And traditionally, and in general, the way many people try to overcome disagreement (and to win verbal disputes) is to posit the existence of an external world of which they claim or imply to have special knowledge, and that anyone who doesn't think the way they do is wrong, bad, evil, or in some other way defective. — baker

Splendid Hegel quote. Just the kind of thing that Marx inverted. — Wayfarer

Coming into the world, one grows into a determinate tradition of speaking, seeing, interpreting. Being-in-the-world is an already-having-the-world-thus-and-so.
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Dasein, whiling away its own time in each case, is at the same time always [also, even primarily ] a generation. So a specific interpretedness precedes every Dasein in the shape of the generation itself. What is preserved in the generation is itself the outcome of earlier views and disputes, earlier interpretations and past concerns.
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Such a forgotten past is inherent in the prevailing interpretedness of being-together-with-one-another. To the extent that Dasein lives from ... this past, it is this past itself.
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The world with which we are concerned and being-in itself are both interpreted within the parameters of a particular framework of intelligibility.
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... the 'fore'-character in the structure of interpretedness shows us that it is none other than what has already been that jumps ahead, as it were, of a present time pervaded by interpretedness. Guided by its interpretedness, expectant concern lives its own past.
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Dasein 'is' history.

The past is not an earlier position but the now implicitly functioning past....the past functions to "interpret" the present,...the past is changed by so functioning. — Gendlin

...he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as “truths” ... he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables...
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The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something to come “beyond the world” or “after death.” .. The “kingdom of God” is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a “millennium”—it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere....
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This faith does not formulate itself—it simply lives, and so guards itself against formulae. ...It is only on the theory that no word is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya, and among Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse—and in neither case would it have made any difference to him.—With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit”—he cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth, whatever is established killeth. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. — Nietzsche

The bodily forms of those great minds who are the heroes of this history, the temporal existence and outward lives of the philosophers, are, indeed, no more, but their works and thoughts have not followed suit, for they neither conceived nor dreamt of the rational import of their works. Philosophy is not somnambulism, but is developed consciousness; and what these heroes have done is to bring that which is implicitly rational out of the depths of Mind, where it is found at first as substance only, or as inwardly existent, into the light of day, and to advance it into consciousness and knowledge. This forms a continuous awakening. Such work is not only deposited in the temple of Memory as forms of times gone by, but is just as present and as living now as at the time of its production. ... The conquests made by Thought when constituted into Thought form the very Being of Mind. Such knowledge is thus not learning merely, or a knowledge of what is dead, buried and corrupt: the history of Philosophy has not to do with what is gone, but with the living present.
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Since the progress of development is equivalent to further determination, and this means further immersion in, and a fuller grasp of the Idea itself-that the latest, most modern and newest philosophy is the most developed, richest and deepest. In that philosophy everything which at first seems to be past and gone must be preserved and retained, and it must itself be a mirror of the whole history. The original philosophy is the most abstract, because it is the original and has not as yet made any movement forward; the last, which proceeds from this forward and impelling influence, is the most concrete. This, as may at once be remarked, is no mere pride in the philosophy of our time, because it is in the nature of the whole process that the more developed philosophy of a later time is really the result of the previous operations of the thinking mind; and that it, pressed forwards and onwards from the earlier standpoints, has not grown up on its own account or in a state of isolation. — Hegel

The point was simply that both Leibniz' and Berkeley's metaphysics fall apart if you remove God. — Janus

Valid argument can be mounted from any premise you like, soundness (in the case of metaphysical arguments at least) is undecidable. — Janus

The new ontology argues that we can only ever speak of being as it is for us. Depending on the philosophy in question, this “us” can be minds, lived bodies, language, signs, power, social structures, and so on. — The Democracy of Objects, Chapter 1, by Levi R. Bryant

Even just their importance as members of the canon relies on their system being accepted as a whole. — Janus

It depends on how you want to define the terms. — Janus

Problem is that there is no one rational understanding. Humanity is diverse. — Janus

I am then led to wonder whether that possibility of perception, when engaged, effects an actualization of perception, such that we are really encountering a perception/image rather than the thing itself. For me the possibility of perception is derivative on the thing that exists in itself. The thing is more than a possibility of perception, even though we always know by means of perception. — Leontiskos

Good to know. I figured as much, even though you both consider yourselves correlationists. — Leontiskos

Ontology would no longer be the investigation of being qua being in all its variety and diversity regardless of whether humans exist, but rather would instead become a"n interrogation of Dasein's or human being's access to being. — The Democracy of Objects, Chapter 1, by Levi R. Bryant

plaque flag, I was reading your thread, "Rationalism's Flat Ontology," and so far I'm on the third sentence. — Leontiskos

The problem is their systems fall apart when the lynchpin is removed, which raises the question as to how we might think their systems are important when they are in a shambles. — Janus

there can be no definitive demonstration of truth regarding metaphysical propositions. — Janus

And as 'the world' and 'experience' are not ultimately divided (per non-dualism) then this is why mathematics is uncannily predictictive. That, I think, is the thrust of McDonnell's book. — Wayfarer

My view is that they're real, but they're not phenomenally existent; they're inherent in the way the mind categorises, predicts and organises its cognitions. — Wayfarer

There is a clear conceptual distinction between 'knowable' and 'unknowable'. Can it be proven that everything is knowable or that some things are unknowable? Fitch's Paradox of Knowability? — Janus

For Leibniz there is a "master monad" who coordinates all the rest: God. — Janus

Seems to present a kind of Pythagorean idealism, although I've barely started reading it yet. — Wayfarer

I'm down with that although I would say it depends on what we mean by "world"; do we mean "human world' or simply 'world' as in 'everything that is' including what may be unknowable to the human? — Janus

This theory states that nothing really exists or ever really happens, so it is quite easy to distinguish from the ideas you mention. — FrancisRay

We could equally say that being is fundamental, but 'being' is also just a word, and also misses the non-dual mark. — Janus

And this, again, within an idealistic system. — javra

I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness.. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

For the classical realist the extramental world can be known in itself precisely through the rational, perspective-grounded mind. — Leontiskos

The "inferential role" idea adds a great deal. — Leontiskos

Exactly! And thus if indirect realism's critique of direct realism is thoroughgoing (as Kant's tends to be), then it saws off the branch on which it sits (as you already noted). That's the part that is always hard to see for the first time. — Leontiskos

has radically failed to understand what objects are. — Schopenhauer’s Philosophy, Bryan Magee

Yes, good point. I agree. — Leontiskos

Others say even that the external world is the work of our organs? But then our body, as a part of this external world, would be the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves would be the work of our organs! — Nietzsche

This is what I don't really agree with. — Leontiskos

In his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty gave a phenomenological analysis of perception and elaborated how one constitutes one's perceptual experiences, which are essentially perspectival.

The essential partiality of our view of things, he argued, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time, does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be co-present with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (profiles, adumbrations).

The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads).

Good quotes. I wish you had given the sources. — Leontiskos

From an excellent blog post on idealism and non-duality, — Wayfarer

the key to non-dual consciousness lies in recognizing that one’s individual person is part of the object side of experience (together with the ‘outside’ world) and that therefore the individual person cannot be the true subject of experience – this true subject being rather non-individual consciousness free from the subject-object duality of individual and outside world.

the duality of subject and external object – and thus the sensory affection of the former by the latter – is a phenomenon appearing in transcendental consciousness and therefore not a property of this consciousness which pre-conditions all phenomenality.

In this sense, Kant’s recognition of the phenomenal nature of the inner sense / outer sense duality should have clearly shown to him the non-dual nature of transcendental consciousness itself. That is, it should have made it perfectly clear to him that the transcendental subject, whose self-consciousness unifies all phenomena, is a non-dual subject, i.e. a subject without an external object (“one without a second” in the language of the Upanishads).

In his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty gave a phenomenological analysis of perception and elaborated how one constitutes one's perceptual experiences, which are essentially perspectival.

The essential partiality of our view of things, he argued, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time, does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be co-present with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (profiles, adumbrations).

The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads).

Also, his dismissal of the idea that there is a 'set of all sets'. . . — FrancisRay

Heidegger was a great and perceptive thinker and I'm a fan, but he muddles the issues to the point of incomprehensibility and did not crack the case. — FrancisRay

The ego is as little absolutely permanent as are bodies. That which we so much dread in death, the annihilation of our permanency, actually occurs in life in abundant measure. That which is most valued by us, remains preserved in countless copies, or, in cases of exceptional excellence, is even preserved of itself. In the best human being, however, there are individual traits, the loss of which neither he himself nor others need regret. Indeed, at times, death, viewed as a liberation from individuality, may even become a pleasant thought.
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Similarly, class-consciousness, class-prejudice, the feeling of nationality, and even the narrowest-minded local patriotism may have a high importance, for certain purposes. But such attitudes will not be shared by the broad-minded investigator, at least not in moments of research. All such egoistic views are adequate only for practical purposes. Of course, even the investigator may succumb to habit. Trifling pedantries and nonsensical discussions; the cunning appropriation of others' thoughts, with perfidious silence as to the sources; when the word of recognition must be given, the difficulty of swallowing one's defeat, and the too common eagerness at the same time to set the opponent's achievement in a false light: all this abundantly shows that the scientist and scholar have also the battle of existence to fight, that the ways even of science still lead to the mouth, and that the pure impulse towards knowledge is still an ideal in our present social conditions.

The primary fact is not the ego, but the elements (sensations). ... When I cease to have the sensation green, when I die, then the elements no longer occur in the ordinary, familiar association. That is all. Only an ideal mental-economical unity, not a real unity, has ceased to exist. The ego is not a definite, unalterable, sharply bounded unity. None of these attributes are important; for all vary even within the sphere of individual life; in fact their alteration is even sought after by the individual. Continuity alone is important.... But continuity is only a means of preparing and conserving what is contained in the ego. This content, and not the ego, is the principal thing. This content, however, is not confined to the individual. With the exception of some insignificant and valueless personal memories, it remains presented in others even after the death of the individual. The elements that make up the consciousness of a given individual are firmly connected with one another, but with those of another individual they are only feebly connected, and the connexion is only casually apparent. Contents of consciousness, however, that are of universal significance, break through these limits of the individual, and, attached of course to individuals again, can enjoy a continued existence of an impersonal, superpersonal kind, independently of the personality by means of which they were developed. To contribute to this is the greatest happiness of the artist, the scientist, the inventor, the social reformer, etc. — Mach

Some one said: “The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.” Precisely, and they are that which we know.
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What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career.

What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. — Eliot

Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed & govern’d their Passion or have No Passions, but because they have Cultivated their Understandings. The Treasures of Heaven are not Negations of Passion but Realities of Intellect, from which all the Passions Emanate Uncurbed in their Eternal Glory. The Fool shall not enter into heaven let him be ever so Holy. Holiness is not The Price of Enterance into Heaven. — Blake