I've mentioned this more than once in this forum, but the philosopher Joseph Margolis supposedly asked Dewey to read Heidegger. He did (I don't know what he read). Margolis asked Dewey what he thought after reading whatever of Heidegger's he read, and claimed that Dewey responded "Heidegger reads like a Swabian peasant trying to sound like me."

Dewey was by all accounts I've read not a man inclined to sarcasm, but usually mild and gentlemanly, so I have my doubts about this, particularly the "Swabian peasant" reference. But the similarity of their views in some respects has been noted.

My problems with H aren't limited to the fact he was an unrepentant Nazi and made some preposterously worshipful claims regarding Hitler. I see him as unduly romantic and something of a mystic. I'm thinking of his The Question Regarding Technology, which I think is sentimental and anachronistic, and of course such things as his rhapsodic statements regarding The Nothing and the unique superiority and destiny of the German language and people.

Dewey was criticized for his emphasis on practical experience as knowledge by such as the aristocratic Santayana, who felt Dewey neglected the higher, better aspects of reality and Nature. Dewey didn't claim that only a certain kind of experience was significant, or that true knowledge was limited in some sense. That seems to have been what his critics felt, in fact. — Ciceronianus

Heidegger didn't sound at all like Dewey. He was working in a vein of thought that moved from the Greeks, to Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, and many others, but certainly not American pragmatism. To say he tried to sound like Dewey makes, truly, no sense at all. And I mean absolute zero. Heidegger's Being and Time hangs close to Husserl, and there is nothing even remotely Husserlian in Dewey. Hermeneutics is alien to Dewey.

Heidegger was miles ahead of Dewey, but thematically, they can be seen to move along the same lines. Pragmatism, this essential idea that our everydayness is epistemically an instrumentality defined as a temporal sequence of events, this forward lookingness of experience (a Kierkegaardian notion first, nearly a hundred years before Dewey. See his Concept of Anxiety for a thematic summary of existentialism. K started it all, of course, standing on the shoulders of Kant and Hegel. All roads, Dewey's as well, lead back to Kant, not in full content, but in the phenomenological structure of Time). An attempt to deliver back to philosophy the entire experiential reality, the rejection of rationalism, and perhaps more. Heidegger probably baffled Dewey, which happened quite a lot. Analytic philosophers don't read him, nor did Heidegger read them. Their problem is that they are bound to positivism, that call for clarity over meaning, and they end up being monumentally boring.
Rorty understood.

Unduly romantic and the position on technology? Are you referring to his claim that technology turns people into useful objects, and nature becomes a utility reserve. THIS anachronistic? Have you not been paying attention? Heidegger was right. Just a note, this was a time in the early 20th century when Talorism and time management concepts were popular. And Dewey was outraged.

Heidegger was NO metaphysician, though Derrida did accuse him of the very thing he criticized Husserl for: the metaphysics of presence. Interesting discussion on this in Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics and Rorty's Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (a must read).

What is the "perceptual apparatus" you speak of? The person? In what sense is a person similar to a hammer, or an apparatus? Regardless, neither the person nor the hammer is removed from the world nor are they in a different one. Why think they are? They moved to a different location in the world, but how does it necessarily follow that the room disappears or becomes something else unless you think of the room as in a different world than the person? — Ciceronianus

Hmmmm You're not really dealing with the previous thoughts, just prior to this. Oh well.

Let the conditions unfold then. I don't think we are bound to this phenomenological singularity because I think it makes all problems go away. I simply ask the question about basic epistemology, and find this inevitable conclusion. — Constance

If you can accept the conclusion that communication is impossible, why attempt it?

No conclusions are inevitable if words do not make sense, even to the user of them.

Shrugging off problems is easy enough but it's different from addressing them. The private-language problem is one that confronts the view that all we can know for certain is our own perceptions.

Heidegger didn't sound at all like Dewey. — Constance

I simply related a claim made by Joseph Margolis, one I tend to doubt myself. There's no need for indignation. I don't think Heidegger sounded like Dewey either. Dewey, though not a good writer, wasn't nearly as opaque as Heidegger.

Heidegger was miles ahead of Dewey, — Constance

Yes yes yes. Heidegger is great, Phenomenology is great, Pragmatism isn't great, analytic philosophy is most emphatically not great, even bad. You've made your feelings quite clear.

Unduly romantic and the position on technology? Are you referring to his claim that technology turns people into useful objects, and nature becomes a utility reserve. THIS anachronistic? Have you not been paying attention? Heidegger was right. — Constance

It's been some time since I looked at it, but I'm referring to his essay featuring the monstrous hydroelectric plant, cruelly commanding the river to serve our purposes (as if we haven't been "commanding" rivers for thousands of years through irrigation, and harnessing their flow for thousands of years using water wheels), and our evil proclivity to store sources of energy (was it coal?) and use them by destroying them when we see fit (as if we haven't been storing and using sources of energy like peat and wood for thousands of years). All this being hideous compared to the simple peasant who lovingly placed seeds in nature's bosom (not to mention the back-breaking and constant labor that entailed). Only a god can save us from technology (well, that was in Der Spiegel I think). That sort of thing.

And no, I don't pay attention; or perhaps more correctly I try to do so, but am lacking in intelligence. I must constantly ask people, like you, to explain what's taking place.

Hmmmm You're not really dealing with the previous thoughts, just prior to this. Oh well. — Constance

If you keep making gnomic claims and shifting ground, you may begin to confuse even yourself.

If you can accept the conclusion that communication is impossible, why attempt it?

No conclusions are inevitable if words do not make sense, even to the user of them.

Shrugging off problems is easy enough but it's different from addressing them. The private-language problem is one that confronts the view that all we can know for certain is our own perceptions. — Cuthbert

But did you read "on the other hand"? I wrote:

But there is a big "on the other hand" to this: Obviously there is in my knowledge of my cat something that is not me, but something else entirely, and it is seems to be there, across an expanse of space. But again, one runs against Kant, who may not be altogether right in his details, but space and time are forms of intuition, if not as he explains it exactly (Heidegger complained, and many others). We are stuck with this event of me knowing my cat is on the sofa, occurring as a phenomenon, but this notion of "noumena" takes the stage again: what IS this "out thereness" that is entirely off radar in our brains? Well, many look, not to the out mystery, but the inner; after all, there is a noumenal "direct" access to the unknown X world, and that is the self, for while the "outer" ness of things seems to be altogether impossible, the "inner"ness of things is some core essence of the self. Where, after all, in metaphysics are all things? All things are impossibly grounded in eternity, or better, finitude is "really" eternity, and this applies to our inner self especially. So if one wants get intimate with with this impossible "other", one need look within, deeply, apart from the "totality" of our constructed selves.

This little bit above is part of the religio-apophatic turn in phenomenology.

The reason why the Vat matter is important is that it tells us something about the world foundationally, which is philosophy's business. It tells us that knowledge relationships cannot be explained by physical/material/causal models. Quantum connections? These will always be problematic as well, for one never can get beyond the "wall of phenomena" and quantum physics is structured by thought in a dense, opaque brain. Philosophically, it is an extraordinary advance in understanding, though philosopher, analytic ones, are out to lunch on this.

And what words do not make sense? Look, words are our interpretative medium, and if something doesn't make sense it is not the words, but their contexts. No one made up this context. It is a genuine philosophical problem. Walk out of a room, take with you all the meaning making apparatus, sensory producing apparatus,, you know, experience itself, can you say there is a room still there absent all this? this is the Brain in Vat issue in its essence.

As to private language, obviously language is a very public affair, for reasons I don't need to go into. this makes all matters public affairs, because such things have their meanings bound to language: institutions that make our economic, ideological, cultural, valuative, and so on even possible. So the whole business of being a person in the world is built out of language, and language is a social phenomenon, but when we look closely, like everything, absolutely everything, this model falls apart; and I am referring to the obvious social nature of language. Philosophy cares about issues like this, not the mundane affairs of exchanging meanings that are well familiar.

So, how does one approach this? The entirety of the social dimension of existence is placed in question.

Yes yes yes. Heidegger is great, Phenomenology is great, Pragmatism isn't great, analytic philosophy is most emphatically not great, even bad. You've made your feelings quite clear. — Ciceronianus

Why not just read Heidegger and be done with it. Dewey was great, though I don't follow him religiously because I find he is out of touch with post modern thinking, which is amazing.

It's been some time since I looked at it, but I'm referring to his essay featuring the monstrous hydroelectric plant, cruelly commanding the river to serve our purposes (as if we haven't been "commanding" rivers for thousands of years through irrigation, and harnessing their flow for thousands of years using water wheels), and our evil proclivity to store sources of energy (was it coal?) and use them by destroying them when we see fit (as if we haven't been storing and using sources of energy like peat and wood for thousands of years). All this being hideous compared to the simple peasant who lovingly placed seeds in nature's bosom (not to mention the back-breaking and constant labor that entailed). Only a god can save us from technology (well, that was in Der Spiegel I think). That sort of thing. — Ciceronianus

Well, that only god can save us idea was rather cryptic, and in the same interview he gave Buddhists a thumbs up, which is less cryptic, one might say. But this opens an issue where Dewey and Rorty fall flat on their...ideas. I don't think the argument would be received well by a devotee of Dewey, but it is closer to Wittgenstein: first philosophy exceeds philosophy, because ethics exceeds philosophy, and this is because value, value simpliciter, or, value-qualia, or the pure phenomena of value (there are others) is the essence of ethics, and this issue of "meta ethics" cannot be spoken. A tough issue, which is why Witt. would never speak of it. The Good, he wrote in his journal, is his idea of the divine. Heidegger could have been close, but I'd have to read up.
Heidegger was observing the effects of the industrial revolution and the rise of technology on a scale never witnessed before, and saw, as Kierkegaard did a century earlier, that there was coming out of this a corruption of something very meaningful. I agree. He was influenced by Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, and shared their distaste for Christian metaphysics and the way it undermined dasein's authenticity. But he did see, one could argue, there was something deeply meaningful about being human, and here is where he is criticized, stepping beyond the boundary of what hermeneutics allows.
Anyway, of course, we've been storing peat for centuries, but things have changed dramatically in the last two centuries, and the worst has come to pass: societies are now little capable of, if you will, romanticizing the world at a primordial way.

Why not just read Heidegger and be done with it. — Constance

I just tried to read The Question Concerning Technology again. Technology is a "revealing." The silver chalice is "indebted" to the silver of which it's made; it "owes thanks" to it. Modern technology "is a challenging which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such." And much, much more. He may as well assert that modern technology poisons the purity and essence of our precious bodily fluids when he makes such claims, for all they can be said to mean anything without a friendly, improbable and generous interpretation.

I just tried to read The Question Concerning Technology again. Technology is a "revealing." The silver chalice is "indebted" to the silver of which it's made; it "owes thanks" to it. Modern technology "is a challenging which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such." And much, much more. He may as well assert that modern technology poisons the purity and essence of our precious bodily fluids when he makes such claims, for all they can be said to mean anything without a friendly, improbable and generous interpretation. — Ciceronianus

Hold on. I am reading it.

Obviously there is in my knowledge of my cat something that is not me, but something else entirely,[.......] you know, experience itself, can you say there is a room still there absent all this — Constance

First there's a cat independent of your experience. Then there's no room independent of your experience. Where does the cat live?

Just as shrugging off the private language problem is no answer, so it stirring up dust and contradiction.

Philosophy cares about issues like this, not the mundane affairs of exchanging meanings that are well familiar. — Constance

You speak for philosophy and you know what it cares about. But listen more carefully to philosophy itself. It has on occasion shown concern for the ways in which words carry or fail to carry meanings.

So, how does one approach this? — Constance

By slowing down. Clarifying the questions. Checking each thing you write for absurdities. Listening to objections. Yes, it's the long hard slog.

I just tried to read The Question Concerning Technology again. Technology is a "revealing." The silver chalice is "indebted" to the silver of which it's made; it "owes thanks" to it. Modern technology "is a challenging which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such." And much, much more. He may as well assert that modern technology poisons the purity and essence of our precious bodily fluids when he makes such claims, for all they can be said to mean anything without a friendly, improbable and generous interpretation. — Ciceronianus

Had to see where this was coming from, and reading The Question Concerning Technology is an extraordinary engagement. You see, Heidegger takes the matter of philosophy to a more basic foundation of analysis, which is why analytics philosophers don't understand him, for it takes a withdrawal from culture and its familiar interpretations to go where Heidegger goes, and analytic philosophers are bound to the clarity of science, and therefore never taking an analytic of being human to its foundations. Existentialists look at the entire breadth of "experience" as Dewey does, but the difference is that Dewey never takes the matter to its foundations: Pragmatism is a proper characterization of human knowledge (forward looking utility), but not of human meaning.
Having said that, the question turns to meaning, and it is not simply the utility dimension of meaning, but the qualitative distinctness of standing in the world in full openness; only here can one overcome (see Nietzsche's use of this term) alienation. Alienation is a principle theme of this philosophy, and others (Marxian alienation, e.g.), and it comes from Kierkegaard, a "religious writer" Heidegger called him, but then, he owed him a great debt: where Kierkegaard concluded we are alienated from God, Heidegger turned to language, the "house of Being", and essentially secularized Kierkegaard, holding that technology rising to dominate our relation to the world has come to alienate us from some primordial original condition. In this discussion, I think of my cat, sitting in the window, very content and there is no trouble, like some foolish metaphysics telling the cat about sin, about how awful the world is and our need for redemption, There is this enviable, untroubled unity there in which everything is well, an "openness" that simply accepts, that my cat experiences. We "had" this, once, and lost it, and now we are scrounging for redemption.
So, in the above, don't get too hung up on the language, which is not German, and Heidegger uses language to construct meaning, not to simply denote and deduct.
Indebtedness? Heidegger is simply giving analysis to the traditional concept of cause, for he wants to move on this toward a clearer idea of technology. Don't see any basis for complaint in this. It is important, no, essential, to see that to understand Heidegger requires one to meet him on his terms. It is a world of original thinking that has as its underpinning, Being and Time. Nothing is as it seems, at all. All hinges on phenomenological ontology, which needs to be taken up as an enterprise, not as a this and that quotation.

As to the "unreasonable demand", the principle term in this is "stored as such". It is a bit like Dewey's complaint against they way the art world puts art on a pedestal and "stores it" in museums. Art thereby becomes restricted to the few, enabled artists, which is a perversion of art which belongs in our lives enriching in the actual making of things. Something primordial has become an estrangement. And just as Dewey is not suggesting all art museums be torn down, Heidegger is not saying all "standing reserve" causes alienation. It is standing reserve comes to dominate our idea of who we are and what the world is that is the danger. Essentially, Heidegger is claiming that the world has lost its original (and this is certainly from Kierkegaard) wonder and awe that we feel when we encounter the world freely, as if, I would argue, a child again. I certainly agree with this.


Let's take a look at what is meaningful for Dewey? It is defined as a "consummatory" experience, that is, a completion whereby something is "wrought out" in problem solving that is successful, and meaning, the aesthetic, the cognitive, all issue from this event. What is counter to this? The rote experience that moves statically, automatically, smooth and clear, free of obstacles.
Note that in Dewey's view, an object made is defined, identified, in terms of a pragmatic compound of experiential aspects, this makes the object's meaning identical to the pragmatic self that produced it. That object's meaning is the agency's consummatory pragmatics. Language is just this as well. All meaning is bound to the consummatory conclusion of some problem solved, from infancy onward, and this is, to me, the great merit of his thought. To "know" is a matter of mingling thought, affect, moods, in short, experience, with the given.
Not how Dewey and Heidegger are closer than one might think, here: Dewey makes the "consummatory" affect of an object made, bound up with cognition, so the thinking is inherently poetic, so to speak; inherently aesthetic, and I think he is right about this. Heidegger in this essay, could be saying, there in this consummatory experience, an abiding sense of well being, of unalienating satisfaction in the world, just being there. In a pragmatic conception, the state of rest is this settled sense of problems solved generating its own foundation of well being. Heidegger doesn't talk like this, but then, he does say our aesthetic (poetical) meanings are not natively apart from cognition, and these must be balanced so the original "presencing" (everything is in the present continuous tense for H because Being is an event). Modern technology presents an imbalance such that what was originally there, say in the hunter/gather's resting world, has been lost, and this resting state is primordial to being human. Treating people like things, the world like "standing reserve" creates this imbalance.

First there's a cat independent of your experience. Then there's no room independent of your experience. Where does the cat live?

Just as shrugging off the private language problem is no answer, so it stirring up dust and contradiction. — Cuthbert

The cat lives in the room, of course. But what is a room? one needs to ask, at the level of basic questions. It is a thing of parts. There is the concept, the perceptual act that, were these to be absent, there would be no room. Is there a ?place" all the same? Well, all "room" meaning is absent. All sensory intuitions absent. Where is the basis for the room still being there?

The only conclusion has to be that the affair of the cat in the room was localized in my head, but strangely, there is the abiding "whatever" that is "there" all the same. To talk about it is impossible. The cat, as with all things, abide in metaphysics. As I type these words, I am sitting at a desk and all familiar things; but I am also, and in finality, "in" metaphysics. No contradictions, just deduction.

You speak for philosophy and you know what it cares about. But listen more carefully to philosophy itself. It has on occasion shown concern for the ways in which words carry or fail to carry meanings. — Cuthbert

An idea I have carried to its logical end in this very matter. "Listening" to philosophy? Interesting. The idea would refer to the understanding. So, what is you understanding telling you regarding the cat and that which I wrote in the paragraph just above this one?

By slowing down. Clarifying the questions. Checking each thing you write for absurdities. Listening to objections. Yes, it's the long hard slog. — Cuthbert

By slowing down. Clarifying the questions. Checking each thing you write for absurdities. Listening to objections. Yes, it's the long hard slog. — Cuthbert

Long hard slogs call for accountability in reasoning. So by all means, reveal yours regarding that cat.

reading The Question Concerning Technology is an extraordinary engagement. — Constance

Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

It is important, no, essential, to see that to understand Heidegger requires one to meet him on his terms. — Constance

This shouldn't be required. He's not God, after all (though it sometimes seems some think he is). I'm not obliged to break the "Heidegger Code."

I can understand quite well (I think) what you've written about this essay or article and what you believe it says. If it says what you believe it says, however, he could simply have said it much as you did. The rest is mere mummery--the use of ancient Greek, Aristotle, ascribing human feelings to chalices and wood mills and hydroelectric plants, vaguely suggestive phrases, etc.

I'm inclined to agree with Carnap when it comes to Heidegger's curious writing. I think it's best classified as an effort at literature or poetry; an effort to evoke some kind of feeling or response. I say "effort" because I think actual artists do this far better than he or any philosopher can, and that philosophers should leave the field to real artists, not pretend to be artists. Clarity of thought and expression isn't a disadvantage for a philosopher, or indeed most others.

I've often wondered what it was like in the pre-Christian West, the world of antiquity. That world was so entirely destroyed I don't think we can do more than guess how it was; and that's a great loss. Christianity like the other Abrahamic religions characterize the world as at our disposal for exploitation. I don't think we can be pagans again, if that was H's desire, and bemoaning the fact that we aren't doesn't seem helpful to me.

By the way, I think you describe Dewey's thinking quite well.

This shouldn't be required. He's not God, after all (though it sometimes seems some think he is). I'm not obliged to break the "Heidegger Code."

I can understand quite well (I think) what you've written about this essay or article and what you believe it says. If it says what you believe it says, however, he could simply have said it much as you did. The rest is mere mummery--the use of ancient Greek, Aristotle, ascribing human feelings to chalices and wood mills and hydroelectric plants, vaguely suggestive phrases, etc. — Ciceronianus

You find this an issue with everyone who has their education, from elementary school onward, grounded in empirical science. Heidegger cannot be accessed through this; one has to begin at least with Kant, who had jargon of his own. Then Hegel, who is ridiculously counter intuitive vis a vis common sense. I mean, all continental philosophy is like this. But if there is one who is both accessible and prerequisite for reading Heidegger, it is Husserl, from whom Heidegger derives a great deal of his basic thinking (certainly not all). Cartesian Meditations, Ideas I open doors.
As to the weird language,, I am told it makes more sense in the original German, but then, German and English are very close languages. He intentionally wants to use new language because he realizes that old usages and contexts reinforces the errors of the past. One must break away, and this has to occur at the level of basic vocabulary, which is always given to us with assumptions built in. the only way to escape the old narratives is to construct new meaning with novel use of language. He finds this in the Greeks.
What can I say, one has to follow through. I looked at Heidegger, Rorty and others with a desire to know, no matter what, and if I had to read Kant first, then so be it. There is a reason Heidegger is considered a giant, the the only thing that stands in the way is oneself, and one's rationalizations for not making the considerable effort.

There is a reason Heidegger is considered a giant, the the only thing that stands in the way is oneself, and one's rationalizations for not making the considerable effort. — Constance

One hears the same sort of thing from those who explain what supposedly keeps us from accepting Jesus as our Savior.

Outside/inside certainly is a meaningful distinction — Constance

Why?

One hears the same sort of thing from those who explain what supposedly keeps us from accepting Jesus as our Savior. — Ciceronianus

Certainly no argument should be determined ad populum. But then, consider that when it comes to Jesus, the standards are quite low, and often ridiculous. Heidegger commands the respect of generations of philosophers, is a seminal thinker which changed the face of philosophical thought. I mean the body of post Heiedggerian thought is staggering.

And btw: you don't think Jesus is our savior? This entirely depends on how this is interpreted.

Why? — baker

Because we say inside this and outside that all the time. The matter here turns on whether "inside/outside" talk has any meaning here. It's like a hall of mirrors in which what appears to be the out there, apart from you, is really just a reflection of yourself: Everywhere you turn to establish the "outside" of the cat affair, you are referred back to the phenomenological. No exceptions seem possible, for to even say "cat" you are referred to someone's understanding, and the analysis of this understanding has nothing to do with anything extra-phenomenological; except! for the mysterious "otherness" which stands at the threshold of what is "other". Lots of phenomenological studies on this business, this other that is an inextricable part of phenomena. How is it possible? One cannot reach across the room and put the otherness of the cat in the brain, so how does otherness get there?
Few even see this as a question, let alone THE question on which the most profound insight into human ontology rests.

A good argument against brain in vat scenarios is the idea that the semantic content of our language (meaning of words) would make no sense if I was the only brain/mind in existence. If I was a brain in a vat, then I could not even make sense of the proposition that I was a brain in a vat (via the private language argument and rule following paradoxes showing that language, semantic content and meaning are publicly held phenomena). It would be impossible for the terms "brain" and "vat" in my conceptualisation of the proposition - 'I am a brain in a vat' to actually have semantic content and meaning to refer to anything such as a real brain in a real vat.

A good argument against brain in vat scenarios is the idea that the semantic content of our language (meaning of words) would make no sense if I was the only brain/mind in existence. If I was a brain in a vat, then I could not even make sense of the proposition that I was a brain in a vat (via the private language argument and rule following paradoxes showing that language, semantic content and meaning are publicly held phenomena). It would be impossible for the terms "brain" and "vat" in my conceptualisation of the proposition - 'I am a brain in a vat' to actually have semantic content and meaning to refer to anything such as a real brain in a real vat. — Ghost Light

But then a couple of things come to bear. First, if you are, as I am, committed to the empirical thesis that phenomenal affairs are reducible to brain activity (though, keeping in mind that this in turn may be reducible to something more fundamental), evidenced by many occasions of brain surgery while completely awake for the treatment of epilepsy, etc.), then the brain is going to be the threshold of epistemic events. Period. What do you have that permits exceeding this boundary? The BIV simply presents this impossible issue. Can it be doubted that my thoughts of my cat in the occurrent perceptual moment are enclosed in a context of referentiality that is brain and only brain? One is not here asking how seems to be the case, but what follows from undeniable premises. You have to work this out, otherwise, your dismissal is purely ad hoc.
You can make sense of being a brain in a vat; of course: one simply deploys a thesis that does not insist on this impossible relationship: phenomenology and hermeneutics. the idea that my cat is on the sofa (or that I am not a brain in a vat) is an interpretation of the events before me, and terms like inside and outside the brain are all interpretative, contingent, resting on assumptions about the world that are, well, contingent. There is no solid ground beneath the feet epistemically speaking; only more thinking, ideas, more interpretatively bound language.
The question then goes to what is there in the world that is not a contingently bound idea that gives rise to all this talk about things outside me. The answer appears to be that there is inherent in the world of our existence this "sense" of the Other. It is IN the phenomenal reality of our affairs, but in the most basic analysis, it is not to be found there in it finality.
An odd business, this world we are IN.

I'll admit off the bat that I am not all that familiar with the brain in a vat literature so some of my comments here may seem misguided.

First, if you are, as I am, committed to the empirical thesis that phenomenal affairs are reducible to brain activity (though, keeping in mind that this in turn may be reducible to something more fundamental), evidenced by many occasions of brain surgery while completely awake for the treatment of epilepsy, etc.), then the brain is going to be the threshold of epistemic events. Period. What do you have that permits exceeding this boundary? The BIV simply presents this impossible issue. Can it be doubted that my thoughts of my cat in the occurrent perceptual moment are enclosed in a context of referentiality that is brain and only brain? One is not here asking how seems to be the case, but what follows from undeniable premises. You have to work this out, otherwise, your dismissal is purely ad hoc.

I am not committed to the view that phenomenal states are reducible to physical brain activity although I hold it tentatively. I also agree that the brain, under this tentative view, will be the threshold of all epistemic events (true beliefs, false beliefs, believed propositions, etc...). I don't have anything that permits moving across this boundary and I am not aware that I argued that epistemic events can be extended beyond the brain? If I did imply this then I state now that I do not argue this. My point was that if I am a brain in a vat, then I am the only mind in existence. Therefore, there is no other mind for me to share the sematic content of my language with or to form a benchmark of following the rules of attributing meaning to the terms "brain" and "vat" correctly. I'm not quite sure what you are trying to argue here.

You can make sense of being a brain in a vat; of course: one simply deploys a thesis that does not insist on this impossible relationship: phenomenology and hermeneutics. the idea that my cat is on the sofa (or that I am not a brain in a vat) is an interpretation of the events before me, and terms like inside and outside the brain are all interpretative, contingent, resting on assumptions about the world that are, well, contingent. There is no solid ground beneath the feet epistemically speaking; only more thinking, ideas, more interpretatively bound language.

In order to state, even mentally, the proposition that you are not a brain in a vat, you first need to hold a consistent meaning of the world "brain" and "vat". The meaning needs to be stable from the moment the ideas first form to when the proposition is stated and from that point onwards. If you are a brain in a vat (the only mind in existence), then this cannot be done. You would have no way to know that what you meant by "brain" and "vat" 10 seconds ago is the same as what you mean by the terms now. Without external minds anchoring the meaning through agreed rule following systems (Kripke, 1982) the proposition you state of not being a brain in a vat cannot even be made sense of for you to know its truth or falsehood.

As I said before, I am not well read on the literature on the brain in a vat arguments; your knowledge is no doubt more extensive than mine. I've tried to restate my argument more clearly as to be honest I was lost with most of what you were trying to argue, especially in your first paragraph about my dismissal of the proposition "I am a brain in a vat" as ad hoc.

I am not committed to the view that phenomenal states are reducible to physical brain activity although I hold it tentatively. I also agree that the brain, under this tentative view, will be the threshold of all epistemic events (true beliefs, false beliefs, believed propositions, etc...). I don't have anything that permits moving across this boundary and I am not aware that I argued that epistemic events can be extended beyond the brain? If I did imply this then I state now that I do not argue this. My point was that if I am a brain in a vat, then I am the only mind in existence. Therefore, there is no other mind for me to share the sematic content of my language with or to form a benchmark of following the rules of attributing meaning to the terms "brain" and "vat" correctly. I'm not quite sure what you are trying to argue here. — Ghost Light

When I say committed I mean the same kind of regard we have for any other fact of the world, and "facts" are doxastically binding . Mind/brain correlation very binding at this level of discussion because there is so much evidence for it. But then, ALL facts are tentatively posited, we just don't think of it like this because we are too busy. That is simply the nature of the world. Another way of putting this is to make one move to a deeper order of thinking, which is phenomenology, something I read and try to encourage in others. In this method of understanding affairs, what you call tentative is called hermeneutics. I am committed to believing many things, like the direction of gravitational pull or that the stars are not gods, but when the very act of knowledge itself comes under review, I find such things open to inquiry, not closed as in the usual way of getting along in the world.

The only mind? Two ways to look at it: In the actual scenario, there is your brain, the brains of the scientists, those who built the vat, those who clean their streets, and so on. But this is not how this spells out philosophically at all. We are being called to question our epistemic relation to the world as a relation, all other details being incidental. So now we can observe this relation freely. There is me, my cat on the sofa and I know this to be the case, e.g.

As to semantic content, this is where the whole thing gets interesting, spooky, really. There is no doubt that there are others, and that we have the various sematic exchanges with them, and all that happens in the first order world actually happens. This is not being doubted here. What is being acknowledged is that all this is "happening" somehow in a brain. The question is how, and the answer to this must lie beyond the simply naturalistic attitude, for by this account, I should know my cat any more than my dented car fenders "knows" the offending guard rail.

In order to state, even mentally, the proposition that you are not a brain in a vat, you first need to hold a consistent meaning of the world "brain" and "vat". The meaning needs to be stable from the moment the ideas first form to when the proposition is stated and from that point onwards. If you are a brain in a vat (the only mind in existence), then this cannot be done. You would have no way to know that what you meant by "brain" and "vat" 10 seconds ago is the same as what you mean by the terms now. Without external minds anchoring the meaning through agreed rule following systems (Kripke, 1982) the proposition you state of not being a brain in a vat cannot even be made sense of for you to know its truth or falsehood. — Ghost Light

Brains and vats are pretty stable, aren't they? Like any other common nouns. External minds do indeed anchor affairs through agreement and nothing changes this fact as it is all laid out clearly as ever. The only difference is that we have entered another order of analysis, coerced, really, to do this by the inexplicable epistemic connection between a mind and the observable world. As to time and knowing, I am not clear on you point. But it does open a very interesting question of the structure of time, with its past, present and future. Can sense be made of this at all?

especially in your first paragraph about my dismissal of the proposition "I am a brain in a vat" as ad hoc. — Ghost Light

Ad hoc because when the question is raised about this relation between the knower and the known, it is often disregarded (Gettier problems are like this) because his is the way of analytic philosophy which along with Wittgenstein simply puts the matter in the bin of impossible questions and disregards it. This is ad hoc, dismissing something with a singular justification just to dismiss it.

Thanks for the comprehensive response. I'll go and think about this and read up on some of the literature.

Certainly no argument should be determined ad populum. But then, consider that when it comes to Jesus, the standards are quite low, and often ridiculous. Heidegger commands the respect of generations of philosophers, is a seminal thinker which changed the face of philosophical thought. I mean the body of post Heiedggerian thought is staggering.

And btw: you don't think Jesus is our savior? This entirely depends on how this is interpreted. — Constance

Jesus has been thought rather significant himself, you know, and has been esteemed and worshipped since long before Heidegger lived to inspire us with such statements as "The Fuhrer himself and he alone is the German reality, present and future, and its law" and "The Nothing itself nothings."

And my little comment wasn't about Jesus, but about what is said of him by his acolytes and its similarity to what you said of H.