Notice the connection between aporia and epochē. — Wayfarer

This is interesting. Can you say more about that?

I think there's a fourth, which also finesses the knowledge problem:

4. There's the person who has a mystical experience, which is life-changing and whose effects persist over time. This person isn't sure WHAT happened, but tries to pick the most likely explanation, given what they know or can learn about such experiences, coupled with their own ongoing experience of the life changes. The result is a hypothesis: that the most likely explanation is that the experience was indeed an experience of God. The person doesn't claim knowledge of this, not at all. They can be shown to be wrong, conceivably, and they know it. But like so many important things in life, we have to make our best judgment.

As for the 'regress' - perhaps what we perceive as laws and regularities are necessarily true. Asking why they must be, is rather like asking why two and two equals four. — Wayfarer

Yes, in the sense that we're wondering whether explanation can ever stop, and if so, on what grounds. But the difference I see between arithmetic and natural laws is this: We don't generally speak about anything being caused in arithmetic -- we speak of reasons why, e.g., 2 +2 = 4, we don't say that the sum 4 is caused by the addition of 2 and 2. Whereas with natural laws, we do want a cause. The laws seem to harness generative power -- they actually get stuff done. Here you need something more along the lines of a Prime Mover to bring explanation to an end, it seems to me.

What happens on the surface level is what appears as phenomena - ‘phenomena’ being ‘what appears’ - but why things happen as they do, is the consequence of uniform regularities that are real on a different level to the phenomenal. — Wayfarer

I think we need to go even deeper, in order to reach a classical idealist understanding of causality and laws. The above statement speaks about a "consequence of uniform regularities" as the reason things happen as they do. (It also speaks about "reality on a different level to the phenomenal," but put that aside for the moment.). Isn't this like saying that sleep happens due to "soporific properties"? Yes, we perceive the uniform regularities, and their uniformity is what calls for explanation. And yes, if we could offer that explanation, it would make the regularities a consequence of it. But have we really progressed?

The kind of "basic" causality that you're talking about, I think, needs to be described more powerfully. You say (for the Platonist), "Laws exist at a deeper level than contingent facts." This is because the laws are supposed to cause the facts. Here a robust idealism emerges: A law, presumably, is not a material object. Yet it has the power, on this account, to cause and organize every phenomenon we experience. Now we reach that "different level to the phenomenal" -- what sort of thing must such a law be? I'm sympathetic to considering a vertical (higher) dimension, as you know, but how do we avoid an infinite regress? Do the laws shape themselves? Do they cause themselves? This raises the interesting question of whether hardcore idealism has to be, at bottom, theistic.

And it can go the other way
— Srap Tasmaner

Quite! And very pleased to have established some rapport. — Wayfarer

Yes. One of those other ways is what some call "whiggish" -- when we make moral judgments about people in the past as if they should have had the same (obviously correct!) attitudes we have today, in our enlightened age.

I think there's a real question whether supposed views of the past are ever really in play in a contemporary debate, or are people staking out contemporary positions in that debate but using the past to give their position the lustre of authority. — Srap Tasmaner

Another possibility: Some (not all) of those who make arguments using the past, want to persuade us of a narrative in which society (almost always Western society) as a whole has gone down the tubes since whatever the Golden Age was supposed to be. In this version, the decline in philosophy doesn't stand on its own, but is part and parcel of a decline in values, culture, and spirituality. We're meant to see the latter sorts of decline as obvious ("Just look around!"), and infer from this that the older philosophy must have been better too. We might even see a causal connection. I suppose if you have a grand narrative in which the West has declined, this doesn't fit well with a belief that philosophy has progressed, or at least not gotten worse.

Thank you for your patience. I'll have to reread AV. Your engagement with it is deeper than mine, and I suspect more accurate as to the arguments. I liked Whose Justice? Which Rationality? very much, though.

Yes, this is a good corrective to my somewhat peremptory rejection of MacIntyre's claim, as I understand it. But at the same time, isn't his whole argument based on a supposed "incoherence" in some monolithic thing called modern ethical philosophy? Is a "collapse into emotivism" supposed to be characteristic of how current moral philosophers think about ethics? That would be news to Bernard Williams or Thomas Nagel or Martha Nussbaum. That's what I meant when I said he was engaged in a degree of cherry-picking, naming approaches he particularly dislikes and making them exemplary.

the further equivocation as vice becomes the "vices" of the "vice unit" (i.e. primarily prostitution, gambling, drugs, and alcohol) and virtue becomes a sexually loaded term for women. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, that's exactly what they are -- equivocations, with a highly political purpose. But incoherent? I don't feel I have any trouble understanding the competing meanings of a term like "vice," nor do I think it affect my ability to engage in ethical thinking that is independent of the Aristotelian framework.

The irony here, for me, is that I actually rely more on virtue ethics than any other semi-systematic theory. I just don't feel it needs the kind of support MacIntyre wants to give it.

he argues that modern moral discourse is similarly fragmented because it has lost its connection to the broader, historically embedded frameworks (like Aristotelian virtue ethics) that once provided coherence. — Wayfarer

I think After Virtue is essential reading, but here again we see that one person's "history of philosophy" is another's "tendentious sour-cherry-picking." Here's a rephrasing and expansion of your (accurate) summary of one of MacIntyre's main points:

"There is no such thing as a single "modern moral discourse"; rather, ethics and moral philosophy have branched out in several interesting and important directions, each with their own problems for discussion both internally and with other branches. This branching-out no longer reveals a single direct connection to broader, historically embedded frameworks (like Aristotelian virtue ethics) that once provided a systematic view of ethics, along with the meta-ethical claim that the view could not be challenged without challenging an entire philosophical system. A number of branches of modern moral philosophy call this into question."

Is this version any more accurate than MacIntyre's? I think it is, but I wouldn't completely endorse either one. My point is that we shouldn't be beguiled by the idea that a loss of connection with a particular older tradition renders the entire discipline incoherent. Make Philosophy Great Again? I don't think so.

But my point here is that saying something is more complex is different to saying it is of greater worth.

Ok. I don't know of anyone who has advocated such a position. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Oh, I do. I was trained in classical music theory, and the assumption that complexity equates to quality was nearly unquestioned. Why is Bach better than Telemann? More complex. Why is the Western classical tradition better than pop? More complex. Etc. The heck of it is, there's something to this. Complexity is a virtue, it's just not the only virtue. And whether it is important to a particular piece of music depends on the aesthetic purposes of the piece. But when someone says, "I just can't find anything of worth in Beyonce, it's too simple, I listen once and there's nothing more to hear," they're not saying something silly. IMO, anyway.

I do really like the idea of trying to come up with a continuous graduation reality concept, which isn't an accuracy of a representation, or a way of counting things that already apply, or a way of saying how individuated an entity is. But I don't think it's possible, honestly. — fdrake

What if we returned to one kind of common talk about reality, where "real" means something like "vivid," "solid," "experientially impressive" -- that whole collection of descriptions?

So my written-down account of the dream I had last night isn't very real, relative to what I'm trying to describe. My memory, on which basis I write the description, is a little realer but still quite far from the dream itself. The dream, when I had it, was considerably more vivid, more real. And the subject of the dream -- a trip I took to Venice, let's say -- far exceeds the dream-images in reality. Until I reach the Form of Venice, or some other heavenly realm, it's the realest Venice I can know.

Something like that? I think this is different from "accuracy of representation" because the important parameter is "vividness of impression," not accuracy.

Why dont you build a giant paddock, and collect all the furniture of the universe inside of it. Then you can determine degrees of reality among the objects
— Joshs

They were all real! — fdrake

That was quick work! I was still trying to build my paddock.

The Kimhi connection is interesting. Are you thinking of the passage starting on p. 100 about "Socrates is wise / Diotima is wise"? So associating a person with a property would be Kimhi's functionalism, and associating a property with an example of it would be factualism? Or maybe you have something else in mind, but I like this. And I think I get what you're saying about how the ascription of an exemplary subject as partaking of a property makes the property look primary, and hence perhaps "realer" in the sense you're exploring.

I'd be interested in hearing more from you on this comment. (I've read some of Husserl's anti-psychologist arguments and found them amenable, but not Frege's) — Moliere

Husserl and Frege seem quite similar to me, re psychologism. They both reject the idea that thoughts can only be said to be “caused,” rather than explained or justified. One of the things I see Husserl doing is to separate the fact that thought-terms describe mental/psychological phenomena from the further fact (as he saw it) that phenomena like judgments and syllogisms are also normative. Similarly, a number is not to be understood as a “presentation,” a thought that occurs to me or you. Husserl says, “The number Five is not my own or anyone else’s counting of five, it is also not my presentation or anyone else’s presentation of five.” Frege’s emphasis, as far as I know (I don’t know his work deeply), was more on what we’d call the analytic quality of logical truths. But the point is similar: The psychological origin of subjective (synthetic) and objective (analytic) truths may be the same – they’re all thoughts – but it’s the way we demonstrate them that shows the difference. So, “the psychological is to be distinguished sharply from the logical, as the subjective is from the objective.” (Foundations of Arithmetic)

Not quite in the spirit of the enterprise though. — Srap Tasmaner

True, and I admit to a lifelong dislike of the term "real". But when you say that you want to see if "I might have any use for saying something has a higher degree of reality than something else," this seems like a good way to go. One of the things we philosophers do a lot of is recommending or stipulating or otherwise offering a use of a term that makes sense for an interesting purpose. We can certainly treat "real" like that, as you're suggesting.

Here’s a suggestion I don’t usually make: Do a classic ordinary-language investigation of the word “real.” After you list and explain the 986 different usages, pick the one you think is most useful for your philosophical purposes. End of story. Moral: “real” doesn’t have any single meaning whose correct application you can argue about.

(OK, maybe not quite "end of story" :smile: )

Another classic to at least read around in: Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons.

not necessarily that it means that every opinion is equal, just because someone holds it. — Wayfarer

God, no. We tolerate every species of fool in my country; dunno about yours. But tolerate them we do, because freedom of speech is a rights-based equality, available to all.

Why I brought it up in the first place, is because the role of there being 'degrees of reality' as providing a qualitative axis, an axis against which terms such as 'higher knowledge' is meaningful. I fully understand this triggers a lot of pushback, as I think it's probably quite inimical to liberalism in some respects — Wayfarer

I wonder which respects. I'm assuming you mean "liberalism" as a political philosophy, not the conventional, rather crude binary of liberal vs. conservative. I'm trying to picture what John Rawls might object to about a "qualitative axis" . . . The point of classical liberalism is that we allow, politically, for differences of opinion about this; we don't say that no opinion is or can be correct.

Now, having opened this exceedingly large can of worms, I'm going to be scarce for a couple of days, due to familial obligations. But I hope that provides grist to the mill. — Wayfarer

Your worms are good grist! (Mixed Metaphor of the Week Award goes to Wayfarer . . . :wink: )

Have you looked at the book I have mentioned, Eric Perl Thinking Being? The chapter on Plato in particular, — Wayfarer

Thanks, I'll put it on my virtual nightstand.

Well, I open my eyes and see a bird, and think, "Huh, a bird" and then I close them and the experience has ended.

I know this isn't what you mean, but it's what I mean when I ask about a temporal slot for a particular thought, understood not psychologically as a brain event but some other way. Brain or no brain, isn't it still an event in time?

Bloom wanted to get out to see them. He asked: "Do you think they'll attack if I got out and approach them?" And Rosen said: "I don't think they've read Closing of the American Mind". — Fooloso4

:lol: I appreciate Bloom's scholarship while deploring his politics.

Clearly we're differing on how straightforward a reading we should give to the Republic. FWIW, my first wife was a Plato scholar who studied with Jonathan Ketchum at the (somewhat notorious) Oakstone Farm at SUNY-Binghamton. So I'm no stranger to reading Plato against the grain. Indeed, my current view may be in part a reaction against what I eventually decided was ironic or aporetic reading taken much too far.

Probably a good target statement to see where people land on this would be your "What else could he have brought back?" OK, the whole allegory is just that -- an allegory. So we have to read it allegorically, as Plato intended. Within allegory, of course we have nothing but images -- as you say, what else could there be? But this is not an allegory about images; it's a story that uses images to try to explain how knowledge may be attained.

So, to vastly oversimplify:

Socrates truly "knows" nothing = ironic reading of Plato
Socrates knows a great deal = straightforward/traditional reading of Plato
We can't decide until we understand more deeply what Plato thought about knowledge and dialectic = fair game for endless, interesting debate

Yes.

Your answers are interesting because they help me realize that I'm not speaking precisely enough. Sorry. I wasn't asking about the 1st person thing/soul as an entity in itself (or not, as the case may be), but rather the experience it undergoes when it has a thought, which you said you believed Descartes was defining as a "1st-person thing." That was what I was asking about when I asked if this 1st-person thing, aka thought, occurred during a specifiable time period. The soul as such . . . of course, that depends.

I think it's pretty clear from the Meditations that he isn't defining "thought" as an event in the brain, though. It's more of a first person thing. — frank

Fair enough, but is the first-person thing an event that happens from T1 - Tn?

The lowest level of the divided line is not transcended or abandoned. — Fooloso4

Well, but it is. Unless you believe that the description of the divided line itself given in Book VI is mere image or opinion, on the grounds that we are only humans? It uses an image -- Socrates doesn't think there is a real Divided Line somewhere -- but it seems a strained reading to say that therefore nothing he goes on to teach can be taken as true, or as different from what we see in the city/cave. Allan Bloom's commentary sounds about right to me: "It [the Line] shows that reality extends far beyond anything the practical man ever dreams and that to know it one must use faculties never recognized by the practical man." To doubt this, I think, is to doubt the cave allegory as well -- or else give it a reading in which the one who returns brings back only another image.

I suppose we could view Socrates as trying to block rational thought at these points of aporia, but I'm not sure that's his purpose.
— J

It is not that he blocks rational thought but that it has reached its limit. — Fooloso4

Interesting distinction. It depends on how we judge Socrates' sincerity in these moments. I think the aporia is often constructed by Socrates himself, as a teaching tool. But again, we'd need to be more specific in each dialogue. Thanks for the references to your earlier discussions -- I'll have a look.

I don't see this as being about the Forms themselves.
— J

It is about knowledge of the forms, or lack of such knowledge. — Fooloso4

I read back, starting from the discussion about astronomy et al., and I can't find this. Where do you see the forms fitting in here?

And Socrates does not know it either. He knows only how it looks to him. — Fooloso4

Begging the question, no? It's the very thing we're debating.

Overall, I agree that there is a mystical element in Plato, and that there are aspects of what noesis shows that probably can't be considered "objective" in any modern sense. I'm just holding out for Socratic/Platonic philosophy as an attempt to achieve a view that is freed from the chains of shadowplay.

But it'd be an argument against what Sartre is saying, I think, if you could argue that the cogito was no longer active, due to this move, and so existence is thrown back into doubt -- that'd be an interesting skeptical response. — Moliere

Yes, but it does feel like a "move," and I wasn't suggesting it seriously.

So [Sartre on the Cogito] fits in that funny place phenomenology often does -- between metaphysics, but then sort of drifts into psychology. — Moliere

Good observation. I think that philosophers who are hostile to phenomenology want this liminal place to be a mistake, an inability to be clear about what the topic is. A more sympathetic reading, starting with Husserl, is that the distinction between metaphysics and psychology must be put into doubt as a first step toward a new conception of doing philosophy in the first person.

One example where it does create confusion, though, is what I tried to straighten out with @frank, above. He quite reasonably wanted to know why a thought must occur in time, which leads us into the two common meanings of the term "thought." One is psychological, the other metaphysical. And see Frege on psychologism.

By "actual thoughts" I meant real-time brain events, not the content of those thoughts. It's very plausible that the thought "2+2 = 4", understood as content or proposition, is timeless, or at least not to be identified with any particular time-based instantiation. But the event of such a thought occurring in my brain is something that happens in time, at a particular T1, since everything at all that happens in the physical world, happens in time. So my question about the Cogito was, Which sort of "thought" is it?

in the context of the meditations it makes sense because we're presented with a story of a man who goes to his desk and thinks a few things until he gets tired, then comes back the next time to push his thoughts further. But in the context of Being and Nothingness it doesn't immediately follow because the "I think" is the in-itself, whereas the "I am" is the for-itself. — Moliere

My question for both Descartes and Sartre is this: Are you offering a psychological story -- that is, a story about actual thoughts -- in which case it must indeed occur in time? Or is the "moment" of the Cogito pointing to a different mode of understanding? I hesitate to use the word "transcendental" because Descartes probably wouldn't know how to respond, and Sartre had his own very special understanding of transcendentality in phenomenology. So I'm struggling for words here. What I'm groping toward is the idea that the indubitability of the Cogito doesn't rest on any account that involves time at all. Suppose we all agreed that it's impossible to experience a present moment. I think many psychologists believe this; it's a version of the Achilles-and-tortoise problem. Would that mean that the Cogito is no longer operative? That, since it doesn't report an actual experience, my existence is thrown back into doubt? That doesn't sound right. I dunno . . . pardon me if this is too murky for response.

Does Sartre say that the for-itself is an object of experience, in addition to being the ground for the possibility of experience? I can't remember.

He does advocate a positive doctrine but it is made to persuade the Athenians not would be philosophers. — Fooloso4

We must have different passages in mind. I'm thinking of Books VI and VII. If the divided line isn't for would-be philosophers, I can't imagine who else it's for.

aporia as a possible gateway to something better.
— J

Aporia means impasse, the opposite of a gateway. — Fooloso4

Yes, or perhaps perplexity, which is why the idea that we are meant to go through aporia is so enticing. I suppose we could view Socrates as trying to block rational thought at these points of aporia, but I'm not sure that's his purpose; I think the aporiae still promise a path forward. We could look at specific dialogues for that, but we'd need a new OP.

A major key to understanding the Republic is the making of images — Fooloso4

I agree that's the case with the form of the city image itself, which we know is constructed in the Republic in order to be a picture of the human soul.

In the Republic after Socrates presents the image of the Forms Glaucon wants Socrates to tell them what the Forms themselves are. Socrates responds:

You will no longer be able to follow, dear Glaucon, although there won’t be any lack of eagerness on my part. But you would no longer seeing an image of what we are saying, but the truth itself, at least as it looks to me. Whether it really is so or not cannot be properly insisted on.(emphasis added)
— 533a — Fooloso4

Hmm. I don't see this as being about the Forms themselves. In 532d, Glaucon is asking to be told what "the character of the power of the dialectic is, and, then, into exactly what forms it is divided; and finally what are its ways." Socrates says he can't present the truth of this particular form -- that is, the dialectic -- without using images. And yet, in the next sentence after your quote, he says. "But that there is some such thing to see must be insisted on." So at best this is equivocal about the dialectic, and doesn't really seem to speak to the overall doctrine of the Forms at all.

With that said, we both know Plato well enough to be aware that, like the Bible, you can find support for diametrically opposed positions depending on what you quote!

See above in my reply to @joshs concerning my careless use of "most philosophers."

Without knowledge I do not see how we can get beyond "how it looks to us." In many cases inquiry ends in aporia. — Fooloso4

Indeed, and in many Platonic cases it did not. As was said by Count T, there are a lot of versions of Socrates to choose from. I agree that sometimes he seems to merely be a gadfly trying to reduce false positions to rubble and use aporia as a possible gateway to something better. But the Socrates (or Plato) of the Republic is doing more than this. Here we specifically examine the difference between knowledge and "how it looks to us." Our modern talk about convergence etc. would be foreign to Plato, but I see him advocating a positive doctrine about knowledge that is meant to be independent of what Athenians, or anyone else, think of it.

You're quite right. Rather than "most philosophers," I should have talked about "a continuing engagement with this question among philosophers who aren't happy to draw the conclusions that Witt. and Heidegger drew about this." I suppose you feel Habermas is retro as well? To me, he's the best exponent of how to live in the Nagelian tension between the search for objectivity and the realities of intersubjectivity and the necessity of hermeneutics.

have I completely mischaracterized Socrates, who swore up and down that he did not inquire into the heavens and the earth like some others, but only asked people questions? — Srap Tasmaner

Socratic irony? And possibly also it's Socrates stating his creed about how wisdom is to found: in dialectic, not in armchair inquiry.

But an examination of opinion is not an attempt to find a view from nowhere. It is an attempt to find the opinions that seems best. It is the view from where we are, in our ignorance of transcendent truths. The questions remain open, to be looked at again from another limited point of view. — Fooloso4

This is the tension that Thomas Nagel and others say we have to live with. Of course the view from nowhere is an unreachable idealization that no one ever achieves. But it's a spirit that can't be exorcized. Consider: "an attempt to find the opinion that seems best." From what viewpoint would we make this judgment? From our own, and from our culture's, certainly. But is that the final word? What happens when two opinions make competing claims to be best, and give their reasons? I think Socrates and most philosophers since are committed to the idea that there is an ideal convergence point, involving rational inquiry, where we can reach consensus based on what is the case, not simply on "how it looks to us." We may all be wrong about this, of course.

The view from nowhere is a forgetfulness or disregard for the human — Fooloso4

So it needn't be this. What could be more human than this passion for truth, objectivity, understanding? I suppose, if someone were to claim, first, that they had actually reached the endpoint of inquiry on a particular subject, and second, that this endpoint dissolved all subjective or intersubjective concerns, we might deplore this as a disregard for the human. But I think that's a straw man.

Good thoughts here. Two things:

it's an excellent example of philosophical engagement without agreement, and without simply negating. — Moliere

I think so too, and this kind of engagement seems crucial to doing any deep work in philosophy. Disagreement should, in my view, produce puzzlement, and then curiosity -- what might we learn here? I wouldn't necessarily pick Sartre as my favorite interlocutor, but I like it that he has no interest in "refuting" Descartes.

Second thing: I rooted around in B&N for the context of these quotes and found this interesting passage (my emphases):

If I cannot re-enter into the past, it is not because some magical power puts it beyond my reach but simply because it is in-itself and because I am for-myself. The past is what I am without being able to live it. The past is substance. In this sense the Cartesian cogito ought to be formulated rather: 'I think; therefore I was.' — B&N, p. 173 (Washington Square Press ed.)

To de-jargonize, "in-itself" means, more or less, without self-consciousness or awareness; "for-itself" characterizes the being of conscious creatures like us. So my past might as well be a rock, for all that I can re-enter it or use it as a postulate about my current being. But Sartre does appear to believe that my previous existence can be a conclusion derived from "I think," which may pertain to your OP.

I’d bet that the percentage of deep and original work in academic philosophy, compared to less meaningful writing, hasn’t changed since there were universities. We revere the past because the only ones we’re still reading are the ones who have survived their times. But everyone wasn’t that good.

Yes, reading what you said as a view of current U.S. academia makes it much more colorable, to me. I got out of academia for different reasons, but was there long enough to observe the emphasis on "criticism of criticism" and the never-ending search by scholar-squirrels for some nut that hasn't been published-upon already.

(Just realized you could take "nut" in either sense! :smile: )

It's not a matter of resolving it in the sense of providing the longed-for certainty, but critiquing the conceptual and cognitive framework which gave rise to it. — Wayfarer

Yes, and the Bernstein book you referenced does a brilliant job of that. Consider the title: Beyond Objectivism and Relativism. The conceptual framework of "EITHER certainty OR it's the end of the rational world!" is what produces a dichotomy like objectivism/relativism.

Thanks for the shout-out to Richard J. Bernstein. Yes, I know his work well -- in fact, he was one of my teachers. "Cartesian anxiety" is a great phrase. But again, resolving a bad case of Cartesian anxiety is probably not on anyone's agenda, philosophically -- if by "resolving" we mean actually finding certainty of the sort Descartes longed for.

For the greater part of Western cultural history, philosophy was woven into a fabric which included poetry, theology, fiction, art and drama — Wayfarer

That's one way of putting it. We could also say, " . . . philosophy was desperately mired in a swamp of inchoate expressions which included poetry, theology . . . " etc. I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek here, but the point is serious. Different accounts of philosophy will offer different interpretations. There is no one obviously correct story.

A lively response, thanks. We could go back and forth on how much of this is really attributable to Nagel, but I'm more interested in your overall picture of modern philosophy. I'll only say that IMHO Nagel could have made an important distinction between his other forms of transcendental service (to society, the state, the revolution, the progress of history, the advance of science) and the glory of God, but this wasn't germane to his argument. In the context of his essay, devoting one's life to serving God is open to the same objections as the other forms of service. It's worth noting that much of his later philosophy seeks to illuminate what, if anything, is special and important about the religious point of view.

But anyway. Do philosophers today really denigrate their work in the way you're saying? I move in circles that are more artistic than academic, so perhaps you're right. But when I read the current philosophers I admire -- Nussbaum, Sider, McDowell, Karen Bennett, Susan Haack, Kimhi, Plantinga, Habermas, Nagel himself -- that's not the impression I get. Could you say more about who exactly thinks their profession is useless?

Similarly, I think I know what you mean when you talk about the early-modern quest for certainty; there's no doubt that epistemological concerns have characterized much of philosophy since Descartes. But I don't see very many philosophers linking "anything meaning anything at all" with the concepts you listed: "objective meaning," and "objective value," the absolute as the objective, set over and against the non-substantial "subjective." Of course some philosophers talk that way, but a great many do not. If a civilian asked me what recent (not modern, in your sense) philosophy was most interested in, I might say something like "Trying to find a reasonable middle ground between unsustainable foundationalist claims about knowledge and the complete abandonment of rationality and values." And as you know, there are many such middle grounds on offer, in both analytic and Continental phil.

Maybe I just don't know what you mean by "the early modern period."