• Joshs
    5.7k


    Heidegger’s point that a science presupposes as its very condition of possibility a set of metaphysical assumptions about how the world ought to be understood, which implies an ethics
    — Joshs

    Is that really Heidegger's point? Because that seems to apply to much more than just science.
    Lionino


    Heidegger’s point about science is that it is not equipped to question its own presuppositions, and that when it does so it is no longer doing science but philosophy. One can liken this to Kuhn’s distinction between normal and revolutionary science.
  • Lionino
    2.7k
    Heidegger’s point about science is that it is not equipped to question its own presuppositions, and that when it does so it is no longer doing science but philosophy.Joshs

    :chin:

    It comes across as straightforward to me that this applies to pretty much everything. X is not equipped to question the presuppositions of X, by questioning it you are doing something other (more basic) than X. It almost makes me think of Goedel.
  • ENOAH
    843
    Do you agree with this, namely that the notion of good in inherent in the primacy of experience, and not something that can be learned by simply looking up a definition and analyzing it?Shawn

    I think you could say that about everything. Take apple. I wasn't born knowing it. Nor did it ever instantly come to me. As I first learned it, I might've confused it with peach or pear. But for obvious reasons apple, like many Signifiers purporting to (re)present the real natural world (and physical objects we construct using signifiers) has evolved to seamlessly trigger the "same" response for all of us.

    "Good" is not only abstract, and therefore "infinitely" broader in its triggering, but we use the same Signifier triggered by and to trigger different very different "newpaths". Good time, person, taste, work etc. Anyway, that's why we ask the question about Signifiers like "good" and not "apple".

    But not only do both apple and good have to be learned through experience. But they are both continuously having to be learned, though sometimes seemingly imperceptible, incessantly becoming (learned by experience). Everythung settles at that moment settlement (knowledge/belief) is triggered (the illusion of being present). But nothing settles permanently.

    I might taste an apple tonight which subtly changes the Signifier Apple and how/what it triggers for me by way of more Signifiers and ultimately feeling. My thoughts right now may have subtly engaged new signifiers. This has caused so called clarity. Apple seems brighter to me now.

    I might learn something in this thread which changes Good for me. I might even say forever. But though the revised chain of Signifiers structuring Good which I picked up here may remain for me forever, Good will yet change for me, as new Signifiers are triggered to trigger newly revised chains.

    What can we learn by just picking up the definition and analyzing it? 1+1=2? I think no. First you experienced difference, that took months, then quantity, etc etc. Am I being strangely meticulous, or misunderstanding that the question was intended for a moral assessment?

    I think morality is the good, and both, related chains in the evolution of Signifiers and how they structure knowledge/experience, are never discovered by an instant assessment. They are never discovered; but are always becoming. And when we "want" to use them as they quickly move, when we are triggered by a fitting function, we just pick up our
    latest version. And call that Good.
  • ENOAH
    843
    First, you see the evil in the world.
    Then, you see the evil in others.
    Eventually, you see the evil within yourself.
    Scarecow
    And that's when you finally see the good in the world?
  • Shawn
    13.2k


    It only occured to me right now, based on what you said, that the highest good for you must be appreciation and with that, axiology? Am I right on this?
  • ENOAH
    843
    But I disagree if the quote from Amadeus means the good never forms. There is an object, a definition, that forms, from our experience, called “good.”Fire Ologist


    Nice

    I think Plato was pointing to what is formed once the good is developed in the human (so he was wrong to point to an eternal form).Fire Ologist

    Yes. I get that [now]. You're probably properly using "object" associating it with "objective" and thus present, not a fleeting nothing. Fair enough.

    We still need to glean a definition of good if we are to leap into judgments of better and worse.Fire Ologist
    I agree. But because let's not ignore, our constructing of good serves a functional end, [survival and prosperity. But ignore that if its distracting]. Not because there is an innate thing, "Good", in Nature.

    But nevertheless, like letters, we fix good in our lives everyday.Fire Ologist
    Yes we do


    Couldn’t you say that the innate in conscience is where the good is gleaned, where the good is constructed?
    — Fire Ologist

    I can see some sense in which it's a 'construct' but I also believe there is an innate good, although not everyone will agree.
    Wayfarer

    I'd love to agree. But where? Where can you show me innate good without walking me through constructs?

    I think if there is an innate good in nature/reality, we can only Be good, but we cannot know that. The instant we know it we have constructed it. So we can be good but we'd never know if we were. That is, if we're talking about Good in the real world independent of Mind. (If we cam even so talk: which, we can't. So Good is not a thing innate in nature)

    Inherent" and "experience" are incompatible concepts. "Inherent" is something we have by nature, we are born with.Alkis Piskas
    I agree. But I also assumed the word wasn't used to denote the contradiction, but rather, in tge sense of "belongs" to experience, "is derived" from etc.

    fallacy is in thinking we can separate out the natural from the moral, the ‘is’ from the ‘ought’.Joshs

    since it was precisely Heidegger’s point that a science presupposes as its very condition of possibility a set of metaphysical assumptions about how the world ought to be understood, which implies an ethics.Joshs

    The way I read "natural from moral" above is to infer you mean morality at least has its basis in nature (a lessening of the two are one, and inseparable). Ought is derived from is. And you cite Heidegger above. But I read H (assuming you depicted H precisely not loosely (as I might)) as implicitly saying not that the pursuit of any knowledge requires a natural framework, Laws of Nature, [to re-present?] or that the two are actually inseparable, but rather that there be convention on how some basic structures should be framed and settled upon as "true"; i.e., how to "construct" a universal framework for our further constructions, or pursuits.

    With respect, he had to. We all do. Even in our mundane interactions. If we don't do that (agree on a constructed framework), "I love you" becomes what it is structurally and inherently, empty and meaningless. If he didn't do that, for example, he could not have reflected so profoundly on the dynamics of what was necessarily restricted to the becoming Mind, and present it as though it had captured Being.
  • Wayfarer
    22.6k
    I'd love to agree. But where? Where can you show me innate good without walking me through constructs?ENOAH

    The part of you that would love to agree is an indication.
  • ENOAH
    843
    Good one. Will rethink with that.
  • 180 Proof
    15.4k
    I don't understand what you mean by "appreciation".
  • Joshs
    5.7k


    The way I read "natural from moral" above is to infer you mean morality at least has its basis in nature (a lessening of the two are one, and inseparable). Ought is derived from is. And you cite Heidegger above. But I read H (assuming you depicted H precisely not loosely (as I might)) as implicitly saying not that the pursuit of any knowledge requires a natural framework, Laws of Nature, [to re-present?] or that the two are actually inseparable, but rather that there be convention on how some basic structures should be framed and settled upon as "true"; i.e., how to "construct" a universal framework for our further constructions, or pursuitsENOAH

    I meant that morality has its basis in the qualitative schemes we construct out of our interaction with our world. Within the realm of science, there has been a longstanding tendency to call these constructed schemes models of ‘nature’, as though our schemes were representations of some natural reality external to and independent of these schemes. In fact, Heidegger protests against not only the idea of a world independent of our models of it , but the very idea of a subjective or intersubjective scheme, model, narrative , theory that we impose on the world. He wanted to get away from a subject-object dualism entirely, and the accompanying assumption of a normativity or conventionalism within which we view each other and the world.

    He claimed that we fall into such inauthentic conventionalism (Das Man, the ‘they’) when we fail to understand the underlying basis of experience in authentic Being, which is not a subject representing a world to itself, but a self continually changed by ‘coming back to itself’ from its world. And this world , for its part, changes reciprocally with self.

    At any rate, whether we go with Heidegger’s attempt to abandon subject-object normative schemes and representations , or retain the idea that humans construct normative models from their interactions with a world, in both cases what ‘is’ is already organized on the basis of prior expectations and anticipations. Scientific as well as ethical facts are made intelligible on the basis of pre-existing assumptions. What ‘is’ is always an interpretation, biased in advance in one direction or another, relative to already in-place goals and purposes. Science can never be a neutral bystander in relation to ethical concerns because its determination of what factually ‘is’ is loaded with its own presuppositions about what ought to be, which is inextricably entangled with all other aspects of the culture in which those scientists live. The consensually arrived at ethical principles guiding the culture of an era do not exist in counterpoint to the scientific understanding produced in that era. Rather, they are variations of the same biases.

    The role of moral structures can be seen most clearly not within a community closely united by shared understandings, but between communities divided by differing intelligibilities. The individual deemed in violation of one group’s moral norms has found themselves caught between two communities, just as is the case with scientific heretics. It is unfortunate that the very bonding around shared intelligibilities that forms a unified community inevitably leads to alienation from those outside of the community. It then becomes necessary to protect that community from foreign ideas and actions which threaten to introduce dangerous incoherence into the normative culture. Thus the need for moral codes and structures.

    It should be mentioned that , like our scientific models, our ethical norms aren’t conventions in the sense of optional fashions that we put on or take off as reasonable members of a consensual community. These are deeply held commitments grounded in presuppositions that guide central aspects of our lives. When such presuppositions are brought into question , we risk the loss of our anchoring in the world , our ability to makes sense of it and our place in it. This is why wars are fought over ethical principles.
  • Joshs
    5.7k


    Heidegger’s point about science is that it is not equipped to question its own presuppositions, and that when it does so it is no longer doing science but philosophy.
    — Joshs

    :chin:

    It comes across as straightforward to me that this applies to pretty much everything. X is not equipped to question the presuppositions of X, by questioning it you are doing something other (more basic) than X. It almost makes me think of Goedel
    Lionino

    You’re right that the place to question axioms is not within the axiomatic system itself. I think the issue has to do with how far one is prepared to go in one’s questioning of the origin of presuppositions, and the groundlessness of grounds. Goedel himself was not prepared to engage in a radical questioning of the basis of mathematical axioms, which is why he remained a Platonist. Similarly, a philosophy of science like that of Popper is not willing to radically put into question the assumption of universal norms of method in science.
  • ENOAH
    843
    In fact, Heidegger protests against not only the idea of a world independent of our models of it , but the very idea of a subjective or intersubjective scheme, model, narrative , theory that we impose on the world. He wanted to get away from a subject-object dualism entirely, and the accompanying assumption of a normativity or conventionalism within which we view each other and the world.Joshs

    Very nice.. I misunderstood. Not anymore.

    Thank you.

    in authentic Being, which is not a subject representing a world to itself, but a self continually changed by ‘coming back to itself’ from its world. And this world , for its part, changes reciprocally with self.Joshs
    Here, I diverge. But no worries, armed with the info above, it is clear to me, how and why.

    in both cases what ‘is’ is already organized on the basis of prior expectations and anticipations.Joshs

    Understood and agreed


    The role of moral structures can be seen most clearly not within a community closely united by shared understandings, but between communities divided by differing intelligibilities. The individual deemed in violation of one group’s moral norms has found themselves caught between two communities, just as is the case with scientific heretics. It is unfortunate that the very bonding around shared intelligibilities that forms a unified community inevitably leads to alienation from those outside of the community. It then becomes necessary to protect that community from foreign ideas and actions which threaten to introduce dangerous incoherence into the normative culture. Thus the need for moral codes and structures.Joshs

    Insightful!

    our ethical norms aren’t conventions in the sense of optional fashions that we put on or take off as reasonable members of a consensual communityJoshs

    Of course not. I'd go a step further and say they "dictate/code" our feelings and actions, in spite of being "constructed". But I do not need to insist upon that "dangler" in order to "fit" your admittedly helpful depiction here.
  • Alkis Piskas
    2.1k

    :down:
    You ask if someone agrees, you receive an answer and you then ignore it. This is quite impolite, @Shawn.
  • Shawn
    13.2k


    Yes, I agree with you Alkis Piskas. In that, good, is beneficial. But, I wouldn't know how to outline good as beneficial in different circumstances, because what can be beneficial is subject to interpretations. So, once again I would have to agree with you. :cool:
  • Shawn
    13.2k
    I don't understand what you mean by "appreciation".180 Proof

    Isn't the negation of disvalue, the meaning of appreciation - or maybe you meant this in terms of aesthetics?

    For me, axiology is the highest good.
  • 180 Proof
    15.4k
    Isn't the negation of disvalue, the meaning of appreciation -Shawn
    No.

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/902327

    or maybe you meant this in terms of aesthetics?
    Also in terms of ethics and logic.

    For me, axiology is the highest good.
    Axiology is the study of value.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiology
  • Shawn
    13.2k
    Axiology is the study of value.180 Proof

    Yes, and the study of value is of the highest importance to the appreciation of value, or what you call the abating of disvalue in appreciation.
  • 180 Proof
    15.4k
    What you keep saying has nothing to do with what I've written. "Appreciation" is irrelevant to my concerns as expressed here .
  • Shawn
    13.2k


    :ok:

    Sorry I mistook the negation of disvalue as a feature of appreciation of value.
  • BC
    13.6k
    Experience is our best guide to what is good. We can spin theories about what is good forever, but until we act, and experience consequences, we have no solid data to go on.
  • AmadeusD
    2.6k
    I reject this.

    But I disagree if the quote from Amadeus means the good never forms. There is an object, a definition, that forms, from our experience, called “good.”Fire Ologist

    There is not. I defy you to point at it.
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