The basic idea in Davidson's paper is fairly straight forward. That folk have different points of view can make sense only if there is some common framework from which we might notice the difference. But if we have such a common framework, then by that very fact, aren't we working in the same conceptual scheme? Doesn't the difference now become that of a disagreement within a conceptual scheme, and not between conceptual schemes? — Banno

The schemes dont have to be identical , they can be similar. And they can be alike when it comes to superficial aspects of behavior that don’t matter deeply to us, but differ profoundly concerning matters of great personal significance. One person can subsume another’s conceptual scheme as a variant of their own, thereby recognizing both the points of similarity and of difference. One person can understand another person’s conceptual scheme better than the other person can understand the first person. I dont have to understand you to know that your way of thinking about a certain matter is different from my own.

Enjoy.

https://independent.academia.edu/JoshSoffer

For as I have insisted already, though Dao has sometimes been depicted as some kind of vague or partial equivalent of the idea of God, it is better described as the most extreme possible antithesis of that idea.

I have Ziporyn's translation of the Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi) and I like it. I certainly don't put myself up against him as an expert, but I understand the place of god in Taoism differently. Taoism isn't atheistic in the sense we normally mean it. It doesn't deny god's existence, it just (mostly) doesn't address it. It's non-theistic not anti-theistic. — T Clark

Ziporyn’s claim is that what monotheisms and the atheisms of the ‘three horsemen’ (Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris) have in common is belief in a single purpose behind existence. For theists that purpose is God and the laws of morality he intends, and for Dawkins et al it is the sole authority of reason. Ziporyn argues that Daoism believes in no ultimate purpose, intention, principle, morality.

Objectivity in the metaphysical sense is an unwarranted absolutizing or sedimentation of half of a two-step process. The philosophical worldview of objectivism is read off from an aspect of this process and made into a doctrine about metaphysics, when in fact it’s just one of many tools in the hands of a hungry animal. So even though it may be the case that, to the extent that we are admitting reasoning at all, the monotheist God can be disproved, there will always be Tertullian, that fascinatingly volatile and wickedly histrionic Church Father, who blurted out the unsurpassable final word on this issue way back in the early third century: I believe because it is absurd, said Tertullian. And no amount of reasoning will be of any use in convincing someone who has declined to accept the ultimate authority of reason.

It is no use saying, “Look, Tertullian, you’re already using reason, you tacitly admit it, so how can you exempt this one issue from application of the same standard you use when you cross the street?” Why must he have only one standard? Should he do it because it’s reasonable? But he’s already shown he’s willing to eschew reason when he feels like it. If we think of beliefs as tools, this sort of move becomes unremarkable: why should I have only one tool that I use on every kind of material? A hammer
for pounding nails, a nail-clipper for clipping nails—for not all nails are the same.

We call all things “things,” but not all things are the same or require the same type of treatment. The illegitimate step lies in assuming that there must be a single standard applied at all times, for all types of situations, regarding every type of subject matter. Why assume that there is any unity of this kind applying to the world, that all existence must form one single system with a single set of laws and rules applying to all of it? That too is part of the circular assumption of the sole universal authority of Reason—an assumption that, I would argue, ironically has deep roots precisely in the idea of God.

The Latin (axio + arche) means Value/Principle & Ruling/Primary. The article says It's “a novel view that pictures the creative power . . . . as a non-personal force that creates the best world . . . but not for us.” {my bold} Also, “Axiarchists argue that only a non-causal force or principle can ultimately explain why things exist”. As an abstract, impersonal, natural, acausal creative principle it seems quite similar to Lao Tse's Tao. Yet, in terms of the value-based “path” or “flow” of the universe, it may be analogous to an algorithm-crunching computer program. — Gnomon

For an alternate atheistic take on Taoism , especially the thinking of Zhuangzi, I highly recommend the recently published book by Brook Ziporyn, one of the top translators of ancient Chinese texts. It is called ‘Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond‘.

If there is any tradition that is really marked by its consistent and thoroughgoing atheism in the sense that matters, it is the Chinese philosophical tradition. This is true of all three of the main classical traditions, Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. The clearest and most paradigmatic anti-God resource in the Chinese tradition is the conception of Dao, as the term comes to be developed in what are later known as “philosophical Daoist” texts such as the Laozi (Daodejing) and the Zhuangzi. For as I have insisted already, though Dao has sometimes been depicted as some kind of vague or partial equivalent of the idea of God, it is better described as the most extreme possible antithesis of that idea. Indeed, classical Daoist thought can very well be described as one long polemic against the idea of purpose—the idea of conscious design, of intentional valuation as a source of existence, of deliberate creation, of control, of God.

↪Joshs Could you elucidate the bearing this has on the OP? For example how this might provide a basis for ethical normativity? — Wayfarer

The awareness of the incessantly changing nature of experience is not a hinderance to, but the route of access into a robustly ethical involvement in the world. Dynamical changing life doesnt unfold as arbitrary disconnected moments but as a mesh of intertwined social practices. Currently, I’m enjoying that work of Hanne De Jaegher, who clarifies the relation between ethics and enactivism.

“Humanity is shorthand for humanity-partly-produced-by-nature and Nature shorthand for nature-humans-participate-in. Networks of biological processes interlace with regional practices in what Haraway (2016) calls sympoietic (“making-with”) webs.”

Sense-making is “the active adaptive engagement of an autonomous system with its environment in terms of the differential virtual implications for its ongoing form of life. [It is t]he basic, most general form of all cognitive and affective activity manifested experientially as a structure of caring” (Di Paolo et al. 2018, 332)…Whether we act or we perceive, whether we emote or we cognize, a structure of caring is at play in all forms of sense-making

Individuating systems in relation open the possibility of new metastable states to which they can transit. These transitions are not in themselves normative because they are open; they follow no “algorithm”. But they have or express values, the relation between current and potential states…to act ethically must involve forms of knowing (incorporated in practices of behaviour, emotion, and reflection) about values in configurations of becoming, i.e., about the good expressed not in the maintenance of a current configuration but in its future (and inevitable) transformation.”

“At its fundamental, engaged knowing requires a particular attitude to flourish, the attitude of letting-be; otherwise, it degrades. Limited knowing can either take the form of overdetermination, i.e., a knower who attempts to force the known into an obstinate epistemic frame, or it can take the form of underdetermination, i.e., disengagement, a “respect” for the known that forgoes any serious relation with it, letting-be degrading into letting-go. Both are fundamentally attitudes of not-caring, situations in which participation is thwarted, leading to epistemic injustices (Fricker 2007). Both can also be resisted or contested, making knowing an open arena for struggle. Engaged/engaging epistemology is both descriptive and prescriptive; it tells us what lies at the basis of a knowing relation, and it tells us also that there are better and worse ways of knowing. If a knowing relation is to flourish it should not be dominated by either end of the relation, which means inevitably that to engage in knowing is to engage in a mutual transformation, a co-becoming of knower and known.”

“ To care ethically is to be morally attuned to differences in becoming and to act in ways that cultivate, nurture, protect, and/ or repair configurations of becoming according to values. Caring for the sick and vulnerable is to help them revert a narrowing in their world. Caring for growth is to promote the value of openness and expansion in possibilities of becoming. Caring for the oppressed is to act so as to destroy patterns of blocking and neglect towards actors whose becoming is systematically thwarted.”(2021)

“While there is not one truth to how or what something is, the example shows that there are also not infinite ways in which we can know things. As Maclaren says, “[w]e can do injustices in the way we take things up”. In our knowing of things, we never fully know them. But the real problem is that we can “know” them quite wrongly.”

Arbitrary doesn't imply 'unconditioned' so your point, sir, is a red herring / strawman. My point: a 'consistent relativist' forfeits all standards for deciding between competing or incommensurable truth-claims, ergo her preference is arbitrary. — 180 Proof

There are always standards to be consulted in matters of competing arguments, but these standards get their intelligibility from within some discursive system, rather than being external to all systems. Paradigm shifts in the sciences are neither arbitrary nor do they take place under the control of some extra-discursive standard of correctness.

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

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

That sounds complicated and a lot like hard work. Is this exhausting to live by?

As a non-philosopher I find this hard to grasp or at least accept. Is it making too much out of too little change? — Tom Storm

Every moment we are conscious our perceptual system translates a constantly changing kaleidoscope of sensations into stable meanings, and the way we tend to think about language accomplishes the same thing by ignoring the fact that every use of a word involves a subtle reinvention of its meaning . So if we typically normalize and stabilize our world without effort , what advantage is there in noticing the underlying variations?

Whenever you suffer negative emotions, you are presented with an opportunity to examine your taken-for-granted assumptions about the world, assumptions which failed to prepare you to anticipate the changes in your world which triggered your anxiety, fear , anger or guilt. My point is that the kinds of thinking which assume a world composed of sold, unchanging physical object, principles or laws is a world of violent polarization, because arbitrary, violent change goes along with such assumptions That’s why fundamentalisms of all kinds are inherently cruel and unforgiving. The price you pay for a world of fixed and nailed down concepts is capricious oppositions and contradictions

By contrast, the incessantly changing universe I described in my earlier post is at the same time a flow of extraordinary self-intimacy and intricacy. Abandoning fixed truths, objects, concepts, laws and principles at the same time significantly reduces the perceived arbitrariness, violence and polarization of change, and allows for a more peaceful anticipation of what is to come.

Quine stabilized the world with his naturalism, ridding the equation of pesky semantics. You affirm the pesky semantics, but deny naturalism. Your idea of objectivity is certainly different from his. Or is it? — Astrophel

I deny Quine’s version of naturalism, but I affirm Joseph Rouse’s naturalism, which doesn’t force the normativity of scientific inquiry into the constraints of a sovereign view of physics.

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

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

IMO, the relativist sees 'many paths to many mountains and therefore arbitrarily choses between them' whereas the pluralist sees many paths up the mountain s/he (we) cannot escape from and seeks the shortest to the summit (C.S. Peirce ... D. Deutsch). — 180 Proof

The choice can never be arbitrary, precisely because our attitudes, values and actions must always conditioned from within a specific system of discursive practices which legitimate and make intelligible our ethical choices. The consequences of our decisions matter deeply to us in ways that we recognize as profoundly relevant in our lives as interpreted from the vantage of our involvement within partially shared ways of life. Nothing could be more arbitrary than this. It would be a mistake to separate our discursive practices from the ‘way the things really are’. Our practices are directly plugged into the world; they are the way that world shows itself to us, and there is no way to get beyond or above these practices to a non-discursive reality.

Most accused of radical relativism agree that it is self-refuting, and for that reason it is a straw man argument. Joseph Rouse puts forth a good explanation of the difference between ‘anything goes’ relativism and the non-sovereign, ‘normativity all the way down’ positions writers like Foucault actually espouse.

Relativism is an assertion of epistemic sovereignty, which proclaims the epistemic "rights" of all knowers or knowledges. The most fashionable forms of epistemic relativism today, which are also those frequently and mistakenly associated with Foucault, are those which dismiss all claims to objectivity or truth as merely masks for power. But such claims are the exact epistemological parallel to the radical critique of law as itself a form of violence, which Foucault insisted always "assumes that power must be exercised in accordance with a fundamental lawfulness." To make this assumption, whether about power or knowledge, is to remain committed to a conception of sovereignty, from which such fundamental lawfulness can be rightly assessed.

What, then, does a post-sovereign epistemology have to say about the legitimation of knowledge? The crucial point is not that there is no legitimacy, but rather that questions about legitimation are on the same "level" as any other epistemic conflict, and are part of a struggle for truth. In the circulation of contested, heterogeneous knowledges, disputes about legitimacy, and the criteria for legitimacy, are part and parcel of the dynamics of that circulation. Understanding knowledge as "a strategical situation" rather than as a definitive outcome places epistemological reflection in the midst of ongoing struggles to legitimate (and delegitimate) various skills, practices, and assertions. Recognizing that the boundaries of science (or of knowledge) are what is being contested, epistemology is within those contested boundaries.”

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

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

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

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

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

Let's see if we can flesh out a little the thinking of those who are truth relativists. I’m not saying that Astrophel is a ‘radical’ relativist, but I am. Let me throw out a hypothetical approach in this vein. Let's say that in my experience of the world and myself, I've discovered that anything I observe or imagine or think or see other people observe has a curious habit of constantly changing its meaning in subtle ways every moment . If i read or repeat the word 'cat' over and over, each time, each moment it has a slightly different semantic sense than the previous. And the same effect occurs when I perceive an object in my environment. I conclude form this that I have discovered something that others haven't noticed, but is there for them also. they just don't see it because it is a subtle effect.

So I then form an explanation of objective truth that goes like this:people believe that there is such a thing as an object that has a certain permanence to it, that can be pointed to or referred back to as the same over time. People believe that self-identity, self-persistence, self-permanence are features of our world. We can find such attributes in the physical world, in our language concepts, in our memory, etc.
But I believe that we only think that such attributes as self-persistence, self-identity over time and permanence are what we are experiencing. I surmise that what we are really experiencing is phenomena that , as I said before, are subtly shifting their semantic meaning every moment of time. So we just assume meaning permanence, self-identity,etc where there is instead very tiny shifts and transformations in the semantic sense of object, percepts, concepts. In practical terms this isn't a big deal. We can understand each other, point to what for the most part is the same reality, and agree on our empirical descriptions and physical laws.

So would I then be able to say that objective truth does not exist? Well, first of all, I could agree with Heidegger and say that truth for me is just the way that each new moment of time unveils a slightly new semantic meaning for me. Truth is just the unveiling of new experience, not its matching up to a standard. So there is truth, but what about objectivity? So does objectivity exist? AlI I can say is that every moment I have to test myself, ask myself the question again. Do I this moment experience a thing that persists identically, be it a concept, a percept, a law of nature, a norm of any kind? IF each time I ask the question the answer is still no, then I can say that as far as I can tell, this moment, for me and apparently for everyone else that I've observed or thought about, reality doesn't sit still even for a moment, such as to allow persisting semantic self-identity or the self-persistence of any object.

I can say that when someone claim's that objective truth exist, they are absolutely right. Every moment there is a truth about the meaning of an object. And every moment that meaning changes very slightly, for everyone that I've observed. So I would want to rephrase that question to: 'does the objective truth about anything stay exactly the same for more than a single moment? What about my claim that objective truth never stays the same for more than a moment? Is this an objective claim? Well, it is me saying, at this moment and from my recollection, I do not now nor ever remember having an experience of self-identity or self-persistence of anything, physical , conceptual or otherwise. But others are welcome to keep asking me the question. I can tell them that I have a theory about why others believe they are seeing objective truth as stable, and that it is possible to miss the instability of reality without it in any way jeopardizing one's ability to do formal logic or science.

So , based on this argument, the relativist isn't really stating a negative claim(objecivity does NOT exist) so much as a positive one, that they are seeing something beyond, within, underneath, overflowing what those who believe in the semantic stability of objects(logical, perceptual, conceptual) arew seeing. Their claim should be: 'objectivty exists, but does a lot more interesting things than the objectivist is able to see). They are seeing dynamism where others are seeing only stasis. Is this dynamism 'objective'? Is it a theory, a principle? It is certainly a general claim. But , and here's the most important point, its not an objective claim as long as it doesn't turn 'radical dynamism ' into a stable object. It has to be modest in its claim. It has to say simply that each moment the question must be asked anew, because the very nature of radical dynamism is that there is no horizon beyond the current moment for any assertion. I can say that I anticipate that the next moment I will generally believe something very similar to what I am now asserting, because in my experience so far the world not only changes every moment but preserves a certain overall stability in its ongoing transformations. Each new moment is not a profound semantic break with the previous but only a very subtle one.This is a post-objective claim, requiring a different method of test.

To test the claim of radical changeability in all objects of experience for everyone is to do two things:
1) it is to try to teach a believer in stable objectivity to see the underlying movement in supposedly static experience. How do you convince someone to see more than they see? Either they see it or they don't. Meanwhile, as relativist, you can leave them to their objectivism, knowing that it works for them, and isn't 'wrong' or 'untrue', just incomplete.
2)The believer in radical relativism must every moment of experience test their own perception(make it contestable) to see if this dynamism continues to appear very moment, everywhere for them.

The world as such becomes an epistemic and ontological vacuum, and it is HERE now one can ask about suffering, because suffering is not a language construction; it clearly has explanatory possibilities that come to mind when we think of it, but there is in this something which is ontologically distinct and imposing that stands outside of language's contingencies — Astrophel

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

↪Count Timothy von Icarus Would you say postmodernism is best understood as a form of skepticism, or does it represent a distinct philosophical approach? — Tom Storm

Many who are included within a postmodernist camp use one form or another of a practice-based approach (Foucault, Deleuze, Rorty, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida) which sees all forms of knowledge and belief, including religion , science and philosophy, as discursive practices. We are always ensconced within one system of practices or another, even when we discard one belief for in favor of another. Recognizing the socially norm-based nature of meaning precludes any sort of radical skepticism in a way that neither Cartesian doubt, nor religious faith based on ultimate purposes, nor an atheism that elevates science and man to the role played by God can. Arguing that a science doesn’t begin from radical doubt, that it “works from established beliefs/knowledge, and then tries to explain what is less well understood in terms of what is more well understood” just subsumes it as a secularized version of the belief in a God of fixed purposes. Because both rely on faith in sovereign purpose, this faith is itself nihilistic, productive of skepticism.

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

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

No, the cause of suffering can be found within oneself, in the form of the constant desire (trishna, thirst, clinging) - to be or to become, to possess and to retain, to cling to the transitory and ephemeral as if they were lasting and satisfying, when by their very nature, they are not. That of course is a very deep and difficult thing to penetrate, as the desire to be and to become is engrained in us by the entire history of biological existence. It nevertheless is the 'cause of sorrow' as the Buddha teaches it, radical though that might be (and it is radical).
— Wayfarer

This is, of course, brilliant — Astrophel

Do you think it’s compatible with the thoughts of Michel Henry below?

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

For Husserl, purpose is bound up with the anticipatory nature of intentional acts.
— Joshs

Not what I had in mind. More a sense of purpose, not anticipatory processing. I'm not talking of scientific accuracy, either, but existential angst, which is presumably what both religion and existential philosophies seek to ameliorate — Wayfarer

Which is one reason Heidegger is not an existenrialist. For him, authentic angst is not something to be ameliorated, since it is the wellspring of transcendence and becoming.

“He who is resolute knows no fear, but understands the possibility of Angst as the mood that does not hinder and confuse him. Angst frees him from "null" possibilities and lets him become free for authentic ones.”

“The fundamental possibilities of Da-sein, which is always my own, show themselves in Angst as they are, undistorted by innerworldly beings to which Da-sein, initially and for the most part, clings.”

I want to point out is that this is not a mere copy. The brain takes input spread out spatially and temporary and condenses it into a simultaneity. Features which originally belonged to different times and different places in the world are perceived at the same time and in the same space. But this isn’t all the brain does. In tying disparate events together temporally and spatially, it can also construe patterns. It can perceive these events as related to each other, meaningfully similar on some basis or other and on the basis of which both events differ from a third.
— Joshs

I'm considerably more sympathetic towards your argument than is the Count. I will just make some additional observations.

Isn't what you're referring to here the subjective unity of perception? This is how the mind 'creates' or 'constructs' (both words have problematical connotations) the unified experience of the world which is our lived world ('lebenswelt'). Something I often mention is that neuroscience has no account of which particular neural system or systems actually perform the magic of generating a unified world-picture from the disparate sensory and somatic sources inputs - and that's a quote from a paper on it:

What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene (Kaas and Collins 2003). That is, enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience.

This is, of course, the basis on which I argue that cognitive science lends support to idealism - that experienced reality is mind dependent (not mind-independent as realist philosophies would have it.) — Wayfarer

I should mention that what I had in mind with that quote was not neuroscience but Husserl’s phenomenological analyses of perception. The fact that it could be taken for an empirical account shows how closely aligned contemporary empirical approaches to perception are to Husserl, up to a point. Husserl would say that where empirical accounts fall short is in remaining within what he calls the natural attitude, assuming an objectively causal ground for intentional processes. In this connection, you may be interested in the role that Husserl’s notion of the noema plays with regard to the subjective intentional constitution of objectivity. The noema gets to the heart of the process of idealization. Derrida describes it this way:

Within consciousness, in general there is an agency which does not really belong to it. This is the difficult but decisive theme of the non-real (reell) inclusion of the noema. Noema, which is the objectivity of the object, the meaning and the “as such” of the thing for consciousness, is neither the determined thing itself in its untamed existence (whose appearing the noema precisely is), nor is it a properly subjective moment, a “really” subjective moment, since it is indubitably given as an object for consciousness. It is neither of the world nor of consciousness, but it is the world or something of the world for consciousness. Doubtless it can rightfully be laid bare only on the basis of intentional consciousness, but it does not borrow from intentional consciousness what metaphorically we might call, by avoiding the real-ization of consciousness, its “material.” This real nonappurtenance to any region at all, even to the archi-region, this anarchy of the noema is the root and very possibility of objectivity and of meaning. This irregionality of the noema, the opening to the “as such” of Being and to the determination of the totality of regions in general, cannot be described, stricto sensu and simply, on the basis of a determined regional structure.

The concept of accuracy limits us to thinking about knowledge of nature ( and morals) in terms of conformity to arbitrary properties and laws. But is this the way nature is in itself, or just a model that we have imposed on it?
— Joshs

But then, I think what your musings lack, is an overall sense of purpose. Isn't this the factor which Heidegger addresses through his writings on 'care'? The point being, consideration of what matters to us, why it is important. And on not kidding ourselves (something I myself am prone to, regrettably.) 'Seeing things as they truly are' is not necessarily a matter for scientific analysis, because we're involved in life, we're part of what we are seeking to understand. And that's what religions seek to provide - a kind of moral polestar, an over-arching purpose or meaning, towards which these questions, or quests, are oriented. (But then, I am mindful of the postmodernist skepticism towards meta-narrative, which is also a factor here.) — Wayfarer

For Husserl, purpose is bound up with the anticipatory nature of intentional acts. A striving to know further along a a trajectory of sense projects itself forward into all acts of constitution. Husserl says “… the style, so to speak, of "what is to come" is prefigured through what has just past”. Both he and Heidegger critique the goal of scientific accuracy as a symptom of the elevation of an idiosyncratic method ( logic-mathemarical idealization) to the status of ultimate ground, which conceals its basis in more fundamental processes of self-world relations. While for Husserl, these primordial relations are processes of striving for knowledge, for Heidegger Being-in-the -world as care is a holistic being-in-relevance. But Care is not the same thing as living for a purpose. It is a living for the mattering of what Dasein is thrown into, how beings disclose themselves.

Everything depends on there being again a beginning of philosophy wherein philosophy is itself this beginning so that be-ing itself sways as origin. Only in this way the power of beings and their pursuit, and along with it every purpose-oriented calculation, will be shattered… Throwing-oneself-free unto enownment is preparedness for the sway of truth to place itself in mastery, and prior to all “truths”, that is, prior to all “goals”, “purposes” and “usefulnesses” to decide beings unto the ownhood of be-ing.

In my opinion, the best critic of representationalism moves in the direction of phenomenology, but I believe you reject that and activism as well.

No, I like a lot of work using enactivism and phenomenology, in part because they avoid notions like "all we know are our own concepts" and "words don't have reference, only sense (or sense IS their reference)." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Could have fooled me. Every point I have made that you have shot down comes directly from either the phenomenologies of Husserl (the reference of sense is to other senses), Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger or the enactivist work of Gallagher, Varela and Thompson. And you dismissed as wrong or unintelligible Astrophel’s reading of phenomenologist Michael Henry, whose work is closely tied to Husserl and enactivism. If you are a supporter of phenomenology or enactivism, it must be to a brand that I’m not familiar with. Perhaps a pre-Husserlian form of phenomenology?Hegel perhaps?

But if perceiving a scene as a disconnected collection of random segments can validate itself ( a discombobulated scene but not a coastline) as well as seeing it as a coastline, if both are true in the sense that both can be tested and validated, can’t one nonetheless say that the latter is a more accurate model of the world that the former?

I don't follow this. Not all perceptions are equally valid, else optical illusions wouldn't be illusions — Count Timothy von Icarus

What about optical illusions that involves gestalt shifts between one way of seeing a scene and another, like the duck-rabbit? Is one way more correct than another? What happens to the components of one image, its lines, curves and contrasts, when we shift to the other image? Don’t those components take on a different role? Is there any account-independent element of the images, something that is not vulnerable to a shift of the definition of its existence?

Right, so representationalism. "We don't experience anything, we only experience our experiences of things." But it seems to me that if one takes this seriously, you might as well say we only experience our experiences of our experiences, and so on, in some sort of infinite Cartesian theater regress. Having the Cartesian humonculus also move the body around doesn't really seem to fix the issues here for me. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’m aware of two kinds of empirical accounts to describe perception, representational and enactivist, and versions that combine aspects of the two. I am not a representationalist, but just used that term for convenience. In my opinion, the best critic of representationalism moves in the direction of phenomenology, but I believe you reject that and activism as well. Does this mean you are questioning all contemporary psychological accounts of perception, or can you suggest a contemporary empirical alternative I’m not aware of? ) Btw, the text photo you inserted was too blurry to read).

We could legitimately declare that the discombobulated scene existed before humans were there to interact with it, but that a coastline never existed, since the concept has no meaning for us

This is conflating existence and being experienced. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You insist that a coastline existed before we were there to experience it. I would point to the genealogy of etymological meanings of words such as melancholia and phlogiston to show that many verbal concepts used in science or common parlance point to what were presumed as existing entities, but as theories changed, one could no longer locate such entities anymore. It wasnt that a real thing in the world simply vanished, but that these words depended for their intelligibilty on a particular system of relating elements of the world. To understand melancholia is to understand cultural practices specific to an era, and to understand phlogiston is to view the system of relations among aspects of the physical world in a way that is no longer being used.

The concept of depression that replaced melancholia will eventually undergo the same fate as melancholia. You would deny that the word coastline could suffer such a fate, but on the basis of what criterion can we draw the line between that word and phlogiston or melancholia? You don’t imagine any way in which ,coastline’ succumbs to the same process of having its underlying practices of understanding shift along with the evolution of culture and language use, such that coastline becomes a quaint expression harking back to a time when they thought about such aspects of nature in a different way than they do now?

But if perceiving a scene as a disconnected collection of random segments can validate itself ( a discombobulated scene but not a coastline) as well as seeing it as a coastline, if both are true in the sense that both can be tested and validated, can’t one nonetheless say that the latter is a more accurate model of the world that the former?

I don't follow this. Not all perceptions are equally valid, else optical illusions wouldn't be illusions — Count Timothy von Icarus

What about optical illusions that involves gestalt shifts between one way of seeing a scene and another, like the duck-rabbit? Is one way more correct than another? Can’t both ways of seeing lead to maps that can be validated? What happens to the components of one image, its lines, curves and contrasts, when we shift to the other image? Don’t those components take on a different role? Is there any account-independent element of the images, something that is not vulnerable to a shift of the definition of its existence?

you suggested a coastline does not exist separate from the act of measuring it, and then used painting as a follow up example, and that one can "imagine" that a coastline exists independent of our concepts, but that it doesn't exist separate from our interactions and anticipations vis-a-vis it, no? It only has a "dependent independence?" Hence my confusion. Is it the coastline or the "notion" we're talking about? — Count Timothy von Icarus

When I perceive a red ball in front of me, all that I actually perceive in front of me is an impoverished, contingent partial sense experience. I fill in the rest of the experience in two ways. All experience implies a temporal structure of retention, primal impression and protention. Each moment presents us with a new sensation, the retained memory of the just preceding sensation and anticipation of what is to come. I retain the memory of previous experiences with the 'same' object and those memories become fused with the current aspect of it. At the same time, I protend forward, anticipating aspects of the object that are not yet there for me, based on prior experience with it. For example, I only see the front of the table, but anticipate as an empty horizon, its sides, and this empty anticipation joins with the current view and the memory of previous views to form a complex fused totality. Perception constantly is motivated , that is, it tends toward the fulfillment of the experience of the object as integrated singularity, as this same' table'.

A remarkable feature of a word or a perception is that it allows the brain to integrate a wide range of modalities (visual, touch, auditory, kinesthetic, smell and taste) of perception into a single unitary concept. When you see the world ‘cat’ right now, your brain , as brain imaging studies show , may be accessing the sight of a cat , it’s smell, how its fur feels , the sound of its purring. And it is doing this all simultaneously. In addition, the brain may be accessing emotional associations and complex bits of knowledge about a cat or cats in general from scientific or literary sources.

Most importantly, there is no experience of an object without kineshthetic sensation of our voluntary movement in relation to the thing seen. Intrinsic to what the object means as object is our knowing how its appearance will change when we move our head in a certain way, or our eyes , or when we touch it. The object is what it is for us in relation to the way we know we can change its appearance relative to our interactions with it.

You may respond to all this by observing that I’m simply describing how the brain creates a representation of the world. But what I want to point out is that this is not a mere copy. The brain takes input spread out spatially and temporary and condenses it into a simultaneity. Features which originally belonged to different times and different places in the world are perceived at the same time and in the same space. But this isn’t all the brain does. In tying disparate events together temporally and spatially, it can also construe patterns. It can perceive these events as related to each other, meaningfully similar on some basis or other and on the basis of which both events differ from a third.

But surely the brain couldn’t perform these tricks
of condensation, assimilation and categorization if the patterns it construes dont reflect the way the world really is? It could do this in fantasy, but when one attempted to predict the course of actual events on the basis of these mapped out patterns, one’s attempts would be invalidated unless they accorded with the actual flow of events. Yes, but the question is, how does the actual flow of events constrain the kinds of patterns we can construct to model them? Apparently the actual flow of events can accommodate an indefinite variety of construals. We can look at a landscape and fail to see it as a unified thing, just a disparate series of colors, shapes, lines and curves, and this wouldn’t be a false representation, it would simply be an impoverished one.

We could legitimately declare that the discombobulated scene existed before humans were there to interact with it, but that a coastline never existed, since the concept has no meaning for us. Seeing it as a unity by synthesizing its temporally and spatially spaced out elements into an instantaneous whole in the brain allows us to do things with it like creating maps of it. And there are many other ways of construing the scene that are equally true in the sense that we can test out our knowledge in our actual interactions with it and validate our model.

But if perceiving a scene as a disconnected collection of random segments can validate itself ( a discombobulated scene but not a coastline) as well as seeing it as a coastline, if both are true in the sense that both can be tested and validated, can’t one nonetheless say that the latter is a more accurate model of the world that the former? Let’s say that it is indeed better in that it subsumes the features of the former into a more holistically integrated unity. In other words, we can always perceive a phenomenon in restrictive terms as ‘this and only this’ , or in terms that are permeable to alternative constructions. Is the latter way a more accurate representation of reality? I think it’s better than accurate. The concept of accuracy limits us to thinking about knowledge of nature ( and morals) in terms of conformity to arbitrary properties and laws. But is this the way nature is in itself, or just a model that we have imposed on it?

We can model physical phenomena in terms of efficient causality, where the behavior of interacting objects is described on the basis of fixed properties (mass, energy), and then declare that the physical world behaved according to the laws of objective causality before humans arrived on the scene. This approach validates itself perfectly well, but perhaps it can be subsumed as just one aspect within a more permeable model of nature, one that doesn’t invalidate the causal account but reveals it as limited and restrictive, like seeing a coastline as disconnected segments. We can declare that dinosaurs existed before we discover them, and then in 50 years a new biological approach will discard names for living things in favor of a radically holistic ecological approach in which it no longer makes sense to talk about discrete objects moving through space we call animals , but instead a web of reciprocal relations within which we no longer need to tease out categorical entities we call animals. And they could then declare this ecology (but not dinosaurs) something that existed before humans arrived.

We can apply this subsuming account of knowledge to ethics as well. We can hold onto a perception of the moral good as akin to the fixed properties behind efficient causes, and validate this model perfectly well, declaring that moral properties are universal, grounding facts of humanity. Or we can subsume such a fiat-based account within a more permeable and inclusive model which reveals dimensions of perception in morally suspect others that were unseen to us previously, dimensions that allow us to discover patterns bridging the differences between us and them.

your claim is that the coastline changes because different people paint or think of it differently, and that it doesn't exist until painted, mapped, etc. Nothing you've said supports this claim; it doesn't follow from the premises. No one disagrees that different people will paint a coastline differently or that coastlines interacted with birds before men. However, most would disagree that the coastline didn't exist until it was painted. Again, you seem to need a premise like: "things are entirely defined by their relations and all relations and properties are essential." But I don't see why anyone would agree to premises like this because it implies things like: "you change when someone lights a picture of you on fire," and "ants didn't exist until people developed an abstraction of 'ant — Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn’t say a coastline or an ant didnt exist until painted. The word coastline implies a particular sense of meaning, and there are as many senses of meaning for it as there contexts of use. Animals who interact with a coastline produce their own senses of meaning for it , even though they don’t perceive it in terms of verbal concepts. The development of knowledge of a coastline , or any other aspect of nature , is in the direction of an enrichment of sense. This is what I mean when I say that the meaning of the concept of coastline changes with the development of knowledge. The issue here isn’t whether things exist outside of us, it’s what kinds of constraints their existence produces in relation to their enrichment by the development of knowledge.

Knowledge produces material changes in the world not by nullifying existing things, but by integrating them in more and more complex and useful ways with respect to our practical uses of other things. The fact that a coastline exists in some sense outside of our growing knowledge of it is utterly irrelevant to anything that makes it scientifically important to us and gives us the power to control nature and get along with each other. If you want to assume there is some intrinsic content that defines the existence of natural things independent of our knowledge of them, I can go along with that, but I would argue that such content acts as barely more than a placemark in comparison to the processes of integration and correlation by which we know about them and do useful things with them. I think the independent existence of things is so important to you because you confuse intrinsic content with integrative processes of knowing.

To say that America has a coastline is to assume some configurative understanding of what a coastline is, which is to say, a system of anticipations concerning what it means to interact with it.

…when a concept or model changes, it does not imply that what is known through them changes. This is for the same reason that if I light a photograph of myself on fire I don't suffer burns, or if I unfocus my telescope, the craters in the Moon aren't smoothed away.

“whenever we use the word we commit ourselves to a particular implied system of interaction”

Yes, a system of interaction where the ocean is not a cliff or a beach. But these interactions don't depend on us knowing about them. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The word ‘bus’ implies a system of interactions with the object ‘bus’ based on our understanding of what it is and what it does. Someone who doesnt know about automobiles or even carriages would see it as very different kind of object and interact with it in different ways as a result. If you want to see how different people interact differently with the same coastline ask them to sit down and paint a painting of the scene as accurately as possible. There will be similarities among the paintings, but none will look identical. This is not just due to different skill levels but to the fact that each person’s procedure for measuring and depicting it makes use of a slightly different process. Objective space is derivative of our subjective determination of space.

"America did not have a coastline until it was mapped," and "penguins and cockroaches didn't exist until man experienced them," are prima facie implausible claims. Extraordinary claims require solid evidence. Yet as noted above, one can easily accept enactivist premises, reject the "view from nowhere," and recognize the epistemic primacy of interaction without having to suppose any of this. You seem to need additional premises to justify this sort of claim, not merely dismissing other views.

As it stands, this looks akin to saying "three and three doesn't make five, thus it must make seven." Well, the first premise is right. The conclusion is extremely counterintuitive though and it's unclear how it is supposed to follow. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I should note that cartography is as much an art as a science. Is an authography projection more accurate than a mercator projection? Things exist in relation to what they interact with, and their properties are a function of that interaction. If a coastline existed prior to the arrival of humans, we have to ask who or what it existed for and in relation to. For instance, we could show what existed in terms of the ways of dealing with it of other animals . Birds have excellent vision and can scan a large area. They ‘see’ something like a coastline much better than we can with the naked eye, but what that coastline means for them is a function of what they do with it, how it matters to their activities and purposes. Just as the person who has no familiarity with vehicles ‘sees’ a bus differently from someone who knows what they are for, a bird sees a coastline differently from the way we do. If we remove all the animals, the coastline still exists , but now it has to be understood from the ‘point of view’ of the inorganic structures that interact with it. In each case, whether it is involved with humans, animals or non-living things, the coastline exists as ‘something’, but what this something is must be determined by what it does, and what it does is a function of its relations with the structures it interacts with. Nothing about a ‘coastline’ or any other thing pre-exists its interactions with other things. Things are nothing outside of their interactions. This is what it means to exist.

Having said this, you might be surprised to hear that I’m a big fan of truth as an asymptotic goal of knowledge , and knowledge as a progressive approximation toward an ultimate truth. Furthermore, I associate truth with achieving a knowledge characterized by stability, inferential compatibility, prediction and control, harmoniousness and intimacy. It might seem as though what I have said points to a relativism that eliminates the possibility of achieving these goals of truth, but I believe the universe is highly ordered. Its order is in the nature of an intricate process of self-development rather than in static properties and laws. We become privy to this intricate order by participating in its development through our sciences, technologies and other domains of creativity.

Also, is it supposed to be a vice to "assert with bold certainty" that a knife is a bad toy to give a baby? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It depends on the system of convictions that underlie your beliefs concerning what is good and what is bad for a baby, just as what constitutes genital mutilation depends on such guiding assumptions. Archeologists found tiny tools and weapons dating back 1700 years.

"They were just not made for adult-sized hands," Losey says. Instead, they appeared to be scaled-down versions for children. Perhaps, the researchers speculate, adults fashioned the tiny tools so that youngsters could begin to hone the hunting skills they would later need, the researchers report this month in Antiquity

Losey and Hull's speculation lines up with what researchers observe in many societies today, says David Lancy, an anthropologist emeritus at Utah State University in Logan. From an early age, children are allowed to interact with the tools adults use to work, forage, and hunt, often with no parental supervision. Babies suck on sharp knives; toddlers play with machetes.

I mention in my other post that I believe in truth as an asymptotic goal of knowledge , and knowledge as a progressive approximation toward an ultimate truth. This goes for ethical truth as well. But I dont see this progress as conformity to pre-determined moral truths , any more than I see scientific progress as conformity to ‘the way things are’, except by understanding the ‘way things are’ in terms of an intricately intercorrelated order of development that transcends all fixed properties and laws. This means ethical progress is not a matter of finding fault on the basis of a pre-given knowledge, but of enriching understanding by presenting new dimensions of appraisal and construing.

A better question would be, why do you think only good things are meaningful? Meaning, and of course, this is not the dictionary sense of meaning, but the affective sense, referring to the pathos of one's regard for something, is about something affectively impactful, and this includes have an interest, being concerned, loving, hating and the entire range of value possibilities. A fatal birth defect is meaningful to the extent it occurs in the context of such engagements.
— Astrophel
to the straightforward question:
Explain in what way (e.g.) a fatal birth defect is "meaningful".
— 180 Proof
In fact, he has done good deal of appealing to authority, but no actual relevant discourse. — Vera Mont

He’s summarizing Henry here, who’s a tough nut to crack. What he’s getting at is the association between objectively causal , representational models of nature and the accidental or arbitrary. The two would seem to go together due to the assumed affect and value-neutrality of objective causes. Forces of nature are not presumed to harbor any affective value in themselves. Henry argues that this externalistic way of thinking is a derivative distortion of the primary relation between subject and world.

Sure, the concepts/notions might change (or we might say our intentions towards them). That seems fine. What seems implausible is that all the interactions mass should have changed because our scientific theories did, or that North America had no coastline, no place where the land met the sea, until someone measured it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Our scientific theories are not immaterial idealizations, they are intrinsic components of our material interactions with the world that we are trying to understand. When our theories change, a crucial aspect of those material interactions are transformed.
To say that America has a coastline is to assume some configurative understanding of what a coastline is, which is to say, a system of anticipations concerning what it means to interact with it. It is fine to use the word ‘coastline’ and imagine it has an independent reality, but whenever we use the word we commit ourselves to a particular implied system of interactions. We want to insist on the independence of ‘coastline’ at the same time that it is OUR word and OUR way of understanding how it is independent, which is a kind of dependent independence.
Measurement is built into the word coastline, even when we imagine a coastline prior to any human measuring of it.

Complex dynamical systems approaches applied to cognitive intentionality explain how intentional stances produce specific constraints, constants which do not act
as efficient causes.

How so? — Count Timothy von Icarus

As Alicia Juarrero explains:

The bottom-up causality of nonlinear far from equilibrium dynamics is thus truly creative; it produces qualitatively different wholes that are not reducible to sums, com­pounds, or aggregates. Once self-organized, furthermore, these emergent global structures of process actively and dynamically influence the go of their compo­nents, but not qua other. In contradiction to the received views on causality, that is, the whole also actively exerts causal power on itself top down. Self-organization, in short, strongly counsels for a wider denotation for the
term cause, one reconceptualized in terms of “context-sensitive constraints” to include those causal powers that incorporate circular causality, context-sensitive
embeddedness, and temporality. On this interpretation deterministic, mechanistic efficient causes become the limit of context-sensitive constraints.

Anyhow, the fact that a knife is a bad toy to give a baby, that one can't mate a penguin and a giraffe, or that one cannot take flight by flapping one's arms vigorously like a bird does not seem the sort of things that should require recourse to cognitive science to explain — Count Timothy von Icarus

Nor should the meanings of these examples be reified as epistemological truths, as G.E. Moore tried to do when he attempted to demonstrate an epistemological certainty by raising his hand and declaring ‘I know that here is a hand’.
You’re doing the same thing by asserting with bold certainty ‘ a knife is a bad toy to give a baby!’ , ‘one can't mate a penguin and a giraffe!’ and ‘ one cannot take flight by flapping one's arms vigorously like a bird’! Are these certainties that need to be justified, and if so, is there an end to justification, a bedrock of belief underlying their sense and intelligibility? And what kind of certainty is this bedrock?

Prima facie, does it make sense that scientific advances in understanding gravity change what gravity is and how it works? Did the coastline of North America change when men began to map it? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Scientific advances in understanding gravity, mass and energy from Newton to Einstein changed the meaning of these concepts in subtle ways. The notion of coastline doesnt exist independently of the actual processes of measuring it, and these processes conform to changeable conventions of measurement.

You mention constraints. The next question is, "from whence these constraints?" Well, one view that might recommend itself is that "things do what they do because of what they are," i .e., natures that explain why things interact as they do, and we might think the case for natures is particularly strong for those substances that are (relatively) self-determining, self-governing, self-organizing wholes (principle, organisms, although other dissipative systems might be lower down the scale here). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Complex dynamical systems approaches applied to cognitive intentionality explain how intentional stances produce specific constraints, constraints which do not act as efficient causes.

This is absent from the discussion,
— Astrophel
What discussion? You make incomprehensible statements about what you do not and can not know, and then double down on them with gobbledegook.
Done here — Vera Mont

Let me give it a try. Astrophel is basing his view of relations between subject and world in part on phenomenologist Michel Henry. Given the respect for Henry’s work on the part of enactivist cognitive theorists, I think there are substantial compatibilities between Henry and these approaches in psychology of perception and related philosophy of science.

So let’s take your comments about scientific observation and rethink them from an enactivist perspective:

Much can be said about the process of observation, taking measurements, hypothesizing, experimentation and testing. The 'basic data' is already there, in the physical world, to be noticed, recorded, studied and understood. There is no single 'perceptual event'. Conscious beings notice their environment and make sense of it to the best of their ability. — Vera Mont

What is the relation between observation and knowledge?
You mentioned that we have to ‘make sense of’ what we observe. Let’s talk about what this ‘making sense of’ consists of. Notice that the development of human knowledge is not simply an internalizing of external facts. ‘There’s a leaf out there and here inside my brain is a representation of that leaf.’ We can instead track the development of knowledge in terms of a remarkable increase of complexity of organization in human brains, human social organization and our built technological environment. Every leap in knowledge is manifested by the construction of new devices, new apparatuses of observation and measurement. Put differently, knowledge evolution involves the construction of a biological niche that we inhabit , interact with and are changed by.

When we build such things as apparatuses of measurement , we don’t use them simply to passively observe an aspect of the external world, we bring together different parts of the world together with our devices and our devices together with our activities. Knowing what a leaf is ‘in itself’ is useless to us. What we want to know is how the leaf interacts with us and other other aspects of the world that we are actively involved with. This is not a passive observational mirroring or representing. , it’s a synthesizing. In coming to know the world we are building new webs of interconnections where there were none before. Saying that knowledge represents the world makes no more sense than saying that the evolution of more and more complex forms of life is a representing of the world. Human knowledge as biological niche construction allows us to actively manipulate our world in more and more complex and controllable ways. But doesn’t scientific knowledge depend on the fact that there are laws and properties intrinsic to the things of the world?

These laws and properties are what show up for us in the ways we interact with our world through our built
niche. The reality of the world shows up for us in terms of constraints on what works and what doesn’t. We can’t build that niche any way we want to, just as there are constraints on what will allow organisms to survive. But st the same time , the laws and properties that we ‘discover’ in nature are not external to the ways we arrange and rearrange our relations with that world as knowledge
develops. The properties we observe are not properties of the things in themselves but properties of our arrangements of interaction with them, and as these arrangements of knowledge evolve, the properties change. Not any old way, but not also not as fixed external ‘laws’.

While it's true that many of our convictions are hinges (basic beliefs), I wouldn't use "system of convictions," and Witt never used this wording — Sam26

How exact do you need the wording to be? He said my convictions form a system.

102. Might I not believe that once, without knowing it, perhaps is a state of unconsciousness, I was taken far away from the earth - that other people even know this, but do not mention it to me? But this would not fit into the rest of my convictions at all. Not that I could describe the system of these convictions. Yet my convictions do form a system, a structure.

My take on that is that chess is a game (or perhaps even a sport, though I personally don't think so) while math is not a game. — Arcane Sandwich

By ‘game’, Wittgenstein meant a discursively produced and reproduced system ( convention) of intelligibility. I consider math to be a discursive convention as well.

Sorry Josh, but I never said anything about a "system of convictions." You're confusing what I said about Moore's use of "I know..." (which is more like an expression of conviction as opposed to knowledge) with the framework of reality, made up of basic beliefs or certainties. — Sam26

I was equating “system of convictions” with the expression you did use: “truths that are part of our background certainty.”
Do you distinguish between what you call the “framework of reality” and what Wittgenstein calls a system of convictions, which I see as equivalent to language games, hinge propositions and forms of life?

The statement, "I believe this is a hand," can be said (I don't like the term 'truth value') to be true in some language games. It's comparable to saying "It's true that bishops move diagonally." — Sam26

Someone is trying to learn the rules of chess. They are afraid they are getting it wrong, so they ask if it is true that bishops move two squares up and one step over. Even as they ask this, they doubt that they have it right. Notice how in this example, it makes sense to talk about true vs false and doubt. But what is one doubting, what is one getting wrong, the language game of chess? But that can’t be, because it doesn’t make sense to doubt a language game. So what is true or false, or to be doubted, about the statement ‘bishops move diagonally’ if not the rules of chess?

Isnt my telling someone their belief that ‘bishops move two squares up and one step over’ is false akin to the adherent of an heliocentric account telling the adherent of a geocentric account that their belief is false? In both examples, aren’t the concepts of falsity and doubt misplaced? We act as though believing a bishop moves two squares up and one square over is incorrect in the same way as miscalculating the product of 25 x 347, when in fact it is an example of producing rules of a different language game than that of chess.

My approach to truth is that it's more about their role in different language games. So, one role is that statements can be true as part of a framework, like the role of hinges or the role that rules play in a game. These are not truths that are justified, but truths that are part of our background certainty (and they can be used as propositions in an argument). — Sam26

You say that the system of convictions that form the background certainty of a language game can be used as propositions in an argument . Banno says the kind of propositions that the ‘truths’ of a background system of convictions can be used as are those which assign a truth value. Do you agree with him? If not , what kind of propositional argument can these truths be used as? Can you give an example? I have problems with calling a language game an ‘argument’. What kind of argument is a form of life? If we try to persuade someone to adopt our way of seeing, are we presenting an argument or is our way of seeing the condition of possibility for arguments? Isnt the language game the bedrock, the groundless ground for arguments and the point where arguments end?

105. All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life.

By this, Wittgenstein doesn’t mean that the elements of the background system form a meta-argument, but that they are not of the order of an argument at all.

I think there is a need here to distinguish between essential and accidental properties, as a way toward understanding this question. If we say that every single rule is essential to the game known as "chess", then changing any one of them would render the new game as no longer "chess". We'd then say that any such change affects the foundation. But if, for example, we designate only the position of "check" as essential to the game, then we are free to make all sort of rule changes, still call the new game "chess", and say that we have not doubted "the foundation".

So it all depends on what is determined as "the foundation". I believe that in many conceptions, there is no such thing as "the foundation", because numerous essential aspects are brought together, therefore numerous foundational aspects — Metaphysician Undercover

A language game like chess has built into its assumptions the looseness of the relations among its rules. This looseness is what makes it permissible to tinker with individual rules without making the game unrecognizable or incoherent. What is considered accidental and what is essential is itself specified by the structure of the language game of chess. By contrast , the language game underlying the statement ‘water boils at 100 degrees’ cannot remain intact if this fact is questioned.

However, I believe that we do have to acknowledge the reality of foundational aspects, such as when we turn things right around, like the change from the geocentric to the heliocentric model. Clearly the foundational belief was doubted.
Imagine if we turned the game of chess right around, so that each player started in an equal position of checkmate, with some pieces already taken off the board, and the players were allowed to move other pieces while the king was checked, and the goal was to get all the pieces back to what is now the starting place. This would render the check position irrelevant, and that change would clearly be the result of doubting the foundation, because "the object" of the game would be completely changed. In this case we can say that when the conception of "the object" is doubted, the foundation is doubted — Metaphysician Undercover

Wiitgenstein uses the word ‘doubt’ to indicate a situation where some particular feature within a language game is put into question, while leaving the game intact. This is why he says that some beliefs must be left certain in order to doubt anything. We can’t doubt the geocentric model by switching to a heliocentric model unless the two models have features that can be incorporated under the same language game.

"To state that a truth value is a property of propositions that function as assumptions in an argument is to lay out the terms of a language game.

But"
...such assumptions are not themselves amenable to ascertainment of truth value.
— Joshs
Well, no. We do assign truth value to some propositions, but we also work out the truth value of other propositions. Not all assumptions must be hinges. — Banno

To be clear, when I equated ‘stating a truth value as a property of propositions that function as assumptions in an argument’ with ‘laying out the terms of a language game’,I didnt mean that all language games are expressible in terms of presenting a truth-apt argument. That is, I dont believe that ‘language game’ is just another word for a ‘proposition with truth values’. They are not the same thing. The latter is subordinate to the former, in the same way that moves in a chess game are subordinate to the rules of chess, and the rules of chess is just one among many possible language games. I’m equating a truth-apt propositional argument with the moves of chess, not with its underlying rules , and certainly not with the nature of language games in general. The underlying rules of a truth-apt argument are not reducible to formal logical notation such as ‘Here is a hand. Therefore there are hands. f(a)⊢∃(x)(fx).’ The bedrock of underlying assumptions making truth apt arguments intelligible don’t , and can’t, look like any statement in formal logic. A system of bedrock convictions is a gestalt structure of interdependent meanings.

141. When we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions. (Light dawns gradually over the whole.)
142. It is not single axioms that strike me as obvious, it is a system in which consequences and premises give one another mutual support.
410. Our knowledge forms an enormous system. And only within this system has a particular bit the value we give it

Furthermore, because the system of convictions underlying the intelligibility of truth apt statements is only one particular language games among many possible games, one can no more use truth apt arguments to express language games in general than one can use the rules of chess to express any and all languages games.

Sounds about right to me.

. If a proposition is to function as an assumption in an argument it must have a truth value. So if hinge propositions are to "ground" our deductions, they must have a truth value — Banno

It seems that you and I read Witt in alignment with different communities of interpretation. The group I identify with believes that all uses of conceptual meaning produce senses of meaning. No word concept can have only one sense of meaning associated with it. If I say that something is true, it always must be asked in what sense , what context of use, within what language game I mean to use this word. This goes for the concept of ‘truth value’. To state that a truth value is a property of propositions that function as assumptions in an argument is to lay out the terms of a language games. Certain bedrock assumptions
must be in place in order for this game of true-false to be intelligible, and such assumptions are not themselves amenable to ascertainment of truth value.

if Wittgenstein is right then we cannot properly be said to know hinge propositions, since they cannot be doubted; and if that is so, then what is one to make of saying we know hinge propositions in a way that is different to other propositions? — Banno

We can be said to know a hinge proposition as being intelligible to us, as opposed to knowing something as in being able to prove it through some empirical or logical procedure. I ‘know’ this is my hand says that the proposition ‘this is my hand ‘ makes sense to me in a particular way, within a particular language game. I have learned how to see that world a certain way. That way can’t be ‘false or true’ since it is simply how things appear to me, how a convention was handed down to me.

What's an example of an organism choosing its motives, goals, or purposes? Aren't those things we discover rather than determine? — frank

We discover , and alter, our purposes in the responses of the world to our perspectivally-based interactions with it.

Turning the foundation on its head requires doubting it. Only by doubting it, will we seek a better way. We will never "change our whole way of looking at things", unless we first doubt our current way of looking at things — Metaphysician Undercover

Would you say that deciding to change the rules of chess in order to make a more interesting game is an example of ‘doubting’ the current foundation of chess?

if we deny to AI conversational assistants the ascription of genuine emotions or autonomous drives, that must be, it seems to me, mainly on account of their lack of embodiment (and social embedding as persons in a community) rather than some missing (literally or metaphorically) "inner" ingredient.
— Pierre-Normand

Being is not an ingredient. — Wayfarer

You wrote that humans are reflexively aware of themselves. This aligns with the notion of subjectivity as consciousness, and consciousness as self-consciousness ( S=S). When God was believed to be the origin of all things, he-she was deemed as the true being, the basis on which to understand all other beings. When man eclipsed god, subjectivity and consciousness took on this role of true Being. An object is that that which appears before a positing self-affecting subject.

A different way to think about being is articulated by people like Heidegger. When he says that Dasein is the being who cares about his own existence, he is rejecting the notions of
subjectively as identity, as self-reflective awareness (S=S), in favor of the notion of being as becoming , as practical action. Being as thrownness into a world. This is consistent with Pierre-Normand‘s suggestion that the appearance of subjectivty ‘emerges from the co-constitution of the animal/person with its natural and social environment, or habitat and community.’

This leads to ’s question:

Can the human mind exceed the limitations of its architecture? — SophistiCat

If it cannot, then my argument that only humans and other living organisms can change their normative motives, goals and purposes would seem to fail. But I would argue that this way of thinking assumes a split between psycho-social and biological processes, ontogeny and phylogeny, nature and culture. It is now understood that behavior feeds back to and shapes the direction of evolutionary processes directly through its effect of genetic structures. This means that the biological brain-body architecture organizing human motives, norms and purposes exists in a mutual feedback loop with cultural behavioral processes. Each affects and changes the other over time. The same is true of the machines we invent, but in a different way. We produce a particular A.I. architecture, and the spread of its use throughout culture changes the nature of society, and sparks ideas for innovations in A.I. systems.

But notice that human intelligence functions as interactive coping in contextually specific circumstances as an intrinsic part of a wider feedforward-feedback ecology that brings into play not only our reciprocal exchanges with other humans but also other animals and material circumstances. Machine ‘intelligence’, by contrast, does not participate directly in this ecological becoming. There is no true mutual affecting taking place when we communicate with ChatGPT. It is a kind of recorded intelligence, a dynamic text that we interpret, but like all texts , it is not rewriting itself even when it seems to respond so creatively to our queries.

And again, it is a mistake to think that these propositions are not true. If they were not true, we could not use them to make observations or deductions. — Banno

I like the rest of what you said, but could you clarify the above? Sam26 pointed out in an earlier post that the sense of ‘ know’ and ‘true’ are not the same for hinge propositions as for particular facts within the games that they set up. Do you agree with this, and if so, how would you characterize the distinction between the sense of ‘true’ with regard to a way of setting up a language game and an observation within that language game? For instance, I would argue that observations are true or false, but language games are true or unintelligible. Unlike an observation within a language game, the language game itself cannot be true as opposed to false. It makes no sense to declare a language game false, only unintelligible.