My point was only that it is possible to think without symbolic language but in images, and that such thinking is not a "shapeless and indistinct mass". — Janus
Every new observation and imaginationincreases the complexity of the experience and understanding of the human world. Of course I am not denying that the young are inducted into this human world in part at least by symbolic language. — Janus
I think non-linguistic thinking is much more than a mere "footnote". — Janus
We need not, as far as I can see, insist on something 'internal,' for its language that gives us this distinction in the first place. — green flag
Hi. I don't think you are grasping my point. — green flag
Definition is a blurry-go-round. — green flag
There is nothing that staples this system of references to something outside it. — green flag
The system of signs that can only mean their differences from one another floats rootless above an abyss. — green flag
saying something like 'being is countable' or 'being is time' is just leaping from stone to stone. — green flag
saying something like 'being is countable' or 'being is time' is just leaping from stone to stone. — green flag
you place a measure of trust and hope in language to successfully communicate. — ucarr
If semiotics is hopelessly self-referential, thus leading inevitably to empty word-games, then why is no one shutting down the global publishing industry? — ucarr
I appreciate your persistence with me as I work to understand subtleties of language and meaning you're trying to communicate. — ucarr
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...
The prejudicial character of understanding means that, whenever we understand, we are necessarily 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.
How does language refer ? — green flag
To me the beauty of this is that we only really get to know ourselves by trying to know others. — green flag
Firstly, do you embrace or refute Descartes' ghost-in-the-machine substance duality, with its bifurcation of mind/body? Language signification is deeply embedded within this interweave, I believe.
I'm not ready to make comprehensive declarations just now, however, language-as-mind-games-hovering-over-an-abyss sounds to me like thinking rooted in Descartes' substance duality. — ucarr
The duet of intelligibility-meets-comprehending-sentience suggests to me something intriguing along the lines of entanglement, with language playing a central role in the mix. — ucarr
That's what the average monkey is still spending a lot of time doing, instead of boarding jet planes to various continents thereafter entering elevators to offices in celestial climes. — ucarr
P.S. Do you have a refutation of my claim: being-ness is an insuperable medium. It's the lynchpin of my application of sets. Its refutation might be the kill shot. — ucarr
Without recognition there would be no continuity of experience. Without memory there could be no recognition. The condition known as "anterograde amnesia" attests to this.So memory is necessary, if not sufficient it seems; which leaves me wondering what are the other factors you have in mind. The world itself, with its similarities and differences? — Janus
...definition is artificial in the first place. It's a creative attempt to sketch the common roles of words in actual conversation. As I see it, it is not like math where definitions essentially create their objects. Formal systems are so nice because we escape from our own complexity when we play with them. — green flag
Memory is an interesting phenomenon. I was referring to something that could be called an objective memory or external memory. This consists in various indications or traces that has been left in the "outer" world. Through these indications we can try to re-member, so to speak, various structural wholes and "adapt" ourselves into them. It can happen that we recognize ourselves in these already existing signs and their structures! — waarala
Do you think that when we drive over a bridge spanning a body of water, say, The Golden Gate Bridge, we're trusting an application of math language that is an attempt to define numbers within empirical experience? — ucarr
This work by you on my behalf is a very valuable service and I'm now thanking you for it. More power to you in your interactions with others. — ucarr
Are you referring to significant places or objects that may evoke strong associations and potent meanings due to their having being integral to important life events, or something else? — Janus
https://emersoncentral.com/ebook/Spiritual-Laws.pdfA man's genius, the quality that differences him from every other, the susceptibility to one class of influences, the selection of what is fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit, determines for him the character of the universe. A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him, wherever he goes.
He takes only his own out of the multiplicity that sweeps and circles round him. He is like one of those booms which are set out from the shore on rivers to catch drift-wood, or like the loadstone amongst splinters of steel. Those facts, words, persons, which dwell in his memory without his being able to say why, remain, because they have a relation to him not less real for being as yet unapprehended. They are symbols of value to him, as they can interpret parts of his consciousness which he would vainly seek words for in the conventional images of books and other minds. What attracts my attention shall have it, as I will go to the man who knocks at my door, whilst a thousand persons, as worthy, go by it, to
whom I give no regard.
...
No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however near to his eyes is the object. A chemist may tell his most precious secrets to a carpenter, and he shall be never the wiser, — the secrets he would not utter to a chemist for an estate. God screens us evermore from premature ideas. Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream. — Emerson
I'm listening to Heidegger in Ruins. It's interesting to learn that he's become something of a hero among far-right groups in Europe — Ciceronianus
It is good that the case against Heidegger has been made persuasively, but his Nazi sympathies and antisemitism have been known for a long time. It is, however, now more difficult for his apologists to separate the man from his philosophy. — Fooloso4
Apart from the political aspect, the question is, is there any evidence
that such readings get the philosophy right? — Joshs
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