And if we're not a singular, simple subject, but a bundle — Moliere

Despite our massive 'internal' complexity, I think we are singular as discursive subjects. At least in practical life we are. A philosophy forum might give each member two different avatars, expecting them to diverge. I do think Shakespeare, for instance, proves that we are internally multiple. [ I guess I should have started with my agreement, in retrospect. ]

Oh no, I hope I don't mix in with the pragmatists. I've never gone down that path! :D Even at my most Marxist I still believe that sentences can be true in a manner that doesn't reduce to the useful, and I believe the party does not know best on truth, because it depends too much on circumstances. You can't escape judgment.

Maybe it's just the word "rationality" that I'm taking umbrage to because it's frequently understood as something opposed to the passions, in the Enlightenment sense. I think we need to recognize how much we, as human beings, are not the Enlightenment's conception of Man as Rational Decider. Which doesn't mean, for me at least, that we should go back to the old ways. I think it's too late for that -- the future is all there is when it comes to decisions. But while we might at first want to be God, I think that our collective nature makes it such that becoming God isn't possible without also destroying that foundation of trust and connection with others. (the birth of class)

Also I don't think we can cast rationality aside. I'd say the sine qua non of philosophy is the appeal to the rational.

So, like I said, I think we agree on a lot. I'm just picking on the things we disagree on.

Despite our massive 'internal' complexity, I think we are singular as discursive subjects. At least in a practical life we are. A philosophy forum might give each member two different avatars, expecting them to diverge. I do think Shakespeare, for instance, proves that we are internally multiple. [ I guess I should have started with my agreement, in retrospect. ] — plaque flag

Again I think we're pretty close here. I think we're singular when we are healthy, but that we are often unhealthy. And that could only happen if we are not simple, ala Descartes' subject.

But I'm not sure how to put it. Shakespeare works wonderfully, but most wouldn't listen to theatrical sorts in a philosophical space -- that's just mere art and all that.

.

I think we need to recognize how much we, as human beings, are not the Enlightenment's conception of Man as Rational Decider. — Moliere

I can definitely agree that we are far more than merely conceptual beings.

Looking around the world today, I'd be tempted to say we are mostly crazy, but there is relatively robust tradition of relative individual freedom which I can't or at least shouldn't take for granted.

Looking around the world today, I'd be tempted to say we are mostly crazy, but there is relatively robust tradition of relative individual freedom which I can't or at least shouldn't take for granted. — plaque flag

I agree with that

I've generally spoken in favor of the academy. I wouldn't have the understandings I do today without having gone. And I wouldn't be able to perceive the world as crazy unless I happened across these paths.

Shakespeare works wonderfully, but most wouldn't listen to theatrical sorts in a philosophical space -- that's just mere art and all that. — Moliere

Perhaps we agree that such a rejection is not logically justified. The world is given to and through entire personalities. I'm aware of no evidence to the contrary. This makes personality a fundamental aspect of reality. But as you hint, it sounds too tenderminded and messy for some.

I've generally spoken in favor of the academy. I wouldn't have the understandings I do today without having gone. And I wouldn't be able to perceive the world as crazy unless I happened across these paths. — Moliere

I depend on professors mostly for my translations of German philosophy, so the universities are not totally rotted out (I mostly joke, but I don't love stories of professors being hounded out of 'em for thinking.) But I had in mind the larger culture of a free society, to the degree that it's not rotted out by tribal fear and hatred.

There's something beautiful and difficult about being an individual --our strange mission in a freeish rational society. Do you know the song Nutshell by Alice in Chains ? Nice ambivalence.

video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AzCj0b4MUU

lyrics:
https://genius.com/Alice-in-chains-nutshell-lyrics

I depend on professors mostly for my translations of German philosophy, so the universities are totally rotted out (I mostly joke, but I don't love stories of professors hounded out.) But I had in mind the larger culture of a free society, to the degree that it's not rotted out by tribal fear and hatred. — plaque flag

Ah, sorry. (tempted to make a pun on "red" and "rot", since "red" is "rot" in German, and I'm a commie)

There's something beautiful and difficult about being an individual --our strange mission in a freeish rational society. Do you know the song Nutshell by Alice in Chains ? Nice ambivalence.

video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AzCj0b4MUU

lyrics:
https://genius.com/Alice-in-chains-nutshell-lyrics — plaque flag

Yup! I heard it many times on the radio in my youth. Though I did not listen to the lyrics.

I agree that it's difficult to be an individual when your individuality goes against the current. And in a free society that ought not be the case. Which is, I think at least, the temptation of foundationalism -- if you're against everything, if you feel you know, if you want something other than what is then how else to pursue that than through a foundationalist philosophy? Or through something like a Marxist philosophy which reduces everything to some other conflict you're interested in?

I don't think you can. And I'd say that it's even a rational move to posit something otherwise, saying "this is rational!" -- after all I believe in more than one rationality, so I have no argument against inventing another one. In fact I believe we ought explore multiple rationalities, because we don't know what the future holds and so we do not know what thoughts will help us most as things change.

Overall our disagreement is very minor, I think though. I just noticed how no one else was picking at this good post, so threw in my 2 cents hoping to make it happen.

My hope is to fire up some conversational research. Does this OP make sense ?
Do you see errors in my reasoning ? — plaque flag

I've read this a couple of times and can make very little sense of what you're trying to say. You throw around some philosophical terms but that's about it. Why people think that have to talk like this is beyond me. When I write philosophically I try my best to keep it simple, I don't always succeed, but that's my goal.

Conditions for the possibility of critical discussion cannot be rationally challenged without performative contradiction. — plaque flag

What are you trying to say here? What does this statement even mean? It seems to be open to a variety of interpretations. I'm not going to list all of the problematic statements, but there are quite a few.

As for reasoning, I see very little clear reasoning.

Glad to have you aboard, @Sam26 -- criticism is the spark of life in these conversations.

Also given my warm responses I wanted to pipe up. Though feel free to correct me @plaque flag

abstract

Conditions for the possibility of critical discussion cannot be rationally challenged without performative contradiction. Such conditions are therefore not only a sturdy foundation for further inquiry but ontologically axiomatic. Such conditions include a shared world one can be wrong about in a shared language. Another such condition is the participants willingly binding themselves to the coherence and justification of their claims, which is to say to being philosophers and not just daydreamers or mystics. — plaque flag

Let's say "critical" means "rational" in the first sentence. If you challenge rationality on rational grounds then you have to find a way to not undercut yourself. Some skeptics have managed, or think they have managed, but the challenge here is to say that skeptics are using the resources of rationality without acknowledging it.

explication

I take ontology in in this context to be “critical” or “scientific” in its intention, as opposed to relatively irresponsible myth-making. Granted that we put on the heroic robes of the “scientific” (critical) philosopher, as opposed to the mystic who denigrates dialectic as a means to truth, what have we already assumed in so doing ? How do these assumptions affect the project of ontology ? As its enabling conditions, they must be included.

Any other ontological thesis depends on the conditions for the possibility of ontology, so the ontologist is justified in putting ontology itself at the center of reality –-- and not on the outside peeping in. The same kind of realization is intended in “theology itself is ‘God.’” My position might be called 'neorationalism.' I suggest that our normative conceptuality is irreducible. A critique of psychologism is implied here, which might be developed in the thread.

I think this states that ontology can only be pursued on a higher ground than myth. "higher ground" would be something like taking the Bible as literal truth versus taking the Origen of the Species as literal truth -- people do make a distinction there, in practice. Darwin is better than the Bible when we think about what's literally true.

I really don't mind be challenged in good faith, but you are saying at the same time (1) that you don't understand me and (2) that my reasoning is bad. Your entrance is hilariously boorish. I'm not exactly intimidated by your critique just yet.

skeptics are using the resources of rationality without acknowledging it. — Moliere

:up:

So I'd call them (from this sketched position anyway) pseudo-skeptics who don't understand themselves. The 'true' skeptic doesn't show up or at least refrains from projecting claims about what others can know. Epistemological claims are implicitly ontological claims, typically about the 'universal' subject. One inspiration for my critique here is a quasi-Kantian pose that pretends to humility but makes a massive claim on what others can rationally hope to know.

Which is, I think at least, the temptation of foundationalism -- if you're against everything, if you feel you know, if you want something other than what is then how else to pursue that than through a foundationalist philosophy? Or through something like a Marxist philosophy which reduces everything to some other conflict you're interested in? — Moliere

I completely understand the temptation to psychologize foundationalism in general, and I tend to find something plausible in such moves. But the psychological sword is sharp on both sides, and the 'anarchist' is just as easily 'diagnosed.' Psychological claims have to be justified, right ?

FWIW, what interests me about this foundational project is its radical minimalism. I want nothing more than what's already implicit in the idea of autonomous-critical thought. What is the absolutely minimal constraint on 'scientific' ontology ? What conditions make it intelligible, coherent ? So that any rational challenge of it misunderstands itself ?

In fact I believe we ought explore multiple rationalities, because we don't know what the future holds and so we do not know what thoughts will help us most as things change. — Moliere

To me that's already in the framework. What we are doing right now is in that framework. It's cooperatively adversarial and the reverse, as if the community was somehow shrewd enough to run a different 'logic' in every individual on its existential-discursive stage.

I completely understand the temptation to psychologize foundationalism in general, and I tend to find something plausible in such moves. But the psychological sword is sharp on both sides, and the 'anarchist' is just as easily 'diagnosed. — plaque flag

Heh. Where do you think my inspiration comes from? This is a diagnosis of the anarchist! :D (which isn't the same thing as a rejection, from me at least) -- where "radical", as in "root" serves as a kind of foundationalism.

FWIW, what interests me about this foundational project is its radical minimalism. I want nothing more than what's already implicit in the idea of autonomous-critical thought. What is the absolutely minimal constraint on 'scientific' ontology ? What conditions make it intelligible, coherent ? So that any rational challenge of it misunderstands itself ? — plaque flag

Fair. I like these questions. I think it's the last question is all I'm recalcitrant about, though for reasons already stated.

So I'd call them (from this sketched position anyway) pseudo-skeptics who don't understand themselves. The 'true' skeptic doesn't show up or at least refrains from projecting claims about what others can know. Epistemological claims are implicitly ontological claims, typically about the 'universal' subject. One inspiration for my critique here is a quasi-Kantian pose that pretends to humility but makes a massive claim on what others can rationally hope to know. — plaque flag

That I agree with. With Kant I know exactly what he meant by "metaphysics", but that's because he spent the time to spell it out. It took quite a few words to be able to rationally defend the belief that we cannot know such things, and many people even disagree with him on rational grounds after the fact in spite of all that effort.

But it's quasi-Kantian to pretend to humility while claiming everyone can only go this far. You have to write a book like the CPR to do that! :D Or at least spell out just what is meant by the limit and how it applies to not just yourself, but everyone.

What still attracts me to the Kantian limit on reason is Hegel's philosophy, which I think is a mess -- it's an interesting mess! But a mess. If we believe we can step outside of the limit of reason then you get the science of logic which is an utterly ridiculous book to me because it pretends to universality while clearly expressing European philosophical virtues. But there is a certain amount of gaminess to all this: like these imagined positions are attempting to undermine one another from the perspective of a minimal and necessary system but are just speaking past one another (after all, no Hegel, no Marx -- so there's value to Hegel's philosophy for me in spite of my protestations).

Which I think is what I like about the idea of a leaping off point, or a return to home, rather than a foundation. It acknowledges we have to start somewhere, that we all started somewhere, and for a coherent philosophy usually we'll return home to it (or find another home). And we have the aesthetic values of parsimony, elegance, and simplicity which can serve as a judgment of a home.

So I guess the perspective I'm coming from, to answer your original question, is the historical one. As a reader of philosophy we can compare and contrast philosophers. In so doing we see that different philosophers start from different places, some of which some of them call foundations. But the buildings they build, and the foundations they start from, are different from one another. It's this perspective which allows us to compare rationalities -- as a reader of philosophy.

To me that's already in the framework. What we are doing right now is in that framework. It's cooperatively adversarial and the reverse, as if the community was somehow shrewd enough to run a different 'logic' in every individual on its existential-discursive stage. — plaque flag

Cool :).

What still attracts me to the Kantian limit on reason is Hegel's philosophy, which I think is a mess -- it's an interesting mess! But a mess. — Moliere

Hegel is a beast. I think I've always had to settle for misreadings of him that make him more coherent by throwing some of him away. At the moment, I suggest interpreting him as intensifying Kant's project. We can interpret him as a direct realist who grasped the meaninglessness of talk about entities which are completely disconnected from other entities and the necessary centrality of the storytelling detective in the detective story and all this implies. 'Absolute knowledge' is (from this POV) just a collapse of indirect realism at a certain level of inquiry's self-explication. The key theme is us realizing what we are already doing. What we have and live in is 'just' our autonomous-rational-critical sensemaking in this world together. The 'other side' of this sensemaking (postulated untouchable-always-filtered Reality. ---with an Official (?) conceptual articulation) is a token within that adventurous self-unfolding sensemaking --- eventually seen as a kind of phlogiston. But this doesn't close off a return to 'alienated' mysticism and other flights from autonomy.

And we have the aesthetic values of parsimony, elegance, and simplicity which can serve as a judgment of a home. — Moliere

:up:
This touches on the marriage of art and science or the art that's already in science.

Conditions for the possibility of critical discussion cannot be rationally challenged without performative contradiction. — plaque flag

As the proverbial Irishman says on being asked for directions to - anywhere, really, "If I were you, I wouldn't start from here."

Critical discussion is all performative contradiction. Or to put it contrariwise, a philosopher is one who has become lost in language, and is trying to argue his way back to reality.

Critical discussion is all performative contradiction. Or to put it contrariwise, a philosopher is one who has become lost in language, and is trying to argue his way back to reality. — unenlightened

As much as I enjoy agreeing with you, I can only make sense of this by understanding 'philosopher' as 'failed philosopher.' And with you speaking as 'successful [anti-]philosopher.'

I reckon I'm a semantic structuralist, so to me it's not so much the magic word 'philosopher' as the role of the 'fundamental' truth teller. For instance, a philosopher is one who has become lost in language, and is trying to argue his way back to reality is very much a 'fundamental' claim.

How does it avoid being the same kind of lostness in language it points out ?

I suggest that such avoidance is partially achieved by presenting/grasping it ironically --as a kind of playful speech act that calls the theorist home for supper. The concept of bread is not as good with soup as actual bread. Conceptuality is merely one 'aspect' or 'dimension' of the world.

How does it avoid being the same kind of lostness in language it points out ? — plaque flag

By being oracular, or poetic. Rationally, one cannot be lost in language or be anywhere else than in the real world. Therefore there is no problem in the first place of 'ontology'. It's all 'engine idling'.

a kind of playful speech act that calls the theorist home for supper. — plaque flag

That was my first response, self-censored; Dinner realism, I eat therefore I am, and try not to eat the menu.

Am I eating the menu here?

By being oracular, or poetic. — unenlightened

:up:

Sure, but I'd say metaphysics has always been oracular and poetic, as discussed in Derrida's White Mythology. As I put Popper putting it, science is a second order oracular tradition that critically synthesizes a better and better Tale.

Therefore there is no problem in the first place of 'ontology'. It's all 'engine idling'. — unenlightened

On some 'existential level,' I probably agree with you. But this is very close to a pragmatism that just identifies with truth with coping.

You say that :

a philosopher is one who has become lost in language, and is trying to argue his way back to reality. — unenlightened

This seems to assume that Reality exists independently of what we think about it, but surely we largely live in a web of our own historically generated conceptuality. I'd say that we actually enrich this web with metacognition (talking about talking about talking) that potentially helps us overcome a sense of alienation --- getting back to Reality in the sense of escaping the fear that Reality is hidden from us.

That was my first response, self-censored; Dinner realism, I eat therefore I am, and try not to eat the menu.

Am I eating the menu here? — unenlightened

I don't know, but I like the phrase. I think we can at least strongly agree that it ain't all concepts out there. Though we need concepts to say so.

What are you referring to when you talk about "rationality" and "logic"?

You said in another thread:

I think we 'have' to separate logic in its ideal / normative sense from logic as a mere description of our fallible often illogical (in a normative sense) thinking process. I'd say that truly logical thinking ought to compel us. — plaque flag

So, I'll add, can you explain what "truly logical thinking" refers to?

This seems to assume that Reality exists independently of what we think about it, — plaque flag

Yes, I think that looks like a foundational truth, sorry about that. And that which only exists dependent on what we think, I shall call a dream, a myth, an idea, or an image.

And that which only exists dependent on what we think, I shall call a dream, a myth, an idea, or an image. — unenlightened

:up:

Yes. So we have to avoid both typical mistakes --- magical independent object and magical independent subject. The world is not our dream, for we are flesh in the world, or 'subjectivity' could have no sense in our talk. But we only know our world, strangely, through this same flesh.

Let me add that I know such ontological niceties aren't primarily what flesh needs. But I'm reluctant to join the pragmatists in their collapse of truth and science into worldly utility. So think ontology is (or can be) 'scientific' in its intention. Like some of Cantor's work maybe, coherent and beautiful and what's for again ?

Hegel is a beast. I think I've always had to settle for misreadings of him that make him more coherent by throwing some of him away. — plaque flag

I wouldn't go that far. I think the reason Hegel's philosophy is a mess is because it's hard to say what a misreading of him even is. I've read fascists, anti-colonial communists, and liberals who all claim Hegel as their philosophical base. So clearly there's something inspirational in there for people -- but where you can go with the ideas is a very wide range of possibilities.

There are gross misreadings, of course, but making him coherent is part of what makes the journey with Hegel's philosophy what it is. So I wouldn't call it a misreading as much as one of the readings Hegel can inspire. (which is why I think his philosophy is an interesting mess)

At the moment, I suggest interpreting him as intensifying Kant's project. We can interpret him as a direct realist who grasped the meaninglessness of talk about entities which are completely disconnected from other entities and the necessary centrality of the storytelling detective in the detective story and all this implies. 'Absolute knowledge' is (from this POV) just a collapse of indirect realism at a certain level of inquiry's self-explication. The key theme is us realizing what we are already doing. What we have and live in is 'just' our autonomous-rational-critical sensemaking in this world together. The 'other side' of this sensemaking (postulated untouchable-always-filtered Reality. ---with an Official (?) conceptual articulation) is a token within that adventurous self-unfolding sensemaking --- eventually seen as a kind of phlogiston. But this doesn't close off a return to 'alienated' mysticism and other flights from autonomy.

I feel like he's ignoring Kant's project in order to do his own thing :D -- but it's an interesting thing so I don't mind. A messy interesting thing, but an interesting thing.

Human autonomy is where they agree, but human reason is where they disagree. This is important for the thesis that there is more than one rationality.

One thing that I find favorable about Hegel is he at least does not settle for a transcendental argument. He makes up his own way of reasoning to counter the transcendental move, and it revolves around the idea that thinking and the world are in motion together which is exactly the sort of thing you'd have to argue to undermine faith in transcendental structures: if even Logic and its categories are not forever-and-always concepts that become baptized in space and time through the Transcendental Subject -- but instead are time-bound then the categories are also subject to change just as the world and its objects are, and then we have a response to "If X necessarily Y" which is "not necessarily Y, possibly Y is false at such and such time". There is nothing to explain about a priori synthetic knowledge because there is no a priori -- rather there is the dialectic which the phenomenologist is able to see and explicate through training in philosophy.

Basically they disagree on the operations of logic with respect to the real, which I'd claim is a divergence in rationalities -- you can pick one or the other, and even both, but our understanding of the rationalities isn't derived from a super-rationality as much as it's our critical engagement with texts that allows us to see difference through comparison.

I wouldn't go that far. I think the reason Hegel's philosophy is a mess is because it's hard to say what a misreading of him even is. I've read fascists, anti-colonial communists, and liberals who all claim Hegel as their philosophical base. So clearly there's something inspirational in there for people -- but where you can go with the ideas is a very wide range of possibilities. — Moliere

Hey now. That doesn't sound like disagreement. At least I meant to make clear that the real Hegel's authorial intention is even a fiction perhaps (Derrida, Foucault,...). I think we both grant the massive suggestiveness of his work. Let me share a passage full of organ music.

The true content of romantic art is absolute inwardness, and its corresponding form is spiritual subjectivity with its grasp of its independence and freedom. This inherently infinite and absolutely universal content is the absolute negation of everything particular, the simple unity with itself which has dissipated all external relations, all processes of nature and their periodicity of birth, passing away, and rebirth, all the restrictedness in spiritual existence, and dissolved all particular gods into a pure and infinite self-identity. In this Pantheon all the gods are dethroned, the flame of subjectivity has destroyed them, and instead of plastic polytheism art knows now only one God, one spirit, one absolute independence which, as the absolute knowing and willing of itself, remains in free unity with itself and no longer falls apart into those particular characters and functions whose one and only cohesion was due to the compulsion of a dark necessity.

Yet absolute subjectivity as such would elude art and be accessible to thinking alone if, in order to be actual subjectivity in correspondence with its essence, it did not also proceed into external existence ... the Absolute does not turn out to be the one jealous God who merely cancels nature and finite human existence without shaping himself there in appearance as actual divine subjectivity; on the contrary, the true Absolute reveals itself and thereby gains an aspect in virtue of which it can be apprehended and represented by art.

But the determinate being of God is not the natural and sensuous as such but the sensuous elevated to non-sensuousness, to spiritual subjectivity which instead of losing in its external appearance the certainty of itself as the Absolute, only acquires precisely through its embodiment a present actual certainty of itself. God in his truth is therefore no bare ideal generated by imagination; on the contrary, he puts himself into the very heart of the finitude and external contingency of existence, and yet knows himself there as a divine subject who remains infinite in himself and makes this infinity explicit to himself. — Hegel

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/part2-section3.htm#s1

In my view, he's saying that we are fucking God.Or we are baby potential God waking up and remembering we are God, overcoming our dizzy alienation/projection as emphasized by Feuerbach. Crucially we are flesh, and in that sense more Jesus than God -- but Jesus is a humanist superman, and God is maybe the software riding our bones, our timebinding conceptuality independent of any particular host but never of all of them.

Brandom also interprets Hegel as grasping our escape from (loss of) nonhuman authority and trying to address how such autonomous creatures could generate their own norms which are nevertheless binding. Neurath's boat, I think : reason is a self-challenging self-editing authority.

if even Logic and its categories are not forever-and-always concepts that become baptized in space and time through the Transcendental Subject -- but instead are time-bound then the categories are also subject to change just as the world and its objects are — Moliere

:up:
Braver features Hegel as just this kind of liquifier of Kant's transcendental subject. He then has Heidegger push it even farther, leaving out any kind of goal for history.

There is nothing to explain about a priori synthetic knowledge because there is no a priori -- rather there is the dialectic which the phenomenologist is able to see and explicate through training in philosophy. — Moliere

This can only be taken so far without performative contradiction. In fact, Braver's A Thing of This World largely inspired my contemplation of exactly how far such relativisms could be taken.

The matrix itself must be atemporal. The denial of an aprior knowledge/structure is given as an apriori knowledge/structure. The earnest 'skeptic' is always (tacitly at least) an ontologist describing the unchanging 'Matrix' of our experience. Or so I claim (well, I strongly suspect it....)