Which is, I think at least, the temptation of foundationalism -- if you're against everything, if you feel you know, if you want something other than what is then how else to pursue that than through a foundationalist philosophy? Or through something like a Marxist philosophy which reduces everything to some other conflict you're interested in? — Moliere

I completely understand the temptation to psychologize foundationalism in general, and I tend to find something plausible in such moves. But the psychological sword is sharp on both sides, and the 'anarchist' is just as easily 'diagnosed.' Psychological claims have to be justified, right ?

FWIW, what interests me about this foundational project is its radical minimalism. I want nothing more than what's already implicit in the idea of autonomous-critical thought. What is the absolutely minimal constraint on 'scientific' ontology ? What conditions make it intelligible, coherent ? So that any rational challenge of it misunderstands itself ?

skeptics are using the resources of rationality without acknowledging it. — Moliere

:up:

So I'd call them (from this sketched position anyway) pseudo-skeptics who don't understand themselves. The 'true' skeptic doesn't show up or at least refrains from projecting claims about what others can know. Epistemological claims are implicitly ontological claims, typically about the 'universal' subject. One inspiration for my critique here is a quasi-Kantian pose that pretends to humility but makes a massive claim on what others can rationally hope to know.

I really don't mind be challenged in good faith, but you are saying at the same time (1) that you don't understand me and (2) that my reasoning is bad. Your entrance is hilariously boorish. I'm not exactly intimidated by your critique just yet.

I've generally spoken in favor of the academy. I wouldn't have the understandings I do today without having gone. And I wouldn't be able to perceive the world as crazy unless I happened across these paths. — Moliere

I depend on professors mostly for my translations of German philosophy, so the universities are not totally rotted out (I mostly joke, but I don't love stories of professors being hounded out of 'em for thinking.) But I had in mind the larger culture of a free society, to the degree that it's not rotted out by tribal fear and hatred.

There's something beautiful and difficult about being an individual --our strange mission in a freeish rational society. Do you know the song Nutshell by Alice in Chains ? Nice ambivalence.

video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AzCj0b4MUU

lyrics:
https://genius.com/Alice-in-chains-nutshell-lyrics

Shakespeare works wonderfully, but most wouldn't listen to theatrical sorts in a philosophical space -- that's just mere art and all that. — Moliere

Perhaps we agree that such a rejection is not logically justified. The world is given to and through entire personalities. I'm aware of no evidence to the contrary. This makes personality a fundamental aspect of reality. But as you hint, it sounds too tenderminded and messy for some.

.

I think we need to recognize how much we, as human beings, are not the Enlightenment's conception of Man as Rational Decider. — Moliere

I can definitely agree that we are far more than merely conceptual beings.

Looking around the world today, I'd be tempted to say we are mostly crazy, but there is relatively robust tradition of relative individual freedom which I can't or at least shouldn't take for granted.

And if we're not a singular, simple subject, but a bundle — Moliere

Despite our massive 'internal' complexity, I think we are singular as discursive subjects. At least in practical life we are. A philosophy forum might give each member two different avatars, expecting them to diverge. I do think Shakespeare, for instance, proves that we are internally multiple. [ I guess I should have started with my agreement, in retrospect. ]

Now this is definitely something which goes against my notions of rationality, given what I've said thus far. I tend to think of rationality as the tool, ala Hume. — Moliere

As a former pragmatist, I totally understand the charm of that view. But mere instrumental rationality, present surely in rabbits, misses the heart of Enlightenment humanism, which is autonomy. The reason claims have to be justified is because we are laws to ourselves. We are only [ ideally ] bound by authorities we recognize. Rationality in this higher sense is a framework of freedom and responsibility. Brandom even gets semantics from inferential norms ---and he seems to at least offer a chunk of the truth.

Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding [= reason[33]] without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. Sapere aude! [Dare to be wise!] Have courage to make use of your own understanding [= reason]! is thus the motto of enlightenment.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason/

and talk of shit-throwing superstitious monkeys. — Judaka

I really didn't mean that to come off as shrill. I was just trying to be vivid about the implications of irrationalism. The culture of personal responsibility and freedom is 'based on' or 'equivalent to' a normative conception of rationality. An instrumentalist concept has us confusing ourselves with optimization algorithms. And this confusion is tempting because it looks daring and openminded and unsentimental. And my harping on the normativity of rationality looks sentimental. But my motives are primarily logical. I want to tell the unsentimental and 'embarrassing' truth --- that ethics is first philosophy.

What's the relevance of psychologism? — Judaka

It's part of the family of post-philosophical 'irrationalisms' that 'reduce' rationality and logic.

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Psychologism

Psychologism is a philosophical position that attempts to reduce diverse forms of knowledge including concepts and principles of logic and mathematics to states of mind or phenomena that occur in the mind. It takes psychology as the fundamental discipline that can explain and justify knowledge in philosophy. .. Psychologism is a form of reductionism that attempts to reduce other forms of knowledge including those of logic and mathematics into psychological concepts.

The issue is that psychological claims are only authoritative if logic is. In our context, I tried to use logic to show that pragmatism has serious issues. We seem to agree that truth is about assertion. But this means truth transcends utility.

'P is useful to believe' is different 'P is true.' Correct ?

Equally, the "truth" of my argument, involves interpreting reality as meeting the prerequisites of something like "useful". It's true that my argument seems correct, or it's true that my argument seems accurate, or something like that.

In the simplest terms, if a method achieves its goal then that is a truth, and it's this kind of truth we seek, not "that which is in accordance with reality", barely anyone gives a shit about that. In a very real sense, anything useful is truth, specifically in its use. — Judaka

This is where you pretty directly write as a pragmatist. Later I try to show the issue with that position.

If there's no truth but only useful fictions, then that itself is just a useful fiction. There's also no fact of the matter about whether or not a fiction is useful. So we'll have to decide if it's useful to believe that it's useful to believe that it's useful to believe... — plaque flag

You call it a strawman, but I don't see why it's a strawman. Pragmatism is close to instrumentalism and the idea of useful fictions. In some version of prag/inst, the claims/beliefs are more like shovels, neither truth nor false,

I'm not opposed to the idea that saying "P is true" is roughly an assertion of P. If I say, it's true that an item is overpriced, I am asserting that it's overpriced. Is that claim irreducible? Sure, generally speaking. — Judaka

:up:
If we agree, as we seem to here, at least, then beliefs as 'pragmatic delusions' (my phrase) don't seem to work. Of course I can get behind mere fallibilism.

I have no idea what you're even criticising so searingly in your response, but it's in a response to me, with a bunch of straw-mans, and talk of shit-throwing superstitious monkeys. — Judaka

I really did mean in all in a friendly tone. I paraphrased part of an argument I found in a book that changed my mind about certain relativistic positions I once found convincing.

Doesn't logic need to be compelling? Isn't logic so easily wrong? I know you know that, so, help me understand the performative contradiction. — Judaka

I think we 'have' to separate logic in its ideal / normative sense from logic as a mere description of our fallible often illogical (in a normative sense) thinking process. I'd say that truly logical thinking ought to compel us. We ought to defer to the 'force' of the better reason. But we may in fact be more impressed by sophistry. This might be what you meant by logic being 'so easily wrong.'

This is tautological. I mean I'm trying to explicate the normative sense of logic -- unfold what is folded/implicit.

I think you just misunderstood my explanation --or I misunderstood what you wanted explained.

I don't mention ethics for sentimental reasons. Rationality is fundamentally ethical (implicitly about autonomy and freedom), though psychologism tends to try to reduce evade the normative dimension.

Also the passages quoted on language, about its protean character, don't destroy [ paradoxically ] a 'faith ' (trust) in conceptuality but inspire a respect for the complexity of the situation.

I asked for an explanation on why you thought I was wrong and you haven't provided one. But if you want to finish things up here, that's fine as well. — Judaka

Sorry if I offended you somehow. I felt quite calm and friendly and when I wrote all that.

Huh... This is a straw man, but I won't correct it. — Judaka

I'm just showing some classic problems with attempts to reduce truth to something else.

Okay... but I thought you had agreed with my views on truth, I'm puzzled. — Judaka

In case it helps:

I suggested that 'P is true' is (roughly) the assertion of P.
Then I said that assertion was possibly irreducible.

Yes, of course we cannot speak without using the verb to be. But this does not imply that we must have a strongly clear idea about its meaning. — Angelo Cannata

:up:
You are just repeating my point.

FWIW, my thread on the 'worldly foolishness' of philosophy is largely a reaction to the invisibility of its power and validity for those who presuppose a 'cash value' pragmatist epistemology of if it's gear, it's here. Probably we all do most of the time, given the pressures of practical life. But ought we embrace this irrationalism even such pressure relents ?Is a page of pure math 'empty' because we don't have the training to appreciate its beauty and truth yet ?

For Science is of that nature, as none can understand it to be, but such as in a good measure have attayned it.

Of course people can overestimate their own attainment, but one form of this is denying the attainment of others.

I don’t think that questioning our understanding of “to be” is equivalent to say that communication is impossible. We don’t need to assume that we have a clear idea about the meaning of “to be” to be able to communicate. — Angelo Cannata

OK, but being is everywhere in our talk. Heidegger, etc.

Some good stuff from Zahavi's book on Husserl (pdf not hard to find, paperback well worth the price):

According to Husserl, reality is not simply a brute fact detached from every context of experience and from every conceptual framework, but is a system of validity and meaning that needs subjectivity, that is, experiential and conceptual perspectives if it is to manifest and articulate itself. It is in this sense that reality depends on subjectivity, which is why Husserl could claim that it is just as nonsensical to speak of an absolute mind-independent reality as it is to speak of a circular square (Hua 3/120).

This is obviously not to deny or question the existence of the real world, but simply to reject an objectivistic interpretation of its ontological status. What does it mean to be a transcendent object? For Husserl, this question can only be answered critically, that is, undogmatically, by turning to the phenomenologically given, namely to the objects qua appearing. To speak of transcendent objects is to speak of objects that are not part of my consciousness and that cannot be reduced to my experience of them. It is to speak of objects that might always surprise us, that is, objects showing themselves differently than we expected. However, it is not to speak of objects as independent of or inaccessible to my perspective in any absolute sense.

On the contrary, Husserl believes that it only makes sense to speak of transcendent objects insofar as they are transcendent for us. The objects only have significance for us through our consciousness of them. To be real, to be an objectively existing object, is to have a specific regulated structure of appearance, it is to be given for a subject in a certain way, with a certain meaning and validity, not in the sense that the object can exist only when it actually appears, but in the sense that its existence is connected to the possibility of such an appearance. To claim that there are objects that are not actually experienced—stones on the backside of the moon, plants in the Amazon jungle, or colors in the ultraviolet spectrum, for instance—is to claim that the objects in question are embedded in a horizon of experience and could be given in principle (though there might be empirical or anthropocentric difficulties connected to this). It is precisely for this reason that every transcendent object is said to remain part of the phenomenological field of research.

Occasionally, Husserl describes his idealism as an attempt to comprehend and clarify the richness and transcendence of the world through a systematic analysis of constituting intentionality (Hua 1/34). In this sense, Husserl's transcendental idealism can be seen as an attempt to redeem rather than renounce the realism of the natural attitude. Or, to put it differently, Husserl would claim that the transcendental reduction enables us to understand and account for the realism that is intrinsic to the natural attitude. In fact, Husserl writes that his transcendental idealism contains natural realism within itself (Hua 9/254).41 [T]he transcendent world; human beings; their intercourse with one another, and with me, as human beings; their experiencing, thinking, doing, and making, with one another: these are not annulled by my phenomenological reflection, not devalued, not altered, but only understood (Hua 17/282 [275]). That the world exists, that it is given as an existing universe in uninterrupted experience which is constantly fusing into universal concordance, is entirely beyond doubt. But it is quite another matter to understand this indubitability which sustains life and positive science and to clarify the ground of its legitimacy (Hua 5/152-153). There can be no stronger realism than this, if by this word nothing more is meant than: 'I am certain of being a human being who lives in this world, etc., and I doubt it not in the least.' But the great problem is precisely to understand what is here so obvious' (Hua 6/190-191 [187]).
...
In making these claims, Husserl is not only approaching Kant's famous dictum about the compatibility of transcendental idealism and empirical realism, he is also getting close to what has occasionally been called internal realism. To a certain extent, it might actually be said that Husserl's criticism of representationalism does support a kind of (direct) realism. We are ... directed at real existing objects, and this directedness is not mediated by any intramental objects. But if one wants to call this position realism, it has to be emphasized that it is a realism based on experience. It is an experiential realism or an internal realism not unlike the one espoused by Hilary Putnam, having no affinities with a metaphysical realism. In the same breath, and perhaps even more appropriately, one might say that Husserls criticism of representationalism can be seen as a criticism of both realism and idealism. If one defines the opposition between realism and idealism with the use of the doublet internal representation/external reality, idealism claiming that the only entity existing is the intramental representation, while realism claims that the mental representation corresponds to an extramental and mind-independent object, it is obvious that Husserl must reject both.

it would help me to hear your response to the alternative views of Direct Realism linked in my previous post. — Gnomon

Hopefully these quotes from Zahavi's book on Husserl will help.

Phenomenology is not a theory about the merely appearing, or to put it differently, appearances are not mere appearances. For how things appear is an integral-part of what they really are. If we wish to grasp the true nature of the object, we had better pay close attention to how it manifests and reveals itself, be it in sensuous perception or in scientific analyses. The reality of the object is not hidden behind the phenomenon, but unfolds itself in the phenomenon. As Heidegger would say, it is phenomenologically absurd to say of the phenomenon that it stands in the way of something more fundamental that it merely represents. To repeat: Although the distinction between appearance and reality can be maintained, according to Husserl it is not a distinction between two separate realms, but a distinction internal to the realm of appearances. It is a distinction between how the objects might appear at a superficial glance, and how they might appear in the best of circumstances.

What's most offensive in this rationalism is probably the Luciferian humanism. Sartre writes that we are condemned to be free. Does the world lose magic when we finally stand up and demand from the gods that they justify their continuing existence ? Tell us why they should keep their jobs?

One essential criticism about Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” is that we have no idea about what “to be” or “to exist” means. — Angelo Cannata

You can't argue for [ anything implying ] the impossibility of communication.

Perhaps we should say that certain concepts could use some clarification.

I think you are missing the central normative essence of rationality. You appeal to it without accounting for it.

I have some knowledge of neural networks, SGD, backprop. Cool stuff. But equating us with machines looks like psychologism, which is to say a self-subverting flavor of irrationalism.
Thinking of judgements as the outputs of algorithms is similar to thinking of all rationality as mere rationalization, so that this proposed equivalence itself is unjustified and unjustifiable.

This part of the quote is what I have in mind.

A thoroughly selfcritical philosopher has no choice, therefore, but to equate being with what is thought and understood. Any other conception of being—in particular, one that regards being as possibly or necessarily transcending thought—is simply not warranted by the bare idea of being as the “sheer-immediacy-of-which-thought-is-minimally-aware” from which we must begin.

This is also close to an interpretation of Husserl that I like (Zahavi's). Not 'warranted' and seemingly questionable semantically. We 'rational ones' insist on knowing what we are talking about. For Husserl, reality isn't given all at once, but it is always at least potentially experienceable --or we don't know what we are saying.

It might be worth stressing (with Feuerbach) that conceptuality is just one 'aspect' or 'dimension' of Reality which is also given to the body through nose, eyes, skin, and so on. Reality is not just ideas, but ideas are like intentional nodes or centers that articulate or organize it.

For Plato, the universal represents a higher truth — Count Timothy von Icarus

For what it's worth, I embrace the quest for (relatively) atemporal universal truth. I think 'anti-philosophers' usually turn out to be just philosophers, even if they don't want to see it or prefer a different packaging.

My point would simply be that the ubiquity of philosophies that focus on the difference between the world of experience and the world of ultimate reality from which experience springs, might tell us something about ourselves, even if we think that view is ultimately misguided. Such views aren't merely products of Western philosophy. You see it in the doctrine of Maya in Shankara, in Lao Tzu, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, but note that 'rationalism' is largely a reaction to the human default of superstition and confusion. Sophisticated defenders of religion forget that crude religion would have them on the gallows beside the atheistic rationalists. Peacefully working out what part of our legacy is worth recontextualizing is the luxury of an essentially reasonable and free community. What I've presented above doesn't exclude the postulation of 'supernatural' entities, though they'd have to be woven into an inferential nexus with the proper justifications (losing in some sense their 'supernatural' flavor.)

Philosophy at its best is absolutely about directly furthering an understanding of the world It is in this sense a more comprehensive and through going science than empirical research. — Joshs

:up: .

Made me think of Donald Hoffman's reframing of the "construction view." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I very much think philosophy is correctly obsessed with subjectivity. But I also (for now) think indirect realism is a bad approach. A sophisticated phenomenology-enriched direct realism is just must cleaner, largely in terms of 'Hegelian' insights. As 'scientists' as opposed to mystics or daydreamers, we've already made (mostly tacit) deep ontological commitments that affect what other commitments are sensible.

A very simple point found in Husserl (and surely in some AP guys) is that we intend the public object. I talk about our real number system, not my own experience of it -- except that Husserl might intend that experience, which is possible, to make this very distinction. The normative discursive self (Brandom is great on this) is profoundly social: the "I that is We, We that is I." Dramaturgical ontology ! It makes no sense for 'science' (the inquiring normative community) to put itself outside of the 'Object,' for it co-determines the 'Object' of which it must be part.

I'd prefer to hear your answer to it actually. You've agreed with every premise in my argument, what exactly do you disagree with? Thinking requires arranging truth, and truth is created by correct references. My arguments are my creative effort, produced by my choices, my biases, and my goals. Why aren't these conditions leading you to conclude as I do? — Judaka

To some degree, we can't help but model one another as unfree objects determined by their environment. Hence the constant temptation toward psychologism. But too much psychologism is a performative contradiction, a denial of our own 'freedom' (responsibility),dignity, and our rationality itself --- hence the trustworthiness of self-subverting psychologizing claims.

You might be tempted to tell me that I'm just being sentimental, but such accusations of sentimentality (of motivated reasoning) would just be 'irrational' opining on your part unless you have some leverage on me in terms of norms binding us both. I could trivially turn folk psychology on you and say you are just antisocial, superstitious, etc. [ Of course I see us as in a friendly conversation here, so I'm just offering examples. ]

Do we aspire to be more than shit throwing superstitious monkeys ? The dignity and the freedom of the individual are entangled with the concept (ideal on the horizon?) of a universal rationality.

I wouldn't have called them "pragmatic delusions", so long as we're aware they're pragmatic, it seems unfair to call them delusions. — Judaka

OK, it's a bit unfair. But there's something self-eating about instrumentalism. And I've wallowed in the mud of it myself --- it's even intoxicating the way it turns on itself.

If there's no truth but only useful fictions, then that itself is just a useful fiction. There's also no fact of the matter about whether or not a fiction is useful. So we'll have to decide if it's useful to believe that it's useful to believe that it's useful to believe...

Another version: truth is 'just' consensus. But how do we find out if we have a consensus ? We need a consensus to determine whether there's a consensus to determine whether there's a consensus and so on.

To be fair, such maxims can be taken as edifying moderately ironic speech acts -- and this may be how they are intended. But maybe it's good for me to point out how they seem to fail as serious ontological assertions.

Are you saying that our brains just let the data of experience 1 to 1 pass-through? — Bob Ross

Our linguistic-conceptuals selves are more like softwhere on the crowd than the lardwhere they run on.

You are basically throwing away, by my lights, the vast majority of biological and neurological knowledge that we have gained in the past 2 centuries and saying that, somehow, we are actually not filtering the world but, rather, directly experiencing it. — Bob Ross

I understand why you want to say that, but I think you are reifying the [ discursive, dramaturgical ] subject. Are we gremlins in the pineal gland ? Do you sit behind your eyes, looking out the windows ? But then the tiny actual you must also have eyes that a tinier man sits behind, ad infinitum.

Or our we always already on the 'public stage' of the rational conversation ? Are we not better understand as discursive selves ? The conditions for the possibility of rational conversation cannot be rationally denied.

But it isn't: you can't account, by my lights, for the fact that our brains are representing the world to us. For example, how do you account for the fact that if your brain is damaged in a particular way, then you lose your ability to see red if you aren't experiencing a representation of the world? — Bob Ross

Note please that you are assuming your own framework -- talking of 'representations' of the world -- in the presentation of the 'problem.' For various reasons, I frame awareness on terms of the direct apprehension of the world --not representation but good old fashioned seeing and smelling and ...

I have no objection to our determining causal relationships between states of awareness and whether the brain is intact. No dualism required.

---He cannot contemplate $\sqrt{2}$, because he's dead.

---He's feeling no pain, because they gave him morphine.

Pain and $\sqrt{2}$ are just entities in a 'flat' ontology inferentially related to other entities like Paris and protons. We 'scientific' ontologists in our demand for justifications are not on the outside looking in --that's a failure of self-consciousness, an 'alienated' failure to notice our own central role.

We all want to be Peter Pan, if that means retaining from childhood the passion for enchantment and adventure. — Joshs

:up:
At least some of us do.

Sadly no, what is "the whole truth in essence"? Well, I doubt it matters, it's clearly a creative endeavour using language, an undertaking that will involve making choices by necessity, and not because there's a right answer. — Judaka

You claim there is no right answer. That's the whole truth in essence, no ? The big one that gives you leverage. Think in those terms. What meta-claims give a speaker leverage ? They often take a skeptical form, truly mistaking themselves for humility. But 'no right answer' is a claim not only about you but about everyone else. A massive ontological claim that not just you but all of us are doomed to quest in vain for more than pragmatic delusions ---but why wouldn't that be a pragmatic delusion that serves your personally ?

Please note that this is not a personal attack. I'm trying to make a larger point that transcends us both.

Then, they start posting on Forums. — Quixodian

……all too often with the inverse quantity/quality ratio. — Mww

I'd say maybe beware of such nakedly self-flattering arrogance. The fool says in his heart: I'm not one of the fools. Both of you like me spend plenty of time on unworldly 'nonsense.'

There is no ideal rational community which binds our rational discussions, though. I think we can imagine an ideal community and aspire to such a community, but that we're not speaking to it as much as we're speaking with our fellows, all of whom are not ideal -- including myself. — Moliere

I agree with you that all actual communities are not ideal. No actual circle is the perfect circle. But the ideal itself seems to me to exist, even if it's blurry. You might say this thread is primarily an attempt to get a better look at this ideal which was always there in the background as the condition of its possibility. We are all imperfectly living toward or into some always imperfect grasp of a horizonal ideal which is largely about autonomy. To me anyway the respect of others in their difference is part of that. I have to give reasons for my claims. I don't brutishly impose them. But I do not let myself be brutishly imposed upon.

So ethics is first philosophy here. You might say I'm sketching the end of history here in some quasi-Hegelian sense. Am I as a flesh-and-blood person optimistic ? Actually quite the reverse. Moloch demands a tower ! The world is a runaway machine, and the exponential primate cannot control itself. I might be lost without my coalblack gallowshumor.

I know this because it is much more parsimonious to explain the data of experience by believing that one’s conscious experience is an indirect window into the world-in-itself. — Bob Ross

A sophisticated direct realism is more parsimonious still. This is exactly because nothing is higher than reason (for philosophers) AND because the rational discussion is primarily concerned with worldly public objects (the stuff in our world). As discursive subjects establishing truth together rationally, we must already be in the same world. What the indirect realist is trying to account for is bias and error and hallucination. But there are other ways to do this without dualism. One can even accept hallucinations in one's ontology without putting the subject in a bubble.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14575/rationalisms-flat-ontology

There is nothing higher than reason (epistemically). You cannot dethrone her without thereby trusting her to be able to dethrone herself, and, thusly, the position of a hard skeptic pertaining to logic is self-refuting. — Bob Ross

:up:

Now that is where we agree.

A sound philos must always rely on sound logic, but at least you are making an effort! — chiknsld

I invite you to show me the error of ways. No irony intended.