If the context is everything, then it's not a context. — Banno
That's the trouble: insisting on telling us details of the ineffable. — Banno
According to Yorck, the analysis and evaluation of the contemporary intellectual-historical situation is integral to philosophy—all the more so if philosophy self-reflexively grasps its ineluctably historical nature, which in itself is one of Yorck's main philosophical objectives. The basic idea for the historicity of philosophy is straightforward. For Yorck, as for Dilthey, philosophy is “a manifestation of life” [Lebensmanifestation] (CR, p. 250), a product or an expression in which life articulates itself in a certain way. But all life is intrinsically historical. Life is inconceivable without its historical development.
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Consequently, Yorck rejects from the start the transcendental method in philosophy as insufficient for grasping lived historical reality. Transcendental philosophy reduces historical life to the merely “subjective,” which misses the genuine characteristic of Geist, spirit or mind, namely its real, historical extension and connection.
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Yorck's primary category of historical life does not only challenge transcendental philosophy as too-narrow a foothold for philosophy. A fortiori, it also challenges the entire metaphysical tradition, which presupposes or searches for an ultimate objective reality (being, idea, substance, and so on), divorced from the ground of the always shifting historical life. Yorck rejects claims to “knowledge” sub specie aeternitatis. For Yorck, metaphysics is a flight from the historical reality ‘on the ground.’ By making historical life primary, Yorck effectively aims to dismantle the predominance of Greek metaphysics, including the modes of thought of modern science derived from it.
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In the condensed and all too general format of the Correspondence with Dilthey, Yorck develops the practical “application” of philosophy in only the most fragmentary fashion. Its most important part is the actual clarification of the contemporary situation, the determination of the given historical possibilities, and the avenues for implementing some of them. Yorck holds that since the Renaissance and through the works of such thinkers as Galileo, Descartes, and Hobbes, the self-interpretation of life has found its centre of gravity in the cultivation of the theoretical understanding [Verstand]. The primacy accorded to theoretical understanding and what it projects as objective, unchangeable, and ultimate reality (metaphysical & physical) has ushered in “the natural sciences,” “nominalism,” “rationalism,” and “mechanism,” (CR, pp. 68, 63 & 155). But this has come at the exclusion of the full thematization, expression, and appreciation of human affectivity [Gefühl], including the underlying feeling of human connectivity through a shared life in history. Blocked-out are questions which affect the temporal, historical and personal existence of human beings, or what Yorck once calls “existential questions” [Existenzialfragen] (CR, p. 62), which relate to the life-goals human beings strive after, the recognition of dependency, and the awareness of human mortality, finitude, and death (CR, p. 120). The relative sidelining of these aspects in the psychology of human beings lies at the bottom of Yorck's diagnosis of the increasing self-alienation of modern man and the crisis of his time. — link
SO to the methodological point: don't start a philosophical conversation with "First let us define our terms".
— Banno
24. The idealist's question would be something like: "What right have I not to doubt the existence of my hands?" (And to that the answer can't be: I know that they exist.) But someone who asks such a question is overlooking the fact that a doubt about existence only works in a language-game. Hence, that we should first have to ask: what would such a doubt be like?, and don't understand this straight off.
Moore's "I know I have a hand" needs to remove all doubt; but "I know" is not strong enough to do this. "I am certain" suffers a similar fate. But "It is certain..." does not. You might agree that I think I know, and still maintain that I am wrong; but if you agree that it is certain, then you cannot then say that I am wrong. (probably needs unpacking... complicity is achieved in the move from first person to third person). — Banno
The backdrop of reality grounds us, if this wasn't the case, then the skeptic would have an argument. — Sam26
The very act of sitting at a computer and typing shows my belief that there is a keyboard; that I have hands; that I am controlling my fingers; that what I type is saved to a hard drive, etc, etc. I don't even think about it, i.e., I don't think to myself and say, "Is this really a keyboard?" After all there is no reason to doubt it, and even if I did doubt it, would that doubt really amount to anything? That I am certain of these beliefs is reflected in what I do. We all act in ways that show our certainty of the world around us. Occasionally things do cause us to doubt our surroundings, but usually these things are out of the ordinary. I am referring to our sensory experiences, i.e., generally we can trust our senses even if occasionally we draw the wrong conclusion based on what we see, hear, smell, etc. — Sam26
Using the word know as Moore used it, is senseless, in fact, it creates bogus philosophical problems. Many so-called philosophical problems are just as senseless. The way we talk about free will and determinism, time, knowledge, and a whole panoply of other philosophical ideas, propositions, and words are also just as problematic. Once you come to understand what Wittgenstein is saying, or trying to do via his method, then many of the problems of philosophy simply vanish as pseudo-problems - many, but not all. — Sam26
Is it really the case that philosophers are abusing language? Or are they pointing out the questionable assumptions used to create our language games? — Marchesk
Did skepticism originate with misuse of the Greek term for doubt? No, it arose because of illusions, hallucinations, dreams, madness, perceptual relativity, sophistry and what not. — Marchesk
If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything.
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At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.
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We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.
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To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.
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Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.
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Perhaps what is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning.
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A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes. — Witt
"The very act of sitting at a computer and typing shows my belief that there is a keyboard; that I have hands; that I am controlling my fingers; that what I type is saved to a hard drive, etc, etc. I don't even think about it, i.e., I don't think to myself and say, "Is this really a keyboard?" After all there is no reason to doubt it, and even if I did doubt it, would that doubt really amount to anything? That I am certain of these beliefs is reflected in what I do. We all act in ways that show our certainty of the world around us. Occasionally things do cause us to doubt our surroundings, but usually these things are out of the ordinary. I am referring to our sensory experiences, i.e., generally we can trust our senses even if occasionally we draw the wrong conclusion based on what we see, hear, smell, etc."
— Sam26
This is either naive realism or pragmatism. All it establishes is that we have a consistent experience of a world. It's not a defeater for skepticism, because the skeptic begins here, and then goes on to point out everything that leads to the problem of perception. — Marchesk
"13. For it is not as though the proposition "It is so" could be inferred from someone else's utterance: "I know it is so". Nor from the utterance together with its not being a lie. - But can't I infer "It is so" from my own utterance "I know etc."? Yes; and also "There is a hand there" follows from the proposition "He knows that there's a hand there". But from his utterance "I know..." it does not follow that he does know it."
There's some beautiful analysis of first, second and third person accounts here.
Anyone care to unpack this? — Banno
The point is that doubting in some circumstances is unreasonable, i.e., our doubting needs good reasons, just as our knowledge claims do. — Sam26
Because someone asserts that they know, that in itself is not enough to conclude that one does indeed know. That one knows needs to be demonstrated in one of the language-games of knowing. — Sam26
Sure, so we can dismiss Descartes as being unreasonable when he set out to doubt everything. But the ancient skeptics did provide reasons for their doubts. — Marchesk
:up:There has to be a framework in which doubting gets its meaning. That framework allows doubting to take place, to gain a foothold. You have to at least be sure of the meaning of your words, otherwise what would it mean to doubt. Descartes didn't really doubt everything. He surely didn't doubt what it means to doubt.
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Just as chess relies on the board and pieces in order to play the game. If you doubt the board and pieces, where do you go from there? You can't play the game.
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The rules of language, or the rules of correct usage, tell us how we are to use these concepts (knowing and doubting). They're not created in a vacuum, but in a culture of correct usage. We can't just create our own uses, as many people do, and expect something coherent. — Sam26
Moore said that these rules are the rules of common sense, and has been criticised for not justifying to the sceptic why common sense should be the basis for the rules. — RussellA
On Certainty it is not only Moore's claim to knowledge that Wittgenstein criticizes, but he also critiques the skeptic, and specifically their use of the word doubt. — Sam26
Wittgenstein said that language has meaning within the context of its language game, meaning is determined by use, and the language game corresponds to a reality. A game such as chess has rules, but different games have different rules. A language game may be internally logically coherent and correspond to a reality, but each language game will correspond to a different reality. I look at the optical illusion "Rabbit and Duck" and see a rabbit, my reality is the rabbit. Another person looks and sees a duck, their reality is the duck. We may have the same perception but arrive at different interpretations. The sceptic may rightly ask for what reason should one interpretation have precedence over another. — RussellA
It's tough on philosophers, to be deprived of obvious choices. I know between certainty and doubt, one has to go but to disallow both is going to leave even the best thinkers scratching their heads.
I can get a handle on how certainty can be questioned but to claim, if I read the OP correctly, that doubt ain't it too is as perplexing as it is depressing. — TheMadFool
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