Lecture by Peter Hacker: “On Certainty Some remarks on the new edition” — Antony Nickles

I’m sure it will be thought-provoking, although Hacker is problematic for me, for reasons his former writing partner Gordon Baker has laid out since he broke from Hacker on Wittgenstein.

Good, but note that my argument says nothing about a so-called "view from nowhere." The reductio does not arrive at, "there is a view from nowhere." It arrives at, "there is a truth claim that is not context dependent." — Leontiskos

How does "there is a truth claim that is not context dependent” not imply a view from nowhere, or sideways-on, or God’s-eye?

Enaction is speculative and experimental, not assertoric.
— Joshs

Sorry, but this makes no sense. It is an attempt to have one's cake and eat it too. You are basically trying to assert without asserting, and then call this "enacting." One can have all the experiences they like, but the assertion of a predication is the assertion of a predication, whether or not it is believed to be based on those experiences. "Truth claims are always context dependent," is an assertion. Style, rhetoric, and neologisms don't change this… The attempt to pretend that, "Truth claims are always context dependent," is not itself a truth claim does not even rise to the level of plausibility. — Leontiskos

I already agree with you that "Truth claims are always context dependent”’takes itself as a predicative assertion. The key word here is ‘always’, because it makes a claim to generality or universality. You see enaction as equivalent to predicative assertion. A relativist sees what you see ( a statement of generality) but sees something else there too, something that particularizes the general and predicative in such a way that they notice what the statement is doing right now. Whenever they encounter what would conventionally be called a general statement, claim or assertion, they cannot help but notice a new ‘how’; how the statement is working right now, in this immediate context. The particularizing ‘how’ isn’t added onto to something called generality, it defines anew what it means to be something like ‘general’, categorical or objective.

You are equivocating between experience and assertion. We could construe an assertion as, "Reporting my experience and extending an invitation to you to experience something similar," or the "foundationalist" could simply take your equivocations into his own mouth and respond to your objection with similar fiat, to the effect that he is "enacting" and not "asserting," so there is no problem to begin with. — Leontiskos

I am making a distinction which is invisible to you, probably similar to the distinction between ‘continuing to be the same’ and ‘continuing to be the same differently’. But there are important implications for the difference between what a foundationalist is doing when they ‘enact’ and what the relativist is doing. The former is representational rather than simply presentational. Because what is enacted is supposed to represent something else, it can correspond to that something else correctly or incorrectly. A kind of ethical judgement is implied. Did the ‘enaction’ get it right or wrong?

By contrast, relativist enaction is not attempting to represent anything. It is instead bringing something new into existence. While the foundationalist uses the representationalist nature of their ‘enactivism’ as a cudgel to coerce conformity to what is ‘true’ in a correspondence sense, the relativist can only invite others to see things in a new light.

You contradict yourself because you say something like, "Truth claims are always context dependent." This means, "Every truth claim, in every context, is context dependent." It is a claim that is supposed to be true in every context, and therefore it is not context dependent. If you want to avoid self-contradiction you would have to say something like, "Truth claims are sometimes context dependent." — Leontiskos

I agree with you that if the relativist-postmodernist is treating their assertion that “truth claims are always context dependent” as itself a truth claim, then they are attempting to achieve a view from nowhere. You might then ask how else one could mean such a statement except as a general claim. The answer writers like Heidegger, Deleuze and Derrida give is that what they are doing is not asserting or claiming but enacting. What’s the difference? A truth claim purports to encompass within its purview a transcontextual temporal span. What I claim to be the case at this moment must be assumed to hold beyond my immediately present experience. Enactment, by contrast, is the experience of the present moment itself as ‘fat’ or specious.

In noticing what takes place right now, I simultanously notice the passing of the previous moment and anticipation of a future moment. If I then draw from this experience of the fat present a notion of primordial ‘contingency’ I can only rely on the present as it repeats itself to confirm and reconfirm this notion of contingency. How do I know the next moment and those that follow it will not lend themselves to truth claims which validate themselves? I only know this by attempting to think such a conception and then notice whether it unfolds itself as self-identical or as self-transforming. Enaction is speculative and experimental, not assertoric.

My submission of your utterance of a truth claim to enaction does not result in a contradiction or refutation of your assertion. It allows me to understand the meaning of your assertion and at the same time to experience it as being buoyed by a current which allows it to remain the same always differently. When I then express this to you, I am reporting gmy experience as it renews itself moment to moment and extending an invitation to you to experience something similar. Either you do or you don’t. If you don’t this does not make your belief in truth claims false. It simply means you will not likely be inclined to participate in the community ofnrelativists who together, each in different ways, are exploring the implications of their experience of the specious present.

Renowned British science columnist Bryan Appleyard thoroughly explores each of these provocative topics in a book that has incited the ire of the scientific community. He points out that while scientists have shaped our lives and our beliefs, they have consistently failed to explain human consciousness, the soul, or the meaning of life. From Galileo to Darwin, from Copernicus to Oppenheimer, countless scientists have proclaimed a universe in which human beings are only an accidental presence. The unwitting result is that science has cast humankind adrift, paralyzing us with fear and cutting us off from personal or religious truth. In Appleyard’s view, science has done us “appalling spiritual damage.” — Understanding the Present, Bryan Applyard

Here’s key claims about the limits of science from Appleyard, and my critique of them:

Appleyard argues that rather than being a neutral method, science has turned into a kind of “mysticism” that only it can address its self-created questions. Pre-Newtonian worldviews (Aristotelian/Christian) provided meaning and moral grounding; the scientific revolution replaced that with a mechanistic cosmos ruled by universal “laws.” Human beings are increasingly viewed as biological machines (genetic coding, deterministic systems), which undermines the sense that we have free will, purpose, or a “soul.” Appleyard doesn’t call for abandoning science. Rather, he argues science should be “humbled”: recognized as one way of knowing, not the only or supreme one. He suggests we need a worldview that allows for meaning, value, and humanity beyond what science currently offers; a balance between scientific insight and spiritual/moral depth.

Appleyard focuses on science, but what he’s really attacking is a range of philosophical worldviews supporting the scientific approaches he disapproves of. Physicalism, mechanism and determinism (which seem to be his targets) belong to an older era of philosophy and science, but have been put into question by more recent philosophical and empirical approaches.

I confess, I'm lending more credence to your point than I think it deserves. — Philosophim

As you know, philosophy is divided into distinctly different communities, camps, cultures. What arguments you think deserve credence and what arguments don’t is to some extent a function of which of these communities you identify with and which ones you don’t. The question of the relation of philosophy and science has been at the center of the cultural wars which reached their peak in the 1990’s. On one side of the debate stands those writers who believe the sciences never actually separated themselves off from philosophy, and instead represent elaborations of philosophical worldviews.

On the other side are those who believe that the sciences function independently of philosophy, and that the role of philosophy is merely to clarify and organize the discoveries of scientists. The first group ( Heidegger, Deleuze, Wittgenstein, Husserl, etc) has written much about the naively held philosophical presuppositions of particular sciences. The second group believes it is the job of the sciences to lead the way toward new knowledge, and the job of philosophy to try and keep up. You are apparently unfamiliarity with the arguments of the first group, but my guess is you would probably find that they don’t deserve any more credence than mine, which may factor into your negative experience in academic philosophy.

If most people are moving in a world of ideas that are 200 years old, then aren't modern day problems really the problems of 200 years ago? And if the world is 100 years behind modern philosophy, doesn't that mean philosophy is 100 years behind where we expect it to be? That would seem to lend credence to my point. Also where did you get the idea of shoving ideas far removed from people's world view when the point is about philosophy being behind and not addressing the current world view? Finally, where did MAGA come from? — Philosophim

When I refer to the ‘cutting edge’ of philosophy of 100 or 200 years ago, I have in mind a tiny handful of thinkers. When you talk about modern day problems, you have in mind the culture as a whole, whereas I’m talking about isolated thinkers. Those thinkers typically become known within the larger academic community ( and from there to the wider community) within a short time and their ideas are written about and taught. But Heidegger’s point stands (“ …a philosophy is creatively grasped at the earliest 100 years after it arises. We Germans are now precisely beginning to prepare ourselves to grasp Leibniz”).

It can take the academic community 100 years or more to effectively understand the radicality of the most important philosophers, even though they have been studying and teaching their work over that period of time. That’s why when you complain about the philosophical community being fixated on the ideas of writers from earlier times I must counter that this is as it should be be as long as the implications of those ideas have yet to be fully appreciated. And buttressing philosophical ideas with the results of the latest sciences is not going to accomplish the ‘modernization’ of philosophy when those very sciences unknowingly ground themselves in philosophical
presuppositions dating back a century or more.

Do you think many either praising or doom-mongering about current A.I. realize that the philosophical underpinning of today’s cutting-edge computer technology can be traced back to the era of Leibnitz?
— Joshs

And if philosophy departments were doing that, then that would be attempting to solve modern day problems with older philosophy — Philosophim

Modern day problems are generated by modern day people. And if most modern day people are moving in a world of ideas produced by cutting edge philosophy of 200 years ago, then it is that older philosophy which defines the very meaning of the modern world, and dealing with those problems requires meeting people where they are at in terms of their worldview. That means beginning from the philosophers they already relate to and moving the needle forward at a pace they can manage. It doesnt mean trying to shove down their throats ideas so far removed from their worldview that they are prompted to respond with a mix of incomprehension and hostility. That is a recipe for political disaster, and in fact it is a large part of the reason MAGA emerged.

Liebniz would laugh at a professor wasting time on his old monad theory if he had the understanding of modern day chemistry and physics we do — Philosophim

My point is that all scientific theories are expressions of underlying philosophical worldviews, and the cutting edge of today’s physics and chemistry is based on philosophical presuppositions harking back more than 150-250 years. Heidegger wrote:

…a philosophy is creatively grasped at the earliest 100 years after it arises. We Germans are now precisely beginning to prepare ourselves to grasp Leibniz.

Heidegger wasn’t just referring to the general public but to the scientific community as well. So the best way to move the needle forward on our ‘modern’ chemistry and physics is to introduce those chemists and physicists to the next era of philosophy they are ready to absorb relative to the philosophy they already understand. That means going back to cutting edge philosophy of at least 100 years ago. For instance, Lee Smolen is an example of a physicist who believes his field desperately needs an infusion of newer philosophical ideas. And if you examine which philosophical era he wants the field to transition from (Kantian) and which era he wants it to enter into (post-Hegelian), you’ll see what I mean.

Btw, nothing I’ve read from you suggests to me that your own philosophical perspective has moved significantly beyond Leibnitz. Can you tell me what philosophers you think have gone beyond his thinking and why?

So then you agree with me that philosophy as a whole is woefully out of date and not with the current times? That was pretty much what I covered above — Philosophim

What I meant was that the full implications of the ideas of thinkers like Kierkegaard, Dilthey, Gadamer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Husserl, Foucault, Deleuze and the later Wittgenstein have yet to be absorbed by many doing philosophy today. The idea of most people today of what it means to be philosophicallly ‘up to date’ is regressive with respect to the above thinkers. Most are still living in the world envisioned by, at best, certain early 19th century writers and , at worst, much older thinkers. So before we can talk about the need for creative innovations in philosophy we have to make sure we aren’t reinventing the wheel. You said you work in programming. Do you think many either praising or doom-mongering about current A.I. realize that the philosophical underpinning of today’s cutting-edge computer technology can be traced back to the era of Leibnitz?

I left the dust bins of history to actually make a positive difference in the world, and have pursued philosophical writings here and there for my own and maybe someone else's use. But why would I ever join the field as more than a hobby when it shuns people like you and I — Philosophim

Did I detect a hint of anti-intelllectualism?

The field will die on its insistence on tradition and fear of creative, relevant progress. — Philosophim

Before the field can make creative, relevant progress , those who fashion themselves as philosophical thinkers need to make sure they are caught up in its acheivements-to-date.
It has been my observation that the vast majority of those writing philosophy today are recycling philosophical ideas from 150-200 years ago.

I would love to read philosophical takes on morality, or gender, or liberty that are grounded in anthropology and evolutionary biology, for example. — Jeremy Murray

Would you also love to hear how anthropological and biological takes on gender are grounded in philosophical presuppositions? For instance, did you know that Queer theory originated in the genealogical-ethnographic-historical studies of Foucault?

Harry Frankfurt's notion of "second-order volitions" may not be very original, but it is advanced with exceptional clarity, which is something analytic philosophy has sometimes done much to improve. And of course, one needs a philosophy for one's own era. Plato could hardly speak to the nature of the modern state, consumerism, capitalism, and the educational system they foster the way Byung-Chul Han, C.S. Lewis, Mark Fisher, or Autumn Kern can. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What I’m interested in is the issue of originality, not with respect to capturing what is particular about one’s own era, but thematizing what is universally and transculturally true. Do you believe modern philosophers such as Hegel are not very original in this regard in comparison with their Greek and Medieval predecessors? Were pre-modern philosophers and theologians the originators and modern philosophers merely the clarifiers and cultural
particulizers?

Even if the origin of trolling is not malicious, it results in a breakdown in trust and in cynicism. — Colo Millz

I’m just skeptical about the idea that we can define ‘trolling’ as a thing, apart from the intersubjective dynamics between the alleged troller and the annoyed accuser. One person’s trolling is another’s critique. From one vantage, it is the troll which produces breakdown in trust and in cynicism. From another vantage, the troll
is merely an adaptive response to breakdown in trust and in cynicism.

It can also explain the particular shape/structure of one's existential crisis. That is, an existential crisis is not the same for everyone who describes themselves as having an "existential crisis". For example, an existential crisis will look different for someone with a Christian background, as opposed to someone with a Hindu background; and their respective solutions to those crises are going to be shaped differently as well. (For example, one can recognize whether a self-described atheist has a Christian or a Hindu background, even without mentioning anything about them having such a background.) — baker

Good points.

↪Joshs The point that interests me is his refutation of the ‘is/ought’ distinction. He phrases it in terms of relevance realisation This revolves around discerning relevance - perceiving what features of a situation could be important in each moment. It puts questions of value, importance, significance and the sacred at the center of the ‘salience landscape’ — Wayfarer

I’m all for dissolving the is/ought distinction, and I agree that Vervaeke challenges this distinction as it relates to the fact/value separation. But I wouldn’t say he dissolves the binary in the radical way that poststructuralists do. Evan Thompson’s comments illustrate the limits of this attempt:

“Nyanaponika juxtaposed descriptive claims about the mind with statements about how one should shape the mind and life, according to the Buddhist path. The second kind of statements are ethical injunctions based on value judgments. In philosophical terms, they are normative claims rather than descriptive ones. Science pursues disinterested explanatory knowledge of the mind, whereas Buddhism also seeks to shape the mind according to certain norms and goals. But this juxtaposition of the descriptive and normative aspects of the Buddhist viewpoint hides a problem, one that still haunts the Buddhism-science dialogue today. On one hand, bare attention—the method of the supposed Buddhist mind science—is said to reveal how the mind truly is. It's said to reveal the truth of the Buddhist doctrine of “no-self” or “nonself”, that there is no abiding self or soul and that the “mind is nothing beyond its cognizing function.”

The no-self doctrine isn't presented as an antecedent normative framework that tells us what ought to happen as a result of practicing bare attention, namely, that we should no longer identify with the mind as the self. Rather, bare attention is presented as disclosing the antecedent truth that there is no self. Bare attention is likened to a scientific procedure or instrument for observing and establishing how things are. On the other hand, mindfulness meditation is a practice that shapes the mind according to certain goals and norms, such as making the mind calmer and less impulsive. Nyanaponika writes that “Bare Attention slows down, or even stops, the transition from thought to action,” and “the plasticity and receptivity of the mind will grow considerably.”

How are these two ways of thinking about bare attention—as disinterested disclosure of how the mind truly is versus as shaping it according to a valued standard—supposed to be related? They seem to be in tension. To disclose something requires not changing it as you disclose it. To shape the mind is to change it. How can bare attention reveal the mind if it also changes it? Consider scientific observation compared to bare attention to one's own mental processes. Scientific observation, like meditation, is a practice and an acquired skill. You need to learn how to see through a microscope or a telescope. But these kinds of instruments are separate from the objects they provide access to, and they don't change them (except, perhaps, at the quantum scale).

Buddhist exceptionalists typically conflate the descriptive and normative aspects of Buddhist doctrines and meditation practices. For example, Sam Harris writes: “a person can embrace the Buddha's teaching, and even become a genuine Buddhist contemplative (and, one must presume, a buddha) without believing anything on insufficient evidence.” He thinks Buddhism is like science: “One starts with the hypothesis that using attention in the prescribed way (meditation), and engaging in or avoiding certain behaviors (ethics), will bear the promised result (wisdom and psychological well-being).” Harris makes it sound as if there is empirical, scientific evidence for the Buddha's normative teaching, including the ideal norm of buddhahood and the possibility of its attainment. I disagree. The concepts of nirvana (nirvana ) and awakening (bodhi ) aren't scientific concepts; they're soteriological ones. They aren't psychological constructs whose validity can be established through measurement. (Why I Am Not A Buddhist)

Vervaeke argues that normativity doesn’t need to be imported from a cosmic telos or moral law.
It’s implicit in our very capacity for rational, self-corrective cognition.

Our “is” — our biological and cognitive architecture — already entails competencies that can be exercised well or badly. “Ought” simply names the direction of self-correction toward more adequate realization of those competences. — Wayfarer

Vervaeke’s view fits squarely within the German Idealist tradition, especially Hegel, with Kantian roots, in his understanding of autonomous reason, freedom as self-determined alignment with rational norms and internalized moral standards. It doesn’t seem partially compatible with the existentialist move to deconstruct the metaphysics of rational subjectivity inaugurated by Kierkegaard. For him, faith involves a personal “leap” beyond reason, sometimes even against ethical universals. Vervaeke’s insistence on autonomous rational standards contrasts with Kierkegaard’s focus on faith as transcending rationality. We are responsible for what matters and how it matter to us, but this isn’t a ‘rational’ responsibility.

If bullshit marks a disregard for truth, trolling marks a disregard for dialogue itself - a symptom of a digital culture that values power more than understanding. — Colo Millz

I would counter that your post confuses cause with symptom by positing the motive for bullshit and trolling as the valuing of arbitrary power for its own sake. You don’t seem to allow that lying, bullshit and trolling may not be primarily intended to cause breakdown in understanding, but may arise as adaptive coping responses to such breakdown. The problem then would not be lying but the deterioration of trust that makes one believe lying is the only recourse. I find the accusation of ‘trolling’ to be most often used as a dismissive weapon to delegitimize the reasoning and justifications of those who we disagree with.

I'm mostly familiar with the notion of a "meaning crisis" through the usual suspects, Nietzsche and his successors, Dostoevsky and later Russian writers like Pelevin, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre (the slide into emotivism in ethics and aesthetics being a sort of special case of the meaning crisis thesis), William Stace, Bertrand Russell, the New Athiests, etc.

Pierre Hadot's approach to "spiritual exercises" and his focus on Epicureanism and Stoicism as more accessible to moderns, as well as the neo-stoic renaissance in the world of "tech culture" are also good concrete examples of the phenomena.

I would tend to agree with Charles Taylor though that the epistemic and metaphysical presuppositions that leave people "spun" open or closed to "transcendence" are themselves largely aesthetic (which is not to say unimportant; the idea that Beauty is of secondary importance is of course merely the presupposition of a particular sort of Enlightenment "world-view.") I think you can see this clearest in people from a solidly materialist atheist frame who nonetheless recoil from the difficulties of the "sheer mechanism" doctrines of the eliminativists and epiphenomenalists, and find themselves open to the notions of God in Spinoza, deflated versions of Hegel, or—most interesting to me—a sort of bizzaro-world reading of Neoplatonism where the One is a sort of "abstract principle" in the same sense that the law of gravity might be (suffice to say, I don't think this reading survives contact with the sources in question, which is why it is interesting that it arises at all, or why the material must be transformed as it is). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Am I right to surmise that for you the history of Western philosophy since at least Descartes amounts to little more than a reshuffling of older theological concepts, and that you would not feel particularly intellectually or spiritually deprived if you had not been exposed to modern philosophy?

I think it's obviously false that 99.99% of Trump's influential supporters are "traditionalists" however, since many in the camp I am referring to are outspoken transhumanists or post-humanists, who see custom and tradition simply as tools, and who want to move beyond humanity itself. Likewise, "tradition" in the American context normally refers to Protestantism, or at least Christianity, and yet these folks tend to refer to Christians as "Christcucks" or Christ as a "Jew on a stick" (if they are even that polite). — Count Timothy von Icarus

They are traditionalists relative to the kind of thinking that falls within the postmodern philosophical sphere. If one wants to be generous, one can point to Kierkegaard as the first postmodernist, or proto-postmodernist. By traditionalist I mean a perspective which is at least prior to Kierkegaard, Marx and Hegel. Please name specific figures associated with this alt-right trans or post-humanism (Curtis Yarvin, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel?) and I'll offer my take on where their philosophies belong on a historical spectrum. Elon Musk and Peter Theil’s advocacy of that old movement called ‘technocracy’ envisioning a rational, scientific society run by experts, can be traced back to the French Encyclopedists (Condorcet, Saint-Simon). Saint-Simon’s idea of a technocratic elite managing production and social welfare was revived almost verbatim by the 1930s technocracy movement.

↪Joshs I’m interested in your thoughts on this meaning crisis. Do you think that, if it exists, it’s because we’re in a transition period, still haunted by the old beliefs and struggling to adapt to new ways of understanding? What are projects like Vervaeke’s trying to accomplish? It feels to me like they’re trying to put the genie back in the bottle. But as someone who isn’t looking for his kind of answers, it’s perhaps easy for me to misread the material. — Tom Storm

Vervaeke’s’Meaning Crisis’ project stems from a personal crisis he experienced in his 20’s. He grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home, but rejected that faith as an adult. He embraced science instead, but found that it only described what is the case rather than how to live, what Aristotle called phronesis and Buddhist traditions call wisdom. He found the answer to his meaning crisis by combining cognitive science, wisdom traditions (Buddhism, Stoicism, Neoplatonism) and meditative practices. This is what he teaches others in his meaning crisis courses.

So is the world in a meaning crisis? I would say only those who find themselves adrift with respect to former belief systems. This does not include those who are happy with their traditional religious beliefs. But what about the majorities in Europe, the U.K., Australia and other places who consider themselves atheists? While Varvaeke is coming late to the game, Europe has had lots of practice, with atheism having become a popular alternative to faith decades ago. I imagine many of those who consider themselves post-theistic existentialists find meaning in what they choose to do. In my own case I became an atheist at age 15 and transitioned immediately from religious faith to finding meaning in creating my own purposes.

I found embodied cognitive science, and later phenomenology, to be very helpful here, since they deal both with questions of how one should live and what is the case. Still, there are many like Vervaeke who grew up relying on a rigid belief system and found themselves in existential crisis when they abandoned that faith and had nothing to replace it with. The craving to replace one totalizing purpose with another is one explanation for the attraction of cults, and Verveake’s project does have some cult-like characteristics.

A big part of what has defined MAGA as against the W. Bush coalition is the outsized role played by the post-religious, post-modern "nu-right" or "alt-right." They tend to recognize something like a "meaning crisis" but are often themselves nihilists, hence the naked embrace of "might makes right" ideologies. Everything is just a sort of natural selection, etc. Hence, accelerationism coming into vogue among — Count Timothy von Icarus

You’re seriously going to try and pin MAGA on ‘post-modernism’? If by this term you’re just referring to a historical era that we all inhabit, then I suppose that’s innocuous enough, but it also doesn’t say anything about the wide variety of viewpoints that belong to our post
modern condition. If on the other hand you’re referring specifically to postmodernist philosophy, I’d make two points. First, about 99.99% of MAGA adherents are philosophical traditionalists and hew socially conservative. They not only would not consider themselves postmodernists but are vehemently opposed to anything they see as even tangentially connected with it (marxism, wokism, intersectionality, post-colonialism, gender and queer theory, relativism, critical theory). Second, theorists such as Nick Land, and movements such as accelerationism, have been tagged with the label ‘postmodern’ simply because some of them studied or mentioned in their work postmodern figures like Deleuze and Foucault. This does not mean that their own work is in any sense postmodern from a philosophical perspective. Ive read Nick Land. His own philosophical orientation is anti-postmodern and rooted in older, more reactionary traditions of thought. He reads postmodern writers like Nietzsche and Deleuze in ways which are directly opposed to a postmodern reading.

Witt even grants the line of inquiry into the “casual connections” of the brain. “Supposing we tried to construct a mind-model as a result of psychological investigations, a model which, as we should say, would explain the action of the mind…. We may find that such a mind-model would have to be very complicated and intricate in order to explain the observed mental activities….” (p.6)

But he does say that “the method of their solution is that of natural science” and that “this aspect of the mind does not interest us” which is related to one of two aspects of this lecture that I think is the hardest to wrap our heads around. This is just before saying that “For what struck us as being queer about thought and thinking was not at all that it had curious effects which we were not yet able to explain (causally). Our problem, in other words, was not a scientific one; but a muddle felt as a problem — Antony Nickles

My reading of this is the following: Witt isnt simply allowing for a peaceful division of labor, where science does its empirical work and philosophy diagnoses conceptual confusion. Instead, he’s diagnosing the impulse to construct “mind-models” as a grammatical temptation. Our very desire to “explain” thought as if it were a causal process is already the problem. Is this your interpretation too?

Do you think that full reflection is possible for a person who is inside a paradigm? — Astorre

The same processes that embed individuals within social paradigms shape the nature and direction of ‘reflection’. The split between the purely private and inner (reflection) and the socially constructed (paradigm) is artificial.

Horkheimer argues that in this transformation, reason has been stripped of its substantive and ethical content; it has become a tool for calculation, efficiency, and control. This marks the “eclipse” of reason—the point at which rationality itself becomes irrational, serving domination rather than enlightenment, and leaving modern civilization powerful in its techniques but impoverished in meaning and purpose.

This later becomes one of the main themes of Horkheimer and Adorno's critique of the Enlightenment. — Wayfarer

Kant and Hegel took the split between a mechanistic world and a representing subject and united the two on the basis of rational freedom of the Will. Schelling went further by eliminating mechanism from nature. But he retained the metaphysical unity of the willing subject. It seems that Horkheimer and Adorno do the same in grounding meaning in rational thought and rational thought in dialectical materialism. The metaphysical unity of reason doesn’t come into question until the irrational, the unconscious and the historical are given equal billing with rationality in the work of Kierkegaard, the hermeneuticists, phenomenologists and Nietzschean poststructuralists. Meaning as affect becomes the ground for meaning as reason. Kierkegaard is where that metaphysical project breaks down. He refuses the reconciliation between reason and the irrational, faith and knowledge, the finite and the infinite.

↪Ludwig V
To be clear, Bateson falls on the "psychology" side of what Wittgenstein is considering. And so does Chomsky. I don't mean to imply that their ideas are adequate responses to what Wittgenstein is trying to do. — Paine

George Lakoff’s embodied alternative to Chomsky’s innatism comes a bit closer to Wittgenstein.

Well, at lease since Parmenides, "nothing" certainly is a "philosophical issue", we agree on that.
— 180 Proof

Ha! Clever reply 180 Proof. — Philosophim

Das nicht nichtet.

I remember Chomsky saying something like, if W stays away from science, then science will have to return the favor.
— Paine
Well, one sharp put-down deserves another. But the map of academia is contested - what map isn't, particularly when it comes to border territory, where both sides have relevant expertise? We need both sides to recognize where territory is contested, not pretend that everything can be decisively settled. — Ludwig V

Yes, I think Wittgenstein (as well as Husserl, Heidegger and others employing phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches) would respond that it is only by keeping a distance from and bracketing the facts of science that one can see the sense of those facts differently. The fact that science has stayed away from the kind of philosophical clarification that Witt’s work represents is the reason for what Evan Thompson calls its ‘blind spot’ concerning its relation to the Lifeworld that generates it and makes it intelligible.

As for Hegel, I'd say that Will is the culminating synthesis of self-determining awareness that coincides with these 'wordless and indescribable existences.'
— Pantagruel

Huh, i thought that was the hallmark of shopenhauer. I suppose we would have to consult the german translation. — ProtagoranSocratist

You see the beginnings of that in Schelling’s “dark ground”, a pre-rational, primal force or will. It is the non-rational foundation that makes freedom, personality, and consciousness possible. Kierkegaard was influenced by this, and studied with Schelling, but went beyond Schelling’s and Schopenhauer’s Idealism of the Will with his existentialism.

…three persons-in-one deity, which includes God's Son, who is nonetheless begotten not made, one in being with the Father, born of a virgin, both God and man, who was cruelly killed for our salvation, descended into Hell, then resurrected, etc. — Ciceronianus

I think I saw that movie. It was part of Halloween month.

A quick Google search reveals that several authors have applied Gadamer's hermeneutics to theology, making your statements seem extraordinary — Colo Millz

What can i say, I’m an extraordinary person. Any author can take a philosophical position in a theological direction. Gadamer didn’t object to theologians making use of hermeneutical interpretation as long they didnt attempt to treat it as a method grounded in a theological foundation. The fusion of horizons he described can only include such foundational theological tropes as revelation and grace if these are stripped of their authoritative god’s eye grounding and treated instead as horizons located entirely within the contingency of historically mediated, linguistically conditioned, open-ended discursive practices.

In Gadamer's dialogical reasoning Caputo purifies theology from triumphalism and anthropocentrism, but Genesis rescues Caputo’s view from nihilism by affirming that our animality is beloved and called. Humanity is both animal and imago Dei: the creature through whom matter becomes self-aware, responsible, and capable of love. Evolution tells the story of our becoming; Genesis names the meaning of that story. Caputo shows what we are; Genesis shows what we are for. — Colo Millz

This is taking Gadamer in a theological direction he was careful to avoid. Rather than self-awareness as teleological purpose, the meaning of hermeneutic discourse is in the process itself.

we should be wary of reducing the human to "mere" animality. The human is animal, but also the being who understands, who plays, and who participates in meaning — Colo Millz

Those poor animals. We humans are so frantically desperate to clutch at whatever we can convince ourselves will separate us from other species (only humans as are self-aware! Only humans are rational animals! Only humans have language, use tools, have culture, engage in play behavior, feel emotion!). I suggest whatever such categorical distinctions we might come up will eventually prove unjustifiable, and we will have to live with the idea that our differences with other creatures are as much a matter of degree as of kind.

Witt says they believe in something as possible but not here. I take the mirage to be created by the projection of the “mental” as imagined objects (by analogy), and I’ll grant to Joshs that they are “gripped” by the picture, and are “inclined” to say certain things as natural given their position once they have intellectually fortified it. But there is a why we have been chasing and I take it as the reason for picking objects as the analogy.

Their conviction comes by a secret they see that we don’t, like they “had discovered… new elements of the structure of the world”. But what makes them excited are the possibilities of an object, which are generalizable, complete, concrete, verifiable, substantial, etc. They become so compelled because there is nothing in the way of them projecting/imagining what they want: knowledge; an answer, a justification, a foundation, something of which they can be certain — Antony Nickles

If we are to associate desire, seen as ‘what we want’, with the ‘why’ which motivates our reasons, then what we desire isnt the same thing as this ‘why’ Rather, like our reasons, what we desire gets its intelligibility from within the why. If we think of this ’why’ as an overarching system expressing how reasons hang together, what Wittgenstein later calls a form of life, and which he is perhaps depicting incipiently here as a firmly held conviction, or that which ties tighter a wide range of convictions ( ‘this is what we do’), then why we desire what we desire cannot be located within the space of reasons, but prior (not in a chronological sense) to them.

If knowledge, an answer, a justification, a foundation, is what we want, then the larger system of intelligiblity is what makes these concepts intelligible. If knowledge-as-picture and foundations are grammatical illusions, the source of our being captivated by this illusion is not to be found in what we want but as this larger ‘why’ organizing the sense of our motives and reasons. It then would make no sense to trace the genesis of something like a form of life to what we desire and what our reasons are. We don’t want to be a solipsist or skeptic; we want what we want, and how we want it, WITHIN these illusory grammars. Is this consistent with your thinking here?

This makes sense, but I don’t think it contradicts what panwei has written. I think it makes sense too say, or at least consider, that the fact we care about each other is something that has evolutionary roots. — T Clark

It can have evolutionary roots in two ways . One way is that it is a gimmick, an arbitrary genetic contrivance whose value is indirect; that it is adaptive for the survival of the species. The second way is that the intrinsic dynamics of caring and social involvement function according the same same principles as evolutionary processes; not as an arbitrary gimmick that just so happens to further survival but
as what Piaget described as the fundamental organizing principle of life , the reciprocal relation between assimilation and accommodation in evolving living systems from a weaker to stronger structure. This limited the arbitrary gimmick aspect, as though we would stop caring about each other if evolution found a better way.
Another way to put it is that relevance and mattering are not inventions of evolution, but its basis.

This ought is not a choice
— Joshs

Well, OK. So if I were to say to someone, "You ought to ____ [filling in your description of what you call the intrinsic striving for self-expression]," that would be pointless, since they're doing it anyway? — J

They’re doing some ought, but it may not match your ought. Your ought may be taken as an invitation to view the situation from a different vantage. In psychological theory, the separating of is and ought translates into the difference between the person as a static object and the motives which push or pull them into behaving.
The ought is this ‘spark plug’ which is presumed to be needed to drive action. Psychological approaches like enactivism assume that we always already find ourselves thrown into action, so the ‘ought’ of motive doesn’t have to posited as a separate mechanism from the ‘is’ of being in the world. The issue isn’t how we get ourselves started but how we cope with the way we find ourselves thrown into situations , that is, the direction of motive.

The enactivists also argue that the social linguistic community is inseparably intertwined with the very notion of self; intersubjective factors already have an effect on our perception and understanding of the world and ourselves, even in the immediacy of our instrumental copings with the environment.

"X should be chosen because X is worthy (or worthwhile)," is simply not a tautology. Your claim that it is a tautology requires equivocation and a redefinition of "worth."

It should be easy enough to see this by simply noting that an argument over whether something has worth is not the same as an argument over whether some course of action should be taken. For instance, "The coffee should be chosen because the coffee should be chosen," is not the same as, "The coffee should be chosen because it tastes delicious," and yet 'tastes delicious' is itself here understood as a relevant form of worth. — Leontiskos

The way I’m reading ‘x should be chosen’ is that it implies a preference. The choice being recommended is preferable to the alternatives on some basis, and thus more worthy to be chosen than the alternatives on that same basis. One isn't making a blanket implication of the worth of the recommended choice, only that it is worthier than the alternatives on some basis. It’s hard to imagine a circumstance in which the utterance ‘the coffee should be chosen because the coffee should be chosen’ would be useful, except as a way of answering objections with ‘because I said so’, which isnt a denial that I deem the coffee preferable to (more worthy than) alternatives, but simply says ‘the reasons for my preference are none of your business and just do what I say’.

I agree with the thrust of your post, and I personally share the sentiment quoted above. But . . . suppose I don't? Suppose I don't see others as like myself, and am not interested in relating to them or expanding my sense of self. Are you arguing that I ought to? If not, what does this have to do with ethics and morality, with doing the right thing or pursuing the good or however one cares to phrase it — J

What I’m arguing is that ‘sense of self’ has nothing to do with the physical boundary that divides the outer layer of my skin from other persons. It has precisely to do with relatability and assimilability. I can be divided within my own ‘self’ just a much as I can be united with another person, depending on the relative success at achieving this integration. My personal desires and interests don’t come before this striving for self-integration; it is intrinsic to the very nature of desire. This ought is not a choice, it is the condition of possibility of intelligible experience.

I also share your idea about the origins of "ought." Essentially, this isn't a new idea—just a new perspective on an old instinct — Astorre

You’re right, the is-ought divide is not a new idea. So why not let some fresh air into the room by focusing on newer philosophies ( there are many of them) which dismantle the basis for the is-ought distinction?

That's the difference between ought and is. The receipt from the checkout is what is the case, the shopping list is what ought be the case. — Banno

It’s difficult for me to absorb the sense of this Humean distinction. My brain is clogged with too many sedimented layers of philosophy which have explicitly dismantled the entire framework on which the is-ought distinction is built. My thoughts bounce from enactivists like Evan Thompson and Francisco Varela to hermeneuticists like Dilthey and Gadamer, from poststructuralists like Deleuze and Foucault to phenomenologists like Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-ponty, from Wittgenstein, Putnam and Rorty, to Joseph Rouse and Karen Barad.

For instance, we have an intuitionthat killing is wrong because our minds can vaguely discern that the act of arbitrarily infringing upon life would be fundamentally detrimental to our adaptation to the environment and survival. Perhaps the moral system of human society is itself an adaptive tool formed under evolutionary pressures to promote group survival and reproduction. In other words, morality is a cultural apparatus that "serves the fundamental purpose." — panwei

This seems like a long and convoluted way to explain something that can be better explained in a much more direct way. We believe killing is wrong because we care about others. We care about others because we see them as like ourselves, which allows us to relate to them, learn from them, expand the boundaries of our sense of self. It’s not a question of what we can ‘get out of them’ for some narrowly conceived selfish purpose, but that they become a part of our own sense of self. The self is enriched and expanded to include others rather than simply treat them as objects for solipsistic purposes. Yes, we could argue that this furthers the survival of the species, but this is still looking at the notion of survival too narrowly and statically. What is being enhanced isnt the mere static survival of an object-a human, but the becoming and expansion of the self. Social bonds, friendship , love and cooperation dont just do the bidding of some prior “fundamental purpose” called evolutionary survival; they are its extension and redefinition. They are not just a means to some prior end. They are their own ends., their own fundamental purpose.

There are, however, some awkward phenomena. Akrasia (weakness of will) is one, and another is the phenomenon of protesting too much - where vehement denial of a truth betrays the denier's uneasy awareness the they are wrong. — Ludwig V

Psychologist George Kelly defined hostility as “the continued effort to extort validational evidence in favor of a type of social prediction which has already proved itself a failure.” Put simply, in hostility, events turn out differently than one had expected, and instead of revising one’s thinking, one tries to ‘force a round peg into a square hole.’

Showing examples of other senses (usages) for a phrase than the skeptic claims, is not in order to be right, but to make a point by basically saying, “see?” to show the conditions which would allow the skeptic's phrase to do what they want (to give it the necessary context, expectations, implications, logic, etc.)
— Antony Nickles
Yes. That's relieving the cramp. Though we need to think of someone suffering from cramp who doesn't want to be released from it. The cramp is our diagnosis. But movement can become restricted because it is never used. Perhaps that's better. — Ludwig V

This gets to the question of the relation between feeling-affect-desire and the ‘intellectual’ for Wittgenstein. There are a wide variety of interpretations to choose from among Wittgenstein scholars. My preference is to claim that the desire to stay on the path of illusion is not knowingly to do so. Desire only makes sense the way that true and false makes sense , within a form of life that gives both a desire and the criterion of truth their intelligibility. If what can be intelligibly desired takes place within a form of life that rests on a grammatical illusion, it is not as though desire first recognizes the illusion and then decides to ignore this knowledge. Rather , the desire can’t make it intelligible in the first place. It is not a s though desire knows the illusion as illusion and then decides to stay with the illusion, as though desire has a choice.

The philosophical problem is not a moral failing or an act of bad faith where the skeptic willfully chooses illusion over truth. Instead, the deep-seated desire for certainty or for a complete explanation is captured by a misleading grammatical picture.