I disagree. One can see a tree without thinking of it as a tree. Animals obviously do this. — Janus

But can an animal see a tree as animals see trees prior to some measure of history in which trees have been encountered. A bit like asking what an infant human knows of mother's milk prior to understanding, social and language modelling, and general experience that engenders familiarity. No familiarity and it is as William James called it, a world of blooming and buzzing, with no "seeing" at all.

So if it is admitted that an animal requires time and experience to "see" things as animals typically do, then analysis asks what this familiarity is about. It is memory, the "having been, having seen, having done" already that mediates the perceptual event when a cow, say, sees greener grass on the other side and sees this and knows this. I call this proto-linguistic regard for things, not taken up in language, but surely when the cow looks up, sees the greener grass and picks herself up to move over there, there is something of the conditional proposition in this, the "if...then" of the activity, as there is something of the affirmation when settling down to eat.

Not thinking, really, but mediated; and not language, but the proto linguistic recollection and repetition. For us, of course, memory language memory. You may not be thinking in the recognition of, say, everything in someone's kitchen as you wander through, but to be asked about anything and a moment's notice, and there is the language, always already there, ready to hand. This is implicit knowledge, and this kind of thing one's perceptions possess like a halo that surrounds any object that comes to view. There is never a completely novel experience, for it is language and familiarity that seize hold in the inquiry itself, that is, even if things are alien, even uncanny, the approach to this issues from a body of assumptions already in place.

On the conceptual end, these are universals.

Seems to me that is just a general idea of existence. When it comes to what we encounter that we are able to talk about, it is only particulars.

There is a sense in which, as Markus Gabriel says the world does not exist. This is because 'world' signifies the totality, and this totality is never encountered—it is just an idea. — Janus

This totality is the totality of one's own past. Look around a classroom, e.g. and note how everything makes sense, the chalk/markers, desks, chairs, textbooks and so on.

Put it this way, when you have an object sitting there before you, what is it that singles it out as an object? Its singularity is a universal, like seeing a tree and knowing its a tree is an instantiation of the general idea. No general idea, no singularity. It has been argued that one never really acknowledges anything as it is because to acknowledge anything at all is a matter of bringing it into general comprehension, and so all one ever understands is this conceptual form that makes understanding what it is. Pull away from this, and the one is seized not by the singularity, but by what is their PRIOR to the sigularity, and this is being as such.

It is a reduction that makes this possible, a reduction down to the very existence that stands before you released from presumptions of contingent language affairs, from Kantian synthetic structures, if you like. The point is, it is possible to "liberate" the world from this usual way(vulgar way, says Heidegger, not to belittle, just to say it is prior to ontology) of perceiving things. Particulars yield to a very meaningful foundational primordiality. You know, the original "wonder" of things (says Kierkegaard).

This is, though, a bare description not an explanation. We are left with no idea how the "one becomes the many". — Janus

One finds what is there that is not among the many, not "a" being. This being as such. Difficult to confront. It does take some of what you could call magic because being is not an empirical concept, nor is it merely analytical. It is apriori existential, meaning the meaning of being as such has to be discovered in a certain "yielding" (meditative thinking?) to the world as opposed to some aggressive analytic approach which forces things into categorical place, reducing the world to an deflating concept in a word game. Keeping in mind that Wittgenstein adored Kierkegaard as Tolstoy. He just thought philosophy cheapens everything it touches. I think he was right.

At the same time, the world we experience is one of tremendous multiplicity, where everything seems to be undergoing constant change. Yet for us to be able to “say anything true about anything,” there must be at least something that “stays the same” across this ceaseless change. Otherwise, our words would mean something different on each occasion, and whatever we referred to would constantly be passing out of being. If, as Heraclitus says, we “cannot step twice into the same river,” then it also seems we cannot speak of the same river twice either.1,i

I am reminded of Heidegger's time, which to me is a very strong case for "magic". Perhaps you know it. First, an ontology, like everything, is going to be conceived hermeneutically, meaning, if you will, the river stops for no theory. Anyway, he is following a historical example, from Augustine, onward: The past doesn't exist, nor does the future, and the present is a Heraclitean becoming, so how can we ever discover reality which is seems lost in time, so to speak?

Heidegger calls this "vulgar" time that is conceived as a linear sequence, the kind of thing in everyday use, but is ontologically irresponsible. We need to think of the three modalities of time as ecstatic, meaning, essentially, no one stands apart from the others. The "not yet" is the "having been" and this is realized in the "nothing" of the present. This is Section 64 and onward in division 2 of b and T.

Why is this magical? Because first, it is impossible to conceive. One would have step outside of "vulgar" time to do this and this is impossible; it would be like stepping outside of one's own ipseity (dasein). Second, YET: one has to admit that it must be right. Past as such never even began to make sense. As with future as such or the present as such. It must be a "unity" and sequential time just, as with many things, a manner of speaking and getting things done.

A settled issue? I suppose not. But, a compelling argument that says our very thoughts and feelings and moods and everything, belong to an impossible and unspeakable primordiality (this is me. Heidegger would never talk like this), well, far more magical than Kant's formal transcendentalism.

It would only be voluntary in a corporate sense, "in Adam." Original Sin flows from a choice, namely Adam's choice. Christian metaphysics is going to see humanity as a kind of corporate/bodily entity, such that the actions of one bear on another. — Leontiskos

Interesting take on this is Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety. He is without mercy on Luthor, Catholic dogma, and others as they proceed fail to explain at all ("thought gets nothing") how the actions of the one (Adam, the first sinner) bear upon another, and here I assume you mean the rest of us, "the race" as Kierkegaard puts it. As it traditionally stands, no sense can be made at all out of this "original sin" unless there is a connecting similarity between us and Adam, meaning Adam's sin must be our own sin and a way that makes some sense. Otherwise Adam stands entirely apart from the rest of us.

You don't have to be a Christian to appreciate his analysis. Many think Kierkegaard went too far. Seminaries try to keep clear because of just this kind of thinking: the sin of all humanity lies with its fixation of all that is not God, bluntly put, and this fixation is culture itself, religious culture especially. Of course, being fixated on God has to do with one's spiritual constitution, and Heidegger will use this (not giving due credit at all. Called K a religious writer, pejoratively) in Being and TIme. But what Heidegger will call dasein, Kierkegaard, arguably, calls inherited sin, keeping in mind that MOST of dasein is language and culture (we are mostly "the they").

An objectivist reductio:

1) Good and evil are relative to a point of view
2) From A's point of view, x is good
3) From B's point of view, x is not-good
4) Therefore, x is both good and not-good (contradiction derived)
5) Therefore, it is not the case that good and evil are relative to a point of view (reductio of 1)

What's wrong with that?

EDIT: there's too much wrong with it to be even remotely plausible. The conclusion doesn't depend on 1. I'll have a rethink... — bert1

The real problem with this lies with the need to disambiguate contingent good and bad from absolute good and bad. Yes, there is such a thing as the latter. Why not horribly murder your neighbor, that is, what is the ground for the prima facie prohibition not to do this? One has to move to the essence of ethics itself, and this move is not going to be about arguing about competing utility or about whether, ala Kant, reason itself creates its own "duty" to obey. It is going to be "outside" of language altogether, into existence itself. Meaning just this: it hurts like hell; that's why you prima facie shouldn't do it.

There is no reductio, for the "premise" is not propositional.

I've yet to tackle Being and Time and may never get to it. But I think perhaps there's some similarity to the Bergson-Einstein debate on objective vs 'lived' time. — Wayfarer

Well, the latter comes first, no? It is presupposed by the former, and therefore philosophically important and the latter is just physics. Objective time belongs to "vulgar" everydayness, Heidegger would say. Not that he is being insulting at all. We are all everyday people. But If the question of philosophy faces this everydayness, there is a radically different analysis to consider.
I vaguely remember Einstein winning that debate, and it was at the end of Bergson's career. Einstein said some unkind things about philosophy. I very much doubt he had read much, though I know he read Kant at thirteen or so. Ridiculous.

Russell's history of Western Philosophy — Wayfarer

If it is just a description of what was said and by whom , I suppose Russell can't do much harm. Informative, like an encyclopedia. But if he laces it with opinion, that is another story. Russell is to philosophy what popular religion is to living and breathing: keeps the faithful appeased, but really, has nothing to say about the world.

Bergson-Einstein debate on objective vs 'lived' time — Wayfarer

Consider Henry's possible answer to this.

What we need to understand is what Kafka implies when he writes: “With each mouthful of the visible, an invisible mouthful is proffered us, with each visible article of clothing an invisible article
of clothing.

’m not sure. Those experiences may not be unified under a single foundational principle. Experience is interesting but contested space. I don’t have the expertise to determine what it means. But I do consider that values and emotions are products of contingent factors and seem to exist in relation to other factors - a web of interactions. What is at the centre? Is there even a centre? The problem with ideas like this is that they flow readily and may not connect to anything… — Tom Storm

But this connectivity is just the problem.

Put it like this: If you were to ask a geologist about some sedimentary rock, and were given a story about what caused it to be what it is, there would be a first assumption as to what it IS that this story is about. And also, if told how useful the rock for building something or as a weapon, the same first assumption would be there, that about what it IS that is being discussed. Asked about this, the geologist, or whoever, would then proceed to describe the rock and all of its features. The evolutionary history, the pragmatism, really makes no sense unless you have something that is in need of analysis in the first place. This is the way science works. It doesn't deal in fantasy. It begins with the basic descriptive givenness, from color and weight, to molecular structure and other descriptions in particle physics. You have to have what is there, in front of your observing, analyzing eyes. The "contested space" you talk about is there, of course, for science has its slow paradigmatic movement toward greater insight, but this goes with greater observation, as with the telescope of the microscope and observation deals with, of course, the content of what is given.

Contested space has its limits. Does modus ponens have contested space? Yes and no, I think is the answer. though logic cannot be imagined to be at fault in the way it shows itself, we know that the language in play through which modus ponens has its expression (symbolic or otherwise) can be imagined to be at fault, simply because language is historical and contingent, and the necessity "behind" the language construction is never really expressed, remains "hidden". Anything taken AS in language is conditioned or qualified by being taken AS (this on my lap, I take AS a cat). So how does one get beyond contested space? And on to true absolute certainty? (Important to keep in mind that a construction like "true absolute certainty" is is a language construct. nd such things can cause more trouble that they are worth.) One has to step out of language. Of course, one has be IN language as one does this, for language is always already there.

Which is not hard to do. Stick your finger in a fire. Nothing at all of language in this. One is not interpreting pain to be what it is as I interpret this cat to be a cat, because while the pain certainly can be talked about, the pain itself stands apart from this, and the same could be true of this cat if I allowed myself to "center" (your term) on the non language dimensions of the presence of this "cat", rather than the usual thoughts that attend thinking about the cat.

So there are two kinds of "centering" here. One is the usual, and this is contingent: it depends on what you are talking about, the context of the meaning of the situation, and this could be a scientific context where cats have genus and species, and so on, or a practical context--did I feed the cat? Or maybe the cat is a comfort, an alarm for intruders, whatever. The sec ond kind of centering is on the presence of the cat, as presence. Much easier to conceive that of a scorched finger: the pain so intense, pulls all attention from explanatory contexts and is allowed to stand as it own nonlinguistic context, if you will. When you have the pain stare at it, and ask what it IS, you are asking a question of phenomenology, and I argue, you have entered "the religious". Can you question pain as such? It is beyond foolish to do so, more foolish than to question the essential non-logical intuition of causality or modus ponens, simply because pain is IMPORTANT, a non contingent importance, you know, NOT important because of some deadline, or some other matter that is important because of some other matter (and the centering gets moved around, reconceived). This is phenomenological importance, importance IN the givenness of the pain.

So the "value and emptions" you speak of are now understood very differently. They come "uncentered" in language, because language really has no center: it has "centerS" but centered in the essential fabric of the world, so to speak. This is where religion begins being meaningful, that is, the examination of religion, as it is delivered from the many "centered" talks, now finds its "real" ground in the importance of pure phenomenality of pain, delight and the value dimension of out existence.

I said that affectivity cannot be conceived apart from agency. This requires further work.

My analysis (and it is analytic as distinct from mystical or symbolic) is that in the pre-modern world, we humans didn't have the same sense of 'otherness' as we now have. John Vervaeke (who's lectures I'm listening to and which I recommend) says there is a sense of participatory knowing in the pre-modern world, which he distinguishes from propositional knowing (see here. And notice here I"m using 'other' in a different sense to the way you've put it.) — Wayfarer

Yes, and you do well note the "different sense, here.

First, just to remind: Verbaeke seems to be suggesting that this otherness is derivative of propositional knowing, One has to ask, is affectivity derivative? To smell, taste, feel, suffer, delight, and to THINK--are these derivative of the reflective act that recognizes them to be what they are? See, this is close to where Henry is. Such a question is NOT an inquiry into an historical sequence of befores and afters. Here at the primordial level of awareness is uncovered in the entire experience of events as a singularity, as thought, feeling, perception are not categorically divided, are outside of time. (Heidegger's analysis of time in B&T to find another way of conceiving this impossible unity. H doesn't talk about the transcendental finality as I think he should [but then ask Joshs for more on this. or perhaps read in Being and Time starting with section 64 and onward. tough to read, but worth the trouble] but the analysis is deeply insightful. Ecstatic time, time that cannot be conceived sequentially, is the only resolution of time's foundational analytic. All roads lead to a non sequential transcendental genesis of all things, as all things are given in phenomenological time). This may sound like a digression, but I only want to say that this "other" is not an historical event and not derivative. It is "discovered," as one discovers things in an observational analytic, like a geologist observing rocks and minerals, IN awareness as such, historical and otherwise derivative accounts aside.

Participatory knowing is the knowledge of how to act or to be in relation with the environment, as distinct from 'knowing about' (propositional knowledge) or know how (procedural knowledge). It is knowing through active engagement within specific contexts or environments (or in the case of religious ritual, with the Cosmos as a whole, per Mircea Eliade). Participatory knowing shapes and is shaped by the interaction between the person and the environment, influencing one’s identity and sense of belonging. Vervaeke associates it with the 'flow state' and a heightened sense of unity (being one with.)

This sense has been massively disrupted by the 'modern' state in which the individual ego is an isolated agent cast into an unknowing and uncaring Cosmos from which he or she is estranged, an alien, an outsider. So healing from that or overcoming it, is more than a matter of propositional knowing, but discovery of a different way of being. Which I think is expressed in phenomenology and existentialism in a non-religious way. But the point is, overcoming that sense of otherness or disconnection from the world is profoundly liberating in some fundamental way. I *think* this is what you're driving at. — Wayfarer

But now, more directly to your idea: of course, to "know" these, rather than to merely experience their existence, like a cat or a lizard, brings in the issue of propositional knowledge, but then all eyes are on what this is. Forget about pre-modern, and now consider pre-language. The cow sees better grass on the other side of the stream, then crosses over to get it. Did the cow think propositionally? No, but the essential structure of the conditional propositional form seems to be there: no explicit if....then; but a proto-conditional and prepropositional if ...then would be in place because the pragmatic situation itself is inherently conditional. The "recognition" that the grass can be obtained by moving legs in a certain way and direction has the basic propositional conditional form.

The point is that propositional knowledge is embedded in participatory knowing, the latter (conceived here as an historical stage of sequential development) cannot be conceived free of the structure of thought as we know it. And therefore, the "other" that eventually makes its way into awareness (again, conceiving of this whole affair outside of Henry and phenomenology) cannot be conceived as appearing with the propositional and therefore derivative of the propositional. Speaking like this, it seems better to say, this other has a much more ancient existence. Perhaps measured in geological time. Dinosaurs?? Trilobites?

I have been a particularly interested in Joshs contributions and am often intrigued and/or sympathetic to the frames he brings here via post-structuralism and phenomenology. I have enjoyed bits of Evan Thompson's and Lee Braver's work.

But I have never pretended to be a philosopher or to have spent much time reading philosophy. In previous years philosophy didn’t capture my imagination. In the 1980's I read a lot of works available at the Theosophical Society, where I often hung out. I have no problem with Henry’s ‘duplicity of appearing’ as referenced. But I am not someone for whom the idea of god resonates. Whether that’s Paul Tillich’s ground of being or Alvin Plantinga’s theistic personalism. — Tom Storm

For me, it is the simplicity of philosophical issues that are striking. I put the question above: ever hear of a physicist studying, Jupiter's moon's or carbon dating or whatever, who decides to begin the study with an account of the perceptual act the produces basic data? No. This is extraordinary. Such neglect is unthinkable in science, like neglecting the sun in the study of moon light. One looks at, around, all over this simple question and it becomes very clear that according to science, such data being about a world is impossible. This point is, nothing really could be more simple, but it is entirely ignored.

Of course we know why it is ignored. Because to study perception itself requires perception. It is impossible to study empirically. Literally impossible. But this changes nothing in terms of the impossible "distance" that remains between claims about the world, and what those claims are "about".

Evan Thompson? Again, simplicity. Is it even possible for value, or affectivity or pathos, the pain of a sprained ankle, say, to occur without agency, one that is commensurate with the experience? Just a question. Momentous yet simple.

Something from the SEP entry on Michel Henry that resonates with me: — Wayfarer

Yeah, I find myself leaning toward this thinking because I, too, like, Henry, am a radical phenomenologist. The phenomenology of absolute self-affection brings the world of encounter right to immediacy of perceptual contact with things (meaning everything, form simple objects to thoughts, feelings). What stands between me and this presence? Nothing; nothing but, as Buddhists say, my attachments. But it is not the presence that becomes so intimately disclosed; it is myself, that is, when one makes the move away from the implicit hold of language and experience that are "always already" there in every glance, there is a transcendental "behind" the perception-of-everydayness that is allowed to step forward and the world is now seen as if for the first time. I think this is the where Buddhism takes one: to release our essential existence from a "world".

If you can sit there watching as the sun goes down, and understand what it was like for the ancient mind to believe the sun is a God, then you are close to Henry and radical phenomenology, I think. Of course, nothing is lost. You still know about fusion and whatever physics you are aware of. Nor do you become childlike (though I have read accounts of Zen monks talking to trees, screaming at them) or ancient minded. Rather, something has affirmed itself from "behind" this familiar world which is elusive to analysis. But it is as if all this time one has been ignoring, as Kierkegaard put it, that one exists, and suddenly there are, and you know you exist, and existence is radically Other than anything else because everything else belongs to the very familiarity one has to drop in order to understand.

You're the expert. Tell me. — Tom Storm

I read, and so do you, only different books.
On religion, frankly, it would take a certain agreement on your part with what Michel Henry, my current muse, a "radical phenomenologist," says here:

Now, the systematic elucidation of appearing (not of things but of the way in which things offer themselves to us) presents us with what I would call the duplicity of appearing. This means that the mode of appearing, considered in itself, is twofold. On the one hand, there is the appearing that consists of a coming outside [venue au-dehors], of such a kind that here phenomenality is that of this “Outside”—which is also called the “world.”

Of course, the world here is the very familiar place of paying taxes, solving problems, socializing, working and so on. He calls this "outside" for obvious reasons. One stands apart from others, from things that are made objective and fit into a general scheme of habitual thinking. A world.
But,

On the other hand, there is a more original revelation that does not project outside of itself what it reveals, that does not divert toward anything external, anything other, anything different, whose phenomenality is not the visibility of any sort of “Outside,” of an ek-stasis. This original revelation reveals itself to itself, in other words, it is a self-revelation.

This would up front have to make some sense to you, just to stir toward further inquiry. Otherwise, just another lame bit of presumptuous philosophy. One might as well read the about the weather if this above makes no sense to you at all. (Though, I was surprised that you did agree with Joshs's thoughts about what constitutes the real. That was pretty out there. Maybe some of this does resonate with you.)

And yet it's only a "definition", not a publicly corroborating, sound argument that warrants believing "classical theism" is not just a (dogmatic) myth. — 180 Proof

Public corroborating? Is this what delivers belief from dogmatism???

But the door is open. — Tom Storm

As I see your position, after reading your thoughts here and there, you are indeed an open door, but a door in a closed room. How does one open a room?

I PRAY GOD TO RID ME OF GOD. (MEISTER ECKHART)

One can only hope. Henry never struck me as an ethical foundationalist. — Joshs

God is good. Though roughly put, this pretty much sets the apodictic ground for prima facie obligation.

Objectivity' can mean different things. In the pragmatic context it just amounts to intersubjective agreement. In the realist context it is an acknowledgement of things having an existence of their own, independently of the human. If objectivity is independent of the human, and everything we experience and know is not, then we cannot fully know a purportedly independent existence even though our experience has obviously induced the idea of it in us.

The absolute idealist conception that objective existence just is what we experience seems inadequate. It certainly seems to be true that our experience itself is objectively real, meaning that we experience just what we experience, but even here we don't seem to have full access to just what it is that we experience. Unknowing seems to be as important as knowing in human life. That doesn't satisfy those who are addicted to finding certain — Janus

I don't approve of the term 'idealist' to explain a description of the world that understands that the perceptual act that receives "the world" must be an essential part of the description. Saying it is all idea simply does not describe the way things appear to us. Trees and fence posts are still "out there" and not me, al this is an imposition on me and I have to deal with it. The idea is that all this has to be understood as an event, because to perceive is an event, and time and space are conditions we bring into the event, though, and this is critical, we do not merely invent in the event. We struggle with, we grapple with, this world, this often overwhelming existence, and this can only be apprehended IN this world. All that ever appears to us is appearance, BUT: To speak of something as an "appearance OF" is where the difficulty begins. I think this "of" is a false attribution, a misleading physicalist metaphysics, for to affirm something like this, one would have leave experience. I don't think leaving experience can be made sense of; but then, I do think experience is far more than plain thinking can give us, the rigors of science, notwithstanding. For me, the physicalist metaphysics (some version of, philosophically, at the level of basic assumptions, when all perceiving systems are removed from this room, there is still a "room") simply ignores the glaringly obvious issue perception. Ever heard of a physicist beginning her theory with an account of the perceptual act itself?? Of course, this is ignored. This is why we have philosophy.

"Unknowing seems to be as important as knowing in human life." To me, this is more important than it might seem. Knowing is built out of unknowing, for to know cannot be understood as a stand alone event. One cannot know the boat is in the water if there is no "that which is not a boat" in the region of the concept where the knowing has its genesis. This kind of thing makes knowledge claims problematic, I mean the simple ones. As I see it, this is the among the death throes of naturalist thinking. But consider: if argument shows that language cannot do this, capture or pin an an "existing thing," then what IS it that we stand before when we stand before a world? For this is certainly not something exhaustible in the language in the analysis of language. It is Other, and here, I hold, that we have entered proper metaphysics (obviously standing on the shoulders of others). "The world" is metaphysics, there, in your face, so to speak, not something impossibly distant at all, whether Kantian or physicalist in its conception.

My point: a 'consistent relativist' forfeits all standards for deciding between competing or incommensurable truth-claims, ergo her preference is arbitrary. — 180 Proof

Speaking of strawperson arguments: The conditioned here IS NOT arbitrary. Nothing says it has to be this way, it just IS that way. This is entirely in line with a consistent relativist.

Aren't there times when ‘being the same’ matters other times when ‘being different’ matters? The point is that it is not the question of persistent self-identity which is primary but why it is important and for what purposes. There is relative ongoing stability in purpose and mood, and this stitches together continually changing moments of sense.
We don’t need an unchanging world, we need a world whose changes we can navigate coherently, with some sense of familiarity. — Joshs

Well said, I say. But foundational ethics is, alas, lost.

I do not now nor ever remember having an experience of self-identity or self-persistence of anything, physical , conceptual or otherwise. But others are welcome to keep asking me the question. I can tell them that I have a theory about why others believe they are seeing objective truth as stable, and that it is possible to miss the instability of reality without it in any way jeopardizing one's ability to do formal logic or science. — Joshs

If there are these micro deviations from moment to moment, and I think this right, then why does this indeterminacy not topple the very notion of objectivity altogether? After all, the macro level agreements only align in the agreements themselves (Quine and his indeterminacy of Translation). This reduces objectivity to a pragmatic notion, for agreement works, and micro disagreements work as long as they don't matter. But Quine stabilized the world with his naturalism, ridding the equation of pesky semantics. You affirm the pesky semantics, but deny naturalism. Your idea of objectivity is certainly different from his. Or is it? When you affirm the

No doubt, the "slightly different semantic sense" occurs from moment to moment, but does this really undo self persistence? How is it that I am the same person that I was a moment ago? Technically, you would say, I am not. But on the other hand, this belies the very concrete "sense" of my existence, whichi is not analytically reducible.

We are certainly concerned with our position in the universe. If such a concern is wholly a 'religious' one then the question has to be what you mean by religion? I am not trying to corner you here as I think we might share a similar view here. The problem is using mere words to convey what is meant. — I like sushi

I think my position here deserves to be cornered. The whole matter requires a sea change, if you will, in philosophical perspective, and a post is such a short thing. So I'll ask you if you agree: It it the case that all that is affirmed about the self or the world in which it finds itself, presupposes the conscious act that affirms its existence? If so, then this conscious act is antecedent to any talk about a universe, that is, at the basic (philosophical) level of analysis, we FIRST encounter the self in determining anything at all. After all, ontology cannot be conceived apart from epistemology, is one way to say it, as if what IS can be posited apart from the positing itself. The question begging is glaringly obvious.

This miniscule step puts the analysis of all that is on the perceptual act.

Does this sit well with you?

You're some variety of a naturalist or a physicalist, right?
— Astrophel
Yes.

So, brain here, tree there: how does the latter get into the former as a knowledge claim?
:sweat: It doesn't.

But what if no certainties can be assumed?
Well, then that would be a certainty.

Because this is a structural feature of our existence.
Thus, a certainty ...

When any and all standards of certainty are of no avail, we face metaphysics, ...
i.e. another certainty, no?

...real metaphysics.
In contrast to 'unreal' (fake) metaphysics?

It is an absolute, inviolable.
Ergo a certainty – a conclusion which contradicts (invalidates) the premise of your 'argument'. Another wtf are you talking about post, Astro?! :shade: — 180 Proof

Sorry 180 Proof, but it is all just too glib and without argument or thought. I am not criticizing. It just doesn't appear you have anything to say.

If one sticks to the view of language as representative symbol this is true, but in the approaches to language we find in such figures as Merleau-Ponty , Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Derrida language isn’t separate from the affective enacting of world, it is that enacting. — Joshs

But my thoughts run like this: There is in this sprained ankle attending thought, and this may be equiprimordial with the pain, but to conceive of the pain as a thoughtful event doesn't make sense. I understand that the basic distinctions drawn are our own analytical impositions, but the ontology of pain needs to be liberated from the presumption of knowing in order to stand apart from it and be acknowledged in its pure phenomenality, and this is not to say that human existence is a foundational body of divisions.

And saying that the Buddha’s enlightenment is a ‘language phenomenon’ doesn’t? — Wayfarer

I say a full bodied language "attends" enlightenment, allows the event to take place against what is not enlightenment, referring to everything one knows about the world prior. imagine if enlightenment were to appear in the mind of an infant. Could an infant be enlightened? No, I would argue.

There is also an understanding of non-conceptual wisdom. In yogic terminology concepts are ‘vikalpa’, mental constructions. They are not necessarily erroneous, but there are domains of understanding, or so it is said, beyond the conceptual. In the same way that other skilled pursuits like acrobats or skiing might be, neither of which rely on or can be conveyed by concept.

I dare say within the Tibetan context, these types of non-discursive understandings can be shared amongst those who are similarly skilled in that sense. — Wayfarer

But in the same way the thrill of a roller coaster ride is non discursive. See, I just think talk "beyond the conceptual" says too much. Nothing is beyond the conceptual because nothing is contained IN the conceptual.

I am not sure if religion would have its ground for its existential justification without the concepts of afterlife, promise of savior from human sufferings, good fortunes, good health, possibility of the miracles and protection from God against the uncertain world. Like it or not, those are the elements of the attractions offered to the followers of religion in the mundane world, whatever religion it might be. — Corvus

Let's call those promises part of the culture of religion. And sure, I know what people believe. But this is philosophically uninteresting. Such things have their grounding in something else. One has to bracket the culture and its institutions and language, to see what lies beneath, perhaps something that is unassailable.

The OP title seems to be implying religion has close connection with human sufferings. No one would have taken the implication for intensifying, but wouldn't it be easing? — Corvus

If it were not, then what would be the point of religion? For understanding the universe, we have metaphysics, epistemology, logic and semantics. Could religion offer better in understanding the universe? I am not sure. — Corvus

Tempting, but there is so much that needs saying, and this is a post. Ethics is the most salient feature of the universe. In religion, ethics becomes metaethics, the justification of suffering at the level of the pure phenomenon, the meta "what is it?" question and here we are supposed to find redemption, you know, meta-redemption, redemption that is built into the phenomenon of suffering itself. How? I argue, take flame and put your finger in it. What does this experience "tell" you? It issues forth an injuction NOT to do this, and injunction that is beyond law and duty conceived in a language to govern the consenting, or somethign like that. It is something as certain as logic itself.

Moral of the story: ethics is metaethics, and metaethics is where all of our ethical prohibitions have their genesis. This kind of analysis goes to foundations. So easing pain is a "principle" the world "tells" us we must follow. As good as any stone tablet, Better, because real, and not full of nonsense.

I don't see that. I think Gautama's discovery overflowed the bounds of what can be spoken. Hence the famous 'Flower Sermon' which is the apocryphal origin of Ch'an and Zen Buddhism. In the story, the Buddha gives a wordless sermon to the sangha by silently holding up a white flower. No one in the audience responds bar Mahākāśyapa, who's smile indicates his comprehension. It is said to embody the ineffable nature of tathātā, the direct transmission of wisdom without words. The Buddha affirms this by uttering: — Wayfarer

They say in Tibet there is a dialog among masters of concepts those on the outside cannot even imagine. Ineffability is meaningful only relative to effability. If the ineffable (the extraordinary discoveries you mention) were a common experience in a culture, then THAT would be the standard of the effable. Language and reason care not.

Because language and reason is entirely open. God could actually appear to me and I would witness the depths of eternity, and then the next day I tell you and you think I am mad. Then you experience the same divine event of impossible dimensions, and now there is nothing at all preventing us from putting a language together, reappropriating the old through metaphorical and descriptive familiarities and similarities and differences, intensoties, possiblities for ironic play, and the communicative possiblities about it would be exactly the same as what exists now between us regarding chicken soup or a roller coaster ride. The original non-linguistic content never was "contained" in the words, just assumed because of this historical matrix of meanings and references that we share. This non linguistic dimension has always been, conceived in and of itself, transcendental. The world right now is always already transcendental, but we do not live in a culture that certifies this kind of thing.

There is more. I hold, and I think those you mention hold though they don't talk like this, that there is a point where simple familiar understanding turns to phenomenological understanding. One "sees" the phenomenon as a phenomenon such that the manifest and the manifested are one. A turning point.

Isn't Religion supposed to ease the human suffering? Or is human suffering the part of or requirement for religion? — Corvus

Best to think analytically: when one observes the world, what does one find at the level of basic questions? As I move into this difficult area, I rediscover everything. The usual ways of thinking at put on hold, bracketed, and the unusual questions become the theme for inquiry. So what happens when suffering is no longer given to us in the reductive contextualities of talk about this and that, whether in science or everydayness? Suffering now simply appears, and I am asking about this, call it purified presence, made more pure by the process of eliminating all things extraneous to what it simply IS. It is a fascinating study of the world and takes one deeply into meaning that has been otherwise summarily dismissed by a busy and distracted mind.

To grasp religion, one has to do this. For religion is a metaphysical question of our existence. One has to ask seriously about metaphysics, and what it is. THEN the value dimension looms large. The easing of human suffering is an issue in ethics (it should be eased). And in religion ,it is about metaethics. Why is it metaethics? Because the world is a meta-world at this level of inquiry.

I do find it interesting that suffering is sometimes equated as a kind of beatific edifice of religious faith. I think this can easily be seen as horrific too rather than a 'special gift' given to the few worthy. — I like sushi

Consider that the religious perspective raises this entire dimension of our existence, this affectivity, the vulnerability, the overwhelmingness of suffering and beatitude, to metaphysics. The question is, then, is there anything really real about metaphysics? We find this in ethics, aesthetics and epistemology.

There is something I want to add, which I think you will understand. It is that 'spending time' and 'making an effort' in meditation counts for nothing. There is nothing that can be accrued or gained through the conscious effort to practice meditation and any feeling that one has gotten better or gained something through such efforts is mere egotism. That is all. — Wayfarer

I see this as is a real insight. Meditation as "spending time" is no better than what my cat does on the window sill. Wonder must be in place. An openness that is not nothing but issues from the the ground of language itself as it stands open to the world as wonder, the primordial wonder about being here at all; and particulars, trees and computer monitors and ideas and emotions and anything that is particularized in some way or another in familiar affairs, yield to this open question of existence. Language cannot be made the enemy of meditation, even though language is exactly what clutters and congests understanding the world. Language does BOTH. It is the problem and the remedy. Even in silence, and thought is pushed down to nothing, thought is the seeking beneath it all, and a fascinating disclosure of something truly primordial can rise up.

The point I am making is that when Gautama Siddhartha sat under the Bodhi tree, he discovered something, and discovery is not something cats can do. It is a language phenomenon, but this does not at all diminish the nature of the discovery. It does elevate the nature of language.

I have no idea what you are talking about, Astro. — 180 Proof

You're some variety of a naturalist or a physicalist, right? So, brain here, tree there: how does the latter get into the former as a knowledge claim? Seems clear to me. It is the simplicity that is striking.

Uncertainty. — 180 Proof

Well, there is a response to this, but you're not going to like it. It makes sense if you follow patiently.

Uncertainty makes sense in context where there is some certainty assumed. But what if no certainties can be assumed? At all. Take logic: I assume tautological truth is inviolable, but then such truth is wrapped in language and language is not inviolable; it is in fact radically contingent. That is, the way we understand the logicality that is so certain and free of accidents (as they say) is given to us in something that is nothing but accidents, for language itself is self referential and its meanings have no foundational stability, only stability conceived in the agreements and disagreements within a given context. The irresistible "sense" of, say, the principle of causality is indicative of something, but when I try to speak or write this I find this intra-referentiality of language-in-play steals away the certainty I thought was so inviolable. Something is inviolable, but if whenever I try to conceive it this inviolability slips away into a question, the we face the "inexorablity of an enigma," and this runs through every knowledge claim imaginable, and every epistemic relation.

The point is, when it comes to religious uncertainty, available contexts are useless because concern exceeds context, the desideratum exceeds any conceivable contextuality. Why? Because this is a structural feature of our existence. When any and all standards of certainty are of no avail, we face metaphysics, real metaphysics. Here, empirical science simply falls away because any such thinking implicitly holds to some set of "certainties," things assumed but stand themselves on uncertain grounds. The world as such becomes an epistemic and ontological vacuum, and it is HERE now one can ask about suffering, because suffering is not a language construction; it clearly has explanatory possibilities that come to mind when we think of it, but there is in this something which is ontologically distinct and imposing that stands outside of language's contingencies. This is really not some abstruse issue at all. Just imagine intense suffering: like the intuition of modus ponens' apodicticity, there is something THERE that language seizes upon, makes claims about, but cannot exhaust just because suffering is not a language phenomenon.

The word transcendence is now meaningful, but here, unlike logic which really is about form, merely, we are deep into meaning, the torturous, and, of course, delightful, trial and aspiration of being in the world. This is religion's territory, where language cannot go to "finitize," that is contextualize, the world. Suffering is being's suffering, not localized in a reductive context. But note: analysis has displaced faith. It has brought inquiry to the threshold of our existence, and suffering is now a stand alone existential presupposition that cannot be analyzed. It is an absolute, inviolable.

Reifiication / misplaced concreteness fallacy is implied in your assumption, Astro. "Propositions" are only truth-bearing ways of talking about aspects or features of "existence" and not the sort of things which can be "removed from" or "discovered in" "existence". Unlike sophists (or essentialists & idealists), most philosophers do not confuse their maps (or mapmaking) with the terrain. — 180 Proof

I don't understand what you mean by "about". Not that it is wrong to say this, but it is a pivotal word.

As a metacognitive species we "suffer" from instinctive and/or learned denial of reality (e.g. change (i.e. pain, loss, failure, impermanence), uncertainty (i.e. angst)). As history shows, what greater reality-denial can there be than 'supernatural religion' (i.e. philosophical suicide) – a cure for suffering that frequently worsens suffering? — 180 Proof

I quite agree, if by supernatural you mean, say, the long history of Christian metaphysics and theology or Harry Potter's magic.

But it is not as if what is natural wears its philosophical disclosure on its sleeve. True philosophical suicide comes from ignoring this analytic, the one that can begin with the question, how do "natural" objects get into knowledge claims when causality, the naturalist's bottom line (just ask Quine) for everything, has nothing epistemic about it? Or, if you prefer, how does any thing "get into" a brain thing such that the what is in the brain is "about" that thing?

Separating knowing a thing from what it is to acknowledge a thing is, as you say, supernatural.

But what is religion apart from the bad metaphysics? One has to clear the question before summary dismissal. And what is NOT a "denial of reality" and that is the true ground of religion? You mention suffering, but what is this?

As you know, it’s not just Husserl’s version of phenomenology that Henry objects to, but Merleau-Ponry and Heidegger as well. And one could imagine that, despite his never mentioning him, Henry would fault another thinker of immanent life, Deleuze, for the same weakness he finds in the others. That is, they are not true philosophies of immanence because they each slip into representationalism
by formulating thr self as an ecstatic relation with the world.
But I think Henry misreads these authors If the path to the elimination of suffering involves the deconstruction of the subject-object relation, this cannot be accomplished by holding onto the notion of a purely self-affecting subject. Henry rightly wants to get beyond representationalism and egoism, but to do so he must let go of the need for a notion of affect as present to itself. — Joshs

Henry thinks philosophy is done with itself at the point of phenomenological consummation. We have God's consciousness now.

They are recognised as effective, but they’re said to belong to the ‘way of sages’ which is difficult (according to them, practically impossible) to bring to fruition. — Wayfarer

Frankly, the way of the sages is the only one that interests me. The "cultural milieu which facilitates those practices and insights" does not belong to the essential purpose, enlightenment and liberation. Thought (and cultural means of understanding) is both the binding that holds one to the habits of normal thinking, and the openness of being's possibilities that eventually turns to itself and makes itself the center of inquiry.

I have my own far flung thoughts about this. I haven't spent time like you have in meditation, but I have spent a galaxy of time doing what you could call jnana yoga, or meditative thinking. Very calm in the process standing before the world, and realizing that the world is not the world. There are times when I get close. Augustine said it like this:
"'I am aware of something within me that gleams and flashes before my soul;
were this perfected and fully established in me, that would surely be
eternal life!' It hides, yet shows itself

I'm not sure what you mean by "manifest meanings". Do you mean to say that we are affected by how things appear to us? If so, that would be a truism. An empirical proposition has no inherent value to be sure. For example, take the proposition it is raining—the proposition itself is merely an observation and the only value, meaning or quality it has is that of being true or false, and it is the actuality of rain that has some value, whether positive or negative. — Janus

Manifest, or immanent, there, upon you, undeniable as modus ponens, the reduced phenomenon, pure presence, minus all one might be able to say about it. Is it possible to strip a living perception of all the presumptions of knowing so that all that remains before you is bare existence, free of the very finitude that language imposes upon it(including language about this very freedom)? Yet in this, one is still a language agency. This is what makes someone like Henry so offensive to philosophy, I think, but he is right about this. Take a lighted match and apply it to your finger. Very pure, non conceptual, noncontextual, and as undeniable as modus ponens. Of course, one need nothing so dramatic to make the point. JUst the interest, the care, desire, satiation or deficit, disappointment, I mean, just noticing something is affectively qualified.

States of affairs are concrete not abstract; it is propositions about states of affairs whose content can be considered to be abstract in the sense of being generalizations. — Janus

Well, I was thinking about early Wittgenstein's states of affairs, which are devoid of value. Nothing concrete about such a thing. We invest a thing with value when it is taken up in the perceptual act. Interesting thought experiment, I think, to imagine what a value-free encounter with an object would be.

There are many points of convergence between Buddhism and phenomenology. Buddhist culture has been phenomenological from the very outset, with its emphasis on attaining insight into the psycho-physical systems which drive continued attachment (and so rebirth). Their philosophical psychology ('abhidharma') based on the five skandhas (heaps) of Form, Feeling, Perception, Mental Formations and Consciousness, and comprising a stream of momentary experiental states ('dharmas') is utterly different from anything in the Semitic religions and even in ancient Greek culture (although there has always been some back-and-forth influence.) — Wayfarer

But what about the core Buddhist event?: the meditative act itself. Wordless, yet wondering, open, liberating. The essence of meditation lies in its radical simplicity. Do you agree?

There is a response posted above.

The movement of life is …the force of a drive. What it wants is …the satisfaction of the drive, which is what life desires as a self and as a part of itself, as its self- transformation through its self-expansion, as a truth that is its own flesh and the substance of its joy, and which is the Impression. The entirety of life, from beginning to end, is perverted and its sense lost when one does not see that it is always the force of feeling that throws life into living-toward. And what it lives-toward is always life as well. It is the intensification and the growth of its power and pathos to the point of excess. (Material Phenomenology)

Thank you for asking the most difficult question. As I see it, what makes Henry so difficult lies in his stand against Husserl's phenomenological ontology, which, he holds, is compromised by intentionality. Husserl holds that when an object is acknowledged, the universality of thought's grasp upon it is itself part of the essential givenness of the pure phenomenon. But for Henry, this entirely undermines the phenomenological purity, as "the singular is destined, in its ephemeral occurrence, to slide into
nonbeing" (Material Phenomenology) Husserl's pure seeing separates the seen from the seeing, and Henry thinks actual conscious life is lost.

I agree with Henry. The reduction takes one to the absolute palpable feels and experiences of the world entirely in what they are, and the "bracketing" of extraneous knowledge claims (I am calling them) is the method that delivers one to the manifestation itself. This is tricky. To me, Husserl was making a concession to Kant adn rationalism because after all, when one sees an obect, one knows one sees it and this spans the distance between the knower and the known; but note how this places the universal before the particular. The particular gets lost, and the vivid living experience gets lost, and this is what leaves philosophers all grasping to reconcile, like Husserl did, the subject and object with some epistemology. For Henry, the manifestation and the manifesting itself, the appearing and what appears, are one and the same.

So Buddhism I take to be a radical phenomenological reduction, an all embracing bracketing, a bracketing of intentionality as well, if done seriously. Desire is no longer ontic desire, and pain is no longer what it merely appears in the vulgar everyday sense. Now ALL is revealed in an impossible revelation that cares nothing for theoretical hindrances, for what appears is "restored" to its primordiality.

So what about Wayfarer's talk about clinging "to the transitory and ephemeral as if they were lasting and satisfying"? Pain is now an absolute manifestation ( I have tried to argue this before. Never brought Henry into it, but he was, among others, like Max Scheler, Karl Rahner), for everything is. And now the phenomenologist-Christian finds repose in God, but this is entirely the same thing as what the Buddhist is doing. Gautama Siddhartha, the quintessential phenomenologist! Both radically still the world/

Such as the above "propositional truth" you're "chasing" (Gorgias laughs). — 180 Proof

It is not an argument that says there is no such thing as propositional truth. The insight here asks, what IS a proposition? Look at it like this: there the prof is running through a logical proof on the board, and one is examining the way this makes sense. One can understand the tautological and contradictory relations in play in a very disinterested way, but the act of being engaged in the exercise is interesting to you, and being interested is the most salient feature of the engagement. Now ask, does logic have this free floating existence that yields truth independently of the interest of subjective engagement? Easy to consider, really, for what if there is NO such independence even imaginable? For logic cannot be conceived apart from the experience in which it is conceived. Now we turn to experience, and we find a full bodied actuality of engagement and the entire analytic of human existence, the prior knowledge of logic going into the affair, the concern, the anticipation, the opennes to what is there, the possibility of failure, and on and on.

This is the point. Propositions can never to removed from the existence in which they are discovered in the "first" place. .