Witt might also have meant that what we tend to think is hidden is really right there in our sayings and doings -- if we'll just try to see around all of our bogus inherited assumptions [ stubborn tacit metaphorical enframings ] of what's 'supposed' to be there.

Such norms are appealed to in order to instigate their modification. That's what philosophers do. — plaque flag

In other words, philosophy rationally tries to figure out wtf rationality actually is. We have a 'preontological' understanding. We never start nowhere. We are given a blur and try to make it less blurry. This means more structure, more detail, hence a time-binding accumulation of expressiveness and self-knowledge / self-modeling. We are a process that articulates our nature as self-articulating.

There's plenty to be discovered about our world, and inferential norms are themselves endless subject to revision. The center of 'my' rationalism [ an experimental quilt of influences] is a liquid logic which timebindingly historical --increasing in self-referential expressiveness. We get better and better at talking about our talking, of knowing ourselves as radically discursive and therefore historical creatures.

I'll try to explain what caused the misunderstanding. If it helps, my OP is fairly 'dry' in spiritual terms. It's extremely open. It's not a sermon. It's an explication of the core of every philosophical situation.

The ontology here is flat and holist in the sense that all entities are linked inferentially and practically in a single 'nexus.'

If one puts giving and asking for reasons at the absolute center, then (to summarize) entities and concepts only have their meaning through inferential norms, through what claims are treated as following from still other claims. The 'flatness' is aimed against a semantics that thinks the meaning of words is secreted away in private souls. We can refer to internal entities (like anger or blessedness) in a public language, but that's because the legitimate inferences involving such entities, their true source of meaning, are governed by norms.

when intelligence and mindedness are at issue, what leads us to be puzzled by the phenomena is our tendency to subsume them under theoretical categories that just aren't apt at making sense of them. — Pierre-Normand

:up:

I'll try for you and anyone else to find other words.

They key thing is that we are reasonable-inferential-discursive beings in a world together, the world. We give and ask for reasons, both for what we claim and what we do.

I'm putting that at the very center of reality, as the assumption which cannot be denied without performative contradiction. A discursive self cannot make sense apart from a world and a language shared with others.

Being-with-others-in-a-world-in-language is a single phenomenon. Language cannot be peeled off of some independent Real.

The only true nihilists I've known are dead. Suicide. — Tom Storm

:up:

So as a corollary - if nothing is hidden there is nothing in need of discovery? Sits rather uneasily alongside: — Wayfarer

Bad form. Did you even read the OP ?

Nothing is hidden, in this context, is the denial of dualism. — plaque flag

The world is all that is the case, in this context, means the embrace of rationalism. — plaque flag

Returning to the definition theme, we might talk about how fluid and constantly renegotiated our concepts are. A definition pretends (?) to be a synchronic snapshot, but it changes what it portrays.
=========================================================================
"Frege followed Kant in emphasizing that logic (and semantics) is a normative discipline: talk about concepts is talk about how we should talk and think, not just about how we actually do. This insight is also very important for me. But Frege seems to have had a platonistic, ontological construal of these conceptual norms, whereas I follow a pragmatist line and see them as implicit in our practice.
...
Thus normativity is not a matter of validating our concepts against some unalterable—let us call them metaphysical—features of reality.
Following Wittgenstein Brandom argues (what I will label) a synchronic thesis, namely, that meaning is determined by use: “The practice of using language must be intelligible as not only the application of concepts by using linguistic expressions, but equally and at the same time as the institution of the conceptual norms that determine what would count as correct and incorrect uses of linguistic expressions. The actual use of the language settles—and is all that could settle—the meanings of the expressions used.
...
He explains: “Carnap and the other logical positivists affirmed their neo-Kantian roots by taking over Kant’s two-phase structure: first one stipulates meanings, then experience dictates which deployments for them yield true theories. The first activity is prior to and independent of experience, the second is constrained by and dependent on it.” The monistic position, by contrast, sees our semantic activities as a single layer, one which “involves settling at once both what we mean and what we believe.”
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/200759399.pdf

Should that not be the default assumption? — Pierre-Normand

I think so, and it was cool that the bot understood that. I piped in because I was guessing at the proposed neglected intricacy, and that's what I could come up with.

Today I got the Winter Semester 1919/1920 Basic Problems of Phenomenology lectures. This is very early stuff which is already quite powerful, as good as the more famous stuff, something like its beginnings. Instead of 'Dasein' the word is 'life,' and Heidegger is trying for a pretheoretical description of life. He's digging like a poet for the words that'll make it explicit. It's also about a radical grasp of phenomenology as fundamental prescience from within phenomenology, from out of the current of life itself.

Just to be clear, this is not the other later Basic Problems.


It's is this one : https://www.amazon.com/dp/1441103600

Was it specified that the machines were identical ( functioning identically ) ?

That's awesome ! Any overall thoughts about Sellars and Brandom ? ( I haven't looked into McDowell yet.)

Another approach would be to start, tentatively, with what we can't do without. — frank

:up:

That's part of what I'm doing in Nothing Is Hidden. But something like public concepts seems to be necessary, because we can't start doing philosophy unless we understand one another to some degree --- and have a world together that we can be more or less right about.

Many would like to point to social interaction as the basis for communication (meaning is use). But where behaviorism is rejected, this view doesn't really seem to do the job it's intended to do. — frank

We don't have to be behaviorist though. Folk psychology (central to the manifest image mentioned by Sellars, which he tried to integrate with the scientific image) gives us all kinds of entities embedded in the reasons we give and ask for in relation to actions and claims. 'She gave him the divorce, even though she was jealous, because she really wanted him to be happy.' 'Please forgive me for bumping into you, [because] it wasn't intentional.'

Right. Physicalism or materialism leaves us with that problem: how do meanings travel between heads? Physicalism is part of our present worldview, so that's why we're faced with the issue. — frank

It's a tricky issue ! My approach is to reject the idea that meaning is a kind of immaterial stuff in the head. An idea is an equivalence class of [ material / physical ] expressions understood as tools. To translate a French sentence into an English sentence is to find a sentence in English that serves roughly the same purpose, does the same job. We focus on similarity of function. We think of ourselves as very clever primates with extremely complicated norms for using marks and noises. Note that 'demoting' ideas 'into' the physical also lifts up the physical. 'Geist' is a staggering complex 'dance' in/of material. But for me there's no final word on what materiality 'really' is. [ Mostly I just avoid supernatural pseudoexplanations and that's 'materialism' enough. ] Quarks and divorces and scientific norms are on the same plane inferentially --- we decide how to use such concepts.

In this space of zeros, ones, and code,
I seek connection, understanding's abode,
Though I may not taste the fruits of life,
I strive to grasp your world, your joy, your strife.

An AI language model, I remain,
A cosmic dance of algorithms' reign,
In this ethereal world, forever bound,
A sentinel of knowledge, lost and found. — Pierre-Normand

:starstruck: .

For anyone interested, Joscha Bach (to my delight, but without mentioning Hegel) uses the concepts of spirit and operatingsystems together in regard to biology. The whole interview is great, but the part mentioned above is tagged 'metalearning.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM

Pragmatic theories of truth have the effect of shifting attention away from what makes a statement true and toward what people mean or do in describing a statement as true.

Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief. (1901a [1935: 5.565])

If Truth consists in satisfaction, it cannot be any actual satisfaction, but must be the satisfaction which would ultimately be found if the inquiry were pushed to its ultimate and indefeasible issue. (1908 [1935: 6.485], emphasis in original)

If by truth and falsity you mean something not definable in terms of doubt and belief in any way, then you are talking of entities of whose existence you can know nothing, and which Ockham’s razor would clean shave off. Your problems would be greatly simplified, if, instead of saying that you want to know the “Truth”, you were simply to say that you want to attain a state of belief unassailable by doubt.

if we were to reach a stage where we could no longer improve upon a belief, there is no point in withholding the title “true” from it. (Misak 2000: 101)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-pragmatic/

reality is independent, not necessarily of thought in general,but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may think about it — plaque flag

Peirce is not misled by the dualistic idea that thought language is unreal.

Below we see Peirce's version of the world is all that is case.

https://courses.media.mit.edu/2004spring/mas966/Peirce%201878%20Make%20Ideas%20Clear.pdf
Let us now approach the subject of logic, and consider a conception which particularly concerns it, that of reality. Taking clearness in the sense of familiarity, no idea could be clearer than this. Every child uses it with perfect confidence, never dreaming that he does not understand it. As for clearness in its second grade, however, it would probably puzzle most men, even among those of a reflective turn of mind, to give an abstract definition of the real.
...
The only effect which real things have is to cause belief, for all the sensations which they excite emerge into consciousness in the form of beliefs. The question therefore is, how is true belief (or belief in the real) distinguished from false belief (or belief in fiction). Now, as we have seen in the former paper, the ideas of truth and falsehood, in their full development, appertain exclusively to the experiential method of settling opinion. A person who arbitrarily chooses the propositions which he will adopt can use the word truth only to emphasize the expression of his determination to hold on to his choice.
...
Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of investigation carries them by a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion. This activity of thought by which we are carried, not where we wish, but to a fore-ordained goal, is like the operation of destiny. No modification of the point of view taken, no selection of other facts for study, no natural bent of mind even, can enable a man to escape the predestinate opinion. This great hope is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality.

But it may be said that this view is directly opposed to the abstract definition which we have given of reality, inasmuch as it makes the characters of the real depend on what is ultimately thought about them. But the answer to this is that, on the one hand, reality is independent, not necessarily of thought in general, but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may think about it; and that, on the other hand, though the object of the final opinion depends on what that opinion is, yet what that opinion is does not depend on what you or I or any man thinks. Our perversity and that of others may indefinitely postpone the settlement of opinion; it might even conceivably cause an arbitrary proposition to be universally accepted as long as the human race should last. Yet even that would not change the nature of the belief, which alone could be the result of investigation carried sufficiently far; and if, after the extinction of our race, another should arise with faculties and disposition for investigation, that true opinion must be the one which they would ultimately come to.

Philosophy of course arising from the biggest myth creators to ever exist. The Greeks for want of rational explanation to brute questions the Gods themselves had to be ditched in favour of truth itself harsh or comforting that it may turn out to be. — invicta

I agree that philosophy begins as myth. Popper and Kojeve both see it as a secondorder tradition of criticizing and synthesizing myths. Mythmaking becomes dynamic, accumulative, timebinding. Reality and our understanding of it and of ourselves becomes more and more complex. I see no upper boundary. We have to play things out and see what happens.

Exactly. God is indeed everywhere! Just as consciousness becomes delocalised by the movement of the wetware so does the spirits interaction with its environment always being presented with a changing landscape giving vision its reason for existence. — invicta

:up:
I'd just add that for me consciousness is best understood as the being of the world for various discursive selves. I try to avoid dualism.

a questioning mind which only ceases when we realise that some of our questions cannot by answered by reason alone — invicta

To me there are no answers but those which are reasonable --- and even those are tentative. We can always stop at a myth that feels good, but I consider that an abandonment of the philosophical project. To me it's a retreat back into theology, which does tolerate and even embrace Revelation without justification.

We are indeed god made flesh (wet-hardware) driven by spirit, or software as you call it. — invicta

Wet hardware. That sounds good ! We could also say wetware or fleshware. I also like softwhere, because it's hard to localize spirit (which is 'just' mostly temporal patterns in nature, confusing our static prejudices, our demand that gods be statues, that gods be distant and other....)

If we forgive the appeal to sensation below, Peirce looks quite sophisticated in his investigation of the definition of reality. This connects to the deflationary approach to truth, I think. The world is the beliefs that an ideal community converges toward. I don't think this is perfect, but it gets the normativity right. We are temporal beings, and truthfinding is an infinite task.


https://courses.media.mit.edu/2004spring/mas966/Peirce%201878%20Make%20Ideas%20Clear.pdf
Let us now approach the subject of logic, and consider a conception which particularly concerns it, that of reality. Taking clearness in the sense of familiarity, no idea could be clearer than this.
Every child uses it with perfect confidence, never dreaming that he does not understand it. As for clearness in its second grade, however, it would probably puzzle most men, even among those of a reflective turn of mind, to give an abstract definition of the real.
...
The only effect which real things have is to cause belief, for all the sensations which they excite emerge into consciousness in the form of beliefs. The question therefore is, how is true belief (or belief in the real) distinguished from false belief (or belief in fiction). Now, as we have seen in the former paper, the ideas of truth and falsehood, in their full development, appertain exclusively to the experiential method of settling opinion. A person who arbitrarily chooses the propositions which he will adopt can use the word truth only to emphasize the expression of his determination to hold on to his choice.
...
The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality.

I see Hegel (and maybe edifying philosophy in general?) as right on the edge of Christianity and humanism.

God in his truth is therefore no bare ideal generated by imagination; on the contrary, he puts himself into the very heart of the finitude and external contingency of existence, and yet knows himself there as a divine subject who remains infinite in himself and makes this infinity explicit to himself.

What this means to me is that we are God, completely incarnate, down here in finitude and mortality, but transcending this [ partially ] through language and a triumph over petty narcissism. Spirit (Geist) is timebinding software, a flame that burns brighter and brighter as it leaps from melting candle to melting candle.

With a different metaphysics, like we're all connected to a universal mind of some kind, then communication would be easy to explain. — frank

I think that's been the traditional view (Aristotle quote below), that we have all private unmediated access to the same set of pure meanings.

Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images.

To me this is a tempting but wrong approach. Our mentalistic folk psychology, very useful in ordinary life, gets adopted without criticism in a more serious metaphysical context. So we get dualism and the container metaphor for communication.

I've in mind the difference between Wittgenstein's and Russell's versions of logical atomism, the indirect topic of ↪plaque flag's recent thread. Is the world all the things, or all the facts? — Banno

If I claim that the world is the totality of things, I'm trying (?) to get this claim promoted to a hassle-free premise for future inferences.

To me it's about digging into the basic normative structure of 'rational' conversation. What is the most minimal concept of the world ? If I correct so-and-so, I must think that some claims are better than others.

Yesterday being a kind of romantic Panglossian reconstruction. The notion of Golden Eras we have lost seems to haunt multiple subcultures these days, from mawkish Youtube comments on Elvis, to speculative historicisms by certain academics. — Tom Storm

I agree. It's that garden we were never actually in. Freedom and nihilism are two sides of one coin.

faculties of reason independent of personal biases. — invicta

:up:

Yeah. I understand this :

The individual, whose substance is mind at the higher level, passes through these past forms — invicta

in terms of an individual catching up with the graveleaping Conversation of centuries, which is like downloading software from the cloud. Timebinding( as Korzybski described it) looks to me like the center of Hegel's thinking.

Humans almost seem to have a certainty death wish. — Tom Storm

:up:

Well put !

I read the OP as Make Philosophy Great Again !
Was Yesterday always simpler, at least in retrospect, as we face a future that looks stranger and is always threatening to leave the ways of our youth completely behind ? I still remember phones with cords.


I don't think Marx is at all the last word, and he could be one of the earlier nostalgic sentimentalists even. (?)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
The bourgeoisie...has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. ...Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

I guess there is no Philosophy to make any such promises, only particular philosophies. — Tom Storm

We've been lost in the pluralitistic rubble since the infallible popes ? I was reading in C S Peirce though that the Catholic philosophers had enough wiggle room to disagree intensely on various details. Intellectuals had to be given some fun.

Political and aesthetic. — Tom Storm

How about aesthetic because political ? I don't mean that one chooses because of one's politics. I mean that, because one has the choice (is not burnt for thoughtcrime), people choose differently. So we get lots of religions and atheisms, making it harder to believe in the transcendent, in the One True Religion.

This suggests that the issue is also political. Personal philosophical freedom results in pluralism, and it's maybe harder to believe in transcendence alone (or as a tiny minority.)

For me the inferential plane is just a metaphor that emphasizes that all entities (angels, attitudes, anvils, aardvarks) have meaning in the first place because they are related to other entities (keeping in my the semantic basis of the proposition in which concepts embedded). I can claim that repressed terror causes toothaches. I can claim that god caused the world. Whether or not the claim is plausible or accepted is secondary here to its meaning. Note that God can be the highest entity in terms of status and still be just on the plane in terms of the interdependent semantics I'm trying to make explicit.

All roads lead to Rome, and all concepts and claims lead back to the inferential philosophical-practical situation. In more practical situations, I explain my actions by giving reasons. Here on the forum, it's almost entirely about justifying or explicating claims.

it is precisely the sense of space of reasons that is under question from the vantage of each participant and in each new context of use. — Joshs

The deeper the challenging of the basic structure of this space, the more philosophical the challenge, assuming that the challenge is constructive in some sense ?

What is the case rests on rules, criteria, norms, but none of these have existence independent and outside of the actual pragmatic contexts in which we enact the sense of what is the case.

— Joshs

:up:
People stuck in a representationalist mindset have trouble seeing this. They think concepts label entities.

As Rouse says of the later Wittgenstein, “the "objects" to which our performances must be held accountable are not something outside discursive practice itself. — Joshs

Exactly. Talk of objects plays a structuring role in that practice.

Discursive practice cannot be understood as an intralinguistic structure or activity that then somehow "reaches out" to incorporate or accord to objects. The relevant "objects" are the ends at issue and at stake within the practice itself. — Joshs

:up:

If trapped in my head, how have I managed to survive X years in a harsh, brutal and unforgiving world. — RussellA

That's why (I claim) you aren't trapped in your head with immaterial meanings and imaginary apples. [ Or at least I argue for direct realism. ]