If you don't minutia-monger, you are simply babbling fantasy nonsense and unnecessary noise out of your mouth hole. You are here to contribute to the techno-economic system. — schopenhauer1

This 'system' is just lots of individuals though. From the guy at Best Buy they want the new smartphone. From the cutie on Tinder they want sex. From their dealer they want some good weed. From their politician they want...all kinds of things. Throw us altogether and we get a system, with no one really in control, despite some having far more influence than others.

'Contributing to the system' pretty much means convincing someone to give you their money, a company or a customer. Some people get rich selling their own personality. They monetize the live narrative of their life, curated to emphasize a bittersweet glamour. A person can get rich selling detailed conspiracy theories. Technology is one product among others, despite its obvious importance.

If only their deep truths could have the prestige of shallow truths of sciences... — old

:rofl:

One has to specialize. So philosophy remains valuable as an attempt to make sense of the big picture and not drown in the details. — old

But the details are where the action happens. Keep your eyes on the details, make your 80k, live comfortably and the world turns. The people use YOUR minutia-mongering technological achievement, at the end of the day. There is meaning in that for the minutia-mongerer. Your equations COUNT. Specializing does not matter to the MM, they are problem-solving and immersed in their specialized world. That makes them content. That provides them meaning. That the world of numbers, the regularities of nature, and physical materials can come together to make devices, items, widgets, and products of use is where the meaning lies.

'Contributing to the system' pretty much means convincing someone to give you their money, a company or a customer. Some people get rich selling their own personality. They monetize the live narrative of their life, curated to emphasize a bittersweet glamour. A person can get rich selling detailed conspiracy theories. Technology is one product among others, despite its obvious importance. It's possible to be adored and even followed while being scientifically/technologically ignorant. I think you should add that to your calculations. — old

I get you, but all of this nonsense and unnecessary noise relies on the underpinnings of technology. How do they communicate their blather? From the products of the technocratic MMs. Their meaning is secondary- derived from the "real" ones.

Specializing does not matter to the MM, they are problem-solving and immersed in their specialized world. — schopenhauer1

Actually it's a bit painful to come to terms with specialization. Or it was for me. If there's an itch for God, then there's a similar itch to know everything, from first principles if possible. But life is too short. Science is too complicated. Now I'm just glad to have chosen something that not only appeals to me aesthetically but is actually in demand. It's not a religion, but it's better than waiting tables.

I get you, but all of these nonsense and unnecessary noise relies on the underpinnings of technology. How do they communicate their blather? From the products of the technocratic MMs. — schopenhauer1

But why do they care about the products? Because they (we) live for that blather to the degree that they (we) are not just animals.

But why do they care about the products? Because they (we) live for that blather to the degree that they (we) are not just animals. — old

The blather doesn't matter. We are here to support technology. People's enjoyments of the products of technology is just a way towards more technology. The MMs involved in making the technology get to participate in the great "real", while the rest can find their blathering amusements that come out of the tedious MMing of the MMers who find it meaningful and not tedious (apparently).

As to the question of the alleged superiority of science-math-technology over other cultural modalities with regard to securing meaning or truth or progress or objectivity or some such thing, it should be noted that changes in worldview within science and technology parallel those in all other modalities within an era. Thus we have Greek or Reconnaissance, or Enlightenment or Modernist or postmodern eras which their own art, science,philosophy, literature, political theory, united by overarching metaphors of meaning.

If science and technology were better adapted toward some sort of 'progress' than the arts or literature , then these modalities would not all evolve in parallel with each other. In fact, it can be argued that it is philosophy which is the crystal ball in each era, pointing toward what will later emerge as the new technological forms. So whatever it is that is most vital in the methods of science and technology with regard to changing ways of meaning making , it is not bound up in what distinguishes them from other modalities, butt rather what is shared among all cultural modalities. There is no such thing as pure science or technology which is not already inextricably bound up with and interaffected by rest of cultural ideation.


Heidegger wrote:
"Because in accordance with its existential meaning, understanding is the potentiality for being of Da-sein itself, the ontological presuppositions of historiographical knowledge
transcend in principle the idea of rigor of the most exact sciences. Mathematics is not more exact than historiographical, but only narrower with regard to the scope of the existential foundations relevant to it."

As to the question of the alleged superiority of science-math-technology over other cultural modalities with regard to securing meaning or truth or progress or objectivity or some such thing, it should be noted that changes in worldview within science and technology parallel those in all other modalities within an era. Thus we have Greek or Reconnaissance, or Enlightenment or Modernist or postmodern eras which their own art, science,philosophy, literature, political theory, united by overarching metaphors of meaning. — Joshs

Art doesn’t make the things happen, technologies do. Those who don’t mind the minutia and REVEL in it are the ones that make the technology. They are doing the work that we de facto rely on. Here’s an example:

Information and probability are dual notions; wherever you have a probability distribution you have an entropy. The connection between the two is particularly intimate for discrete random variables - like when there is a given probability of being in one of countably many eigenstates of an operator. Quantum entropy measures the degree of mixing in a state; how close it is to behaving in a singular eigenstate (unless I'm misinterpreting, I am both rusty and mostly uneducated here). Information measures are derivable from probability distributions, but the process of mapping a distribution to an entropy value is not invertible - so the two notions can't be taken as inter-definable. As in, if you have an entropy, you have a single number, which could be generated from lots of different quantum states and probability distributions.

I'm sure there are problems, but I think there are good reasons to believe that information is just as much a part of nature as wave functions. — fdrake

What does it mean to 'rely on' something? We certainly rely on technology in a different way than we rely on art, but how can we prioritize technology when all its components of thought derive in one way or another from earlier eras of creativity that include the contributions of artists? What happens with you when you listen to music and how is that different than what happens to you when you use a technology? Only if we make a sharp (and I believe artificial) distinction between the material and the ideational do we end up talking a bout one modality 'making things happen, or relying on those things', and another not being capable of such a happening. One doesn't have to have been directly exposed to the humanities in order those modes to have made their way into the founding assumptions behind a new technology. A whole generation of art is built into an iphone(including Steve Jobs' encounters with calligraphy) .
A technology doesn't represent the leading edge of ideas. On the contrary, it is the tail end of a long process of discovery that begins with philosophy and then the arts. Today's cutting edge technology is a force of conservatism, its leaders are rehashing old ideas in a new form. The next wave of philosophy and the arts will be a reaction against what today's technologies instantiate.

Technology means the application of scientific principles, mixed with math, and physical materials are used in such a way as to create functional items or predictable models. At the end of the day we reach for the products of technology and science, even if we are soothed or edified l by art. Especially the minds capable of getting through minute details of mathematical complexity, they are doing the stuff that counts.

At the end of the day, if we are more conservatively minded, then we reach no far than the imaginative vistas that our current technologies evoke. If we are more radically minded, we recognize that today's technologies are yesterday's arts and philosophies., and we look beyond the machines of today to a new frontier.
A machine is just another form of text, and it informs, changes , moves us the way any text does. And its limits are the limits of any text.

As text, a technology has no existence apart from the ability of its users to read and interpret it. It is just one cog in a matrix of cultural readabillty . That's why a technology cannot be a technology until a community is ready to understand it and thereby see it as useful. Technology means nothing without usefulness and usefulness is a cultural artifact. It also defines a certain conventionality and common denominator. By definition, technology can only be what it is because it exemplifies the familiar and widely understood.

As text, a technology has no existence apart from the ability of its users to read and interpret it. It is just one cog in a matrix of cultural readabillty . That's why a technology cannot be a technology until a community is ready to understand it and thereby see it as useful. Technology means nothing without usefulness and usefulness is a cultural artifact. It also defines a certain conventionality and common denominator. By definition, technology can only be what it is because it exemplifies the familiar and widely understood. — Joshs

It is widely understood to use but not the minutia of creating. That is for the minutia mongerer who makes real and useful functions from the science, math, and materials.

" the minutia mongerer who makes real and useful functions from the science, math, and materials."

Every creative soul is a minutia mongerer. Beethoven's minutia mongerings were as 'real' (whatever that is supposed to mean) as Jobs', The difference as I see it isnt that you cant hold a symphony in your hand, but that the realness of Beethovben's music was richer, more powerful, more precise in a way than the final, exhausted incarnation of ideas that a technological instantiation represents Think about what happens we we move along a hypothetical spectrum of 'realness' from , say, Kant to Goethe to Schoenberg to Joyce and Picasso to Frege and Russell and Goedel and Turing and Von Neumann to finally today's device inventors.

Just for the sake of argument let's say that the essential discoveries made by Kant were carried through into these subsequent creative products in the arts, mathematics and then technology. That is to say, that each new product was the translation of ideas originally put forth within a philosophical context into a variety of cultural vocabularies(literary, poetic, artistic, scientific, technological). Each new mode, then, was an application of a previous mode, and the dissemination of ideas that were initially held by a tiny few to a wider and wider spectrum of society.

Finally , the originally philosophical ideas become widespread in the form of machinic 'text', and then we say they are 'real', as if somehow something magical is happening with them that wasn't before. But what really is this magical thing, this 'reality, this 'materiallity', this 'I an hold it in my hand and play with it so it has more 'reality' than an a measly idea'?

And if a technological device more 'real' than the philosophical and scientific ideations that made it possible, then keep in mind that this process of 'realization, of further and further application of application, doesnt stop with technology. It makes its way into business and finance theories and then into popular modes even more conventional and widespread in culture. These modes should then be considered even more 'real' than those of technology.

It would seem arbitrary to pick, out of all of these phases of application, that of the technological and crown it as the queen of the 'real'.

You can’t do anything with Beethoven’s music besides emotional edification or inspiring more music. Is it genius? Yes. Is it talent? Yes. But it’s not real on that it’s use doesn’t provide physical functionality except in a superficial way that all things are “physical” or “functional” (like a butterfly effect). The computer engineer and the materials and structural engineer are touching on the real though. Their minutia formulas and creative innovations of the minutia on applied ways.

Havent you heard? the 'physical just a construct that we use, and have been using a long time, thanks to Aristotle, Galileo and Descartes. But we are beginning to realize that it is a more and more problematic construct, becoming less and less useful to us. Eventually ,we will be ready to jettison it altogether. But dont worry. that wont require the negating of all our scientific achievements, just the reinterpreting of them within a much more power context of thinking than that of the 'objective and the real, whose conditions of possibility we owe to a metaphysics which believes in substance and self-identicality. This metaphysics is what makes possible propositional logic, upon which the objectivity of the object is based. But it misses aspects of the world that it will be necessary to model more effectively than a philosophy of the real can do for us .

Derrida' s main focus was exposing the ways in which presence has been prioritized throughout the history of Western philosophy. It has taken the form of privileging speech over writing, nature over culture, and these days it involves theorizing something that somehow escapes interpretive contingency, that which we call the 'real'

But what is more real than applicable principles derived from the universe’s natural regularities, that “get things done”?

Absolutely nothing is more real than this. And the reason is that the very claims of reality to being able to 'get things done' via its connection to the natural and the lawful already presupposes what it aims to prove. For notions like 'lawful', 'natural', 'real', all derive from the same metaphysical pre-supposositions concerning the conditions of possibility of there being such a thing as an object.

The deconstructive move of Heidegger or Derrida aims not to disprove, but argue that the very idea of 'correctness' as agreement between a subject and object of a proposition stands at the basis of the determination of objectivity and the notion of the 'real'.
Is there anything about a physical device that we understand identically , whose inner working everyone can describe identically? Are there ever two people who use a device in the identical manner? IF not, then what distinguishes such objects from texts?
And of course, I dont need to point out the profound ways in which any other cultural product, from music to the political to the philosophical, can reorganize communities.

Thanks for the mention, looks a good read! Interesting author, also. — Wayfarer

My pleasure. One good thing about this book is that it pays attention to why philosophers caught on or not in their time. The main idea and its mood seems to have been more important than its careful justification for nonspecialists. Presentation (of a new, living option) seems to trump justification, though of course some support is needed for what also just appeals to and creates the spirit of the time.

Absolutely nothing is more real than this. And the reason is that the very claims of reality to being able to 'get things done' via its connection to the natural and the lawful already presupposes what it aims to prove. For notions like 'lawful', 'natural', 'real', all derive from the same metaphysical pre-supposositions concerning the conditions of possibility of there being such a thing as an object.

The deconstructive move of Heidegger or Derrida aims not to disprove, but argue that the very idea of 'correctness' as agreement between a subject and object of a proposition stands at the basis of the determination of objectivity and the notion of the 'real'.
Is there anything about a physical device that we understand identically , whose inner working everyone can describe identically? Are there ever two people who use a device in the identical manner? IF not, then what distinguishes such objects from texts?
And of course, I dont need to point out the profound ways in which any other cultural product, from music to the political to the philosophical, can reorganize communities. — Joshs

You mentioned Heidegger. He wrote about the broken-tool phenomenon. Humans are uniquely dependent, upon tools. Yes, we do this from habituated means, but nonetheless, this dependence is present. Let’s take a hunting-gathering society that relies on the technology of the poison from a poison dart frog. Let’s us say the dart frogs happen to migrate elsewhere or die out all of a sudden. This society was habituated to be dependent upon these frogs. They were integral to the daily supply of food. The monkeys this tribe ate were hunted in abundance and with ease with this poison. In fact, the tribe never really thought about life without supply of this vital poison tool-function. The abrupt disappearance of the missing frogs and poison supply, the world of this tribe has been severely shaken. The tribal members are scrambling, trying to figure out an alternative- maybe more ancient hunting techniques they haven't employed in generations. Life for this tribe, seemed to glide through time, without thinking about it. This is humans relying on their natural use of tools that work and provide function. When this tool is broken, the world is no longer ready-at-hand but present-at-hand. It is something which needs to be diagnosed, solved. Life moves at a grinding pace. It is something that needs to be overcome.

Now let’s look at modern societies based on Enlightenment-based scientific methodologies and their descendent technologies. Internet has now become a utility almost akin to electricity. When internet access works, the modern plugged-in human who relies on it for commerce or communication doesn’t even think of the platform upon which he relies. When a problem in the connection occurs, the world of ease comes crashing down, as the troubleshooting begins. Is this as devestating as the first scenario with the missing dart frogs? No. But does the frustration and annoyance and the feeling of helplessness ensue for many people? Yes, as the habituation to the reliance threshold on a tool becomes more engrained it becomes yet another “essential feature” if that society.

Who are the ones that increase and maintain the technological thresholds? The minutia mongerers. They are the inventors of the tool and the remedy of the broken-tool. Being that humans are a technological being and “at home” with technology, they are essential.

The issue is how we are to understand what a tool is. You mentioned Heidegger's distinction between the ready-to-hand and the present-to-hand. When you talk about tools in terms of the 'real', and in contra-distinction to a text or something in my imagination, you are thinking about them as present-to-hand. Heidegger's critique of the dangers of technology concerned not its products but this way of thinking about it that he also called "enframing', or standing reserve'.

Heidegger determines technology in its instrumentality as an 'enframing', or 'standing reserve'.
“The merely instrumental definition of technology is in principle untenable”.

Heidegger doesn't say tools don't have the being of the 'real' . He says an 'objective',. present at hand, enframing way of thinking about beings requires a derivative modification of primordial heedful circumspective ready to hand engagement with the world. For Heidegger, humans aren't simply 'dependent on' tools, as if there was first a subject and then a present-to- hand object that one engaged with in certain useful ways. Rather, the essence of the ready to hand , as 'use', circumspective engagement', having something matter to one, precedes both subjectivity and objectivity. Thought most primordially, Dasein doesn't 'use' or 'depend on' tools. Dasein is always already in between, in transition, in creative engagement with a world, prior to its being a subject.
Enframing cuts off our thinking about tools from their relational context of heedful circumspection and narrows them down to theoretical propositional statements, which is what we are doing when we point to a tool as a real, objectively existing thing. Only then can we talk bout something like a tool being 'invented' For Heidegger, the ready to hand is not the invention of a thing that we then use in particular ways. It's meaning is wholly enveloped in its use, and this use is particular to me and my context of relevant purposes and engagements. So , thought in this way, the ready to hand doesn't distinguish between invention of and engagement with what we call present to hand things. This is because all being is being with ,and all being with is a modification and transformation of being. That is, all being is creative, inventive. The notion of objectivity and reality, as derivative ways of thinking, are not necessary to explain technological invention. What objective thinking does is arbitrarily separate certain types of relational contexts, those you would call tool invention, from all others, including making music and philosophy.

you speak about the critical importance of the presence or absence of tools throughout history to particular cultures. In my own life, the development of my philosophical thinking has had an infinitely more profound effect on my life than exposure to any 'objective' technologies. That is as it should be, given that there is no way in principle to distinguish between philosophical creation and technological creation. As Heidegger says , the essence of technology is nothing technological.

Thought most primordially, Dasein doesn't 'use' or 'depend on' tools. Dasein is always already in between, in transition, in creative engagement with a world, prior to its being a subject. — Joshs

Hello again. I don't say that the quote above is wrong or is meaningless. In fact I like Heidegger. I even relate my criticisms of Heidegger to things I've learned from him. But I do think this is an example of a certain excessive style. We don't use tools? We don't depend on tools? This kind of statement seems to rely on ripping 'use' and 'depend' away from their ordinary use and re-framing them as complicated metaphysical commitments.

The notion of objectivity and reality, as derivative ways of thinking, are not necessary to explain technological invention. — Joshs

I suggest that the notion of reality is not derivative. For me the assertion that it is derivative... relies on some kind of reality that it asserts something about. 'The reality is...that the notion of reality is derivative.' 'The fact is...that there are no facts.' The philosophical elaboration of reality is one thing and a more primordial sense of being in a world together is another.

Let's say you disagree with me. Fine. But what then am I wrong about ? if not something like this world or reality?

This is a complex issue. For Heidegger the real has to do with the present-to-hand, and the present-to -hand is the transforming of our relations with the world into narrow, formal conceptualizing that is based on subject-predicate relations. When we determine the presence of a thing in terms of a propositional subject-object statement we cut off our experience of something from its context of use and ossify it as what it is in itself. We attribute to objects self-persistence and self-identity through time, but in doing so, we forget about what gives beings meaning in the first place. In objecting to the 'real', Heidegger is objecting to the idea of being able to understand anything independent of a context of relevance.

Heidegger writes:

"...statement means pointing out. With this we adhere to the primordial meaning of logos as apophansis: to let beings be seen from themselves.""Statement is tantamount to predication. A "predicate" is "stated" about a "subject," the latter is determined by the former." "Positing the subject, positing the predicate, and positing them together are thoroughly "apophantic" in the strict sense of the word. "Like interpretation in general, the statement necessarily has its existential foundations in fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. But how does the statement become a derivative mode of interpretation? What has been modified in it? We can point out the modification by sticking with limiting cases of statements which function in logic as normal cases and examples of the most "simple" phenomena of statement. What logic makes thematic with the categorical statement, for example, "the hammer is heavy," it has always already understood "logically" before any analysis. As the "meaning"
of the sentence, it has already presupposed without noticing it the following: this thing, the hammer, has the property of heaviness. "Initially" there are no such statements in heedful circumspection. But it does have its specific ways of interpretation which can read as follows as compared with the "theoretical judgment" just mentioned and may take some such form as "the hammer is too heavy" or, even better, "too heavy, the other hammer!"

The primordial act of interpretation lies not in a theoretical sentence, but in circumspectly and heedfully putting away or changing the inappropriate tool "without wasting words." From the fact that words are absent, we may not conclude that the interpretation is absent. On the other hand, the circumspectly spoken interpretation is not already necessarily a statement in the sense defined. Through what existential ontological modifications does the statement originate from circumspect interpretation? The being held in fore-having, for example the hammer, is initially at hand as a useful thing. If this being is the "object" of a statement, as soon as we begin the statement, a transformation in the fore-having is already brought about beforehand . Something at hand with which we have to do or perform something, turns into something "about which" the statement that points it out is made. Fore-sight aims at something objectively present in what is at hand. Both by and for the way of looking, what is at hand is veiled as something at hand. Within this discovering of objective presence which covers over handiness, what is encountered as objectively present is determined in its being objectively present in such and such a way. Now the access is first available for something like qualities. That as which the statement determines what is objectively present is drawn from what is objectively present as such.

The as-structure of interpretation has undergone a modification. The "as" no longer reaches out into a totality of relevance in its function of appropriating what is understood. It is cut off with regard to its possibilities of the articulation of referential relations of significance which constitute the character of the surrounding world. The "as" is forced back to the uniform level of what is merely objectively present. It dwindles to the structure of just letting what is objectively present be seen by way of determination. This levelling down of the primordial "as" of circumspect interpretation to the as of the determination of objective presence is the speciality of the statement. Only in this way does it gain the possibility of a pointing something out in a way that we sheerly look at it. Thus the statement cannot deny its ontological provenance from an interpretation that understands. We call primordial the "as" of circumspect interpretation that understands, the existential hermeneutical "as" in distinction from the apophantical "as" of the statement. There are many interim stages between interpretation which is quite enveloped in heedful understanding and the extreme opposite case of a theoretical statement about objectively present things: statements about events in the surrounding world, descriptions of what is at hand, "reports on situations," noting and ascertaining a "factual situation," describing a state of affairs, telling about what has happened. These "sentences" cannot be reduced to theoretical propositional statements without essentially distorting their meaning. Like the latter, they have their "origin" in circumspect interpretation."

I value Heidegger as a philosopher and think there are important ideas in what you quoted, but I don't feel that the issue I raised is being addressed. I also hope to avoid talking more about Heidegger than reality.

When we determine the presence of a thing in terms of a propositional subject-object statement we cut off our experience of something from its context of use and ossify it as what it is in itself. — Joshs

Let me borrow that structure: When we determine the presence meaning of a thing word in terms of a propositional subject-object statement metaphysical investment, we cut off our experience of something this word from its context of use and ossify it as what it is in itself and mishear it as an opposed metaphysical investment to be corrected by our own.

I do agree that we focus on objects and left them from their context and that they are something like ossifications. This perspective has its uses, but so does that ossification. This doesn't seem to address the issue of (as I see it) a 'primordial' reality that we can't help talking about. For instance, to deny that there even is something like reality is to say something about reality as I intend it here.

I have to confess I'm not sure how you want to define reality.

If I may make use of Richard Rorty here instead of Heidegger, the postmodern pragmatist sees 'reality' as resting on the idea of truth as the mirror of nature, a correspondence between human constructions and an external world.

"I argue that when extended in a certain way they let us see truth as, in James's phrase, "what it is better for us to believe," rather than as "the accurate representation of reality." Or, to put
the point less provocatively, they show us that the notion of "accurate representation" is simply an automatic and empty compliment which we pay to those beliefs which are successful in helping us do what we want to do."

Maybe you're raising the often brought up objection to radically relativistic philosophical positions which deconstruct foundational metaphysics. The argument goes something like this: "If your claim is that no metaphysical ground for reality can justify itself, then isn't your very claim a sort of ground in itself"?

It would be unfair to answer this question by suggesting that it is only an issue when one has failed to understand the nature of a thinking that frees itself from foundationalism. Instead, I would say that there are many ways of constructing a philosophical position, .The sort of philosophical position that embraces a radical relativism doesn't see itself as a concept that sits above or beneath or outside of the flux that it points to, but instead embodies that flux within its own terms. Heidegger's notion of Being, Derrida's differance and Nietzsche's he's Will to Power are already bifurcated within themselves. they are less to be thought of as originating concepts than they are enactments, performances, transitions. They are self-reflexive and historical , meaning that each time one references such a 'grounding' , it is a historically new manifestation of itself. Mobility , transition, absence, the in-between, these notions can be talked about and referred to to. In doing so, we are not pointing to static concepts, but enacting what we are pointing to.

I have to confess I'm not sure how you want to define reality. — Joshs

It's not a huge issue, but I'll try one more time. I don't claim to be able to define reality. Consider what it would mean for me to do so. I'd be showing or making known what reality is, what reality 'really' is. I connect this to:

"...statement means pointing out. With this we adhere to the primordial meaning of logos as apophansis: to let beings be seen from themselves." — Joshs

The beings are there. Reality is there. Language reveals and points out. It is aimed away from itself.

If I may make use of Richard Rorty here instead of Heidegger, the postmodern pragmatist sees 'reality' as resting on the idea of truth as the mirror of nature, a correspondence between human constructions and an external world. — Joshs

I know the work of that ol' snake Rorty. I learned much from him. He did pomo with a minimum of stylistic bluff. His work is full of important insights , and I embrace the anti-foundationalism. But I don't think he shattered the mirror of nature unless it's the mirror of certain fussy foundationalists. If he did shatter that mirror, after all,...then he also didn't. And he also neither did nor didn't. My talk and his talk about that mirror corresponds to nothing. It's just marks that help me get what I want and feel good about myself. But it's also not that, because nothing is really there and reality is superstition. And yet superstition is a superstition too, for that very distinction corresponds to nothing. Clearly our mild-mannered liberal Rorty is a nice fellow who's just trying to soften up an unhip scientism (or something like that), which is fine.

they show us that the notion of "accurate representation" is simply an automatic and empty compliment which we pay to those beliefs which are successful in helping us do what we want to do." — Joshs

Note that they show us. They represent the notion of accurate representation (accurately, one would hope) as an 'automatic and empty compliment.' Let me emphasize that I like the spirit of this statement. I also like the spirit of logical positivism. Certain anti-metaphysical positions can't resist becoming meta-physicians themselves as they try to prove (metaphysically) that metaphysics is impossible or worthless. James was disliked empty talk that went nowhere. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. As James wrote, his pragmatism was (in its guts) old as the hills. IMV it's as much an unlearning as a learning, and I connect it with the later Wittgenstein's insights. A live 'spiritual' option is presented, and that's the possibility of taking a certain kind of thought less seriously.

The argument goes something like this: "If your claim is that no metaphysical ground for reality can justify itself, then isn't your very claim a sort of ground in itself"?

It would be unfair to answer this question by suggesting that it is only an issue when one has failed to understand the nature of a thinking that frees itself from foundationalism. — Joshs

You can probably tell from what I've written already, but I'll emphasize that I'm coming from an anti-foundationalist position in my criticism of certain excesses of the pomo style. As I suggested in the Wittgenstein thread, the danger in a profound reading is that it repeats what is being criticized. I find this tension in the personality of Wittgenstein himself, who seem to wrestle with the angel of his own massive and lovely pretentiousness. Because the TLP is fascinating, it's easy to forget how absurd it is. Who but Wittgenstein could wring a PhD out of something so indulgent? Institutions aren't exempt from seduction and fads, and this contributes to the wariness toward lines like 'science doesn't think' or 'woman does not exist.' The same people who mock Jordan Peterson (which is fine with me) sometimes embrace Zizek as an essentially different animal. I'm not so sure, at least not if pseudo-science is the issue. I'll see your Jung and raise you a Lacan.

The notion of objectivity and reality, as derivative ways of thinking, are not necessary to explain technological invention. What objective thinking does is arbitrarily separate certain types of relational contexts, those you would call tool invention, from all others, including making music and philosophy.

you speak about the critical importance of the presence or absence of tools throughout history to particular cultures. In my own life, the development of my philosophical thinking has had an infinitely more profound effect on my life than exposure to any 'objective' technologies. That is as it should be, given that there is no way in principle to distinguish between philosophical creation and technological creation. As Heidegger says , the essence of technology is nothing technological. — Joshs

Heidegger has always been obtuse to me. What I've gleaned from his "ready" and "present" at hand along with broken tool is more-or-less summed up in this:

Ready at hand is how we relate to an object as a practical thing for us, and present at hand is simply understanding the object in a conceptual way- observing it, understanding how it works, enframing its features and distinctions, etc.

Thus objects in the world naturally seem to relate with us and us to them in a ready-at-hand way. However, we have learned to abstract objects to the point of present-at-hand more frequently and readily. Philosophy has overstepped its bounds by taking the present-at-hand as the natural stance, when in fact our existence is usually related to the world in a ready-at-hand fashion. [Let me know if that interpretation seems wrong to you. I've never had anyone explain Heidegger very well without using self-referencing neologisms which don't help. Try to avoid that if you do want to explain a better interpretation. ]

Anyways, the point in general I'm trying to make is that we are in a way a tool-being. We relate to the world via technology. Using tools are natural to us. The minutia mongerers live in the present-at-hand. Troubleshooting, surmising, deriving, synthesizing. They revel in doing this. They are in a mix of flow and halting frustration until they have solved it. Either way, whether flow or grindingly exhausting work, they produce the things that "get the job done" so the rest of us can have a seemless tool that is "ready-at-hand". Thus the minutia mongerers are the essential ones, yet again. More than anyone else. The meaning they find minutia mongering is more important than the derivative meaning we find in the fun of ready-at-hand that is a result.

By the way..to be completely upfront.. everything I'm saying right now is completely devil's advocate. I am spitefully taking the position as if I indeed think meaning is to be found in minutia mongering, and that usefulness is what counts as the real.. everything else being babble. Keep that in mind.. This is a LONG con to get to a certain point..But a long con I was upfront about, that you may not have caught :wink: .

"Note that they show us. They represent the notion of accurate representation (accurately, one would hope) as an 'automatic and empty compliment.' Let me emphasize that I like the spirit of this statement. I also like the spirit of logical positivism. Certain anti-metaphysical positions can't resist becoming meta-physicians themselves as they try to prove (metaphysically) that metaphysics is impossible or worthless."

What if showing is transforming? What if representing is an an altering interaction? What if the constraints imposed by reality are normative constraints that are only relevant and coherent within a contingent scheme of understanding? Do you support Kuhn's anti-foundationalism or do you think he goes too far?

Neither Derrida, Heidegger nor Nietzsche would say foundational metaphysics is worthless. They would instead say that it doesn't understand its basis. I would not call Heidegger and Derrida anti-metaphysical. Derrida in particular says that we can never simply escape metaphysics. He calls what he does quasi-transcendental.

WIttgenstein may be anti-foundatinaist but not radically so. His approach is what I'd call emanciaptory, fitting into a Kierkegaardian mode where truth is contingent within cultures but one can still justify a trajectory or telos to history. I think this is Kuhn's move also, allowing for a pragmatic notion of progress. The radical anti-foundationalists are post-strucrturtalists like Deleuze and Derrida, who question the ability to justify the meaning of a valuative directionality to truth, meaning, value.

Who are you r anti-foundationalist heroes, those who you believe have avoided whatever excesses you are trying to point out?

What if showing is transforming? What if representing is an an altering interaction? What if the constraints imposed by reality are normative constraints that are only relevant and coherent within a contingent scheme of understanding? Do you support Kuhn's anti-foundationalism or do you think he goes too far? — Joshs

I think the common concepts of interpretation and bias already demonstrate a general awareness that representation is transformation. I also think that schemes are contingent. Moreover I'm down with holism.

I haven't read Kuhn directly but got him mostly through Rorty. I don't think he goes too far, from what know.