eternity, nothingness — Aidan buk

Whenever ( :chin: ) I encounter these words and others of its ilk (so-called unknownables) my mind actually draws a blank. Thanks for the update (I see myslef as a computer, in need of broadband and the latest "updates". I hope you don't hold that against me. It's not a choice.)

Anyway, an analogy seems to be the first port of call :point: Tesseract. Just like 4D objects (inconceivable so they say) cast 3D shadows, these shadows being more mind-friendly, unknowables too should/could have shadows that our minds can, in a sense, grasp.

My two bitcoins!

Thank you for that answer. My mind draws a blank too, but isn't this blank necasserily something? I must be getting confused in the language.
As for the second part of your answer, that seems to be similar to Kants idea that the 'thing in itself', that which lies beyond appearances, is recognised indirectly through appearances.
Should I just be satisfied with the unknown being these blanks, and leave it at that?

Kants thing in itself, direct notions of eternity, nothingness, etc, at first thought, seem to represent thing which are unknowable. They purport to represent things outside of human cognition. But, surely, all there is is human cognition? In such an instance, there is no unknowable, in the way it is commonly assumed, instead, the unknowable is always knowable.
For example, knowing that it sounds silly, someone asks, so you know the thing in itself then? And I'd say, what are you referring to, in your mind, when you mention the thing in itself?
Surely if you can think it, I can know it?

Is this just an instance of taking reason on its own too far? — Aidan buk

It's a good point. The only problem is that we can't say that all there is is human cognition. What does it even mean to say that all there is is human cognition?

There are some ideas that represent things outside of human cognition, but then there are ideas that don't represent anything, or are products of human imagination as opposed to some other natural process independent of humans. These things we can be said to know, as we are the creators of such things. However can we say that we know the Earth, Sun and Moon in the same way that we know Paris is the Capitol of France?

It's a good point. The only problem is that we can't say that all there is is human cognition. What does it even mean to say that all there is is human cognition? — Harry Hindu

I know that Scientific realism is the common sensical position, and I have a lot of time for it.
I guess I'm considering a view of idealism and realism at the same time. For example, I say that physical nature exists independantly of human cognition, which is a realist statement, but then I realise that such a statement, that nature exists independantly of human cognition, is borne of human cognition, and wouldn't be possible without it. Then I get stuck in a double bind.

For example, I say that physical nature exists independantly of human cognition, which is a realist statement, but then I realise that such a statement, that nature exists independantly of human cognition, is borne of human cognition, and wouldn't be possible without it. Then I get stuck in a double bind. — Aidan buk

Ask yourself what reasons there are to wonder whether nature exists, given the fact that you interact with it every minute of your life. Ask yourself what reasons there are to believe that you are somehow separate from nature given the fact you interact with it every minute of your life. Then ask yourself whether those reasons provide a basis on which you should doubt what you clearly don't doubt if your conduct in your day to day life is any indication.

Thank you for that answer. My mind draws a blank too, but isn't this blank necasserily something? I must be getting confused in the language.
As for the second part of your answer, that seems to be similar to Kants idea that the 'thing in itself', that which lies beyond appearances, is recognised indirectly through appearances.
Should I just be satisfied with the unknown being these blanks, and leave it at that? — Aidan buk

Well, if you're going to put your money where your mouth is, I suggest that you contemplate on, mentally engage with, contradictions which in my humble opinion is the unknowable of unknowables (did I say that right? I dunno!). Look around you, go for a walk in the woods, go eat out in a deli with your friends, walk up to your arch enemy and see how fae reacts, eat a burger, take a swim, go AWOL, and so on - can you or did you already see, the shadow of dialethia?

Kants thing in itself, direct notions of eternity, nothingness, etc, at first thought, seem to represent thing which are unknowable. They purport to represent things outside of human cognition. — Aidan buk

Yesterday, @Janus had a little back and forth in the "I've got an idea..." ("citizen philosophy")" discussion. I claimed that Kant's noumena are similar to Lao Tzu's Tao. I didn't make a very good case and we didn't take the discussion far, but I still believe my comparison makes sense. The primary document describing Lao Tzu's vision of the Tao is the "Tao Te Ching." It starts with the following:

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

That's from Verse 1 of Stephen Mitchell's translation. Here are some definitions of the Tao from various sources, keeping in mind that the Tao that can be defined is not the eternal Tao.

[1] The ground of being
[2] The Tao that cannot be spoken
[3] Oneness is the Tao which is invisible and formless.
[4] Nature is Tao. Tao is everlasting.
[5] The absolute principle underlying the universe
[6] That in virtue of which all things happen or exist
[7] The intuitive knowing of life that cannot be grasped full-heartedly as just a concept

But, surely, all there is is human cognition? In such an instance, there is no unknowable, in the way it is commonly assumed, instead, the unknowable is always knowable.
For example, knowing that it sounds silly, someone asks, so you know the thing in itself then? And I'd say, what are you referring to, in your mind, when you mention the thing in itself?
Surely if you can think it, I can know it? — Aidan buk

This is the heart of the question that Lao Tzu, and I think Kant, are getting at. How can you know something that can't be put into words? As the verse says, the unnamable, the Tao, is reality. The world we deal with conceptually consists of particular things - cars, apples, electrons, galaxies - which manifest from the Tao by being named. Some translators call these particular things "the ten thousand things," which I love. Putting things into language is what brings our world into existence. This is my particular interpretation, with which many disagree.

I'm certain that there are many people here on the forum who can find fault with my comparison of the Tao with noumena. I'm not claiming there is an exact correspondence, but it is clear to me that at heart the two men were talking about the same experience - knowing what can't be put into words. The unspeakable.

I draw an analogy between Kants noumena and the Dao too. I think Philosophers have many different ways of articulating the unknown, and it's implicitly the central problem in many.

I draw an analogy between Kants noumena and the Dao too. I think Philosophers have many different ways of articulating the unknown, and it's implicitly the central problem in many. — Aidan buk

Then I'm a bit confused. You wrote:

For example, knowing that it sounds silly, someone asks, so you know the thing in itself then? And I'd say, what are you referring to, in your mind, when you mention the thing in itself?
Surely if you can think it, I can know it? — Aidan buk

Which is a restatement, in a sense, of the first verse of the Tao Te Ching. You seem to have a grasp of what it means to refer to the unreferable. The important thing is that it can't be put into words. There are ways of experiencing the world directly without words and ideas as intermediaries. It's something I experience all the time and I assume you have too.

As a kid I often use to think that words were like falsifications of thoughts - inchoate blocks used to construct a shared notion of experience - a notion that necessarily reduced or entrapped that personal experience in a kind of verbal prefabrication. It often seemed to me that when my thoughts become words they were heavily truncated or even diverted by the process. It led me to think that in the process of becoming verbal there's a concomitant loss of experiential wisdom. Maybe that doesn't make sense to others - words again...

I guess I'm considering a view of idealism and realism at the same time. For example, I say that physical nature exists independantly of human cognition, which is a realist statement, but then I realise that such a statement, that nature exists independantly of human cognition, is borne of human cognition, and wouldn't be possible without it. Then I get stuck in a double bind. — Aidan buk

Welcome to phenomenology.

Husserl writes:

“Certainly the world that is in being for me, the world about which I have always had ideas and spoken about meaningfully, has meaning and is accepted as valid by me because of my own apperceptive performances because of these experiences that run their course and are combined precisely in those performances—as well as other functions of consciousness, such as thinking.
But is it not a piece of foolishness to suppose that world has being because of some performance of mine? Clearly, I must make my formulation more precise. In my Ego there is formed, from out of the proper sources of transcendental passivity and activity, my “representation of the world, ” my “picture of the world, ” whereas outside of me, naturally enough, there is the world itself. But is this really a good way of putting it? Does this talk about outer and inner, if it makes any sense at all, receive its meaning from anywhere else than from my formation and my preservation of meaning? Should I forget that the totality of everything that I can ever think of as in being resides within what is for me real or possible.”?

Dan Zahavi:

“ For Husserl, physical nature makes itself known in what appears perceptually. The very idea of defining the really real reality as the unknown cause of our experience, and to suggest that the investigated object is a mere sign of a distinct hidden object whose real nature must remain unknown and which can never be apprehended according to its own determinations, is for Husserl nothing but a piece of mythologizing (Husserl 1982: 122). Rather than defining objective reality as what is there in itself, rather than distinguishing how things are for us from how they are simpliciter in order then to insist that the investigation of the latter is the truly important one, Husserl urges us to face up to the fact that our access to as well as the very nature of objectivity necessarily involves both subjectivity and
intersubjectivity.”

Again, the best analogue is Antigonish...

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away...

"Being in itself" is the philosopher's "little man who wasn't there".

Kant invented this nonsense. Husserl and friends elevated it to an academic career.

"Being in itself" is the philosopher's "little man who wasn't there". — Banno

Could you give me an example of ‘being in itself’ for Heidegger or Husserl? What do you suppose they had in
in mind?

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn't see him there at all!

Andy Clark on phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty:

“Merleau-Ponty stressed the importance of what I have called "continuous reciprocal causation "- viz., the idea that we must go beyond the passive image of the organism perceiving the world and recognize the way our actions may be continuously responsive to worldly events which are at the same time being continuously responsive to our actions. Consider a lovely example, which I think of as "the hamster and tongs" :

“When my hand follows each effort of a struggling animal while holding an instrument for capturing it, it is clear that each of my movements responds to an external stimulation ; but it is also clear that these stimulations could not be received without the movements by which I expose my receptors to their influence . . . . The properties of the object and the intentions of the subject are not only intermingled ; they also constitute a new whole .” (Merleau -Ponty)

...and...?

Or should that be:

...so...?

That’s being in itself in a nutshell. Irreducible subject-object reciprocal relationality.

But, surely, all there is is human cognition? — Aidan buk

There's your problem.

There's this thread, for example. While it might arguably be the product of human cognition, it isn't the very same as human cognition. For one thing, if it were we could then ask which human... and would we answer "Aidan buk"? but there were contributions by , , , , , , and I.

So there are other things besides your own cognition.

And there is the screen on which you read this. That's something quite different to what it writ here, apparently. And the thing on which you sit or stand; There's that, too. From there the list of things grows.

The odd thing about cognition is that it is sometimes about something else.

Hence there is something else.

Irreducible subject-object reciprocal relationality — Joshs

Oh.

What's odd is that you seem to think that this helps. I don't see how.

so you know the thing in itself then? — Aidan buk

I've found that a better question is to ask how the thing in itself is different from the thing.

It led me to think that in the process of becoming verbal there's a concomitant loss of experiential wisdom. Maybe that doesn't make sense to others - words again... — Tom Storm

I don’t know that words trap to any greater extent than thoughts do. It’s the construing that constrains ( as well as enables) , whether that is verbal or pre-verbal.

That’s being in itself in a nutshell. Irreducible subject-object reciprocal relationality. — Joshs

All is half truths except for this sentence?

What's odd is that you seem to think that this helps. I don't see how. — Banno

My fault for trying to respond to a critique without an argument behind it.

All is half truths except for this sentence? — frank

Including this sentence, because this sentence is also a product of subject-object interaction. Except rather than half truth I would say contingently constructed sense.

Except rather than half truth I would say contingently constructed sense. — Joshs

That's because you like to obfuscate.

My fault for trying to respond to a critique without an argument behind it. — Joshs

It's the principle of explosion at work. Start with a nonsense like "the thing in itself" and everything follows. That struggling animal moves in response to every reply.

Didn't you say much the same thing as I did here? I understood what I said...

This is the heart of the question that Lao Tzu, and I think Kant, are getting at. How can you know something that can't be put into words? As the verse says, the unnamable, the Tao, is reality. The world we deal with conceptually consists of particular things - cars, apples, electrons, galaxies - manifests from the Tao by being named. Some translators call these particular things "the ten thousand things," which I love. Putting things into language is what brings our world into existence. This is my particular interpretation, with which many disagree. — T Clark

I think we know many things which cannot be put into words or at least definitively explained in words. Much of what we know is pre-cognitive, but I don't think that is the same as the different things the Daoists and Kant, in their different ways, were trying to get at.

From the relatively little I know (compared to the specialist) of Daoist ideas I have formed the impression that they are positing, by hinting at, a universal movement of life and energy that flows as an undercurrent to our common life as it is conceived, in all of us. This universal dance of life will be intuited directly by those who are able to work effectively on their dispositions such as to quiet the dualistic mind that blinds us to its mistaken views.

I think Kant was concerned with the logical, epistemological requirement that there must be noumenal things which appear to us and which we conceive of as phenomenal things, but the 'real' nature of which cannot be known, since all knowing is only of appearances. Kant, to my knowledge, denies the Spinozistic idea of rational intuition, which for Spinoza (and the Daoists) is the source of ideas of the eternal and the universal. Kant says we have only practical reasons, moral reasons, for believing in God, immortality and human freedom, and I think he allows of no faculty of insight beyond that

Perhaps our resident Kant specialist @Mww might weigh in on this question.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that our naming of things brings our world of things into existence, and I don't think Kant would either. I think our world of things is already precognitively implicit insofar as we are affected by the body and its environment. Surely animals without language are inhabiting their bodies and environments without requiring language. I think language makes things determinate for us in highly abstract ways. I think that is the difference.

I think we know many things which cannot be put into words. — Janus

Yes, but saying one knows them is also wrong. They just are the case; explanation stops here.

What I have worked out: it's not always easy to say something meaningful.

Yes, but saying one knows them is also wrong. They just are the case; explanation stops here. — Banno

That doesn't sound right to me. To say something is the case evokes the very propositional character of knowing whose limitations are in question. We cannot, as defined, say what the things we know which cannot be pout into words are, but we can say there are such things, and we can gets hints of and hint at this. Our bodies know many things our minds cannot tell of. Animals also, in their different ways, know many things. It is the arts and poetry in particular that can deal with this kind of knowing I would say