a super-scientist with the one true system. When I think back on my own progress, it's usually been an escape from a vain attachment to this our that one-size-fits-all idea. Far be it from me to prohibit the kinds of philosophy I find less important.I just want to do it the way that feels right to be. (Oh sinful subjectivity...)

I agree with Paul Feyerabend's critique of Popper's claims for a single method of science :
"Combining this observation with the insight that science has no special method, we arrive at the result that the separation of science and non-science is not only artificial but also detrimental to the advancement of knowledge. If we want to understand nature, if we want to master our physical surroundings, then we must use all ideas, all methods, and not just a small selection of them. The assertion, however, that there is no knowledge outside science - extra scientiam nulla salus - is nothing but another and most convenient fairy-tale."

Seems to me the physical vs non physical question is a product of the philosophical heritage of object-subject dualism, a world 'out there' split off from and making contact with a subject. — Joshs

I relate to your general approach. You mention linguistic pragmatism elsewhere in your post. For that gets it right. Besides the subject-object dualism, there is also the tendency to think in terms of fixed categories. Sure, in some contexts we have a loose, functional mental-physical distinction. It gets the job done. We know well enough what is meant. But then as philosophers we are tempted to pluck out a rough distinction and do a sad kind of math with it.

'Define your terms,' someone said once. It sounds wise. But (or because) trying to do so opens up to us our fundamental ignorance, it only gets the job done by revealing its impossibility. We can't exhaustively and conclusively say what it is to say or for something to mean. It's that old game of looking up one word's definition in the dictionary and then looking up the words that the first word is defined in terms of, and so on. The system exists as a whole. One feels oneself into a language in a bodily way, in the context of words and actions, thoughts and feelings and 'sensations.' But all of this is already too abstract and misses the way the situation hangs together.

The subject-object distinction along with the mental-physical distinction is a tool we rely on. But I contend that we use such distinctions with a know-how that is largely invisible to us. We just can understand one another. We found ourselves this way.

I can relate to this; much of what passes for modern philosophy seems to consist of academic gherkin jerkin'. There is certainly an arrogance in the way some philosophers think their discipline is the great umbrella under which all others are protected from the rain of incoherence and irrelevance. On the other hand anthropologists provably think much the same. And psychologists, and physicists, and biologists...oh, wait...

Sometimes I think we cannot help doing theology. What seems to distinguish one person from another most of all is what they worship (and why they worship it; so maybe it's mostly all theology and psychology).

Yes, I like 'gherkin jerkin.' I had to look gherkin up, but I had a sense of what to expect. I think you nailed it in terms of the arrogance. If philosophers think they provide foundations, I think they don't. In some ways they make things worse, in that they pretend to provide foundations. In my view, we operate with a kind of basic know-how that we cannot make explicit. I'm not saying it's bad to try. I've tried myself, and that's how the darkness of this know-how became darkness visible. I agree that it's bigger than any discipline. It's just our human tendency to learn a few things and become smug.

Sometimes I think we cannot help doing theology. What seems to distinguish one person from another most of all is what they worship (and why they worship it; so maybe it's mostly all theology and psychology). — Janus

This is one of my basic beliefs, actually. Even here I'm selling a negative theology. Yes, it's what we worship. It's the shape of our 'god' that varies. What I like in Hegel is the idea of this shape evolving. What I don't like in Hegel is the exaggeration of the importance of concept. Art and music say what concept can't say. Images of the heroic human, the ideal love object, etc. Sounds that somehow mirror the complexity of human feeling. As far as theology and psychology goes, I also relate to that. In some ways philosophers (especially the ones I like) are theologians of theology itself. Theology itself is god. The substance-seeking subject is the only god worth worshipping. All other gods are (at least as mere concepts) flat objects for the dynamic, passionate subject. I suggest that we more or less explicitly worship the virtuous human, projected or not into the sky or onto some eroticized abstraction. (Justice, truth, science, ...)

In my view, we operate with a kind of basic know-how that we cannot make explicit. I'm not saying it's bad to try. I've tried myself, and that's how the darkness of this know-how became darkness visible. — ff0

That's right, that's Heidegger's and the late Wittgenstein's point, or really context, of departure. I have been looking into a little known American philosopher named Buchler a bit lately, and I find his ideas very congenial with in line with what the way I have been thinking for some time: that knowing is not merely knowing that, but also knowing how and, further still, the wordless knowing of familiarity as well. He says that all our forms of activity involve judgement and he identifies three kinds of judgement: assertive judgement, active judgement and exhibitive judgement.

I can map these to knowing that, knowing how, and the knowing of familiarity; or even more clearly, judging that, judging how and the judging of familiarity. So when we do something that we know how to the doing of that involves that we continually make judgements (In an implicit or unconscious way) what to do. This kind of know-how can be explicated, though, if we want to. Exhibitive judgement involves the familiarity that cannot be made explicit like how to paint, or play music or make love (over and above the technical "know-how" dimensions of those activities).

(revised reply)

"everything is true as we experience it, "— Michael Ossipoff

Where does 'being wrong about something' fit into that?

I didn't mean that the way it probably sounded. I didn't mean that our interpretation, conclusions or explanation about what we experience are necessarily true. I merely meant that the raw data we experience is so, as (meaning "when") we experience it.

Like the sound of an engine, even if it's only a motorcycle, when we think it's an airplane.

Alright, that doesn't say a lot.

I was only agreeing with something said by the post I was replying to, about experience.

MUH, a Realism, emphasizes mathematics, but, because I suggest an experience-based possibility-story, then experience of whatever kind is to be emphasized--experienced facts that aren't necessarily mathematical (...but are, when the physical world is closely studied). But the requirement remains that your experience not be outright self-contradictory...meaning that logic still has authority over experience.

I think litewave was right when he said that realness or existence depends on non-contradiction. That might resolve the awkward problem about impossible, inconsistent worlds.

Michael Ossipoff

That's right, that's Heidegger's and the late Wittgenstein's point, or really context, of departure. — Janus

Ah yes, I love both those guys. Early Heidegger and late Wittgenstein. I've been experimenting with not referencing them, just to see what I could do in English and how the ideas sounded without being attached to great names. This is not some veiled criticism of your mentioning them, to be clear. I'm just taking this opportunity to share a thought. In passing (for context), I mention, for instance, that I no longer like the word Dasein being left untranslated. It becomes a technical term, an inside jargon --more metaphysics in the sense that the medium 'is' the message. Early Heidegger (as you may know) used terms like 'factic life' or 'life,' and Dasein can be translated as existence. Better to make it new in English, in my opinion. Phonemes matter. Direct access. Anything fancy and foreign betrays the quest for wakefulness, perhaps --at least in some sense.

I have been looking into a little known American philosopher named Buchler a bit lately, and I find his ideas very congenial with in line with what the way I have been thinking for some time: that knowing is not merely knowing that, but also knowing how and, further still, the wordless knowing of familiarity as well. He says that all our forms of activity involve judgement and he identifies three kinds of judgement: assertive judgement, active judgement and exhibitive judgement.

I can map these to knowing that, knowing how, and the knowing of familiarity; or even more clearly, judging that, judging how and the judging of familiarity. So when we do something that we know how to the doing of that involves that we continually make judgements (In an implicit or unconscious way) what to do. This kind of know-how can be explicated, though, if we want to. Exhibitive judgement involves the familiarity that cannot be made explicit like how to paint, or play music or make love (over and above the technical "know-how" dimensions of those activities). — Janus

Buchler sounds great. I've never heard of him, but this is my kind of theme. I like the idea of divided know-how into the kind that can and cannot be made explicit. I suppose the know-how of language is at the center of my contemplation lately. For me this can't be made explicit. We live on the surface of it, in a sense that I'm still finding words for. It's pretty much what I took from the OLP movement. Metaphysicians rip a few words out of context and strive for an explicit know-how, but in my view they rely on all the other words that still function in a sort concealment, as a necessary but dim background.

I can see how Buchler, with his focus on distinctions and groupings of meaning, relates to Wittgenstein's questions about language. But I read Heidegger, coming out of Husserl's phenomenological project and transforming it into existential phenomenology, as doing something distinctly different than the later Wittgenstein, and also Buchler.
Everything in Heidegger, all the various distinctions he draws in language, draw from a fundamental dynamic of change, variation, unfolding, transformation and otherness that is not there in these other writers.

I confess that I may read all of these guys idiosyncratically.

It's been awhile since I've read Wittgenstein. I had what I'd call a sort of insight or click about ordinary language, and this intuitive sense has always been more important to me than the sources I associate with its inspiration. That's one of the reasons I've thought about not dropping the names of influences, because I don't want to drag along the implication of some argument from authority. I like the idea of just sharing ideas in my own English and defending them as words that ring true to my own direct experience.

I've read lots of Heidegger lately. His pre-B&T texts and Kisiel's impressive Genesis. That's a strong influence, but I have my own ax to grind. The medium-message theme is key for me. The how of our grasping is overlooked in our focus on the what that is grasped. But this receding 'how' of our grasping constrains the 'what' that appears. Along the same lines, our questions are always loaded in ways that we don't notice. One might say that the goal is to get behind the past --as much as possible. We can't get completely behind the past. The past makes our questioning possible. But we open up our future (as I see it) by getting behind the past, since the past constrains the question that opens the future. That sort of thing. I'm still looking for the best words.

But I read Heidegger, coming out of Husserl's phenomenological project and transforming it into existential phenomenology, as doing something distinctly different than the later Wittgenstein, — Joshs

That's true, but the thing they have in common is the idea of an implicit shared background. The later Wittgenstein employs the idea of "forms of life" which can be interpreted as being similar to the Husserlian notion of "Lebenswelt". Of course, Wittgenstein is not concerned with developing a phenomenology as Husserl and Heidegger, in their different ways, obviously primarily are.

One might say that the goal is to get behind the past --as much as possible. We can't get completely behind the past. The past makes our questioning possible. But we open up our future (as I see it) by getting behind the past, since the past constrains the question that opens the future. — ff0

Can you explain what you mean by "get behind the past"? Do you simply mean to think about or understand it or are you referring to something else?

Can you explain what you mean by "get behind the past"? Do you simply mean to think about or understand it or are you referring to something else? — Janus

Sure. It's my favorite theme lately. Given your post above, none of this will probably sound new to you. I'm largely inspired by Heidegger, though I like the idea of making it my own --emphasizing the ideas I like and finding new metaphors, etc.

The 'living' or 'primordial' past is the 'how' of the present. This 'how' is the method we take for granted, the pre-grasp or invisible background. The form of life. It hides in its familiarity. It's our manner of questioning that goes unquestioned as we question the 'what' of our focus.

To get behind the (living) past is to see 'around' all the crust of yesterday's living choices that we've inherited as blind necessities. The apparently necessary (the blindly inherited paradigm) becomes optional once we strip away its familiarity. The 'living' past is the water that the fish doesn't see. It is the medium that quietly controls what can and cannot appear as the message.

Normal discourse is 'message' focused. It uses the medium in an unconscious manner. Abnormal discourse 'attacks' or destroys this past. Just making it conscious is sufficient. A homier example:the living past is the glasses we don't realize we are wearing. But to get completely behind the past would be to pluck out our eyes, since we live in language and language is historical.

OK, I get it now: it is not merely to understand the past in the terms which the past itself has cemented into the present forms of discourse, but to attempt to get free of those cemented forms in order to gain fresh insights. Of course, as you acknowledged, we can never becomes wholly free, because to do so would be to become blind. I agree that it does take creative effort to produce something new rather than merely to continue repeating the same old patterns of thought. Every theme contains within itself the possibility of variation; and this is well exemplified in music.

I don't agree, though, that we live wholly in language if that is just taken to mean verbal or written speech. We live in languages. We live in visual language, musical language, mathematical language, and of course body language, as well as 'linguistic' language.

And 'linguistic' language itself has modes: propositional, practical and poetical (which includes the religious and theological). This last is often forgotten by those who aspire to "know' in the philosophical sense; philosophy is a discipline which should avail itself of all three modes.

Also, I don't believe we (or culture itself for that matter) are entirely socially constructed.

That's the ground of being you're talking about,i presume, our situatedness or thrownness. And the most rigorous form of awareness for Heidegger, what he calls authenticity, is a not being caught up in the particulars of what comes into our horizon of concern, the this and the that of experience, but rather experiencing as a whole in its always being oriented ahead of itself.I suppose this could be understood as a getting behind the past.

Derrida said there is nothing outside the text.By text he didnt mean literally written language. He meant context. There is no meaning that escapes its being framed via a context, and in fact isn't simply framed or oriented by a context, but in fact exists as what it is by being already split with itself. Very complex stuff.

I don't agree, though, that we live wholly in language if that is just taken to mean verbal or written speech. We live in languages. We live in visual language, musical language, mathematical language, and of course body language, as well as 'linguistic' language. — Janus

Right. Life is bigger than language. It's even bigger than all of those languages you mention. The way the body moves through the world comes to mind. The way we claim stairs, step into the bathtub, embrace those we love, chew out food, etc. I was just focusing on the blind know-how of speaking/writing at that particular moment. It's a fairly new theme/realization for me. It's so easy and traditional to snap into a certain artificial mode when doing philosophy.

That's the ground of being you're talking about,i presume, our situatedness or thrownness. And the most rigorous form of awareness for Heidegger, what he calls authenticity, is a not being caught up in the particulars of what comes into our horizon of concern, the this and the that of experience, but rather experiencing as a whole in its always being oriented ahead of itself.I suppose this could be understood as a getting behind the past. — Joshs

Right. I more or less read the authentic mode as the phenomenological mode. It's one of the slippier themes in Heidegger (to me), but he does speak in The Concept of TIme of authentic Dasein attaining clarity about its temporal being. I suppose one can bear the angst of abnormal discourse without thematizing it, however. But I doubt anyone could thematize it without experiencing it.

But I really don't like the word Dasein anymore. It sticks in my throat. It becomes theological in its association with a famous brand name. 'Idle talk' can itself become part of idle talk, for instance. This is not at all directed at you. I've just read lots of Heidegger criticism, lately (and the man himself). It's fascinating how any particular approach to describing factic life can 'harden' into a crust that blocks the phenomenon. The words become academic and lose their force. Everything tends to become clever and precious as it succeeds. I feel the need to keep reaching for new words. I think slang evolves for the same reason.

Derrida said there is nothing outside the text.By text he didnt mean literally written language. He meant context. There is no meaning that escapes its being framed via a context, and in fact isn't simply framed or oriented by a context, but in fact exists as what it is by being already split with itself. Very complex stuff. — Joshs

I have read somewhat of Derrida, and to be honest I was not impressed by his ideas or his degree of clarity and rigour. If he means 'context' then why not just say "context" instead of 'text' since the latter definitely implies written language?

Of course I agree that all meanings are relative to contexts, but I do not agree that all contexts are merely confined to language; whether written or spoken.

What do you mean by "in fact exists by being split with itself"? Is this a reference to Hegelian dialectic; that every idea holds within it its own negation? It might be complex stuff, but unless it can be clearly expressed I can't see that it could have any use beyond the merely poetical.

Im not sure how to start here. The complaints against major philosophers from Leibnitz and Spinoza through Kant, Hegel and Heidegger are legion. It is clearly a different style of presenting ideas than that of the Anglo-American analytic tradition. i was initially wedded to an empirical language and believed that this mode had usurped the role that philosophy had historically played, thanks to Darwin and the rise of the social sciences.
Then I read Heidegger's Being and Time. Apart from the content of the work, I had never come across a way of formulating questions like that. It immediately had a profound effect on me. Heidegger wasn't simply offering a new set of ideas couched within the conventional methods of exposition. He was offering a genuinely, from the ground up as it were, new way to approach thinking. If you take it as your project to do something so audacious(as did Kant , Hegel and other), then what you are doing is essentially inventing a new language, and you will be accused of being unnecessarily turgid. There is a big difference between obscurantist language and vocabulary that is initially impenetrable because it is introducing strikingly new concepts.

I had a friend who told me anything worth saying should be summarizable in a sentence or two. Of course he would believe that. He was in the corporate world. By definition they deal in product that must be accessible to as large a population as possible in order to maximize profit. Only goods whose purpose and value is already widely understood by a culture will be desired by the masses. Such goods are of course summarizable in one or two sentences.

The problem with Derrida's ideas is that they are rich enough, as is the case with all great philosophy, that they are accessible from a myriad of cultural fields, Like the blind men and the elephant, Derrida has been embraced within literary criticism, architecture, religious studies, political theory, and finally philosophy. From my vantage, only the philosophers have 'gotten Derrida right'.

I have read just about everything Derrida has written. I dont have patience for bloated, superficial thinkers, I cant tell you that my interpretation of Derrida is 'correct'. What I can tell you is that I find his ideas to be just as powerfully original as Heidegger's. I havent found an unnecessary word in anything I've read of his.I can explain my interpretation of him to you in systematic terms. And I'm not the only one. I recommend 'The Tain of the Mirror' by Rodolph Gasche for a clear exposition of his idea. Also 'Derrida' by Geoffrey Bennington..

BTW, the root of text is tissue or woven. He means text , not context. And he richly and complexly inscribes this word alongside a chain of other terms to arrive at what his project is about .Derrida would never mean one word to carry the weight of depicting what text, difference, deconstruction, the trace, the gram point to.

The complaints against major philosophers from Leibnitz and Spinoza through Kant, Hegel and Heidegger are legion. — Joshs

Sure, but I have read something of Leibniz; and quite a bit of each of the rest and found them to be understandable, despite their idiosyncratic language. I find them to be as easy to read as Wittgenstein, Davidson, McDowell or Brandom for example. You just need to know what their beginning assumptions are; these are the key ideas and keystones of their thought.

I don't agree with the key ideas of Derrida's thought, and from what I have read I don't even believe he consistently elaborates his ideas based on these key axioms, as the other's you mentioned do. So, I certainly don't find his ideas " to be just as powerfully original as Heidegger's"; in fact I believe he is a clever charlatan, and that he will disappear into the "dustbin of history".

BTW, I don't say the same about Deleuze, Foucault, Badiou or Henry.

Have you read Jean Francois Lyotard, or Jean Luc Nancy? They are closer to Derrida's ideas than are Deleuze or Foucault. (I dont see Badiou and Henry as post-Heideggerian in their thinking).
I'd love to hear your take on the key ideas of Derrida's thought, so that I can compare my Derrida with your Derrida. I would like to build you a 'Derrida machine', a kind of subpersonal architecture.
One of the reasons Derrida may be so difficult for you is that his ideas challenger your assumptions in ways that the others don't. That might lead to the impression of incoherence on the part of the writer when in fact the incoherence is in the reading. i also find his writing to be more theory-dense than that of Foucault, with his long-winded genealogies, and Deleuze's semi-literary style.
It would help for me to have a sense of what family of ideas and writers are most relrevant to your own thinking. Since individual philosophers are interpreted in so many often contradictory ways, I like to understand another's idea via a network of philosophers. That would help me situate your orientation to Derrida. Consider it a kind of genealogical triangulating. I do know that those most hostile to his ideas havent yet made it into Husserlian territory and so cant make to jump from Husserl to Heidegger to Derrida..

I'm actually most interested in why people choose to believe one or the other, — Janus

Do you think most have a chance to choose what to believe in? I know you didn't intend to say so.

So, it may be that we often say things are not physical ( when we really mean 'material') simply because they are not immediate objects of the senses. — Janus

I think this has roots in an open question: what is matter? hasn't been resolved completely because Quantum and string theories and so on ...have not merged.

To me now - in a multiverse belief - any imaginable is matter. Furthermore, that may be just a trivial subset of what matters constitute. I will explain if any aspect has a question.

Apologies for the late reply: I just saw your post now. I don't have time to respond in detail, but let me just say that I have not made a really consistently concerted effort to persist with reading Derrida, because every time I have tried reading him (The gift of Death, On Grammatology are the two I can right now remember attempting) I have gotten the impression that the reward will not justify the investment of time and energy.

I also read along with this thread: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/23390#Post_23390 ( although I didn't actively participate) and it seemed that none of the participants could make much sense of Derrida's 'arguments' in his critique of Husserl's philosophy. On the other hand I certainly see Henry as a post-Husserlian thinker (See Material Phenomenology).

I am not saying my view of Derrida is definitive, but it is the view I have; and I'm not interested enough, due, amongst other things, to already not having enough time to study what I really am interested in, to engage with anyone wanting to 'educate' me as to Derrida's significance.

Many people seem to be very concerned about the ontological status of things which we ordinarily think of as 'mental'. I sometimes wonder whether that is because it is (perhaps even unconsciously?) felt that their ontological status has some implications for religious belief, and most especially belief in an afterlife. — Janus

I think you've nailed it. If I had to pick one issue as an indicator of others, I'd go with afterlife.

If the mind needs the brain and the brain dies, then the mind dies. So the believers in afterlife seem to need something that can float away from the brain and remain intact.

It occurs to me that more rigid metaphysical beliefs might also need an independence of mind from the brain. After all, the brain is a fragile piece of gear. It's also spongey. It's counter-intuitive that this spongey, organic, fragile piece of gear is going to make for non-spongey surgically-exact symbols that somehow get reality right. And this whole intuitive notion of getting reality right may itself be problematic as we push it beyond the everyday sense of factuality.

So forget about Derrida and give me a sense of what family of thinkers inform your own philosophy. I'm curious. Since Henry offers a theological approach to phenomenology, is that your approach also?
(BTW, I wrote a paper for the journal of the British Society of phenomenology analyzing Derrida's reading of Husserl).

I can't say which philosophers have influenced my thinking the most. The philosophers I have been most interested in have been Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger and Whitehead. I have looked somewhat into Merleau Ponty and Deleuze. Lately I have been exploring Buchler's ideas.

In any case, I'm an amateur, a dilettante, when it comes to philosophy. My abiding interests are more in painting, music and literature, particularly poetry. I have always tended to mostly think for myself, and then been attracted to philosophers that seem to be in accordance with the ideas that i am currently entertaining. I have no aspiration for or interest in becoming an academic. I am interested to know, though, what are the key ideas in your reading of Derrida's reading of Husserl.

So, then do you think "non-physical" things exist, or are real, and, if so, then what is the nature of that existence or realness? Could it be completely independent of the physical world?

the universe does not depend on our simulations — Pollywalls

have you thought about phenomena like quantum collapse and its philosophy aspect?

What does it mean to say that something is physical or not?

Thinking a bit about this distinction. We live phenomenally and we conclude a realty behind our experience, as we try to understand what our experience means. I am not sure about the distinction, however it seems to me that the reality of our self (body/spirit) lies outside of the distinction between "physical or not", straddling this presumed divide.

"my body simultaneously sees and is seen. That which looks at all things can also look at itself and recognize, in what it sees, the "other side" of its power of looking. It sees itself seeing; it touches itself touching, it is visible and sensitive for itself. It is self, not by transparency, like thought, which never thinks anything except by assimilating it, constituting it, transforming it into thought--but a self by confusion, narcissism, inherence of the see-er in the seen, the toucher in the touched, the feeler in the felt--a self, then, that is caught up in things, having a front and a back, a past and a future. " Merleau-Ponty

The self's being is whole, it is not divided up into physical and non-physical parts. While parts can be abstracted, studied as if they were separate, in reality, and as it is experienced, none of it is separate.