This-is-me” in the sense of: making myself answerable for what will matter to me, what I will be the measure of, what I take as mine, as founding, constituting me in this situation. — Antony Nickles

So, the self as an accountable agent for moral decisions and broader social and contextual circumstances, a bit like becoming who you are by acting or engaging is such a way as to be responsible for who you are.

Yeah, that is another approach to the topic, I believe Kierkegaard talks about this to some extent.

. So I guess I just don’t know what sets what I am saying apart from trying to “articulate (through reason) what this phenomenon is”. What do we want, or need, to explain that we don’t think we can? — Antony Nickles

That's person-dependent, when it comes to specific details. As I understand it, philosophers are trying to elucidate, or find in experience the I, that binds everything together, not only objects in the world, but, as you mention, moral choices too.

But all have failed, to some extent or other. I think it's weakness of understanding, you seem to take a view that it is a misleading or incomplete or potentially risky way to deal with the topic, because there is so much else to consider.

As for legal matters, I do think we have differing pictures of the mind.

That wasn’t clear, sorry. I meant imagine as in fabricate; we fantasize that there is something to “know” about the other. That is the picture we create in order to have the universal timeless certain knowledge we want (“pure” “logical”, like math). Yes, we don’t imagine people’s thoughts, but also hypothesizing about someone only applies in certain situations (guessing at thoughts, is Wittgenstein’s example, as luck would have it). If someone expresses something we don’t guess and then are “right” (now we “know”), like their expression matches my “perception” of it (that’s not how understanding or misunderstanding works). If they are in pain, I don’t guess or know, I accept or deny them, I help them. — Antony Nickles

Do we fantasise other people's minds? I can't imagine ( By the way, imagine here is a linguistic usage, nothing to do with the epistemological use of imagine) doing it myself. :) Why do we fantasise other people's minds? We don't.

Normally, we don't think about other minds, because we just deal with others using language communication, texting and their attitudes and behaviours. It is when we are not clear about others' intentions, thoughts and feelings, we get puzzled, or anxious. That is the time we ask ourselves about the state of other minds. Sometimes it is obvious, you know it my common sense, and thinking, reasoning, but there are times it is not possible to know it. In that case, you would guess other minds, trying to find their unspoken or hidden feelings, intentions or thoughts about something that you were curious about.

Other people's pains? I don't accept, deny or help them. I am not a doctor. What privilege have I to accept, deny or skills to help ease other's pain? None !

If they asked me "Do you feel my pain?, then I would try to guess their pain. From my own experience of my own pain (if I had the similar pain myself), I could guess the other's pain. But it would be just guessing with no possibility of feeling the real pain by myself (thankfully :) ).

I don't accept or deny others' pain. If they asked me ""Do you accept my pain?" then my answer would be "Why do I have to accept your pain?" If they asked me "Do you deny my pain?" then my answer would be "I am not sure why you ask me to deny your pain. Could you please explain?"

I am not sure if we have different cultural backgrounds in responding to these cases in different ways, but it is clear that our thoughts are far away from each other.

Thinking does not work the way you (and classic philosophy) picture it, it is not judged as a mental activity. We manufacture looking at it this way because we want something certain, so we create a perpetual self that has and controls our constant individual “perceptions”—of “appearances” compared to an “objective” “reality”—or compared to someone else’s different “perceptions” that they have. — Antony Nickles

We don't agree on this point either. To me, thinking is a mental activity, which has intention and content.

Well I’ll just say that motive isn’t “internal”. The legal concept of mens rea (guilty mind) is not how we convict on 1st degree murder if the circumstances allow for only one reasonable explanation. We don’t infer whether they “meant to” or “intended to”. If they planned it, took steps beforehand, etc. there is no other criteria we use, or could, to judge—as we use other types of criteria to judge other things—but there is NOT a criteria that might ensure with certainty making it unnecessary that we be the judge**. And this is not the failure of knowledge, but why a juror must stand behind their decision (and why the law must absolve them). **The desire to avoid the responsibility of judging entirely is why people want something as certain as DNA, and why the success of science has cemented its standards in our culture for everything, creating this mistaken version of action and the self. — Antony Nickles

My point on the self perception embedded into all the motives of human actions was purely from the epistemological aspect. I don't know much about the legal side of affairs, nor am I interested in the legal, social or political topics.

Thanks for your replies to all my queries. It is clear that we don't agree on many points in this topic, but I believe that, it is natural that people have different opinions and thoughts on the philosophical topics. Realising and accepting this fact is also part of the study I suppose. :)

And this I take as what Emerson is referring to as conformity, and Wittgenstein labels “grammar”(the ordinary criteria for judgment), and what Rousseau is calling the social contract, the general will. — Antony Nickles

I have a very soft spot in my thoughts for Emerson. Philosophically I think lacks discipline, as with my favorite, "Nature"; he sort of toys with Platonism and casually constructs a metaphysics. But it's not that he is wrong, for this isn't the point. He invites us to think and experience like mystics, and imagines how this would go. It is his walk on a bare common and being glad to the brink of fear, and standing before nature like a transparent eyeball! This is not philosophy, but is more aligned with pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite or Meister Eckhart, but with passion.
But the Witt, Rousseau, is not quite the thinking. In Discourse on Thinking, Heidegger gives us a picture of meditative thought, something threatened by the mentality of modern technology, which tends to reduce meaningful encounters with the world to a "standing reserve" of utility (Hartmut Rosa's Social Acceleration was inspired by H. Things today are far worse than he ever imagined). His gelassenheit is something like this:

That which shows itself and at the same
time withdraws is the essential trait of what we call the
mystery. I call the comportment which enables us to keep
open to the meaning hidden in technology, openness to the
mystery.
Releasement toward things and openness to the mystery
belong together. They grant us the possibility of dwelling
in the world in a totally different way. They promise us a
new ground and foundation upon which we can stand and
endure in the world of technology without being imperiled
by it.

(Memorial Address from Discourse on Thinking)

For Heidegger the general will is "the they," which is what we first encounter in the process of enculturation. It is here that we "forget" our essential self. Meditative thought is a reduction of this to a phenomenological ontology.

I think Heidegger gets some things astoundingly right (because Kierkegaard got them right).

And of course, as there are similarities, there are divergences (though more interesting ones because sensible in being closer). In its openness to “interpretation”, I think it is important to note there is a “when” this happens (as not all the time), and forms, structures, “grammar”, rules, morals, etc. (what I take you to mean by “IN the context of its own contingency), in or from which a divergence is only even possible. However, each thing with its own structure, measures, considerations. Thus “the giveness of the world that is not language and culture” only enters into some situations, and those do not involve my interpretation (as science’s results are the same for anyone following its method), nor always my experience (neither the opportunity for it nor because I am always “experiencing”).

And so, the criteria and circumstances of the life of the self (which may not, or not continually, happen), work and are measured in totally different ways (as pain is important to us in my response to you being in pain). This is not in my interpretation of culture (though that is a thing), but in my relation to it: pushing against it, bringing it alive again (as it can be dead also). Thus the importance of this instant (go now! Emerson seems to say), and the “power” Rousseau claims it takes, to claim my self (my future responsiveness) as authority, for example, over what we are to call “right”, how to measure the (common) “good” (as Plato could not with knowledge, as Kant could not with logic). — Antony Nickles

The idea of hermeneutics is a bit more radical than this. To know is to interpret. This is really the basis for all the fuss about post modern thinking, for (see Derrida's Structure, Sign and Play. For Derrida's link to Heidegger I found Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics very useful) there is nothing at all that can be said that is free of a context, for contexts give meaning its center, its meaning assignments. Outside of language's contexts, nothing at all is to be said. I suppose for Wittgenstein, it would be outside of a language game, we pass over all things in silence (as with the Tractatus). It is right to say that basic to something being said at all is structure, grammar, etc. But then, this idea is as well contextualized to the context of talk about what grammar and structure "are". Nothing escapes deconstruction, this endless deferring to other contexts of discussion to explain what one is talking about. There is, in Rorty's terms, no final vocabulary, like something engraved on stone tablets by God. The word rests, every iota of it, on metaphysics, and metaphysics is nonsense, says Rorty. Not just a bad idea, but just GHHJK#^&*&*. Saying as I did, that everything rests on metaphysics, is just nonsense. For him, only propositions can be true of false, and there are no propositions "out there".

I agree and don't agree. Rorty just couldn't see knowledge without language. I think language is the setting for knowledge without language. What is non propositional truth? An excellent question. Hard to say...heh heh. This is why I read Michel Henry.

I take it Wittgenstein is the one thought to be only describing “a senseless abstract idea”, which is the common misunderstanding that he is concerned with language, and not that he is looking at it—specifically: what we say, when… —as his method of understanding the world (and our interests in it, what is essential about it).

Nevertheless, the “radicalness” I claim as our self’s stance to the conformity to our culture (what Wittgenstein will see as the criteria for judging each different thing, the current possibilities of its “senses”, as in: versions). Some take Wittgenstein as defending common sense, or solving skepticism, but this misses his discussion of the extension of our concepts, the seeing aspects of a thing (as it were) with a force against the norm. Though not a “metaphysical” me, but constitutive of me (a new constitution); not a “presence” of the world, as if a quality, like an imposed “reality”. Derrida and Marx thought tearing down the ordinary would was necessary to reveal a new relation to the world. Nietszche says that our morals needed to be made alive again, or reconsidered, by a new human, a me in a new defining position to the world. — Antony Nickles

Philosophers talk a lot about this. The argument, as I understand it, comes down to the very simple insight that we cannot speak the world, for meaningful language requires requires predication. To say "I am" as a reference to stand alone being is nonsense because in order for a proposition to make sense one has to be able to imagine it not to be the case. Talk about being as such, not being red or being a teacher, but just stand alone am-ness, if you will, doesn't have a meaningful contradiction possible, for there is nothing that one can imagine that "is not". If nothing is being predicated of X, then saying X is makes "is" an entirely vacant concept. I think this is the idea.

Witt called "the world" mystical. And he flat out refused to talk about ethics and aesthetics in basic terms, because all of this leads one the intuitive givenness of things that is not reducible to any possible explanatory context. I think of it in terms of Derrida's difference/differance that constitutes the "trace" that is this kind of emerging quality of related meanings. Calling something a fence post doesn't really have the power to make a true singular reference. Such singularity is impossible, and this makes a mess out of science and knowledge claims in general.

I’ve read “What is called Thinking?”, in which I take Heidegger as examining that thinking is not the violent imposing of a set requirement (the “egoistic” idea of trapping the world in a word), but being drawn into, passively submitting (as you say, “yielding”) to, what he says “calls” to us about a thing, which I take as the difference Wittgenstein makes between explanation and description, or looking at our ordinary criteria as evidence of what is attractive about a thing, it’s “possibilities”, as what is essential. And when you say this is not a “finished matter” I take it as to the future of a thing, but also to the ability of our extending our practices, our judgment, etc., and that this is the true realm of the human, that we take up and thus which defines us. — Antony Nickles

Right, Heidegger was the opposite of the kind of rigor of assumptions found in technology and science (though he makes pains to say he certainly not anti science). This openness is the nothing (derivative of Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety. Reading this latter one sees exactly where Heidegger got some of his major ideas) of pulling away from beingS. Fascinating, at least to me.

Haven't read What Is Called Thinking, though I do have it, because I have everything he wrote on pdf. Wittgenstein's explanation and description sounds familiar. I can say description is the way the world "shows" itself, logic and value are shown (given) and have no explanatory possibilities at the basic level. One cannot talk about logic since it is logic doing the talking. What is required is a third pov to explain logic, but then, this would also require yet another pov to explain it, ad infinitum. Nor can one explain suffering. It is simply there, and saying "simply there" makes good sense in many contexts; but when I say it to talk about pure givennes of pain, I am talking nonsense, says Witt. The Tractatus is nonsense itself for bringing it up, so he says.

Rorty is a big fan of this kind of thing. Everything is contingent, period, he says: truth is made, not discovered. He was very fond of Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Derrida, too.

There is no escaping this nature of language as an historically evolving and contingent phenomenon… it is no less true then, perhaps, some social theory of the self or evolution… But out of context, it is not as if the world is speaking what it is outside of propositional possibilities. — Astrophel

But we aren’t investigating language, and I don’t know how an activities’ possibilities are “contingent” or “propositional” (somehow not how the world works?). The ordinary criteria come from what has mattered to us about stuff over the vast history of our lives; the “possibilities” are what count in the judgment of a thing. We define ourselves in relation to them (against, re-invigorating, etc.), so this is not a social theory but how the self is differentiated from our shared lives.

.....a new standpoint must be available which in spite of the switching off of this psycho-physical totality of nature leaves something over—the whole field of absolute consciousness. Thus, instead of living naively in experience (Erfahrung), and subjecting what we experience, transcendent nature, to theoretical inquiries, we perform the “phenomenological reduction”. In other words : instead of naïvely carrying out the acts proper to the nature-constituting consciousness with its transcendent theses and allowing ourselves to be led by motives that operate therein to still other transcendent theses, and so forth—we set all these theses “out of action”, we take no part in them ; we direct the glance of apprehension and theoretical inquiry to pure consciousness in its own absolute Being. — Astrophel

Well, kudos for reading Levinas. There is a thread of similarity here. When we are just conforming, we are “living naively” (as Plato will say, unreflectively), and just “carrying out the acts proper” and “allowing ourselves to be led”. Wittgenstein is investing the “motives that operate therein” as the fear of skepticism and thus the desire for certainty, which we turn from to realize our “real need” (PI, #108)—as we do in differentiating the self. He will similarly “set all these [he will say “metaphysical criteria”] “out of action”, not to “take no part in them”, but to understand why we desired their certainty.

things that are not me… epistemically transcend my reach. His priority cannot be the transcendent natural world, for this cup, this fence post, and so on, are themselves only accessed through what it is that connects one to these things. The self? It is the stream of consciousness that is intuitively and irreducibly there. This is the foundation for any knowledge claim at all. — Astrophel

In relation to the self, things don’t “epistemically transcend my reach”. Knowledge does not do everything; it is not our only connection to the world. We “access” apologies, and justice, and chairs each differently, through the ordinary criteria for each: for their identification, how our judgment of your acts with them work, how porous the boundaries, how change happens or not, etc. So there is nothing which connect these things; and, even if there were—say, all: objects—it would be the criteria for objects, not “me”. “I” am not “foundational”, and my self-awareness and internal dialogue are unremarkable in this regard. This picture of “me” and this conception of a “transcendent natural world” is based on the desire to have something fixed, pure, math-like, dependable, predetermined, universal, complete, generalized, etc. If our ordinary criteria are Emerson’s “conformity, the “social contract”, then I don’t only “know” those or not, I claim them, or defy them, live them, or don’t stand up for them, etc.

So, the self as an accountable agent for moral decisions and broader social and contextual circumstances, a bit like becoming who you are by acting or engaging is such a way as to be responsible for who you are. — Manuel

There’s more to it, but yes. Thank you. My OP point being that I am a self only if, but also when, we are “acting and engaging” in relation with or against the social contract, the ordinary criteria for things; thus that the self does not “exist” as a constant, and for the purpose philosophy wants.

…philosophers are trying to elucidate, or find in experience the I, that binds everything together, not only objects in the world, but, as you mention, moral choices too. But all have failed, to some extent or other. I think it's weakness of understanding, you seem to take a view that it is a misleading or incomplete or potentially risky way to deal with the topic, because there is so much else to consider. — Manuel

It all fails because there is nothing that meets classic philosophy’s predefined standard for certainty, i.e. that there MUST be an understanding of “I”, the “world”, “reality”, “experience” that “binds everything together”. To require that outcome is not misleading; it is a delusional fantasy that not only twists our vision of how things are, but blinds us to our part in the world. The danger is its desire to altogether remove the need for us (each “me” defined against us all), even in reducing us to “perception”, “consciousness”, “intention”. So, yes, everything can fall apart, but knowledge is not our only relation to the world, as everything is judged differently, as with the self and the moral realm.

it is natural that people have different opinions and thoughts on the philosophical topics. — Corvus

No, philosophy is about truth. Kant says philosophy speaks in a universal voice, as if for each of us, for us to see ourselves in it. Not everyone will have all the answers but there is merit in learning how they think to find what it is they do see. I take your responses here as not only obtuse but dismissive, condescending and disrespectful. Keep your opinions to yourself in the future please.

There’s more to it, but yes. Thank you. My OP point being that I am a self only if, but also when, we are “acting and engaging” in relation with or against the social contract, the ordinary criteria for things; thus that the self does not “exist” as a constant, and for the purpose philosophy wants. — Antony Nickles

This takes us back to the topic of needing others to create some kind of reference to one's self. To this extent, I agree. I don't find it intelligible to suppose a person would develop a concept of selfhood, nor language nor many aspects of being human absent other people.

I think this stops rather short of concluding what you are saying, that the self doesn't exist as a constant and for what the philosophers are looking for. I don't take these things to be mutually exclusive, granted we need others to develop a feeling of selfhood, but once developed, there may be something there.

It all fails because there is nothing that meets classic philosophy’s predefined standard for certainty, i.e. that there MUST be an understanding of “I”, the “world”, “reality”, “experience” that “binds everything together”. To require that outcome is not misleading; it is a delusional fantasy that not only twists our vision of how things are, but blinds us to our part in the world. The danger is its desire to altogether remove the need for us (each “me” defined against us all), even in reducing us to “perception”, “consciousness”, “intention”. So, yes, everything can fall apart, but knowledge is not our only relation to the world, as everything is judged differently, as with the self and the moral realm. — Antony Nickles

Yes, knowledge is but a small part, one could even say fraction, of our relationship with the world - there is a tremendous amount that goes beyond it, or above it or does not apply.

As for this being a delusional fantasy, that's putting it way too strongly. I mean, if you apply it to say, Descartes methodology, you can argue that he is asking for something he cannot attain, which is certainty, we can't meet this standard. We are fallible.

If you have Hume in mind, then his observations are quite sober.

But, as you observe, there is much more to the self that trying to find "it" - as it may not exist. Again, I think we lack sufficient evidence to be too confident one way or the other.

No, philosophy is about truth. Kant says philosophy speaks in a universal voice, as if for each of us, for us to see ourselves in it. Not everyone will have all the answers but there is merit in learning how they think to find what it is they do see. I take your responses here as not only obtuse but dismissive, condescending and disrespectful. Keep your opinions to yourself in the future please. — Antony Nickles

Sorry if you took it personally. I didn't mean to be disrespectful at all.  My point was all about your argument.  It had nothing to do with you personally.  I don't even know who you are.  All I see is arguments and writings in the posts.

But I was just being honest with your points. If I was blindly agreeing with your points when I don't, wouldn't the hypocrite attitude be more disrespectful to you?  

Anyway, yes I agree truth is important in philosophy.  But are you claiming that all your arguments and points  were the truth for the topic, and all my points were false?

I only joined in this thread to interact with the topic, because it was the topic I was interested in before, and was just giving my own argument on your points. And I concluded that we have different ideas on the topic, which cannot be agreed, and said that to you honestly. If that was judged by you as obtuse and disrespectful, it is not a fair and definitely not sensible judgement.

Philosophy is also about expressing one's own opinion on the subject with full honesty and sincerity. If you dictate others to keep their opinions to themselves in the open philosophy forums just because he didn't agree with your points, then you are treating your debaters with an arrogance and anti-philosophical attitude.

Philosophically I think [Emerson] lacks discipline, as with my favorite, "Nature"; he sort of toys with Platonism”

I too have a hard time understanding Emerson as a serious analytical philosopher; to see “Fate” as about freewill, to see “Self Reliance” as wrestling with philosophy’s historic idea of the self, that he was responding to Plato and Descartes and Kant and Aristotle, trying to inherit analytical philosophy, as was Nietszche, as Wittgenstein had hoped to bring a new epistemology (about us in the world), with his new methodology. Perhaps an OP on Emerson sometime then. — Astrophel

…thought …threatened by the mentality of modern technology, which tends to reduce meaningful encounters with the world to a "standing reserve" of utility. — Astrophel

I was given the analogy, for “technology”, of a word’s fixed, timeless, violence cutting off any other interests we may have in the world (here, apart from teleology).

For Heidegger the general will is "the they," which is what we first encounter in the process of enculturation. It is here that we "forget" our essential self. — Astrophel

This is along the lines of what I’m getting at, although what I would say is “essential” to the self would be what is important to me in relation to “them”. I do highly recommend What is Called Thinking? as it is a demonstration, in a series of lectures, almost as if in real time along with him, on how to dig deep into all the facets of something, which is one earmark of what I call thinking. And I should brush up on my Kierkegaard for sure.

To know is to interpret. — Astrophel

It’s been a while since I’ve flown in those circles; I’d need to hear more. But, in relation to the self, it makes me want to say we don’t need knowledge (as in: information) of interpretation (as if “yours” vs “mine”). Interpretation is a kind of a guess so this sense of knowing is picking the option among the possibilities of a thing (interpreting which one) that can be shown (argued if not agreed) as to wrong or right, say, "that was a threat", "no, it was an offer", "yeah, an offer I can't refuse). The moment of the self I am getting at is when no one has any more authority to claim what is right. Then positing is creating, making alive, me and the world, extrapolating from information and possibilities.

Outside of language's contexts, nothing at all is to be said. — Astrophel

To clarify: when I speak of context, I’m referring, as I believe Wittgenstein is, to the “event” of when something is said or done (expressed, by someone)—who is there, what was the expectation, is there a confusion, offense, and all the bottomless things that could be asked or clarified or explained or brought to bear on an ongoing basis between those involved. This “context” is suppressed in being abstracted from in the process of generalization and purified knowledge that comes from imposing a singular standard of judgment. So then all that is left is the words together, which is insular and cannibalistic.

But we aren’t investigating language, and I don’t know how an activities’ possibilities are “contingent” or “propositional” (somehow not how the world works?). The ordinary criteria come from what has mattered to us about stuff over the vast history of our lives; the “possibilities” are what count in the judgment of a thing. We define ourselves in relation to them (against, re-invigorating, etc.), so this is not a social theory but how the self is differentiated from our shared lives. — Antony Nickles

It would be argued that whatever you talk about, you are always talking about language when inquiry moves to basic assumptions, which is philosophy. Wittgenstein's Tractatus' states of affairs are facts and facts are propositions in the logical grid of sensible talk. An activity? What is this? This is a predelineated event, that is, I already know what it is before I do it. We live in this always already knowing.

The point is that language is not simply in our everyday lives. It IS this. Heidegger holds that there really is no mind/body separation at all. For dasein, to see a thing is to already know it, and the knowledge is part and parcel of the thing. A human being IS a WHEN (interesting to note that the same holds for dogs and cats. I think animals have a proto-linguistic grasp of their affairs, as memory informs the present matter and establishes a sense of familiarity and habit of responding. This temporal construct is their existence), not IN a when (as might be said of objective time, when we say, you're late! or, what time is it? We speak here, rather, of Subjective time, what Augustine started in his Confessions, through Kant, and Kierkegaard, and others).

Doing a hand stand is not explaining a hand stand, this understood. But what a hand stand IS, is in the explanation. One could say that language is reducible to pragmatics, as Rorty does. But this gets into a technical discussion. E.g., if for S to know P is inherently anticipatory, and knowledge is a time event, then my knowing where to put my hands on the uneven bars is essentially like my knowing oaks trees are deciduous: no more than the forward looking engagement that anticipates an outcome.

This that you say about our "vast history" sounds very Heideggerian. All that we think is spontaneous and present issues from an enculturated education. (what Kierkegaard called inherited sin!).

Well, kudos for reading Levinas. There is a thread of similarity here. When we are just conforming, we are “living naively” (as Plato will say, unreflectively), and just “carrying out the acts proper” and “allowing ourselves to be led”. Wittgenstein is investing the “motives that operate therein” as the fear of skepticism and thus the desire for certainty, which we turn from to realize our “real need” (PI, #108)—as we do in differentiating the self. He will similarly “set all these [he will say “metaphysical criteria”] “out of action”, not to “take no part in them”, but to understand why we desired their certainty. — Antony Nickles

Not Levinas, Husserl, from his Ideas I. To understand "why we desired their certainty" is interesting. I'll have to read this in whole (having just looked here and there). I think Peirce had a good take on this in his Fixation of Belief: doubt steps in, creates unrest, then the movement away from unrest toward certainly or fixity anticipates solace. Something like that as I recall. Of course, we will be reminded that while this explanation (a good one!) intends to reduce one thing, belief, to another, the pragmatic move toward stability, we begin all of this in language. We cast our concepts at first IN language. 'Pragmatism,' say, is a particle of language prior to being about anything at all. It is not that there is nothing other than language, but our understanding is contingent on what language is and can do. Hence, hermeneutical openness.

In relation to the self, things don’t “epistemically transcend my reach”. Knowledge does not do everything; it is not our only connection to the world. We “access” apologies, and justice, and chairs each differently, through the ordinary criteria for each: for their identification, how our judgment of your acts with them work, how porous the boundaries, how change happens or not, etc. So there is nothing which connect these things; and, even if there were—say, all: objects—it would be the criteria for objects, not “me”. “I” am not “foundational”, and my self-awareness and internal dialogue are unremarkable in this regard. This picture of “me” and this conception of a “transcendent natural world” is based on the desire to have something fixed, pure, math-like, dependable, predetermined, universal, complete, generalized, etc. If our ordinary criteria are Emerson’s “conformity, the “social contract”, then I don’t only “know” those or not, I claim them, or defy them, live them, or don’t stand up for them, etc. — Antony Nickles

You would be hard pressed to argue that knowledge is not our connection with the world. I am not saying language is all there is to human existence. I am saying that when we try to understand anything at the most basic level of assumptions, THEN we face language, and the question of what language is is antecedent to anything else. Everything is a knowledge claim when we try to say what a thing is. I ask you, what IS justice? or, what IS a promise? Then we are deep in language and logic.

To claim this is not the case runs squarely into a performative contradiction, for the denial itself is a language/logic phenomenon.

There really is no way around this. The good news is that language is entirely open. God could literally appear before me and impart an intuitive wisdom of all things, and language would not be somehow undone, for the only requirement here would be a shared intuition with my interlocutor. We could talk all day about it, notwithstanding Derrida. Hermeneuticists don't deny this possibility, for they are assuming such a thing would constitute mystical knowledge and this is just bad metaphysics, that is, bad metaphysics UNTIL it actually happened. And this supposition is not logically impossible for this to happen---there are no contradictions necessarily assumed if God did this. Just something entirely other than what is familiar.

The bad news is that unless divine wisdom were intuitively deposited in one's mind, thereby establishing a true absolute foundation for understanding the world, we are bound to a world where everything is epistemically indeterminate.

Until ethics and aesthetics are considered. Again where Wittgenstein feared to go. He was right about this, and Heidegger agreed.

It would be argued that whatever you talk about, you are always talking about language when inquiry moves to basic assumptions, which is philosophy. Wittgenstein's Tractatus' states of affairs are facts and facts are propositions in the logical grid of sensible talk. — Astrophel

But philosophy does not always “talk about language”. To ask what the good is, is not to talk about the word “good”. In the Investigations, Wittgenstein just looks through language (specifically, what we say when...), that is his method to see the world, because our interests and judgments of the world are reflected by what we say in a situation (during an activity).

An activity? What is this? This is a predelineated event, that is, I already know what it is before I do it. We live in this always already knowing. — Astrophel

By “activity” I just mean what Witt terms “concepts” which is just to say, regular human stuff: pointing, apologizing, being just, measuring, excusing, following a rule, extending a series, etc., some of which he uses as his examples in the Investigations. To say “we already know it” is the same as the fact that we get indoctrinated (or, as you say, “enculturated education”) into a history of criteria and judgments for things which we operate on without reflection; I take this as the social contract and conformity. That Kierkegaard says we inherit the “sin” of it I take to record that we are compromised by conformity, comprised of nothing but our culture (the means of production) if I do not claim what is mine from it, against it.

A human being IS a WHEN… not IN a when…. — Astrophel

Well, we would need to unpack this, but to be as poetic: the self IS only WHEN (in relation to conformity).

Doing a hand stand is not explaining a hand stand, this is understood. But what a hand stand IS, is in the explanation. — Astrophel

A handstand can be explained (how to do one, etc.), but what is essential to a handstand (what it IS) is reflected by the criteria we use to judge, for instance, what makes one better. or a handstand different from a… to switch examples, say, walking different than running; what goes toward counting with this activity, mattering to us. Thus the self IS only in its alignment or aversion to these terms of judgment, when those things are at issue for me.

if for S to know P is inherently anticipatory, and knowledge is a time event, then my knowing where to put my hands on the uneven bars is essentially like my knowing oaks trees are deciduous: no more than the forward looking engagement that anticipates an outcome. — Astrophel

We are far afield here, but knowledge is “inherently anticipatory” only if we require that certainty (only accept the outcome of predictability, predetermination), as if equating “knowing” gymnastics is like the knowledge of facts. Thus, in the light of this requirement for certainty, the self must be an ever-present, unique "fact".

To understand "why we desired their certainty" is interesting. I'll have to read this in whole (having just looked here and there). — Astrophel

The idea of this certainty is probably more succinct in the last paragraph here and probably better off in that discussion (of our desire for rules), or in a new one. Though the conversation in this thread with @Manuel did relevantly veer into this territory, most notable, here, and afterward.

You would be hard pressed to argue that knowledge is not our connection with the world. …when we try to understand anything at the most basic level of assumptions… Everything is a knowledge claim when we try to say what a thing is. I ask you, what IS justice? or, what IS a promise? — Astrophel

I said knowledge is not our only connection to the world. Thus the importance of an occasion regarding the self. Our understanding of what is essential about a promise are the ordinary (unreflected on) criteria for identity of a promise, the appropriateness, the completion, etc. It is when these criteria (our shared conformity) come into question (in a situation, not stripped of everything to be “basic”, contextless), that we are not making a “knowledge” claim, but a claim of what is ours, what we are prepared to live by as mattering to us in a situation where knowledge has failed, or does not rule, as in a moral moment. But there is a time and place when we are lost, as you say, “where everything is epistemically indeterminate”, which is the moment for the self to assert itself, claim itself.

I appreciate the further connections and the effort, thank you.

You put a lot of thought into this question. But we should always start with the basics. For me, the fundamental thing is to ask yourself the question "Who am I?" It's a tricky question, but without answering it, we will only dive into further nonsense of identification, including all the unnecessary thinking and ideas. Therefore, discovering who exists is the first part before we start discussing when. And as far as I know, once we discover the Who, the rest will be irrelevant.

"Who am I?" It's a tricky question, — Jake Mura

Yes, a tricky question. I would agree that discovering one's self is a primary concern, but I am claiming that we may not have discovered it yet, partly because our understanding of how that works is misguided (thanks to classic philosophy). And so I am making a claim about how we "discover the Who" that accounts for this conformity, and why we want discovering the self to happen a certain way. Perhaps you have not read through all the "nonsense" and "unnecessary thinking" above, but, if we agree discovery comes first, how does that happen? (why is it: tricky?)

But philosophy does not always “talk about language”. To ask what the good is is not to talk about the word “good”. In the Investigations, Wittgenstein just looks through language (specifically, what we say when...) to see the world, because our interests and judgments of the world are reflected by what we say in a situation (during an activity). — Antony Nickles

The good is a special question. But what it IS is going to be cast in language. I don't see Wittgenstein looking through language. I do see him having the insight that propositional knowledge cannot "speak" what the good is, because this is a question that goes to value, and value is the intuitive irreducible presence. One cannot, for example, say what a pain as a pure phenomenon is. One can talk about it is many contexts, but pain qua pain is just the pure givenness of the world. But unlike qualia, it has an ethical/aesthetic dimension (Witt says these are really the same thing, for ethics and aesthetics are essentially about value).

Philosophy is about inquiring into anything at the most basic level. The Tractatus, Witt said, is mostly about what is not said. The limits of meaningful talk show us the threshold of our existence. In Culture and Values he says divinity is the good. A bold statement for someone who drew such a line between what can and cannot be said in the Tractatus.

I say philosophy always ends in a discussion about language, I mean anything that can be said is question begging. This is because saying something meaningful always gets its meaning from the "difference" and the "deference" of words, sentences, etc. Obviously we humans do more than explain knowledge claims. It is the everydayness of living that goes on people are not really interested in underlying existential assumptions at all. This is the job of philosophy and, for most, religion. Philosophy understands (say the phenomenologists) that our everyday thoughts and engagements are, in the Cartesian/Husserlian vein, wreathed in questions, if you will. This is where epistemology discovers its own foundational failure.

Analytic philosophers don't like to consider this, but this is because they despise any hint of Kant and indeterminacy. This, in my view, trivializes philosophy, and the world, this positivist insistence on clarity over meaning and content.

The world is foundationally indeterminate. This is hermeneutics.

By “activity” I just mean what Witt terms “concepts” which is just to say, regular human stuff: pointing, apologizing, being just, measuring, excusing, following a rule, extending a series, etc., some of which he uses as his examples in the Investigations. To say “we already know it” is the same as the fact that we get indoctrinated (or, as you say, “enculturated education”) into a history of criteria and judgments for things which we operate on without reflection; I take this as the social contract and conformity. That Kierkegaard says we inherit the “sin” of it I take to record that we are compromised by conformity, comprised of nothing but our culture (the means of production) if I do not claim what is mine from it, against it. — Antony Nickles

Kierkegaard analyzes Christian original sin down to hereditary sin. He uses the Bible story to do this "psychological" analysis. The Concept of Anxiety is a fascinating read! One finds Heidegger everywhere in this book. Of courwe, K is a Christian, so alienation is not going to be the nothing that beckons from metaphysics. It is going to be alienation from God. Human culture is alienation from God when one is mesmerized by day to day affairs and refuses to face the "nothing" of its foundation.

Familiarity for human dasein (Heidegger's term) is a language phenomenon. It's a big issue for Heidegger, for at its center is time, and knowledge is a forward looking affair. Indoctrinated? This term has connotations of a particular kind to learning, but learning, but more generally one could call it conditioning into a collective understanding of the world. One IS dasein, and the historical process of language's evolution and the personal acculturation are conditions that constitute being human.

Etc., etc. Long, long story.

Well, we would need to unpack this, but to be as poetic: the self IS only WHEN (in relation to conformity). — Antony Nickles

One cannot unpack Heidegger like this. His phenomenology of time is too complex. There is, though, this quite simple pragmatist account. What IS nitro glycerin? The most basic analysis is contained in a conditional proposition: If you take some quantity X of nitro travels at some velocity Y and impacts some surface, Then, the result will be an explosion of some magnitude Z. Crudely put, but it makes the point. A think IS the anticipated response in a certain environment (H calls these environments of Equipment). Everything is like this, for an encounter with a thing is always already known, anticipated, prior to the encounter, like taking a step and knowing the sidewalk will not sink but support the step.

Mind/body issues vanish, and the pragmatic time analysis is basic. This little forward looking analysis is the basis for H's hermeneutics. Massively interesting.

A handstand can be explained (how to do one, etc.), but what is essential to a handstand (what it IS) is reflected by the criteria we use to judge, for instance, what makes one better. or a handstand different from a… to switch examples, say, walking different than running; what goes toward counting with this activity, mattering to us. Thus the self IS only in its alignment or aversion to these terms of judgment, when those things are at issue for me. — Antony Nickles

That sounds like Heidegger.

All that is being said here is these "terms of judgment" belong to language, as in describing the utility of one way over another. There is the acting on judgment, the practical end of things, and this would be looking to outcomes, making knowledge forward looking. Thought itself is forward looking and our existence is a forward looking stream of events. Observing my cat is to anticipate the "potentiality of possibilities" that come to mind when I see my cat and assume it will just sit there and sleep. Obviously, my cat does the same with me, anticipating food in the morning, etc. But my cat is not dasein. Human existence is a language construct through which there is an understanding of the world, Dasein does not HAVE this. It IS this. Heidegger dismisses the duality of consciousness/object. Objects in the world ARE the language embodiment! They are something else, too, but this "something else," until this is taken up in dasein's language/culture "inheritance" (Kierkegaard's original idea on this) is nothing to us but the potentiality of possibilities.

We are far afield here, but knowledge is “inherently anticipatory” only if we require that certainty (only accept the outcome of predictability, predetermination), as if equating “knowing” gymnastics is like the knowledge of facts. Thus, in the light of this requirement for certainty, the self must be an ever-present, unique "fact". — Antony Nickles

In the doing, there is not the thinking of what the doing is. This is clear. But this, call it oblivious doing belong to what H calls preontology, our everydayness, and we live in this just as typing these words requires has nothing to do with thinking about where the fingers go or if the keyboard is in working order. This world of just carrying on is us in the ready-to-hand mode of our existence. Ontology begins when we insert the question about this world and its being. In this "movement" we see our freedom to make an unmade future (as I see it, the question, the piety of language, opens possibilities that stand before our freedom. This is existential anxiety. K said this a hundred years before H.

So knowledge is always anticipatory. This lies not in accepting the out come, but in accepting the possibilities, which seems the opposite of certainty. One creates one's existence in this consciousness of one's freedom.

said knowledge is not our only connection to the world. Thus the importance of an occasion regarding the self. Our understanding of what is essential about a promise are the ordinary (unreflected on) criteria for identity of a promise, the appropriateness, the completion, etc. It is when these criteria (our shared conformity) come into question (in a situation, not stripped of everything to be “basic”, contextless), that we are not making a “knowledge” claim, but a claim of what is ours, what we are prepared to live by as mattering to us in a situation where knowledge has failed, or does not rule, as in a moral moment. But there is a time and place when we are lost, as you say, “where everything is epistemically indeterminate”, which is the moment for the self to assert itself, claim itself.

I appreciate the further connections and the effort, thank you. — Antony Nickles

Apologies for all the writing. I have the time lately.

The knowledge claim would go to the assumptions that are already in place when one enters into a situation. They may fail, as when my car doesn't start, or they may, as is usually the case, be part of the continuing confirmation that cars start in the usual way. The car not starting imposes the question, why? This is when freedom and its indeterminacy steps in. Take that question conceive of the failure to confirm to be applied to one's own existence qua existence. Now this is metaphysics: to stand before the nothing where one's potentialities to respond a mute, and existence just stares back.

For K especially, this is an existential crisis, and sin in born.

I don't see Wittgenstein looking through language. — Astrophel

Well this is an entirely different topic (that I have addressed elsewhere—or could explain by msg) but I’m not saying he sees through language like a wall that he makes transparent, but that he examines (looks AT) the kinds of the things we say (the possible expressions) about a certain thing (at a time and place) because those are evidence of our criteria for that thing. It is a philosophical method. And taking Wittgenstein to be dividing what we can and cannot talk about is a remnant of the Tractatus; part of the point of the PI is to show how we can actually have rational, quasi-logical discussions about all kinds of things, and, thus, that the Investigations is actually an examination of why we imagine we can’t.

The good is a special question. But what it IS is going to be cast in language. — Astrophel

Yes, a moral agreement works differently than walking, or measuring an atom, or having a self. But they are all going to be “cast in language” as the means by which we communicate about them (or, meant how else?). We think we understand what “Language” is (as some general thing), but this is just to take the possibility of, and our part in, failing to communicate or reach agreement, and to project it—out of fear—onto something other than us (to put our failings onto “language”). Another way of doing this is to say we (or language) cannot communicate “me” (my “constant” self), “my thought”, what “I mean”. This mischaracterization is not a misunderstanding of “language” (to be corrected) but blindly homogenizing the world in requiring something certain (even in creating an “uncertain” fall-guy). We ignore that things are more complicated so we don’t need to be responsible for what we say, or do, or judge.

I agree that the way things “are” is how they are essential to us: what matters to us about them, the criteria by which we judge that they are what they are, the expectations, the disappointments, the mistakes involved with each, etc. As I take you to be echoing in part here:

A thing IS the anticipated response in a certain environment... Everything is like this, for an encounter with a thing is always already known, anticipated, prior to the encounter, like taking a step and knowing the sidewalk will not sink but support the step. — Astrophel

This “anticipated response” comes, as I think we also agree, from being raised into a culture, a way of living together, which comes before us, prior, “already” (though perhaps not “known” as in: not always aware of, explicated, examined; thus philosophy). But there are times where a practice moves into a new context, when there is an act which we do not anticipate. I find you basically the same place in saying “Ontology begins when we insert the question about this world and its being.” (Though I’ll just qualify, if needed, that this is not to question the “whole” world, in seeing the situational nature of our various customs, etc.). And, like any moral situation, that we have the means of addressing it, understanding it (because it is in contrast to the already-existing expectations (standing possibilities you say). This is the moment of the self, its being in relation to our history, our culture, against our conformity to it.

So knowledge is always anticipatory. This lies not in accepting the out come, but in accepting the possibilities, which seems the opposite of certainty. — Astrophel

I am not arguing for certainty, what I am saying is that humanity craves it. We are afraid of the fact that knowledge doesn’t get us all the way there, that we must insert ourselves behind our words, to stand by them; “accepting the possibilities” especially when extending those possibilities, living in a way that gives them new life, shows what it is to be, say, “just”, by being an example of it. That fear of our fallible human condition creates the desire for something that can take us out of the equation, e.g., if there are rules, then I can just follow the rules and I will be right; as if conformity absolves me. So we impose upon everything the same desired outcome which generalizes over each things’ possibilities. So the self is imagined as a constant, given, maybe unknowable thing, so I can have it (and I can keep it from you) without having to answer for my expressions and actions. I take this as Kierkegaard “sin” that is possible in this moment. Or that in not answering, we are still held to account, but only in that it doesn’t matter if it is us, because the usual expectations and answer, etc. apply, so I am unnecessary, or, that I do not exist, which I take it you mean by “failure to confirm to be applied to one's own existence qua existence.”

I should also say that reflection at these moments is the purpose of philosophy. That to have “consciousness of one’s freedom” is not a given, but an effort, a change in not knowledge, but attitude (perspective), such as contained in a paradox like: we are born free but are everywhere in chains.

Well this is an entirely different topic (that I have addressed elsewhere—or could explain by msg) but I’m not saying he sees through language like a wall that he makes transparent, but that he examines (looks AT) the kinds of the things we say (the possible expressions) about a certain thing (at a time and place) because those are evidence of our criteria for that thing. It is a philosophical method. And taking Wittgenstein to be dividing what we can and cannot talk about is a remnant of the Tractatus; part of the point of the PI is to show how we can actually have rational, quasi-logical discussions about all kinds of things, and, thus, that the Investigations is actually an examination of why we imagine we can’t. — Antony Nickles

Yeah, I will take a close look at Investigations soon. After I finish with Michel Henry and others. But two things: As to it being an entirely different topic, it certainly is thematically different, but since the issue is of the "when" we exist, is it not that this "when" lies outside discussions of epistemology. All philosophy has to pass through this, for at the basic level, all that is, is known to be, and so knowing is foundational, presupposed. The when of one's existence goes to time and time is the essential structure that receives and produces the world, then talk about a self and anything else is about time. That is, before I can talk about anything at the basic level, I have to talk about the conditions that structure and constitute that thing. This goes directly to "subjective time."

At the outset, one is greeted with a paradox: normal talk about time presupposes something that is not at all normal and familiar, which is the temporality of thought and experience itself. This is us. The paradox is Wittgensteinian: To speak at all presupposes the assumptions about the validity about speaking, but these presuppositions cannot be addressed in the speaking. This is the worst kind of question begging. But while a perspective outside of our own subjectivity is impossible (like trying to talk about the basis for the principle of non-contradiction), one has to wonder if there is anything that is beyond indeterminacy.

The second thing is this, speaking of a method as you did: In inquiring about the "when" of the self, is there anything at all that survives the Cartesian doubt that rules philosophical inquiry (per the above)? Is there not a method that is at once radically negative (or, apophatically negative, I might put it), yet radically positive as well? Something that both tears down all assumptions, yet discovers what lies beneath that cannot be torn down. This is Husserl's reduction, which is a method. As he says in "The Idea of Phenomenology":

Phenomenology: this term designates a science, a complex of scientific -
disciplines; but it also designates at the same time and above all a method and
an attitude of thought: the specifically philosophical attitude of thought, the
specifically philosophical method.

The difference here is this: Husserl thought he had discovered the solution to epistemological and ontological transcendence, which was achieved through his method, the phenomenological reduction. Witt would have thought this insane.

But Husserl was qualifiedly right.

Yes, a moral agreement works differently than walking, or measuring an atom, or having a self. But they are all going to be “cast in language” as the means by which we communicate about them (or, meant how else?). We think we understand what “Language” is (as some general thing), but this is just to take the possibility of, and our part in, failing to communicate or reach agreement, and to project it—out of fear—onto something other than us (to put our failings onto “language”). Another way of doing this is to say we (or language) cannot communicate “me” (my “constant” self), “my thought”, what “I mean”. This mischaracterization is not a misunderstanding of “language” (to be corrected) but blindly homogenizing the world in requiring something certain (even in creating an “uncertain” fall-guy). We ignore that things are more complicated so we don’t need to be responsible for what we say, or do, or judge. — Antony Nickles

There is something to this, if I take your meaning. Language produces generalities that fail to speak the complexities of one's subjective world. One can thus toss out casually words and their meanings into an arena of standardized thinking, and this pretty much belies the rich interior of one's true actual world. Worst yet is that this inner world gets lost entirely, yielding to the general (Heidegger's das man), and this is a crisis of identity. One becomes this body of generalities.

Phenomenologists have the cure: Kierkegaard's qualitative leap, Husserl's epoche, Heidegger's turn to
authenticity. Of course, the Buddhists, the quintiessential phenomenologists, have their liberation and enlightenment. But it is not, as you say, things being "more complicated," presumably referriing to the complexity of one's inner world. Rather, here the brass ring is a simplicity. Sure, their philosophy is dense and alien to common sense, but the "turn" itself is simple. Fascinating the way this works if one has a mind to pursue it. Buddhists take the whole idea to its impossible end, which is an altogether termination of this world.

This “anticipated response” comes, as I think we also agree, from being raised into a culture, a way of living together, which comes before us, prior, “already” (though perhaps not “known” as in: not always aware of, explicated, examined; thus philosophy). But there are times where a practice moves into a new context, when there is an act which we do not anticipate. I find you basically the same place in saying “Ontology begins when we insert the question about this world and its being.” (Though I’ll just qualify, if needed, that this is not to question the “whole” world, in seeing the situational nature of our various customs, etc.). And, like any moral situation, that we have the means of addressing it, understanding it (because it is in contrast to the already-existing expectations (standing possibilities you say). This is the moment of the self, its being in relation to our history, our culture, against our conformity to it. — Antony Nickles

The reason I take the matter to the level of philosophy by referring to the world, and not just some particular context of categorical belonging is because the question you ask is about the self-in-time, the "when" of the self, and talk like this refers the totality of what the self is and not any of its specific, as Heidegger put it, potentialities of possibilities. The self is taken as an aggregate of these, not too far afield from Kant's transcendental unity of apperception, though here, I am not concerned with his grand reduction to structure of the rational mind. Kant's concept of the self is an abstraction from what Michel Henry (my newest infatuation) calls life, for which he has a strong phenomenological designation. One cannot "fit" the self into a box, to speak loosely, and the same goes for time, the "when" of the issue at hand. Objective time is everyday time, all to familiar. Subjective time's examination begins when we understand that all of our objective possibilities of thinking about time (the whens, how longs, what time it is, being late or early, and on and on) issue from a temporally structured self: thought and the experience it belongs to itself IS time. Kant said this, of course, but again, his "when" of the self is an examination of the mere vessel or form of our existence (per the Transcendental Aesthetic). Phenomenology conceives the entirety of the self.

I agree with what you say regarding the self historical grounding in morality. But I want to take ethics to its true grounding which lies in the metaethical issue: what is the ethical/aesthetic good and the bad? This is where the self finds its essence, for such a question goes, as do all things, to the question of the pure givenness of the world, the value-qualia, if you will: OUCH! What IS that?

This does wander away from the "when" of the self, granted. But then the when is always a when of the self. Any analysis of value-qualia, as I call it, is an attempt discover the nature of the when-self, itself. Our existence is time. AS I experience I anticipate, I summon the past, both at once to write these words. My affective being, the caring, interest, doubt, dread, and so on, built into this, making the normativity of ethics a wholly temporal affair.

I am not arguing for certainty, what I am saying is that humanity craves it. We are afraid of the fact that knowledge doesn’t get us all the way there, that we must insert ourselves behind our words, to stand by them; “accepting the possibilities” especially when extending those possibilities, living in a way that gives them new life, shows what it is to be, say, “just”, by being an example of it. That fear of our fallible human condition creates the desire for something that can take us out of the equation, e.g., if there are rules, then I can just follow the rules and I will be right; as if conformity absolves me. So we impose upon everything the same desired outcome which generalizes over each things’ possibilities. So the self is imagined as a constant, given, maybe unknowable thing, so I can have it (and I can keep it from you) without having to answer for my expressions and actions. I take this as Kierkegaard “sin” that is possible in this moment. Or that in not answering, we are still held to account, but only in that it doesn’t matter if it is us, because the usual expectations and answer, etc. apply, so I am unnecessary, or, that I do not exist, which I take it you mean by “failure to confirm to be applied to one's own existence qua existence.”

I should also say that reflection at these moments is the purpose of philosophy. That to have “consciousness of one’s freedom” is not a given, but an effort, a change in not knowledge, but attitude (perspective), such as contained in a paradox like: we are born free but are everywhere in chains. — Antony Nickles

Well said, I say to much of this. Kierkegaard's sin, there are two parts to this, historical (the sin of the race, as K calls it), and subjective sin, an existential and highly personal affair. Best book by far is his Concept of Anxiety. Couldn't possibly do it justice here. Suffice to say that metaphysics is an actuality

As to craving certainty, Peirce's Fixation of Belief fits your account, I think. Belief is the stability and freedom from doubt, and we take the pragmatic route toward fixity. But fleeing doubt is a fleeing of the discomfort of doubt, and this begs a question of value-in-the-world, or value-qualia. one analytic step further in leads to the question of value qua value, the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to, as Hamlet said. This presence of value-in-being is by far the most important question one can even conceive, I say.

Of course, many existentialists will take this as a basic description of our religious condition, where doubt is alienation from God. A good point in this, though: What kind of doubt? Ordinary doubt in the bus arriving on time or doubt in someone's behavior in some circumstance is clearly contextual and doubt is no real mystery, in itself, because one can explain it, cast it terms that make sense. But doubt about the self is different because here we stand on the threshold of metaphysics: what is a self? Why am I (are we) born to suffer and die? And love and hope and dream? To me, this threshold is deeply profound, for it is not just an abstract issue, a premise in an argument (though it is certainly this). It is the palpable presence of the world, the "life" we are thrown into, this living vulnerable flesh "rubbing abrasively" against the brute physicality of it all. Here I take your point (as I see it) about language to heart: language and culture (the two are really the same, for one cannot speak without being IN a context of beliefs, values, assumptions, etc.) distract, ameliorate, reduce to a palatable form, this world existence. We live lives of cultural fixities with all of those concerns we deal with every day. Life is reduced to a manageable triviality. This is K's complaint, and the essential complaint of phenomenology as a social commentary.

Quite right about the effort to be free. But again, Rousseau's thinking was political, playing against Hobbes, as I recall. Inquiry will take this to the wire and I am reminded of Foucault's thoughts about Bentham's panoptical prison concept in which there is no need for guards for we possess the censure for bad or inordinate behavior. We are our own prisoners, so to speak. The question is, what is there to be free for?

it [ is ] not that this "when" lies outside discussions of epistemology — Astrophel

Yes, the idea is exactly that the self is not a matter of knowledge. Our relationship to others is that we accept or deny who they are, how they feel, etc. The same is true of our own feelings (we acknowledge or suppress them). This action happens as an event—so only a matter of time in that it is not a continuous state—just as we do not always have a self but differentiate from conformity as an occurrence.

Language produces generalities that fail to speak the complexities of one's subjective world. One can thus toss out casually words and their meanings into an arena of standardized thinking, and this pretty much belies the rich interior of one's true actual world. — Astrophel

Language is sufficient to share ourselves. The “rich interior of one’s actual world” is a fantasy of the self so I have the excuse of being unknowable and yet always special. We pawn our failures onto language, and make it incapable. (This is not to say we do not have personal experiences, even ineffable ones of, say, a sunset by ourselves after a hike (the awe of nature), where we cannot say it, nor paint it, nor have a picture capture it, nor even take you to see and point at it (though the difference here might be too close to matter between us). But this is the rare exception, not the general mechanics of the self.

The framework I am outlining is that the judgments and expectations and implications and all the different criteria of our society’s various ways of living may not match up with how I want to be in not being defined by those criteria, who I am willing to defy society to be.

My affective being, the caring, interest, doubt, dread, and so on, built into [the present], making the normativity of ethics a wholly temporal affair. — Astrophel

But isn’t this just to say that humans have interests, desires, fears, etc? And so does our culture, as evidenced in its criteria of judgment; and we either conform to the judgments of our culture or not, regarding ethics or art or city planning or making tea. That in general we do is because our lives together are what is “normative” in an ongoing way (from Cavell), but at times (at a particular moment and situation) we may have to cross the ethical dictates of our society as it stands, though we don’t do it in a vacuum but against (or with) our culture, e.g., the difference between society’s criteria of what a girl or boy is expected to do, and the interest of a boy or girl in either identifying with those criteria or not letting society define them, deter them.

doubt about the self is different because here we stand on the threshold of metaphysics: what is a self? Why am I (are we) born to suffer and die? And love and hope and dream? To me, this threshold is deeply profound, for it is not just an abstract issue, a premise in an argument (though it is certainly this). It is the palpable presence of the world, the "life" we are thrown into — Astrophel

Yes we all struggle with these issues. I am just suggesting the question is not who “we” “are” or “I” “am” so much as what am I willing to express interest in, and thus how this places me with or against the history, criteria, implications, etc. that I am brought up into. This would mean that neither the self (nor the world) is always “present”, nor is that particular goal necessary, but that the possibility of the self is always open, but only actualized as an event (now).

I would say that we exist when we are able to have conscious thoughts about ourselves if we are dead or sleeping I think that's when we stop existing.