That is already contained in Peircean semiotics. — apokrisis

I have a collection of his essays. I've glanced at his semiotics. If there's a single best book on this in particular, let me know. Peirce seems to be dispersed.

When it was structuralist, it was dyadic Saussurean semiosis it went for and not Peircean triadic semiosis. — apokrisis

I'll look into the difference, but if you feel like trying to summarize, I'll be glad to read it. Dyadic plays into the rest of Western philosophy, which is not necessarily good but of course familiar.

But then a closer examination of Saussure says he was actually so much a Saussurean either. He suffered the usual over simplification. — apokrisis

I'm a fan of the guy. He's quite radical. I know that I initially gave Derrida too much credit that belonged to Saussure. Still, it matters that Derrida emphasizes the vague, default prejudice of the proximity of crystalline and luminous signified and some kind of subject. Phonocentrism also seemed like a legitimate target along these lines. Saussure did prioritize speech as the 'real' aspect of language. Derrida emphasized the independence of the medium, that it was all 'like writing' in the 'bad' way, not backed up by a consciousness in complete possession of its meaning, open always to a recontextualization that could shift the entire system of signs (some more than others, of course.) Wittgenstein's beetle analogy makes a similar point in a different tone and style. (I through in my interpretation for context that might help you help me understand Peirce better.)

you didn't answer my question which is what's the difference between contexts and language games? — Agent Smith

Did you check this?

The term ‘language-game’ is used to refer to:

Fictional examples of language use that are simpler than our own everyday language. (e.g. PI 2)
Simple uses of language with which children are first taught language (training in language).
Specific regions of our language with their own grammars and relations to other language-games.
All of a natural language seen as comprising a family of language-games.

I think of 'toy' languages, like the one where the carpenter can only say 'hammer' and 'nail' to his helper, and the helper hands what is requested.

Context is the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed. In the example above, there is a simple context (two dudes working together to build something.) But context is a broader concept, it seems to me.

over simplification — apokrisis

What's that? I mean what's oversimplification? So simple that it fails to give an accurate account? Childish stick figures?

It’s been a long while since I read any Derrida. And for me, I didn’t feel I was learning anything new at the time. The points were already familiar from social constructionism and Vygotskian psychology. — apokrisis

I'm sure your fine without him. But his emphasis on difference and early concern with semiology and 'grammatology' seemed relevant. He definitely blurs/troubles the mental/physical distinction (and actually every distinction, aiming as he does at their condition of possibility.)

I do recall coming across that particular story. How does that help in furthering the discussion? So, there's this carpenter and his help, a coupla words, and basic syntax, all the necessary ingredients for a simple language. Now what? What's the point?

As for metaphors, I have nothing against their use - it makes for interesting reading, adds zest to what otherwise would be a dull and boring interaction among ourselves to say nothing of how it makes certain subjects/topics more relatable, oui? — Agent Smith

I think you underestimate their force and prevalence. Lakoff, Hofstadter, Wittgenstein. Folks have been trying to tell us that we think in pictures, often without realizing it. See what I mean? (With your inner eye.) Do you grasp what I'm saying? (With your intellectual hand?).

How can abstract thoughts get themselves established in the first place?

think you underestimate their force and prevalence. Lakoff, Hofstadter, Wittgenstein. Folks have been trying to tell us that we think in pictures, often without realizing it. See what I mean? (With your inner eye.) Do you grasp what I'm saying? (With your intellectual hand?).

How can abstract thoughts get themselves established in the first place? — jas0n

We think in pictures? Perhaps, but still in the dark about how.

All I can tell you is this. Once rationality or to be precise, logic, enters the picture, semantics is no longer part of the game. Logic has its own syntax and that's all that matters. Validity, as you'll recall, is all about form, the content is of zero significance. When I think logically, it's all syntax and no semantics.

Ergo, I feel justified to say, Wittgenstein is irrelevant to philosophy as it's wholly a logical exercise. It doesn't matter what I think p or q means so long as we both agree that modus ponens holds like so:

1. If p then q
2. p
Ergo
3. q

If the argument above makes sense to me with what I substiute for p and q, is it the same for you with your own assignments for p and q, their specific values?

:confused:

Minus the metaphors would you even grasp the basics (of any subject)? — Agent Smith

I'd say....no. The basics are metaphors, frameworks, 'big pictures.'

It's hard to say how much of culture is mistaken for nature: — Agent Smith

A really easy example (if you are an atheist) is people sincerely burning other people to save their souls at the cost of their bodies. Or people living in terror of hellfire, etc. From the 'outside,' this is superstition (culture). From the inside, God and hell are very important parts of the world, if admittedly hidden away somehow (nature, though not the nature of godless 'scientism.')

We think in pictures? Perhaps, but still in the dark about how. — Agent Smith

I think you accidentally made a funny, unless you meant to do that....

Once rationality or to be precise, logic, enters the picture, semantics is no longer part of the game. Logic has its own syntax and that's all that matters. Validity, as you'll recall, is all about form, the content is of zero significance. When I think logically, it's all syntax and no semantics. — Agent Smith

So you get a machine for cranking out tautologies, or for checking formal proofs. This is on the level of programming a computer to check for checkmate on a chess board. Clear, yes, but at the cost of saying nothing at all. The life of the signs that matter is out there in the world. I like Chess, but even that is fun because there's the drama of another tricky human on the other side, or because of time pressure, or the aesthetic aspect.

I spent years writing mathematical proofs (it was my job), and it probably helped me as much as anything else to experience just how sloppy and ambiguous ordinary language is.

Ergo, I feel justified to say, Wittgenstein is irrelevant to philosophy as it's wholly a logical exercise. — Agent Smith

Well I entirely disagree, but it's as you like.

Like I said, I'm not terribly excited by the language games game. I could squeeze some stuff out, but I'm more interested in the way the past haunts a future that haunts the present.

Some quotes on the metaphor issue:
///////////////////////////////////////////////////

A metaphysical sentence is always symbolical and mythical. The sentence “The soul owns God to the extent, in which it takes share of the Absolute.” does not contain any signs, only symbols whose colourfulness and evocative power were erased. With some phantasy it can be said instead: “The breath is seated on the shining one” (God) “in the bushel” (to the extent) “of the part it takes” (in which it takes share) “in what is already loosed (the Absolute),” and elaborate it metaphorically even more: “He whose breath is a sign of life, man, that is, will find a place in the divine fire, source and home of life, and this place will be meted out to him according to the virtue that has been given him of sending abroad this warm breath, this little invisible soul, across the free expanse.” Even at this point we would not arrive at the original figures of speech, though our fantasy would read as an old Vedic hymn. From this, says France, follows that metaphysicians rub the colours from the old myths and fables, and are their collectors. They cultivate white (colourless) [clear] mythology.
...
First and foremost, there are no originary concepts. All of them are tropes, starting with the word archē – origin and principle, that is, governing rule, control. The value of the “basis”, “base”, “ground” corresponds to our wish to stand on a firm ground.
...
The words for comprehending and conceiving (fassen, begreifen), says Hegel, have a totally sensuous contents that is substituted by spiritual meaning. The sensuous words are becoming spiritual in the process of their use.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////

Lakoff stresses how bodily out metaphors are. Mammals.

Thought you might like to glance at Derrida on Peirce in Of Grammatology.

//////////////
In his project of semiotics, Peirce seems to have been more attentive than Saussure to the irreducibility of this becoming-unmotivated. In his termi­ nology, one must speak of a becoming-unmotivated of the symbol, the notion of the symbol playing here a role analogous to that of the sign which Saussure opposes precisely to the symbol :

Symbols grow. They come into being by development out of other signs, par­ ticularly from icons, or from mixed signs partaking of the nature of icons and symbols. We think only in signs. These mental signs are of mixed nature; the symbol parts of them are called concepts. If a man makes a new symbol, it is by thoughts involving concepts. So it is only out of symbols that a new symbol can grow. Omne symbolum de symbolo.

Peirce complies with two apparently incompatible exigencies. The mis­take here would be to sacrifice one for the other. It must be recognized that the symbolic (in Peirce's sense: of "the arbitrariness of the sign") is rooted in the nonsymbolic, in an anterior and related order of significa­tion: "Symbols grow. They come into being by development out of other signs, particularly from icons, or from mixed signs." But these roots must not compromise the structural originality of the field of symbols, the autonomy of a domain, a production, and a play: "So it is only out of symbols that a new symbol can grow. Omne symbolum de symbolo."

But in both cases, the genetic root-system refers from sign to sign. No ground of nonsignification --understood as insignificance or an intuition of a present truth --- stretches out to give it foundation under the play and the coming into being of signs.
...
Peirce goes very far in the direction that I have called the de-construction of the transcendental signified, which, at one time or another, would place a reassuring end to the reference from sign to sign. I have identified logocentrism and the metaphysics of presence as the exigent, powerful, systematic, and irrepressible desire for such a signified. Now Peirce con­siders the indefiniteness of reference as the criterion that allows us to recognize that we are indeed dealing with a system of signs. What broaches the movement of signification is what makes its interruption impossible. The thing itself is a sign. An unacceptable proposition for Husserl, whose phenomenology remains therefore the most radical and most critical restoration of the metaphysics of presence. The difference between Husserl's and Peirce's phenomenologies is funda­mental since it concerns the concept of the sign and of the manifestation of presence, the relationships between the re-presentation and the originary presentation of the thing itself ( truth ). On this point Peirce is un­doubtedly closer to the inventor of the word phenomenology: Lambert proposed in fact to "reduce the theory of things to the theory of signs." Ac­cording to the "phaneoroscopy" or "phenomenology" of Peirce, manifesta­tion itself does not reveal a presence, it makes a sign. One may read in the Principle of Phenomenology that "the idea of manifestation is the idea of a sign." There is thus no phenomenality reducing the sign or the repre­senter so that the thing signified may be allowed to glow finally in the luminosity of its presence. The so-called "thing itself" is always already a representamen shielded from the simplicity of intuitive evidence. The representamen functions only by giving rise to an interpretant that itself becomes a sign and so on to infinity. The self-identity of the signified conceals itself unceasingly and is always on the move. The property of the representamen is to be itself and another, to be produced as a structure of reference, to be separated from itself. The property of the representamen is not to be proper, that is to say absolutely proximate to itself (prope, proprius). The represented is always already a representamen.


Also, in case you've never sampled it, Kojeve's Hegel.

The Real itself is what organises itself and makes itself concrete so as to become a determinate “species,” capable of being revealed by a general notion"; the Real itself reveals itself through articulate knowledge and thereby becomes a known object that has the knowing subject as its necessary complement, so that "empirical existence” is divided into beings that speak and beings that are spoken of. For real Being existing as Nature is what produces Man who reveals that Nature (and himself) by speaking of it. Real Being thus transforms itself into “truth” or into reality revealed by speech, and becomes a “higher” and “higher” truth as its discursive revelation becomes ever more adequate and complete.
...
The concrete Real (of which we speak) is both Real revealed by a discourse, and Discourse revealing a real. And the Hegelian experience is related neither to the Real nor to Discourse taken separately, but to their indissoluble unity. And since it is itself a revealing Discourse, it is itself an aspect of the concrete Real which it describes. It therefore brings in nothing from outside, and the thought or the discourse which is born from it is not a reflection on the Real: the Real itself is what reflects itself or is reflected in the discourse or as thought.

If I catch your drift, I had an inkling of that then. Observe, how physical, how tangible, the words "grasp" and "see", synonyms of the word "understand" are. How "craving" is "clinging", how "justification" is "bedrock", how "perspective" is an "angle" and so on.

Indeed, we still seem to be in the grips of such metaphors if they are that to begin with.

Do you mean to recommend that we abandon this figurative language? How will that advance our cause which is to comprehend the universe and ourselves? If we discard all these familiar modes of expression, we're left with absolutely nothing! Then, perhaps, we can think in pictures, wordless images.

Intriguingly, language did begin as pictures (pictography): the letter "A" is actually a sketch of an ox (head). You'll have to invert "A" to notice that. Similarly the letter "w" is supposed to capture the waves on/in water or something like that.

Only later did language evolve to become what it is - abstract sound-based symbolism. Why? Probably because it made language more versatile, complex enough to express ideas and describe the world. So, when I write "A", I ignore the ox noggin that it actually is, and latch onto, instinctively as it were, to what it is now (a certain sound) and what meaning it has been ascribed, if any.

What about how logic is semantics-independent? The form of valid arguments use variables (p, q, r, etc.) that can be replaced with actual propositions with constituent concepts/words (constants).


Modus Ponens
1. If p then q
2. p
Ergo
3. q

Suppose an argument about God:

Argument X
1. If God exists then God intervenes (in human affairs)
2. God exists
Ergo,
3. God intervenes

If you're a theist, the argument will make sense to you (the conditional, statement 1 in both arguments). However, if a deist, statement 1, the conditional, is false.

In other words, homing in on the actual meaning of "God" is a matter of logic. If disagreements pop up, one reason could different meanings for the same word. We can then analyze the argument and reconstruct the definition which one's interlocutor is employing.

Also, logic doesn't care about semantics, just make sure you're consistent in usage of words and it's smooth sailing.

To put it simply, we can altogether ignore semantics just so long as you get the grammar/syntax of logic correct. In other words, Wittgenstein, whose philosophy is semantics-oriented, is taken out of the equation as it were. :grin:

Do you mean to recommend that we abandon this figurative language? — Agent Smith

No. That's like a fish giving up water. We think metaphorically, maybe only metaphorically. The point is to not be trapped unwittingly in a metaphor.

1. If God exists then God intervenes (in human affairs)
2. God exists
Ergo,
3. God intervenes — Agent Smith

Philosophers (and regular folks) still don't agree what 'God' means, what 'exist' means, what 'intervene' means (at least in this context), and of course what 'mean' 'means.' Meaning is social and therefore ambiguous. We mostly ignore this, because we mostly stick to practical talk. Start talking religion and politics and things get ugly. Somehow the other fellow just doesn't 'see' it (the folly of his ways, his bad logic, etc.)

make sure you're consistent in usage of words and it's smooth sailing. — Agent Smith

Well this might not be so easy....

In other words, Wittgenstein, whose philosophy is semantics-oriented, is taken out of the equation as it were. :grin: — Agent Smith

IMO, He's taken out of the equation only when a person isn't interested in the problem of meaning, doesn't 'feel' it maybe. I think it's people who long for clarity that'll notice how hard it is not to spit fog and try to figure out why. The tantalizing fantasy is the ghost in machine who actually knows what he's talking about: sure, he might have trouble 'finding the right words' for it when talking to others, but he at least knows what he's trying to say 'directly.' He can see his beetle, which is the signified face of a sign understood as only requiring a signifying 'vessel' as a kind of jetpack to shoot across the air into the cogito-soul-ghost of the other, who'll hopefully dial up the same pure content. This is the nomenclature fantasy which assumes similar mental content, as if all share in the mind of a kind of language god, or come equipped with same thought crystals that just need labels (soundmark conventions) attached. This 'pure content' is the unquestioned metaphor that dominates lots of philosophical and 'sub-philosophical' talk about meaning and consciousness. But for practical purposes, it doesn't really matter. A person can have a primitive theory of meaning and still be very good at talking with people. There's a big difference between a mostly automatic skill and dialectically developed account of that skill.

No. That's like a fish giving up water. We think metaphorically, maybe only metaphorically. The point is to not be trapped unwittingly in a metaphor — jas0n

You want me to eat the cake and have it too. :grin: I like that although you have my sympathies, having painted yourself into a corner like that. That's what happens to all philosophers in the end. They tend to exit one cage only to walk into another. My personal point of view; could be way off the mark. The question is am I?

Philosophers (and regular folks) still don't agree what 'God' means, what 'exist' means, what 'intervene' means (at least in this context), and of course what 'mean' 'means.' Meaning is social and therefore ambiguous. We mostly ignore this, because we mostly stick to practical talk. Start talking religion and politics and things get ugly. Somehow the other fellow just doesn't 'see' it (the folly of his ways, his bad logic, etc.) — jas0n

Don't conflate disagreement with problems with meaning. Indeed, differences in definition is a cause of many quarrels, but then to oversimplify it as being only a definitional issue is not, in my humble opinion, a very sensible thing to do.

I have my concepts, my own logic, and I can understand them within the constraints and freedom therein present. You can't tell me I'm confused and nor can I say the same thing about you, oui?

Indeed, differences in definition is a cause of many quarrels, but then to oversimplify it as being only a definitional issue is not, in my humble opinion, a very sensible thing to do. — Agent Smith

I don't mean definitions, which humorously supports my point. You 'automatically' (it seems) read meaning in terms of definition, but definitions are relatively artificial. No one could use a dictionary if they weren't already embedded in the living language.

I have my concepts, my own logic, and I can understand them within the constraints and freedom therein present. You can't tell me I'm confused and nor can I say the same thing about you, oui? — Agent Smith

On a personal level, of course I respect your freedom. Philosophically speaking, I think the point is to challenge apparent confusion/misunderstanding and try to resolve it. A thoroughgoing relativism/subjectivism (which is where that thinking seems to lead) ends up being sad and boring. Go back to simple things, like the boy who cried wolf. Or the danger in mistaking correlation for causation. Then's there's our deeper goals. What if people want to be understood? To be respected as trustworthy interpreters of a shared situation? Or just to be amusing by transcending cliché? Making a good joke. Point being that we do care about being perceived as confused, credulous, biased, or predictable, etc. We are networked beings. We depend on one another's intellectual virtues (and of course friendly intentions.)

That's what happens to all philosophers in the end. They tend to exit one cage only to walk into another. My personal point of view; could be way off the mark. The question is am I? — Agent Smith

I don't think anyone ever gets out of all the cages they are in. But this cage metaphor might suggest that cages are always bad. It's more like a mass of automatic habit that simultaneously helps us survive and opposes innovation. We inherit dead metaphors because they worked pretty well for previous generations. Perhaps a philosopher is someone who's invested in understanding and escaping from a certain kind of linguistic cage (and they'd only understand their 'game' this way as one of its later moves).

A relevant quote:

/////////////////////////////////////////////////
...Gadamer also takes issue directly with this view of prejudice and the negative connotations often associated with the notion, arguing that, rather than closing us off, our prejudices are themselves what open us up to what is to be understood. In this way Gadamer can be seen as attempting to retrieve a positive conception of prejudice (German Vorurteil) that goes back to the meaning of the term as literally a pre-judgment (from the Latin prae-judicium) that was lost during the Renaissance. In Truth and Method, Gadamer redeploys the notion of our prior hermeneutical situatedness as it is worked out in more particular fashion in Heidegger’s Being and Time (first published in 1927) in terms of the ‘fore-structures’ of understanding, that is, in terms of the anticipatory structures that allow what is to be interpreted or understood to be grasped in a preliminary fashion. The fact that understanding operates by means of such anticipatory structures means that understanding always involves what Gadamer terms the ‘anticipation of completeness’—it always involves the revisable presupposition that what is to be understood constitutes something that is understandable, that is, something that is constituted as a coherent, and therefore meaningful, whole.
...
In this respect, all interpretation, even of the past, is necessarily ‘prejudgmental’ in the sense that it is always oriented to present concerns and interests, and it is those present concerns and interests that allow us to enter into the dialogue with the matter at issue. Here, of course, there is a further connection with the Aristotelian emphasis on the practical—not only is understanding a matter of the application of something like ‘practical wisdom’, but it is also always determined by the practical context out of which it arises.

The prejudicial character of understanding means that, whenever we understand, we are involved in a dialogue that encompasses both our own self-understanding and our understanding of the matter at issue. In the dialogue of understanding our prejudices come to the fore, both inasmuch as they play a crucial role in opening up what is to be understood, and inasmuch as they themselves become evident in that process.As our prejudices thereby become apparent to us, so they can also become the focus of questioning in their own turn.
...
Gadamer thus advances a view of understanding that rejects the idea of understanding as achieved through gaining access to some inner realm of subjective meaning. Moreover, since understanding is an ongoing process, rather than something that is ever completed, so he also rejects the idea that there is any final determinacy to understanding.
...
Conversation always takes place in language and similarly Gadamer views understanding as always linguistically mediated. Since both conversation and understanding involve coming to an agreement, so Gadamer argues that all understanding involves something like a common language, albeit a common language that is itself formed in the process of understanding itself. In this sense, all understanding is, according to Gadamer, interpretative, and, insofar as all interpretation involves the exchange between the familiar and the alien, so all interpretation is also translative.
...
We cannot go back ‘behind’ understanding, since to do so would be to suppose that there was a mode of intelligibility that was prior to understanding. Hermeneutics thus turns out to be universal, not merely in regard to knowledge, whether in the ‘human sciences’ or elsewhere, but to all understanding and, indeed, to philosophy itself. Philosophy is, in its essence, hermeneutics.
////////////////////////////////
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gadamer/#PosPre

Well, all that I can say at this moment is I don't quite follow your language game. Did you get a handle on mine?

Each word has a form of life that maybe private (enough) to be incomprehensible to an other. So, if we're to avoid the pitfall of talking past each other, we must come to an agreement as to what the words we use mean, but then that's impossible for it seems the notion of private languages applies also to groups/socieites/tribes if you will.

It's possible that you and your favorite philosophers, some of whom you mention by name, could be participants in a language game I'm not familiar with. The same applies to you however, I'm playing my own language game, a simple one in all likelihood but still one that'll you have to work out for yourself, assuming you feel that's worthwhile.

As for me, I'm trying my level best to get an idea of what you're trying to say here. Do you mean, à la Wittgenstein, that language is inadequate for philosophy? If yes, why make all this effort to convey your thoughts? If no, why bring up Wittgenstein at all? :chin:

Coming to what I said about logic, semantics is irrelevant. If so, Wittgenstein is too, oui? I don't need to know the meaning of words to do philosophy, a rational/logical enterprise, so long as I'm consistent, ja? P and Q in $P \to Q$ must mean the same thing as in another statement like $P \land Q$ in the same argument. Note here that P and Q can be anything at all - semantics is not an issue.

In living, our bodies generate, imply, and enact language and culture; but with and after those, our bodies imply (project, experience, sense, practice, demand . . .) more. What they imply is inherently interactional and social, but it is more precise and implies what has never as yet formed and happened.”
— Joshs

Plausible but vague and hard to do anything with. Something is gestured at. A Romantic poet might talk of the chains of rigid conceptuality scraping the incomputable flesh of a most elusive goddess. — jas0n

We see the importance of the future defining our present in Heidegger, too. Heidegger describes the proposition ‘S is P’ as ‘seeing something as something’. He calls this the ‘as’ structure and it is the fundamental basis of perception, cognition , affectivity and theoretical knowledge.

“...in interpretatively addressing something as something, one addresses the thing encountered against the background of a more or less explicit acquaintance with it: as a tool as suitable for this or that, etc.
The most immediate state of affairs is, in fact, that we simply see and take things as they are: board, bench, house, policeman. Yes, of course. However, this taking is always a taking within the context of dealing-with something, and therefore is always a taking-as, but in such a way that the as-character does not become explicit in the act.”

In experiencing something as something, Dasein comes back to its having been from its future, which is to say, it interprets a global context of relevance via the ‘as’ structure. In so doing, it “takes apart’ the relation between what it encounters and a previous instance of it by coming back to it from a fresh context of relevance. Seeing something as something makes sense of what
is encountered in a new way, on the basis of a freshly modified totality of relevance. It is produced rather than discovered.
"The essence of something is not at all to be discovered simply like a fact; on the contrary, it must be brought forth. To bring forth is a kind of making, and so there resides in all grasping and positing of the essence something creative…. To bring forth means to bring out into the light, to bring something in sight which was up to then not seen at all, and specifically such that the seeing of it is not simply a gaping at something already lying there but a seeing which, in seeing, first brings forth
what is to be seen, i.e., a productive seeing. "

I think we both need to be careful to distinguish between body and 'symbolic' ego. At times I've preferred an 'external' view, watching bodies learn to emit the token 'I' appropriately. A body is trained to emit tokens interpreted as a self-description internal realm. A body is trained that such a narrative features a single protagonist. This perspective, admittedly one among others, takes 'culture'-coordinated bodies navigating a shared world as primary — jas0n

How does a body know what is emitted ‘appropriately’? Via social reinforcement , shaping, conditioning? How is it that each of us emit what is socially ‘appropriate’ in unique ways , with unique senses that doesn’t simply correspond to the ‘ norm’ but contributes its own variation on the ‘norm’? Isn’t a social ‘norm’, ‘convention’, ‘shared practice’ merely an abstraction derived from what is in fact always ways of sense-making unique to individuals who particulate in those ‘shared’ spaces? Doesn’t this make the ‘shared’ space derivative and the personalistic space primary?
Isnt what you are describing precisely Heidegger’s concept of Das Man of average eveydayness , where we all share the same appropriate meanings?

The body's interaction is always more intricate than language. It is after and with language, always again freshly ongoing and constellating this situation in the present.”
— Joshs

This may be so, and one can also go in the direction of 'art mysticism' and insist that concept is wrong way to grasp 'Reality' in the first place. On the other hand, it's a move away from a critical and exoteric inquiry/articulation and back into the darkness of intuition and the ineffable. I'm not immune to the charms of the aesthetic or even the mystical. As Nietzsche might say, it may be only those who are secretly sustained by 'dark forces' who can indulge in reckless and thorough criticism — jas0n

There is nothing ineffable and mystical here. It’s stating a fundamental concept common to Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty , Derrida , enactive embodied approaches in cognitive science and Pragmatism that when we intend a meaning we intend beyond what we intend. Cognition is fundamentally anticipative.

Cognition is fundamentally anticipative. — Joshs

This squares with what I've learned. The future haunts the present in terms of the past, or something like that.

Heidegger, too. Heidegger describes the proposition ‘S is P’ as ‘seeing something as something’. He calls this the ‘as’ structure and it is the fundamental basis of perception, cognition , affectivity and theoretical knowledge. — Joshs

Yes and others have described something similar in terms of analogical/metaphorical, embodied cognition. I think they're right.

“...in interpretatively addressing something as something, one addresses the thing encountered against the background of a more or less explicit acquaintance with it: as a tool as suitable for this or that, etc.
The most immediate state of affairs is, in fact, that we simply see and take things as they are: board, bench, house, policeman. Yes, of course. However, this taking is always a taking within the context of dealing-with something, and therefore is always a taking-as, but in such a way that the as-character does not become explicit in the act.” — Joshs

I agree with Dreyfus that we learn how to see/use a fork or a chair as 'one' does. The background is part of the 'who of everyday Dasein.' This quote also hints toward the Wittgenstein idea of the domination of unconscious/automatic pictures that tacitly dominate and otherwise explicit interpretation.

How does a body know what is emitted ‘appropriately’? Via social reinforcement , shaping, conditioning? — Joshs

Yes.

How is it that each of us emit what is socially ‘appropriate’ in unique ways , with unique senses that doesn’t simply correspond to the ‘ norm’ but contributes its own variation on the ‘norm’? — Joshs

The norm is blurry and self-updating. Some variations become more common, others fade out. One metaphor here is that culture (the one) is a distributed operating system. No one has/is the official version. Creativity is constant. But creativity would be unintelligible without some kind of average background. From my POV, we never know exactly what we mean. We are forced to play jazz, thrown into a novelty only partially tamed by social habit, contributing to that novelty ourself despite our best efforts to conform. One does not have to try to be unique. One even struggles against this uniqueness, perhaps just in this way becoming most valuably unique.

The world as a whole is entrained to the dynamics of the laws of thermodynamics. We exist both by and for our evolved ability to break down barriers to entropy production. So to understand the human situation, we must be able to place ourselves correctly in nature. We must start with the core or fundamental imperative that drives us, and thus shapes our sociocultural mindset, our generalised and collective view of the world. — apokrisis

I guess this is the heart of the structuralism, the laws of thermodynamics and entropy. What does such a structure entail? If not particles then certainly objective relations of forces that are describable through geometry and other forms of mathematics. So this structuralism points to objective , mathematizable properties and attributes. Quite specific and quite powerful. It’s like a specifically shaped piece of a puzzle (of course we’re not talking about an object but a principle guiding a multi-dimensional system of relations) that constrains and organizes the whole. It could be otherwise but it s not . It’s thermodynamics and entropy, and that means that our most personal and intimate experience is most fully understood via this fundamental ‘puzzle piece’.

…. it is quite possible to step back from the human condition and see the whole story laid out. — apokrisis

Because of its primordially as objective structural source and center , everything else in the world, including all of human history , can be judged by way of correctness and conformity relative to this constraining structural center, where and how things have gone right or wrong.

….It is only when you get down to this level of science-informed modelling that you can clearly diagnose where things have gone wrong for us.


The fourth level of modelling - the one based on numbers that wants to treat nature as a machine - isn't doing so well. Or it has over-performed on the entropy production, under-performed on the material recycling.

So for the scientist who understands the reality of organismic being, the inadequacies of the machine model, all this as plain as the nose on your face. — apokrisis

The semiotic structuralism of Thermodynamics and entropy may not be an atomistic machine but it is still a RubeGoldberg-like machine to the extent that it claims to stand outside of time to reveal the whole story rather than determining and redetermining history from out of the here and now.

if philosophy was up to date, it would be presenting fine arguments about what it really means to be an organism - at the noosphere scale.

Instead, we have this stale nonsense - this warmed over Romanticism - about the human individual and the pluralistic struggle against totalising discourse. — apokrisis

Can’t get around the laws of thermodynamics and entropy and all of our personal hopes and dreams and feelings are beholden to these. Sounds a bit totalizing to me.

I dunno. I prefer to think history is reinvented every moment. But then I’ve never been very good at obeying laws, even the laws of thermodynamics.

Isn’t a social ‘norm’, ‘convention’, ‘shared practice’ merely an abstraction derived from what is in fact always ways of sense-making unique to individuals who particulate in those ‘shared’ spaces? — Joshs

I don't know if it makes a big difference to say one is prior to the other, but the symbolic/linguistic ego as opposed to the separate body looks like part of the software to me. If you want to talk about culture as 'really' just being the performance of bodies, I guess you can. If a room is dancing the Charleston, though, you might want to focus on the form of the dance, 'imperfectly' realized by each dancer. If you allow the dance to slowly mutate, then you have a metaphor for culture.