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
(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
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. — frank
That sounds interesting. I hadn't been aware of any debate between McDowell and Dreyfus. Will you start such a thread? — Janus
Why does this imply conflicting ontologies and why do multiple ontologies need to be *resolved* in order for us to be realists? — Ilyosha
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
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
Janus
Do you advise Husserl over Heidegger? — frank
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
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
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
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
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
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
Sorry, Frank, I'm not sure I understand this question. Scientists generally ask questions of or about phenomena, don't they? — Janus
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 — Janus
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
Do you disagree with Dreyfus' view? — frank
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
But to say that we are separate form the world is to say something different altogether. — 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. — frank
You mean because we're part of the world? You're probably right about that. — frank
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
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