I wonder if pornhub has a discussion section.

QM can predict the activity of something that is a millionth of a millimeter in size with the accuracy of someone guessing the distance from Paris to Rome within the precision of a single hair. — Gregory

Yes, but this impressive feat is the result of rigging the deck to some extent. The method of physics restricts
the criterion of ‘activity of something’ so it can achieve great precision within a limited arena of human functioning. But such precision is useless for making sense of the behavior of phenomena that require different accounts , such as biological and psychological entities. One can use a qm description here , of course, but that would eliminate the subject matter whose activity it is supposed to predict.

Great story. Ok, here’s an idea that comes to mind. It may or may not apply to your friend , but I think it gets to the heart of at least one aspect of homophobia. Males brought up in our society are encultered into an ethos of masculinity and I think this explains an apparent double standard with regard to attitudes toward male homosexual behavior vs lesbianism( or I should say, the idea of two women having sex, which is not necessarily the same thing). I think it also explains what a number of women I’ve known have told me, which is that even though they consider themselves heterosexual, the idea of sex with another woman was not repulsive to them. This runs directly counter to what most self-declared heterosexual men I know feel about the idea of sex with another man, which is that the idea horrifies them.

I think the reason for this is that the idea of masculinity engrained in us sees affection between two men as a sign of weakness and a violation of that manliness , whereas two women being affectionate with each other doesn’t violate the conventional idea of femininity. So it’s possible that your friend was instinctively offended by male to male anal intercourse and relationship for this reason.
One way to test this out with your friend is to ask him whether he is more comfortable with a male who ‘tops’ another man anally as opposed to the one being the ‘bottom’.

That's merely a claim that the reasons I give are not my true reasons and what you think my reasons are are the true ones. — Kenosha Kid

No no no. I believe they’re absolutely your true reasons. I’m not saying you’re making anything up or fooling yourself. To demonstrate what I mean we’d have to make this concrete. Give me an example of a homophobe who is acting hypocritically with regard to rules and I’ll try and suggest what I think you may be missing about how they are interpreting their rules, and thus why their are being consistent even as they act in ways that appear oppressive or harmful.

Even as a construct, it's the same construct everywhere. The laws of logic are independent of opinion, even if they're arrived at by consensus. — Kenosha Kid

But logic is meaningless apart from the opinion( axiom) that it applies to. Your axiom or hypothesis concerning certain others is that they are espousing rules but holding themselves or others as exceptions.

I mean hypocrisy in its strict sense, e.g. espousing rules but holding themselves or others as exceptions. That's not really a subjective opinion; it follows from logic. — Kenosha Kid

But I suggest you may be led to this hypothesis by your exasperation over not being able to fathom how they could justify to themselves in good faith certain behaviors towards others. The key here is your interpretation. of how they are perceiving the rules. If the rules mean the same to them as they do to you, then yes, they would be hypocrites. But the source of most moral and political conflicts , like those ripping the world apart today, is that the world views by which rules are interpreted are incommensurable with each other.

That's not really a subjective opinion; it follows from logic. — Kenosha Kid

I’ve heard tell that logic is grounded in intersubjectivity.

No, I don't. These traits are examples of hypocrisy: the people who do them wouldn't have them done back to them also. — Kenosha Kid

We tend to accuse others of hypocrisy when we are unable to understand their thinking from their own point of view. It’s one of the favored words of blameful
politics, which is why it is used so often both on the right and the left.

The historic reason for identity politics is that some social constructs regarding people are harmful. Racism, misogyny and homophobia attempt to establish a natural order with straight white heteronormative people at a supremum and different people at lower strata. Such schemes are oppressive. Since these people are not open to integration and will support the perpetuation of oppressive structures, usually while denying they exist, the oppressed reassert their identities as positive qualities to challenge normalised constructs with negative connotations. — Kenosha Kid

Would you say that your characterization of those who are named by categories such as racism, misogyny and homophobia is compatible with Gergen’s
characterization of ‘those we excoriate’? Do you mean such terms as oppression and harmful in a way that takes into account that from their own perspective , those who are ‘guilty’ of being oppressors act from intentions as noble as we feel our own to be, and that inevitably, our own preferable perspective will appear to another group in a future era as oppressive?

is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within traditions that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy? — Joshs

A useful comparison would be in the realm of philosophy of science.
— Joshs

Frankly, I find this to be a strained comparison, and I am not sure what point you are trying to make here with respect to blameworthiness. — SophistiCat

Could you elaborate on why it is a strained comparison? The point I am trying to make is that in order to assess moral blame one must have a justification for correctness that goes beyond mere local consensus.That is , one must believe local norma are rooted in something more universal.

As I said, all that is required for assigning praise and blame is (a) moral valuation and (b) personal responsibility. This should be compatible with most positions on the nature of morality. — SophistiCat

I really want to know how YOU make use of moral
valuation in your own life to assess blame. Give me an example of a moral claim that you have made recently concerning some issue of significance and how you ground that claim. That will give us something concrete to go on in the discussion.

moral claims are not attempts at describing reality in the first place, — Pfhorrest

If moral claims are not attempts at describing reality, are they not grounded in certain assumptions concerning the nature of reality( universality, transcendence
of local cultural contexts of normativity, etc)

One would hope.

phenomenology was effectively begun by Brentano, and the notion of intentionality he used and that Husserl took up is a medieval one that involves thought directed at an in-existent object. — Snakes Alive

I would agree that intentionality was effectively begun
by Brentano. Kohler and Koffka studied with him
and were inspired to found gestalt psychology, Freud took classes from him and created psychonanalysis. So, three different interpretations of intentionality led to 3 distinct approaches.

Brentano founded psychological intentionality on the cartesianiam of empirical naturalism, which Husserl
rejected in favor of a thoroughgoing subject-object interactionism, so Bretano’s intentionality is not Husserl’s phenomenology. The central method of phenomenology, maintained by Heidegger and Merleau-ponty as well , is the epoche , the bracketing of the taken-for-granted objective world.

p The writers you're referring to are part of when phenomenology was just assimilated into the general soup of continental philosophy, and so lost most of its unique identity and methodological concerns (much in the way that OLP was subsumed into the soup of analytic philosophy more generally, and so lost its specific identity). — Snakes Alive

In order for it to be assimilated it has to be understood , and from my vantage most continental
writers haven’t effectively done so yet, which is why the group of writers I mentioned to you who work in the overlapping terrain of constructivism, hermeneutics , phenomenology , enactivism and self-organizing theory are so valuable to me. ( the journal Phenonemology and the Cognitive Sciences showcase a lot of this work).
They don’t stick just to one phenomenologist but preserve its methodological concerns.

The authors your bud mentions here are just general big names that all continentals read, and besides Merleau-Ponty, aren't even especially related to phenomenology (though like with much in philosophical movements, people sometimes retroactively declare every author to be everything). — Snakes Alive

There is much more overlap and cross-fertilization among strands of philosophies that you seem to indicate here. Each phenenologist offers a unique perspective , and built into that unique perspective is the influence of particular works outside of phenomenology. So Gendlin isn’t just naming influences in common with other continental philosophers , his phenomenology is fused with some of these influences. And yet I recognize his method as unquestionably phenomenological.

withholding praise and blame implies not holding people responsible for their actions, and that is a dubious position*. By not holding people responsible for their actions we rob them of their agency, dehumanize them. — SophistiCat

Yes, but the issue here is how such notions as responsibility and agency are to be understood from a social constructionist perspective. Gergen ( as well as Foucault) would argue that one could trace a genealogical history of changes in cultural understanding of these terms. For instance, for a Kantian, agency, character and responsibility are attributes of an autonomous subjectivity. Implied by this idealistic model of personhood and agency is the capacity to approximate moral correctness though successive approximations pointing to an asymptotic telos.Morality by this measure is conformity to the real, and the real is a pre-established objectivity.

By contrast , social constructionism abandons the notion of correctness as conformity to empirical
objectivity.

A useful comparison would be in the realm of philosophy of science. In Popper’s Kantian falsificationist approach , one cannot definitely prove a theory correct , but one can falsify, because Popper assumes a non-culturally relative, universal standpoint from which to judge empirical validity. This is an empiricist ‘moralism’, allowing one to judge a theory with respect to a supposed universal yardstick, and thus to ‘blame it’ as wrong. By contrast , Kuhn’ s post-Hegelian philosophy of science denies that there is such a standard of validation that transcends the paradigmatic basis of local scientific practice. While some interpreters of Kuhn, like Putnam, hold onto a modified form of realism whereby he maintains that it is possible to adjudicate or translate between scientific paradigms ( and thereby assess empirical ‘blame’), others , including Gergen’ s social constructionism, deny this possibility. This does not mean that one cannot find one particular paradigm preferable to another , but one cannot ground this judgement in some universal scientific standard on the basis of which one can align different scientific theories. So in this way, Gergen’s approach denies the justification of ‘blame’ ( falsification) in science as well as in politics. So one is responsible for openness to new possibilities of seeing and negotiating new understandings with others, and one is responsible for avoiding blaming others for falling short of universal standards of moral correctness.

Phenomenology in general has nothing to do with OLP – their milieus were too different, and their practitioners didn't overlap, so they shared few if any concerns or methodologies. — Snakes Alive

Not sure how to respond to that since I don’t know what olp means to you. I’m on more familiar ground with Wittgenstein , and I’d say that a fair amount has been written recently connecting him to phenomenology.

phenomenology at its heart was a neo-medieval enterprise with Kantian and Platonist influences — Snakes Alive

Medieval? How so? Many of today’s philosophies have Kantian and Platonic influences so you may have to be a bit more specific( perhaps in a new thread). Husserl, the founder of modern phenomenology , had many influences, including DesCartes, Kant , Hume
and Brentano, but his notion of the cogito and the subject-object relation transcended these. Merleau-Ponty showed the influence of Hegel, but again his work transcended Hegel. And then there’s the phenomenological work of Eugene Gendlin, who was a friend of mine. He credited Dilthey, Wittgenstein, Dewey, Merleau-Ponty , Marx and Heidegger.

You can complicate the picture by thinking about those with multiple personality disorder , who are a number of different personalities. And what about your memories of you as a 10 year old? When you see videos of that person, do you see them as the same person you are now or as someone else ? Also, are you really the same self from minute to minute? On the other hand, aren’t there noematic t s with someone you’re really close to where you think the same thought and feel the same way?
And what about all the ways your thinking is bound to your culture? If you and a friend travel to a complete different culture you begin to seem all most like one person compares to how different you both are compared to me the way people think in that other culture.

It's mysterious that I'm not anyone else. — Ori

What would it mean to believe that you are someone else:
‘I am someone other than myself’.

What are you really asking about, the arbitrariness of identity? Why is there arbitrariness?

Why this consciousness that is observing itself going to the bathroom is my current self. — Ori

Dan Zahavi is among a group of philosophers who believe that there is a subjectively personal aspect of experiencing. Referencing Nagel’s argument that there is something it is like to be a conscious entity, Zahavi insists that consciousness of anything always includes a dimension of ‘for-meness’. In attempting to account for the subjective dimension of awareness,
Zahavi argues that the for-meness of consciousness in its most primordial form manifests as a self-affecting pre-reflective minimal self-awareness. All conscious experiences are essentially characterized by having a
subjective ‘feel’ to them, that is, a certain quality of ‘what it is like. He contrasts this subjective self-experience
with the apprehension of objects.

Philosophy itself as a first-order discipline is fairly tedious to me at this point, because once you see through its small bag of tricks you recognize them everywhere, and you can't be duped anymore — Snakes Alive

Again with the attack on philosophy. Since I can’t give you a list , I’ll give you an incredibly skimpy summary of my claim justifying the continued vitality of philosophy after Witt and olp. You will have to provide your own summary of what you think this movement has done to destroy the self-justification of ‘philosophy’ as you understand it, but I have a pretty good idea of what the term means to you.
I certainly know what a dirty word philosophy was to Rorty. But then I thought he read Heidegger and Derrida badly , and. missed the point of phenomenology.
So here’s my very thin summary. Witt and olp shows us that meaning emerges out of contexts of interaction , not as the result of a subjective mind mirroring an independently existing objective world via concepts , and using words to refer back to these concepts. Philosophy before olp was constantly trying to erect what Rorty called ‘skyhooks’, removing it from contextually driven human interaction.

So far so good. But phenomenology takes this interactive thinking one step further, or rather, one step back. Rather than beginning from a notion of interaction as that which takes place between persons, it begins from temporality. That is to say, prior to my interacting with another person, my interaction with myself moment to moment is already an interaction with another, my exposure to an outside. So this kind of philosophy begins from difference, transformation, contextual change , the in-between, rejecting everything that Rorty disdained about metaphysically grounding philosophizing. This radically temporal discourse doesn’t claim to negate or ‘’refute’ the analyses of Witt or olp, but it makes them derivative and abstractive of a more primary basis of the social.
Well , I warned you this would be way too brief a summary.

This article is not about OLP. — Snakes Alive

I sent the link to the OP of this thread a few weeks ago, and he seemed quite enthusiastic about reading it. In fact , we debated a number of the authors on my list with regard to their engagement with, or critique of, olp. So if the OP thought it was worth his time to engage in lengthy discussion with me on his thread on these issues, maybe you should take a hint.

This is totally off-topic and has nothing to do with the thread. No one asked you for a list of philosophers you happen to like, which is all this amounts to. — Snakes Alive

More off-topic than this?

I don't think philosophy died – it just went on doing pretty much what it did before when people got bored of one way of doing it and moved on. It's a matter of historical contingency and fashion. It’s not any better now than it was then, though. — Snakes Alive

I think that, in a thread about OLP, coming in and listing a bunch of random philosophers who never engaged with it and have nothing in particular to do with it is not helpful — Snakes Alive

No, it would be terribly unhelpful. The nerve of me.
A recent paper by one of my random philosophers, Shaun Gallagher:

Doing phenomenology with words:

“Abstract
I'll argue that in some historical discussions between phenomenologists and analytic philosophers of mind we can find complementary phenomenological methods. One method follows along the line of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. The other follows the kind of analysis of speech-acts, avowals and “unstudied speech” proposed by Ryle and Austin in what they called their phenomenologies of our in-the-world, enactive use of language. I propose that one might conceive of combining these methods into a 'double phenomenology’. One place where this double phenomenology can do some work is in the area of social cognition.“

http://www.ummoss.org/gall17doublePhen.pdf

Here are other philosophers on my list who have specifically engaged with Austin:

Jacques Derrida : Signature Event Context
Matthew Ratcliffe:Trauma, Language and Trust

Philosophers who engaged with Wittgenstein:

Jean Francois Lyotard: The Differend ( the book is centrally influenced by Wittgenstein)
Eugene Gendlin: What Happens When Wittgenstein Asks "What Happens When ...?
Dan Zahavi: Expression and Empathy

Philosophical movements are contingent historical things, and you can't magically grasp them without engaging with them. — Snakes Alive

I think you’re wrong about that. I read Wittgenstein and olp after having read phenomenology and deconstruction, and concluded that the essential ideas of Witt, Austin and Ryle (not the details of methodology of course ) were not only pre-supposed by those approaches, but the phenomenological and deconstructive perspectives thought more radically about the basis of language than olp did.

Rorty is the only one here that really makes sense as having 'learned from' OLP – many of these guys probably hadn't even read it or weren't aware of it. — Snakes Alive

They didn’t have to read it to have absorbed the essence of its advances. Do you think that olp’s ideas are proprietary, that they don’t belong to larger movements in philosophy that includes hermeneutics , phenomenology, pragmatism, constructivism, social constructionism, philosophy of science?

I have no interest in 'team continental' versus 'team analytic' nonsense, which this post smacks of. — Snakes Alive

My post smacks of a respect for continental as well as any other style of philosophizing that can offer important ways to understand ourselves, which is why I don’t limit myself to one particular strand. My ‘team’ is all of the above. The list I offer includes writers who integrate insights from many disciples and styles of philosophy.
I particularly recommend Zahavi, Ratcliffe and Gallagher , all of whom are thoroughly versed in Wittgenstein as well as analytic approaches, pragmatism and hermeneutics, and combine all these with the work of Husserl, Merelau-Ponty and Heidegger in order to arrive at vital new models in cognitive science pertaining to the understanding of affect , psychopathology , intersubjectivity and perception.
So in that spirit I’m hoping you’ll reconsider your claim that philosophy is no better now than it was before olp.
You have a passion for olp writers. Why not expand your horizons and explore a new generation of thinkers taking the next step.

s I don't think philosophy died – it just went on doing pretty much what it did before when people got bored of one way of doing it and moved on. It's a matter of historical contingency and fashion. It’s not any better now than it was then, though. — Snakes Alive

I’m saying exactly the opposite(unless you’re just referring to analytic philosophy, in which case I agree) and here’smy list of philosophers who absorbed the lessons of olp ( whether they read it or not) and moved on from it:

Heidegger
Derrida
Foucault
Deleuze
Jan-Luc Nancy
Lyotard
Gendlin
Merleau-Ponty
Rorty
Dan Zahavi
Shaun Gallagher
Matthew Ratcliffe
Jan Slaby
Thomas Fuchs
Andrea Jaegher
Gadamer
Ricouer
Francisco Varela
Evan Thompson
John Protevi
Brian Massumi

That’s just a sampling . Please defend your claim that this philosophy isn’t any better than the pre-olp philosophy. My hunch is you haven’t read much of any of these authors.

Philosophy is, in some sense, stupid or defective, but we're cognitively disposed to fall into its traps. — Snakes Alive

Except that philosophy didn’t die with Wittgenstein. It absorbed his ideas and reinvented itself as post-metaphysical ( Derrida would say there is no such thing as post-metaphysics, he would instead say that one must work at the margins of philosophy. He would also suggest that olp rests on implicit metaphysical
assumptions.).

That language is dead is to say that writing comes before the speaking (as if opposite of Derrida I believe Joshs). — Antony Nickles

‘Writing’ for Derrida means that what is spoken is not immediately understood but is deferred, delayed in its reception.
“ When he writes himself to himself [or speaks to himself], he has no immediate presence of himself
to himself. There is the necessity of this detour through the other...”

In same fashion , when I speak to another , this detour through the other is necessary.
“ . A living being - whether a human being or an animal being - could not have any relation to another being as such without this alterity in time, without, that is, memory, anticipation, this strange sense (I hesitate to call it knowledge) that every now, every instant is radically other and nevertheless in the same form of the now. Equally, there is no ‘I’ without the sense as well that everyone other than me is radically other yet also able to say 'I’, that there is nothing more heterogeneous than every 'I’ and nevertheless there is nothing more universal than the 'I’.”(Arguing with Derrida)

This is not a denial of conventional use.
“No doubt, for a meaning to be understood and for discussion to start, for literature to be read, we need a community that has, even if there are conflicts, a certain desire for normativity, and so for the stabilization of meaning, of grammar, rhetoric, logic, semantics and so on. (But, by the way, if these imply a community, I wouldn’t call it a community of 'minds' for a number of reasons - not least those touched on In response to your last question regarding the 'inner' .) This is obvious. And, again, I would say that it is true even for animals, for animal societies. They form a community of interpretation. They need that. And some normativity. There is here some 'symbolic culture‘.”

Look no farther than the United States Government for real life examples of standards existing in writing but no one following them, or using them to show that no one is following them. — creativesoul

So ‘original intent’ is a thing?

The whole point of interaction theory is that standards don’t have any existence outside of their use, and in their use they are altered to accommodate themselves to what they are applied to.
— Joshs

I can accept this. with a slight revision, and this is what I've been arguing. We can not call this a "standard" then. That is why I rejected Antony's use of "criteria". The point though, is that we also have stated standards, and criteria, laws, which are not intended "to accommodate themselves to what they are applied to", they are intended to be steadfastly adhered to. These are exemplified in mathematics and logic. And they are what those words more properly refer to. — Metaphysician Undercover

Husserl made a distinction between free and bound idealities. Mathematical logic is an example of of a free ideality. It is designed to be able to be identically repeatable outside of all contexts, it it is by itself empty of intentional meaning.
Spoken and written language, and all other sorts of gestures and markings which intend meaning, exemplify bound idealities. Even as it is designed to be immortal, repeatable as the same apart from any actual occurrences made at some point, the SENSE of a spoken or inscribed utterance, what it means or desires to say, is always tied to the contingencies of empirical circumstance. In other words , no matter how hard we try to steadfastly adhere to a standard , there is always contextually driven slippage. That’s why a document like the constitution is worthless outside of its interpretation, and its interpretation is a widely varying as the subcultures which make use of it.

The unique particulars of the very distinct and unique situations which we find ourselves in, makes it impossible for us to govern our lives through strict adherence to any rigid standards or criteria, because these general, universal principles cannot be applied in the majority of those mundane situations. — Metaphysician Undercover

It sounds like you are saying that we have unaltered access to a standard first, and only after do we pick and choose what parts of it to apply to a news contextual situation. I’m saying that regardless of how hard we attempt to keep our understanding of the original standard an exact duplicate of the first time we became acquainted with it , there will be continual slippage in the meaning of that standard. Such slippage will be subtle enough, at least over short periods of time , that it will go unnoticed. For all intents and purposes we can claim to be able to consult an unchanged version of the standard every time we think of it in our mind or re-read it.

But it is important to recognize that learning , and experience in general , beginning at the most basic perceptual level , is not a matter of accumulating bits of data , but of transforming one’s past knowledge in the face of the present context. The past (our standards ) is changed by what it occurs into.

New approaches have moved past the Enlightenment notion of thinking as objects in the head that are shuffled around to correspond with objects in the world. We know know things in the world perceptually by interacting with them. Perception is based on schemes of bodily interaction with an outside.

what is involved in my recognizing what another person has said, is simply a matter of switching out my intention, and replacing it with the other's intention. My "principles" have a direct relation to my intention, and the switch allows a direct relationship with the other's intention because I have assumed the other's intention to take the place of my own. The important word is "assumed", because the other's intention doesn't actually take the place of mine, i simply allow it to seem that way. — Metaphysician Undercover

Dan Zahavi discussed ‘putting oneself in the others shoes’ in the context of a comparison between theory theory, simulation theory and interaction theory.


“ According to Goldman, we don’t need a theory in order to understand others. Rather, we can simply use our own minds as a model. Our understanding of the minds of others would be grounded in our introspective access to our own mind;our capacity for self-ascription precedes the capacity for other-ascription. More specifically, Goldman argues that my understanding of others is rooted in my ability to project myself imaginatively into their situation. I literally use my imagination to put myself in the target’s “mental shoes”. If I for instance witness an immigrant being harassed by a desk clerk, I would be able to grasp the immigrant’s mental state and predict his subsequent behaviour by means of the following procedure. By means of an explicit simulation, I would imaginatively put myself in his situation, would imagine how I would feel and react under similar circumstances and on the basis of analogy I would then attribute or project similar states to the person I am simulating (cf. Goldman 2000). In my view, both sides in the theory of mind debate are faced with difficulties.When it comes to the simulation theory of mind, one might initially question whether there is any experiential evidence in support of the claim that our understanding of others relies on conscious simulation routines. As Wittgenstein once remarked, “Do you look into yourself in order to recognize the fury in his face?” (Wittgenstein 1981,Sect. 220). Furthermore, one might ask whether it is really legitimate to cast our experience of others in terms of an imaginative exercise. When we project ourselves imaginatively into the perspective of the other, when we put ourselves in his or her shoes, will we then really attain an understanding of the other or will we merely be reiterating ourselves? To put it differently, will a process of simulation ever allow for a true understanding of the other or will it merely let me attain an understanding of myself in a different situation?


In contrast to the take favoured by simulationists and theory-theorists alike, the crucial question is not whether we can predict and explain the behaviour of others,and if so, how that happens, but rather whether such prediction and explanation constitute the primary and ordinary form of intersubjectivity. There is a marked difference between the way we engage with others in the second-person and the third-person case. When we interact directly with another person, we do generally not engage in some detached observation of what the person is doing. We do in general not at first attempt to classify his or her actions under lawlike generalizations; rather we seek to make sense of them. When you see somebody use a hammer, feed a child or clean a table, you might not necessarily understand every aspect of the action, but it is immediately given as a meaningful action (in a common world). Under normal circumstances, we understand each other well enough through our shared engagement in this common world, and it is only if this pragmatic understanding for some reason breaks down, for instance if the other behaves in an unexpected and puzzling way, that other options kick in and take over,be it inferential reasoning or some kind of simulation. We develop both capacities,but we only employ them in special circumstances. Neither establishes our primary nor ordinary access to the embodied minds of others. They are the exceptions rather than the rules. In most intersubjective situations, we have a direct understanding ofthe other person’s intentions, since these intentions are manifested in the person’s behaviour and embedded in a shared social context. Thus, as Gallagher remarks,much is going on in our understanding of others that exceeds and precedes our theoretical and simulation capabilities. At best, the theory–theory of mind and the simulation theory of mind only explain a narrow and specialized set of cognitive processes that we can employ when our usual way of understanding others fall short (Gallagher 2005, p. 208).



https://cfs.ku.dk/staff/zahavi-publications/Book_Ratcliffe_Hutto.pdf/

Being written is not equivalent to being used when it comes to standards. Being written is most certainly a way of existing. Interaction theory, if your report is accurate, is wrong. — creativesoul

We only know what is written by reading it , and reading involves interpretation. Each time we return to a written page to read it , we interpret it slightly differently than the last time. So saying the written word ‘exists’ without us doesn’t tell us exactly what it is that is existing.

I haven't denied altering one's own standards, I just said the person has to establish consistency between the new information and one's standards. Sometimes the existing standards might be judged as wrong — Metaphysician Undercover

The whole point of interaction theory is that standards don’t have any existence outside of their use, and in their use they are altered to accommodate themselves to what they are applied to. The way you are understanding them is precisely as internal templates or representations, which are first consulted and then compared with something else.

Interpretation is an act of subjecting your terms to my standards of judgement. If I have not interpreted what you have said, simply read the words and agreed to them, it is impossible that I have understood what you have said. — Metaphysician Undercover

I’m going to see if I can contribute anything helpful to this discussion. It seems to me that your understanding of understanding is compatible with first generation. cognitive psychology. The mind is
modeled on a computer. It inputs data from a world , and interprets that data according to internal
representations. OLP is not compatible with this model. It requires a shift to a way of thinking more consonant with newer approaches in cognitive science that replace internal representations with a system of interactions. Think of it this way: In Piaget’s model the cognitive system assimilates meanings from the world into itself. But at the same time the system as a whole accomodates itself to the novelty of what it assimilated. What is key to understanding g this approach is that the system is an integrated network , and the accommodation . changes the network’s structure as whole. Learning something news isnt simply a matter of synthesizing and combining the new event with one’s
extant cognitive system, but of altering the meaning of that system as a whole while assimilating the new item. This means when you subject someone’s
terms to your standards of judgement , those standards must at the same time accommodate and alter themselves in order to assimilate the other’s terms.
Piaget called this reciprocity of assimilation and accommodation the logic of action. It can also be seen as a grammar or action.

This newer approach is also being applied to the theories of empathy, that is , to the ways that we are able to recognize others as being enough like ourselves that we can communicate with them.

The three main contenders are theory theory, simulation theory and interaction theory.
Theory theory seems to be be similar to your thinking. It posits that we understand and relate to others
by consulting our own internal templates or representations. That is , we create a theory of how they are thinking and apply it to them. Simulation theory says that we imitate the other and learn to understand them that way. Against both of these representationalist approaches , interaction theory claims that we do not consult an internal set of representations or
rules in order to relate to the other , but perceive their intent directly in their expressions. Interaction theory
rejects representationalist because it never makes contact with another. Instead it just regurgitates the contents of its own cognitive system, which is not true interaction. The system must be affected and changed as a whole in response to communication with others. You can see the resonances here with Witt. Contexts of interaction create meanings, rather than just acting as excuses for a cognitive system to recycle it’s own inner contents.

The crucial shift in thinking here is away from knowledge as mirroring the world and toward knowing as interacting with a world. See Alva Noe’s important work on visual perception for a better sense of the distinction.

Everyone knows what homophobe is, a person who hates or dislikes gay people, someone who holds being gay against someone. — DingoJones

Everyone knows what a homophobe is except the homophobe. The definition of a homophobe is someone else you accuse of having malevolent intent because you can’t understand why they think the way they do. Built into the definition is your assumption that they simply want to hate ,rather than that they have traditional
religious values , or believe that homosexuality is a perversion. Good lord , prior to 1970 the medical and psychiatric establishment held this as an official diagnosis. There were laws on the books in many countries punishing them for deviance. Was this society-wide belief motivated by hatred, or was the hostility a symptom of ignorance? If the latter, why is it so hard to accept that not all segments of culture evolve at the same pace? How does it help to demonize those who are still clueless?

I even understand what that mod was looking for (homophobia), i just think he was mistaken about finding it. — DingoJones

Homophobia is a pc word. Why? Because It was created after standards of correctness emerged on the cultural scene following upon an evolution of thinking about gender, an evolution in which some segments of culture have participated more than others. Like all such standards of correctness, whether it is recognized as appropriate or censorious depends on where on that spectrum of development one finds oneself.

I’m not complaining. I understand that lines have to be drawn for convenience sake. I’m just reminding of their arbitrary nature. Who’s in and who’s out depends on who’s got the power.

Personally, I’d prefer the mods banned such speech because it doesn’t lead to philosophically interesting conversation, rather than using a moralistic rationale.

Is being French a disability? — Baden

If it isnt I’m going to have to return my car placard.

I think this has been a rather robust discussion of the ethics surrounding the use of the word ‘defect’ with regard to gender (thanks to your efforts). Free speech somehow has a way of wriggling its way around pc.

I said above what I'm saying, no need to repeat it. — Raul

Let’s look at the quote again.

This existential "solip­sism," however, is so far from transposing an isolated subject-thing into the harmless vacuum of a worldless occurrence that it brings Da-sein in an extreme sense precisely before its world as world, and thus itself before itself as being-in-the-world.“ — Joshs

Are you seeing the rhetorical move Heidegger is making? He does this often. When he wants us to realize that he is saying the complete opposite of what we might be inclined to think he is saying , he will warn us that what ever concept he is introducing to us ‘ is so far
from’ our assumption of it that it has the opposite effect of what we think. In this instance, lest we think that Dasein is an isolated subject-thing split off from the world , he tells us that, on the contrary, individuated Dasein is fundamentally as itself
only when it is outside of itself in the world.’ Itself before itself ‘ MEANS in the world , because self for Heidegger IS interaction.

once you have finished reading and studying him you are left with a great and enjoyable intellectual experience, but nothing else, very modest epistemological value. — Raul

No wonder, you seemed to have missed the central
idea of Being and Time.

"transposing an isolated subject-thing", then it says "itself before itself" — Raul

Are you saying that you interpret Heidegger as believing in a notion of self as an isolated subject-thing?

The anxiety is triggered when one finds oneself alone drowning within this sweet infinite ocean, with no worldly supports for one’s existence. Dasein encounters then itself as an individual, ultimately alone. In Heidegger’s words: “Anxiety individualizes Dasein and thus discloses it as ‘solus ipse’” — Raul

Ah, but don’t forget the paradoxical nature of individuation for Heidegger. Look at the rest of the paragraph you quotes from:


“ For as attune­ment, anxiousness is a fundamental mode of being-in-the-world. The existential identity of disclosing and what is disclosed so that in what is disclosed the world is disclosed as world, as being-in, individualized, pure, thrown poten­tiality for being, makes it clear that with the phenomenon of Angst a distinctive kind of attunement has become the theme of our interpretation. Angst individ­ualizes and thus discloses Da-sein as "solus ipse." This existential "solip­sism," however, is so far from transposing an isolated subject-thing into the harmless vacuum of a worldless occurrence that it brings Da-sein in an extreme sense precisely before its world as world, and thus itself before itself as being-in-the-world.“

So in relation to the OP’s focus on aloneness as being cut off from others, this is the opposite
of what Heidegger is saying. The primary quality of
authentic anxiety is not isolation, but in the contrary, uncanniness, the feeling of not being at home with oneself because one is already out in the world.
Let me give an example:

Two people are talking together. One may be feeling alienated by the encounter, while the other may feel a strong sense of kinship and togetherness with the first person. Heidegger would say the first person’s alienation is a deprivation mode of being-with.
So each Dasein has individualized the encounter between them , but for both interaction and being-with is pre-supposed.

how can I know that though? I have no way to confirm any of what you are saying, that others feel what I feel or even feel to begin with. — Darkneos

We hypothesize such things and see if the resulting anticipations bear fruit. We know how we are likely to act when we ‘feel’ any particularity way , and on that basis we form expectations of others whose behavior from our vantage seems to be similar to ours when we are feeling a certain way. We often have to hypothesize about our own feelings too. (was I angry or confused?)

Point-of-view not having itself in view thus needing somehow something to bring it into view, lest it be essentially unconscious. And, I'm a fan of Stambough's translation, you? — tim wood

That sounds reasonable to me. I agree about Stambough vs. Macquarie. I don’t know how they got ‘state of mind’ from Befindlichkeit

Which being-with is in my reading a part of the analysis of in-authentic being. But I appreciate and accept as corrective being-alone as a deficient form of being-with - if one couldn't be-with, then how could one be-alone?

Where I get "aloneness" is from Heidegger's observation that we all die our own deaths - and no one else's, and no one else ours - this being for H a window into the possibility of authentic being. — tim wood

But there is also an authentic being-with.

“If the being of everyday being-with-one-another, which seems onto­ logically to approach pure objective presence, is really fundamentally different from that kind of presence, still less can the being of the authen­tic self be understood as objective presence. Authentic being oneself is not based on an exceptional state of the subject, a state detached from the they, but is an existentiell modification of the they as an essential existential.”

But then again, as you say, there is one’s ownmost possibilities, which he formulates as being toward death.
The way I read this is, the self for Heidegger is an in-between, not a present subject facing separate objects but fundamental interaction. As inauthentic interaction Dasein is flattened into the normativity of Das Man. As authentic interaction, Dasein is its ‘point of view’.

Heidegger argued we're essentially alone, spending our time trying to escape it. — tim wood

I wouldn’t quite interpret the following from Being and Time as arguing that we are essentially alone. Rather,being alone is a form of Being-with.

“Being-with existentially determines Da-sein even when an other is not factically present and perceived. The being-alone of Da-sein, too, is being-with in the world. The other can be lacking only in and for a being­
with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of being-with, its possibility is a proof for the latter. On the other hand, factical being alone is not changed by the fact that a second copy of a human being is "next to" me, or per­
haps ten human beings. Even when these and still more are objectively present, Da-sein can be alone. Thus, being-with and the facticity of being­ with-one-another are not based on the fact that several "subjects" are
physically there together. Being alone "among" many, however, does not mean with respect to the being of others that they are simply objectively present. Even in being "among them," they are there with. Their Mitda-sein
is encountered in the mode of indifference and being alien. Lacking and "being away" are modes of Mitda-sein and are possible only because Da-sein as being-with lets the Da-sein of others be encountered in its world.”