The defining element of our mind is its possession of a sensible intuition….. — Moliere
I was wonderin’…..like…..why should we attribute to our minds a defining element given from our senses, when it is certain other animals have senses?
If we grant other animals have senses, we cannot immediately deny they have sensible intuitions of some kind. It would appear some form of sensible intuition is merely one element for any animal with sensory apparatus, hence not so defining an element for just our human mind. — Mww
So….what is a defining element of a human mind, implying that which belongs to no other animal, insofar as none of them offer any indication they possess it.
Without a comprehensive catalogue of what and how many elements there are in a human mind, it defies possibility for picking out a defining element. And if possibility is defied, what chance does certainty have? As well, being human, how to alleviate the privileging associated with examining our own minds, carrying the inclination to vainglorious elemental composition.
So not only is it being asked what element is definitive, but what are the choices for it, and given the choice, how is it the case it belongs solely to humans.
Care to bid on another defining element?
I'm at least a realist. And I like direct realism in the phenomenological sense, but I wonder what's so direct about it if all I mean is that indirect realism is false? — Moliere
With Heidegger... — Moliere
We need only pay more attention to see the world as such a 'blanket.' Neutrinos and marriages and nostalgia and premises are all part of this same single involvement network. Entities are radically semantically and practically interdependent.Heidegger introduces the term that Macquarrie and Robinson translate as ‘involvement’ to express the roles that equipmental entities play—the ways in which they are involved—in Dasein's everyday patterns of activity. Crucially, for Heidegger, an involvement is not a stand-alone structure, but rather a link in a network of intelligibility that he calls a totality of involvements. Take the stock Heideggerian example: the hammer is involved in an act of hammering; that hammering is involved in making something fast; and that making something fast is involved in protecting the human agent against bad weather. Such totalities of involvements are the contexts of everyday equipmental practice. As such, they define equipmental entities, so the hammer is intelligible as what it is only with respect to the shelter and, indeed, all the other items of equipment to which it meaningfully relates in Dasein's everyday practices. This relational ontology generates what Brandom (1983, 391–3) calls Heidegger's ‘strong systematicity condition’, as given voice in Heidegger's striking claim that “[t]aken strictly, there ‘is’ no such thing as an equipment” (Being and Time, 15: 97). And this radical holism spreads, because once one begins to trace a path through a network of involvements, one will inevitably traverse vast regions of involvement-space. Thus links will be traced not only from hammers to hammering to making fast to protection against the weather, but also from hammers to pulling out nails to dismantling wardrobes to moving house. This behaviour will refer back to many other behaviours (packing, van-driving) and thus to many other items of equipment (large boxes, removal vans), and so on. The result is a large-scale holistic network of interconnected relational significance. Such networks constitute worlds, in one of Heidegger's key senses of the term—an ontical sense that he describes as having a pre-ontological signification (Being and Time 14: 93).
I'm not so sure there is a most rational rationality — Moliere
It's that intuition which "sensible intuition" is being defined against, rather than animal knowledge — Moliere
Which in a way gets along with the spirit of Kant: We have knowledge of the empirical world, but that knowledge doesn't touch upon the metaphysical totality which grounds it. Or, in knowledge's multiplicity, they're all self-grounding projects which we are free to take up or leave, but which we're not really sure how to relate that to ontological claims. Or, at the very least, I'm not sure how to relate knowledge, scientific or historical, to ontological claims. — Moliere
that knowledge doesn't touch upon the metaphysical totality which grounds it. — Moliere
Rejecting indirect realism is a big move with the little unworldly world of metaphysics. — plaque flag
Do we start doing philosophy trapped and isolated in a bubble, referring to private 'representations' ? Or do we start together in a single world, referring to objects in that world, the bridge over the river?
If it helps, Heidegger is no infallible oracle for me. I only endorse certain parts of his work. The key for me is phenomenology's uncovering of the lifeworld and it's refusal to be seduced --- it's unhip willingness to question -- a counter-empiricism that pretends to be empirical in its reduction of the fullness of the world to what is convenient for its mere technical intentions. To me it's a truly scientific ontology that challenges scientistic ontologies. It's the true empiricism -- not the stuff full of posits like sensedata taken for granted. — plaque flag
"I'm not so sure there is a most rational rationality" -- me
But who ever claimed there was ? — plaque flag
As I see it, it makes more sense to challenge the details of my explication of rationality then try to argue for the apriori impossibility of such an articulation. — plaque flag
If one accepts that the world, so far as we know, is given perspectively, then the being of the world is always for (ignoring other animals) an entire human personality. This world is always already meaningfully structured (for instance, the network of involvements above).
I myself, as an ontologist, even as an informal ontologist who 'hates philosophy' doesn't know the word 'ontology,' have to clarify the totality of the meaningstructure of the world as it is given to me. How does science fit within the grand scheme of things ? How do real numbers exist not only as tokens in a specialist games for me as a total personality ? Are electrons more real than marriage or even than my own thought of electrons ? Is there an afterlife ? Is there a truly truly true truth somewhere?
All this squishy stuff is just established empirically by refusing to take a useful fiction (view from anywhere/nowhere) as an ultimate ontology because it helps with making smartphones -- though we'd be silly to ignore what it gets right. — plaque flag
Yes, I get that, but the ask is….what is a defining element of the mind.
I guess I don’t get how something every human mind can do, or there is something for which every human mind has the capacity, is a defining element. Just seems more apropos to claim for a defining element as not found anywhere else, rather than found everywhere else.
Anyway….idle thought, while remaining in a non-collapsible box. — Mww
:up:Heh, it seems so small to me. It's like removing saran wrap that you put around your face: what on earth was that saran wrap for? — Moliere
Note that I agree with this ontological claim. Only a few wacky philosophers forget that concept is merely one 'aspect' of the world. But I don't see any begging of the question.t seems to me that ontology is always begging the question, which is why "the given" is tempting: there's a part of the world that's not conceptual, that's not derived from a logical structure. — Moliere
Is the world given at all? — Moliere
but I like this game, where the choice of a founding metaphor is indeed significant. 'Existentially' (to me) it's all hebel/hevel (vapor, mist, vanity). But it's a good way for dust that woke up to spend its little moment, seems to me. — plaque flag
The former, so I believe, is a falsehood. But it's important to highlight some differences in interpreting and translating Kant -- for some interpretations he's a representationalist, and for some he's a presentationalist. In both, however, there's certainly only one empirical world. So even for Kant, with the distinction between phenomena/noumena, we start together in a single world (and end up together in a single mind). — Moliere
I really hope I don't sound grouchy. I just get into the spirit of the game. — plaque flag
More and more I think I'm just fixating on "foundations" as a word for its connotations more than denotations, given everything you've said to qualify the word. — Moliere
So my issue is whether you can defend these claims with the texts. I don't blame you if you aren't in the mood to dig thru the texts. No problem. But I did quote clear passages and explain problems with them, and so far not a single Kantian on this forum has actually addressed them. The sense organs are used as real to argue that they (and everything else) is mere appearance ---radically unlike the real they merely represent, radically undermining methodological skepticism — plaque flag
That is -- it's not the sense organs, which are a subject matter for empirical psychology, but sensibility, which is a part of our mind described at a very abstract philosophical level which founds knowledge on cognition. — Moliere
Heh, not at all. You're among friends here who like to be grouchy! :D — Moliere
So the notion that he's an empirical realist isn't just a kind of defense -- he's a Transcendental Idealist, which means the empirical world is fully real. — Moliere
If you believe there's a heirarchy to texts, however, then the CPR will "trump" the prolegomena. That's why I quoted it in opposition to your prolegomena quote. — Moliere
Yeah that's fair. I've let go of the desire to say what he really meant, but obviously it can kick up now and again. — Moliere
I'm not sure that I could climb to those heights. — Moliere
I think it's great to steelman a beloved thinker. That's roughly equivalent to sharing what one thinks are good beliefs for possible adoption. — plaque flag
I'm really much more interested in the bubble issue itself, as I said above. Kant is just a symbol for that. But so is Hume. Methodological solipsism was always trying to say something profound. So I haven't abandoned what's good in it. I just believe in progress. — plaque flag
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.