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. — Joshs

I agree with what you say about Heidegger and Derrida, but I'm not sure I agree with them on this. While we are all enmeshed in a contingent culture, To say that we can't escape metaphysics is, in my view, one more dramatic overstatement. Instead of metaphysics being impossible, we have with Derrida that not metaphysics is impossible. Not a huge difference in style, but this inverts logical positivism as supposedly Nietzsche inverts Plato. Sure the uneducated person who's never touched a philosophy book has his prejudices, but why call them metaphysical? It stretches the word in a way that may inflate the relevance of the guy who happens to have studied metaphysics all his life (an academic like Derrida or Heidegger.)

Nietzsche stands out in important ways from both, but he wrote in obscurity (having scared off his peers), and he was amazingly honest and naked on the whole. He captured the ups and downs of godlessness, and he's something like the Coca-cola of critical mystics. *

*I mean this as a compliment.

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

I suppose excess is relative to time and place. If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, we are here talking about James, Rorty, Heidegger, Derrida. I was blown away by Nietzsche in my 20s, and part of that was because of his exciting style. Beyond Good and Evil! Those are rock lyrics. What Wittgenstein means is endlessly debatable, but I read some anti-found. into them. I also very much like some of Heidegger (some of the early pre-B&T stuff, cuz' I'm a hipster.)

For me anti-foundationalism has a significant anti-philosophical charge. To live antifoundationalism might just be to do excellent work in something besides philosophy.

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. ] — schopenhauer1

For what it's worth, that's sounds about right to me, on that one issue anyway. And I think the later Wittgenstein is making the same kind of point when it comes to language. The alternative is centuries of analysis of the word 'know?' In the meantime, somehow the people who don't even 'really' know what 'know' means erect skyscrapers and land on the moon.

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".
— schop

Yeah that seems about right. I will say that it offer artistic pleasure if a person is designing something. Coding is building a machine more or less out of ideas. The computer will do all the boring stuff for you if you can figure out to tell it how.

" To live antifoundationalism might just be to do excellent work in something besides philosophy."
Or it could be to understand 20th and 21st century anti-foundational philosophy well enough not to confuse its attempts at rigor for sneaking in foundationalism through the back door. Rorty badly misread Derrida and Heidegger this way, It's a typical Anglo-American weakness. We tend to be threatened by the thoroughness of a continental style, having only our own thinner emprically-parasitic intellectual traditions to fall back on. You sound like Rorty, exhorting us to abandon philosophy for other endeavors now that metaphysics is out of fashion.
At the same time that we pat ourselves on the back for avoiding the supposed errors of the overly theoretical continentals, we haven t figured out a way to think anti-foundationalism without falling back on the crutch of empiricism. They have, and we fault them for our inability to read them well enough. Their abstractness is no match for our anti-intelectualism.

Indeed. Why not? I'm open to that. But this is also the problem with pomo insight. Anyone can accuse anyone of confusion. Yet at the same 'there are no facts, but only interpretations.' So what is there to be confused about?

This is why I value technology that works whether one believes in it or not. The game of 'you're confused no you're confused' is interminable if the players are foolish or amused enough to persist. It's exactly this kind of noise that I want and use philosophy for cutting through : hype, bluff, pose, and the endless wishful thinking that inflates and deceives itself, my own included.

Note that I am not accusing you of these things. I'm saying that critical minds are by definition on the lookout for bullshit. Which claims should I trust in a world where so many claim so much? I look at what their talk can help accomplish not only without the help of faith in such talk but even against such faith.

Noise is an unfortunate but necessary byproduct of difficult ideas. In grad school, I thought the empirical trajectory was my best bet for attaining the solidity of stable fact. I eschewed philosophy, thinking it obsolete. A few years later I was to do a 180 degree turn. What I mistook for solidity was just a different sort of noise than that of philosophical debate. For all the substanceless sycophants in the philosophy world, (and there are many), there are as many empiricists reinventing a wheel that a philosopher built generations earlier.
If you want to escape noise , choosing one side over another isn't the answer. The trick is to locate that small minority within the scientific and philosophic communities who are truly onto something.

And when you do, you will likely find that they have found each other. IF you want to read the best new approach to the empirical understanding of visual perception, you can do no better than Alva Noe. But you will have to listen to his praise for Edmund Husserl's and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. Yes, he found out they had been onto something, the same thing he was just now discovering, but they got to it decades earlier. If you want to read some remarkable new research on autism, schizophrenia, child development of empathy, I highly recommend Shaun Gallagher. But you'll also have to make your way through his praise of Gadamer's hermeneutics(as well as phenomenology.) Yes, Shaun noticed that these philosophers were onto something. That's why he co-founded the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. Dan Zahavi is one of the best interpreters of Phenomenological philosophy today, and he has immersed himself in the project of integrating phenomenological method with empirical fields. Such endeavors were encouraged by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty themselves.

Noise is an unfortunate but necessary byproduct of difficult ideas. — Joshs

Sure, but you don't do much to acknowledge the possibility that some difficult ideas are just smoke. You mention substanceless syncophants, but what about master thinkers who are ultimately faddish footnotes?

If you want to escape noise , choosing one side over another isn't the answer. — Joshs

I don't see myself as having chosen one side over the other, though I have chosen one career path over the other. I spent many years on music, art, lit, and philosophy. I still love all of these things. Still I insist upon the distinct charm of what I see as the least controversial forms of specialist knowledge (for instance, math.)

IF you want to read the best new approach to the empirical understanding of visual perception, you can do no better than Alva Noe. — Joshs

I'm not not interested in that (I've looked into Noe briefly already), it's just that I'm more into (and more likely to be paid for) understanding the guts of a convolutional neural network for computer vision. Also my sense is that the world won't reward me much for being the intellectual tourist I might prefer to be. As far as phenomenology goes, Heidegger was great, but there is also just living more in one's body. Books are great, but let's not forget old fashioned experience.

@Joshs
One of the many things that I guess I'm trying to say here is the importance weighted to various topics or "ways of" thought. There may be a group of people discussing a fictional book and be passionately involved in understanding it. There may be people diving into the complexities of what Schopenhauer or Camus, or Heidegger said in various terms like "Will", "absurd", and "ready-at-hand". There may be religious discussions delving into the complexity of Leviticus or Matthew, etc. etc. But these are all put by the wayside when it comes to "real" daily living.

The meaning then is not in the deep, rich laughter, reflection, faith, apprehension, discussion of these topics aforementioned, but of "getting shit done". It is precisely those most adept at solving daily problems ("getting shit done") that might say, "I am the one who gets the most meaning, as I am dealing with life at its most necessary and useful functional level. I am the one solving the problems of inventing and maintaining tools that we rely upon as a species through daily life.. That we get habituated to, and find greater thresholds of need, when the tools are working". In other words, BECAUSE of the pragmatic and useful nature of the work done by the minutia mongerer, they, by default may very well claim to hold the real "meaning". They are reveling in the very thing that keeps the circular, repetitive thing called life going, and therefore have a monopoly on what actually counts (which entails for them that it makes things meaningful). Thus, working away at an equation that solves real world problems is more "real" than the pablum of discussing a book. The present-at-hand IS the real.

To go even further, even ancient tribesman probably thought more present-at-hand. They had relations to their surroundings for sure (themes of ready at hand), but they were constantly trying to figure out how to use those surroundings to fit their needs (present at hand). This is the mode of the real indeed. The one tinkering, not the one reflecting. The one constantly stressed out about how to solve that problem to get that tool created and maintained. They will claim THIS is life. The more minutia, the better. We are here to monger minutia. All else can be tolerated, but don't be surprised if the MMs laugh derisively and roll their eyes at what doesn't count.

Edit — Joshs

"I'm not not interested in that (I've looked into Noe briefly already), it's just that I'm more into (and more likely to be paid for) understanding the guts of a convolutional neural network for computer vision. Also my sense is that the world won't reward me much for being the intellectual tourist I might prefer to be. As far as phenomenology goes, Heidegger was great, but there is also just living more in one's body. Books are great, but let's not forget old fashioned experience. "

Lots of distinctions being thrown around here:books vs experience, bodily living vs abstract thought.
What I like about Heidegger was his tearing apart the supposed distinction between 'bodily' and conceptual. Of course , we don't need to rely on Heidegger for that. In a less radical way , today's enactive, embodied approaches also dissolve such distinctions between what is body and what is cognitive. I think what you're getting at is that you are more comfortable with applied fields because they suit your style of thinking better. But I wouldn't confuse your personal preference for mode of ideation with some supposed defect in the style of thinking associated with many continental philosophers. Everyone has their preference in terms of how to best articulate, process and expand their creative thinking. I do think a non-linear sort of development of ideas can be talked about in relation to cultural history that involves a holistic relationship between different modes of expression(empirical, political, philosophical, ethical, artistic, literary, etc).

No one modality takes preference over others(not the scientific-technological) in terms of something like rapidity of progress or better access to truth. Each modality of culture depends on all the others in complex reciprocal ways in articulating truths of an era within their own vocabularies. Persons working within a particular modality can confuse their own biases and preferences for some universal priority of their discipline. Heidegger thought poetry could articulate Being better than any other modality, Some physicists still think their field is the queen of the sciences and that the
sciences are superior modes of access to truth and progress than other modes. Some mathematicians believe their field is grounded in Platonic universals and is protected from the contingencies of empirical science. There are musicians and artists who prioritize an affective-intuitive language of expression over empirical or philosophical.

My own bias is that the best philosophers of an era tend to act as a crystal ball, anticipating ahead of the rest of culture to ways of thinking that unfold eventually as new empirical discoveries and artistic movements. Whether I can justify that or not, the important point for me is that it is possible to translate what is essential in a philosophical articulation of ideas into psychological or artistic or literary or any other modality of ideation of that same era(Im Hegelian in that way, I believe in the idea of cultural worldviews and their evolution)., so I am not wedded to one disciple over another. Do I want my subjective idealism in the form of Kant, Einstein, Picasso or Joyce? They are all essential to me even though my preferred vocabulary would be Kant. Do I choose Freud, Nietzsche, Foucault or Dennett? They interpenetrate each other's thinking in so many ways, it would be a crime to excluded any of them. And still, my personal preference is Nietzsche, for the incomparably rich language.
The particular milieu you have chosen to embrace is your priority, but dont make the mistake of universalizing it.

There may be a group of people discussing a fictional book and be passionately involved in understanding it. There may be people diving into the complexities of what Schopenhauer or Camus, or Heidegger said in various terms like "Will", "absurd", and "ready-at-hand". There may be religious discussions delving into the complexity of Leviticus or Matthew, etc. etc. But these are all put by the wayside when it comes to "real" daily living. — schopenhauer1

To me this is an important point. It's the down-to-earth wisdom that cautions against forgetting ourselves in those spiritual complexities that makes us deaf to the speech of daily living. This doesn't make those complexities less meaningful. Instead some of us can share in an investment in critical thinking. We differentiate between spiritual claims and worldly, objective claims.

A difference between @Joshs and myself might be that I find claims like 'there are no fact but only interpretations' more spiritual than objective, even as they attempt to abolish the distinction. I don't see how this difference can be methodically resolved. This is part of the angst of personality. I can always decide that I was lying to myself by underrating or overrating some thinker. At moments of manic investment I can look back at more sober moods as a failure of nerve. In moments of appreciation of others who have never looked into various famous intellectuals, I might think that these famous intellectuals functioned for me more spiritually than practically. They entertained me with grand abstractions about grand abstractions and made me feel like I was one of the few no longer in the matrix.

It is precisely those most adept at solving daily problems ("getting shit done") that might say, "I am the one who gets the most meaning, as I am dealing with life at its most necessary and useful functional level. I am the one solving the problems of inventing and maintaining tools that we rely upon as a species through daily life.. — schopenhauer1

They might say that. More reasonably they might enjoy the feeling that they are less likely to decide that they have been lying to themselves. Their work is also intelligible to everybody, not the details but its value. Those who can do something are definitely skilled, definitely intelligent. On the other hand an atheist may find theology fundamentally absurd and deceived. The newfangled religious type may find some kind of scientism to be fundamentally blind. Then in politics the other side is often simply demonized. Practical power convinces everyone. In war it sometimes 'convinces' them by removing them altogether. Talk is cheap and yet poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

"To go even further, even ancient tribesman probably thought more present-at-hand. They had relations to their surroundings for sure (themes of ready at hand), but they were constantly trying to figure out how to use those surroundings to fit their needs (present at hand)."

Using one's surroundings to fit one's needs, as you say, is a ready to hand relation with a tool. What would be present to hand about the situation would be extracting the tool-object from one's needs in the contextually meaningful surroundings and simply thinking of it as a contextless, purposeless 'thing', this tool with its properties and attributes. normally , we dont do that when we engage with objects, because we are busy making meaningful use of them. We dont even notice the tool until something goes wrong. Then the meaning of the tool is in what went wrong with its use, not as 'thing with properties'.

In Heideger's lecture 'What is a Thing', he says a commonly held assumption is that of the 'natural attitude' toward things, as if , beneath the changing fashions of theoretical definitions of objectiveness, there lies a universal, non-theoretical practical understanding of what a thing is.
Heidegger then goes on to skewer this assumption.He argues that there is no such thing a a natural, pre-theoretical notion of a thing.He believes the present -to-hand and the development of logic went hand in hand as Western inventions. A primitive tribesman would likely have a different notion of what we commonly call things and objects than via the present to hand.. And I think Heidegger foresaw an era to come when we would replace the idea of the present to hand with a different thinking, just as the present to hand emerged at some point in Western history. This would imply that a future empirical science would not have to base itself on the idea of present to hand.

In fact , one could argue that today's enactive embodied cognitive approaches replace objectivity with intersubjectivity, which might still fall under a Heideggerian critique , but goes a long away towards emancipation from the thinking of a mind-independent world, or a correspondence theory of truth, or the idea that we have ever have theoretical access to objects severed from a larger implicit context of interactive use and significance.

Now lets talk about getting shit done, the rock-bottom irreducibly physical-material thingly-bodily- corporeal-fleshly realer-than -real basics of surviving, the real shit. I'm thinking about how Silicon Valley's minions are spreading out over the earth, and how the closer we seem to get to the immediacy and hands-on-ness of the really real shit the more likely it is that such tasks are being given over to robots. Extrapolate forward 100 years, when a majority of humans will work at tasks in virtual' reality.
They will code, design, organize, plan, orchestrate. All kinds of stuff that involves creating, manipulating and interpreting language. But an almost complete elimination of tasks involving physical objects, excepts as housings for screens or implanted neural devices communicating image and text.

In the future the real may be completely virtual, bout wont it still mostly be about getting virtual shit done? About creating and maintaining tools? Of course, the writing and teaching of a book of philosophy is also the creating and maintaining of a tool, but what of your adjectives?

Heidegerrian thought is clealy not necessary, useful functional, repetitive minutiae mongering, or pragmatic tinkering, is it? Heidegger is on the side of complexity and richness. Real meaning is on the side of survival and getting shit done. A quick question. What if it were the case(and it isn't for most people) that reading Heidegger produced for everyone an extraordinary , lasting euphoric pleasure that was far superior to anything that 'getting shit done' could produce, would you still call minutia mongering more meaningful? In that case you're defining meaning in terms of a distinction between pleasure and survival. Of course, if my hypothetical were true, then many would sacrifice their lives to such pleasure(as they do now to euphoria-producing drugs).

There would then seem to be a constant battle among humankind between what gives pleasure and what is necessary for survival, with some arguing that true meaning is higher than mere survival, and others arguing a Darwinian position that pleasure is merely epiphenomal, a biproduct of adaptive brain structures those only meaning from an evolutionary standpoint is in their capacity to foster continued survival of species, gene or whatever.
In a way this is a variant of Rousseau's philosophy of the cultural as parasitic on the natural , which Freud picked up on in 'Civilization and its Discontents'.
One could point out here that the survival of a complex post-industrial service and information- based society would seem to be a survival with distinctly different features than the survival of an ant colony.

One might want to divide 'survival' into two components,1) the very sucess of self preservation and persistence, which would not differentiate between an amoeba and a philosopher, and 2)the level of complexity and , internal differentiation of a particular living system that happens to be surviving.

Let's say for the sake of argument that we say that meaning requires both components, such that the more complex and differentiated a human's life is, the more meaningful it is, and it is thus directly tied into human desire and motive.

This is kind of the 'complexity theory' of meaning. By this measure , all those grunts trying to simply 'get shit done' are striving not just for simple self-preservation, but are getting shit done for the sake of a motive for self-complexification(what people call personal growth or self-improvement).

In other words, getting shit done has an arc to it, a kind of developmental telos. Getting shit done always implies a motive toward getting shit done better, and getting shit done better naturally aims toward getting it done in a richer, more complex, more differentiated and integral way. This isnt what the grunt is thinking, but it is what underlies their sense of satisfaction and what it means to them to be doing a good job, or a better job. In situations whether one is just trying to get paid and doesn't find their work rewarding, this anticipatory sense making still applies, but in this case one has to follow what they are preferring to the work.

My favorite writers in psychology and philosophy(George Kelly, Jean Piaget, Heidegger and numerous others) see human experiencing as anticipatory. These writers do away with the distinctions between motive , affect and cognition. They see human beings as already in motion(not physical motion but in process of experiential change). So they don't have to posit extrinsic or internal movers, drives, pushers and pullers of human incentive. The only motive is sense making in a world that appears to us as always changing from moment to moment. Sense making is anticipatory, future oriented.
So motive is naturally aligned with being able to assimilate all variety of new experience.

I didn't mention the key component of their thinking. It is that thinking is hierarchically organized as an integral totality. That means that when we approach the world we interpret the meaning of experience globally. From the most mundane practical minutia to the most elevated, abstract spiritual or philosophical concerns, all of this functions in the background of each of our engagements with the world at every moment. So those lowest level pragmatic 'getting shit done' experiences imply , are authorized by , are understood in relation to and meaningful extend those most global, abstract and complex meanings by which we defined ourselves ethically, spiritually, socially. A human being is, from moment to moment, a single integrated worldivew in process of self-transformation, Getting shit done is our ways of preserving, extending and transforming that worldview. The 'getting shit done' pragmatic minutia mongerer of today in the tech world is extending his worldview, which , being a 21st century empirically sophisticated worldview, has internalized Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and liekly Knat, whether they have read a word of those authors or not. Each eyeblink and and sneeze
and intended action of getting shit done refers to, addresses and strengthens their Platonic-Aristotelain-Caretsian-Kantian construct system. So maybe you can see that, thinking about the real and tools the way that I do from this vantage, there is no conflict or separation between the most abstract and ephemeral meaning in our lives and the most supposedly 'real', 'getting shit done' meanings. each presupposes, feed back from and extends the other.

My working right this minute on soldering together these two circuit components is not just the isolated activity that it seems . Everything that led me to sitting down in this chair and doing everything necessary to begin the task , including deciding why i want or need to do it, what my goal is, etc. arise out of the global, integrated context of my construct system. When I lose myself in the details of my task, that global background is never absent but informs and directs my actions and motives.

What I like about Heidegger was his tearing apart the supposed distinction between 'bodily' and conceptual. — Joshs

I like that too, but pointing out the limits of a distinction doesn't destroy its utility. I relate my reading of Heidegger to Wittgenstein through the idea of automatic knowhow. One of the reasons I don't quote the masters much is because this sometimes shifts real talk into academic chatter. Participants switch out of their automatic knowhow and ordinary words lose their transparency.

I think what you're getting at is that you are more comfortable with applied fields because they suit your style of thinking better. — Joshs

It's complicated. I love pure theory, but this love sometimes looks to me like a vice. I am wary of human pretentiousness and self-deception. The gap between theory and application is also philosophically fascinating. The prestige of science seems technological and ethical. The ethical prestige is in its humility. Popper's notion of falsification has an ethical appeal. I don't see how it can be justified. Just as Turing machines are one way to make the intuitive notion of an algorithm definite, so falsifiability is an attempt to crystallize a sense of what makes science science. I think that technology and its supporting theory that works whether or not one believes in it is another good candidate.

No one modality takes preference over others(not the scientific-technological) in terms of something like rapidity of progress or better access to truth. Each modality of culture depends on all the others in complex reciprocal ways in articulating truths of an era within their own vocabularies. Persons working within a particular modality can confuse their own biases and preferences for some universal priority of their discipline. Heidegger thought poetry could articulate Being better than any other modality, Some physicists still think their field is the queen of the sciences and that the
sciences are superior modes of access to truth and progress than other modes. Some mathematicians believe their field is grounded in Platonic universals and is protected from the contingencies of empirical science. There are musicians and artists who prioritize an affective-intuitive language of expression over empirical or philosophical. — Joshs

I largely agree, but I apply this to Heidegger and gang too. As illuminating as they can be, I don't find them authoritative. Maybe Dostoesvky or Heller is better. What's missing from so much philosophy is divine malice, laughter. I love Nietzsche on these themes. We are mortals. The species itself is mortal. All our fine talk is ridiculous to the gods. Sometimes we can laugh with them at all of our poses. Does academia welcome this kind of divine malice? If I used the slang I think in, I'd get in trouble. This is the slang of comedians and rappers and our taboo selves behind all the masks we wear in this world.

My own bias is that the best philosophers of an era tend to act as a crystal ball, anticipating ahead of the rest of culture to ways of thinking that unfold eventually as new empirical discoveries and artistic movements. — Joshs

I agree, but I don't see why philosophers should always be the leaders. Sometimes it may be the artists or the engineers. And sometimes maybe philosophy is in the way.

And still, my personal preference is Nietzsche, for the incomparably rich language. — Joshs

I love Nietzsche too. If I had to pick a single thinker who affected me most, it might be Nietzsche. Some of that is circumstantial. I happened on him early in my 20s. Did you ever read Kojeve? He also deeply impressed me.

"Popper's notion of falsification has an ethical appeal. I don't see how it can be justified. Just as Turing machines are one way to make the intuitive notion of an algorithm definite, so falsifiability is an attempt to crystallize a sense of what makes science science. I think that technology and its supporting theory that works whether or not one believes in it is another good candidate."

I was going to bring up Popper to you. I wonder if you could talk a little more about what sort of view of what science does makes sense to you. I think it was Bacon who coined the hypothetical deductive method as what science does. Do you agree with Bacon that there is such a thing as THE scientific method , and if so, what is it?
When you say that Popperian falsification cant be verified , does that mean you disagree with the whole claim he is making? Have you read Thomas Kuhn? Do you prefer Popper to Kuhn?

Does science change by revolutions in its paradigms or does it progress incrementally, mostly preserving facts from earlier theories and adding to them? Does it progress toward an asymptotic limit of truth?

"Sometimes it may be the artists or the engineers. And sometimes maybe philosophy is in the way.

Quite possibly, but I'm going to make you a dare. Name an engineer or artist who you think defined a new cutting edge before any philosopher.

BY the way, how could an engineer do such a thing when they represent an application of basic science. Isnt an engineer by definition a conventional character, translating what has already been established into something that can be marketable? Isnt marketability function of recognizability? That is, if a large enough mass of consumers dont see the value in a new device, then it will not succeed. Automobiles were originally scoffed at as impractical whimsy(this was of courses before infrastructure like auto repair and parts stores, gas stations and paved roads).

— Joshs

What I would want to try to disabuse you of is the notion that you have found any refuge from the risk of noise and nonsense by enveloping yourself in the supposed solidity of the pragmatic. You have called your thinking anti-foundational ,but i think there may be a misunderstanding of what that term means, or at least one can confuse a Kantian calling themselves anti-foundationalist with Rorty making the same claim. It may be that your anti-foundationalism is my foundationalism. Maybe we should unpack this term a little more carefully.

What I would want to try to disabuse you of is the notion that you have found any refuge from the risk of noise and nonsense by enveloping yourself in the supposed solidity of the pragmatic. — Joshs

I never claimed an escape from angst altogether. We are mortal. And your talk of disabuse lapses back into the objectivity that some of your pomo taken earnestly would deny. If there are no facts but only interpretations, there's no reality for me to see incorrectly. It's this kind of performative contradiction that I strive to avoid by cutting back on some of the rhetorical habits of thinkers I otherwise value.

I think you're also being a little deaf here in terms of our interpersonal situation. I'm not here as it were looking for your approval. I'm probably as arrogant as you are. I just take it for granted that we intellectual dudes are generally pretty sure that we are more profound, etc., than one another. That's part of the comedy. And that's why a conspicuous attachment to critical thinking is disarming. If the other person doesn't even expect doubt, then I have to question their own possible credulousness.

*This isn't meant as an insult. It's almost common sense. In another thread a religious person is outraged by skepticism directed toward spiritual experiences, as if the OP hadn't noticed the ubiquity and danger of unchecked wishful thinking. He'd be far more credible as someone who has had a spiritual experience if he opened by emphasizing how ridiculous he may sound.

Some of us pride ourselves more on being reliably correct than on any particular profound viewpoint. This pride is its own kind of 'spirituality.'

"And your talk of disabuse lapses back into the objectivity that some of your pomo taken earnestly would deny. If there are no facts but only interpretations, there's no reality for me to see incorrectly. It's this kind of performative contradiction that I strive to avoid by cutting back on some of the rhetorical habits of thinkers I otherwise value.'

Perhaps the person most closely associated with radical relativism, and the idea that there is "no reality for me to see incorrectly". is Jacques Derrida. But no one saddled with that accusation would argue that there is no way , in any sense, to distinguish better and worse , more or less correct. The quote from Derrida below is I think representative of how so-called radical relativists would argue against your claim.


For of course there is a "right track" [une 'bonne voie "] , a better way, and let it
be said in passing how surprised I have often been, how
amused or discouraged, depending on my humor, by the use or abuse of the
following argument: Since the deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the skeptic-relativist-
nihilist!) is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or the unity of
meaning, in intention or "meaning-to-say, " how can he demand of us that we
read him with pertinence, precision, rigor? How can he demand that his own text
be interpreted correctly? How can he accuse anyone else of having misunderstood,
simplified, deformed it, etc.? In other words, how can he discuss, and
discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple enough: this definition
of the deconstructionist is false (that's right: false, not true) and feeble; it
supposes a bad (that's right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous
texts, first of all mine, which therefore must finally be read or reread.

Then perhaps it will be understood that the value of truth (and all those values associated
with it) is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in
more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. And that within interpretive contexts
(that is, within relations of force that are always differential-for example,
socio-political-institutional-but even beyond these determinations) that are relatively
stable, sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to
invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith,
lucidity, rigor, criticism, and pedagogy. I should thus be able to claim and to
demonstrate, without the slightest "pragmatic contradiction," that Searle, for
example, as I have already demonstrated, was not on the "right track" toward
understanding what I wanted to say, etc. May I henceforth however be granted
this: he could have been on the wrong track or may still be on it; I am making
considerable pedagogical efforts here to correct his errors and that certainly
proves that all the positive values to which I have just referred are contextual,
essentially limited, unstable, and endangered. And therefore that the essential
and irreducible possibility of misunderstanding or of "infelicity" must be taken
into account in the description of those values said to be positive.

"We differentiate between spiritual claims and worldly, objective claims."

Heidegger called the basis of modern science onto-theology because he recognized that worldly objective claims are founded on metaphysical pre-suppositions that link it to the history of Christianity.
IN a fundamental sense, the claims of objectivity are inherently spiritual claims.

But no one saddled with that accusation would argue that there is no way , in any sense, to distinguish better and worse , more or less correct. — Joshs

I agree, and I've criticized the style of statements that I otherwise value for being exaggerations.

The quote from Derrida below is I think representative of how so-called radical relativists would argue against your claim. — Joshs

I'm familiar with that quote. I don't think Derrida comes off all that well there. Accusations of feeble readings can be answered with further accusations of feeble readings. You can accuse me of a feeble reading of Derrida and/or Heidegger and/or Nietzsche. I can accuse you of the same. After all, my criticisms of pomo are largely inspired by pomo.

You question my antifoundationalism, but I'd say that it's largely inspired by Heidegger. I like Groundless Grounds by Lee Braver. Language is mostly ready-to-hand. To read metaphysics into this automatic knowhow is to stretch the word to the point of uselessness. If everything is metaphysics, then nothing is metaphysics.

Heidegger called the basis of modern science onto-theology because he recognized that worldly objective claims are founded on metaphysical pre-suppositions that link it to the history of Christianity.
IN a fundamental sense, the claims of objectivity are inherently spiritual claims. — Joshs

But Heidegger's claim is itself (arguably) a spiritual claim. He makes a case, gives reasons. Does he achieve a Science above science? Who's to say? Some consider him profound, others can't believe that the ol' swastika lover is taken seriously. I was myself intensely impressed and influenced by some of his early stuff, but I don't feel the need to quote him much and I am consciously against appealing to such a controversial figure as an authority --which you seem to do implicitly.

What I sense here is the same old projection of an explicit metaphysics on automatic knowhow. The philosopher is endlessly tempted to cast the non-philosopher as a failed philosopher. When the non-philosopher decides to play the philosphical game, he's likely to underperform. But the non-philosopher is mostly not playing the philosophical game but instead just living in the pretheoretical knowhow that we philosophers rely on when we aren't performing a certain role for one another (and the mirror.)

Not only Walt Whitman could write "who touches this book touches a man." The books of all the great philosophers are like so many men. Our sense of an essential personal flavor in each one of them, typical but indescribable, is the finest fruit of our own accomplished philosophic education. What the system pretends to be is a picture of the great universe of God. What it is—and oh so flagrantly!—is the revelation of how intensely odd the personal flavor of some fellow creature is. Once reduced to these terms (and all our philosophies get reduced to them in minds made critical by learning) our commerce with the systems reverts to the informal, to the instinctive human reaction of satisfaction or dislike. — James

That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are—how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in short, how childish and childlike they are,—but that there is not enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest manner. They all pose as though their real opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk of "inspiration"), whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices, which they dub "truths,"—and VERY far from having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule. — Nietzsche

I agree with both quotes. For me this is a fundamental experience. We take ourselves quite seriously and jockey for the status of the most profound, critical, educated, authentic, hip, creative, etc. In my view it's naive to think that the master thinkers aren't caught up in such a game.

I play and enjoy this game myself, but another part of me sees the ridiculousness of claiming to know that which is most important or authoritative or primordial or sophisticated. The gods laugh at us pretentious mortals, and sometimes we can laugh with them. I think Nietzsche is great in the way that Dostoevsky is great. Heidegger and Derrida, despite what I like about them, were also longwinded academics. Could they afford to get real ? I think Rorty hinted at the darkness now and then in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. His style and tone were post-metaphysical too.

[ Could you do me a favor and offer some comment concerning my philosophy of science questions? I would like to understand better what you mean when you say you are anti-foundational. Explain to me what makes your anti-foundationalism different than "accusations of feeble readings can be answered with further accusations of feeble readings."
Great, so what's your alternative? Is it closer to Popper, Kuhn or neither?

" I am consciously against appealing to such a controversial figure as an authority --which you seem to do implicitly." Suit yourself. If Heidegger's political affiliations were enough in and to themselves to discredit his philosophy, don't you think that Derrida, Levinas and philosopher Eugene Gendlin, three Jews who suffered from anti-Semitism (Levinas only survived the war because he was in a prisoner of war camp rather than a concentration camp, and Gendlin only barely made it out of Germany in 1938), would have ignored him, rather than considering his work teh greatest of any 20th century philsopher? (I'm also Jewish, for what that's worth)
Either you find his work authoritative or you don't . Obviously I do, and I'd rather rely on my friend Gendlin's take on Heideger's politics than yours.

I no more expect you to be dazzled by my anonymous perspective than I am automatically dazzled by yours. Despite our little clash here, I find you a worthy opponent. Very little persuasion happens on these forums as far as I can tell. Personalities tend to settle and harden. I wouldn't even say that one of us has to be right or wrong on what I regard as spiritual matters. As I see it, we are publicly performing the game of personality. So of course the gods are chucking. I like to think that we are leaving a nice stain for passersby.

My antifoundationalism is focused around the inexplicit or automatic knowhow that I keep mentioning. Lee Braver focused on this theme in both Wittgenstein and Heidegger in Groundless Grounds. His view is close to mine. Rorty's view is also close to mine. An important difference is that Rorty was constrained by being a professor (one wrong tweet and you are history.) He also takes politics more seriously than I do. I don't have to pretend to have a cure for the individual or the species or justify my income in the same way. All is vanity and this world is a great stage of self-important fools, including of course the self-important fool rude enough to point such a thing out. But that's just spiritual music. It's a joke and a reminder.

Also I don't reject Heidegger for the usual whiny reasons that he was a Nazi once. I mention the controversy to make the point that his claims are not obviously binding, however occasionally spellbinding. I don't pretend to authority on spiritual matters, nor am I quick to grant such authority to others (to put it mildly.) I'd like to both not be rude and at the same time be sincere. It's tough when it comes to a critical attitude toward what others have woven into their persona. Our heroes are something like our spiritual substance. I like dorky Stirner for trying to root out every such vulnerability in himself. He never organized or purified his message (which is concisely offered as 'the irony' in Hegel's lectures on esthetics), but he worked the theme for hundreds of pages.

"Very little persuasion happens on these forums as far as I can tell. Personalities tend to settle and harden. I wouldn't even say that one of us has to be right on what I regard as spiritual matters. As I see it, we are publicly performing the game of personality."

My goal is not persuasion. I believe that worldviews, which are what philosophical positions are, have a certain stability to them.
What I aim to do is to get as precise an understanding of the other's worldviews as possible , from their perspective, so that I can effectively summarize back to them their ideas. I'm not out to win anything but demonstrating to myself that I was able to subsume another's worldview to their satisfaction.

i'm curious why when it comes to Heidegger you are "consciously against appealing to such a controversial figure as an authority", when you've just said you are close to Lee Braver's thinking and he seems to appeal to Heidegger as an authority.

Try to see it my way. I generally try to avoid quoting. I prefer to just paraphrase. But intellectuals like to drop names. Maybe it's a ritual where we convince one another that we've actually read something.

Braver interprets Wittgenstein and Heidegger in a way that pleases me. I don't see the appeal to authority in merely bothering to interpret so-and-so. It's just that academics seem to often define themselves in terms of more famous academics. If everyone is obsessed with X, then one might as well express one's own view in terms of a reaction to or interpretation of X.

Of course if everyone is talking about X, that'll also inspire curiosity. The implication is that they are the most profound fellows around. Why miss out? Sometimes they live up to the hype. Sometimes not. I say we sculpt our personae in terms of those more famous (for intelligibility and as shrewd marketing). Magazines usually only put celebrities more famous than the magazine on the cover for the same reason.

What I aim to do is to get as precise an understanding of the other's worldviews as possible , from their perspective, so that I can effectively summarize back to them their ideas. I'm not out to win anything but demonstrating to myself that I was able to subsume another's worldview to their satisfaction. — Joshs

I like this goal. I hope my cynicism wasn't too offensive.

I don't think this is an easy project. Why should every position fit in a living way in one personality? I suggest that we understand best what we were once or are currently passionately invested in. It's not just ideas. It's the feel of a personality.

Pre-theoretical knowhow, the laugher of the gods, and a respect for technology that works without the help of our faith in it....That's an improvised theme summary of my philosophy, if you are curious and really want to assimilate what they mean to me.

Could you do me a favor and offer some comment concerning my philosophy of science questions? I would like to understand better what you mean when you say you are anti-foundational. Explain to me what makes your anti-foundationalism different than "accusations of feeble readings can be answered with further accusations of feeble readings."
Great, so what's your alternative? Is it closer to Popper, Kuhn or neither? — Joshs

As I mentioned, we can try to formalize/crystallize our intuition of what makes science science, even if the word has no essence. Falsifiability is good. Technology that works without our faith in it is also good. What is science? What is knowledge? What is justice? What is meaning? These questions aren't ridiculous and have even been useful, but there's a limit to how seriously we should take this game. After all, we've put human feet on the moon without the profound philosophers managing to come to a consensus.

I also dodge materialism, physicalism, idealism, etc. I don't worry about the ontological status of the real numbers or what the entities of physics 'really' are. I don't think we need a crystalline theory. We know how to get shit done, without knowing exactly how we know how. If the philosophers could somehow answer this convincingly, I'd want to hear their answer. I've lended a few thousand ears by now. But usually the philosophers are less sophisticated than the same blind know-how they must rely on to construct their philosophy. Obviously I'm expressing opinion here. You asked and I improvised an answer with some of that blind know-how. I didn't know what I would write beforehand. See how we glide.

Do you agree with Bacon that there is such a thing as THE scientific method , and if so, what is it?
When you say that Popperian falsification cant be verified , does that mean you disagree with the whole claim he is making? Have you read Thomas Kuhn? Do you prefer Popper to Kuhn? — Joshs

I like Popper. Like many crystallizations of an intuition, it enriches us. But it's the working technology that I prefer to any theology of science. Texts /sentences are machines too, but some texts only work if you believe in them. The sentences associated with technology that works for everyone are lifted by the reliability and power of that tool. This is almost bestial, such is our pre-theoretical response to stuff that works.

I have only browsed Kuhn himself, but I have been exposed to his ideas, which I think are great. I have read many pages of Popper and have quite an affection for him. If I pick favorites, it'll be largely circumstantial. He was a crusty old man, which amuses me.

Rorty badly misread Derrida and Heidegger this way, It's a typical Anglo-American weakness. We tend to be threatened by the thoroughness of a continental style, having only our own thinner emprically-parasitic intellectual traditions to fall back on. You sound like Rorty, exhorting us to abandon philosophy for other endeavors now that metaphysics is out of fashion.
At the same time that we pat ourselves on the back for avoiding the supposed errors of the overly theoretical continentals, we haven t figured out a way to think anti-foundationalism without falling back on the crutch of empiricism. They have, and we fault them for our inability to read them well enough. Their abstractness is no match for our anti-intelectualism. — Joshs

That is a tempting reading. You've located the crux. Is it anti-intellectualism or good sense to be suspicious of Derrida, Heidegger, & co. I'm familiar with accusations that Rorty misread D & H. Having looked into D & H after being steeped in Rorty, I agree. But he went in through the front door. He was conspicuously recontextualizing other thinkers. He took what he liked and gently mocked the rest. Whether one prefers Heidegger to Rorty seems to some degree to be an expression of a fundamental attitude. Heidegger was just tuned to present himself as a little wizard, and I do enjoy the magic show. Rorty was cool like Hume and friendly like James.

We don't need to 'think' anti-foundationalism. We just learn to live without some top-level metaphysical justification of our doings. Or we learn that we are already doing so.

There's no way to prove that X has or has not been read well enough. It's not as if the professionals agree. I've followed petty squabbles in Heidegger scholarship between two important translators for instance. They accuse one another of fundamentally misunderstanding the thinker that both specialize in. How are we to interpret this failure of consensus?

For me it's not a binary response. I think a person can enjoy a thinker like Heidegger without losing the ability to criticize and doubt him. Indeed, I'd say that we ultimately synthesize our own philosophy appropriate to our own particular existence. I face my life and death alone in some sense. The fine phrases of others can help, but I like working up my own fine phrases...in the context of this help.

I'm not sure that any proposed profundity conquers death and the risk of being an individual. I think death is death, the end of me. I don't see how the human species can avoid extinction forever either. 'Death is god' I scrawled on my copy of Hegel's shorter Logic. There are the little deaths of the evolving personality and the big death that threatens all this progress with absurdity. Is Plato wiser than the teen aged suicide? Does the philosophy professor really have something better than the annoying sophomore who suspects that it's all bullshit on some level? In this or that practical context, we can make a case. In some grandiose narrative of human progress, we can make a case.

But philosophy is also gallows's humor. Heidegger, to his credit, gave his attention to this. I like Heidegger the existentialist. Is he my guru? No. I'm doing my own version on this forum. Who couldn't? Who isn't already doing so? And maybe Bukowski is a better philosopher than Derrida. Our obsession with academic chatter may be pretentious and artificial in the first place. By all means let's include it, but perhaps the professionalization of philosophy is also to some degree its castration or transformation into a mostly irrelevant game or masked politics.

Most people get the stuff that matters (their living philosophy) somewhere else.Some of us work the high-brow stuff into a fusion with everything else.

"We don't need to 'think' anti-foundationalism. We just learn to live without some top-level metaphysical justification of our doings. Or we learn that we are already doing so."

So apart from a definiton of foundationalism as a "top-level metaphysical justification", here's another one. You stop a random person in the street and point to a rock. You ask them what it is. They say it is a rock, and as a rock, it is an object with persisting attributes and properties such as a grey color and a particular weight and size, and is composed of particular material compoents. You ask them if the object still exists when they walk away from it, and they answer yes. You then stop another person in the street and point to the same rock. You ask them what it is. This person says what it is depends on the reason that the person is paying attention to it. It could be an object of aesthetic enjoyment, or merely abstract figure, or only something indistinct in the background next to something else the person has their eye on. You ask them if it is an object with persistent properties like weight and size, and they say those are not properties of a fixed or persisting thing, but only a way that one has of talking for particular purposes. You ask if the rock is still there when one walks away from it, and they say the question is incoherent. Most would say the first person is using common sense in describing the rock, That may be so, but I'd also say their description is a foundational one. What is common sense to someone in the 21st century would not be to someone 20,000 years ago. A set of theoretically guided ideas underlie the commonsensical answer of a self-identical object with persisting properties. The second person gives a non-foundational response, making the experience of the rock relative to the concerns and context of that person. They may have learned their answer from a philosopher, but then again, it may be common sense to them.

So whether or not we live with direct exposure to philosophical teachings, our common sensical thinking about our world may be foundational or post-foundational, and this will depend primarily on what cultural era we grow up in.

I'm going to add to my definition of post-foundationalism and you tell me what you think of it ..

We need an entirely new conception of truth, since the traditional notion of correspondence to the world in itself is no longer feasible. I think that Heidegger gives us the best answer: if reality is that which appears and if it is as it appears, then truth should be thought of as this event of appearing itself. The idea of comparing appearances with the reality behind them is off the table, since the only way we have of making such a comparison is by checking one experience against another. In other words, all we can do is compare appearances with appearances without ever getting outside of these. There is no way to get behind them to something deeper or realer, so we shouldn’t even say that there is an outside or that these are “mere” appearances. What we need is a rigorous philosophical analysis of appearances and appearing, and this is just what phenomenology becomes in Heidegger’s hands.

We need an entirely new conception of truth, since the traditional notion of correspondence to the world in itself is no longer feasible. — Joshs

Nonsense.

Enlightenment rules. No urgency here for Heidegger. Even Pierce and pragmatism would do (in my view), but it isn't really needed. The critique is just fashionable nonsense.

And the reason why it's nonsense is that when you teach and read only the critique, you don't actually understand the thing that you are criticizing and, above all, you don't put the critique itself into context, into some perspective with the whole. Heidegger knew the science of his day and the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Today people seldom do. This is the basic problem. Or as one Asian academician put it aptly: "In order to criticize Western science, you actually have to know and understand Western science".