The problem is how this fits in with everything else he says in terms of ‘Dasein’. It’s contrary and I suspect he was quite purposeful in how he was trying to hoodwink the reader. — I like sushi

I've had a love-hate relationship with Heidegger for years. I'd write him off and yet be pulled back.
For me a decisive moment was reading translators of Heidegger whose English I liked: Theodore Kisiel, John Van Buren, and William McNeill.

William McNeill translated the short lecture version of The Concept of Time. As you may know, this is sometimes called the 'ur-B&T.' In 22 pages the basic ideas are laid out, in a prose that verges on poetry. Then Kisiel wrote The Genesis of Being and Time, tracing its development through Heidegger's earlier lecture courses and quoting letters, also translating History of the Concept of Time, which is close in content to B&T (as you may well know already.) Van Buren translated Ontology: Hermeneutics of Facticity. This is nice because it's short, of similar intensity throughout, and shows Heidegger's terminology still in development -- but still working on the same themes.

Huge lumps of text he wrote in B&T were frustratingly pointless. I don’t trust writers if they lead you on a merry dance to say something that could’ve been summed up in a couple of paragraphs. That said, it is forgivable on occasion, but when 80% of the entire text needn’t be there I’m not impressed. — I like sushi

I still haven't read all of B&T. I was also disgusted by those chunks. I may never decode some of them. But then the chapters that do make sense to me are IMO as good as it gets in philosophy. Even if I can find only 300 pages of Heidegger that I'd be brave enough to paraphrase, those 300 pages are golden. The longwindedness of B&T may be related to him being forced to squirt something out to get a job. The earlier parts seem 'mastered' and to have come naturally. Maybe the rest was more of an improvisation, a work-in-progress.

Derrida is an even worse culprit, but at least he pretty much admitted what he was doing so I can forgive that — I like sushi

Derrida can indeed be a pain, but Limited Inc is a work that stands out to me for its clarity. What first got me truly interested in Derrida was his treatment of Saussure as presented by Bennington in Derrida. Recently I discovered Jonathan Culler, a refreshingly focused writer. Not only did he write a great book on Saussure, he also wrote on Limited Inc.
http://www.colby.edu/music/nuss/mu254/articles/Culler.pdf

I love Derrida for the concept of iterablity and all that it implies. Not only that, but that was my path in. He is sometimes too indulgently artsy for my taste. But I tolerate it. Reading his biography lately (by Peeters) was illuminating. He gave Sartre hell, but I think he connects to some key passages in Nausea. I see him as truly fascinating by the wonder and depth of what it means to write and read.

Heidegger was merely playing at rewriting Husserl’s ideas (likely because he assumed Husserl’s work would be buried and forgotten). — I like sushi

It's my understanding that Husserl didn't approve of Heidegger's work, and not because it was theft. Indeed, in the introduction to Crisis, the translator David Carr stresses that addressing historicity was a deviation from Husserl's past work (which I have only experienced through secondary sources.)

The question of historical genesis is explicitly banned from phenomenology per se in Husserl's writings up through the Cartesian Meditations. Yet in the Crisis it suddenly makes its appearance as something the author obviously thinks is important. — Carr, page xxxv

There is ‘language’ beyond mere ‘worded language’. It is frankly foolish to ignore this. That is not at all to say that ‘worded language’ is hugely important - or how else would we be communicating now! — I like sushi

Could you elaborate on this?

Could you elaborate on this? — softwhere

Yes. That’s kinda the problem.

Yes. That’s kinda the problem. — I like sushi

Even a rough sketch might help me locate what you're getting at. I do think that there's no clean separation of word from deed. Much of our language use is as automatic as animal noises.

Language in the broader sense of a ‘communication’/‘relation’ to environment and interactions.

‘Worded language’ isn’t a necessity of being a human. The case of The Man with no Language’ made that clear enough. I call it ‘kinesthetic language’ but that’s just to distinguish from the common use of the term ‘language’.

I found this.
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/03/books/all-language-was-foreign.html

Fascinating! Thanks.

A human being without language would seem to be a 19th-century phenomenon; at least that's what people tried to tell Susan Schaller. But one day in the late 1970's Ms. Schaller, while working as a sign-language interpreter in Los Angeles, encountered a 27-year-old deaf Mexican man who seemed bright and curious but who, as she quickly discovered, had no language whatsoever. No sign language, no written or spoken Spanish or English. The man, whom the author calls Ildefonso (a pseudonym), was an illegal alien who had worked at a variety of jobs all over the United States but had somehow managed to get by without knowing how to add or subtract or even how to tell time.

Ms. Schaller, fascinated, was determined to make linguistic contact with him. She succeeded; the man suddenly connected "cat" -- the picture, the sign and the written word. And he was hungry for more. For her, Ildefonso's breakthrough was every bit as exciting as Helen Keller's discovery of water at the well.

In essence Ms. Schaller's book, "A Man Without Words," is a meditation on the wonders of language. Without language, there is no way to understand the passage of time. Ildefonso had no idea what a birthday was. In order to get to work on time he memorized how the face of the clock looked. Ms. Schaller began to realize how crucial language is in the organization of our inner selves, how it influences our perceptions about the world. To teach adjectives, the author began with colors. When she hit the color green Ildefonso was horrified. Eventually Ms. Schaller realized that, for Ildefonso, green represented the immigration officials who frequently captured him -- the color of their trucks and uniforms, even the green card he didn't have. Without language, the color came to symbolize all that was frightening. Without some language system, some explanation, history and geography cannot be comprehended unless one has lived every moment in time and traveled every foot of ground. There isn't even a way to illuminate the concepts of deafness and hearing.

Seven years later, Ms. Schaller tried to re-establish contact with her student. Convinced his was not a unique case, she searched for others like him as well. She discovered that several teachers had worked with deaf people who had no language, many of whom were from different cultures or who had astonishingly protective parents. She also pored over studies of so-called wild children, consulted treatises on language such as "The Man With the Shattered World" by A. R. Luria, and talked to the physician and writer Oliver Sacks, who urged her to continue her pursuit, and who ultimately wrote the foreword to this book.

When Ms. Schaller finally finds Ildefonso, he is working as a gardener for a hospital in Los Angeles and the proud holder of a green card. His gardens are characterized by order and symmetry. He is an eager student, and his signing has advanced by light years. He tells the author he now tries to find people to interpret the evening news for him. And he has developed a philosophical bent from all those years of observing: "There is enough in the world for everyone to have a little garden," Ildefonso tells Schaller. "Everyone could be content. But some people want gigantic houses and gigantic gardens, so they fight and steal and buy up all the land and others can't have anything."

Over dinner, Ildefonso tries to demonstrate how people without language communicate -- he has a younger brother, deaf, also without language. He wants to show the author what his life was like before the miracle of language, but he is incapable of regressing to his previous state. And so he takes her through back alleys to a tiny room where she discovers a virtual lost tribe: people who have no language.

No one has a name here; introductions are really descriptions. And each person has peculiar ideas about cause and effect in life. One has discovered that the number 1986 seems to satisfy authorities and believes that those shapes are endowed with magic. But as the people tell stories, it can only be done through mime, each movement an invention. One person might repeat a gesture but, as Ms. Schaller realizes, most communication is trial and error. She witnesses a testament to how slow and painful the evolution of language must have been. — article

I’d appreciate if you could copy and paste for me. I ain’t signing up to read an article.

I added to original post above.

That’s the one.

Also, think about this alongside cases of feral children where they’re never able to obtain a full ‘worded language’. I’m pretty sure this is simply due to items in the human world being alien to them whereas for others, like the Mexican guy, they already live in the human world and can then at least come to appropriate social concepts and conventions with use concepts.

If he was deaf AND raised by wolves I doubt very much he’d ever have stood a chance of acquiring language so late in his life. The key element of language being ‘common experience’ and a ‘common social environment’, rather than ‘word symbols’ (be the auditory or visual).

If he was deaf AND raised by wolves I doubt very much he’d ever have stood a chance of acquiring language so late in his life. The key element of language being ‘common experience’ and a ‘common social environment’, rather than ‘word symbols’ (be the auditory or visual). — I like sushi

Yes, this makes sense to me. At the same time, I think symbols are necessary for conceptual sophistication. I'm guessing that some primitive unformalized language of gesture would be hard to avoid.

Again, this wasn’t/isn’t an issue for tribal life because they didn’t house time in clocks or space in buildings - their world s a lost world of the ‘infinite’ in the sense of being experienced without demarcations of time or space in anything like our modern comprehension. — I like sushi

Their perspective of the infinite seems to be clearer than simple modern infinite spacetime. It's interesting that Einstein himself thought spacetime was finite. But then again, his specialty was big stuff, not the weird quantum world.

Thanks for the suggestion on the book for kids.

For me studying Heidegger further illuminated Hegel and Feuerbach and Wittgenstein — softwhere

Were those guys all living about the same time in Germany? Similar philosophical bents?

In exploring the universe we’ve moved from an infinite self in a finite world to a finite self in an infinite world. — I like sushi

Here's a thought. What about an infinite self in an infinite world? In fact, if one could divide a human body infinitely, essentially a human being a small infinity.

To me philosophy at its best is the opposite of merely going along on the surface of things, which is our ordinary mode in daily life. — softwhere

That's the enjoyment of philosophy, to take some basic assumptions, and then test them out. See where they play out, even if not conventional.

Philosophy asks questions like where did we come from, where are we going, what is our purpose within the cosmos? Even if someone is way out there, it is still interesting to discuss.

When did you get interested in philosophy?

white hole-like Q-tunneling from a higher (false?) vacuum — 180 Proof

What does that mean?

That's the enjoyment of philosophy, to take some basic assumptions, and then test them out. See where they play out, even if not conventional.

Philosophy asks questions like where did we come from, where are we going, what is our purpose within the cosmos? Even if someone is way out there, it is still interesting to discuss. — DanielP

Well put. And, for what it's worth, I think that philosophy makes and has made progress. 'Know thyself' can be understood as directed at the 'global' subject, by which I mean humanity as the protagonist of history, and that history as a self-creation that is also humanity's self-consciousness. In time we come to know ourselves as time. But that's just one story, one conversation among all the possibilities you hint at.

When did you get interested in philosophy? — DanielP

I guess I was about 16, which makes for 20+ years of studying it. A conversation that stretches over centuries comes slowly into focus, neither religion nor science but scratching both kinds of itches at once.

Were those guys all living about the same time in Germany? Similar philosophical bents? — DanielP

Hegel and Feuerbach came earlier. Feuerbach is largely remembered as the bridge between Hegel and Marx, but I think he's underrated. Wittgenstein and Heidegger were early 20th century greats. What connects all of them is their understanding of how social and historical we are as human beings. We aren't trapped in our heads like pieces of 'mind' mysteriously stapled to pieces of 'matter.' Or, at the very least, they show where this initially plausible framing of the situation goes wrong and is no longer illuminating but in fact conceals what makes that framing possible in the first place, what I playfully call 'softwhere.' (I've been reading John Gordon's book on Finnegans Wake. )

white hole-like Q-tunneling from a higher (false?) vacuum
— 180 Proof

What does that mean? — DanielP

 יְהִי אוֹר (fiat lux) ... :fire:

I am new here so please tell me to shut up. I f you think I am wrong.

I was looking into Pantheism when I found this forum. ie the concept that god is the universe, I am part of said universe and part of said god, and will be when I pop my clogs.

However I saw this thread and it interested me.

I think the initial post comes down to a question of what exactly space is, and how does it evolve.

Lets say that space is not infinite, but has no definable edge. A definable edge or infinity is a mathematical construct, which is not necessarily helpful. There is however a definable edge to the visible universe, and if we were to travel there, would likely see more galaxies not observable from our current location.

Space is virtual and made up of individual parts all momentarily connected to a certain extent, constantly coming into and out of existence, on the large scale as we observe space is expanding at an accelerating rate. This can be explained by various Ricci flow models.

Space and time emerge from a underlying membrane where neither space and time exist. This membrane connects all points/things in space time to a certain extent, see ER=EPR conjecture and emergent gravity and time theories. The membrane itself occupies zero space but connects everything to a certain extent, it allows only information flow. How does anyone feel about this :)

The unbounded universe can be visualized as being made up of an infinite number of smaller interconnected parts, due to the presence of a underlying membrane.

What we can say is the universe is constantly evolving.
Cosmic Cyclic Cosmology allows for multiple big bangs. Also inflation theory which has replaced the original big bang theory in cosmology now, does not have all the mass in the universe appearing from a singularity with infinite mass.

"And of course, the infinity of the other stuff that humans cannot perceive with our senses or instruments – that is one with All too."

Really, anyone got a warm feeling :)

"
What are the implications of this perspective? It means you are one with All, by being part of an infinite universe. There is no boundary or limit between you and everything around you. It also means with the lack of true innate boundaries in the universe, everything in it is constantly mixing, creating the balance we see in the universe. It also means you can free yourself from a finite perspective where you focus on finite things like job, house, family, etc. You can adopt an infinite perspective and weave these important things like job, house, family, into a free-flowing infinite web that is part of the infinite web of the universe. This also means that the finite labels we apply to things are approximations of an infinite reality. We can apply labels like tree, but a tree is infinite. We can know some things about trees, but not everything. We can say, “you are a man or a woman” and be correct, but still just be making an approximation. You are a vast collection of complex infinity in your own right.
"
Mostly agree :)

Space and time emerge from a underlying membrane where neither space and time exist — flummoxed

The seething quantum membrane from a which a Big Bang might have spontaneously emerged.

The membrane itself occupies zero space but connects everything to a certain extent, it allows only information flow. How does anyone feel about this — flummoxed

Feel pretty good about it, thanks for the post.

What connects all of them is their understanding of how social and historical we are as human beings. We aren't trapped in our heads like pieces of 'mind' mysteriously stapled to pieces of 'matter.' — softwhere

Thanks for your perspective, softwhere. Sorry for late reply. Wife got a job, and kids are still young and suck up lots of attention.

I got another question for you all. Instead of focusing on the possible infinite nature of the world, what if the world is whole/complete and always moving towards wholeness, completion? And thus a fully whole world would have to contain everything up to infinity. And when we seek to be whole individually, we are doing something very natural and in the flow of the cosmos. Indeed if we have a worldview in which the world is whole, we are more easily able to be whole ourselves.

I'm gonna open up a new discussion on this "whole world, whole person." No need to reply to this post.