I would be disappointed because I've been turning into an anti-realist existentialist. — frank

I'd be really curious for you to explain what you mean by this. For what it's worth, Dreyfus, Taylor, etc. are all staunch realists.

I think the idea of implicit distinction making is self-contradictory. My idea is more that our pre-reflective lives and their activities work in ways that make thematic awareness of, and distinction between, self and other, possible. So the distinctions are implicit, but there is no implicit "distinction-making" because distinction making can only be explicit. We don't "discern distinctions without reflection" but rather we act in ways which the possibility of making such distinctions is inherent.

Think of riding a bike. You need have no reflective understanding of what you are doing at all in order to ride the bike, but your act of riding it inherently involves the possibility of a self-reflective understanding of what you are doing (given that you are a language-user, of course). — Janus

Yes. Exactly. That's what I think. I think we might behave in a way that upon reflection seems to indicate to us that we think the world can speak to us. That doesn't comply with our worldview, so we attribute that voice to an objective nobody.

(a) Michael Jordan would not be able to do this (viz. play skillfully) if he were exercising his conceptual capacities while playing; (b) When Michael Jordan tries to conceptualize the experience of what it is like to play basketball at his best, this transforms the content of the experience. — Ilyosha

Yep. Exactly.

i'd be really curious for you to explain what you mean by this. For what it's worth, Dreyfus, Taylor, etc. are all staunch realists. — Ilyosha

Ontological antirealist. It's the same thing we've been talking about. Our knowledge of our pre-reflective behavior generates conflicting ontologies. In the past I imagined the conflict could be resolved in some way. It can't be.

Do you advise Husserl over Heidegger?

Ontological antirealist. It's the same thing we've been talking about. Our knowledge of our pre-reflective behavior generates conflicting ontologies. In the past I imagined the conflict could be resolved in some way. It can't be. — frank

I've always been pretty bad with philosophy shorthand, so this just leads me to further questions, such as: Why does this imply conflicting ontologies and why do multiple ontologies need to be *resolved* in order for us to be realists? It seems to me an easy way to square the problem we've been discussing with realism is to suggest that our human forms of knowledge and freedom are expressions of distinct modalities.

Edit: Of course, then you would need to give some sort of philosophical account of the "genealogy of truth" within these modalities, as Merleau-Ponty put it.

That sounds interesting. I hadn't been aware of any debate between McDowell and Dreyfus. Will you start such a thread? — Janus

I will start that thread if no one actually competent volunteers! Best would probably be to have a formal debate between people who can do a good job of defending each side.

Why does this imply conflicting ontologies and why do multiple ontologies need to be *resolved* in order for us to be realists? — Ilyosha

Take a grain of salt with everything I say because I'm trying to think it through (that's why I started this thread, so thanks for engaging). In the midst of unthinking behavior, there is no division between subject and object. That division is a product of reflection. It's linked to other distinctions like mind/body, real/unreal, contingent/necessary. There is no conflict until the desire to lay out a complete ontology appears.

To be an ontological realist is to have conviction that a complete theory of existence is possible. To be an anti-realist is to deny it. It's to recognize why there is a longing to establish a completed ontology, but that methodological is all we get.

It seems to me an easy way to square the problem we've been discussing with realism is to suggest that our human forms of knowledge and freedom are expressions of distinct modalities. — Ilyosha

I'm not sure what you mean. Could you say more?

I don't think there is anything wrong with your writing; what you are saying seems clear enough to me. I agree with you that Michael Jordan's "learned capacity" to play basketball is not the same, conceptually or experientially (and does not even rely upon) his capacity to give a discursive account of capacity to play basketball.

But I also think, as I have explained to @Frank that, to continue with this example, MJ's capacity to play basketball has within it the potential to be explicated, so that all the distinctions that become explicit in any such explication are incipient within his capacity to play basketball. This does not mean that those distinctions are actually being drawn in the course of MJ's playing basketball.

So, there is a kind of "isomorphism" there, I would want to argue, even though the playing and the explication are very different conceptually and experientially. (When iI say that the playing and the explication of it are conceptually different, what I mean is that the explication of the playing and the explication of the explication of the playing are different).

Yes. Exactly. That's what I think. I think we might behave in a way that upon reflection seems to indicate to us that we think the world can speak to us. That doesn't comply with our worldview, so we attribute that voice to an objective nobody. — frank

I'm not sure what you want to say here; could you expand on it? The first part is clear, and I agree with it: I think reflection does seem to show that the world primordially speaks to us, but without there being any separation between us and the world. In a way we are (part of) the world speaking to itself; we are the speaking part of the world, on other words.

Janus
Do you advise Husserl over Heidegger? — frank

I've read much more of Heidegger than I have Husserl; I'm familiar with the latter mostly only from secondary sources (Michel Henry and Dan Zahavi, mostly).

So, I wouldn't advise one over the other. It seems from my reading of Zahavi that Heidegger is not as different from Husserl as is commonly thought. But I'm no scholar of phenomenology, just an interested amateur.

I have no doubt that you are as competent as most of the people here. Personally I prefer open threads (with all their divergences and digressions) to formal debates.

As I said I agree the "fundamental way of being in the world" is prior to the explicit positing of subject and object. But the explicit positing of subject and object is derived from that fundamental way of being, a way of being wherein I would say that subject and object are "always already" implicit. So, does that mean that the fundamental way of being can be understood in terms of subject and object? — Janus

I guess it depends on what we mean by 'derivative'. If derivative merely means implicit then subject/object might be argued to be fundamental like you have done. However since we know that subject/object is definitely not fundamental for Heidegger, for this reason he surely must mean something other than 'implicit' by 'derivative'. I think what he means is something like: the derivative phenomenon's being (e.g. present at hand) is only possible on the basis of the more primordial phenomenon (e.g. being in the world). Explicit/implicit doesn't really do justice to this transcendental requirement since the explicit phenomenon is always going to be, as you say, "always already" present in the implicit phenomenon, thus there is nothing to derive. The two phenomena are ultimately the same only one is implicit and the other explicit.

Sorry I wanted to try to explain myself more but I must go...

The way I tend to understand this is that language itself is another 'bike' most of the time. It is 'transparent' while we use it. When we double back on our own language to question it, the questioning language is 'transparent' while the questioned language has become translucent or opaque. — fart

Yes. What's there in a reflective moment is the realization that we can't explain how we're able to ride the bike or speak. Maybe some portion of philosophy is exactly that: trying to explain how it works. The question is whether, after we put aside the question of how, we can still see outlines of some structure to our background practices.

You mentioned the I emerging from We. What's of interest to me is that this We is not necessarily people. There's a We made of me and the non-human world. That is as much background as social practices.

I'm not sure what you want to say here; could you expand on it? The first part is clear, and I agree with it: I think reflection does seem to show that the world primordially speaks to us, but without there being any separation between us and the world. In a way we are (part of) the world speaking to itself; we are the speaking part of the world, on other words. — Janus

That's kind of hard to digest intellectually, though. I think the intellect needs things broken down a little more. One angle on it: when a scientist asks a question: who is he or she asking it of? Nobody?

One angle on it: when a scientist asks a question: who is he or she asking it of? Nobody? — frank

Sorry, Frank, I'm not sure I understand this question. Scientists generally ask questions of or about phenomena, dson't they?

I wouldn't say that subject/ object is fundamental. When I asked if the fundamental way of being can be understood in terms of subject/object I was asking if the fact that subject/object is implicit in the fundamental way of being should lead us to say that. The fact (if it is a fact) that the fundamental way of being can be understood in terms of subject/object does not necessarily entail that understanding would be exhaustive; it may only represent one aspect of, one way of understanding, the fundamental way of being.

Then the question would become whether the fundamental way of being can be understood discursively in any other way than subject/object. Or we might alternatively ask whether there could be a non-discursive understanding of the fundamental way of being.

Yes. What's there in a reflective moment is the realization that we can't explain how we're able to ride the bike or speak. Maybe some portion of philosophy is exactly that: trying to explain how it works. The question is whether, after we put aside the question of how, we can still see outlines of some structure to our background practices. — frank

Given the fellow-traveler nature of this thread please allow me to nit-pick a little.

I think Heidegger's big idea is that the order of intelligibility is the inverse of the order of explanation. The present at hand is intelligible on the basis of the ready to hand, but the ready to hand exists (in a natural/scientific/causal sense) on the basis of the present at hand. The problem, for early Heidegger, comes when we aim to give an explanation of the nature of intelligibility in terms of the present at hand.

The problem is that I don't think Heidegger has a particularly good grasp on the insight he has stumbled across here. I think that Wittgenstein has a much more nuanced and clear set of arguments about the basis and implication of this sort of position. But I digress.

My point is, I don't think that "some porton of philosophy can...explain how it works" because explanation involves a present-at-hand mode of knowledge, which lacks the necessary relationship to our forms of intelligibility needed to 'explain' these forms.

You mentioned the I emerging from We. What's of interest to me is that this We is not necessarily people. There's a We made of me and the non-human world. That is as much background as social practices. — frank

Well, yes. The world is nothing other than the world, what Merleau-Ponty calls the 'entwining' of nature, the artifice we have carved out of it, the practices which take from and give to that nature/artifice, the reflection and lives that derive therefrom, and the change those reflections ultimately bring back to bear on the world of which they are a part.

Again, Dreyfus brags in his commentary that Heidegger attempts to describe this world ontologically whereas Wittgenstein simply calls it the 'hurly-burly' of our common world. But again, I think Wittgenstein wins the day in terms of clarity of thought; Heidegger's ontological pretensions obscure the underlying phenomenon a tad.

But I also think, as I have explained to Frank that, to continue with this example, MJ's capacity to play basketball has within it the potential to be explicated, so that all the distinctions that become explicit in any such explication are incipient within his capacity to play basketball. This does not mean that those distinctions are actually being drawn in the course of MJ's playing basketball.

So, there is a kind of "isomorphism" there, I would want to argue, even though the playing and the explication are very different conceptually and experientially. (When iI say that the playing and the explication of it are conceptually different, what I mean is that the explication of the playing and the explication of the explication of the playing are different). — Janus

So, on your view, how is it explicable? His knowledge can be made conceptually explicit? So, for example, do you think Michael Jordan can bring all of his sophisticated basketball-knowledge into conceptual shape in order to teach it to another person? And when MJ tries to teach others how to play basketball -- he owns a team, after all -- do they play worse than him because they are worse at engaging in the practical application of the conceptual knowledge he has imparted to them through discourse?

Of course there will always be elements of an athlete's skill that cannot be made conceptually explicit, and even if they could be explicated they could only be emulated by those who possess the necessary physical potentialities.

Of course there will always be elements of an athlete's skill that cannot be made conceptually explicit, and even if they could be explicated they could only be emulated by those who possess the necessary physical potentialities. — Janus

Then what role do concepts play in skill?

Well, again I would say the conceptual explication of how to do anything is inherent in the skill to do it. It is also true that conceptual explanations enable skills to be developed, obviously. This is where the vorhanden can contribute to the zuhanden, a fact which we might think muddies Heidegger's assertions of primacy.

Sorry, Frank, I'm not sure I understand this question. Scientists generally ask questions of or about phenomena, don't they? — Janus

To whom are the questions directed, that's what I meant. If we project our own way of being onto the world, do we implicitly expect it to be able to speak. That issue is sliding down on my list of interests right now. I think I'm going to read What is Metaphysics and finish my Dreyfus book. I'll be back! :)

Given the fellow-traveler nature of this thread please allow me to nit-pick a little. — Ilyosha

Absolutely. I'm going to read more and get back to you later.

If we project our own way of being onto the world, do we implicitly expect it to be able to speak. — frank

The notion that we project our way of being onto the world implies that we are separate from the world. A different idea would be that the world just is a projection of our way of being. Which of these two do you have in mind?

If the former, is our way of being itself a function of the world? If it were then the world would be speaking through our projections back onto it.

If the latter, then we are actually speaking the world through our projections; in which case why would we not expect it to speak back to us, just as a character in our dreams might do?

The notion that we project our way of being onto the world implies that we are separate from the world — Janus

We are. Since we're both in a reflecting state as we talk about this, we see a distinction between ourselves and our world. That distinction exists. Are you wanting to say that the distinction is just a matter of the structure of language?

You can distinguish your hand from your eye, but are they really separate from one another? Or again, we can distinguish ourselves from our bodies, our minds from our brains, but should they therefore be thought to be separate?

You can distinguish your hand from your eye, but are they separate from you? Or again, we can even distinguish ourselves from our bodies, our minds from our brains, but should they therefore be thought to be separate? — Janus

Minds are thought to have something to do with brains, but there is a clear distinction. If you want to change my mind, don't come at me with a drill.

Thinking depends on distinctions. I don't think we can escape that.

Do you disagree with Dreyfus' view? — frank

I'm sorry I'm very busy at the moment so am posting erratically, especially as I am interested in this subject.

I am with Dreyfus's Heidegger that there isn't always an implicit belief or theory involved in action, as Dreyfus's Plato would purportedly maintain. What McDowell wants to say in the Dr/McD debate is that the most intuitive-seeming human action can as it were be retrospectively unwound into reasons; Dreyfus wants to say that there is a residual 'mindless' area. That's my summary of my own memory of the debate anyway, I hope anyone will feel free to correct me!

For me I then go a certain distance with Dreyfus and his embrace of J J Gibson's ecological psychology. There are affordances to action in the world that are available to sentient creatures, who perceive such affordances as they move and act. But I think built into this, 'the mind' - some thinking process - is always ready to kick in. A highly-trained athlete runs largely on habit, but part of their training is what to do when habit fails you. This is the exceptional case: act on it.

Dreyfus makes a great deal of chess-masters and pushes the notion that at the highest level, grandmasters are not 'thinking'. There's some good empirical work to suggest that he's mistaken in this by a woman called Barbara Montero, which is then a philosophical challenge to Dreyfus's whole position.

My feeling is these categories like 'thinking/not thinking' still have some residual problem in them because they relate to cognitivism, and neither Dreyfus nor McDowell is a cognitivist. But they and we cannot help having breathed in the cognitivist air which makes words like 'mind' and 'thinking' hard to render anew.

Sorry if this has waffled off into incoherence.

To be sure thinking relies on distinctions; but I don't see how that obvious fact relates to the discussion. So, as far as I can tell you haven't answered the question as to whether the fact that we can draw these kinds of distinctions should lead us to think that the things we are distinguishing from one another are therefore 'really' separate from one another; the question would then be, if you think there is a separation, do you think it consists in something more substantive than the mere conceptually explicit distinction?

I'm not denying that substantive separation of things is possible, that things might actually be more or less separate. For example, you and I are separate organisms and we are both way more separate from Alpha Centauri than we are from each other. But to say that we are separate form the world is to say something different altogether.

So, as far as I can tell you haven't answered the question as to whether the fact that we can draw these kinds of distinctions should lead us to think that the things we are distinguishing from one another are therefore 'really' separate from one another; the question would then be, if you think there is a separation, do you think it consists in something more substantive than the mere conceptually explicit distinction? — Janus

"Really" is an honorific (according to Chomsky). You can try to go past phenomenology, but you never get too far beyond your own biases. We're just stuck with divisions of various kinds until we come up with some other kind of thinking.

But to say that we are separate form the world is to say something different altogether. — Janus

You mean because we're part of the world? You're probably right about that.

"Really" is an honorific (according to Chomsky). You can try to go past phenomenology, but you never get too far beyond your own biases. We're just stuck with divisions of various kinds until we come up with some other kind of thinking. — frank

Sure, thinking involves distinctions; and we can think about the possibility that there is a distinction between a distinction that is merely conceptual and a distinction which reflects something more substantial. This is the traditional distinction between epistemic and ontic differences.

You mean because we're part of the world? You're probably right about that. — frank

And yet there is this:

The notion that we project our way of being onto the world implies that we are separate from the world — Janus


We are. Since we're both in a reflecting state as we talk about this, we see a distinction between ourselves and our world. That distinction exists. Are you wanting to say that the distinction is just a matter of the structure of language? — frank

Is it a matter of being tied up in knots?