for me both Marxists and Randians are ideologues like the dogmatic religionists just because they posit some old "one way for all". It seems to me we all inhabit the same world in the empirical sense of "world"―but on the other hand beyond that we each inhabit our own worlds, which are microcosms, along with our family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues and so on. — Janus
↪J I think Heidegger is referring to his distinction between between vorhanden "present at hand" knowledge and zuhanden "ready to hand" wisdom. I see that distinction as being basically similar to the distinction between "knowing that" and "knowing how". — Janus
…the standing-reserves do not possess constancy in the sense of a steady, unchanged presence. The kind of presencing of the standing-reserves is orderability… The transformation of the presence of what-is-present from objectiveness to orderability is, however, also the precondition for the fact that something like the cybernetic way of representation can emerge and lay claim to the role of the universal science at all.”
How do we move past this? — Banno
Yes, the religious phenomenologists (and we could include Henry, Scheler, and perhaps even Zahavi and Levinas in this group) believe that to exceed the solipsistic self-givenness of the subject requires metaphysics. But why?
How does the transcendence of the subject toward a substantive in-itself (the Goodness , Height and Righteousness of the divine other) not represent a backsliding away from Husserl’s content-free ground towards an arbitrary substantive beginning?
How does it not end up reifying both subjectivity and alterity?
if we want to critique Husserl’s ground of pure presence as excluding Otherness, we can follow the path set by Nietzsche, Deleuze, Heidegger and Derrida, who don’t fall into the trap of imprisoning transcendence with a substantive divine content.
You have to appreciate these remarks in the context of Heidegger’s critique of technology. When he says that the “immediate effectiveness must remain foreign to all essential thinking, because such thinking, in its truth, must be prevented from becoming “familiar” and “understandable” to contemporaries”” , he equates the the familiar and immediately effective with the technologizing instrumentalism of empirical science as well as the Cartesian metaphysics that grounds it.Philosophy cannot be the mere putting into practice of a pre-conceived plan. — Joshs
I think Heidegger is referring to his distinction between between vorhanden "present at hand" knowledge and zuhanden "ready to hand" wisdom. I see that distinction as being basically similar to the distinction between "knowing that" and "knowing how". — Janus
such thinking, in its truth, must be prevented from becoming “familiar” and “understandable” to contemporaries.
Is Williamson "blind to his philosophy's historical situatedness? Does he need to take that into account? If he tried to do that would not his accounts of our historical situatedness be themselves historically situated? Then we might need an account of the historical situatedness of the account of historical situatedness. Easy enough to see where this is headed. It seems we inevitably must begin from where we are and we cannot attain a "god's eye" view of our situatedness, and nor do we need to to begin to inquire into whatever it is we wish to inquire. — Janus
The historiographical, as the word itself is supposed to indicate, refers to the past insofar as it is explored and presented, either expressly or inexpressly, from the perspective of what happens to be the present. Every historiographical consideration turns the past as such into an object... It is now clear that happenings and history are not what is by- gone and what is considered as such, i.e., the historiographical. But just as little is this happening the present. The happening and the happenings of history are primordially and always the future, that which in a concealed way comes toward us, a revelatory process that puts us at risk, and thus is compelling in ad vance. The future is the beginning of all happening.
The historical does not denote a manner of grasping and exploring but the very happening itself. The historical is not the past, not even the present, but the future, that which is commended to the will, to expectation, to care. This does not allow itself to be "considered"; instead, we must "reflect" on it. We have to be concerned with the meaning, the possible standards, the necessary goals, the ineluctable powers, and that from which all human happenings begin. These goals and powers can be such that they have already come to pass -in a hidden way-long ago but are precisely therefore not the past but what still abides and is awaiting the liberation of its influence. The future is the origin of history. What is most futural, however, is the great beginning, that which-withdrawing itself constantly-reaches back the farthest and at the same time reaches forward the farthest. (Basic Questions of Philosophy)
Williamson finishes by explicitly acknowledging that his own essay does not meet the criteria it advocates.
He couldn't, becasue the essay is not an argument as such, so much as an aesthetic critique. He is showing us again what is beautiful in philosophy, and what isn't. — Banno
Despite all the talk of rigour, logic, clarity, and convergence, Williamson’s piece is fundamentally rhetorical: — Banno
What is philosophy for?
That's the question that will decide what you think philosophy is, and how you will do philosophy. — Banno
I don't disagree with you. But I would go much further. We warp our understanding of philosophy by thinking that rhetoric is something that can be removed from our use of language, like cutting out the rotten bits of an apple. Rhetoric is often assumed to be an optional strategy, mostly relied on by those who do not have good arguments. Argumentation is not an alternative to rhetoric. When arguments are presented to an audience/readership, it is an attempt to persuade and consequently rhetoric. Much of what is labelled rhetoric is not an alternative to argumentation, it is simply bad argumentation.Despite all the talk of rigour, logic, clarity, and convergence, Williamson’s piece is fundamentally rhetorical:
— Banno
If "rhetorical" is taken as the alternative to "argumentative," then yes. But rhetoric often gets rejected as not philosophy at all -- and sometimes for good reason. W's paper is very clearly philosophy. — J
So he is representing the debate as something like a boxing match. When a foul is committed the referee stops the match and makes the participants start again. That's not even possible in a philosophical discussion. If Dummett has committed a foul, someone will likely call him out and he will either accept the criticism and take the remark back or not. There's no referee. Why does he present things in this way?But when participants in a debate are allowed to throw out both (Sc. the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle simultaneously, methodological alarm bells should ring
W's paper is very clearly philosophy. — J
So thinking being the male and its object being the female?
Metaphorically. Or maybe archetypally. — Srap Tasmaner
Another way to say this might be that good thinking is portable, which I think most of us want to believe, but I suspect the evidence there is a little mixed. Right from Socrates we get, "If you want to know about horses, do you ask a physician or a horse breeder?" — Srap Tasmaner
Yet another way to put this might be that the good reasoning that went into a good piece of thinking, or the good thinking that went into a good decision, ought to be 'extractable', that you in your field (or life) could learn from someone else doing something else. — Srap Tasmaner
And that again relies on a distinction between the movements of a mind and its object. To draw them back together, as you are inclined to do, would be instead to distinguish reason from instrumental rationality, giving to reason not only the expertise in reaching the desired result but something like the 'proper' selection of a goal, or of an object of thought. Instrumental rationality would then be only part of reason, not the whole thing.
Is that close to your view? — Srap Tasmaner
Does it leave untouched important areas? Morality, politics, spirituality, art, culture? Of course. But thinking poorly about those important areas of human experience doesn't deserve the name "philosophy". — Srap Tasmaner
Anyway, that's the hard view. I'd like to be able to state the opposing view as clearly, but it's quite a bit more difficult. — Srap Tasmaner
But I also think the Heidegger passage is more combative than that. He writes:
such thinking, in its truth, must be prevented from becoming “familiar” and “understandable” to contemporaries.
"Prevented" is very strong, especially when coupled with "in its truth." If he'd said, "in its misunderstanding" or "in its misapplication," that might be different. But H seems to want it both ways: "What I'm saying is true, but don't you dare claim that it is 'understandable.' That would be to turn it into a technology — J
Srap Tasmaner: I would say that non-Analytic philosophy does think about what is important, but it does not think well.* — Leontiskos
Leontiskos: I would say that Analytic philosophy does think well, but not about what is important. — Leontiskos
Thinking well will seek out a high object of thought, and a high object of thought will attract strong thinking. — Leontiskos
For the record, of course I didn't say that, even inadvertently. — Srap Tasmaner
This, on the other hand -- I'll admit I was trying to coax someone into saying exactly this. Not with any particular goal in mind, it's just that this is what people always say about philosophy in the analytic tradition, so I wanted to sort of set a place at the table for this view. — Srap Tasmaner
...discourse and dissection. So I'll go back to the suggested demarcation criteria, that we stop just making shit up when we start dissecting, and that this is what marks the move form myth making to doing philosophy.Acknowledge that there are different styles of philosophy with very different aims — Janus
He explicitly situates himself within realism within the realism/antirealism debate within analytic philosophy. But the expectation is that he explicitly situate himself in Heidegger's history.Is Williamson "blind to his philosophy's historical situatedness? — Janus
The work done on Heidegger that made progress was that which interprets it in analytic terms, and dissects it accordingly - Dreyfus, Brandom, Carman..."What I'm saying is true, but don't you dare claim that it is 'understandable.' That would be to turn it into a technology."
What I really think: This is all rhetoric of a bygone moment in philosophy. We can find plenty to think about in Being and Time without worrying about whether H was often defensive and hyperbolic. — J
Unless names are invidiously named, sermons like this one tend to cause less
offence than they should, because everyone imagines that they are aimed at other people. — Timothy Williamson
For my money, Williamson strikes his best chord in the second paragraph on page 10, beginning, "Discipline from..." — Leontiskos
Discipline from semantics is only one kind of philosophical discipline. It is insufficient by itself for the conduct of a philosophical inquiry, and may sometimes fail to be useful, when the semantic forms of the relevant linguistic constructions are simple and obvious. But when philosophy is not disciplined by semantics, it must be disciplined by something else: syntax, logic, common sense, imaginary examples, the findings of other disciplines (mathematics, physics, biology, psychology, history, …) or the aesthetic evaluation of theories (elegance, simplicity, …). Indeed, philosophy subject to only one of those disciplines is liable to become severely distorted: several are needed simultaneously. To be ‘disciplined’ by X here is not simply to pay lip-service to X; it is to make a systematic conscious effort to conform to the deliverances of X, where such conformity is at least somewhat easier to recognize than is the answer to the original philosophical question. Of course, each form of philosophical discipline is itself contested by some philosophers. But that is no reason to produce work that is not properly disciplined by anything. It may be a reason to welcome methodological diversity in philosophy: if different groups in philosophy give different relative weights to various sources of discipline, we can compare the long-run results of the rival ways of working. Tightly constrained work has the merit that even those who reject the constraints can agree that it demonstrates their consequences. — pp 10f
philosophy subject to only one of those disciplines is liable to become severely distorted: several are needed simultaneously.
Into this debate about his existence, I will not pretend to enter. I must take up humbler ground, and limit my ambition to showing that a God, whether existent or not, is at all events the kind of being which, if he did exist, would form the most adequate possible object for minds framed like our own to conceive as lying at the root of the universe. My thesis, in other words, is this: that some outward reality of a nature defined as God's nature must be defined, is the only ultimate object that is at the same time rational and possible for the human mind's contemplation. Anything short of God is not rational, anything more than God is not possible, if the human mind be in truth the triadic structure of impression, reflection, and reaction which we at the outset allowed.
There is, for example, no actual philosophical work by anyone anywhere in this thread. At least on this view. Strictly speaking. — Srap Tasmaner
In Christ’s human—which is to say, rational—nature, we see the rational human spirit in its most intimate and most natural unity with divine Spirit, which is absolute reason, and the most intimate and natural unity of human intellect with divine intellect.31 And so on. One should not let the sheer grandiloquence of these apostrophes to the God-man distract one from their deepest import, or from the rigorous logic informing them. Because what Nicholas is also saying here, simply enough, is that in Christ the fullness of human nature is revealed precisely to the degree that it perfectly reveals the divine nature of which it is the image, and that human spirit achieves the highest expression of its nature only to the degree that it is perfectly united with divine Spirit. That is, in Christ we see that the only possible end for any rational nature
is divine because such also is its ground; apart from God drawing us from the first into ever more perfect union with himself, we do not exist at all. We are nothing but created gods coming to be, becoming God in God, able to become divine only because, in some sense, we are divine from the very first
There is, for example, no actual philosophical work by anyone anywhere in this thread. At least on this view. Strictly speaking. — Srap Tasmaner
I think -- and don't you? -- that this view is wrong. — J
Now, there are still differences between the three sorts of paragraphs you find in a math textbook, the English, the mathematical, and the transitional. Not all of them exactly *are* math, but all are necessary to math and for math even to be a thing.
And so I think it is with philosophy. It's not really a matter of formalism at all, but more like the distinction in a legal opinion between the actual decision, the language of which is binding on parties, and obiter dicta, — Srap Tasmaner
There is, for example, no actual philosophical work by anyone anywhere in this thread. At least on this view. Strictly speaking.
— Srap Tasmaner — Fire Ologist
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