According to the positivists, like Carnap and Ayer, they comprise words that might be gramatically coherent but carry no actual meaning as they don't refer to anything observable or testable. — Wayfarer

I was being pedantic or uptight, but just for clarity: the metaphysicians are referring to observable things like chairs but debating whether they are 'made of' or mind or matter. So I read Carnap as criticizing differences that make no difference. Very close to James' pragmatism. Content is identified with practical content, a step that can of course be criticized.

You did not. :up:

That sounds right, and I haven't seen much philosophy by W on the subject. One can find a few quotes like:

I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life. (Or the direction of your life.)

A hero looks death in the face, real death, not just the image of death. Behaving honourably in a crisis doesn't mean being able to act the part of a hero well, as in the theatre, it means being able to look death itself in the eye.

For an actor may play lots of different roles, but at the end of it all he himself, the human being, is the one who has to die.
— W

There are also spiritual-adjacent quotes in the TLP.

But my response is still (politely, I hope): so what? Why should Wittgenstein be an authority on religion just because he was a great philosopher of language?

using the word 'reduces' and making a comparison to unsexy legalese is a rhetorical stunt. — Tom Storm

:point:

To be fair, half of philosophy perhaps is rhetorical stunts.

Notice that Kant's violently opposed notion of the noumenal world is objected to most vociferously by those who insist that there is nothing about an object which cannot be known. In other words, those aspiring to omniscience. — Wayfarer

You make a good point. Hegel was explicitly annoyed by Kantian skepticism as a cowardly retreat from the manifest destiny of philosophy. But I think humans generally want a stable picture of the world. Both 'spiritual ' and 'anti-spiritual' people are biased. IMO, everyone is biased. No one likes big changes in their worldview, with the possible exception of joyful visions (if I was visited by God and he filled my heart with joy and belief in the goodness of all things...)

No. It's an existential statement. Consider the mythos behind Christianity - that the universe is the creation of an intelligent being with whom the believer has a personal relationship mediated by faith in Christ. So from the Christian perspective, belief in Jesus Christ is instrumental in realising the higher life which they say that this belief is the entry to. — Wayfarer

To begin to truly believe (ignoring the ambiguity for a moment) in a benevolent creator would indeed seem to be an entry into a different kind of life. It would feel good, very good even. Songs about the joy of it would make a special kind of 'sense' within the community of believers.

I think we both agree that a such a belief is typically not metaphorical.

There's a Philosophy Now OP on the Wittgenstein and the folly of logical positivism which outlines pretty clearly what logical positivism ignored about Wittgenstein: — Wayfarer

Sure. I don't see the relevance unless I'm supposed to go easy on spiritual claims just because Wittgenstein was moved by certain spiritual writers. FWIW, I think positivism was/is interesting but is hardly the last word (I don't expect the arrival of the last word.)

what makes something true or not is its relationship to our experiences. — Pfhorrest

Right, so the issue is what is this relationship? And what is experience? Obviously we have a rough, practical idea. We get by. For context, I think the situation is ineluctably fuzzy. I don't mean that we should never strive for clarity but only that we'll never be able to do without a skill with the concrete that can't be formalized. I don't think critical thinking can be automated, that some system can articulate its essence so that the rest is trivial.

And the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 did not want to believe in the existence of atoms. — Tom Storm

While it does seem a little silly to doubt atoms, an instrumentalist view of them isn't obviously absurd.

Mach, in the introductory chapter of his book Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen (1886; Contributions to the Analysis of the Sensations), reviving Humean antimetaphysics, contended that all factual knowledge consists of a conceptual organization and elaboration of what is given in the elements—i.e., in the data of immediate experience. Very much in keeping with the spirit of Comte, he repudiated the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant. For Mach, the most objectionable feature in Kant’s philosophy was the doctrine of the Dinge an sich—i.e., of the “thing in itself”—the ultimate entities underlying phenomena, which Kant had declared to be absolutely unknowable though they must nevertheless be conceived as partial causes of human perceptions. By contrast, Hermann von Helmholtz, a wide-ranging scientist and philosopher and one of the great minds of the 19th century, held that the theoretical entities of physics are, precisely, the things-in-themselves—a view which, though generally empiricist, was thus clearly opposed to positivist doctrine. Theories and theoretical concepts, according to positivist understanding, were merely instruments of prediction. From one set of observable data, theories formed a bridge over which the investigator could pass to another set of observable data. Positivists generally maintained that theories might come and go, whereas the facts of observation and their empirical regularities constituted a firm ground from which scientific reasoning could start and to which it must always return in order to test its validity. In consequence, most positivists were reluctant to call theories true or false but preferred to consider them merely as more or less useful.
...
Mach and, along with him, Wilhelm Ostwald, the originator of physical chemistry, were the most prominent opponents of the atomic theory in physics and chemistry. Ostwald even attempted to derive the basic chemical laws of constant and multiple proportions without the help of the atomic hypothesis. To the positivist the atom, since it could not be seen, was to be considered at best a “convenient fiction” and at worst an illegitimate ad hoc hypothesis. — link

https://www.britannica.com/topic/positivism/The-critical-positivism-of-Mach-and-Avenarius


My view is something like: it really doesn't matter whether one decides to call atoms 'really real' or 'damn good models.' The practical issue involves enacting the trust of certain predictions and technologies. I like Mach's lifeworld-theory-lifeworld structure. I'd just replace 'sensation' with uncontroversial observation statements (sensations are 'mystical' entities just like atoms.)

Being correct only relative to a perspective or framework is just the same thing as being thought correct by those who hold such perspective or framework. But the very thing at question is whether what they think is correct, so saying "it's correct according to what they think" is a non-answer. Everyone's views are correct according to what they think; the question is whether what they think is correct, regardless of whether or not they think so. "Relative correctness" is just opinion. Culture-relative "correctness" is just popular opinion. — Pfhorrest

Good issue, and a natural question here is what is correctness? What exactly do we mean by true? I don't think such words have exact meanings, though philosophers can try to specify meanings and reduce by not eliminate the ambiguity in a particular context.

A belief system must be coherent to fulfill the conditions of being a "system". This means that if one belief within the system is dubious, then the entire system is dubious due to all the beliefs being related through coherency. So it makes no sense to say that some beliefs within the system are dubious but the foundational ones, hinge propositions cannot be doubted. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you are reading too much into 'system,' putting your own spin on it. To me it's not surprising that what 'everybody knows' turns out to be wrong sometimes. I also read Wittgenstein as an anti-foundationalist. There's know particular finite set of foundational beliefs, though we can plausibly imagine some beliefs as more central and weight-bearing than others.

I am arguing that the concept of hinge propositions which are beyond doubt is itself incoherent. So my point is not that hinge propositions ought to be doubted, but that there is no such thing as hinge propositions. — Metaphysician Undercover

As I see it, no particular belief in this system is beyond doubt. But a doubt only has a specificity (as opposed to paralyzed madness ) through a place in this system. While I doubt that I have hands, I am not doubting that I understand what a hand is, etc.

If you allow that worldviews change, then how can you subscribe to hinge propositions which are beyond doubt? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't subscribe to fixed (eternal) hinge propositions. No need for it in the fuzzy theory.

Doing a religious practice can never convince a person who doesn't already believe. — baker

I lean toward agreeing with you, but I can imagine exceptions to this rule, depending on the practice.

I had lots of stress and anxiety as my dad declined in health during the last few years, but when he passed away, all negative emotions disappeared, and thinking and talking about him immediately brought me nothing but joy. I shed not a tear, but we were very close. My family has a hard time grasping it. — Pantagruel

That's beautiful, though it might be tough to not be understood by your family.

I think that propositional descriptions may not be so much expressions of beliefs as attempts to arrive at or achieve belief. We only think about what is problematic. I hope that in reading this thread some people will have spent some time pondering the nature of their most deeply held convictions and achieve some insight or clarity. That is what motivated it. — Pantagruel

That view reminds me of Peirce's view, and I agree. The idea is something like: inquiry swings into action when belief is threatened. Doubt is 'paralysis' (for refitting habits of reaction), while belief is the smooth, habitual 'movement.'

As an aside, note that the use of 'they', speaking of oneself, is spreading in the language, which points to the idea that the unity of the mind is not always a given. — Olivier5

While the intention is seemingly to avoid gender, it does accidentally work against the unity of the mind in a subtle way. I should clarify that I'm not against the unity of the mind or for the plurality of mind in a spiritual/ethical sense. For me it's just a good example, maybe the best, of a metaphysical presupposition, if we even want to call something so typically automatic a presupposition. In the Blue Book thread, there's a killer Wittgenstein passage about this. Locke also thought about this in a less radical but related way. What is a person, and how does this connect with memory and language?

Yes, I mentioned that also, I do think if we excavate deeply enough we come to this point. — Pantagruel

Right. I guess I was trying to develop your lead. It's a good issue.

The question is, is there a difference in the subjective experience of the believer who tends to believe in true beliefs, versus one who tends to believe in false beliefs? — Pantagruel

I should have answered your question more directly perhaps. IMO, beliefs like conspiracy theories and some (not saying all) religious beliefs strike me as intermediate in some sense. If one more seriously expects a pleasant afterlife for one's self and one's loved ones, then why cry at funerals? Why exercise much caution? Fret about cancer? Yet I think that some church-going 'believers' do cry and fret. Then there are conspiracy theorists who think that they think that child-abusing lizards rule from outer space rule the world and yet go to their mundane jobs, renew their driver's license, and generally proceed as before, with a new hobby, a new thing to spend their money and time on.

I'm partial to the pragmatist idea that belief is least ambiguously manifested in action. Words are just too cheap. Self-deception or self-entertainment is too tempting. Parents who don't seek medical treatment for a sick child for religious reasons, at the risk of the child's life, are manifesting belief in this sense. I don't approve of such things, but, assuming they love the child,... In the same way, leaping off a high building enacts the belief that one can fly. Again, not recommended. A less morbid example is the rich man who converts and gives away all his wealth. Then there are more mundane examples, like driving into an intersection typically manifesting the belief that no other cars are in the way, or lifting a fork to one's mouth suggesting a belief that what's on the fork is edible.

In saying that everything is natural and nothing supernatural exists, what we end up saying is along the lines of "something 'existing' in some way yet not meeting the criteria to be natural is an incoherent idea"; to be natural and to be real are just the same thing, and so "supernatural" just means "unreal". — Pfhorrest

I'm somewhat attracted to this view and have even expressed and argued for it before. I picture a continuum from familiar to postulated entities that are taken more or less seriously. For instance, I don't believe in ghosts, but surely something strange enough could happen to make me reconsider. I'm familiar with the concept which could come into play during an anomalous experience.
Currently, though, I'm a little more wary of going against the grain of everyday language. 'Supernatural' is already taken, already suggests gods and ghosts, not simply the nonexistent or even the postulated, less likely entities.

to bring enjoyment or pleasure to at least some while bringing pain or suffering to none, just is the same thing as being good, and so if there were a simple word for the opposite of altruistic hedonism the way "supernatural" is to "natural" (and please let me know if you know one!), it would just be a synonym for "immoral". — Pfhorrest

Perhaps you would soften this so that bringing pain to none is a sort of impossible target. As I've seen life, there's just no way around hurting others. For instance, should I drive a car when I know that I might destroy someone's life because I have a heart attack on the interstate? But maybe I'm a doctor rushing to the hospital to save someone's life. There's so much fuzzy calculation in life. We can't be sure of our methods or even be sure of our motives at times. I do think 'be nice = cause pleasure' and 'don't be mean = don't cause pain' are pretty universal, at least in the context of a global humanism.

It's good (has been perceived a good) to hurt the tribe's criminals or enemies. It's good to be evil to the evil, and it's bad to be good to the evil. Revenge is still a popular theme in action thrillers. The bad guys are presented as so cruel that the viewer delights even in their torture. What do you make of 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'? Obviously I don't expect that you embrace it, so I'm asking how you classify that paradigm, which seems outside yours. [I'm not advocating for this eye-for-an-eye stuff.]

Me, myself and I do like Lady Day: we always use the "royal we". — Olivier5

:grin: :grin: :grin:

Whenever you make a decision, that excludes all other decisions you could have taken. — Echarmion

One point I almost made was that Kojeve is only right if order doesn't matter. I still think Kojeve is roughly right, but I consider this one a matter of opinion. To me the order doesn't matter much. Having only so much time means that I can't try everything, can't manifest all of my potentiality as a human being.

Someone who lives for 100 years doesn't live two lifes of a 50-year-old. So it doesn't make sense to me to draw some arbitrary line at X years and declare that this is the maximum amount of years anyone can live without loosing "meaning" or "stakes" or gets bored etc. — Echarmion

How many grains does it take to make a heap? I see your point, but perhaps living 1000 years lives quite a few lives. Maybe I'm a doctor for a century, spend a decade becoming a master helicopter pilot, end up reading in 25 languages. If the pill was readily available, others would be as experienced and developed, so conversation (and sexual relationships) would be at an extremely high level. I do wonder whether people would converge toward a single personality. Would this take 10,000 years? 100,000 years? Or would people diverge in ways I can't imagine?

If the Mythos idea were as presented then reading The Lord of the Rings would be no less spiritual than reading The Bible, lying on top of a tor watching the clouds scud by no less enlightening than guided meditation. — Isaac

Right. I liked the Mythos thing but I recognized in it as my own appreciation of Kings and Judges, for example, which are like the Homer but possibly better given the translators.

It's an approach which restricts only those with insufficient imagination to re-frame their narrative in new terms, anyone else has five minutes of mental gymnastics to do before they can carry on with exactly the solution they had in the first place but now with the benefit of a whole fresh post hoc justification. — Isaac

Well said. I'd just add that it's easy to get sucked in if one is not wary. I once found psychological egoism plausible, until it finally clicked that it was empty (pragmatists, Wittgenstein, and others helped.)

Here's a Carnap quote that might be worth talking about:

From the internal questions we must clearly distinguish external questions, i.e., philosophical questions concerning the existence or reality of the total system of the new entities. Many philosophers regard a question of this kind as an ontological question which must be raised and answered before the introduction of the new language forms. The latter introduction, they believe, is legitimate only if it can be justified by an ontological insight supplying an affirmative answer to the question of reality. In contrast to this view, we take the position that the introduction of the new ways of speaking does not need any theoretical justification because it does not imply any assertion of reality. We may still speak (and have done so) of the "acceptance of the new entities" since this form of speech is customary; but one must keep in mind that this phrase does not mean for us anything more than acceptance of the new framework, i.e., of the new linguistic forms. Above all, it must not be interpreted as referring to an assumption, belief, or assertion of "the reality of the entities." There is no such assertion. An alleged statement of the reality of the system of entities is a pseudo-statement without cognitive content. To be sure, we have to face at this point an important question; but it is a practical, not a theoretical question; it is the question of whether or not to accept the new linguistic forms. The acceptance cannot be judged as being either true or false because it is not an assertion. It can only be judged as being more or less expedient, fruitful, conducive to the aim for which the language is intended. Judgments of this kind supply the motivation for the decision of accepting or rejecting the kind of entities.

Thus it is clear that the acceptance of a linguistic framework must not be regarded as implying a metaphysical doctrine concerning the reality of the entities in question. It seems to me due to a neglect of this important distinction that some contemporary nominalists label the admission of variables of abstract types as "Platonism." This is, to say the least, an extremely misleading terminology. It leads to the absurd consequence, that the position of everybody who accepts the language of physics with its real number variables (as a language of communication, not merely as a calculus) would be called Platonistic, even if he is a strict empiricist who rejects Platonic metaphysics.

A brief historical remark may here be inserted. The non-cognitive character of the questions which we have called here external questions was recognized and emphasized already by the Vienna Circle under the leadership of Moritz Schlick, the group from which the movement of logical empiricism originated. Influenced by ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Circle rejected both the thesis of the reality of the external world and the thesis of its irreality as pseudo-statements;6 the same was the case for both the thesis of the reality of universals (abstract entities, in our present terminology) and the nominalistic thesis that they are not real and that their alleged names are not names of anything but merely flatus vocis. (It is obvious that the apparent negation of a pseudo-statement must also be a pseudo-statement.) It is therefore not correct to classify the members of the Vienna Circle as nominalists, as is sometimes done. However, if we look at the basic anti-metaphysical and pro-scientific attitude of most nominalists (and the same holds for many materialists and realists in the modern sense), disregarding their occasional pseudo-theoretical formulations, then it is, of course, true to say that the Vienna Circle was much closer to those philosophers than to their opponents.
— link

http://www.ditext.com/carnap/carnap.html

To talk about the system as a whole is without content. Everything is X is not informative, useless. 'It's all mind.' 'It's all matter.' 'What difference does it make? Who cares and why?'


The acceptance cannot be judged as being either true or false because it is not an assertion. It can only be judged as being more or less expedient, fruitful, conducive to the aim for which the language is intended.

The calculus as a whole is not true or false but merely useful or not. Internally it may contain true or false propositions.

I think there are robust studies demonstrating that secular countries have happier citizens. Religiosity may not really be about God all that much and more about culture and community belonging. — Tom Storm

That makes sense to me. On the second sentence: that's been my working theory for a while now. I don't believe that most people believe in religious doctrine in any functional or earnest way. It's a little bit of OT traditional morality and little bit of NT forgiveness and communism. But maybe bigger than all of that it's a building that people go to on a regular basis to see friends? (This is far from my lifestyle, but I've seen aunts become religious later in life and this seems to be the buzz...singing the choir, having lots of people around with similar views and lifestyles. )

This is what I loved so much about Wayfarer's initial talk of the Mythos. It had this wonderful fallible sense of us all trying to grasp at the ungraspable, to express in myth the experience we have of life which, let's face it, presents to us as so much more than just the biology or physics of it.

But religious practice is diametrically opposed to that. It defines far more as 'wrong' than it does as 'right', Papal edicts ban a hundred times as many things as they prescribe. Nine out of the ten commandments start with "Thou shalt not...", etc. — Isaac

I'm with you on the Mythos, for the reasons you mentioned. To me that's just myth, literature, the freethinking study of famous religious texts. Life is definitely more (I agree) than biology and physics -- and more than enacting the scientist or even the philosopher.

The one person who achieved rapture obviously did so by some practice, but it clearly wasn't simply the instructions of the priest otherwise all would have. so if rapture is the objective (and I'm obviously just using it as an example), all currently religions are demonstrably wrong in their ideas about what practices lead to it. They are either missing something, or missing everything. — Isaac

That's a good objection, but you already mentioned the patch-up. 'If if don't work, you aren't doing it right.' As long as there is some secret interior of the soul, there's room for excuses (hidden variables.) Maybe they said the prayers, abstained from this or that, and so on, but their 'heart' was not right.

Seeking continuity, I have in mind the notion of logical space from Tractatus when considering the relation between language and the world... as in, in logical space, anything consistent can be said; but only a small subset of what can be said gives us a picture of the world that is true. So I'm understanding the autonomy of language as somewhat analogous to logical space, but using use instead of mere reference; something like only a small subset of the possible things that might be said are actually useful... — Banno

Nice!

In other words, and here's where it gets interesting, mindless evolution through random mutation is exactly what a mind which is as intelligent as us would do given the way things were, are, will probably be. — TheMadFool

That's a nice thought. Have you looked into GAs by chance? They can work when other methods don't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm

The toddler does not have the practical knowledge of how to ride a bike all the while they keep falling off, practical knowledge still has a truth-maker. — Isaac

One difference here is the 'subjective' element. A person could (I don't) take the view that it's impossible to tell from the outside if someone is 'saved' (in touch with the Ecstasy or 'transconceptual gnosis' or enlightenment, etc.) The toddler falls off the bike. The believer can keep saying the words, which might sound absurd to us, and the believer can explain that we are locked out (of course it may be that the believer is just as much locked in.)

I think the problem is that religious thought is sometimes envious of the prestige and/or function of science. It often can't settle with being 'just' myth, ritual, observance, and tradition that helps people live well together. I don't know, but it might be the case that religious people tend to be happier. I find that plausible. But the idea that outsiders are deluded (living in the cave of illusion or sin or or scientism or whatever) is where the more aggressive element sneaks in.

You do a good job of stretching the concept. I am concerned, though, that psychological hedonism, like psychological egoism, ultimately says too little. If everything is X, nothing is X (in practical terms.)

A man can get himself burned alive to rescue his family from a burning house, and we can say that he does some calculation where the death of his family is even worse than his skin melting off. But does this satisfy us? There's also the problem of death, which may throw a wrench into all calculations.
Finally there's the issue of using 'subjective' terms. Do we give surveys?

What I have in mind is to discover whether there may be a lot of people in the world who, in fact, cannot really be said to believe much at all. Rather, they only have things that they want to believe are true. — Pantagruel

Instead of two groups of people, I'd think instead of two tendencies in all of us. There's stuff that we believe 'authentically' and stuff that we believe in front in the mirror or the ring light, stuff we can almost believe that almost believe.

But, she says, in other cultures, and even in earlier Christianity, religious belief was not intended as propositional knowledge, which is part of what she calls 'logos', logic and science. It's properly part of 'mythos', which is the mythical re-telling of human existence, encompassing suffering, redemption, mystery, and many other felt realities which can't be incorporated by logos. — Wayfarer

Isn't this just a fancy way of saying that religion traffics in myths and feelings? These can be fine things, to be sure. But 'Jesus is the son of God' is (typically presented as ) propositional knowledge. 'A divine person named Jesus died for my sins.'

Religious truth is, therefore, a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice. Religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance, and make no sense unless they are accompanied by such spiritual exercises as yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle. Skilled practice in these disciplines can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd. — Armstrong

This is a sophisticated and perhaps atypical view of religion (pretty likable!). This line doesn't sound right tho : religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance. Perhaps such doctrines only make sense in the context of rituals or observances. I think even atheists can acknowledge that some kind of poetic supplement only 'lights up' for earnest practitioners who live differently. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd.

If Armstrong is right, then religion is not universally rational in some sense. It would be absurd to argue for such doctrines as opposed to simply evangelizing and drawing potential beneficiaries immediately into the practice, so that the apparently incredible becomes believable and believed. If such doctrines are, pre-practice, absurd or incredible, then most philosophers are damned. (I'm sort of joking, but the point is that a certain personality type will be turned off by the doctrines and never try the practice.)

According to the positivists, like Carnap and Ayer, they comprise words that might be gramatically coherent but carry no actual meaning as they don't refer to anything observable or testable. — Wayfarer

Hi, Wayf (from you know who.) I think you are basically correct here but I did refresh my mind on Carnap and found some quotes that remind me as much of pragmatism and Wittgenstein as of positivism. He discusses the existence of numbers.

From these questions we must distinguish the external question of the reality of the thing world itself. In contrast to the former questions, this question is raised neither by the man in the street nor by scientists, but only by philosophers. Realists give an affirmative answer, subjective idealists a negative one, and the controversy goes on for centuries without ever being solved. And it cannot be solved because it is framed in a wrong way. To be real in the scientific sense means to be an element of the system; hence this concept cannot be meaningfully applied to the system itself. Those who raise the question of the reality of the thing world itself have perhaps in mind not a theoretical question as their formulation seems to suggest, but rather a practical question, a matter of a practical decision concerning the structure of our language. We have to make the choice whether or not to accept and use the forms of expression in the framework in question.

In the case of this particular example, there is usually no deliberate choice because we all have accepted the thing language early in our lives as a matter of course. Nevertheless, we may regard it as a matter of decision in this sense: we are free to choose to continue using the thing language or not; in the latter case we could restrict ourselves to a language of sense data and other "phenomenal" entities, or construct an alternative to the customary thing language with another structure, or, finally, we could refrain from speaking. If someone decides to accept the thing language, there is no objection against saying that he has accepted the world of things. But this must not be interpreted as if it meant his acceptance of a belief in the reality of the thing world; there is no such belief or assertion or assumption, because it is not a theoretical question. To accept the thing world means nothing more than to accept a certain form of language, in other words, to accept rules for forming statements and for testing accepting or rejecting them. The acceptance of the thing language leads on the basis of observations made, also to the acceptance, belief, and assertion of certain statements. But the thesis of the reality of the thing world cannot be among these statements, because it cannot be formulated in the thing language or, it seems, in any other theoretical language.

The decision of accepting the thing language, although itself not of a cognitive nature, will nevertheless usually be influenced by theoretical knowledge, just like any other deliberate decision concerning the acceptance of linguistic or other rules. The purposes for which the language is intended to be used, for instance, the purpose of communicating factual knowledge, will determine which factors are relevant for the decision. The efficiency, fruitfulness, and simplicity of the use of the thing language may be among the decisive factors. And the questions concerning these qualities are indeed of a theoretical nature. But these questions cannot be identified with the question of realism. They are not yes-no questions but questions of degree. The thing language in the customary form works indeed with a high degree of efficiency for most purposes of everyday life. This is a matter of fact, based upon the content of our experiences. However, it would be wrong to describe this situation by saying: "The fact of the efficiency of the thing language is confirming evidence for the reality of the thing world; we should rather say instead: "This fact makes it advisable to accept the thing language."
...
What is now the nature of the philosophical question concerning the existence or reality of numbers? To begin with, there is the internal question which together with the affirmative answer, can be formulated in the new terms, say by "There are numbers" or, more explicitly, "There is an n such that n is a number." This statement follows from the analytic statement "five is a number" and is therefore itself analytic. Moreover, it is rather trivial (in contradistinction to a statement like "There is a prime number greater than a million which is likewise analytic but far from trivial), because it does not say more than that the new system is not empty; but this is immediately seen from the rule which states that words like "five" are substitutable for the new variables. Therefore nobody who meant the question "Are there numbers?" in the internal sense would either assert or even seriously consider a negative answer. This makes it plausible to assume that those philosophers who treat the question of the existence of numbers as a serious philosophical problem and offer lengthy arguments on either side, do not have in mind the internal question. And indeed, if we were to ask them: "Do you mean the question as to whether the framework of numbers, if we were to accept it, would be found to be empty or not?" they would probably reply: "Not at all; we mean a question prior to the acceptance of the new framework." They might try to explain what they mean by saying that it is a question of the ontological status of numbers; the question whether or not numbers have a certain metaphysical characteristic called reality (but a kind of ideal reality, different from the material reality of the thing world) or subsistence or status of "independent entities." Unfortunately, these philosophers have so far not given a formulation of their question in terms of the common scientific language. Therefore our judgment must be that they have not succeeded in giving to the external question and to the possible answers any cognitive content. Unless and until they supply a clear cognitive interpretation, we are justified in our suspicion that their question is a pseudo-question, that is, one disguised in the form of a theoretical question while in fact it is a non-theoretical; in the present case it is the practical problem whether or not to incorporate into the language the new linguistic forms which constitute the framework of numbers. — Carnap

http://www.ditext.com/carnap/carnap.html

As I read this, his object that calling reality as a whole 'physical' or 'mental' makes no real difference, because any distinction that collapses to this or that pole becomes useless, excepting its emotional valence and convenience. The accusations of 'lack of content' are of course implying that only this or that counts as content.

I'm hoping others will jump in, but I'll proceed in the meantime with a detour through Nietzsche, with a focus on the dominant habit of talking as if the one person per skull were necessary rather than contingent.

As early as 1873, Nietzsche described metaphor as the originary process of what the intellect presents as "truth." "The intellect, as a means for the preservation of the individual, develops its chief power in dissimulation." "A nerve-stimulus, first transcribed [iibertragen] into an image [Bild] ! First metaphor! The image again copied into a sound! Second metaphor! And each time he (the creator of language] leaps completely out of one sphere right into the midst of an entirely different one." In its simplest outline, Nietzsche's definition of metaphor seems to be the establishing of an identity between dissimilar things. Nietzsche's phrase is "Gleich machen" ( make equal ), calling to mind the German word "Gleichnis"-image, simile, similitude, comparison, allegory, parable-an unmistakable pointer to figurative practice in general. "Every idea originates through equating the unequal." "What, therefore, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms; ... truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions, ... coins which have their obverse effaced and now are no longer of account as coins but merely as metal." I hold on here to the notions of a process of figuration and a process of forgetfulness. In this early text, Nietzsche describes the figurative drive as "that impulse towards the formation of metaphors, that fundamental impulse of man, which we cannot reason away for one moment-for thereby we should reason away man himself . . .. Later he will give this drive the name "will to power." Our so-called will to truth is a will to power because "the so-called drive for knowledge can be traced back to a drive to appropriate and conquer."21 Nietzsche's sense of the inevitable forcing of the issue, of exercising power, comes through in his italics: " 'Thinking' in primitive conditions (preorganic) is the crystallization of forms . . .. In our thought, the essential feature is fitting new material into old schemas, ... making equal what is new."22 The human being has nothing more to go on than a collection of nerve stimuli. And, because he or she must be secure in the knowledge of, and therefore power over, the "world" (inside or outside), the nerve stimuli are explained and described through the categories of figuration that masquerade as the categories of "truth." These explanations and descriptions are "interpretations" and reflect a human inability to tolerate undescribed chaos-"that the collective character [Gesamtcharakter] of the world ... is in all eternity chaos-in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms [human weaknesses-Menschlichkeiten] ." As Nietzsche suggests, this need for power through anthropomorphic defining compels humanity to create an unending proliferation of interpretations whose only "origin," that shudder in the nerve strings, being a direct sign of nothing, leads to no primary signified. As Derrida writes, Nietzsche provides an "entire thematics of active interpretations, which substitutes an incessant deciphering for the disclosure of truth as a presentation of the thing itself."
....
The "subject" is a unified concept and therefore the result of "interpretation." Nietzsche often stresses that it is a specifically linguistic figurative habit of immemorial standing : "that when it is thought [wenn gedacht wird] there must be something 'that thinks' is simply a formulation of our grammatical custom that adds a doer to every deed." The "insertion of a subject" is "fictitious." The will to power as the subject's metaphorizing or figurating, or introduction of meaning, must therefore be questioned. And Nietzsche accordingly asks, pondering on the "making equal" of proximate sensations, a propos of how "images . . . then words, . .. finally concepts arise in the spirit": "Thus confusion of two sensations that are close neighbors, as we take note of these sensations; but who is taking note?" Nietzsche accordingly entertains the notion of the will to power as an abstract and unlocalized figurative (interpretative) process: "One may not ask : 'who then interprets?' for the interpretation itself is a form of the will to power, exists (but not as a 'being' but as a process, a becoming ) as an affect." Sometimes Nietzsche places this abstract will to power, an incessant figuration, not under the control of any knowing subject, but rather underground, in the unconscious. The Nietzschean unconscious is that vast arena of the mind of which the so-called "subject" knows nothing. As Derrida remarks: "both [Freud and Nietzsche] ... often in a very similar way, questioned the self-assured certitude of consciousness. . . . For Nietzsche 'the important main activity is unconscious.' '' If, however, we want to hold onto "the important main activity" we have to go further than the unconscious, we have to reach the body, the organism. — link

Is it fair to say that 'one person per skull' is an interpretation that's hardened into a (fragile) fact for us in our pre-philosophical mode?

Another key point is this 'entire thematics of active interpretations, which substitutes an incessant deciphering for the disclosure of truth as a presentation of the thing itself.' This is reminiscent of Brandom's Wittgensteinian Geworfenheit.

A characteristic distinguishing feature of linguistic practices is their protean character, their plasticity and malleability, the way in which language constantly overflows itself, so that any established pattern of usage is immediately built on, developed, and transformed. The very act of using linguistic expressions or applying concepts transforms the content of those expressions or concepts. The way in which discursive norms incorporate and are transformed by novel contingencies arising from their usage is not itself a contingent, but a necessary feature of the practices in which they are implicit. It is easy to see why one would see the whole enterprise of semantic theorizing as wrong–headed if one thinks that, insofar as language has an essence, that essence consists in its restless self–transformation (not coincidentally reminiscent of Nietzsche’s “self–overcoming”). Any theoretical postulation of common meanings associated with expression types that has the goal of systematically deriving all the various proprieties of the use of those expressions according to uniform principles will be seen as itself inevitably doomed to immediate obsolescence as the elusive target practices overflow and evolve beyond those captured by what can only be a still, dead snapshot of a living, growing, moving process. It is an appreciation of this distinctive feature of discursive practice that should be seen as standing behind Wittgenstein’s pessimism about the feasibility and advisability of philosophers engaging in semantic theorizing…

…
[T]he idea that the 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 (Wittgensteinian Geworfenheit) is itself a pragmatist insight. It is one that Dewey endorses and applauds. And it is a pragmatist thought that owes more to Hegel than it does to Kant. For Hegel builds his metaphysics and logic around the notion of determinate negation because he takes the normative obligation to do something to resolve the conflict that occurs when the result of our properly applying the concepts we have to new situations is that we (he thinks, inevitably) find ourselves with materially incompatible commitments to be the motor that drives the unceasing further determination and evolution of our concepts and their contents. The process of applying conceptual norms in judgment and intentional action is the very same process that institutes, determines, and transforms those conceptual norms.
— Brandom

Finally, we see the connection of (preconscious or unconscious) organism and incessant interpretation in know-how or skill as opposed to know-that or (explicit) method. This requires extending the concept of interpretation to include something like an enacted taking-as that's only incidentally and perhaps secondarily made explicit, if indeed it can in general be made explicit in the first place. As I understand it, none of this is new, but I like throwing these horse-shoes, getting a better grip on them.

Danke!

BTW, found another quote that inteprets Nietzsche without the annoying tone.

As early as 1873, Nietzsche described metaphor as the originary process of what the intellect presents as "truth." "The intellect, as a means for the preservation of the individual, develops its chief power in dissimulation." "A nerve-stimulus, first transcribed [iibertragen] into an image [Bild] ! First metaphor! The image again copied into a sound! Second metaphor! And each time he (the creator of language] leaps completely out of one sphere right into the midst of an entirely different one." In its simplest outline, Nietzsche's definition of metaphor seems to be the establishing of an identity between dissimilar things. Nietzsche's phrase is "Gleich machen" ( make equal ), calling to mind the German word "Gleichnis"-image, simile, similitude, comparison, allegory, parable-an unmistakable pointer to figurative practice in general. "Every idea originates through equating the unequal." "What, therefore, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms; ... truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions, ... coins which have their obverse effaced and now are no longer of account as coins but merely as metal." I hold on here to the notions of a process of figuration and a process of forgetfulness. In this early text, Nietzsche describes the figurative drive as "that impulse towards the formation of metaphors, that fundamental impulse of man, which we cannot reason away for one moment-for thereby we should reason away man himself . . ..Later he will give this drive the name "will to power." Our so-called will to truth is a will to power because "the so-called drive for knowledge can be traced back to a drive to appropriate and conquer." Nietzsche's sense of the inevitable forcing of the issue, of exercising power, comes through in his italics: " 'Thinking' in primitive conditions (preorganic) is the crystallization of forms . . .. In our thought, the essential feature is fitting new material into old schemas, ... making equal what is new." The human being has nothing more to go on than a collection of nerve stimuli. And, because he or she must be secure in the knowledge of, and therefore power over, the "world" (inside or outside), the nerve stimuli are explained and described through the categories of figuration that masquerade as the categories of "truth." These explanations and descriptions are "interpretations" and reflect a human inability to tolerate undescribed chaos-"that the collective character [Gesamtcharakter] of the world ... is in all eternity chaos-in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms [human weaknesses-Menschlichkeiten] ."As Nietzsche suggests, this need for power through anthropomorphic defining compels humanity to create an unending proliferation of interpretations whose only "origin," that shudder in the nerve strings, being a direct sign of nothing, leads to no primary signified. As Derrida writes, Nietzsche provides an "entire thematics of active interpretations, which substitutes an incessant deciphering for the disclosure of truth as a presentation of the thing itself." — link

https://monoskop.org/images/8/8e/Derrida_Jacques_Of_Grammatology_1998.pdf

I like the idea that 'analogy is the core of cognition,' that the 'metaphysical' animal is a metaphorical animal. Poets all, even when we'd rather not be.


This quote is from the intro. In general I like this book, though Derrida can be exhausting to read.

Here's one more.

Now if the "subject" is thus put in question, it is clear that the philosopher creating his system must distrust himself as none other. And indeed Nietzsche articulates this problem often. He couches his boldest insights in the form of questions that we cannot dismiss as a rhetorical ploy. Writing on "The Uses and Abuses of History" as early as 1874, he warns us: "And this present treatise, as I will not attempt to deny, shows the modern note of a weak personality in the intemperateness of its criticism, the unripeness of its humanity, in the too frequent transitions from irony to cynicism, from arrogance to scepticism." The spirit of self-diagnosis is strong in every Nietzschean text. "Every society has the tendency to reduce its opponents to caricatures-at least in imagination­ ... Among immoralists it is the moralist: Plato, for example, becomes a caricature in my hands." Quite in passing, he places a warning frame around all his philosophizing: "One seeks a picture of the world in that philosophy in which we feel freest; i.e., in which our most powerful drive feels free to function. This will also be the case with me!" In a passage in The Gay Science, he spells out his version of the particular problem that leads Heidegger and Derrida to writing under erasure : How far the perspective character of existence extends or indeed whether existence has any other character than this; whether existence without interpretation, without "sense, " does not become "nonsense"; whether, on the otherhand, all existence is not essentially an interpreting existence [ein auslegendes Dasein]-that cannot be decided even by the most industrious and most scrupulously conscientious analysis and self-examination of the intellect; for in the course of this analysis the human intellect cannot avoid seeing itself in its own perspective forms [perspektivische Form]" and only in these. We cannot look around our own corner.
— link

I'm disappointed to learn that Nietzsche is a metaphysician after all. — Tom Storm

What's funny is the repetition of the 'getting out of the cave' motif. Eventually, the 'cave' is just the cave motif itself, so one tries to get out of trying to get out the cave, or out of the cave-like illusion that there's a cave to get out of. It's hard to imagine a way out of this structure. Anyone with a story to tell is going to have something like a good guy and a bad guy and something like a journey from a bad place to a good place. Even the 'anti-philosophical' Wittgenstein has his bottle and flies.

This is the point I made, which Banno scoffed at. Allowing that a system of beliefs may be imperfect means that the entire system needs to be subjected to doubt. This is proof that the idea of hinge propositions, which it is unreasonable to doubt, is fundamentally flawed. — Metaphysician Undercover

Why not doubt then this need for subjecting the system to doubt?
I think you are taking 'system' too much in a technical sense, as if it were a mathematical proof with a broken link. Instead the system is a big, baggy monster of ways that people do things, things that people 'know,' without having to think about it. You claim that 'perfection is a requirement in logic.' Why is that true? Is that something that everybody just knows? Is that just part of what logic means?

Why must hinge propositions be doubted? To what extra-systematic authority do you appeal? This 'system' is not intended as some philosopher's pet system but as something like a shared system of meanings and taken-for-granted quasi-facts. I say 'quasi-facts' because worldviews change. 'Everybody knows' that the earth is a ball that goes around the sun (which is not to say that every single human agrees with this, hence the loose concept of the 'reasonable' or 'educated' person.) But in other times, everybody knew something different, incorrectly by our current standards.

That's why "existence" is a disputed and unclear concept. — Metaphysician Undercover

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

Life has stakes because of the different paths it can take, not because it has an end. — Echarmion

Kojeve makes the point that an immortal can get around to all paths, so I think mortality does have a place here. I don't have the immortal's luxury. I don't have time to be everyone. (I also have to start wherever I find myself, babbling in English in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

But he is the one who said that bothering to oppose a point of view is a recognition of it. — Valentinus

:point:

BTW, the theme of recognition is also great...the struggle to be recognized, the will-to-recognition...

Well my quick answer would be that the two alterities are indissociable. — Derrida

Nice quote. I read 'indissociable' as not giving priority to one or the other. I like the critique of presence and punctiform 'now.' In some ways, philosophy has to keep beating back a mathematizing-idealizing-reifying tendency of the 'wax' to cool and solidify. Successful metaphors harden into cages. New metaphors depend on a dead context for traction.

OK, now I think I see what you mean. Autonomy draws the boundary. I was stuck in the more honorific sense of the word, as the sort of conscious goal of an individual.

This also flows into my point about the convenience of the single self. The body is a natural 'first boundary' (or second, if the skull comes before) for us to draw.

You posted a quote earlier that inspired me to get that book back out. Thanks!

Nice and thanks. I just can't read an entire book in this tone. The observations are rich but for me the prose is so swollen, passive aggressive and rhetorically portentous, I just can't do it. — Tom Storm

I don't like the tone either, though I liked it more when I was in my 20s (what a surprise!). I tolerate the tone for the richness of thought. I speculate that maybe his mad passion (cause of the tone) was also cause of the richness. This stuff burned in him.

Endless possibilities here. "Plato a douchebag, Homer a genius: discuss". I get the feeling that the people who like FN already agree with him. — Tom Storm

I think you are probably right about 'younger' thinkers, but personally I'd be slow to generalize here. Maybe Nietzsche is battling his inner Plato. They are both something like supreme prose poets. Thinkers I trust have said that they are both masters of prose in their respective languages, and even in translation both of their gifts are clear and perhaps similar. Both are also dialectical, crammed with personalities (plural.)