if everything changes continuously, then it is never possible to know
/
what we are talking about, because one second later it has changed its meaning. — Angelo Cannata

Heraclitean and Cratylean knowledge of change cannot possibly be anything like Eleatic Aristotelian or modern language-philosophical knowledge of static objects or facts! Therefore we must be talking about at least two distinct notions of knowledge here.

What would you say Cratylean knowledge is like? Plato suggested that Cratylus believed in essences of ideal objects. That could have been so, since diffused ideals are logically independent of physical motion and change, but that sounds more like Plato than Cratylus.

Plato believed that If the physical world changes continuously, then it is not possible to completely know any particular objects. Therefore Eleatic knowledge as justified true belief of particulars is insufficient. Something is still missing.

What we are talking about is different. In itself, language says nothing but nonsense. Meaning is primarily conventional, except for what little is natural (like imitative sounds) or comes from transcendent sources (as recollection). But once there is established meaning it is as fixed as their related Forms are.

In itself, language says nothing but nonsense. Meaning is primarily conventional, except for what little is natural (like imitative sounds) or comes from transcendent sources (as recollection). But once there is established meaning it is as fixed as their related Forms are. — magritte

If meaning is conventional, it means that what you wrote has a conventional, which means an agreed meaning in your perception. If you perceive that your words have an agreed meaning, how can you say at the same time that language says nothing but nonsense? Does what you wrote have an agreed meaning or is it nonsense?
Then you referred to an established meaning: how can we realize that it is established, since our mind is part of all the things that are subject to change?

how can we realize that it is established, since our mind is part of all the things that are subject to change? — Angelo Cannata

To say that the world , language and mind undergo continuous change does not mean the inability to discern ongoing themes and patterns in the flux.

To say that the world , language and mind undergo continuous change does not mean the inability to discern ongoing themes and patterns in the flux. — Joshs

Exactly. I agree.

Then you referred to an established meaning: how can we realize that it is established, since our mind is part of all the things that are subject to change? — Angelo Cannata

I think you have your finger on something here.

How do we know that all knowledge experiences are hermeneutical if the same hermeneutics applies to itself? How can logic say what logic is? How can permanence ever be discovered if impermanence lies within the very asking? If impermanence is presupposed in the very concept of permanence? It is here we have reached the end of philosophy, which is why, I am sure, Rorty simply gave up and started teaching Literature. He knew Derrida and Heidegger very well, and, I suppose was inspired by Heidegger's privileging of poetry and its special power to ironize the world and thereby make new meanings, determined the answers to such questions were "made not discovered".

But this issue if change is about Time, the "existence" of time, I might put it. Time is change, Kierkegaard's repetition that does not look back and recall, but is forward looking, ever forward looking. The is a lot of Kierkegaard's "Concept of Anxiety" in Heidegger. If you want understand the reconciliation between Heraclitus and Parmenides, as I see it, it lies not in Plato, but in Kierkegaard, and his nunc stans, the eternal present. Wittgenstein was a BIG fan of Kierkegaard.

One also has to keep clear: there is no past nor future. These "are" presence"s". One has never witnessed a past or future event. Of course, this problematizes the present as well, it meaning vanishes without past of future to contextualize it. Is this the way to some apophatic affirmation?

It is here we have reached the end of philosophy — Constance

I think we need to be always careful in proclaming the end of things such as philosophy, literature, art, cinema, that I have seen proclaimed in several contexts: we should, more humbly, talk, if anything, of end of one kind of of philosophy, not of philosophy as such. It is the end of philosophy meant as domain over concepts, things, but actually, surreptiously, domain over people. In this context, the choice to teach literature, be interested in poetry, or in politics, can considered a symptom of need for a new way of meaning philosophy. The way Kierkegaard talks about time or eternal present is not a metaphysical way, is not a language organized in a dominating way; he talks in an existentialist way.
After realizing that we need a weak philosophy, we need to build a good relationship with metaphysics, because the things of the past cannot just be put in the bin and forgotten. I think that a good relationship with metaphysics should be in the form of a dialogue, rather than adopting passively metaphysics as if it was contraditions-free and well working to get domain over things, reality and people. Metaphysics can be helpful to tell literature and poetry that, even if we have a certain human ability to shape and even create reality, nonetheless we cannot ignore that we need to face humanly humiliating experiences, such as suffering, death, contradictions, inconsistency, forgetfulness. At the same time, we cannot be just pessimistic, because weak or postmodern philosophy, as well as art, literature and a lot of other human experiences, are able to show that we can make miracles, unpredicted wonders.
In this context philosophy ceases to be the place where people look for conclusions, answers, solutions, formulas, that is all stuff to exercise domain, and becomes instead perspective to work, do research, open dialogue, plan comparisons, explore horizons. When we realize this, we can see that philosophy is far from beind ended, there is lot to do and to work on, and it doesn’t need to retrieve any disguised metaphysics or masked realism to gain reputation or to keep afloat.

Rorty simply gave up and started teaching Literature. He knew Derrida and Heidegger very well, and, I suppose was inspired by Heidegger's privileging of poetry and its special power to ironize the world and thereby make new meanings, determined the answers to such questions were "made not discovered". — Constance

Unfortunately he didn’t. He thought Derrida was just being a trickster, and completely missed the complexity and rigor of his philosophizing. He also misread Heidegger’s notion. of transcendence as the use
of skyhooks. That’s why Rorty mistook literature as the antidote to philosophy, as if literary movements didn’t already share in the metaphysics embraced by philosophical eras.

How would you describe Rorty's project - post-modernism?

He thought Derrida was just being a trickster, and completely missed the complexity and rigor of his philosophizing. — Joshs

Care to speculate on why he misread or deliberately reconstructed Derrida in this way?

I liked Shaun Gallagher’s account in ‘Conversations in postmodern hermeneutics’:

“ I want to show that the conception of the conversation of mankind employed by Rorty and Caputo for
postmodern purposes is not a good model for postmetaphysical/ postmodern thought.”
“ The postmodern idea is not that there is one overarching conversation, but that there is a plurality
of conversations, some constituting relative differends in relation to others. It is still possible that fusions can happen between conversations, not in the sense of unifying or reducing different conversations, but in the sense of creating new and different conversations by linking one to another; or again, not in the sense of a fusion of horizons, but in the sense of a creation of new
horizons.”

Care to speculate on why he misread or deliberately reconstructed Derrida in this way? — Tom Storm

it wasn’t deliberate. Doritos very difficult to understand from an anglo-American philosophical background

He thought Derrida was just being a trickster, — Joshs

Rorty: "Admirers of Derrida like myself"

https://web.stanford.edu/group/csp/phi60/rortyintro.pdf

He also misread Heidegger’s notion. of transcendence as the use
of skyhooks. — Joshs

Not familiar. Where does that observation come from?

He thought Derrida was just being a trickster,
— Joshs

Rorty: "Admirers of Derrida like myself" — Jackson

Yes, Rorty respected Derrida for deconstructing the metaphysics of presence but misread his method as mere poetic playfulness.

Yes, Rorty respected Derrida for deconstructing the metaphysics of presence but misread his method as mere poetic playfulness. — Joshs

I don't remember Rorty saying that. And if you cannot cite something, there's nothing to talk about.

He also misread Heidegger’s notion. of transcendence as the use
of skyhooks.
— Joshs

Not familiar. Where does that observation come from? — Jackson

From “Heidegger, Contingency, and Pragmatism

“There is no validating reality behind our narrative; Being and interpretive narrative arise together. Therefore, Rorty appropriates for pragmatism only Heidegger’s sense of contingency and the transitory condition of human life, along with the ability to radically redescribe Western culture. He sets aside Heidegger’s nostalgia for an authentic world-view that says something neutral about the structure of all present and possible world-views. By doing so, Rorty aligns himself more with John Dewey’s brand of anti-essentialism and anti-foundationalism than with Heidegger’s project.”( Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

I don't remember Rorty saying that. And if you cannot cite something, there's nothing to talk about. — Jackson

But I don’t want you to be lonely. Besides, I’m driving home in rush hour traffic, which makes it hard to satisfy you need for scholarly rigor at the moment.

From “Heidegger, Contingency, and Pragmatism

“There is no validating reality behind our narrative; Being and interpretive narrative arise together. Therefore, Rorty appropriates for pragmatism only Heidegger’s sense of contingency and the transitory condition of human life, along with the ability to radically redescribe Western culture. He sets aside Heidegger’s nostalgia for an authentic world-view that says something neutral about the structure of all present and possible world-views. By doing so, Rorty aligns himself more with John Dewey’s brand of anti-essentialism and anti-foundationalism than with Heidegger’s project.”( Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) — Joshs

I think Heidegger's notion of the being of beings is meaningless. Some philosophers think Heidegger himself realized that the ambition of fundamental ontology cannot be realized. So he dropped the idea from Being and Time in his later writings.

But I don’t want you to be lonely. Besides, I’m driving home in rush hour traffic, which makes it hard to satisfy you need for scholarly rigor at the moment. — Joshs

Thinking and driving don't mix.

her ya go:


“In my view, Derrida's eventual solution to the problem of how to avoid the Heideggerian "we," and, more generally, avoid the trap into which Heidegger fell by attempting to affiliate with or incarnate something larger than himself, consists in what Gasch6 refers to disdain­fully as "wild and private lucubrations."lo The later Derrida privatizes his philosophical thinking, and thereby breaks down the tension between ironism and theorizing. He simply drops theory - the attempt to see his predecessors steadily and whole - in favor of fantasizing about those predecessors, playing with them, giving free rein to the trains of associa­tions they produce. There is no moral to these fantasies, nor any public (pedagogic or politicat) use to be made of them;” Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity)

I think Heidegger's notion of the being of beings is meaningless. Some philosophers think Heidegger himself realized that the ambition of fundamental ontology cannot be realized. So he dropped the idea from Being and Time in his later writings. — Jackson

He didn’t drop the idea. In one of his last works, Time and Being, he takes up the Being of beings again:

Heidegger begins Being and Time saying his aim is to answer the question of the meaning of being in general. But by the end of the book, he says he still hasn't quite answered it. He does define Dasein's kind of being as the ontological difference , the in-between , happening , occurrence , the ‘as' structure , projection.

“ Something like "being" has been disclosed in the understanding of being that belongs to existing Da-sein as a way in which it understands.”

“The ontological condition of the possibility of the understanding of being is temporality itself.”(Basic Problems, 1927)

“In Being and Time, Being is not something other than time: "Time" is a preliminary name for the truth of Being, and this truth is what prevails as essential in Being and thus is Being itself.”(What is Metaphysics)

But he leaves us with the following questions:

“The existential and ontological constitution of the totality of Da-sein is grounded in temporality. Accordingly, a primordial mode of temporalizing of ecstatic temporality itself must make the ecstatic project of being in general possible. How is this mode of temporalizing of temporality to be interpreted? Is there a way leading from primordial time to the meaning of being? Does time itself reveal itself as the horizon of being?”

In the 1962 work , On Time and Being , he answers this question in the affirmative, with an addtional feature.

“Time, which is addressed as the meaning of Being in Being and Time, is itself not an answer, not a last prop for questioning, but rather itself the naming of a question. The name "time" is a preliminary word for what was later called "the truth of Being." “ Being and Time is on the way toward finding a concept of time, toward that which belongs most of all to time, in terms of which "Being" gives itself as presencing. This is accomplished on the path of the temporality of Dasein in the interpretation of Being as temporality.”

In the 1962 work, Heidegger ‘grounds' being in temporality and ‘grounds' both time and being in ‘appropriation'. Here he defines being as a letting be of presencing (unconcealing) which stands within the realm of temporality.

In my view, Derrida's eventual solution to the problem of how to avoid the Heideggerian "we," and, more generally, avoid the trap into which Heidegger fell by attempting to affiliate with or incarnate something larger than himself, consists in what Gasch6 refers to disdain­fully as "wild and private lucubrations."lo The later Derrida privatizes his philosophical thinking, and thereby breaks down the tension between ironism and theorizing. He simply drops theory - the attempt to see his predecessors steadily and whole - in favor of fantasizing about those predecessors, playing with them, giving free rein to the trains of associa­tions they produce. There is no moral to these fantasies, nor any public (pedagogic or politicat) use to be made of them;” Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity) — Joshs

And yet, if we take Rorty seriously about pragmatism, he makes the same claim. One just argues about which words or descriptions are better.

And yet, if we take Rorty seriously about pragmatism, he makes the same claim. — Jackson

My point is that Rorty is impugning to Derrida something that Rorty thinks we should do instead of philosophy, but this ‘private fantasizing and free-associating’ is not what Derrida is doing.

My point is that Rorty is impugning to Derrida something that Rorty thinks we should do instead of philosophy, but this ‘private fantasizing and free-associating’ is not what Derrida is doing. — Joshs

Derrida is a sceptic. So a lot of his arguments are about the impossibility of knowledge.

Derrida is a sceptic. So a lot of his arguments are about the impossibility of knowledge. — Jackson

Derrida is no sceptic, and he never argues that knowledge is ‘impossible’, only contextually embedded.

“For of course there is a "right track" [une 'bonne voie "] , a better way, and let i t b e said i n passing how surprised I have often been, how amused or discouraged, depending on my humor, by the use or abuse of the following argument: Since the deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the skeptic-relativist-nihilist!) is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or the unity of meaning, in intention or "meaning-to-say, " how can he demand of us that we read him with pertinence, preciSion, rigor? How can he demand that his own text be interpreted correctly? How can he accuse anyone else of having misunderstood, simplified, deformed it, etc.? In other words, how can he discuss, and discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple enough: this definition of the deconstructionist is false (that's right: false, not true) and feeble; it supposes a bad (that's right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous texts, first of all mine, which therefore must finally be read or reread.

Then perhaps it will be understood that the value of truth (and all those values associated with it) is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. And that within interpretive contexts (that is, within relations of force that are always differential-for example, socio-political-institutional-but even beyond these determinations) that are relatively stable, sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism, and pedagogy.”

Nice and very useful. Where's that Derrida extract from, Joshs?

Where's that Derrida extract from, Joshs? — Tom Storm

Me too. When quoting a text please cite the source.

↪Joshs Nice and very useful. Where's that Derrida extract from, Joshs? — Tom Storm

Limited, Inc

If meaning is conventional, it means that what you wrote has a conventional, which means an agreed meaning in your perception. If you perceive that your words have an agreed meaning, how can you say at the same time that language says nothing but nonsense? Does what you wrote have an agreed meaning or is it nonsense? — Angelo Cannata

Nicely done, but you're shifting around between different philosophies here. Heraclitus denied the value of non-scientific thought altogether. Plato, while not denying the value of 'poetical' thought was mainly busy developing formal meaning that is needed for the purposes of conducting communicative dialectic.

Following more modern science, I imagine that there is at least three kinds of thought -- formal, personal private, and deep-seated pictorial thought, expressed respectively by logical formal language, loosely structured common language, and by artistic imagination. One type of meaning cannot cover them all.

The purpose of conventional language is to find some common ground of meaning to communicate to other people. When I have pain of a kind somewhere in my body I seldom need to communicate the specifics to anyone else beyond saying that I'm in pain. To say that rivers flow is implicit, just as lakes do not. But what if I find the source of the Nile and I block it with my boot, does that river still flow?

Then you referred to an established meaning: how can we realize that it is established, since our mind is part of all the things that are subject to change? — Angelo Cannata

Those are two different things, aren't they? I agree with Plato that we have no direct access either to the outside world or to our minds. These both need to be sensed and perceived, but by different means. The expressive linguistic part of our mental functionality is small compared to our total capacity for thought. What is formal is still much smaller. Yet, this formal language is the only one that philosophy can manage.

In this context philosophy ceases to be the place where people look for conclusions, answers, solutions, formulas, that is all stuff to exercise domain, and becomes instead perspective to work, do research, open dialogue, plan comparisons, explore horizons. When we realize this, we can see that philosophy is far from beind ended, there is lot to do and to work on, and it doesn’t need to retrieve any disguised metaphysics or masked realism to gain reputation or to keep afloat. — Angelo Cannata

That is a lovely obituary.

as if literary movements didn’t already share in the metaphysics embraced by philosophical eras. — Joshs

Literature is an evolving concept. It reflects the issues that arise and complicate our lives, and it has in this "relevance" and moves with the times. This is very different from philosophy which has its world grounded in basic questions, questions that do not change with politics, ethics and social norms.