Is that an accurate account, to your knowledge? I like the sound of it well enough. — ZzzoneiroCosm

The only quibble I have is the claim that there is only one true reality. Kelly at times did seem to talk like a realist, but the important thing is that, unlike realist cognitive therapists like Aaron Beck or Albert Ellis ( rational emotive
therapy) , Kelly never determined the ‘correctness’ or rationality of a belief on the basis of correspondence with an objecivte outer world. My constructs are validated or invalidated on the basis of a world that appears
already pre-interpreted by me relative to my prior history (my personal construct system). So what is validating or invalidating from my perspective is not necessarily so for you. This is a departure from cognitive therapy.

I don't really compare science and philosophy in this way. Science sends folks to the moon and gives me omeprazole for my reflux. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I know it will sound weird if I say that philosophy ‘sent folks to the moon’ two centuries before NASA. But what I mean is that most of the important conceptual elements required for this technological achievement were in place with the breakthrough work of certain key philosophers.
Think about the most astonishing and monumental scientific achievements of all time(Newton, Einstein, Darwin) My claim is that the bulk of the conceptual substance of their contributions was already on the scene through the work of earlier philosophers. Most of us simply aren’t familiar enough with philosophy, or good enough at making the translation from philosophical to scientific language, to recognize this parallel.

↪Joshs I can't tell if that's a yes or a no. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I was still editing my comment.

All? Do you mean testability exists vis-a-vis the realist v. idealist showdown? — ZzzoneiroCosm

To test a perspective on the world is to use it as a tool for meaningfully organizing and anticipating events. We know that a construct is invalidated when it fails in this task and we find ourselves in a state of confusion. This is not something we can hide from ourselves or deny because sense making is an affective process. The signs of failure to anticipate are anxiety, anger, etc.
Validation doesn’t require the consensus of a community. This is an artifact of objectivist thinking.

I agree we should constantly strive for a new perspective. But when a vital healthiness of mind is achieved, to my view it's time to put philosophy to bed and rest on our laurels.

My continuing to search for new vistas put philosophy on the back burner in favor of psychology, especially the positive psychology of flourishing and Maslow's research on peak experiences. Unfathomed heights are there to discover and explore. — ZzzoneiroCosm

You should dump Maslow for his contemporary, George Kelly ( or at least Carl Rogers).
Kelly’s philosophy of constructive alternativism offers that there are infinite ways of construing the world , none of which is the final or correct way.

Philosophy in general deals in untestable theories so it's easy to get snared in one's personal fetishistic philosophical labyrinth and thereby to self-aggrandize boundlessly - there's no controlled experiment on the horizon to set one straight if one has committed an egregious error. — ZzzoneiroCosm

All philosophical accounts are testable and only persist becuase they continue to be validated. Your notion of testability comes from a narrowly conceived empiricist conception of evidence. It doesn’t take into account that what counts for the scientist as evidence is circular. That is, what appears within a scientific domain as an observable is recognized as such on the basis of the interpretive framework of that science. When a scientific paradigm changes, what counts as evidence changes with it. The value of scientific evidence and proof is to tighten up the structure of the theory under test. It doesn’t make the theory more ‘true’. On the contrary, it makes it easier to recognize when the theory is eventually overthrown.

One might want to argue through the method of empirical test , scientific theories are tighter, more rigorous, more precise in their predictions than any philosophical account, but I think the opposite is the case. A science is a conventionalized version of a philosophy.This means its mathematized terms are designed to be so general as to hide interpretive differences between participants. A philosophy is richer and thus more particular, which accounts for the disparity of interpretive modes of access to it.

We only need the new if we're clearing ancient clouds and have never seen the sky. We need the new to eliminate inherited errors of thought - confusions, covert and overt. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Consistent with your previous comment, we only know error(clouds) in hindsight, from the vantage of a new perspective. All current scientific and philosophical accounts will be show as erroneous from a future vantage. That means we should strive for a new perspective not just when a theory isnt working, but also when it is working, when it does t appear confused.

↪jgill Far too seriously. Certainty can be a crippling psychological illness.


Uncertainty too. Philosophy has its place but should keep to it: clearing away the clouds. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Clearing away clouds is only desirable to the extent that it opens up magnificent new vistas. Would you describe the job of the sciences as merely clearing away clouds? Is thar all that Newton, Einstein and Darwin did? Everything we pride our sciences for , and more, we can expect from our philosophies.

In general, they each describe an approach, a method, but they do not claim to have reached the bottom. There's a big difference between claiming to be pointing the way, and claiming to have reached the end of the voyage. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly. They create a specific ‘way’( a metaphysics), and assume future philosophy will follow this path and add more clarity and detail.
In other words, they claim to have reached the bottom (the way) as far as they can tell. Obviously if they were able to detect a more originary ground than the one they present in their writing they would talk about it. When a philosopher believes they have penetrated to the most fundamental level of things, this means that going any further in that direction would lead to the dead end of nihilism, meaningless relativism, an infinite regress, the elimination of the world, incoherence, or some such catastrophic consequence. These are the accusations they typically make against the philosophers who follow and critique them for not having reached the most fundamental level of metaphysical grounding, and who proceed to burrow deeper.
What you will instead find is that a philosopher will remind us they have only sketched out a beginning framework, which will need to be completed by future generations of thinkers. In other words, while they cannot conceive of a more originary ground that would stand up to scrutiny , they tend to be quite aware of the incompleteness of their framework,that they have only pointed the way, and this ‘way’ needs to be filled in with more detail.

It's conceivable that some X becomes visible only when transcended. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Which is why historical movements are only identified in hindsight.

I don't think I've read any philosopher who believed oneself to have "reached the irreducible basis of things and has stripped thought of superstitious accretions". If I knew that this was the case, before reading it though, I'd reject it as bad philosophy, and not bother reading it. — Metaphysician Undercover

What about Descartes( certainty of the cogito) , Kant(irreducibility of the categories) , Hegel( Absolute subjectivity) , Husserl ( apodictic certainty) and Heidegger( Being as fundamental ontology). I could add Spinoza, Leibnitz and many others to the list.

How could they be when every significant scientific development in history requires a change in philosophical underpinnings?
— Joshs

Could you explain what that means? — Jackson

I’m a fan of Thomas Kuhn. His paradigm shifts are philosophical transformations.

↪Wayfarer ↪Joshs What do you mean by "worldview" in contrast to (a) metaphysics? — 180 Proof

I tend to use them interchangeably.

I have to say that every philosophical position I’ve ever read believes that it has reached the irreducible basis of things and has stripped thought of superstitious accretions. One can only recognize their position as just one more worldview once they have transcended it. — Joshs

Sounds like you haven't read very much philosophy — Metaphysician Undercover

Would you like to elaborate?

One can only recognize their position as just one more worldview once they have transcended it.
— Joshs

Fair enough, for which the awareness of there being something to be transcended would be a pre-requisite. — Wayfarer

The awareness comes from within the sciences themselves. Heidegger argued that for the most parts the sciences dont think, they construct their own regional ontology and remain constrained within it.

Philosopher of science Joseph Rouse disagrees with this limited view of science:

“Science as such could not uncover its “essence,” the metaphysics of the world as picture which made the transformation of science into a research enterprise seem appropriate and inevitable. Only philosophical reflection could hold open the possibility of an alternative understanding. This claim depended upon a contentious distinction between science and philosophy, however. In lectures contemporaneous with “Age of the World-Picture,” Heidegger acknowledged that Galileo and Newton, or Heisenberg and Bohr, were doing philosophy rather than “mere” science. The need for such gerrymandering suggests difficulties with Heidegger's claim that science inevitably closed off a more fundamental ontological understanding: the most important and influential scientific work had to count as philosophy instead, precisely because it was unquestionably insightful.”

At that point I think we start to take philosophy less seriously. It's still healthy brain food and good for clearing away the clouds. But has little effect on, for example, blood pressure. — ZzzoneiroCosm

You think the sciences are any different? How could they be when every significant scientific development in history requires a change in philosophical underpinnings?

The point is, their kind of naturalism is a worldview that doesn't realise that it's a worldview - it takes itself to be the way things truly are, once the world has been stripped of what they see as superstitious accretions. — Wayfarer

I have to say that every philosophical position I’ve ever read believes that it has reached the irreducible basis of things and has stripped thought of superstitious accretions. One can only recognize their position as just one more worldview once they have transcended it.

Does that mean we can’t critique materialism
— Joshs

The purpose of this thread is not to discuss the validity of a materialist viewpoint. — Clarky

Is that because you are an advocate of a materialist viewpoint?(Just curious)

The basic drift of all this is that the advent of modernity, whilst conferring immense power and comfort, is also deeply irrational. Man pictures himself, as Bertrand Russell put it, as the outcome of the accidental collocation of atoms, 'chemical scum', in Stephen Hawkings words, on a minute speck of dust in an infinite universe. That's the setting in which metaphysics is ridiculed, mainly because the culture has forgotten what it means — Wayfarer

Russell and Hawking may have ridiculed what they understood to be metaphysics, but this hardly means their own view of the world was lacking a metaphysical basis. Post-Einsteinian physics fits Kant's definition of empirical idealism: “Idealism is the opinion that we immediately experience only our own existence, but can only infer that of outer things (which inference from effect to cause is in fact uncertain)” (Kant 2005: 294).

the discussion will take place from a materialist/physicalist/realist point of view. — Clarky

Does that mean we can’t critique materialism, or just that we have to wait till we’ve agreed on the metaphysical assumptions of classical physics?

If something exists, so does nothing exist. — Jackson

EX-ist: passage , transition, difference. No-thing and something together form an Existing. There is no nothing or something by itself , as itself. Without the movement between the poles, the poles cannot be. The be-ing is in the ex-isting, which is the differentiation.

I really think we could come together on our reading of Derrida. There's enough between us that we could find agreement here.

No? — Moliere

Lets give it a try. Here’s Husserl’s take on Humean skepticism:

“Unremittingly, skepticism insists on the validity of the factually experienced world, that of actual experience,
and finds in it nothing of reason or its ideas.”( Crisis of European Sciences)

Derrida is not a skeptic in this sense, because he doesn’t locate truth in correctness or adequation with what is represented.

Derrida's aesthetics are the sublime, like Kant. A vast unknowable which we know is there. — Jackson

For him what we know we always know differently. This is not the same as ‘unknowable’. There is nothing for Derrida which is simply vast or unknowable. I dont know where its ‘vastness’ would come from when it is always this context right now, which has no depth , vast or otherwise, and is known to us precisely as the structure of context.

What totality does Derrida posit? — Joshs

The text. — Jackson

When Derrida uses the word ‘text’, he means context. Context for him is not a totality, it is an articulated hinge , a movement, a repetition which alters what it repeats.

[

Yes, and I do not agree. — Jackson

You said skeptics posit a totality that cannot be had. What totality does Derrida posit? He defines idealism as the identical repetition of the same ( what he calls an idea in the Kantian sense) , and argues that deconstruction shows that when we intend the repetition of meaning , this repetition must incorporate the contaminating and altering effect of context, so we end up saying something other than what we meant to say. I suppose this transforming repetition of an ideality could be considered a ‘totality that cannot be had’.
How do you think Derrida is defining the concept of skepticism?

Skeptics posit a totality which cannot be had. Platonism. The real object cannot be conceived.

I am not a skepic. — Jackson

In that sense I'd say that I agree with you -- Derrida is a skeptic — Moliere

Derrida insisted that he is not a skeptic:

“…it is impossible here to single out and to analyze in detail all of the distorting and malicious presentations of my work (or similar work, because were it merely a question of myself alone, none of this would have unfolded in such spectacular fashion), presentations by colleagues whose every sentence proves clearly that they either haven't read or haven't understood one line of the texts they wish to denounce. Likewise it is impossible to refute in a few words their accusations of nihilism, skepticism, or relativism.”( Points)

“This way of thinking context does not, as such, amount to a relativism, with everything that is sometimes associated with it (skepticism, empiricism, even nihilism). First of all because, as Husserl has shown better than anyone else, relativism, like all its derivatives, remains a philosophical position in contradiction with itself. Second, because this "deconstructive" way of thinking context is neither a philosophical position nor a critique of finite contexts, which it analyzes without claiming any absolute overview. Nevertheless, to the extent to which it-by virtue of its discourse, its socio-institutional situation, its language, the historical inscription of its gestures, etc.-is itself rooted in a given context (but, as always, in one that is differentiated and mobile), it does not renounce (it neither can nor ought do so) the "values" that are dominant in this context (for example, that of truth, etc.).”

“For of course there is a "right track", a better way, and let it be said in passing how surprised I have often been, how amused or discouraged, depending on my humor, by the use or abuse of the following argument: Since the deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the skeptic-relativist-nihilist!) is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or the unity of meaning, in intention or "meaning-to-say," how can he demand of us that we read him with pertinence, precision, rigor? How can he demand that his own text be interpreted correctly? How can he accuse anyone else of having misunderstood, simplified, deformed it, etc.? In other words, how can he discuss, and discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple enough: this definition of the deconstructionist is false (that's right: false, not true) and feeble; it supposes a bad (that's right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous texts, first of all mine, which therefore must finally be read or reread. Then perhaps it will be understood that the value of truth (and all those values associated with it) is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. And that within interpretive contexts (that is, within relations of force that are always differential-for example, socio-political-institutional-but even beyond these determinations) that are relatively stable, sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism, and pedagogy.”

(Limited, Inc)

I really don't want to get into a discussion about what "metaphysics" is. I'm already in one in another thread. As I see it, metaphysics is the set of underlying assumptions, Collingwood called them "absolute presuppositions," people use when they try to understand the world. — Clarky

Good definition. So as these presuppositions evolve , so does scientific theory. There would be no scientific progress otherwise.

Science progresses because it is based primarily (but not completely) on technological progress. Technology grows exponentially on top of all previous cultural gains in both science and technology. Also, unlike philosophers, scientists get gradually smarter via increasingly advanced math and science education, allowing them to group-think once settled in their specialties

Philosophy imitated this approach quite successfully in the 20th Century after advances in simple logic and linguistics. — magritte

Only analytic philosophy imitated this approach.
Technology does not represent the leading edge of thought. On the contrary, it is the last step in the process of dissemination of ideas though the culture, which begins with a small handful of philosophers. For example, the most advanced digital technologies available today are the final products of philosophical underpinnings contributed by Leibnitz , Hume and others in the 1700’s. These insights were then ‘applied’ by figures like Frege, Turing and Weiner. By the time inventors like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates turned them into popular products, the leading edge of philosophy had long since moved on.

This cycle is now repeating itself.
The underpinnings for the next great revolution in technology were set in motion more than 100 years ago with the work of philosophers like Nietzsche. More recently, they have been ‘applied’ by philosophers of mind like Dan Dennett. Eventually , you will see the final instantiation of these ideas in a new generation of technological products that you can claim to be the cutting edge of ideas.

In science,metaphysics is an archaic word replaced by speculation in science. — jgill

In postmodern philosophy , scientific speculation is recognized as being beholden to hidden metaphysical presuppositions.

A scientific paradigm is nothing but a conventionalized instantiation of a metaphysical worldview. — Joshs

I see it the other way around. Metaphysics is a tool, a set of tools, people use when they want to figure stuff out. — Clarky

You mean, like a scientific theory?( except less
conventionalized)

Science describes physical particles. Philosophy is not limited by physicality. — Jackson

In another 100 years natural science may no longer be in the business of describing physical particles. That is , it may no longer believe in the notion of the physical
particle. There is no clear definitional distinction between philosophy and science. One is simply a more or less applied and conventionalized version of the other.

Do you think there is progress in science?
— Joshs

Yes. But philosophy is not science. — Jackson

No, it is not science. A philosophical worldview is the basis of a science. If science progresses , then philosophy progresses. Newton=Descartes , Einstein=Kant , Freud=Nietzsche, enactive cogntive science=phenomenology. For every major innovation in science there is a parallel change in metaphysics. A scientific paradigm is nothing but a
conventionalized instantiation of a metaphysical worldview.

Contemporary philosophers debate whether there is progress in philosophy. My first answer is no, because there does not need to be progress. Qualified, sometimes there are vigorous debates and people accept a consensus view, which might be called progress. — Jackson

Do you think there is progress in science?

Misery loves company - the loneliness of suffering is obvious/evident, oui? — Agent Smith

Except in depression, which is epitomized by a sense of isolation from others. Physical pain and grief can also isolate.

Matthew Ratcliffe has written extensively about experiences of depression:

“Even more troubling is the loss of emotional connectedness to other people that features in almost every account. The loneliness that sufferers describe is not a contingent form of isolation that might be remedied by a change in social circumstances; one feels irrevocably estranged from the rest of humanity. Elizabeth Wurtzel describes herself as “a stranger in town and on earth” (1996, p.142), and Tracy Thompson writes, “I wanted a connection I couldn't have. [. . . .] The blankness might not even be obvious to others. But on our side of that severed connection, it was hell, a life lived behind glass” (1995, pp.199–200). Absolutely central to depression is the need for a kind of interpersonal relatedness that at the same time presents itself as impossible.”

How does one deal with addictions in the light of this? Surely the need to gamble or use substances - even if just for psychological reasons - should be temporary? — Tom Storm

This article may help give a sense of how a ‘groundless’, embodied self forms addictions.

“The enactive account of addiction is a nonreductive, naturalistic model that views addictive processes (e.g
craving, mental obsessions, abnormal reactions) as “dynamic and embed­ded interactions” (McGann et al. 2013, 203) between IWEA ( individuals who experience addiction)and their en­vironment.1 Addiction is not seen as residing in IWEA, but “as emerging, existing dynamically in the relationship between [IWEA] and their sur­roundings, including other agents” (203). Such a model of addiction “groups central concepts (such as action, sense, and agency) in the autonomous or­ganization of [IWEA] and their value-laden, meaningful engagements with their environment” (203).
Two analogies, borrowed from McGann et al. (2013), may be useful. For example, a handshake does not exist except during its enaction. With the enactive approach, the same is true of addiction—it is “intrinsically relational and dynamic in nature” (McGann et al. 2013)
A dance en­dures “only while the dancers continue to act, and is defined by the coor­dination, the mutual sensitivity, and reciprocal influence between the dancers and the music” (203). With enaction, addiction “is a dynamically constituted process and, like a dance, or a handshake, should be studied and understood in dynamic, contextualized terms”

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicholas-Zautra/publication/285747009_Embodiment_Interaction_and_Experience_Toward_a_Comprehensive_Model_in_Addiction_Science/links/5820c24608aea429b29bc06f/Embodiment-Interaction-and-Experience-Toward-a-Comprehensive-Model-in-Addiction-Science.pdf?origin=publication_detail

As I noted, I think selfhood has sufficient definition, clarity, evidence, logic, and consistency to be considered real, existent. — Clarky

Does the self have a core that remains self-identical
over time , or is it always a slightly new and different self that come back to itself minute to minute , day to day? Have you read Varela and Thompson’s ‘The Embodoed Mind’? There , they use neuropsychological evidence to make the argument that there is only a contingent center of agency, and that the organism is a community of temporary selves.

Are you familiar with Heidegger’s writing on authentic anxiety and guilt, or Nietzsche’s views on the primacy of suffering?

Levinas writes:

“Suffering qua suffering is but a concrete and quasi-sensible manifestation of the non-integratable, the non-justifiable. The `quality' of evil is this very non-integratability...In the appearing of evil, in its original phenomenality, in its quality, is announced a modality, a manner: not finding a place, the refusal of all accomodation with..., a counter-nature, a monstrosity, what is disturbing and foreign of itself. And in this sense transcendence!"(TE180)

Heidegger writes of Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra:

“Zarathustra invokes his ultimate recesses and so conducts himself to himself. He becomes what he is and confesses himself to be the one who he is: "the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle." Living, suffering, and circling are not three distinct matters. They belong together and form one: being as a whole, to which suffering, the abyss, belongs and which is inasmuch as, circling it recurs”

Critical theory is a neo-marxist approach in philosophy, a form of structuralism and dialectic. . Derridean deconstruction places into the dialectical and structuralist basis of marxism and neo-marxism.
— Joshs

Derrida was a critic of structuralism. — Jackson

I meant to write he places into question structuralism
and dialectic.

It seems to me that, in the context of philosophy, not just humanity, however we define the self, we are in the Catch 22 situation: if the self is something clear, then we are like machines with some kind of particular phenomenon that we can call “self”, that, as such, can be referred even to computers properly made; in this case we have the challenge of agreeing that a machine can suffer and, as such, can deserve empathy, fighting for its rights, even making laws to punish those who make violence against computers. In the opposite case, if the self is unclear, then there is not anywhere anybody suffering, so there is no philosophical need to defend the rights of oppressed people. — Angelo Cannata

There are two ways to dismiss Chalmer’s hard problem. The first is to solve it by making materiality primary and declaring humans to be complex machines. Dan Dennett holds to this view. I think that even though for him a conscious self is just an artifact , a convenient function, he would still argue that humans operate on the basis of complex motivational systems that computers currently lack, but that eventually we will be able to construct machines with such systems , and those machines es will indeed be capable of ‘suffering’.

The second way to do away with the hard problem is to dissolve it. This is the approach of phenomenology and postmodern theories. For them bodily and social
systems of differential drives , values and affects, what e than materiality, are fundamental and irreducible a prioris. This makes suffering intrinsic to reality, even without a constituting ‘self’.

This distinction divorces human aggression from animal aggression, in opposition to the widely accepted myth that 'malignant' human aggression has its roots in an animal past — ZzzoneiroCosm

I don’t think ‘innate programming’ is a helpful way to understand aggression in humans , and frankly, I think it covers over complex cognitive attributions taking place in animals as well. We become hostile and angry when a standard or expectation has been violated and we perceive there is a way to modify the others behavior. This is a cognitive assessment , not an instinct. Cruelty and destructiveness is not an inherent feature of anger and hostility. First of all, it is in the r eyes of the beholder , and secondly, the central goal of hostility is the amelioration of the perceived violation , not destruction or cruelty. If the others motives are perceived as deliberately cruel and destructive in their aim , that is generally a function of our own hostility toward them.
We dont see how they can justify their actions to themselves , so we assume their motives are gratuitous.