IT is over there, but this intimation of real Being is somehow IN the "presence" of the encounter. Where does this come from? It comes from me, the perceiver. This "sense" of "absolute being" is me. — Astrophel

Is it because you know what it is? I've been reading a book on classical metaphysics, which says that the basis of the forms is that they are the what-it-is-ness of a particular. So you know a post as a post, because you recognise it as such. To a post itself, it is nothing, of course, because it's an inanimate object, so its form is imposed on it by the fencemaker, but the same general idea applies to particulars of other kinds - they exist insofar as they exemplify a form, which is what makes them intelligible. If they had no form, they wouldn't be anything. Of course, all of this is nowadays regarded as archaic, but often without much knowledge of what, precisely, has been rejected. Suffice to say for the purposes of this discussion, and your comment above in particular, that the pre-moderns did not regard the world as being 'mind-independent' in the way that moderns reflexively do, which is what engenders the modern 'problem of knowledge' that we're all continually running up against. A comment from an essay on the consequences of nominalism in modern thought:

In doing away with forms, Ockham did away with formal causality. Formal causality secures teleology—the ends or purposes of things follow from what they are and what is in accord with or capable of fulfilling their natures. In the natural world, this realist framework secures an intrinsic connection between efficient causes and their effects—an efficient cause produces its effects by communicating some formality: fire warms by informing objects with its heat. ....

Thomists and other critics of Ockham have tended to present traditional (i.e. scholastic) realism, with its forms or natures, as the solution to the modern problem of knowledge. It seems to me that it does not quite get to the heart of the matter. A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom. — What's Wrong with Ockham, Joshua Hochschild

The way I've come to think of 'intelligible objects' is through the expression that they are 'in the mind, but not of it'. This suggests that while forms (or essences) can only be known or apprehended by a rational mind, they are not simply constructs or inventions of the mind; they are not 'the product of' the human mind. Instead, forms have a reality independent of the human mind; they inhere in things themselves, and our minds have the capability to grasp or recognize these forms through observation, reasoning, and abstraction.

The mistake of modern thinking is to regard particular objects (the proverbial tree or apple or chair) as 'mind-independent', when the act of knowing what each thing is, is itself an intellectual act, which is obviously mind-dependent. This error relies on the so-called 'view from nowhere', the conceit that one can rise above all particular acts of knowing to see material things as they are in themselves. It is a foundational error within empiricism, because particulars are not anything 'in themselves' in the sense that modern objectivism posits. They have no inherent reality, their reality is imputed to them by the observer. (This also shows up, needless to say, in quantum physics.)

Speaking of Frege, he obtains to a somewhat similar view with respect to the reality of intelligible objects:

Frege believed that number is real in the sense that it is quite independent of thought: 'thought content exists independently of thinking "in the same way", he says "that a pencil exists independently of grasping it. Thought contents are true and bear their relations to one another (and presumably to what they are about) independently of anyone's thinking these thought contents - "just as a planet, even before anyone saw it, was in interaction with other planets." '

Furthermore in The Basic Laws of Arithmetic he says that 'the laws of truth are authoritative because of their timelessness: "[the laws of truth] are boundary stones set in an eternal foundation, which our thought can overflow, but never displace. It is because of this, that they are authority for our thought if it would attain to truth." — Frege on Knowing the Third Realm,Tyler Burge

Plato lives! :party:

I'm sorry haven't been able to reply to you, but it seems that the moment has passed and the discussion moved on. In interesting ways

Whatever existence is is bound analytically to the saying it is. — Astrophel

Yes, that's the point that one keeps coming back to - even if one thinks about different ways of using language.

But knowing does not give one the kind of "ontological" intimacy you seem to be suggesting. To knowledge, the world will remain transcendental. There is my cat, that lamp, that fence post over there, and here am I. Nothing is going tp bridge that distance, no matter how one theorizes epistemic relations. I know that they exist, but I don't know what that means. This is because language is pragmatic: in perceptual events I DEAL with the world, and meaning is bound up in this. — Astrophel

This seems to me the right way to approach the problem. Is it too brutal to observe that the description of the cat is not the cat. Why should it be? It would be pointless if it were. But when we are dealing with the cat, interacting with it, it is the cat we are interacting with, and not a description of it. Is describing the cat inter-acting with it? Clearly not in the sense required to state the problem. To accept a sense of interaction that includes description as interaction is to dissolve the problem by definition and will satisfy no-one.

Hi, I like ur view I have come to notice. This didnt happen today, its been 2 years about...not important or relevant (a nonfactor even)

I want to question something here in a curious minded manner, no problems had as of now:

This error relies on the so-called 'view from nowhere', the conceit that one can rise above all particular acts of knowing to see material things as they are in themselves. It is a foundational error within empiricism, because particulars are not anything 'in themselves' in the sense that modern objectivism posits — Wayfarer

yes! right on. good!

Plato lives! :party: — Wayfarer

hm... :brow: yeah sure he does, whatever you say. YAY plato lets party :cheer: :razz:

... because particulars are not anything 'in themselves' in the sense that modern objectivism posits. They (what are they now? have no inherent reality, their reality is imputed to them (WHO) by the observer...

(This also shows up, needless to say, in quantum physics.) — Wayfarer

-well I Wonder why? Seems obvious to me, now but NEED MORE to act and you need to say more here! Interested yes its true...you already have the answers, i think...thats why i ask, just keep doing what you are doing, include everything you can and go for it!! Waiting and excited to learn and know something for sure, but again I am wondering... how bothered can I really be? A challenge? A competition perhaps? No, that is no fair. But is life anyways? I'm suspicious still...

My bad for mentioning qm. It has derailed many a thread.

yup thats it, QM! :rofl: you mentioned QP doe :roll: and now apologizing kinda? Whyyyyy? At what cost? Like another thread cant be rebuilt after a derailing..THEE attempt...they are still being repeated over and over and again and again and again..i start to wonder, at what point is this an attempt anymore?! Attempts are attempts but until when? They fail for good? AT what cost??? Is their money in this thread? Clearly not, but this would actually cause more attention though and chaos...

*Chaos enters chat*
"my bad for mentioning chaos...lets just keep it, lame."
*Chaos leaves unbothered*

But go on, blame yourself for the mention of qm (is that right though??hmm i dont know if it was now) and if done so wrongly, saying because you did mention it, qm, for now it possibly can derailing this precious thread....why now? Not worth it, I feel.

Are your hopes high that this thread wont derail regardless? regardless OF ANYTHING ELSE?

thats fine, I see u!

We will see, cause WE can.

"Prove it"
...at what cost though?
"It is a bother but Cmon!"
fine, but only one more time

Of course, you are excused Wayfarer. That is lame though, i feel...carry on :zip:

You have to put your thinking cap on, Lionino. — Astrophel

Opening statements such as this really help people getting on your side. Keep it up.

that it is true — Astrophel

one has to state this is the case — Astrophel

stating it — Astrophel

That what it is the case?

Again: Tell me what you think the nature of existence is, and you find that you are telling me, and so "the telling" is propositional, and you have thereby committed yourself to an epistemology. — Astrophel

By "an epistemology", I imagine you mean an epistemological system. Surely by telling you things I commit myself to some epistemological claims, but that is a truism. By telling you what I think the nature of existence is, I am talking to you about ontology, not epistemology — you are yet to prove otherwise. So I don't know what epistemology I am committing myself to by telling you something, because as far as I know, everybody is also committing to it by saying something.
You are speaking in vague terms, I can't know for sure what you are referring to because you don't give examples.

Whatever existence is is bound analytically to the saying it is. — Astrophel

This seems to be what other users were talking about, some sort of idealism or anti-realism, but apparently I am not the only who can't decipher it.

I asked you to reference your OP, not to explain it over again with a novel text. You did exactly that.

Is it because you know what it is? — Wayfarer

Knowledge is a strange bird. Does mouse know cheese? Or the excitement in seeing it? Or its own reproductive urges (putting it nicely)? Yes and no. Yes, because knowledge is familiarity. No because it is not our symbolic familiarity. My thinking is that language stands "open" to the world, and truth is aletheia, a disclosure or unhiddeness. What it discloses is its own nature, that is, language is reflexive, and discovery is the self, so language is the pragmatic modality of the telos of self discovery.

the basis of the forms is that they are the what-it-is-ness of a particular. So you know a post as a post, because you recognise it as such. To a post itself, it is nothing, of course, because it's an inanimate object, so its form is imposed on it by the fencemaker, but the same general idea applies to particulars of other kinds - they exist insofar as they exemplify a form, which is what makes them intelligible. If they had no form, they wouldn't be anything. — Wayfarer

Well, they would not be nothing at all. But they remain transcendental. The qualia of being appeared to redly, e.g., is not nothing because, you know, it's just not nothing. "There" it is. MOST telling is events of explicit value, like having your flesh scorched of eating Hagen dasz. Or experiencing real happiness. These arise in the givenness of the world and while they certainly are entangled interpretatively, as in, ice cream makes you fat or "no pain, no gain," the value experience as such actually HAS an "as such" nature: the good and the bad of experience, designated in philosophy as aesthetics and ethics. The mouse "knows," that is, is familiar with this as well. It is truly primordial and its transcendence, that is, its has stand alone independence of language and cannot be spoken (as Wittgenstein was so emphatic about in his Tractatus). Givenness cannot be spoken.

The "form" we give the object, the entity of some kind? For me, one has to go through the likes of Kant, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger and Derrida as well as the pragmatists...okay, LOTS of thinking that culminates in Derrida and post modern thinking. I certainly am no expert on this, and my thoughts thus far are: Philosophy is a pragmatic endeavor, for all language is pragmatic, the essential telos of which is the discovery of one's own being, a "beyond dasein," if you will. Evidence for this lies int he pervasive "sense" of existence or reality that is IN the givenness of our being, and IN this givenness is the presence of value-in-being. Our dasein leads us to one inevitability: out of dasein, that is, our "existence" and into our transcendence, discovered in what Kierkegaard calls a "qualitative movement" when one realizes one's essential alienation in the everydayness of things. What is our transcendence? This is evidenced in the affective dimension of our existence, and this is difficult to pin because we all are different.

Honestly, few have interest in this kind of esoteria. I consider Buddhists, the serious ones, among the most "enlightened". The quintessential phenomenologists, taking the Husserlian reduction to its conclusion, its telos. Buddhism gets VERY simple, doesn't it? Meditation is the radicalization of the Husserlian Cartesian method, which is apophatic. Husserl's "epoche" leads to an annihilation of "the world," (our being in the world) and its telos is not truth as correspondence, or coherence, but truth as a radical existential affectivity. This is a long argument.

A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble. — What's Wrong with Ockham, Joshua Hochschild

Interesting to compare what Husserl has to say about "realism," not referring to the tradition, but to the issue of what is "out there" affirmations:

As phenomenologists we avoid all such affirmations. But if we “do not place ourselves on their ground”, do not “co-operate with them”, we do not for that reason cast them away. They are there still, and belong essentially to the phenomenon as a very part of it. Rather, we contemplate them ourselves; instead of working with them, we make them into objects; and we take the thesis of perception and its components also as constituent portions of the phenomenon.

Affirmations here refer to the "affirmation that posits a “real” thing or “transcendent” nature as a whole, or “co-operates” in setting up these positions." He understands that we "posit" real things as things beyond the conditions of our experiencing them by "making" them into objects. The traditional position of reals res extensa is reduced to a "part of" the phenomenon. So the idea here is this: True, reality ha(s) an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole, but reality is phenomena. All phenomena. Anything posited beyond this is just bad metaphysics. Where is the justification to invent realities beyond what is given? Husserl is essentially not denying realism, but insists that analysis goes further to embrace the real of our contribution in the perceptual act. Reals things are there, and they are intelligible, and they are over there, not me. But ALL of this is in the phenomenological presentation.

Opening statements such as this really help people getting on your side. Keep it up. — Lionino

Just responding to your preemptive, "You are jumping from topic to topic chaotically. First, JTB, then intentionality, now solipsism. This is my closing statement for this thread ヾ(¬ _ ¬)" which I thought rude.

By "an epistemology", I imagine you mean an epistemology system. Surely by telling you things I commit myself to some epistemological claims, but that is a truism. By telling you what I think the nature of existence is, I am talking to you about ontology, not epistemology — you are yet to prove otherwise. So I don't know what epistemology I am committing myself to by telling you something, because as far as I know, everybody is also committing to it by saying something.
You are speaking in vague terms, I can't know for sure what you are referring to because you don't give examples. — Lionino

Speech and existence: how can you separate these? Examples: One may point to a chair, and say, that is not language, but is entirely apart from the language we use to talk about it. I say, if this were true, then there must be a means of affirming it to be true outside of language. Not unlike one affirming the brain to be an entity beyond the thoughts and experiences the brain produces, but having to deal with the brain itself being generated by thoughts and experience. Once analysis reveals that all one has ever, or can ever, acknowledge about the word is the phenomenon, then the chair/the brain, and the thought that conceives, that is, "speaks," its existence are delivered from the delimitations of ordinary dealings. The point is, even when the thing is right before your eyes, there is no way to affirm this "radical exteriority" of the thing. This is why I discuss causality itself, which is not "truth bearing" in any way. All roads lead to phenomenology.

this is NOT to say there is nothing there that is not language and experience. Important to see this. Rather, it is saying that when we think about what that is, there is nothing to say, and we should keep quite about it. Can we say it "exists"? Well, this itself is a language-structured inquiry. Language is always, already there, IN the apprehension.

And, when you are "talking to you about ontology, not epistemology" you are nevertheless talking! The "talking about" is inherently epistemic. You bring the knowledge claim, and a great number of knowledge claims implicitly, into the ontology...that is, of course, unless you can demonstrate that the language and structures of experience that are integral to the perceptual act can be set aside allowing you to apprehend the object "as it is." I just do not think this possible. You would, and this comes from Wittgenstein's discussion about logic and its foundations, have to be in a third pov, outside language, and this in turn would require yet another outside pov to affirm this, and so on.

No, this is not the claim. The claim is that if something is a belief, it is a proposition. This may not hold for the pigeons outside my window, but their existence is not ours. — Astrophel

I made an entire argument to the effect that beliefs aren't propositions and certainly not propositions of a formal system obeying the usual laws. If they were, the use of truth predicate would be impossible and understanding of the Godel sentences would be impossible. And we do understand (are able to asses the truth conditions of) the Godel sentences like "this statements is unprovable". As I said, understanding must be something more more than a set of sentences. That's why Carnap's syntactic view of theories failed and he himself changed sides to the semantic one.

I made an entire argument to the effect that beliefs aren't propositions and certainly not propositions of a formal system obeying the usual laws. If they were, the use of truth predicate would be impossible and understanding of the Godel sentences would be impossible. And we do understand (are able to asses the truth conditions of) the Godel sentences like "this statements is unprovable". As I said, understanding must be something more more than a set of sentences. That's why Carnap's syntactic view of theories failed and he himself changed sides to the semantic one. — Johnnie

Depends on what you mean by a sentence. And re. "formal system of obeying usual laws," the same. I call sentences pragmatic constructions that are demonstrated by the conditional form if...then... This does not mean at all that one brings out this sentential structure whenever one crosses the street. But what we call beliefs about streets are really established anticipations at the ready whenever streets enter one's actual affairs. Knowledge is "predelineated," there as a potentiality prior to street crossing, street repair, street anecdotes, and so on. The truth as a propositional property amounts to this anticipatory feature of any given knowledge claim.

Beliefs are propositional because propositions are expressions of actual engagement. I take logic as an abstraction of this. i suppose I would treat Godel sentences accordingly, noting that there is nothing, save logic itself, that prevents such constructions, for there is no other system that can be used to see where things go wrong. Self contradiction are then, not an issue any more than modus ponens is. It is just the structure of language.

But I don't really know about how logicians handle Godel sentences.

This seems to me the right way to approach the problem. Is it too brutal to observe that the description of the cat is not the cat. Why should it be? It would be pointless if it were. But when we are dealing with the cat, interacting with it, it is the cat we are interacting with, and not a description of it. Is describing the cat inter-acting with it? Clearly not in the sense required to state the problem. To accept a sense of interaction that includes description as interaction is to dissolve the problem by definition and will satisfy no-one. — Ludwig V

As I see it, yes. And when one turns attention to this or that cat issue, this, too , refers us to anticipated possibilities. Even if God were to come down and announce her presence, this would be greeted by an awe and wonder based on the familiar things in the world. Wittgenstein said in his Lecture on Ethics that, say a man's head turns suddenly into a lion's head. We would all be shocked, suspect a miracle; that is, until science got a hold of it and a discovery, perhaps something completely new, was measured, compared, tested in different environments, etc. And if this were simply not explainable because the results defied the repeatability requirement of science, then this, too, would be admitted and normalized. We would call this "chaos". There are many things called chaos by science.

so the idea here is this: True, reality ha(s) an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole, but reality is phenomena. All phenomena. Anything posited beyond this is just bad metaphysics. Where is the justification to invent realities beyond what is given? — Astrophel

You're familiar with the 'myth of the given'? It critiques the view that knowledge is based on a foundation of given sensory experience, saying that all perception is conceptually mediated; that is, our understanding and interpretation of sensory data are always shaped by our prior knowledge, beliefs, and concepts. So there can be no pure or immediate knowledge derived directly from sense data. I don't see how that can be avoided. And your reference to 'bad metaphysics' sounds like A J Ayer!

I'm afraid there is a big problem. What "correspond" means is completely unclear. Consequently, this theory - paradoxically - is the basis of some very strange ideas, such as the idea that reality is, in some mysterious way, beyond our ken. — Ludwig V

The idea of correspondence is inherent In Tarski's approach, and it is only a problem if reality is considered to be something absolute and out of the reach of human experience and judgement. What is generally considered to be real is of course not out of the realm of human experience and judgement.

What is generally considered to be real is of course not out of the realm of human experience and judgement. — Janus

:up: Couldn’t have said it better.

You're familiar with the 'myth of the given'? It critiques the view that knowledge is based on a foundation of given sensory experience, saying that all perception is conceptually mediated; that is, our understanding and interpretation of sensory data are always shaped by our prior knowledge, beliefs, and concepts. So there can be no pure or immediate knowledge derived directly from sense data. I don't see how that can be avoided. And your reference to 'bad metaphysics' sounds like A J Ayer! — Wayfarer

Derrida and his criticism of Heidegger is the "final" critique, isn't it. After deconstruction one can either follow Husserl's reduction to it grand finale, or retreat back into more conversation, aka analytic philosophy. For if language can only produce the "trace" effect of its own existence, and philosophical correspondence and representation are thereby obviated, then language hangs eternally on its own peg. "Turtles all the way down" is what Hawking told when talking about foundations of ontology.

But sense data is no longer sense data, and this is most important to see that deconstruction liberates absolutely. And though it seems like a sleight of hand, it is most powerful if realized for its existential insight. What is it we are liberated from? Knowledge assumptions that clutter perception. What is knowledge? It is essentially pragmatic. To know is to enter into a dynamic of temporal dealings in the world. Language is really this, even in the saying "language is really like this" Heidegger runs through Derrida, only the latter takes the final breathe of philosophical meaning making, accusing Heidegger of the same thing Husserl was so rightly accused of, which is affirming presence, i.e., "the given". Even Heidegger gets pummeled by the Zen master's fan!

Husserl's reduction leads to only one place, being silent whereof one cannot speak. And one cannot speak of Being as such, which is where we are.

No, not A J Ayer. Reading positivists' writing is an exercise in learning why one should not be reading positivists' writing. It is conceived in a mentality of narrow logical rigidity. Very good at arguing arguments; terrible at understanding the world.

That's a good quote. I think the idea of meaning being defined by social practice causes particular problems for nominalists. On the one hand, I don't think many people want to say such practices have no reasons outside other practices. We develop and change practices for reasons out in the world. But it becomes very hard to articulate how this works when your picture of the world is a seething sea of multiplicity that only ends up differentiated by practices in the first place. When you look for the causes of practices, there is nothing concrete to point to behind them, no essences to inform what it is that rules might be used to point out. Then you're in danger of positing that the world must be "social rules all the way down," or getting "trapped in the box of language," because the rules that define meaning have become unfathomable.





I am not really sure I've understood what you were trying to get across. Language and knowledge as a whole are pragmatic? But then why does the theory vs praxis division seem so obvious to us and why is it useful in philosophy? Is truth not sought for its own good? It would seem to be in many thinkers.

I'm more confused by the idea that perception could be "pragmatic." It seems like perception just happens, regardless of if you intend to use it for something or not.

Derrida and his criticism of Heidegger is the "final" critique, isn't it. — Astrophel

It might be in some worlds, but not in mine.

What is it we are liberated from? Knowledge assumptions that clutter perception. What is knowledge? It is essentially pragmatic. To know is to enter into a dynamic of temporal dealings in the world. — Astrophel

The over-arching issue of modernity, and of human existence generally, is the illusion of otherness, the sense of separateness and apart-ness that is part of the very condition of being born. As you suggest, Zen has bearing on this - which is why, I think, Heidegger acknowledges it (in the well-known anecdote of him being found reading one of D T Suzuki's books and praising it. Recall that Suzuki was lecturing at Columbia University during the latter half of Heidegger's career and was a contemporary. There was also a considerable exchange of ideas between Heidegger and the Kyoto School.)

But Zen is an exotic tradition and can't simply be assimilated or appropriated by Western culture, while Heidegger, as I understand it, wished to maintain the philosophical dialogue within the bounds of the Western tradition. But nevertheless the convergence of phenomenology and existentialism with Buddhist praxis has become a factor in current discourse (mainly through publication of The Embodied Mind but also in other works.)

Anyway, I've spent some time with Japanese Buddhists, and the point of their culture is precisely to 'enter into a dynamic of temporal dealings in the world' but to do so whilst fully mindful of both its transience and its beauty. They have ways of understanding the centrality of 'the unmanifest' (mu) without absolutizing it. That is what their culture is, being able to maintain that, and it's still largely lacking in Western culture, and one of the main reasons the West has turned to Zen as a meaningful philosophy.

Agree you're not preaching positivism, but the 'all metaphysics is bad metaphysics' comes dangerously close. Many depictions of metaphysics in modern philosophy are poisoned in my view.

I think the idea of meaning being defined by social practice causes particular problems for nominalists. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That essay, by Hochschild, is about the momentous implications of the defeat of Aristotelian realism for Western culture. History being written by the victors, we tend not to be able to see that, because of course nominalism is true. It is foundational to modern culture.

Here's a rather abstruse idea but bear with me. I've noticed that there's a topic in history of ideas, under the heading of 'the union of knower and known'. If you google that phrase, nearly all the returns are about Thomism, Averroes, and other medievals. Of course a very large and abstruse topic, but the gist is this: that in classical metaphysics, and in hylomorphic dualism, the ability to 'grok' the Forms, which is the sole prerogative of reason, is an antidote to the 'illusion of otherness' that I mention in my reply above. It is a holistic vision, which is very much the thrust of that Hoschschild quote. Metaphysics, in that context, is not a dry textbook of scholastic definitions and dogmas, but a grounding vision, a way of being-in-the-world, but one that has been long forgotten, on the whole.

BTW for some light entertainment I'm sure anyone interested in this thread will like this trailer:

I am not really sure I've understood what you were trying to get across. Language and knowledge as a whole are pragmatic? But then why does the theory vs praxis division seem so obvious to us and why is it useful in philosophy? Is truth not sought for its own good? It would seem to be in many thinkers.

I'm more confused by the idea that perception could be "pragmatic." It seems like perception just happens, regardless of if you intend to use it for something or not. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What happens when you "see" something? Why are you not shocked? Because memory informs the occasion, making it familiar. So what is familiarity? Repetition of results. This is the scientific method, isn't it? Every time I see something, I can predict what it will do or not do. This is the basic knowledge relation with the world, to experience, have repeated outcomes, then "know" something to "be" because the seeing is inherently anticipatory, a "consummated" anticipation, to use Dewey's term, is when what is an anticipated outcome is confirmed, as when I tie my shoes or open a car door: I grab the handle and push or pull or whatever, and this frees the door from its holding, and just like that, the door opens! So, what IS a door? Just this consummatory event, the process to consummation, the door opening, is the "meaning".

In pragmatism, this kind of explicit activity, like opening a car door, is IN the perceptual event itself. This is the point. To take note of something at all is an event that is familiar, and familiarity is due to this "forward looking" consummation of an existing belief, i.e, experiment confirmed in the occurrent event: I look up, see a rabbit, I "always already" know rabbits! Nothing new here, just a confirmation of what I already know, pretty much. We are walking embodiments of the scientific method, confirming what is there already in the potentialities of possibilities afforded by past experiences.

I am convinced this is right, but then, one has to reconceive what it is to be a self in-the-world, as Heidegger does. His "ready to hand" in environments of "equipmental" needs and meanings. What you call perception just happening is likely what Heidegger calls presence at hand. Things just sitting around here and there which I understand to be use in waiting. Turn your attention to them, and they are alive we meanings that issue from your personal history, as well as your culture's history (where it all comes from). But Heidegger isn't exactly like the pragmatists (Dewey, Peirce, James, later Rorty) and his view of language is more complicated. But his analysis of human dasein and time is extraordinarily revealing. We are not IN time; we ARE time. We ARE forward looking beings, and perception is historically interpretative. You can see the Hegelian influence in this: Heidegger doesn't not talk about the personal soul, and I believe this is Hegel as well. The Zeitgeist of the Hegelian time frame is found in Heidgger,

Truth is not traditional truth, some kind of agreement between subject and object. Truth is dynamic disclosure, aletheia, revealed in the event of the self creation by the explicit act of drawing upon one's potentiality of possibilities in the openness of one's freedom.

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth
century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.

Now this gives me an idea for a book I had in mind. I really enjoyed Christopher Buehlman's "Between Two Fires," a historical fiction/fantasy novel set in France during the Black Death and Hundred Years War. The key idea is that Satan has decided to destroy man through plague and war, but then God is silent as society dissolves and demons begin to walk the Earth.

But I thought it was also a missed opportunity in that it diverges radically from the source culture it had been following pretty closely early in the book and doesn't actually make much of a point.

I thought of a sequel of sorts, where a defeated Lucifer realizes that man's faith only gets stronger when faced with external horrors and pressures. So instead, the Devil whispers to the faithful, turning the certainty of faith against faith, resulting in the cataclysm of the Wars of Religion (Mammon also does a good job getting the Spanish to chase gold in the Americas, enslaving the peoples there). But tracing this plan back to nominalism on the 1400s, as Satan licks his wounds from the failed Black Death campaign would be interesting, since nominalism definitely paved the way for Luther and the resurgence of fideists.

But the Thirty Years War is such a shit show I find it impossible to write about, so maybe it will never work. Plus, I don't want to suggest Calvin, Luther, and co. were "agents of Satan," but rather that something goes dreadfully wrong when man reaches for a divided and false certainty, and this was certainly as true for Counter Reformation figures as well. Some allow the fear of error to become fear of truth, while the worst are "filled with passionate intensity," led on by an angel of light who promises to reduce all things to some single idolatrous image — the elevation of man's ideas to divine status.

The over-arching issue of modernity, and of human existence generally, is the illusion of otherness, the sense of separateness and apart-ness that is part of the very condition of being born. As you suggest, Zen has bearing on this - which is why, I think, Heidegger acknowledges it (in the well-known anecdote of him being found reading one of D T Suzuki's books and praising it. Recall that Suzuki was lecturing at Columbia University during the latter half of Heidegger's career and was a contemporary. There was also a considerable exchange of ideas between Heidegger and the Kyoto School.) But Zen is an exotic tradition and can't simply be assimilated or appropriated by Western culture, while Heidegger, as I understand it, wished to maintain the philosophical dialogue within the bounds of the Western tradition. But nevertheless the convergence of phenomenology and existentialism with Buddhist praxis has become a factor in current discourse (mainly through publication of The Embodied Mind but also in other works.)

Anyway, I've spent some time with Japanese Buddhists, and the point of their culture is precisely to 'enter into a dynamic of temporal dealings in the world' but to do so whilst fully mindful of both its transience and its beauty. They have ways of understanding the centrality of 'the unmanifest' (mu) without absolutizing it. That is what their culture is, being able to maintain that, and it's still largely lacking in Western culture, and one of the main reasons the West has turned to Zen as a meaningful philosophy.

Agree you're not preaching positivism, but the 'all metaphysics is bad metaphysics' comes dangerously close. Many depictions of metaphysics in modern philosophy are poisoned in my view. — Wayfarer

Consider that the moment it is spoken, it is bad metaphysics. This is the point. Of course, this is a philosophy forum and one does have to speak. But nothing in the Japanese exotic tradition is going to make any difference. The world as such does not speak. Logic does not tell you what logic is and value the same. This philosophical metaphysics in Kant through Derrida culminates in, well, let John Caputo say this:

If Derrida thinks that the surcharge of surreal, hyperousiological being dreams the dream of pure presence without différance, does that imply that something that would be plainly and simply “absolutely other” is plainly impossible? Now this is a delicate point about which we must be clear because, as we have seen, Derrida is not against dreams, is not against the impossible, and is not against the tout autre. Far from it. Everything in deconstruction, we are contending, turns on a passion for the impossible, on setting a place at the table for the tout autre, which is the impossible.

Caputo, John D.. The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion) (p. 20). Indiana University Press.

The moment it is spoken it is taken up in a totality of possible thought. Language is pragmatic, and has nothing to "say" about the world. It is a tool for discovery. It "stands in" for things in the world. It is not that enigmatic terms like ineffability, ultimate reality, nirvana, the sacred, the holy, and so on are nonsense. They are a means to an end that itself is not a means to and end, but is an end, as Kierkegaard put it, it stands as its own presupposition. This is value-in-being. There is a very good reason why Wittgenstein refused to speak about "the world" and "value" in the Tractatus. These are simply given. Heidegger's dasein can be talked about for centuries because the language possibilities are endless if one is committed to the totality of language possibilities. The endless conversation humanity is having with itself, as Rorty famously said. But this is not metaphysics, not really. Metaphysics is in the cat, the sofa, the coffee cup--these are Wittgenstein's world, which is mystical, a miracle, if you like.

What happens when you "see" something? Why are you not shocked? Because memory informs the occasion, making it familiar. So what is familiarity? Repetition of results. This is the scientific method, isn't it?

No, I wouldn't say so. This would seem to flatten out what makes the "scientific method" distinct, why it only emerged in the modern era, etc. It renders all perception, seemingly even animal perception, "scientific," and collapses the meaningful distinction between pseudosciences, such as astrology, and the sciences.That is, it generalizes the term "scientific" to the point where it no longer has anything like its original meaning, which I don't think is helpful.

I think it might be more useful to say that there are general principles that are essential to making the scientific method work that are also relevant to statistics, probability theory, perception, Hebbian "fire-together-wire-together" neuronal activity, and how physical information works at a basic level.

It doesn't seem helpful to make every human action "scientific," in the same way it doesn't seem helpful to make it all "pragmatic." What exactly is the universal goal that is being pursued such that all things are pragmatic? Moreover, importantly, there seems to be a useful distinction between what is commonly called pragmatic and what isn't — a notable difference between pragmatist epistemology and Aristotleanism, etc. If the point is simply that people have purposes, why not just say that?

Every time I see something, I can predict what it will do or not do

Consciously or phenomenologicaly, I would not say this is the case. When I take the trash out, I am vaguely aware of my lawn, but I don't make predictions about it. Perhaps this is true in a way of pre-concious processes, the ways in which information is pruned for relevance before entering the system of recursive self-awareness — it would seem to be. But then it seems worth disambiguating these two types of "prediction."

I'd be more worried about trying to reduce all meaning to correlation and inference though, the way computational theories of mind do when they lean to heavily on intuitions from information theory.

So, what IS a door? Just this consummatory event, the process to consummation, the door opening, is the "meaning".

Is the meaning of what? The meaning of a door is opening a door or the meaning of opening a door is opening a door? Is it that things are known in terms of their final causes? I'd agree with that, but the formal, material, and efficient causes can be objects of our inquiry as well, and these are all made manifest to some degree in perception.

Truth is dynamic disclosure, aletheia, revealed in the event of the self creation by the explicit act of drawing upon one's potentiality of possibilities in the openness of one's freedom

I don't know what to make of this. Truth is often a constraint on freedom, something that asserts itself in the world against our will our expectations. How does this definition apply to usual cases of truth and falsity? E.g., if someone tells me Miami is the capital of Florida or a mechanic claims to have fixed my car and it starts having the same problems again?

Freedom would seem to be posterior to perception. It is the sort of thing that must be developed. Infants do not have much by way of freedom.

Hamlet's stoic lemma that "there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so," was understood by the Stoics as a very limited sort of freedom. Rather than a declaration of moral relativism or moral freedom, it assets our affective freedom as we respond to events. Yet even the Stoics admitted that this freedom was limited.

But "nothing is either true or false but thinking makes it so?" I am not sure about this one. Yes, there is a sense in which thought and belief are required to give the appearance/reality distinction content but truth does not arise from mere "thinking that it is so." I would say that, to avoid a sort of nihilism, truth has to be grounded in the intelligibility of the world, which is a part of thought, but which transcends it.

Metaphysics, in that context, is not a dry textbook of scholastic definitions and dogmas, but a grounding vision, a way of being-in-the-world, but one that has been long forgotten, on the whole. — Wayfarer

something goes dreadfully wrong when man reaches for a divided and false certainty, and this was certainly as true for Counter Reformation figures as well. — Count Timothy von Icarus

In this context, do we really have a basis for making these judgements? I've no problem with the idea that the Enlightenment is not perfect, and perhaps it has run its course. But when I think about what preceded it, I do not find myself longing to return to the Good Old Days. So we find ourselves trying to work out the Next Thing, avoiding the mistakes of the Last Thing.

But

something goes dreadfully wrong when man reaches for a divided and false certainty — Count Timothy von Icarus

So perhaps we should be very careful, and sceptical of certainties.

When you look for the causes of practices, there is nothing concrete to point to behind them, no essences to inform what it is that rules might be used to point out. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Aren't practices and ways of life ("This is what I do") foundations for Wittgenstein at least? If they are, your question does arise, as it always does for any foundation. For some, it leads us to a change of discourse, to naturalistic ideas about human beings, social animals finding their way through the "real" world. But that seems to be where we came in!

I think it might be more useful to say that there are general principles that are essential to making the scientific method work that are also relevant to statistics, probability theory, perception, Hebbian "fire-together-wire-together" neuronal activity, and how physical information works at a basic level. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do their have to be general principles as such? Should we not change the model and think of something more dynamic, more evolutionary?

:clap: Fantastic ideas, if you have the literary chops I'm sure it would make a riveting read, although I daresay difficult to craft.

the elevation of man's ideas to divine status. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's one of the themes of Theological Origins of Modernity, Michael Allen Gillespie, which I mentioned.

But when I think about what preceded it, I do not find myself longing to return to the Good Old Days. — Ludwig V

Quite. I'm not pushing for a return to a golden past. It's more along the lines of a forgotten wisdom.

Language is pragmatic, and has nothing to "say" about the world. It is a tool for discovery. It "stands in" for things in the world. It is not that enigmatic terms like ineffability, ultimate reality, nirvana, the sacred, the holy, and so on are nonsense. — Astrophel

I think Buddhism is far better at mapping these ideas of what can and cannot be said - much more so than 20th century philosophy, although to explore it would be beyond the scope of the thread. Suffice to point to the 'parable of the raft', an early Buddhist text, in which the Buddha compares his instruction to a raft, thrown together out of twigs and branches, necessary to cross the river, but not to be clung to as an ultimate. I think it contrasts with the absolutism of Judeo-Christian culture. Anyway, that's a major digression as far as this thread is concerned, I won't pursue it, but thanks for your replies.

Wittgenstein said in his Lecture on Ethics that, say a man's head turns suddenly into a lion's head. We would all be shocked, suspect a miracle; that is, until science got a hold of it and a discovery, perhaps something completely new, was measured, compared, tested in different environments, etc. And if this were simply not explainable because the results defied the repeatability requirement of science, then this, too, would be admitted and normalized. We would call this "chaos". There are many things called chaos by science. — Astrophel

Thank you very much. I didn't know that Wittgenstein articulated this thought.

And at the end of the day, he'd be lionized. :lol:

Quite. I'm not pushing for a return to a golden past. It's more along the lines of a forgotten wisdom. — Wayfarer

It's one thing to retrieve the wisdom. It's quite another to one bring back the fool's gold. Effective panning is essential. And then I wonder whether you can have one without the other.

he'd be lionized — Wayfarer

That would explain why he's so hard to understand.

It's true, there would be no fools gold, were there no actual gold.

I would explain my position further but it would be a complete digression from the thrust of this thread.

Quite so. Perhaps another time.