So no subject/object dualism? — Mww

I am comfortable distinguishing between persons and their encompassing world. But it seems that the world is only for or through such persons. We know nothing about a human-independent world anyway. Folks talk of round squares, to be sure. They abstract/ignore 'functioning subjectivity' within this same 'functioning subjectivity.' In other words, as living persons they fantasize about a world without living persons, but naturally in terms of how that world is given to the human nervous system -- in terms of their experience as living persons in the familiar (life-)world.

Note that the world is independent of any particular individual subject (my mother was here before me), but not of all of them at once. So my 'transcendental ego' is the entire human species.

the world is only for or through such persons. (….) the world is independent of any particular individual subject, — plaque flag

Do these not contradict each other? Or, how do these not contradict each other? Can a thing be both for and through, and independent of that for which it is for and through?

To whose transcendental ego have you favored as your own?

Do these not contradict each other? Or, how do these not contradict each other? Can a thing be both for and through, and independent of that for which it is for and through? — Mww

I use the word 'entangled.' It looks to me like a Mobius strip. What's weird about my view is its stubborn and intense anthropocentrism. Apparently I disagree with early Husserl here in a serious way. It's not about cheerleading the species but rather a fidelity to a genuine empiricism. We are humans, and if roses look red to us...then they just are bloody red. Folks can talk of round squares and 'seeing around' human seeing. We both like Kant. We both know how easy it is to talk nonsense without realizing it. And I am aware that I'm on the edge here myself, trying to juggle hatchets and alligators.

We have no possible experience of world without us. Tautological. The only world that wecan speak about meaningfully (without bluffing) is the one that we've seen with or through our sense organs and timebinding concepts --- the lifeworld.

The donut and the donut hole exist simultaneously and interdependently. This seems to me at the moment like the best way to do justice to both the subject and the object -- and to avoid the absurdities resulting from treating either as absolute or unfounded.

To whose transcendental ego have you favored as your own? — Mww

Feuerbach, following Hegel, perhaps demystifying Hegel, writes pretty well on this stuff. The main idea, beyond our sharing the same sense organs and mammalian feelings, is that we are symbolic-cultural beings. As Husserl puts it, we have categorial intuition. I see an apple as an apple, not as a blob of red. I hear my mom call, not indeterminate noise. Though I can also hear a noise as indeterminate. ' I heard the strangest noise.' We swim in conceptuality like fish in water. And we also live and move and have our being in normativity. We pay debts, keep promises, and keep our stories, try to agree with ourselves at least if not with others. We are fundamentally discursive, temporal, and normative beings. We are also profoundly social, and 'I' am largely 'we,' perhaps even primarily the 'we' of hundreds of long [not-so-]gone generations in terms of the changes they wrought on my current concept system -- the hand-me-down intelligible-discursive structure of my lifeworld even. As Heidegger puts it, the living past leaps ahead as the character of our expectant interpretation. Thrown projection.

Note that the local subject (individual person) matters (Dramaturgical Ontology), but it depends on its community, at least to become a discursive normative being, after which it might become a hermit and write ontology to be published posthumously (or thrown in the fire every morning).

What's weird about my view is its stubborn and intense anthropocentrism. — plaque flag

I’m a firm supporter of the relation between the human intellect, and the method by which the world is understood by means of it. It’s not weird at all, it’s impossible that is could be otherwise.

Feuerbach — plaque flag

YIKES!!! A Young Hegelian?!?! Schopenhaur’s favorite targets, and he t’weren’t proper gentlemanly about it, neither.

Sounds about right!

I’m a firm supporter of the relation between the human intellect, and the method by which the world is understood by means of it. It’s not weird at all, it’s impossible that is could be otherwise. — Mww

:up:

Well I shouldn't be surprised. I think we both appreciate Kant and (in my case, anyway) the Kantian 'intention' or project in general. Positivism and phenomenology are 'basically' Kantian, seems to me. Perhaps all [ critical ] philosophy is.

YIKES!!! A Young Hegelian?!?! Schopenhaur’s favorite targets, and he t’weren’t proper gentlemanly about it, neither. — Mww

Feuerbach is underrated, I think.

Positivism and phenomenology are 'basically' Kantian, seems to me. Perhaps all [ critical ] philosophy is. — plaque flag

Usually philosophy is critical of something, but Kantian philosophy on the other hand, is critical of philosophy itself. Or maybe the general metaphysical discipline specifically.

Positivism, that is plain ol’ basic positivism, re: Compte, 1844, if it actually does deny knowledge not derived from experience, cannot be Kantian.

Phenomenology…..ehhhhh, I dunno. Not sure whether, or even how, the Brentano/Husserl doctrine relates to Kantian phenomenalism. I think the doctrine of intentionality towards an object attributes more to human intelligence than it deserves, beside the fact the origin and methodological placement of Kantian phenomena is not a conscious state of the subject, whereas in Brentano/Husserl it is insofar as it is much more related to experience itself.

Disclaimer: I have but cursory familiarity with those P philosophies. Maybe just enough to get me into trouble if I say too much.

Usually philosophy is critical of something, but Kantian philosophy on the other hand, is critical of philosophy itself. Or maybe the general metaphysical discipline specifically. — Mww

Well I admit I'm speaking a high and fuzzy level of generality. But I take critical philosophy to be interested in articulating the limits of speculation, the boundary between sense and nonsense.

I actually had the later positivists (Vienna circle) in mind. I think Popper's great, and he was on its circumference, reliably sober and realistic, in my view, while they sometimes went too far.

Husserl: the tricky thing is that experience in a direct realist framework is just being. But Husserl is not simply or obviously or consistently a direct realist. (I can't help but blur him with Heidegger, too, and also keep from doing my own damned ontology.) And I'm only looking more deeply into him recently. So I don't pretend to expertise. Extremely prolific/creative guy. I can say that much.

I take critical philosophy to be interested in articulating the limits of speculation — plaque flag

Cool. I’d go as far as to take it a step further, and call it the limits of reason. But then, I suppose speculation presupposes reason, so….close enough.

Cool. I’d go as far as to take it a step further, and call it the limits of reason. But then, I suppose speculation presupposes reason, so….close enough. — Mww

:up:

Yours may be better. I also like to think about critical rationality explicating its own nature. The self-investigation of reason, which is naturally applied to this very investigation. Feedback. It's very beautiful and difficult and 'foolish.' One 'should' get rich using intelligence more productively. But I can't help it. Some people gotta play saxophone. I gotta try to do philosophy.

Feedback. It's very beautiful and difficult and 'foolish.' — plaque flag

Feedback. The charitable expression of circularity, which is indeed foolish, yet at the same time, inescapable. Using reason to investigate reason. Like….no problem there, right?

Humans. The only species known to confuse themselves and simultaneously insist they’re not.

(Sigh)

The charitable expression of circularity, which is indeed foolish, yet at the same time, inescapable. — Mww

:up:

Hermeneutic circle comes to mind. Also early Heidegger's talk on 'prescience' about coming into the circle the right way. It'd be weird maybe if first philosophy wasn't circular.

I'm afraid that explaining the existence of the world is quite beyond my capacity. — Quixodian

Sorry, I persist in giving you credit for more explanatory powers than your modest evasion would imply.

Speaking of persistence in the form of general "existence" --- in the context of Phenomena and Noumena --- I just read the chapter In Search of Reality in Charles Pinter's Mind & Cosmic Order. On the topic of Facts, he says "our words cannot refer to things in the world, because those things don't really exist in the world. They only exist when they have been individuated, separated out, and noted in mind". (Internal Realism : word to world mapping)

That would make sense to me if he had said "in my world model". But the quote sounds like the counter-intuitive Idealist notion that there is no objective "real" world out there, only a subjective "ideal" model in symbolizing minds. Hence, Idealism seems to use the word "exist" differently from the usual objective meaning. Perhaps, "to be" from God's cosmic perspective vs "being" as seen from my local point of view.

Pinter goes on to note that "commonsense wisdom holds the opposite view : it holds that facts exist in the universe regardless of whether anyone notices them . . ." That is indeed my own sense of the word "to exist" : being a thing in the territory prior to becoming noted in a map. Is that disparity between "commonsense" existence and "idealistic" existence defined in the literature of Idealism? Is there a more accurate term of being to distinguish between Noumenal existence versus Phenomenal extant?

I understand that things don't exist for me --- in my imaginary world model --- until I have named them with a label attached to a personal meaning. However, my "commonsense" model of reality includes animals of the canine species, even before any human had named that type of animated matter as "canus" or "dog". For example, I assume that there were large ruminants --- that we now call "moose" roaming the American continent long before the so-called Indians migrated into their territory, and labeled that species as "moosu" (twig-eater).

Are Idealists, like Pinter & Kastrup, saying that there was no such thing (fact) as a Moose --- in the mind-independent world --- until a classifying human mind realized its existence? Pinter says that "the mind-independent world is not naturally divided into individual parts". Yet Plato's notion of "carving nature at its joints" seems to assume that the division into parts pre-existed the carving by a mind. Am I missing something here?

Even though my Information-centric world-model is similar in some ways to Platonic Idealism, it does not deny the existence of human-mind-independent Reality. Instead, it attempts to "explain the existence of the world" in terms of shape-shifting Forms that are (exist) both real and ideal, both Phenomenal and Noumenal. Does that notion of straddling the subjective & objective worlds make any sense to you? :smile:



BEING :
In my own theorizing there is one universal principle that subsumes all others, including Consciousness : essential Existence. Among those philosophical musings, I refer to the "unit of existence" with the absolute singular term "BEING" as contrasted with the plurality of contingent "beings" and things and properties. By BEING I mean the ultimate “ground of being”, which is simply the power to exist, and the power to create thing-beings.
Note : Real & Ideal are modes of being. BEING, the power to exist, is the source & cause of Reality and Ideality. BEING is eternal, undivided and static, but once divided into Real/Ideal, it becomes our dynamic Reality.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html

"I'm afraid that explaining the existence of the world is quite beyond my capacity." — Quixodian

Speaking of persistence in the form of general "existence" --- in the context of Phenomena and Noumena --- I just read the chapter In Search of Reality in Charles Pinter's Mind & Cosmic Order. On the topic of Facts, he says "our words cannot refer to things in the world, because those things don't really exist in the world. They only exist when they have been individuated, separated out, and noted in mind". (Internal Realism : word to world mapping) --- Gnomon

As I continued to read the Facts and Information chapter, I began to see how Pinter was using the term "exist" in his idealistic worldview. First, he makes the same differentiation as I do, between Shannon's use of "information" --- defining the physical carrier instead of the metaphysical content of a message --- and the traditional meaning of the word as "informative" (meaningful) content. He says "wherever there is some variation or modulation of a physical medium, there is potential information". {my bold} Then he further distinguishes the physical carrier (e.g. energy pulses) from the metaphysical content (meaning). "We shall regard information as a non-material 'something' "

Pinter goes on to define "Form" (the root of information) in terms of Structure : "aspects of an object that are accessible only to observers able to see in Gestalts". That is, to separate the meaningful Pattern from the noisy foggy background. Next comes the introduction of substance/property dualism : "every fact consists of two separate pieces of reality". One piece is A> the general material-world background --- including the not yet discerned Object --- and B> the specific logical structure (Form) that the observer interprets as meaningful to the Self.

Further down, he notes that things "outside the view of any sentient observer are latent and unrealized. They become actualized when living observers individuate them by assigning features and structure to them, and perceiving them as wholes". {my bold} I would prefer to substitute "conceiving" as the interpretation of parts into wholes (Gestalt images). "Objects do not exist outside the purview of minds" That is not a universal Ontology, but a personal meaning of Being.

Next, he makes the assertion that I found counter-intuitive : "If this [gestalt] information is absent from the universe, then the object does not exist" {my bracket} It does not exist for the viewer until defined (from meaningless background) by an act of conception. The brain perceives raw data, which the mind conceives into personally meaningful Gestalts (words). "To put it another way, the information which brings an object or fact out of the background in which it is immersed . . ."

As I understand his view of contingent "existence", clumps of matter (e.g. stars) only exist as a noisy meaningless background, but the concept of a star (Gestalt object) comes into existence when an observing sentient Mind defines it as a particular thing. An object may have potential Form when unobserved, but it only takes on actual formal Meaning in the mind of a Subject.

"Prior to the existence of conscious awareness, there were physical processes, but they were virtual [potential] and not actual because they were not impressed on any aware observer". Of course, that statement of fact is true only if you ignore the contribution of Berkeley's universal Observer. But that outside awareness may be the only way to "explain the existence of the world", as defined against the background of nothingness. :smile:


A Precis of Enformationism :
"This is a powerful and far-reaching proposal. What it claims is that all of reality is divided into two very different branches. There is the purely material aspect of reality which encompasses matter and energy playing by the rules of physics. In addition, there is information --- or rather knowledge --- which is immaterial . . . ." ----Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order
Note 1 --- BothAnd dualism = material & immaterial exist, but in different forms : substance + property
Note 2 --- Monistic Existence = both Physical and Metaphysical = universal Ontology
Note 3 --- The non-traditional vocabulary & counter-intuitive nature of this BothAnd worldview makes it difficult to convey without lots of parenthetical diversions.

DO YOU PERCEIVE A CAMOUFLAGE BACKGROUND OR CONCEIVE A "DAZZLE" OF ZEBRAS ?