Well, yes and no - we are local, but we can aspire towards the universal. It's just that we can never totally reach it. To be human means to be subjective and limited, but there are great variations in how subjective and how limited. — hwyl
I just think that every philosophical enquiry should start from history, from the narrative of how these particular meanings and concepts emerged in a particular place and in a particular continuum of slow time. — hwyl
The problem of the concept of universal truth is that it contradicts itself: if a truth is universal, it must be able to face any consideration and, particularly, the consideration that we humans are unable to think without using our brain. This means that we are unable to think of the concept of universal truth without using our brain. Since any concept of universal truth is necessarily dependent on our brain, it cannot be universal, because our brain doesn’t seem so universal. The interesting thing is that this conclusion comes exactly from the premise that some universal truth exists. So, assuming that universal truths exists, brings us to the conclusion that universal truths do not exist. If universal truths exist, then they don’t exist. That’s the contradiction. — Angelo
The scientists don't seem to be able to formulate one single coherent thought — hwyl
Well, I'm a Humean when it comes to the possibly universal truth of you having woken at 8am today. You might be totally mistaken. You might not even be there though I think it is pretty likely that both things are sensibly true, you probably really did wake at 8am and you really most probably do exist. — hwyl
I think the best competitors for being universally true are logical propositions. But then again I just might imagine that a logical proposition is sound, as it is just my limited brain that tells me that it is universally true. It's not really within the realm of reasonable suspicion but it is within the realm of suspicion. — hwyl
If we want to make use of a real radical consideration of subjectivity, each of us must consider his own subjectivity in the “here and now” of the moment when he is thinking. This is the true consideration of subjectivity, that is able to demolish any idea of truth, be it universal or not. If I take into consideration my subjectivity here and now, I realize immediately that I have no way to give any kind of guarantee about what I am thinking of, what I am talking about. — Angelo
Objective reasonings give us the illusion of being working, just because we forget ourselves in the moment we describe them.
This might be used as an argument against my conclusion about the contradiction I showed in my preceding message: since I can’t guarantee the correcteness of what I said, I can’t be sure that what I described was really a contradiction. But this makes me think that other people must be in the same condition: how can they guarantee that their reasoning is free from errors? How can they be less uncertain than me? — Angelo
What is important now is that I ended up in questions, not in statements. Who will be able to put a stop to our questioning, our doubting?
Relativism and scepticism can be attacked if they are considered as sources of statements: “nothing is absolute”, “nothing can be known”. But I think that their real nature is questioning, doubting, without giving nor suggesting any answer. — Angelo
1) At the beginning they trust memory and logic;
2) they just apply logic
3) and they discover that the application of logic demolishes trust in memory and, as a consequence, in logic as well;
4) then they become skeptic.
What is demolished by the application of logic is the initial trust on memory and logic, because this initial trust is the necessary base that makes possible the conclusion. — Angelo
I think that you reach the conclusion that skepticism is self-refuting because you consider the question as everything happening in the same instant, like in a photo, while instead it is a sequence of reasoning steps that happen over time, by stages, like a film. — Angelo
Philosophy, traditionally conceived, is love of wisdom, and wisdom, traditionally conceived, involves knowledge, especially knowledge of important truths that are fundamental to understanding reality and human life — Noisy Calf
the belief in the principle of non-contradiction is indispensable because, if I deny it, then all my other beliefs may be true and false at the same time, in which case I can't really believe anything. — Noisy Calf
So, your love of truth is subordinate to your need to believe something.
How can you think of finding truth if there are things that you exclude from discussion?
It’s like saying: I’ve lost my keys, let’s look everywhere to find them, but, please, don’t look in that room. What if the keys are precisely in that room? — Angelo
Perhaps "the inherent haziness of reality" is time, specifically futurity (à la Bergson's la durée).I had this strange thought a coupla days ago. I'm myopic, both literally and figuratively, and without my glasses, I only see extremely blurred images. Quite indubitably the fact that the images I see when I don my spectacles become clear is conclusive proof that the problem or fault lies with my eyes, me.
However, it occurred to me that if reality itself were fuzzy, no matter how much I improve my vision, the image will forever remain grainy like old photographs or, in this digital age, pixelated.
To cut to the chase, that "scientists don't seem to be able to formulate one single coherent thought" maybe an indication of the inherent haziness of reality. Just saying... — TheMadFool
I have been fascinated about literary attempts at describing the reality (or as I put it, our experience of being in the world) - like the great modernists Joyce and Woolf, both tried (among many other things) to put our everyday experience, the texture of if, the internal and the external, into language. Quite magnificently but it is still clearly obvious fiction, obvious art. Reality is elusive, the moment is: we control the past and the future by internal stories and small fictions but never really are very consciously in the present, we rarely really just are. Maybe sometimes in serious pain or maybe at the moment of orgasm - but then those moments are pretty empty, not having much meaning in themselves. — hwyl
Anyhow, my attitude still remains: philosophy is rather frustrating and its sub specie aeternitatis hubris breathtaking. Maybe it's worthwhile to try the impossible, but literature and history are to me more profound and much more interesting, and more comprehensive fields. — hwyl
Maybe just imagine philosophers as protagonists in Greek tragedies, desperate to fend off the gods with the final hieroglyphic. — igjugarjuk
Perhaps we never just 'are,' because 'we' are ethical entities ('fictions') with serious work to do. To be an 'I' is to be responsible for a past and and future, smeared out over the present between memory and fear, sins and promises. 'I am the first mammal to make plans.'
I was on a Joyce kick recently, and Ulysses is great. The stuff that goes through our minds, flowing flowing flowing. — igjugarjuk
Well, I'm just glad that literature and poetry are my obsessions and not philosophy :) — hwyl
probably almost twice Nietzche and three times Heidegger. — hwyl
Joyce was huge, so I mostly agree. But Nietzsche has golden moments that make him as big as anybody. — igjugarjuk
I'm obsessed with all of them, veering especially between philosophy and prose. Not long ago I read Joyce's bio, studied Ulysses, and continued plugging away at FW, largely reading books about it, which means enjoying fragments in the context of interpretation. I've composed various fragments in that style myself. As I see it, some of the more exciting philosophers just brought in a killer new metaphor. So it's nonfictional in its seriousness but literary in its method. — igjugarjuk
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