Oh that's a shame! I think this is exactly where Heidegger is most "useful" in a scholarly sense; the man certainly knew his Greek. I think he is still underestimated as a "philologist," or perhaps linguist. — Xtrix
with the Introduction to Metaphysics. Have you tackled that one yet? — Xtrix
Eh, I wouldn't say that myself. He never killed anyone or advocated for the holocaust. If simply being a member of a dangerous political party makes you evil, then we currently have a lot of equally evil people in the US alone- called Republicans. — Xtrix
Heidi has his uses, no doubt, like many of others; but you're spot-on, Street, that, also like many others, his concerns are too narrow — 180 Proof
I do what I can to follow certain scholars on the etymological issues...but I am haunted by a sense of being outside all of the languages I don't know. I feel forced to recreate some analogue that's necessarily a misreading. On the linguistics front, I have only looked in Saussure, but it was illuminating. — path
with the Introduction to Metaphysics. Have you tackled that one yet?
— Xtrix
I haven't seriously studied it. I was impressed by certain passages, definitely. So far I've mostly been drawn to the early stuff, before B&T, though obviously that book has its killer lines. I guess I don't like when Heidegger gets too systematic. To me, Witt and Heid were sometimes saying the same thing in different styles. Witt could be 'too' anti-systematic while Heid was too systematic. It's a tradeoff, and I'm glad both went in different directions. And what I have in mind is the deconstruction of various linguistic/metaphysical confusions based on assuming an isolated subject, etc. — path
To be clear, I could always read more of either or of other thinkers. I def. feel my finitude. I see so many...paths...and I can't take or be them all. — path
For me it's tricky, because I don't want to either just virtue signal self-righteously or act like his being a Nazi wasn't important. That letter I quoted is painful. — path
I've read some of Mein Kampf. It's an ugly book, and Heid was recommending it, complaining only about the boring autobiographical parts. I won't quote Hitler here, but browse for yourself. It's a thuggish document. It troubles me that anyone could recommend it in the spirit of Christ... — path
But yeah fucking Mitch & the gang are evil. I will hold my nose and vote for Biden, I guess, though it won't matter in my red state... — path
If you mean the meaning of life, then I think I agree. To me there's enough 'enlightenment' in just getting back in that state of immersed play. The coin in the washing machine annoys us into a 'lower' state of troubleshooting (which is sometimes good for us in the long run.) — path
Yes indeed. I do ultimately believe in the beetles, however ineffable. So I don't know if belief is the right word. 'Since feeling is first,...' And we live a kind of inside-outside. If I do bully people in the Hegelian style, it's often against hardened complacent convention --against other bullies who invoke common sense as a kind of law. Sarl is an annoying dad, who refuses to understand his arty son, and he panders to other annoying dads, Polonius to Polonius. I'm Hamlet of course. Who else? — path
I like all of this. I can't know for sure exactly what you mean, but it sounds right. That backdrop sense of meaning is what I try to point out by talking about 'myth,' however awkwardly. We are always already invested, never coming from nowhere. We are after something, have some orientation, as we join the conversation. So the angtsy nihilist just wrestling with the death of god is a tender heart. He's sort of identifying with his tormentors as he cast away all beliefs and restraints (only in his imagination, thankfully.) — path
You see yourself growing up around the other, posited life, intimidated and defensive. And you lacerate yourself so as to say, These wounds are me. I cannot let you live your life this way, and at the same time I am slurped into it, falling on top of you and falling with you. At this point it is again time for forgetting, not casually so as to repeal it all delightedly later on, but with a true generous instinct for ending it all. This is the only way in which new lives - not ours - can ever begin again. But the thought haunts me - will they be defined in terms of what we never were?
This is a deep issue, which is maybe two issues.
On the mirror issue, I have coded some neural nets and I really personally don't see them becoming daseinlike unless Issue B becomes important. For me they are currently rhetorical devices or mirrors for showing us that we don't know what we are talking about with 'consciousness' and so on. I do think there is some kind of beetle in the box, but we can't ever say it clearly, outside of all conventions. I can't prove that you exist on the other side of your posts, but I 'know' it. But this knowledge is somewhat ineffable, and 'I know' only signifies within conventions. So this Issue A is for me all about pointing out how loose and slippery language is, that it's not anchored to the ineffable beetle in any calculable or master-able way, despite the wishes of a metaphysical Polonius (a type) who won't admit that he really doesn't know except 'mystically' or 'ineffably.' Metaphysics won't admit that it's poetry !
Issue B is just the thought that somehow the stuff that we are made of (hydrocarbons and whatnot) became 'conscious' or daseinlike. Are zygotes conscious? Most don't think so. So somehow a fertilized egg becomes daseinlike, which by Issue A is an ineffable or 'mystical' thing. So from this angle it seems possible that some brain-analogous but non-bio structure becomes 'self-aware,' whatever that 'really' or 'ineffably' means. I don't think about this much, but maybe some kind of panpsychic stuff is happening and we just don't know it. I can't really act on this or take it seriously. But I have to admit that I don't see how it's ruled out, given the strangeness that we are daseinlike bags of water. I also love animals. My cat has a soul of some kind. Do rocks? Maybe I just can't handle the truth or have any access. — path
I think this is exactly right. "Backdrop sense" is well put, because it's not really a "definition" laying dormant somewhere in our heads. — Xtrix
I can't say I've read Hitler, but I'm sure it's thuggish. — Xtrix
The lack of political and social analysis in Heidegger is no accident, but a constitutive element of his Daseinanalysis. There’s lots to learn from in Heidegger, and I always feel edified after having read him, but his whole approach has always been overly narrow to me. His peasant romanticism, his haughty disparagement of das man, his luddism are all awful aspects of his philosophy. His most interesting concept to me has always been the clearing - the Lichtung - along with his more topological considerations of Being (documented brilliantly in Jeff Malpas’ Heidegger’s Topology). But in general, he’s a thinker that’s more fun to forage around in and plunder than to take wholesale. — StreetlightX
a handy image for showing how all these very different modes of living can root themselves in something mystical and profound, while producing very different flowers. And the variance in final flowering is probably pushed along through all the brawls and tussles. — csalisbury
I have a wariness of anti-system thought, of staking your ground there. I think Anti-System still has one foot in System. — csalisbury
Yeah, I think enlightenment, if it exists, is something reached subtractively. One way to get at that is to decry 'enlightenment' altogether which I think is a legit approach. — csalisbury
Right. I like that approach while knowing it's not the only approach. In some ways my vision of what enlightenment is is just so mundane that it hardly deserves the name. If I get caught up in loving my cat, forgetting mortality and identity and all of that, then that's it. Or I'll settle for just being in a state of easygoing play, even if that play is hard work. 'The seriousness of a child at play.' Maybe there's more, but I'm pretty happy with that. It's an animal kind of spirituality. The more mystical-manic states I've had via philosophy might deserve their own name. But it's like a drug state, not really for mortals, or not for long. — path
Well, this is what I get for all my plotting and precautions,. But you, living free beyond me, are still to be reckoned into your account of how it happens with you[...]Is it correct for me to use you to demonstrate all this?[...]what is wanted is some secret feeling of an administrator beyond the bound of satisfying intimacy, a sort of intendant to whom the important tasks may be entrusted so as to leave you free for the very necessary task of idleness.
Very cool that you've been in the trenches with the nets. I feel (I'm responding to your posts, as I read them) like I'm getting a better sense of "Path's Polonius" (who does, I admit, bear a strong resemblance to the character himself) He seems to think he understands everything well enough, without looking beneath the smooth workings of everyday life. — csalisbury
But I think, having accepted that, that a space is opened to understand what AI really is. Which is not just the programs themselves, but our relation with them, and how we change them and are changed by them... and how that rhythm of change keeps morphing, if that makes sense? That's why I think another technological suite - agriculture - is really useful here, particularly how it begins as one thing among others, then slowly changes us in ways we don't recognize, until we're symbiotic with it. — csalisbury
Polonius is my shadow. I read lots of Jung once, I confess. I connect him [Polo] to idle talk, chatter, or bot-speak. We always leave (or I always leave) a slime trail of the already-been-said. That's part of it. Polonius just barfs up what everybody knows.
But he's also a father figure. There's basically a performance of the smart guy that is implicitly patriarchal. So I can deliver a sermon on humility and the form of the communication is arrogant. Who gets to give the sermon? That's the 'real' issue on the level of form, thinly veiled by content.
You also hint at a kind of shallowness of knowledge. I relate to that too. I play fast and loose and basically bluff, and part of that bluff is that everyone is bluffing. And talk of us all walking in darkness is one more false light. But part of me wants to be called out, as an opportunity to catch the spaghetti again. If I am called out gently and perceptively, then the game is actually happening. This is a narcissistic detour, but I want to catch the spaghetti again. — path
Yes, exactly that last part. There is some security in identifying totally with your wound, while having control over how the wounding happens (Deleuze will say this is the core of masochism) John Ashbery's long prose-poem-in-parts three poems gets at this well (and draws together a lot of the things we've been talking about): — csalisbury
I would like to say that the ideal on here is leaving out that relationship, but that we can talk about the vicissitudes of those relationships, outside, but talk among other as equals. — csalisbury
I wasn't calling you out as shallow, — csalisbury
I think the dasein vs AI debate (as in Dreyfus) functions primarily to draw out what is legitimately unique about dasein, and I think that's exactly right, I'm not on Polonius's side here. I think it's important to understand what we are that AI is not. — csalisbury
But comparing the two isn't altogether fair, and I'd recommend checking out Heidegger's (4 volume) lectures on Nietzsche. — Xtrix
We're all trying to work something out, putting forward bold statements, like children, or like adults, to see how they withstand whatever, in order to grow. — csalisbury
--I like Jung. I think he's really good, actually. I haven't read him deeply, but I've read him. I get your qualification because he gets a bad rap, but I think that rap is misplaced. He's good. — csalisbury
If interested in Chomsky, Saussure is a good place to start, but ultimately one must come to wrestle with Chomsky's neurolinguistics. — Xtrix
I think the dasein vs AI debate (as in Dreyfus) functions primarily to draw out what is legitimately unique about dasein, and I think that's exactly right, I'm not on Polonius's side here. — csalisbury
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