If it's possible for others to not know that they do not know, how can I know that I do know? Especially when meaning seemed so simple and easy this whole time, almost as if it were given, and now it seems impossible to determine? — Moliere

It has a self-referential quality -- what we say is an example of the phenomenon being explored, and so in the act we can make new examples that break old rules, even the rules that we may supply ourselves. — Moliere

The conformist personality envisions a child who will embrace the conformity of the given, just like themselves. Surely, why would they be unhappy with the given?

The open personality type envisions a child trapped in the conformity of the given. Why should they put someone through this? — schopenhauer1

Obviously, the practical minded will always win this debate in the realm of the social as we need things to get done, not questioned. — schopenhauer1

Do the conformist-personalities have better values because they don't have this extra layer of inertia to overcome? Does human evolution favor these personality types? The ones that must overcome their own dislike for the practical, perhaps are the outliers. — schopenhauer1

The conformist can never really see the open personality types view. They don't understand why they don't hunker down in the given system. The open person sees the pragmatist as conformist and unimaginative. — schopenhauer1

We cannot repeat too often the great lesson of freudian psychology: that repression is normal self-protection and creative self-restriction-in a real sense, man's natural substitute for instinct. Rank has a perfect, key term for this natural human talent: he calls it "partialization" and very rightly sees that life is impossible without it. What we call the well-adjusted man has just this capacity to partialize the world for comfortable action. I have used the term "fetishization," which is exactly the same idea: the "normal" man bites off what he can chew and digest of life, and no more. In other words, men aren't built to be gods, to take in the whole world; they are built like other creatures, to take in the piece of ground in front of their noses. Gods can take in the whole of creation because they alone can make sense of it, know what it is all about and for. But as soon as a man lifts his nose from the ground and starts sniffing at eternal problems like life and death, the meaning of a rose or a star cluster-then he is in trouble. Most men spare themselves this trouble by keeping their minds on the small problems of their lives just as their society maps these problems out for them. These are what Kierkegaard called the "immediate" men and the "Philistines." They "tranquilize themselves with the trivial"- and so they can lead normal lives.

The truth of Skepticism is that part of being human is our part, to step forward with courage, to treat the other as if they are a human (as if they have a soul Wittgenstein would say), meaning not as if they were real, because I don't know your pain, I react to it (or ignore it). — Antony Nickles

Is existentialism at odds with the idea of personality types? — schopenhauer1

Existentialism seems to focus on human freedom and choice. This seems to indicate that we could do and be things at each moment differently than we are doing. — schopenhauer1

Solipsism, born from skepticism, is not ridiculous, or just illogical, or wrong. — Antony Nickles

we have this thing as the processor, and it doesn't touch the world around it, ever. It's safe inside a blood/brain barrier. — frank

we both have limited access and connection to the same world, which is not therefore "internal". — unenlightened

Now don't spoil it Mr Flag... I was enjoying my achievements. And yes, it does mean I was also responsible for Pol Pot and Hitler and that sitcom, Friends... And you... — Tom Storm

I love how we can go from Heidegger's notions of chatter to putative supplies of bananas and peanutbutter in the same thread... — Tom Storm

Dickens also used to laugh as he wrote, and he even did all the voices of his characters out loud as he penned their dialogue. I would give anything to hear that... — Tom Storm

I imagine Shakespeare doing similarly - smart actors make great writers. — Tom Storm

As long as you get the money and the girls, what will it matter? :cool: — Tom Storm

Do you equate interpretation with idle talk? — Fooloso4

It means I wrote all of Beethoven's string quartets, directed all the great movies, and was the seminal (and only) figure in the development of Quantum Physics. I had no idea I had that sort of range. :wink: — Tom Storm

P.S. Do you have a refutation of my claim: being-ness is an insuperable medium. It's the lynchpin of my application of sets. Its refutation might be the kill shot. — ucarr

That's what the average monkey is still spending a lot of time doing, instead of boarding jet planes to various continents thereafter entering elevators to offices in celestial climes. — ucarr

The duet of intelligibility-meets-comprehending-sentience suggests to me something intriguing along the lines of entanglement, with language playing a central role in the mix. — ucarr

Firstly, do you embrace or refute Descartes' ghost-in-the-machine substance duality, with its bifurcation of mind/body? Language signification is deeply embedded within this interweave, I believe.

I'm not ready to make comprehensive declarations just now, however, language-as-mind-games-hovering-over-an-abyss sounds to me like thinking rooted in Descartes' substance duality. — ucarr

The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in a many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning. — Cormac

I appreciate your persistence with me as I work to understand subtleties of language and meaning you're trying to communicate. — ucarr

all interpretation, even of the past, is necessarily ‘prejudgmental’ in the sense that it is always oriented to present concerns and interests, and it is those present concerns and interests that allow us to enter into the dialogue with the matter at issue...

The prejudicial character of understanding means that, whenever we understand, we are necessarily involved in a dialogue that encompasses both our own self-understanding and our understanding of the matter at issue ... In the dialogue of understanding our prejudices come to the fore, both inasmuch as they play a crucial role in opening up what is to be understood, and inasmuch as they themselves become evident in that process. As our prejudices thereby become apparent to us, so they can also become the focus of questioning in their own turn.

you place a measure of trust and hope in language to successfully communicate. — ucarr

If semiotics is hopelessly self-referential, thus leading inevitably to empty word-games, then why is no one shutting down the global publishing industry? — ucarr

Gossip? Is this an example of frankly violent and shameless interpretation? — Fooloso4

As I see it, we would benefit more from being honest with ourselves and admit that there are those who have far more interesting and important things to say than we do. But perhaps I am wrong and there will be books and seminars and classes devoted to studying green flag. — Fooloso4

Thanks, yes, I kind of got this from the initial thought experiment. Not sure I'd do it all again. Let alone for ever. You? — Tom Storm

By avoiding saying as they say we do not thereby have something of worth to say in their stead. — Fooloso4

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater.

The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and
creators, but names and customs. Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
...
For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.

Why must we do as they do? — Fooloso4

It is not only questionable, it is not something I would do or recommend. — Fooloso4

you’d have to answer where you got the language to be able to think of it, but further when you doubt everything but that you definitely exist you don’t have anything you can use to support your point. — Darkneos

There is no "naked world" if it's within our system of references. We can't get outside it. — L'éléphant

The only way to truly understand the author on their own terms is to be that author, and even then , ‘their’ own terms change from writing to writing. We have to make do with filtering the author’s ‘own’ terms through our own times and our own philosophical frame of reference. — Joshs

I think non-linguistic thinking is much more than a mere "footnote". — Janus