That rings true to me, even though I can't claim to really understand it. — Wayfarer

Plato would say you're remembering the wisdom of the Anima Mundi.

The US is an oddity in that most countries in its position would demand tribute.

Not sure I understand this but is the point that, at an ordinary level of thinking, dualities appear to us? — Tom Storm

Dualities necessarily appear to us. We think in pairs, up/down, left/right, male/female, etc. In every case, the meaning of any word contains it's opposite. So if we deleted 'down' from your mind, "up" would also disappear for lack of anything to compare it to.

But in saying that, was he say that, of all the things that there are, none of them exist in every possible world? Or was he saying of nothing, that it exists in every possible world?

That's the trouble with continentals... so vague... — Banno

Good question. The ancient Greeks couldn't accept the idea of nothing. As a result, they didn't have the idea of zero and their math was limited because if it.

Zero was invented by the Babylonians.

So I think it's true that Heidegger's philosophy amounts to a-humanism, which in the wrong hands becomes in-humanism. But why were there so many wrong hands?

The provocative answer is: the rise of naturalism. Eugenics, which reduces people to something like genotype started in Britain and spread like wildfire to the US. During its height, women were being sterilized by state governments with the assent of the Scotus, for no other reason that they had checkered pasts.

Eventually it was discovered that this was all based on deplorable pseudo science, but lurking in the background was the real a-humanism of the naturalist perspective.

That's what caused the Holocaust. Heidegger's himself later blamed it on technology. I'd say that was close, but missing the bullseye.

Heidegger would agree that nothing exists necessarily. One happy moment of agreement between continental and analytic philosophy.

thought Hegel was a monist idealist, like Kastrup? — Tom Storm

He would say the ultimate truth is the Absolute, which is a state of unity in which there is no thought because there are no divisions. Thought is the realm of partial truths. In that realm, you can't really escape dualism.

Are you a dualist? — Tom Storm

Thought is necessarily dualistic. Implied is some unified world beyond thought. This is Hegelian. He's an example of the way I think.

Could well be. My question doesn’t change, however: what is the reason, in idealism, for the division between apparently dead matter and conscious beings? If all that exists is mental in nature, why does some of it present as "lifeless" structure while other portions present as subjects with inner experience? — Tom Storm

The question goes back a long way, at least to Plotinus, who was an idealist monist. Monism of either variety has this problem, and seems to require eliminativism, in other words, we identify the thing we don't want as an illusion. That was Plotinus' answer: that matter is maximal privation of the Good (which he thought is identical to God and intelligence), and according to his interpreters, he was saying that matter in its fullest extent is an illusion. I went looking in his writings for where exactly he explained it and was disappointed that he didn't address it in a very full bodied way. He just sort of trailed off. Btw, Kastrup's view is vaguely Neoplatonic like Plotinus' view.

That compares to the present moment, when consciousness is the thing some would like to eliminate in favor of monistic materialism (like Daniel Dennett). The same thing happens. If you go to where Dennett is supposed to be tucking this problem away, he resorts to open-ended questions designed to help us doubt that consciousness is what we think it is. Monists can't seem to nail down how we're all enjoying a big fat illusion, but they're sure we are.

I’m comfortable with my understanding. — T Clark

Ok. It's odd that you're not even willing to look into it.

I wrote a bunch of stuff about different principles in the OP. This particular one is just a small portion of what I’m interested in here and not a central one. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me on all the presuppositions I identified. — T Clark

I just thought maybe you'd want to get a correct understanding of the scientific views you're discussing.

The amount of energy is a number, but so is the amount of matter. Energy and matter are just two phases of the same substance like ice, steam, and water. — T Clark

I think if you look into it further, you'll discover that I'm right. Energy is a scalar number that measures the capacity of a system to do work. There's an awesome Spacetime video in which Dr O'Dowd explains it really well. I've posted that video three times so far on this forum. But you can also discover the information elsewhere. :grin:

What I struggle to understand is how this framework accounts for the apparent distinction within the world between living entities (animals, plants, bacteria) and non-living ones (chairs, rocks, bottles). — Tom Storm

I don't know Kastrup's answer, but there is no scientific definition of life (according to Robert Rosen). What we're referring to by "life" requires the concept of purpose, or final cause. That's not something we detect, per se. It's an idea we use to organize our experience, so it may be like a Kantian category.

Energy is a number, not a substance.

yep

[2] The universe consists entirely of physical substances - matter and energy. — T Clark

Energy isn't a substance. It's a physical construct, which means it comes from the analysis of an event.

Not that any of them endorse him wholesale but this passage in particular is highly relevant. — Wayfarer

Schopoenhauer believed subject and object are two sides of the same coin. That insight goes back to Plato. You're in danger of calling all of philosophy phenomenology.

But that can be no more than fiction. Surely, there is a place for rationalism, but rationalism has got a worse record than empiricism, starting with Thales saying everything is sourced from water. — Questioner

It's a model you use to make sense of what you're experiencing. If you find the model is wrong, you update it. Davidson said it's like a web of inter-related beliefs, and possessing such a web is the hallmark of rationality.

Empiricism only gets you so far. You run into the problem of induction.

If you're describing the way the world is, you're giving an objective account.
— frank

This sentence is contradictory. If it's your account, it's not objective. — Questioner

If you precede your statement with "from my point of view" then your statement is 1st person.

A physics book expresses a 3rd person account. That doesn't mean it's not derived from 1st person data, or that it's necessarily true. We're just talking about what kind of voice the account is in.

We have no access to it. Everything constructed in the mind of the subject is by definition subjective. We have no choice but to believe our senses. — Questioner

An objective account is in 3rd person. It's like a novel written in 3rd person, a God's eye view.

I think the answer to Josh's question is that a state of affairs looks different depending on where you're standing. And 180's point resists sophism. If you're describing the way the world is, you're giving an objective account.

But how can I know states of affairs in the world if my knowledge of the world is limited by my language. Does this infer that states of affairs only really exist in my language. — RussellA

This is why I suggested we leave out the word "reality" because it connotes mind-independence. Russell was a neutral monist, and the Tractatus has the same character.

But TLP 2.01 A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects (things) — RussellA

He sort of mystically says that in a state of affairs, things are like links in a chain. Since the Tractatus is dense and enigmatic, I prefer to just use a logic textbook for determining what state of affairs is.

A very high percentage of the stuff you post is completely wrong, like maximally bonkers.

The next few years will be interesting. Vance commented that he's fascinated by Bernie Sanders. I hope that's a good sign, because Sanders is a fundamentally decent human being, whatever one thinks of his politics.

For Wittgenstein, States of Affairs (SOA) are the fundamental building blocks of reality in the world, and are about how objects can be arranged. — RussellA

I would say leave out the word "reality." Wittgenstein (in the Tractatus) is saying that the boundaries of what we call the world are precisely the same as the boundaries of thought.

When we talk or think about the world, we don't usually think of it as a collection of objects, but rather as a complex of relationships and events. We'll call these complexes states of affairs. They're closely kin to propositions.

The basic point of the Tractatus is that since language and the world are meshed together, language can't be used to talk about what's beyond the world (that's the interpretation I favor anyway.)

States of Affairs exist in a mind-independent world. — RussellA

A realist would say an obtaining state of affairs is mind-independent. Realism is tacked on to the basic idea of a state of affairs. The idea itself is compatible with any ontological outlook.

that is the case, then the enquiry is not about the State of Affairs in the world (Caesar was a General) but more about the State of Affairs in the mind “Caesar was a General”. — RussellA

It's one state of affairs that either obtains or doesn't.

And yet", he goes on, "the existence of this whole world remains ever dependent upon the first eye that opened, even if it were that of an insect. For such an eye is a necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge, and the whole world exists only in and for knowledge, and without it is not even thinkable. The world is entirely idea, and as such demands the knowing subject as the supporter of its existence." — Wayfarer

Just note that this not any kind of phenomenology. It makes the thread a little confusing if you smash up differing philosophical approaches.

Seems to me the best way to proceed is by differentiating Combinatorialism and Abstractionism, and at the core the difference is that while Abstractionism sets up possible worlds in terms of states of affairs, Combinatorialism sets it up by combinations of individuals, relations and universals. Trouble is that Combinatorialists go on to talk about states of affairs. But if we are to make sense of the distinction those states of affairs for Combinatorialists consist in combinations of individuals and relations, but for Abstractionists they are fundamental. — Banno

I wrote a whole freakin' essay. :grimace:

Modal logic's touchstone is the way we think about the world around us. Simple stuff like: "What if I'd never been born?" That's the theme of a famous Christmas movie called "It's a Wonderful Life" starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed:



In the movie, an angel shows the protagonist what the world would be like without him. He does this by literally putting the character into this alternate world, where he walks around learning what's happened to people he wasn't there to help. Some died. Some became alcoholics. Some took over the town and turned it into a dark hellhole.

Why is it so easy to follow the events of the movie? Why don't we become profoundly confused? Apparently it's because we routinely think this way. We look back and imagine a multitude of paths leading up to the singular present, and from there, we imagine a multitude of futures. Time is shaped like an hour glass in our minds. We're at that place in the middle where grains fall one at a time.

The old question appears, though. What is the relationship between the way we think and the way things really are? The first recorded philosopher to testify that we can't know the answer to that was Socrates in Plato's Crito. What is the role of the logician here? Is she supposed to answer the question that Socrates himself warned can't be answered?

I think abstractionism, concretism, and combinatorialism are three ways of exploring how extravagant we want to get with answering the question.

Concretism: I think this version forgets the original touchstone: the way we think. In the movie It's a Wonderful Life, that's not an alternate Jimmy Stewart. The whole point of the movie is that our Jimmy learns what the world would be like without him. If it turns out that that's a different Jimmy, then we really would become confused and turn the movie off. For all its advantages, I have to nix this one.

Abstractionism: This is a modest approach that enjoys roots in Frege. It gets thumbs up from philosophy of math. It says alternate worlds are figments of thought. How does that relate to the way the world really is? We don't know. We talk about sets, propositions, states of affairs, etc. because it's handy to use those ideas. When God Almighty steps in and reveals the true nature of Everything to us, we'll modify as needed.

Combinatorialists Some people say dreams are just memories that have been jumbled and recombined. Combinatorialists are saying the same thing about possible worlds. A possible world is just components of the actual world pulled apart and put back together in a new way. Is that true? They seem to be saying that I can't dream up anything truly new. I'm not fired up to argue about that. If an orbiting satellite wasn't really something new, it was just the same old stuff reorganized, then ok. It seemed new when they first thought of it, though.

As if Schopenhauer was a rambling, antisocial mystagogue ... — 180 Proof

That's weird that you brought up Schop. He would confirm that you and Heidegger are two facets of the same diamond.

As an aside, Hitler was no philosopher — Tom Storm

I haven't read Mein Kampf, but Steiner mentions it more than once in explaining the climate of post WW1 Germany.

It always struck me that populists don’t really do ideas, they do slogans. — Tom Storm

I don't think Hitler was a populist. Populists don't usually have substantial agendas. Hitler obviously did.

Yet Heidegger is clearly buying in to 1) the concept of national greatness, and 2) the belief that National Socialism offers "inner truth and greatness." If not irrational, then surely nuts. — J

Yea, it was an end-of-history narrative. Ironically, it's twin was Communism.

doubt this the work of this despicable, loathsome excuse for a human being had anything signicant to do with the creation of Nazism. — Ciceronianus

It's probably more that he was a creation of the same forces that crash landed in a Holocaust.

The problem for the misanthrope is to figure out how to survive the realization that Heidegger is your brother. You aren't above him. You have the same genes, the same blood, the same permanent stain.

Are you open to the possibility that it may have no connection and is more concerned with his attempt to retrieve the way Being was originally encountered before it was conceptually distorted by centuries of bad metaphysics? — Tom Storm

I was trying to understand what Habermas and Adorno were detecting in it. I guess I didn't explain that. :grin:

I can make no sense out of the work, so I'll rely on those who have studied it to let me know — Tom Storm

It's phenomenology peppered with dialectics. It ends up being a zoo of strange creatures which are supposed to be hiding behind the veil of language.

It wasn't my intention to sneer at all, and I may have misunderstood your point. — bert1

Sorry, I misunderstood. :yikes:

Btw, decades ago I'd found George Steiner's Martin Heidegger to be an excellent synopsis – I wonder how well Steiner's interpretation (or my own rationalist, anti-obscurant bias) has aged in light of more recent scholarship on the old Rektorführer. — 180 Proof

Don't know. I've mainly been trying to figure out how Being and Time connects to Heidegger's fascism. I read Wolin's Heidegger in Ruins (2023), and it left me unconvinced that there's any obvious relationship. Wolin just sort of suggests that anyone who was that much of a Nazi must have produced radioactive philosophy.

Steiner's work is the first one I've come across that suggests that Being and Time isn't actually supposed to make sense. It's just supposed to be pointing toward some new comprehension (which I think is alluded to in the speech you linked, thanks for that.)

The fact that chemical treatments are far from guaranteed to work, and work differently in different persons, indicates that objective materiality abstracted away from the interaction of the world with subjectivity is also not primary. What is primary is the indissociable interaction between the subjective and objective poles of experience, and this is the lesson phenomenology is trying to teach. — Joshs

I'm partial to phenomenology. The OP is not accurately describing it.

would hope that any thoroughgoing philosophy would stake a position on the nature of consciousness, and phenomenology as introduced by Husserl certainly does that. — Joshs

Chomsky is pretty thorough-going, but he is a mysterian.

Anyway, I was calling out Wayfarer's assessment of phenomenology. It does not start with the primacy of the subject. That is an intellectual conclusion, not a product of experience.

Yes, for Husserl every fact we know about ourselves and the world is the product of social construction — Joshs

Is that also considered to be a social construction?

Chemical treatments for mental illness seem to show that consciousness is not primary. Though I think the issue really comes down to the way we talk rather than what we know about the world.

So onward? — Banno

Sounds good.

No more than anyone else. The correspondence observed between brain function in humans and what those humans experience is compatible with all positions on consciousness, even substance dualism. — bert1

My criticism was going to Wayfarer's assessment of phenomenology. Phenomenology is a philosophical approach, not a position on the nature of consciousness. But I did note your sneer. Merry Christmas.

Sure. Those are still cases where primacy goes to materiality. Drugs and alcohol are other cases of it.

:grin: