This is the 'dialectical' process that Hegel is trying to point out. I start with an assertion that is not quite right. You locate what is not quite right. I try to patch the hole with more detail, more context. Repeat. — macrosoft

That also sounds like some explanations of the hermeneutic circle. Is it the same thing?

That also sounds like some explanations of the hermeneutic circle. Is it the same thing? — frank

I'm no expert, but I'd say that they are related. (I can't guarantee that this isn't a misreading on my part.)

As I understand the circle, we have to start with a vague initial understanding of what we are questioning in order to ask our question in the first place. As we specify what it is we are asking about (the nature of truth, for instance), then right away we are forced to deal with other concepts related to the concept of truth. Do we have a perfectly clear grasp of these concepts? Probably not. And maybe the meanings of these related concepts themselves depends on our unclarified concept of truth. We seem stuck. But as we run around the circle, back and forth from concept to concept, the circle as a whole becomes illuminated and clarified, also clarifying the individual concepts via their place in this circle. IMV this does not mean we ever attain perfect clarity about truth or any of the related concepts. It only means more clarity.

I love the hermeneutic circle as a holist insight. It strikes me as a description of what we actually do without usually being conscious of it. Hegel's dialectic would seem to be part of moving around in this circle, increasing its circumference, since his dialectic is creative. Of course clarification is also creative. (more meaning, brighter meaning). Maybe Hegel and Heidegger are emphasizing different aspects of the same process, of course doing so as a part of that same process, allowing the process to become 'self-conscious.'

I find it easiest to just start with a statement that is quite right. :razz:

Sounds good, but that leaves us with 'it is what it is.' No, not even that. What does it mean for something to be? What do we mean when we say 'is'? If this seems a trivial question, that may just an indicator of our complacency.

Even 'the cat is on the mat' leads to endless debates about whether the cat is really on the mat or rather that just our seeing of the cat is on the seeing of the mat. And then what does 'cat' mean? Or rather how does 'cat' mean? We have a rough sense or picture of a cat along with the word, but I'd say that these rough senses (employed constantly) aren't quite right if one demands total explicitness. They are otherwise quite right practically, in that we have all the clarity that we usually need to keep the machine running (less theoretical life and its business.)

I wasn't saying that other people would necessarily agree with me. I can try to teach them to the extent that they're teachable, but past that, I don't see it as my problem.

Of course. Of course. But surely you embrace some kind of duty to defend your ideas or the desire to promote them persuasively, at least within certain limits. As far as I can tell so far, you have a different sense of 'the cat is on the mat' than others. For instance, on how this statement is supposed to be made true, etc.

It at least seems possible (if a little scary) that the globe could fall under the control of a specific community which makes its way of being and seeing dominant. — macrosoft

I don't see any reason to believe this scenario is actually (as opposed to merely logically) possible.

My question is whether science is essentially deeper than this. — macrosoft

There does not seem to be any other method that reveals actuality as opposed to mere imagination. Or to put it another way; there does not seem to be any other method to test imagination.

There does not seem to be any other method that reveals actuality as opposed to mere imagination. Or to put it another way; there does not seem to be any other method to test imagination. — Janus

You didn't answer my question. Do you think science is deeper than prediction and control? IMV, saying that it 'reveals actuality' is already non-scientific metaphysics and goes beyond...prediction and control.

You write 'testing imagination.' And what is this imagination tested against? A public sense of reality, itself somewhat mysterious, I'd say. I can't make sense of testing a model against the 'thing itself.' We (roughly) fit models to measurements. What is it to make a measurement? What is it like to read a thermometer or count spider eggs? What is 'inter-subjectivity' really? We don't know exactly, but we know enough to get things done. This fuzzy know-how makes science possible in the first place. In some sense, science seems like a clarification of one aspect of this know-how.

The reason science is supreme when it comes to predicting and controlling public entities is because that is what makes science science, one might say. Any explicit method that reliably does so would seem to qualify. Science deals with what is public, not with what is real, I would say, except to the degree that the public and the real are identified. Once we see how our notion of the scientific real is largely just a matter of publicity (did we all just see that? can we do it like that again?), it's not so hard to understand that other kinds of differently public entities might also be investigated non-arbitrarily. IMV, this is what we are doing right now, investigating semi-public ideas, non-trivially possible because we speak the same langauge (and what are the depths of sharing a language?)

*Anyone is invited to reply.

Assuming that science is the best way to predict and control nature as it is familiar to all of us, does this reduce philosophy to assisting such prediction and control? defending such prediction and control as the 'true' or only 'real' knowledge, so that philosophy is science's ideological bodyguard?

Must bringing certain presuppositions and unclarified notions to light within the fundamental approach of 'scientistic' metaphysics be interpreted as 'just trying to sneak in religion'? Or does such a bringing-to-light seek to avoid a kind of thoughtless religion that hasn't clarified its own existential investment in what can be reduced not only to 'knowledge is power' but to 'public power as knowledge.' I'm no saint. I worship the dollar and the belly too. I obey the clock that tells me anyone's and no one's time. But I can't pretend that inventing aspirin or cell phones or predicting eclipses or extinctions exhausts the meaning of being human, nor do I think this meaning is utterly subjective. Some of this shared meaning makes prediction and control possible/intelligible in the first place.

For instance, is the 'wrongness' of torturing kittens really less publicly accessible than the redness of human blood? If a few humans don't 'see' this wrongness, then are also literally blind humans who don't see the redness of blood. Logic itself seems to have a certain for-everyone nature that isn't trivial to explain. I'm not trying to answer a question here but raise a question where the complexity of the issue might otherwise be swept under the rug. What makes an object public? To what degree is language part of this and itself a kind of public object?

That we don't need for practical purposes to investigate this much is granted. That we wouldn't want to use our technologically provided leisure to think beyond what provides this leisure is more complicated. Thanks to science, we don't have to obsess over prediction and control all the time. Nor must we identity the most public experiences with the most real or most significantly real --if we even care much about the game of calling this or that 'real.'

For instance, is the 'wrongness' of torturing kittens really less publicly accessible than the redness of human blood? — macrosoft

Yes, because moral stances are simply individual's mental states, which aren't third-person observable.

Yes, because moral stances are simply individual's mental states, which aren't third-person observable. — Terrapin Station

Is that so clear? How does one distinguish between mental and non-mental in the first place? What is sensation? How do we learn to distinguish between dreams and the rest of experience?

Is a man with sight in a room with blind men able to comment on the color of things 'objectively'? Let's shift to light waves. If only 1 in 100 human beings could grasp calculus, then how science exists for them except as a minority of individuals who were eerily good at making predictions? One might say that their mathematical-conceptual system for building models is a strong way to perceive some strong but elusive notion of true-for-us, but certainly these entities (real numbers and functions) aren't the thing itself? We might say that the 'true-for-us' or the 'shared-world' manifests itself especially usefully through a certain mathematical-conceptual lens which reduces its ambitions to accomplish this reduced task spectacularly. --so spectacularly that its method has rippled outward into a metaphysics that is not part of the method itself. (?)

You didn't answer my question. Do you think science is deeper than prediction and control? IMV, saying that it 'reveals actuality' is already non-scientific metaphysics and goes beyond...prediction and control. — macrosoft

Do you deny that the kind of observation, employing unbiased analysis and synthesis, that is characteristic of natural science reveals what is really going on? For example that the heart is a pump, that heat causes many materials to expand, some to combust, others to melt, that animals and plants both consist of cells (with plants cell, unlike animals cells, having cell walls consisting of cellulose) and so on? I mean, the examples are countless. Are these not revealing actuality? I don't see how metaphysics comes into it at all. Can you explain why you think so?

You write 'testing imagination.' And what is this imagination tested against? A public sense of reality, itself somewhat mysterious, — macrosoft

Why do you think it is mysterious? "A public sense of reality" simply consists in those things which are identifiably shareable such that nobody (except perhaps some idiot philosophers).seriously questions their reality. Actuality is what is publicly identifiable as real. What else could it be?

Do you deny that the kind of observation, employing unbiased analysis and synthesis, that is characteristic of natural science reveals what is really going on? — Janus

I deny the absoluteness of this 'really.' Making this narrative (science) the 'real' one is where metaphysics comes in.

For example that the heart is a pump, that heat causes many materials to expand, some to combust, others to melt, that animals and plants both consist of cells (with plants cell, unlike animals cells, having cell walls consisting of cellulose) and so on? I mean, the examples are countless. Are these not revealing actuality? — Janus

I indeed agree that science is a central revelation of what is actual. But its power largely comes from ignoring the realm in which it has its foundation, a realm open to philosophy. I'm not religious in any typical way, so it's best to think of me as coming from a philosophical angle. To centralize science without further ado is like pretending we have eyes but no ears. Note that no one has really addressed my specific concerns about science-as-metaphysics (Note that my formal education is in science, so it's wrong to think that I am anti-science just because I ask more from philosophy than that it be the cheerleader or bodyguard of educated common sense. EDIT: not implying anything about your position in that last line --not sure where you are coming from yet)

I don't see how metaphysics comes into it at all. Can you explain why you think so? — Janus

One example: If we model reality with math and say that the model is good and reveals reality, we leave unquestioned how such models exist for us. How do we grasp real numbers? Are they real? Certainly the marks on paper are real. But this is not math. Science is caught up in a living intelligible discourse. While it can model this discourse in some ways (predict the next word I might type via machine learning), it is not clear that is even equipped to touch 'meaning.' Those who deny meaning would seem to have to do so in the very space of meaning. I don't know what meaning is, but I see the question.

Another example is the notion of a public entity. I think this notion is left hazy, precisely because we can get away with it and still have our technology. Are public entities fixed? Or did/can other communities recognize entities that we do not as public? This might sound like a silly question. But what is it that allows us to recognize a spider egg as a distinct public object? That one seems easy, and may be universal enough. But what is it to grasp a mathematical theorem as a public entity? None of this has any obvious bearing on the uncontroversial predictive power of science. It's about whether science can or is even interested in giving an exhaustive account of existence. If it does not even attempt to tackle issues for which its method is inappropriate, then making it the arbiter of the 'really' real is suspect, IMV. This fits the real to the method, not the method to the real.

I deny the absoluteness of this 'really.' Making this narrative (science) the 'real' one is where metaphysics comes in. — macrosoft

Quite. Shouldn’t be forgotten that the rejection of metaphysics was a characteristic of both Protestantism - Luther called Aristotle a ‘son of the devil’ - and also the scientific philosophy of the Enlightenment. The whole effort was to concentrate wholly and solely on what was empirically observable and the mathematical analysis of its measurable attributes. The sense in which philosophy was critical of that, or even could be critical of it, was almost entirely forgotten, or rejected, until Philosophy of Science came along.

Assuming that science is the best way to predict and control nature as it is familiar to all of us, does this reduce philosophy to assisting such prediction and control? defending such prediction and control as the 'true' or only 'real' knowledge, so that philosophy is science's ideological bodyguard? — macrosoft

Splendid post. I had pasted a quote from earlier on in the thread in my scrapbook and compared it to a snippet from Aristotle.

Truth, the cognition of which is the business of philosophy, was in the hands of Hegel no longer an aggregate of finished dogmatic statements, which, once discovered, had merely to be learned by heart. Truth lay now in the process of cognition itself, in the long historical development of science, which mounts from lower to ever higher levels of knowledge without ever reaching, by discovering so-called absolute truth, a point at which it can proceed no further, where it would have nothing more to do than to fold its hands and gaze with wonder at the absolute truth to which it had attained. — Engels

Aristotle never stated this exactly, but in 6.7.2-3 said that Wisdom [σοφία] is the most perfect mode of knowledge. A wise person must have a true conception of unproven first principles and also know the conclusions that follow from them. “Hence Wisdom must be a combination of Intelligence [Intellect; νοῦς] and Scientific Knowledge [ἐπιστήμη]: it must be a consummated knowledge of the most exalted objects.” Contemplation is that activity in which νοῦς [nous] intuits and delights in first principles. 1.

Although it could be stated that the ancient conception of science is worlds apart from the modern because it was presumed to have bearing on both aesthetics and morality, whereas in the modern conception, these are understood as ‘social constructions’ i.e. without correspondence to anything beyond the social sphere. Whereas in Aristotle, there is still the suggestion of the contemplation of the eternal ideas as being in some sense salvific, that is as the aim and indeed consumation of the ‘life well lived’.

I deny the absoluteness of this 'really.' — macrosoft

What exactly is "absoluteness"? can you spell it out for me?

And how exactly can philosophy be critical of " the whole effort to {... } concentrate wholly and solely on what was empirically observable and the mathematical analysis of its measurable attributes' when it comes to the question of how we are to understand what actuality consists in? Doesn't actuality consist in what is empirically observable (what is publicly accessible in other words)? What else could it imaginably consist in? (Of course there is also the actuality of individuals' experiences, But that is not actuality in the public or scientific sense. obviously).

I think we share a sense that philosophy should not collapse into something 'small,' dazzled so much by the undeniable public power of science that it is afraid to investigate that which makes science possible and yet may be resistant to the scientific method, supposedly 'subjective' 'meaning.' Is meaning subjective? What is meaning? Whatever it is, science lives 'in' and 'as' such meaning. To be clear, I think it is 110% fine that science just takes such meaning for granted and builds its models. Most of life is like that. It works with a pre-loaded intelligibility which it need not question. On the other hand, philosophy seems like exactly the human pursuit that digs deep, 'uselessly' or for 'existential reasons' or out of curiosity. It does question 'educated common sense,' or is all such questioning ridiculous? Philosophy makes the sensible, worldly people giggle. Is philosophy essentially worldly and respectable? Or is it a little foolish, like a child? Or maybe it is especially serious. Or both.

I am really only opposing a philosophy that adds to this modelling without perhaps confessing that it is wrapping a metaphysics around it --and 'my' critique is far from new. I'm just exploring this critique, bringing old thinkers to life in my own mind.

I think we share a sense that philosophy should not collapse into something 'small,' dazzled so much by the undeniable public power of science that it is afraid to investigate that which makes science possible and yet may be resistant to the scientific method, supposedly 'subjective' 'meaning.' — macrosoft

Who said that philosophy should not investigate supposed "subjective meaning"? It's trivially obvious that science cannot investigate that! But what do you think phenomenology consists in?

Who said that philosophy should not investigate supposed "subjective meaning"? It's trivially obvious that science cannot investigate that! But what do you think phenomenology consists in? — Janus

Is 'subjective meaning' really real, in your view? And if it is trivially obvious that science exists as 'subjective meaning' (at least part of it) and trivially obvious that science cannot investigate 'subjective meaning,' then science cannot reveal its own actuality? Or not in its fullness? Does science even exist (in its living essence as meaningful discourse) for itself?

Do we really disagree? Or what?

Is 'subjective meaning' really real, in your view? — macrosoft

Not publicly, as I've already said. I can't see anything puzzling about the distinction between private and public actuality.

Not publicly, as I've already said. I can't see anything puzzling about the distinction between private and public actuality. — Janus

You may be missing something then. How does meaning exist? How can science be shared if meaning is not somehow public? How is the spider egg interpreted as a spider egg? How is the number of spider eggs written down in a book for others to read?

It's been awhile, but I remember the Vienna Circle struggling with questions like this. What is an observation? Is it really so trivial? Or are we employing a know-how that we take utterly for granted and don't even think to investigate because it is too close? And you mention phenomenology, so I am surprised you have no idea where I am coming from.

On the other hand, philosophy seems like exactly the human pursuit that digs deep, 'uselessly' or for 'existential reasons' or out of curiosity. It does question 'educated common sense,' or is all such questioning ridiculous? Philosophy makes the sensible, worldly people giggle. Is philosophy essentially worldly and respectable? Or is it a little foolish, like a child? — macrosoft

What motivated my initial interest in philosophy was the possibility of spiritual illumination or enlightenment. Actually when I first went to Uni it was by way of a quaint custom called ‘the mature-age entry exam’ which it took at the not-very-mature age of about 25. But the main part of the exam was a written comprehension text on Bertrand Russell’s splendid essay Mysticism and Logic. And that more or less set the tone for the subjects I then went on to study. Goes without saying that nobody had much of a clue about what I was really interested in, but I found plenty of clues, hints, and fragments, so to speak. But that has culminated in a somewhat religious kind of philosophy, although possibly ‘religious’ is not actually the correct word, in that it’s not oriented around mainstream religion. Anyway, I have never wavered in my pursuit of that understanding. There’s bits of it in Hegel, Plato, Aristotle, and the pre-moderns, but not much since!

natural science reveals what is really going on? — Janus

Hi, Janus. I was responding to your 'really' above. This is the metaphysics. I get it. I trust science so that this 'really' is natural and defensible in many ways. But it implies that non-scientific experience is unreal. Since I think science depends on 'ordinary consciousness,' the world of tables and chairs, I can't embrace the notion that the chairs and tables are not real while electrons, etc., are.

Mach resisted the atomic theory as being descriptive of what was 'truly' there. They were handy virtual entities (fictions) for getting good predictions. Evidence became stronger so that he looked silly, but I always liked his skepticism. I'm not adopting his philosophy as my own, but I think I saw where he was coming from. He thought of science (if memory serves) as the economic description of patterns in sensation. But there are problems with this. We don't work with 'sensation.' We already see the tables and the chairs. We understand measuring instruments. This basic intelligibility of the world deserves contemplation, I think. The meaningless world is an abstraction useful for certain purposes within the meaningful world. In some very important sense this meaningful world is also in the meaningless world.) Aporia. But this doesn't mean the meaningful, ordinary world in which ideas are somehow shared is an illusion.

A second theory might understand science as the modelling of relationships between measurements. Where does the 'hidden but truly real' have a place in this perspective? Is the ordinary world real or an illusion? Or is all of this a function of the language game we are playing in a particular context while engaged in a particular purpose? Is meaning 'fixed' enough to begin with so that metaphysics is possible is a certain 'perfect' way? I am primarily trying to light up the question, not answer it.

But that has culminated in a somewhat religious kind of philosophy, although possibly ‘religious’ is not actually the correct word, in that it’s not oriented around mainstream religion. Anyway, I have never wavered in my pursuit of that understanding. — Wayfarer

I suppose for me philosophy is just one of the deeper aspects of being human. IMV, it (among other things) dissolves or problematizes the everyday understanding of terms (which is why you put 'religious' in quotes.) In some ways it is precisely this thrust against educated common sense (or all that a community takes for granted) --ideally because it has a larger view on existence that no longer fits in that everyday taken-for-granted obviousness.

You must learn to phrase your questions in a more neutral manner.

Right now you have loaded the question. This is a fallacy according to any list of fallacies by any philosophy organization. A loaded question is a form of affirmation of the consequent or even shifting the burden.

IMV, it (among other things) dissolves or problematizes the everyday understanding of terms (which is why you put 'religious' in quotes.) In some ways it is precisely this thrust against educated common sense (or all that a community takes for granted) --ideally because it has a larger view on existence that no longer fits in that everyday taken-for-granted obviousness. — macrosoft

:up:

What motivated my initial interest in philosophy was the possibility of spiritual illumination or enlightenment — Wayfarer

I relate to this too. I didn't know what exactly I was looking for, but it was always a thrill to see the world from a wider perspective, having synthesized painful contradictions both in thought and action. Hegel speaks to me in this regard. Existence is describable as the process of its own self-clarification. Since language/meaning is so deeply a part of this (and so mysteriously public/social), it's hard to imagine stopping with prediction and control that cannot give an account of its own possibility.

And I think that most would agree that the point of prediction and control is to create the leisure, abundance, and safety to pursue the heights of feeling and thought that are possible in such conditions. Philosophy in that sense is the blossom, while natural science is the leaves and stem --mentioning here only the conceptual heights which are by no means all that we care for. Then of course philosophy is a passionate, potentially ecstatic 'how' of being human. For me it opens more doors than it closes.

Since I think science depends on 'ordinary consciousness,' the world of tables and chairs, I can't embrace the notion that the chairs and tables are not real while electrons, etc., are. — macrosoft

I think it is acknowledged by science that any entity that cannot be directly observed is a mathematical model. Of course it is assumed that there is something energetically real there which is being modeled, but that we cannot visualize it adequately (and thus must rely on our mathematical models for understanding) simply because our abilities to visualize have been conditioned and limited by the perception of observable entities.

By meaning I presume you are referring to indemnification and reference. If we can identify and agree about the features of public entities (which we certainly seem able to do), what more is required for shared meaning?

I think it is acknowledged by science that any entity that cannot be directly observed is a mathematical model. Of course it is assumed that there is something energetically real there which is being modeled, but that we cannot visualize it adequately (and thus must rely on our mathematical models for understanding) simply because our abilities to visualize have been conditioned and limited by the perception of observable entities. — Janus

And of course all of this is fine, but (from a philosophical angle) how does this unseen something exist? What is the gap between our models and what they model? Do scientists even need to take a position on whether electrons or quarks are anything more than useful fictions? Perhaps you see where I am coming from. We have prediction, control, and a certain language game. The details of the language game are mostly unimportant to most, who mostly want tangible, intelligible results in the 'lifeworld.'

What I think is questionable is adopting virtual entities as the 'real' world simply because these virtual entities are part of the creation of technology. I do see a certain aporia, but I would leave it undecided and just endure it. The lifeworld is 'in' the deadworld is 'in' the lifeworld is 'in' the 'deadworld' is....