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…. — Joshs
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gadamer/#LinUndIn phenomenology, the ‘horizon’ is, in general terms, that larger context of meaning in which any particular meaningful presentation is situated. Inasmuch as understanding is taken to involve a ‘fusion of horizons’, then so it always involves the formation of a new context of meaning that enables integration of what is otherwise unfamiliar, strange or anomalous. In this respect, all understanding involves a process of mediation and dialogue between what is familiar and what is alien in which neither remains unaffected. This process of horizonal engagement is an ongoing one that never achieves any final completion or complete elucidation—moreover, inasmuch as our own history and tradition is itself constitutive of our own hermeneutic situation as well as being itself constantly taken up in the process of understanding, so our historical and hermeneutic situation can never be made completely transparent to us.
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, — Agent Smith
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? — Agent Smith
it seems the notion of private languages applies also to groups/societies/tribes if you will. — Agent Smith
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/herder/#PhilLangLangThouMeanHerder’s theories of interpretation and translation both rest on a certain epoch-making insight of his: Whereas such eminent Enlightenment philosopher-historians as Hume and Voltaire had normally still held that, as Hume put it, “mankind are so much the same in all times and places that history informs us of nothing new or strange” (1748: section VIII, part I, 65), Herder discovered, or at least saw more clearly than anyone before him, that this was false, that peoples from different historical periods and cultures vary tremendously in their concepts, beliefs, values, (perceptual and affective) sensations, and so forth.
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Given this principle, and the gulf that consequently often initially divides an interpreter’s own thought from that of the person whom he wants to interpret, interpretation is often an extremely difficult task, requiring extraordinary efforts on the part of the interpreter.
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In particular, the interpreter often faces, and needs to resist, a temptation falsely to assimilate the thought that he is interpreting to someone else’s, especially his own.
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. — jas0n
But if , as I am arguing , there are only ever individual interpretations of the norm or standard, then there as many Charlestons as there dancers of it. — Joshs
I wouldnt say the form of the dance is ‘imperfectly’ realized. by each participant. One would only say that if one already took for granted the correctness and primacy of a standard or norm. — Joshs
You have a dangerous metaphor for culture of you assume that the mutation of the dance need not be understood from the point of view of each dancer. — Joshs
But rational inquiry (philosophy, science) seeks for some kind of truth about our shared situation. To deny this is to demonstrate it, for what can such a denial mean if it does not pretend toward the truth of our shared situation. — jas0n
As human beings we are always already in motion( experimental not physical ). So it’s not about nailing down any unchangeable facts but doing our best to construe events such that the next minute’s changes appear inferentially compatible with the previous. — Joshs
We could then say this is teleological, that over time our revised constructions of the world produce anticipations that allow us to anticipate events as more and more intricately, multidimensionally and assimlatively consistent with our precious knowledge. — Joshs
Note her that this is not a mere mirroring of intransigent external
world but a continually refashioning of the world in more an more self-consistent ways. — Joshs
So the only assumption being made here about some a priori nature of reality is the at it is endlessly amenable to reconstruction in more and more intimate ways. — Joshs
I wouldnt say the form of the dance is ‘imperfectly’ realized. by each participant. One would only say that if one already took for granted the correctness and primacy of a standard or norm.
— Joshs
You are trying to make a point using logic, yes? That feels like taking 'for granted the correctness and primacy of a standard or norm.' — jas0n
As human beings we are always already in motion( experimental not physical ). So it’s not about nailing down any unchangeable facts but doing our best to construe events such that the next minute’s changes appear inferentially compatible with the previous. — Joshs
So the world tells me when my constructs are valid or invalid. But this ‘world’ that fits or doesn’t fit my expectations is world that comes already pre-interpreted by me It is my version of the world that can reward or disappoint me. — Joshs
As human beings we are always already in motion( experimental not physical ). So it’s not about nailing down any unchangeable facts but doing our best to construe events such that the next minute’s changes appear inferentially compatible with the previous.
— Joshs
Is this the statement of an unchangeable fact? — jas0n
But the constructs which organize events into such patterns only retain their ‘primacy’ to the extent that new events dont invalidate them. — Joshs
If in some way the world as I interpret it suddenly no longer appears to me to change relative to the previous moment , then I would have to attempt to alter my axes of understanding. In the meantime I would have to suffer through the experience of confusion and disorientation in a world that has become less structured for me. — Joshs
I basically agree, but do you see the indirect realism peeking out this? You say 'my version' of the world, which is your perspective on the one world we share. Yes, these 'perspectives' are hardly only geometrical. We all see the world in terms of projected futures constructed from our unique histories, but the philosopher seeks to transcend such bias and incarnate something like an ideal perspective. As — jas0n
But isnt my version part of this world? And every time I elaborate or revise my version I am contributing another piece to the world. — Joshs
I would have to conclude that there doesnt seem to be anything pragmatically useful to gain by the notion of a shared world. I prefer to ‘sharing with others’ the idea of subsuming another’s perspective from my own vantage because that is all that I can ever experience. — Joshs
Thought you might like to glance at Derrida on Peirce in Of Grammatology. — jas0n
Also, in case you've never sampled it, Kojeve's Hegel. — jas0n
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. — jas0n
Cultural analysts in sociology typically cite the work of Ferdinand de Saussure to motivate a narrow theory of meaning. In so doing, sociologists incorrectly attribute to Saussure (1) the postulate that meaning is arbitrary; (2) the idea that signs gain meaning only through relations of opposition to other signs; (3) the view that there is an isomorphic correspondence between linguistic signs and all cultural units of analysis, ergo culture is fundamentally arbitrary; and finally (4) the idea that he offers a Durkheimian theory of culture (i.e. Saussure was a follower of Durkheim). Saussure’s project, rather, was specific to linguistics, and mainly one of theoretical and methodological clarification regarding phonology. Saussure never intended his analytical model of phonology to apply to the real operation of meaning in general, as done by contemporary interpreters and, furthermore, never argued that meaning is arbitrary.
Consider a murder trial. I think it's a crisp enough empirical matter to ask whether Jones shot Smith. In the real world, the shared world, not just in your dream or my dream. Or one can ask whether Jones is the biological father of Smith. I don't think what I gesture toward with the formal indication of 'shared world' can be finally and happily specified. It's not just 'atoms and void' or 'medium sized dry goods.' — jas0n
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. — Joshs
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. — Joshs
as if that has any meaning outside of agreed on criteria — Joshs
you want to bend your metaphysics to suit a socio-political agenda. Pluralism wins, or whatever. — apokrisis
The point is that the laws of thermodynamics encode the most general cosmic constraints ... and so, reciprocally, also its most generic local degrees of freedom.
What isn't constrained is free to be the case. It is a possibility that can be concretely expressed.
So the cosmos isn't ruled by laws that determine every "free" action. It is ruled by constraints that - due to their limited reach - underwrite actual creative freedom — apokrisis
In the long-run, the statistical outcomes rule. How an organism spends its freedoms gets judged by history. — apokrisis
So you make the usual socially-expected statement about "being a free thinking and feeling individual, not a mindless entropy dissipating machine". You shake a fist at the very notion of fundamental constraints.
How could you personally feel free unless you also imagined there were laws to break? This would be why you need a totalising discourse as something to react against. How can you imagine living in a world of maximum social pluralism unless you have also the backdrop of a maximal social conformity to kick against? — apokrisis
And then there is the overthrow of the system of values:The Proud Boys must make Antifa real, and Antifa must make the Proud Boys real. — apokrisis
Yet the bigger picture is still the fact that constraints and freedoms are reciprocally yoked together as the two poles of being which make for a cosmos in the first place. Without general limitation, there is no possibility of there being any particular reaction against those limits. — apokrisis
I think On Certainty points at the same abyss/ground as Popper's swamp does. 'Doubt' occurs 'within' or against a background of non-doubt or automatism. I manifest trust in the intelligibility in the most radical questioning I can manage, just as stepping out of bed manifests an expectation that the floor will catch my feet. — jas0n
But for example - given your maths background - I loved this Kauffman paper. — apokrisis
In mathematics the grin without the cat is often obtained through a process of distillation. The structure is traversed again and again and each time the inessential is thrown away. At last only a small and potent pattern remains. This is the grin of the cat. That grin is a pattern that fits into many contexts, a key to many doors. It is this multiplicity of uses for a single symbolic form that makes mathematics useful. It is the search for such distillation of pattern that is the essence of mathematical thought.
And Peirce was sharp on real numbers - an example of the secondary literature on that. — apokrisis
then jumped the epistemic cut to apply this systems analysis to a pansemiotically self-organising Cosmos itself. — apokrisis
https://foucault.info/documents/foucault.authorFunction.en/The third point concerning this “author-function” is that it is not formed spontaneously through the simple attribution of a discourse to an individual. It results from a complex operation whose purpose is to construct the rational entity we call an author. Undoubtedly, this construction is assigned a “realistic” dimension as we speak of an individual’s “profundity” or “creative” power, his intentions or the original inspiration manifested in writing. Nevertheless, these aspect of an individual, which we designate as an author (or which comprise an individual as an author), are projections, in terms always more or less psychological, of our way of handling texts: in the comparisons we make, the traits we extract as pertinent, the continuities we assign, or the exclusions we practice.
Your reading of Witt here reminds me of Hacker’s, which is critiqued here: — Joshs
You shake a fist at the very notion of fundamental constraints. — apokrisis
How could you personally feel free unless you also imagined there were laws to break? This would be why you need a totalising discourse as something to react against. — apokrisis
I detect in you less ambivalence than I feel in myself toward 'pomo' recklessness/indulgence. Grand statements are delivered which contain important insights and yet the implicit self-subversion of such insights is ignored. Concrete details are mostly omitted. Examples are sparse. Purple haze. — jas0n
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