You only see the relative as the unconnected because you oppose it to self-presence, as if nihilist meaninglessness were the only alternative to the thinking of presence-in-itself.

No, I don't think so. I thought you were saying they were unconnected because your response to "people can learn to communicate ideas across cultures and transcend current boundaries" seemed to be negative - that the ideas changing would imply there was no real communication.

But if we're in agreement that there is meaningful communication there, then I don't see how different cultures are a barrier that reason can't transcend, or an area where reason fails to apply — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’m all in favor of reason. But if by reason you mean the consulting of criteria and rules of reasonableness that exist prior to and outside of the actual, contextually unfolding situation in which they are being used, without that context modifying the sense of those criteria and rules, then this is a non-starter for me. As the later Wittgenstein argues, there is nothing in a rule that tells us whether we are following it correctly. In every situation where reason is involved, agreeing on what is the case is always accompanied by a redetermination of what is at stake and at issue in the interchange. That is to say, a paradoxical element of unreason belongs to the very heart of reason.

The truly groundless is not defined by anything else. To hate something else is to stand in a relation to it where you are defined by what you hate. To be merely indifferent to something is still to be defined by something, for its boundaries are the limit of your being and interest. Only an attitude of love, the identification of the self in the other, avoids this limitation, allowing for what is truly unconditioned. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Since when does love have priority over any other affectivity? One can only identify the self in the other if the other is already recognizable in some fashion. What matters to us, what we care about, whose suffering we empathize with, is dependent in the first place on what is intelligible to us from our vantage as nodes within a larger relational matrix (first order morality). We can only intend to recognize and welcome the Other who saves us from chaos; we intend to reject the Other who offers the oppression of incommensurability. Freedom from incoherence implies a sense of liberation, freedom from the order of intelligibility and intimacy a sense of subjection. We always have intended to welcome, sacrifice ourselves for the intelligible Other, and always disliked, `chose against' the incommensurate Other. What is repressive to us is what we cannot establish harmonious relation with. We cannot get beyond this link between the lovable and the recognizable without losing the basis of any ethics, which is the ability to distinguish between, even if without yet defining, what is preferred and what is not.

The disagreement you're having is very similar to the Katz-Forman debate. This debate centers around the contrasting views of two scholars: Steven T. Katz and Robert K.C. Forman. The crux of their disagreement lies in the interpretive framework used to understand mystical experiences, particularly regarding the extent to which these experiences are shaped by cultural, religious, and linguistic contexts.

Steven T. Katz argues for a constructivist approach, suggesting that mystical experiences are heavily influenced by the individual's cultural, linguistic, and religious background. According to Katz, the interpretive frameworks and conceptual categories that a person has internalized from their culture shape the nature of their mystical experiences. This view implies that there is no "pure" mystical experience independent of the conceptual apparatus brought by the mystic to the experience.

On the other hand, Robert K.C. Forman advocates for the perennialist approach, positing that there are core realisations that are universal and not entirely shaped by cultural or linguistic conventions. Forman argues that some aspects of mystical experiences transcend cultural and religious boundaries, suggesting the existence of a common realisation that can be accessed by individuals independently of their specific religious or cultural backgrounds.

I see @Count Timothy von Icarus as favouring the Forman approach and @Joshs as advocating the latter. I favour the former approach, in that I believe that at least some elements of what is being described as mystical experience (granting that it is rather a problematic description) are as universal as the experience of breathing or having sex. Religions and philosophies vary culturally, but hearts and lungs are the same everywhere.

But it's futile to really try and isolate or identify what that common core or 'mystical experience' is, because insofar as anything whatever is said about it will be expressed in language and its related metaphorical and cognitive structures. I believe that the 'philosophers of the absolute', of whom I suppose that Hegel is arguably one, would be aware of that, but I wouldn't look for agreement in the milieu that Joshs typically appeals to.

I think the key term is 'the unconditioned', and accordingly did a search on 'the unconditioned in philosophy'. I found one article called The Unconditioned in Philosophy of Religion - read it a couple of times and didn't get much from it, but at least it frames the debate the right way. A better one was The Unconditioned Soul by Stephen Priest, a book excerpt. But I know the objection will often be that all consideration of a putative 'unconditioned' is characterised by post-modernists as religious dogma, which counts against it.

What matters to us, what we care about, whose suffering we empathize with, is dependent in the first place on what is intelligible to us from our vantage

Well, you have to consider the framing here. Plato, for instance, lays this view out in the Timaeus as the goal of "becoming like God," and this would become even more central for later Christians like Augustine or Sufis like Rumi. Nothing that is intelligible is unintelligible for God, and henosis itself implies an accent to the height of intelligibility already. Consider where intelligibility is coming from in the first place in Neoplatonism, or where Maya is coming from in Shankara.

Strictly speaking, there isn't an other who can oppress God; God is fully self-determining. E.g., "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.



I don't disagree with:

experiences are heavily influenced by the individual's cultural, linguistic, and religious background

And I think it can be generalized to all sorts of experiences. I simply disagree that this difference cannot be transcended, that someone raised in an Orthodox society is unable to ever understand Islam, or that someone raised as a secular atheist will never grasp the intelligibility of Hinduism. This does not seem to be the case. Converts exist, and "a convert's zeal" is a common expression for a reason.

Moreover, I don't see why broad identity groups would be the defining line here. You could as well make the same sort of case for people from different families not understanding each other or individuals being unable to understand one another.

But if people can understand each other, I see no reason to understand this as people learning "Arab Reason," "Hindu Reason," or "Jewish Reason," through some sort of non-rational process so that they can then communicate. It would seem to be more the case that people learn these different contexts of reason through reason.

Nor are the conditions of each groups "reason" sui generis and primitive. There are commonalities across them. Where do you tend to see male-led households and polygamy? In resource scarce, less centralized societies where conflict is common — "warrior cultures" — which result in a high ratio of adult women to adult men. Which is to say, the differences between groups themselves aren't arbitrary and unanalyzable either. You can certainly make a lot of mistakes generalizing the "those who work/those who pray/those who fight," categories across Medieval Europe and India, but there are also obvious commonalities, e.g. that "those who work," is always the largest group, from Egypt to India to Europe, because of the physical realities of the amount of labor hours agriculture requires without access to modern technology, or that "those who fight," are always going to have a significant advantage in getting their way.

But if people can understand each other, I see no reason to understand this as people learning "Arab Reason," "Hindu Reason," or "Jewish Reason," through some sort of non-rational process so that they can then communicate. It would seem to be more the case that people learn these different contexts of reason through reason — Count Timothy von Icarus

There are many different systems of reason, perfectly logical within themselves, but no overarching way to arbitrate between different systems of rationality.

Wittgenstein argues that heterogeneous language-games cannot be resolved rationally, since rationality exists only within particular language-games. He calls the process that changes the way someone thinks a kind of “conversion”
brought about by “persuasion” rather than autonomous, rational discourse. While freely admitting that reasons would be given, he asks, “but how far do they go? At the end of reasons comes persuasion. (Think what happens
when missionaries convert natives).” The point is that for them to count as reasons, the interlocutor must already share a form of rationality or argu­ment language-game, which in turn cannot be imparted by reasoning on
pain of infinite regress. Wittgenstein even employs violent imagery to make the point: “is it wrong for them to consult an oracle and be guided by it?— If we call this ‘wrong’ aren’t we using our language-game as a base from
which to combat theirs.( Lee Braver)

The point is that for them to count as reasons, the interlocutor must already share a form of rationality or argu­ment language-game, which in turn cannot be imparted by reasoning on pain of infinite regress.

Sounds like a pretty serious problem for an interpretation of Wittgenstein to have.

Is this supposed to be a communitarian interpretation of Wittgenstein ala Kirpke? IMO, these have seriously problems with plausibility, both as theories of meaning and as supposedly representing Wittgenstein's own view. But if you take a non-communitarian view, this sort of issue doesn't just exist across cultural lines, but potentially for communication between any individuals. And yet philosophy presupposes they such communication is possible.

Indeed, consider Wittgenstein's example re persuasion. IIRC, the king who has been told the world was created when he was born fifty years ago isn't described as being from some radically different culture or speaking a different language. His difference with Wittgenstein lies precisely in his having been told the world was created at his birth, making the problem individually situated.

But Wittgenstein doesn't describe a process whereby any such disconnects must be solved by some sort of purely affective maneuver. What the case highlights is the way justification hangs together, not that justification is some sort of unanalyzable primitive. Rather, PI basically sidesteps and ignores the issues of how practices arise. Yet presumably they do not spring from the ether uncaused, nor are their causes unknowable. Wittgenstein even provides a narrative of the reasons that the king holds this belief.

The claim that reason can transcend such differences is not the same as saying it always does. That people can reject discourse is obvious. So to is the fact that people can be convinced of things in ways unrelated to reason. A key point made by Plato is that people are generally not ruled over by the rational part of the soul. Nor is the claim that human rationality is bound up in language and practice equivalent with the claim that rationality as such is wholly reducible to "language-games." For example, Kant's reason, which sits prior to perception, is clearly not the type of thing to be defined in terms of language.

Getting stuck inside the box of language is quite akin to getting stuck inside the box of "mental representations," and I don't know how advocates of our being stuck in either box justify the one over the other. It seems like the same mistake in either case, mistaking the means through which something is grasped for the thing that is grasped. E.g., "we cannot drive a car, we can only push pedals and turn steering wheels; we do not experience the world we can only experience ideas; we do not exercise reason, we can only participate in language-games."

But consider someone raised on intuitionist mathematics, who has always taken it as gospel that proof by contradiction and non-constructive proofs are bad inference, illegitimate. It seems totally possible for this person to come to embrace a Platonist or formalist view of mathematics, perhaps for reasons related to emotion (they get married to a formalist, it is good for their career, etc.). But it seems completely implausible that reason plays no role in this jump between heterogeneous systems.

The point is that for them to count as reasons, the interlocutor must already share a form of rationality or argu­ment language-game, which in turn cannot be imparted by reasoning on pain of infinite regress.

Sounds like a pretty serious problem for an interpretation of Wittgenstein to have.

Is this supposed to be a communitarian interpretation of Wittgenstein ala Kirpke? I — Count Timothy von Icarus

What you’re seeing here is a particular kind of theological interpretation of Wittgenstein. Braver, like contemporary religious thinkers such as Caputo and Critchley, read Wittgenstein through Kierkegaard and Levinas. They believe that in order to rescue god from idolatry, we must not allow empirical fact to become captured within presuppositions concerning the nature of ontology or reason.

Getting stuck inside the box of language is quite akin to getting stuck inside the box of "mental representations," and I don't know how advocates of our being stuck in either box justify the one over the other. It seems like the same mistake in either case, mistaking the means through which something is grasped for the thing that is grasped. E.g., "we cannot drive a car, we can only push pedals and turn steering wheels; we do not experience the world we can only experience ideas; we do not exercise reason, we can only participate in language-games." — Count Timothy von Icarus

The irony here is that Braver’s reading of Wittgenstein is meant to protect true novelty from being dissolved into subjective schemes of language. He is unhappy with my claim that we can never be truly surprised by anything.

“Lately, I've become interested in these moments of revolutionary experience, when our whole sense of what the world is like gets turned inside out and we are forced to form entirely new concepts to process what is happening. According to what I am calling Transgressive Realism these are the paradigmatic points of contact with a reality unformed by human concepts, when a true beyond touches us, sending shivers through our conceptual schemes, shaking us out of any complacent feeling-at-home.”

His aim would seem to be in accord with your desire to keep the real a radically surprising phenomenon. But he believes this aim is compromised by dictating the terms of what counts as real and true by sneaking into the real a series of assumptions, as Kant does, which claim to be universal and outside of history but are instead a contingent product of a particular historical era.

consider Wittgenstein's example re persuasion. IIRC, the king who has been told the world was created when he was born fifty years ago isn't described as being from some radically different culture or speaking a different language. His difference with Wittgenstein lies precisely in his having been told the world was created at his birth, making the problem individually situated.

But Wittgenstein doesn't describe a process whereby any such disconnects must be solved by some sort of purely affective maneuver. What the case highlights is the way justification hangs together, not that justification is some sort of unanalyzable primitive. Rather, PI basically sidesteps and ignores the issues of how practices arise. Yet presumably they do not spring from the ether uncaused, nor are their causes unknowable. Wittgenstein even provides a narrative of the reasons that the king holds this belief. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It’s not a private situation , but an intersubjective one. We are brought up into, or inherit, our practices, because they are language games, not solipsistic opinions. “ why should not a king be brought up in the belief that the world began with him?” As far as the role of justification and reason with respect to the king’s belief, Witt says

“… if Moore and this king were to meet and discuss, could Moore really prove his belief to be the right one? I do not say that Moore could not convert the king to his view, but it would be a conversion of a special kind; the king would be brought to look at the world in a different way…I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false. The propositions describing this world-picture might be part of a kind of mythology. And their role is like that of rules of a game; and the game can be learned purely practically, without learning any explicit rules.”

So how do practices arise? The same way that Kuhn tells us paradigms arise. Via a gestalt shift. We turn the picture upside down, change its sense. This is a different notion of causation than that of empirical reason.

It’s not a private situation , but an intersubjective one.

Isn't that the very point of contention re Kirpkestein, that it seems obvious that Robinson Cursoe can develop practices off on his island?

It seems to me that Kirpke ends up in the position of denying that things that obviously happen actually happen, or allowing that people can indeed create private practices, but that for some reason these must be considered "practice-like behaviors." Except that it is more acute than that, for he seems in a position where it is impossible for him to explain why someone might ever decide they have performed a private practice incorrectly, IMO, a very effective point against Kirpkestein.

We are brought up into, or inherit, our practices, because they are language games, not solipsistic opinions.

Yes, and we also modify those practices for various reasons and create practices for specific purposes. I don't see how practices then can be identical with reason, at least not sui generis forms of reason, for then it would never make sense for us to go about changing the rules of games because they fail to achieve what they were created for. But this sort of thing happens all the time.

So how do practices arise? The same way that Kuhn tells us paradigms arise. Via a gestalt shift. We turn the picture upside down, change its sense. This is a different notion of causation than that of empirical reason.

Sometimes. Naismith came up with basketball for the practical purpose of keeping athletes active during the winter. Spencer Brown's system in "The Laws of Form," might have been a paradigm shift, but it was a private one until he released it. Lots of changes in practices are iterative. But the very fact that people make iterative changes to practices based on what they think is bad about the rules, or can think that "the rules are wrong," shows that such rules can't be the ground for reason.

I don't even think Wittgenstein thought reason was locked into separate reasons (plural) that can't communicate, his point is on how justifications hang together. Reason is the ground for rule following. Kant puts it before perception in the First Critique. Plato locates it out "in the world" in the Philebus. Hegel locates it as the engine of all being in the Logics. I see better arguments for the expansive view than the deflationary one.

I see Count Timothy von Icarus as favouring the Forman approach and @Joshs as advocating the latter. — Wayfarer

This is just one example of the way that Joshs consistently approaches reality, namely through a kind of relativism. I have been reading Thomas Nagel's The Last Word which is a good refutation of this general approach. As someone interested in ancient philosophy, I am a bit curious as to how modern philosophy got itself so mixed up, but I am glad to see that folks like Nagel can see beyond their cultural context.

I frequently refer to that book, particularly the chapter Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, which I have reproduced online for the sake of discussion. His arguments in that chapter for the sovereignty of reason are important and can also be related to the 'argument from reason', which is significant especially because Nagel himself doesn't defend belief in God.

As to the plight of contemporary philosophy, I have benefitted greatly from one of the first books I read when I started posting on forums, The Theological Origins of Modernity, Michael Allen Gillespie. There's a useful abstract here which also contains links to other reviews. (I suppose Charles Taylor's A Secular Age is of a similar ilk.) But then, I started reading philosophy as part of a youthful quest for enlightenment, my overall approach is more influenced by theosophy (small t, I was never a member of the Society) than philosophy proper. The main historical narrative that I'm following are the reasons behind the philosophical ascendancy of scientific materialism. I find *some* convergence with themes in postmodern philosophy, but I'm not well read in it, or in modern philosophy generally - my undergraduate honours were in comparative religion.

↪Leontiskos I frequently refer to that book, particularly the chapter Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, which I have reproduced online for the sake of discussion. His arguments in that chapter for the sovereignty of reason are important and can also be related to the 'argument from reason', which is significant especially because Nagel himself doesn't defend belief in God. — Wayfarer

Interesting! I was looking at another of his books which is on a similar topic, Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament. I am looking forward to that chapter. I think Nagel's project in The Last Word is important and pertinent to our age.

As to the plight of contemporary philosophy, I have benefitted greatly from one of the first books I read when I started posting on forums, The Theological Origins of Modernity, Michael Allen Gillespie. There's a useful abstract here which also contains links to other reviews. (I suppose Charles Taylor's A Secular Age is of a similar ilk.) But then, I started reading philosophy as part of a youthful quest for enlightenment, my overall approach is more influenced by theosophy (small t, I was never a member of the Society) than philosophy proper. — Wayfarer

Thanks for the link. I have enjoyed some essays by Owen Barfield, who was a theosophist. Granted, his theosophy is often downplayed and I don't know a great deal about that movement.

There's a copy of Secular Philosophy online here. I wouldn't recommend the book, the title chapter is the only one of interest in my view, the remainder are essays on various topics.

(Technically, I think Barfield was an 'anthroposophist', a follower of Rudolf Steiner, who broke with the Theosophical Society. I have his Saving the Appearances in my pile of unread books ;-) )

namely through a kind of relativism.

Interestingly enough, the book that kicked this thread off makes a case for a certain type of relativism. Plato's Good falls into the category of "things that are good for the sake of something else and good in themselves," a category Aristotle lacks, but which Augustine recovers. These basically map to "relative good," and "absolute good." There is a perspectivism at work in the love of the good. Plato uses downright erotic language to describe knowledge, and romance is deeply personal and subjective (at one point he seems to suggest having intercourse with the Good, which gets close to the eros between husband/God and the bride/soul/Israel/Church in the Song of Songs, the apex of Hebrew wisdom literature).

However, the whole point of the images in the middle of the Republic is that there is no true division in the relative or absolute. The divided line is still one whole line. The philosopher king goes back into the cave because he must recover the whole, the appearances with the in itself in order to have the absolute. Appearance and reality are not mutually exclusive alternatives as Parmenides would have it in the Parmenides. The absolute, by definition, includes the relative. Relative appearance is not reality, but the reality of a thing must include all its appearances. The reality/appearance dichotomy isn't dyadic then, but rather appearance is a subcategory of reality. Nor is the modern positivist's "objectivity" the absolute, but rather, sitting in intersubjective space, it is a certain type of appearance.

The relative then is always a part of the whole, not divorced from it. This is why relativism in Augustine's semiotics (even if object and sign are the same, the interpretant will vary) or in Boethius' conception of human vs divine knowing do not collapse into sophistic power struggles and a bad sort of relativism. Such relativism is still a part of whole to which reason applies due to the fact that reason is transcendent and ecstatic.

- :up:

Incidentally, I would not have found Nagel's book very interesting if I hadn't first been exposed to the popular philosophies on this forum. The errors he is trying to address seem rampant, such as those related to language, science, ethics, and religion. More generally, there is the error of allowing what Nagel calls "first-order reasoning" to be eclipsed.

What you will mostly find are over-long posts filled with too much information. — Joshs

I can vouch for that. :smile:

I was joking.

All of the comments you direct towards me are respectful and on point.

All of the comments you direct towards me are respectful and on point. — Arne

:starstruck: