in order to escape from eternity (of monotonous subjectivity) if, without irony, only for brief, scattered, moments. — 180 Proof

He not busy being born....

Which reminds me of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGxjIBEZvx0

But I would like to know how experiences can be compared. I don't think we can use language, because there's no way to verify what another person means when they refer to their own expereinces. — RogueAI

This heads toward the 'beetle-in-the-box' idea. How can 'pain' have a public meaning? And yet it does (there are right ways and wrong ways to use the word.) Same with 'red' and 'green' tho there's no way to check raw sensations. But then how does 'raw sensation' or how does 'experience' get public meaning?

Actually, I googled that phrase, 'nature loves to hide', which lead me to splashing out seventy five bucks for a philosophy of physics book of that same title. Hasn't arrived yet. Hope I can understand it. — Wayfarer

Should be fun! I just got Classics of Analytic Philosophy to make up for having read too much dirty, obscurantist continental stuff so far.

That's the question. Here's a quote from Edward Conze, an irascible Buddhologist from mid last century: — Wayfarer

Great quote. There's some taboo-violation there, right? All men are not created equal. This is the dark side of Nietzsche too, with his idea of ranks of human beings. Becoming what one is, discovering one's fate, one's level. I say 'dark side' because it's taboo but I think intellectual types can't help relating to such elitist concepts. In that quote we get 'more real because more exalted.' But exalted remains undefined as a kind of raw superiority. The more real is what the better people say it is or how the higher man experiences the world. You can find this energy in Nietzsche running strangely alongside his Enlightenment materialism, and I think it's where Art (as a sacred concept) is involved. Art is the mysticism of the Romantic 'atheist.' What Russell types hate in religion they hate in Nietzsche, the perceived arrogance, the claim that some live by different rules.

Conze contrasts this with the 'sciential' philosophy of the modern West: — Wayfarer

Another great quote, and it does seem to describe the modern West.

Well, I was speaking rhetorically, but I think in the secular academy it is assumed that the Universe is essentially energetic-material with no intrinsic value/purpose/meaning. There are exceptions, but I feel that in English-speaking academic philosophy, the assumed background is explicitly secular. — Wayfarer

I think you are right that there's a metaphysical belief (vague but powerful) that nature is a dead machine. Secular religion just focuses instead on race, class, gender, freedom, environment, etc., but very passionately. But against the background of a disenchanted nature-machine.

The world we of skill we grow into and live within is always floating over some deep well/chasm you can't learn better by falling in. — csalisbury

I'm with you on this floating metaphor. The ground is an abyss, an ocean whose bottom is lost in darkness. I'm not sure I'm reading the last part right. Are you saying that falling in does no good? That one has to (or might as well) float at a kind of distance? Or is there a word left out?

Recognition among craftsmen is as important, but also if there's nothing in your life you can do that you can't explain and show to a child , delighting them- you're probably on the wrong path. — csalisbury

I like the introduction of the childhood theme. Think of adolescent concerns, being funny, dressing well, sports, cheerleading. All quite embodied, not compressible in a textbook.

Then there's a grown-up version that we're doing here with words (being funny, being cool, dressing well in words.) The whole 'logic is a gentleman's agreement' fits in here. I don't think there's a manual for being rational, being funny, being decent. Or rather we're all scribbling in a book that'll never be finished. Philosophy is something like the game of writing that book of rules, except (as Brandom/Hegel notes) we change the game as we comment on it. There's always a drift, often toward more complexity.

But it is always supposed that the source of that mythology is insight into a higher reality and the mythical re-telling a way to communicate that rather than a literal description. Actually that goes back to Armstrong's point about the distinction of logos and mythos - to interpret mythos literally is to mistake it for logos, which it isn't. — Wayfarer

What is 'height' here? What makes one judgment or proposition higher than another ? Is it generality? That the statement speaks of larger structures in existence? Is it an intensity of feeling? Such a magnanimity, serenity, love? I have no objections to the idea that certain metaphysical judgments 'light up' for those in the right 'place' for them (lifestyle, what they've been through.) Also no objections to the existence of the esoteric. I guess the issue is boundaries, how to treat the esoteric. Is there a performative contradiction in reasoning about something that hides?

On the logos/mythos thing, I see a spectrum. Cognition seems fundamentally metaphorical to me (Lakoff's work, for instance.) I'm with you and Armstrong on the sophisticated reading of spiritual texts as non-literal analogies or just as texts of undecidable status that help people.

As I think we've discussed previously, one glaring problem in all this, the elephant in the room, is that in modern philosophy there is no 'higher' - there's no axis against which that can be calibrated. I'm afraid that's always going to be an insuperable barrier. — Wayfarer

I think you can find some philosophers/philosophies where that's true, but for the most part it doesn't seem accurate to me. Just about every thinker has some story in which there are good guys and bad guys. IMO, you are just throwing all 'atheist' philosophy (I mean that with a non-religious attitude) into the same Flatland bin.

Explanation is a human activity. It takes one level, x, the explanandum - and links it to another level, y, the explanans. in context, in the proper language games, this is a super useful tool! Science makes use of it all the time, and we have rockets and penicillin and VR etc. But when it's taken out of those contexts - when the indigestive hunger is looking to be satisfied - then (here's where Hegel really breaks it down) what is explanation? Metaphysically it can't satisfy. It can only link descriptions between different levels. Maybe you say x is the expression of y. Or maybe you say y causes x. But the indigestive, metaphysical, hunger expects]explanation to supply - offer the substantial heft - of the final satisfying thing - when all it can do - all its constructed to do - is establish linkages between levels.Wittgenstein breaks his spade to show the bedrock, and Hegel posits a 'inverted world' to show there's only so far you can go. — csalisbury

I really like this and agree. What is it that people hunger for? Some kind of impossible explanation of the whole deal, even though an explanation of the whole deal does not make sense, since explanation only links things intrasystematically. Long ago, before I really knew what I meant, I wrote 'Wittgenstein is the cube root of Hegel.' I went from Kojeve/Hegel to the TLP, favorite book of the moment to the next one and felt some kind of connection that I couldn't make explicit. You make me want to look into certain parts of Hegel's Phen. I have always only focused on certain passages and themes (most the types of people stuff.)

(i)Brandom's 'raging white-water river' image is fantastic, and honestly (having read only a little of him) a nice surprise. He has felt dry to me in the past - this is a living, breathing, apt, image. — csalisbury

I've never owned one of his books, but I'm curious about A Spirit of Trust, which seems to be an assimilation of Hegel, finally, in the analytic tradition.

I adore the 'raging white-water river' metaphor. It was like something I was looking for without knowing it. This anti-theoretical and anti-philosophical notion of skill...I think Heidegger can be read as 'dasein is (primarily)skill.' Nice that we have a monosyllabic English word. Better than know-how in that words and deeds live together, no exact boundary between them.

Great post! I wanted to get that out before composing a response.

I understand Baker's quote. It just seems to stretch the meaning of 'investigation.' The notion of 'Direct Experience' is an epistemic disaster. Think of the strong criticisms of sense-data empiricism. This stuff is private by definition, so it makes an absurd foundation for science, however initially plausible. Instead we have to start with (theory-laden) observation statements.

Granted there are journeys into the interior, the self making sense of the self, we can still talk about what 'self' is supposed to mean here and how language works. I think the issue is trying to be philosophical and rational and at the same time gesturing beyond rationality. It's as if the mystic can't leave behind the desire to be recognized as some sort of scientist of the interior, hence metaphors like 'truth' and 'knowledge' for something that's also called 'mythos' or 'gnosis.'

One issue is that a science of the the interior is only possible with the assumption of similarity, but such an assumption cannot be justified via Direct Experience.

W brings in both abstract generalizations like beauty and more concrete generalizations like leaf. Both are expressed by word, yet there is distinction between showing some leaves to a child and then some beautiful objects or scenes. — magritte

I think that W would say something like 'we shouldn't take this image metaphor too seriously.' Contrast this with Plato or someone who sees that we generalize and invents entities to make sense of it. And these aren't tentatively-held pragmatic entities but (for such thinkers) metaphysical bedrock.

The idea of a general concept being a common property of its particular instances connects up with other primitive, too simple, ideas of the structure of language. It is comparable to the idea that properties are ingredients of the things which have the properties; e.g. that beauty is an ingredient of all beautiful things as alcohol is of beer and wine, and that we therefore could have pure beauty, unadulterated by anything that is beautiful. — W

Lakoff's theories seem to fit in here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

Beauty is to beautiful things as alcohol is to alcoholic beverages. This metaphor doesn't work upon close investigation, but it's tempting. Family resemblance is an alternative, more flexible conception.

Also, on pictures/images/metaphors:

Metaphor has been seen within the Western scientific tradition as a purely linguistic construction. The essential thrust of Lakoff's work has been the argument that metaphors are a primarily conceptual construction and are in fact central to the development of thought.

In his words:

"Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature."
According to Lakoff, non-metaphorical thought is possible only when we talk about purely physical reality; the greater the level of abstraction, the more layers of metaphor are required to express it. People do not notice these metaphors for various reasons, including that some metaphors become 'dead' in the sense that we no longer recognize their origin. Another reason is that we just don't "see" what is "going on". — link

I have a very basic question: how readable is Wittgenstein? I am familiar with his ideas from various summaries I've read and Great Courses lectures I've bought, but never read him outside short excerpts that lack context. — Count Timothy von Icarus

IMO, one of his great charms is that thinkers don't get more readable than Witt. His thought is chunked into little sections but often these sections flow together. I've read some secondary sources that were good, but personally I think W is such a good writer that it's hard to improve the original.

:up:

She's a cool lady & as you say one of many great observations.

That's where one's self-confidence comes in and intuitively deciding that some claims aren't worth one's time, or are otherwise none of one's business.
One will simply crash and burn if one wishes to give all claims a "fair hearing" or approach them scientifically, testing them or requesting evidence for them. — baker

I agree with this very much. We just can't give every claim an equal hearing.

That's a good example. I think intuitively we'd all want to say that the woman in question was suffering from some mental health issues and would possibly benefit from psychiatric help. — Isaac

It seems a little wacky to me too. But perhaps our florist is happy. Then I'd classify it as more of the usual human vanity. The woman probably obeys traffic rules and is nice to babies. It's only when you get her started on flowers that she's harmlessly mad. A very nice person recently told me she believes in fairies. She's a hard-working single mother. I nod sympathetically. I like her too much to try and take it from her.

There's been a tendency to exempt religions on the grounds of numbers (that many people can't all be mad). I'm inclined to go along with that approach, but in doing so we've pinned religious acceptance to empirical claims (the question of how many people share the feeling) and that takes us away from what people like Wayfarer want to say about religious investigations, I think.

But yeah, personally, I don't really see any other way out of it. There's no denying the difference between some lunatic believing in their own fantasy world and a religious claim is the number of people ho go along with it, and that does make claims about the success of religious practice empirical, otherwise the lunatic gets their fair shake too. — Isaac

I think this connect to the OP. It's as if people are doing some ritual of claiming to believe. Did the average Trump voter really believe the election was stolen? I like the pragmatist idea that belief is enacted. A Catholic can show up and mouth the Apostolic creed, put a tithe in the basket, try to be nice. The ritual actions have a low cost. Contrast this with a suicide bomber (and Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling reminds me of such things, a father sacrificing his miracle son for God, going against norms and common sense to prove his faith.)

What I think neither side want is for my claim that one should rub trifle in their hair every day to achieve enlightenment, to sit alongside the claim that one should attend church, meditate, wear a hijab or whatever. And it's not the degree of justificatory narrative around the claim. Anyone who thinks I couldn't come up with whole libraries of justificatory narrative for the trifle rubbing clearly hasn't read enough Terry Pratchett. — Isaac

I haven't read Prachette, but I like your example. A single madman is a joke. A few is a cult. Many are a religion. At the same time there's the sublimation (or neutralization) of a religion that makes it relatively harmless, in the short run at least.

No. I'm saying one has to have those things, or else getting involved with religion is going to squish one. — baker

OK. Well I could see it working both ways. People need community, or most people do. I can imagine just being accepted by some group could rescue someone. Then the doctrines may flatter the group, and they can all believe it together (that they are saved, enlightened, pure,...)

I'm sometimes amazed by high-calibre thinkers like Marx, Weber, or Nietzsche because they don't account for the cunning of religious people. Instead, they talk of religious people as if a page from De Imitatione Christi were a template for them. — baker

In The German Ideology, though, you'll find a Marx's criticism of religion's cunning philosophical forms. Nietzsche's analysis of asceticism in GofM is highly complex (he seeings himself as a late stage of that mutating asceticism.) That said, I agree that in general secular thinkers can neglect the cunning you mention. It's all too easy to chatter on the level of cartoons and stereotypes. Pet theory: the sophistication or complexity of one's theory is mirrored by its internal vision of its opponent.

Of course, it's possible to jump to conclusions, even encouraged sometimes.
I've seen this in Buddhism, for example, where there was a subtle pressure to conclude, after a few "good" meditation sessions, that the Buddha was enlightened and that the practice of meditation was the one true path to enlightenment. — baker

I expect more of that the 'good stuff' I reluctantly admit as possible. I had a religious phase long, long ago, that I look back on with embarrassment. I was young and looking for some Meaning, and in retrospect I see in those I was with a mixture of charlatans and sincere seekers (I could say 'marks,' but they were getting some value for their time and money.)

To me this is about the notion of Direct Experience. How does one florist convince another that she too has had the Direct Experience of the world as a purple rose? Locke discussed the 'Inner Light' and Adorno wrote critically of the 'jargon of authenticity.' An outsider might call it poetry that won't confess that it's poetry but rather insists that it's a trans-scientific knowledge (metaphysicks, but with an emphasis on lifestyle.)

Imagine a florist who develops over many years of dedicated practice the insight that 'the world is a purple rose.' She explains that this truth only sounds like nonsense to those who haven't arranged ten million flowers with a pure heart. A critic tells her that surely arranging flowers is not the path to grand metaphysical truths and that this can only be a metaphor of some kind, or perhaps a poem that captures a mood. She retorts that this is a common misconception about flower-arrangement, and the inner meaning of the purple rose also reveals new dimensions of the mind, a trans-conceptual or non-discursive faculty that mostly lies dormant. She even admits that perhaps only some humans have this faculty and are capable of the Insight, but insists that arranging the ten million flowers is necessary for those who do have the faculty.

More or less, yes. I'm fairly certain, by and large convinced, that inequality in any way, shape, or form is immoral. In saying this I haven't strayed off course from our intuition on the matter, the intuition best exemplified by the words "all men are created equal" enshrined in the American Constitution. My view on equality is but an extrapolation of the spirit of this statement and becomes "all creatures are created equal". — TheMadFool

I'm not one to step on non-threatening spiders, but what's the practical gist of such equality? Is wiping the place where my dog had diarrhea with bleach the mass murder of E. Coli ? Should a Wal-mart cashier tolerate roaches in their kitchen in solidarity with other creatures who just want to get by? Should cops spend more time arresting cats who kill birds?

Same here, and yeah that would be a good band name.

Perhaps Kant's a priori is a better way to look at it, like our sense of space and time? — Olivier5

I would say that it has that Kantian flavor except that in my imperfect understanding of Kant is that it's too contingent. We can imagine more than one person per skull. The philosopher Robert C. Solomon used (don't think invented) the phrase methodological solipsism for something like the Cartesian starting point. I think of it as a research habit that was fruitful in many ways but also leads to certain confusions and dead ends (well criticized by various 20th century philosophers.)

We might also consider how Kant's work is endangered or not by dropping MS or at least by recognizing it as a contingent decision. Philosophers could have worked from the outside in rather than from the inside out, or many other ways.

A philosophical quest for the truth, for "knowing how things really are" can sometimes turn into a self-perpetuating obsession that makes one's life miserable. It can start off out of a poor self-image, or it can result in one (and then further perpetuate it and itself). — baker

I agree that the Quest can take a sickly form (certain god-and-antinatalism loops come to mind, but also the less offensive stuff Wittgenstein invented therapy for.)

I also like the focus on self-image. I think that's the cornerstone. Which statue am I trying to become?

By having confidence in yourself, believing that you exist for a reason, that you're a worthy person, and so on. Yes, cheap self-help slogans, I know. But I'm earnest about this. — baker

I think you are right that religion offers some people these things. Calling this 'truth' still seems to stretch the word too much. Many an atheist would probably agree that religion makes people feel good about themselves (which is not to ignore that atheism makes people feel good about themselves too.)

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society.
...
Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.
— Marx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism_and_religion#:~:text=19th%2Dcentury%20German%20philosopher%20Karl,economic%20conditions%20and%20their%20alienation.

I don't agree with Marx entirely, and personally I think humans can get just as entangled with conspiracy theory sans the supernatural for the same 'opium.' Perhaps even Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals, etc. I quote this to make the point that 'mythos and ritual that makes us feel good (but only if one really believes and practices a certain lifestyle)' is not so far from what an atheist might say.

as translations of tribal Names of unlearned laboring masses into sovereign Principles for educated leisure castes — 180 Proof

:up:

Do you think there's a complete escape from this structure? Or just intensities of sublimation?

You have mentioned that an omnibenevolent god will not favor one creation over another and will treat all creation equally, such as bacteria, fish, the rich and the poor. — Isabel Hu

I think your point is clever. That said, you are giving us a philosopher's god. This is a late concept, which has drifted from traditional human-centric conceptions. Nothing wrong with that in principle, but my objection is that defenses of God tend to be (cryptically sometimes) a defense of particular gods from particular religions whose gods favor humans who live in particular ways. You may know all this and just be having fun with concepts.

Why would an all good God have created an array of life forms that can only flourish at the expense of each other's suffering, instead of creating an array of life forms that live in perfect cooperative harmony, with no predation or parasitism, no aging, etc? — Pfhorrest

:point:

I haven't studied metaethics with any seriousness, unless reading lots of Nietzsche counts (for reasons hinted at by the example problems.) I think we both reject the eye-for-an-eye scheme as crude. Do you have any second favorite approaches? Which ideological opponent of yours do you most respect while not agreeing? What is Pepsi to your Coca-cola?

But now it may come to look as if there were something like a final analysis of our forms of language, and so a single completely resolved form of every expression. That is, as if our usual forms of expression were, essentially, unanalysed; as if there were something hidden in them that had to be brought to light. When this is done the expression is completely clarified and our problem solved. It can also be put like this: we eliminate misunderstandings by making our expressions more exact; but now it may look as if we were moving towards a particular state, a state of complete exactness; and as if this were the real goal of our investigation. — PI

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b61a4e4b04eca59c4d232/1447780772744/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf

In the context of 'my' skill-focused interpretation, I'd expand on this. 'Meaning' is 'fuzzy,' fuzzier in some places than others. It's a matter of skill to know when to quit, to read between the lines. As another poster has said, logic is a gentleman's agreement. I don't mean symbolic logic, which is relatively quite exact. I mean living logic, talking with others in the world and being understood. The 'gentleman' (who can be man, woman, both, neither) is the 'reasonable person.' I can imagine objections to the fuzziness of this concept, but I suggest that that's how things are. Invent exact languages if you want, but I think it has to be done in the fuzzy metalanguage according to the gentleman's agreement. The impish or confused student can always raise objections, refuse to understand, but life goes on. In fact, at some point we just disregard certain objections as mad or insincere. The ground (shared skill) is in this sense an abyss...or perhaps a fog that obscures the bottom of the castle of meanings.

"But still, it isn't a game, if there is some vagueness in the rules".—But does this prevent its being a game?—"Perhaps you'll call it a game, but at any rate it certainly isn't a perfect game." This means: it has impurities, and what I am interested in at present is the pure article.—But I want to say: we misunderstand the role of the ideal in our language. That is to say: we too should call it a game, only we are dazzled by the ideal and therefore fail to see the actual use of the word "game" clearly. 101. We want to say that there can't be any vagueness in logic. The idea now absorbs us, that the ideal 'must' be found in reality. Meanwhile we do not as yet see how it occurs there, nor do we understand the nature of this "must". We think it must be in reality; for we think we already see it there. 102. The strict and clear rules of the logical structure of propositions appear to us as something in the background—hidden in the medium of the understanding. I already see them (even though through a medium): for I understand the propositional sign, I use it to say something. 103. The ideal, as we think of it, is unshakable. You can never get outside it; you must always turn back. There is no outside; outside you cannot breathe.—Where does this idea come from? It is like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at. It never occurs to us to take them off. — PI

But yes, logic is the ultimate "gentlemen's agreement" from which we proceed to all other sciences. — James Riley

:up:

Factoring an afterlife into things just kicks the ball down the street. If there's a life after this one that is expected to be beyond all suffering, then a desire to get there instead of suffering in this life is still driven by hedonistic concerns. If staying behind is for the sake of helping over people to get there too, then that's out of hedonistic concern for them. — Pfhorrest

This analysis still sounds like psychological hedonism. Or some strange version of it where every ethical system is revealed to be ethical hedonism, except the eye-for-an-eye system which is just wrong. I'm not arguing the eye-for-an-eye system but just trying to clarify this issue.

Sure, making a choice that unintentionally ends up hurting someone doesn't reflect any kind of character defect on your part. — Pfhorrest

For me the point is that I know that getting in a car puts others at risk. Another question: should Bono take a private jet if it helps him fight climate change? Should I continue to feed my beloved, carnivorous cat? Should I threaten to divorce my wife if she doesn't embrace vegetarianism? Recently, my dog had dental surgery under general anesthesia. I asked myself: do vets charge when they accidentally kill clients' pets? Should they charge? I could argue both sides. I don't pretend to have an answer here.

I won't go so far as the condemn the study of ethics at an abstract level, but questions like these at least suggest the poverty of abstract theorizing in the face of ordinary life. Do you have any comments on this? Let me stress that I grant that ethical abstractions may be helpful, at least indirectly.

Thus Aquinas wants to distinguish between the act of sin, which is caused by God, and the sin itself (which is not). For reasons I cannot go into without making an already long section longer still, the distinction Aquinas wants to draw here seems to me obscure and problematic.

Understatement, no?

...it always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us (from which we after all get the whole matter for our cognitions, even for our inner sense) should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory proof... — Kant

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendental-arguments/

Heidegger sees skepticism about the external world as a “sham” problem (GA 20: 218), one that one comes to pose only by having embraced a confused ontology. “Starting with the construct of the isolated subject,” one does indeed come to wonder how this “fantastically conceived,” “denatured” entity “comes out of its inner ‘sphere’ into one which is ‘other and external’” (206, 60, GA 20: 223, emphasis added). To refute the skeptical worry that it can’t would indeed “call… for a theory and metaphysical hypotheses” (GA 20: 223). But Being and Time famously insists that we must not answer that call: Kant calls it “a scandal of philosophy and of human reason in general” that there is no cogent proof of [“the existence of things outside us”] which will do away with any scepticism… [But the] “scandal of philosophy” is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again. — link

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290534185_Heidegger_on_skepticism_truth_and_falsehood

Who is a proof of the external world for? I suppose it could be a decoration. 'We already know that we all exist in the same world, but it sure would be nice to have a proof...' Or are we to imagine a thinker in genuine angst, haunted by the possibility that only he is actually 'conscious'? Perhaps he's desperate for a proof, and once he has it he can breath a sigh of relief and love his wife in a new way.

But why isn't a proof needed that there's a solitary voice in a box that may be lost in a dream? That a starting point of methodological solipsism is appropriate is apparently accepted without proof. The anti-skeptic criticizes the skeptic not only for practical irrelevance but for not being skeptical enough, for failing in terms of his own playful project.

This kind of entity is, all apologetic clichés aside (e.g. theodicy), either a sadist – "demon" – or a masochistic, self-abnegating, fiction, such that the latter amounts to a pathological feitsh and the former is immoral to "worship". (The Gnostics (or acosmists re: "maya") surely had/have a point ...) — 180 Proof

:up:

I think there is a problem with accepting a proposition or a premise on the basis of its utility, when it is known to be a falsity. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm no physicist, but do you believe in quarks? If so, how exactly do they exist ? Talk about quarks has a place in the entire context of our civilization, and it's connected to how iphones are designed. In many cases I don't think metaphysical statements are clear enough so that they can be known to be a falsity. One might say that they are not even wrong, while yet being useful in some indirect way. I like this take on Wittgenstein.

[T]he most basic linguistic know–how is not mastery of proprieties of use that can be expressed once and for all in a fixed set of rules, but the capacity to stay afloat and find and make one’s way on the surface of the raging white–water river of discursive communal practice that we always find ourselves having been thrown into... — Brandom

How does one get this 'raging white-water river' noticed by theoretical types who want a final method ? One philosophical fantasy as I see it is the invention of automated critical thinking. Someone one day will write that final book and get the method that lets us escape the noise of that raging white water....

I read that as a modest plea for additions and corrections from a slightly but not too different perspective. — magritte

:up:

First...welcome to the thread!

Can a solipsist possibly agree to W's insistence of language making sense publicly? Absolutely not, and my fish in its aquarium agrees with that thinking too. — magritte

I agree that 'meaning is public' clashes with solipsism. For me the 'one mind per skull' theme is interesting because it shows that quasi-Cartesian attempts to start from nothing are confused. They assume --- without justification ---the framework of a single mind in possession of (or composed from) private meanings.

IMO, all concepts are more or less disputed and more or less unclear.
— j0e

So I assume that you do not believe in hinge propositions either.
--MU

A little more on this. I think the concept of 'hinge propositions' has a certain utility. As we use the sign 'hinge propositions,' its fuzzy public meaning will float and drift like a cloud. This semantic drift seems to be slow enough so that we can understand one another well enough to keep the conversation going. (Now we can say the same thing about 'semantic drift' and so on. We all depend on our ('blind') skill of navigating the rapids of language. )

As can bee seen in various other threads hereabouts, he had much to say about belief. Hence his relevance. — Banno

OK, well I grant his relevance. I thought Wayf was using him rhetorically ('well, W was religious.' ), and that's what I was reacting to. I think we both agree that god-talk usually takes itself for propositional knowledge. I'm aware of something like 'cultural religion' where it's taken as myth and ritual. But that's somethng else (sentiment, as you say.)