So, the endless regress problem. — J

Sort of. More like the “why don’t you just answer the question” problem.

What do you see as the way out of that? — J

The truth. Something absolute. Something not arbitrary. Something said about the world, and not just about the speaker.

I’m not afraid of the big bad authoritarian tyrant, as long as he is telling the truth.

Well, Witt’s approach is air tight

Is it? I don't think Wittgenstein's philosophy is presuppositionless. Its style (both early and late), does not make its presuppositions clear, but we can infer them from what must be assumed to make arguments like the rule following argument from undetermination go through. These require certain ideas about warrant and knowledge. Quine is helpful here because he makes similar arguments from underdetermination, but is much more explicit about what is needs to be presumed to make them go through. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I spoke too fast. I should have said “pretty air tight” (because everything with Wittgenstein in a general sense has to have blurry edges).

And I should have just said, Wittgenstein made some valid points that I can work with. Wittgenstein to me, speaks of the How. He applies flux to the flux with rigor. He’s Heraclitus post highly developed math and logic. He yielded a rigorous analytic tool. Even though that would bother him to hear, that’s the best I can make of him.

None of it really tells you about the world. It applies its method to tell you what the world is not, and what language doesn’t say. It’s the hammer and the tuning fork smashing metaphysics. When it is used to catch a fallacious argument, it proves its value.

But in the end, Witt is for the backroom experts who refine the product. The front room produces what I (and most people) need from philosophy and speak of the What and the Why. These should be subjected to Witt’s How-to-speak, but serve a different purpose and have their own substance regardless of the confusions and clarifications.

I agree Witt isn’t air tight. I think that is why he had to admit, once you see his world view, you have to throw world views away, and that is a contradiction; you need a worldview in order to see that you never really had a worldview, and that is the new worldview.

So I was wrong.

We are all in the midst of identifying the prior, the presuppositions, asserting something that is merely supposed, and maybe even finding what is just posed. Wittgenstein gave up on all of that and stayed in his box where only language could be used to suppose other words. He just did it pretty well.

"never" is once again an all-or-nothing option — J

Is it always and only an all or nothing option, or only some of the time?

I have to smile, because you still haven’t directly addressed Count’s question, or any of the meager substance of my post.

Just admit it, either all narratives are acceptable or they aren’t, and if they aren’t, want could possibly ground that? Saying they are and they aren’t depending on the reason doesn’t address the question. Because then what criteria allows you to say that??

Cool. I’ll check it out. Thanks

there is a taboo against this framework of discourse, on the grounds of its association with religion. I think that is the dynamic behind a lot of this debate. — Wayfarer

I agree. The unconditioned is probably the most analytic way of referring to what was formerly often called “God,” or the “transcendent” or “the One” with a capital O. The word has the least baggage, but I agree, it’s all taboo now.

Metaphysics sympathizers are always suspect. The hidden agenda must be religion or authoritarianism, or a closed system of everything. All for excluding, othering.

J asked me seriously how I actually function. Banno thinks I am a terrible person.

I just think the idea of “the truth” is a good one. So is the idea of “the good” as in “a good idea”. I want to be able to say “that is good” to another person and mean it. Not just mean “I think that is good”, but simply know and say “that is good”. I think we can. I’m not sure we can often, but once is enough for me to have hope for more and make all of this bickering actually meaningful. (There I go again…)

A rather facile response! — Janus

To what part?

I thought it was all that was needed.

…is impossible to strictly define... — Janus

Not one single, tiny definition?

There's a kind of gentleman's agreement as to what is considered a suitable topic for philosophical discourse, and of this, 'we must be silent' — Wayfarer

Honestly, here on Banno’s thread, and he’s not talking to me anymore, I’m kind of afraid to bring up anything close to God. I don’t want that to be how we fly off an otherwise hopeful encounter.

But I was also still agreeing with you in my own weird way.

The Buddhist text kind of reflects what I said here (I think, slightly):

I wouldn’t know anything of the indeterminate whatsoever, without the determinate. And I certainly know the fact of the indeterminate, so I must therefore know the fact of the determinate. — Fire Ologist

I think they both allude to a kind of inference of the positive (unborn-unmade/ determinate) from the negative (born-made/ indeterminate).

(But that is applying to the Buddhist text, and to my quote, the “positive and negative” to sort of align them, which may not actually do justice. Luckily, I can call it mystical and get away with it? :brow: )

But don’t you think there are true statements, and that, taken together, these tell us about what is real? — Banno

I’ll bite.

Yes, there are true statements. Some of them, are about some things, in the world.

I don’t know about “taken together, these tell us about what is real.” “Taken together” and “real” scare me a bit.
I’d say, taken together they tell us something about what is real.

I understand you want to hear from Count.

But I’ll give you true statement about the world that tells us something about what is real.

There is wisdom in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

Or maybe, there is wisdom about the essence of language itself in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, but it is really hard to infer.

And I think there's an abyss in the current philosophical lexicon, where something corresponding to 'the unconditioned' used to dwell. I think in the Western cultural context, this is associated with God, so post death-of-God, the unconditioned has been banished from respectable philosophical discourse, except by way of hints and aphorisms. — Wayfarer

God is a survivor.

We throw God out and we are left with the exact same world.

He just won’t die no matter how hard we try.

And that is literally true for some of us.

Just imagine the real philosophy that might occur if not for all of these elementary threads. — Leontiskos

I love it when Banno, actually talks philosophy. I don’t even need any humility, although that would be nice.

I love this thread. The OP was a great set up for a for an important question.

I just answered a thread about someone’s incredulity about how I get along in life, as if any of us have any idea who or what each other is or does or says when not doing this little thing of ours.

There are probably 10,000 people in the long history of humanity who give any shit about anything we say here. We are the tiny captive audience.

We should all appreciate each other more.

This crap is fun for me.

Wish I didn’t also have wear a helmet.



Wait, Banno stopped reading my posts too.



Bueller use the word “unconditioned” in a sentence today? Bueller?

What is it with this fascination with "either absolute or arbitrary"? Do you really think and act that way IRL? Not being snarky, I'm actually curious. — J

I didn’t mean to not directly answer your question here. My non-answer “maybe” was actually meant to demonstrate something. I was trying to demonstrate that any arbitrary string of words surely would not answer you and that you, like all people who speak, rely on some absolutes just to follow along the conversations. I almost answered “Finland” but you’d have to really respect me to work out I was trying to respect your question with that answer. So I said “maybe”, which people often say, but os just as indeterminate and arbitrary.

What is it with this fascination with "either absolute or arbitrary"? Do you really think and act that way IRL? Not being snarky, I'm actually curious. — J

We are in the ocean, swimming in indeterminate arbitrariness. That is the ubiquitous ground - drowning, to seek footing. If you are really asking me about “either absolute or arbitrary” IRL, what I wade through is almost entirely arbitrary, but not only that, as once in a while, I touch the ocean’s bottom, brush the shoreline, and stand still for as long as I can.

And you call what I’m saying “either absolute or arbitrary”. IRL, at every step I try for the absolute. If ever possible, I invoke it. Whenever I can, I fix it, or grab hold of it. Once in a while, I catch it. I think the last time was 2022.

The question I have for you is, how do you avoid it? Have you never demanded “absolutely not!” Maybe to someone saying “you know Trump is a good guy who loves all races and respects all women.” Do you never say “I am absolutely certain” about anything? Never? Do you ever say “never”? Do you never pause and force others to “wait, now is not the time. Wait for me to tell you.” Honestly, IRL, you never shine light on the absolute with certain authority? Are you never like a tyrant at all? How do you survive in this world if not?

Sometimes, when you say “you are wrong” I am certain you were absolutely right to say that, because you are clearly a smart person.

I can say this about you, because I don’t believe all is arbitrary. Most of life may be, but not all of it.

Count said:
“Either all narratives are acceptable/true/valid, whatever you want to call it, or they aren't.”

That is a simple enough assertion. Maybe you wouldn’t say that but it seems straightforward to me. Either everyone gets to say “this is true” about whatever they want or they don’t.

Count then asked:
“If some aren't, in virtue of what are some to be rejected?”

What determines which narrative must be rejected?

You answered:
“Some narratives are acceptable, true, or valid for one sort of reason; some are so for another sort”

So what is your answer? Either all narratives are acceptable or not? You say some are for one reason, some are for another reason.

Does that mean all narratives are acceptable depending on the reason?

Or maybe some narratives are rejected after all, because you haven’t finished answering, since you only mentioned some?

I tried to ask if you were finished answering and gave the last word on all narratives. You said no, but that left me wondering then “if some aren't, in virtue of what are some to be rejected?”

The infinite regress of "justifications for justification" doesn't apply to this question. — J

It’s not about justification. You didn’t answer the question.

Edit:
Count: Is that blue or not?
J: Well it’s not green.
Fire: Is not green, blue or not?
J: No.

What is it with this fascination with "either absolute or arbitrary"? Do you really think and act that way IRL? — J

Maybe. Or should I say maybe not.

Does that answer the question?

I am so lost here. — J

Yeah.

You are trying to avoid arbitrariness, while avoiding authoritarianism.

Let’s go back.

Either all narratives are acceptable/true/valid, whatever you want to call it, or they aren't. If some aren't, in virtue of what are some to be rejected?

If one cannot offer any criteria for making this judgement, then the choice seems arbitrary. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You answered this to avoid arbitrariness saying that narratives are acceptable/valid based on “one sort of reason.” But this is a narrative too, a meta narrative about narratives, but just another narrative. So Count’s question could again be asked and becomes whether this new level’s “one sort of reason” is arbitrary. So I asked again, is this new narrative absolute or not?
You said no. This “no” is either an absolute (at a third layer we haven’t gone there but it would be me asking you how you came to say “no”), or you are just contradicting of the initial statement that all narratives can be validated by one sort of reason or another.

You either:
1. answer my question “yes” and contradict your statement about narratives, or
2. answer “no” and keep punting the question to a meta, meta-level, avoiding the question making everything continue to seem arbitrary, or
3. something becomes the absolute authority on narratives, ending the infinite regress but also contradicting the original intent of the argument with Count.

It’s still confusing but maybe Leon’s post clarifies it.

You can’t say there is nothing absolute if you want to avoid saying the validity of any narrative is arbitrary. Some goal post must become fixed before the arbitrary is avoided.

Some narratives are acceptable, true, or valid for one sort of reason; some are so for another sort;
—J

“So is the above (narrative) always absolutely the case, or can there be reasons not to accept it?” — Fire Ologist

There could be reasons not to accept it. — J

Then, some narratives are acceptable for only one sort of reason. (And you have asserted some sort of absolute criteria exists and a universally non-arbitrary narrative exists and contradicted your own narrative.)

OR

Then, what is the criteria we use to tell when it is not acceptable to say: “Some narratives are acceptable, true, or valid for one sort of reason; some are so for another sort”
AND
does that criteria set up a narrative that is sometimes valid and sometimes not? Leading to infinite regress…

Bottom line on this second optional outcome - you still haven’t avoided arbitrariness.

Yes sorry. The story of narration goes:

Some narratives are acceptable, true, or valid for one sort of reason; some are so for another sort; — J

So is this always absolutely the case, or can there be reasons not to accept it?

Some narratives are acceptable, true, or valid for one sort of reason; some are so for another sort; — J

This is a narrative.

Is there a reason the above is acceptable or not?

There's clearly something in this all-or-nothing position that seems incontrovertible to you.
-J

I don't think it's that hard to get. Either all narratives are acceptable/true/valid, whatever you want to call it, or they aren't. If some aren't, in virtue of what are some to be rejected?

If one cannot offer any criteria for making this judgement, then the choice seems arbitrary. In the past you have said some narratives are not "reasonable." But what does "reasonable" mean here? From what I've gathered, it has no strict criteria, but "you know it when you see it." If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me. If I am right, can you not see how such an incredibly amorphous, ill-defined criteria essentially makes inquiry all a matter of taste? — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is all spot on.

Maybe all narratives are acceptable/true/valid/good enough.

If we want to say no to that, what Count says above has to be true.

Added: where I differ maybe from Count is that I haven’t discovered the thing that forces one to say no.

This is overly deferrential to analytic methods, exposing a bias towards its supriority — Hanover

Well, Witt’s approach is air tight. It is just not about the world. It’s inside baseball. So I wouldn’t say it is superior at all. It leaves out the all the other fun about going to baseball game besides just the stats. What about the beauty of a late game home run? The good of taking your kid to the language game?

No, just the idea that "wisdom" cannot be vacuous or apply to everything equally.
— Count Timothy von Icarus

There's whole worlds between what is vacuous and what is determinate. That seems to be our point of difference. Those worlds are where we find the unknown, the unknowable, the mysteries and mystical, as well as scientific method and myth. — Banno

I agree the poles are “what is vacuous” and “what is determinate.”
Maybe more plainly, we speak of what is indeterminate and what is determinate.

And I agree there are worlds (or at least the world) that sits between these poles.

Speaking of the determinate is where the speaking corresponds directly with the spoken about. It is also like the apriori, the axiom. Or for believers in myth, it is the truth, the absolute. The fixed. The permanent and unchanging. The eternal. The ground.

The indeterminate is the unknowable-in-itself. It’s psuedo-determinate when known as ‘nothing’ or the ‘vacuous’, but then, that may just be a language trick where we have ‘determined nothing’. It is unformed. It can’t exist and is all around us, and in us, allowing for mystical/mythical (maybe meaningless) statements like this one.

We live somewhere in between. We are the synthesis builders. In fact, we build the poles of the determinate and the indeterminate by naming them, conceptualizing them, before speaking further about them. We are the meaning seekers/constructors/dissolvers.

And this is where I believe various folks disagree. (Again basically agreeing with Banno’s statement above.)

The dissectors seem to focus on the fact that the language game must be constructed first, before we can use language to speak about the world, so the world itself remains indeterminate to the speaker, and the world we really live in is within language. Determinacy and indeterminacy is within language, the world itself remaining indeterminate.

The metaphysical discursive philosopher may or may not directly refute this (despite how harshly Banno condemns us), but is at least open to the fact that, since there must be a world in itself as an ingredient in the synthetic world we occupy, and as we are beings who live in and share this world in itself synthetically, we must all have had some degree of direct access to the world in itself (I said degree of direct access, which is again a synthesis). We know absolutely that the world is. The metaphysician may only know more about the world by accident, and despite all of the rigorous arguments and language used to support what he thinks he knows, he is more truly taking shots in the dark. But he believes he can sometimes hit the intended mark, and that what he knows is sometimes in fact the world in itself. (Physicians call this predictability, but they are playing a different game so that is only analogous to rhe metaphysician.)

Because such theorizing can only accidentally be accurate, and there is no measure to confirm whether actually right, the dissector won’t philosophize about such leaps. The dissectors see that as folly.

I see that point. Hume and Witt should give everyone pause.

Metaphysics takes a leap involving hypothesis based on assumption. Hegel had hubris claiming he saw the Absolute and giving it a capital “A”.

But I also see hubris in Wittgenstein. He made a similar mic drop move, but from the opposite pole. By soundly identifying how metaphysics can only be theoretical in essence (yes pun intended), he showed metaphysicians must be fools, and their claims of determinacy made up of indeterminate parts; he now knows better than to ask about the One and the Truth.

But later Wittgenstein still gave nod to the mystical, admitted his ladder was a metaphysical construct of sorts, and he continued speaking about transcendence, and morality. These are synthetic, discursive, folly too, if being truly consistent. Like Banno here may have been frivolously inconsistent in daring to distinguish the “unknowable” from the “mysterious” or the “mystical” but not the “myth”.

In the end, from what I can tell, if you will not make the leap into assertions about the world in itself, philosophy is narrowly defined as a discussion about how we can accurately say things - it’s an analysis of the language game. It’s Wittgenstein. And it’s no longer about the world.

So what are we left with to discuss since Wittgenstein said it all?

Nothing, except how people who “don’t get it, or can’t get it” must be authoritarian as they keep abusing language.

I’d still rather dissect notions of the world and its mysteries.

I admit it may be a frivolous pursuit. No need to keep reminding me. Sorry to burden you with my ideas about the truth of the world.
—

There is the world.
There is talking about the world. (Aristotle, Count, myth story tellers)
There is talking about talking. (Witt, Banno, etc.)

Because we all talk, we should all learn to improve how we talk, and as philosophers and scientists, pay attention to the talk about talking. So thanks, Banno (if you’ve read this.), and Hume, and Nietzsche, and Witt, and Kripke, and Russell, etc.

But because we all have to live, in the world, and because we all have to talk about living in the world, we should also talk about the world, and the truth, and what is good in itself. (Thanks Count, and Aristotle, and Socrates, et al…)

The same, one mind, burdened with its logic and judgment and senses and understanding and imagination, at every turn of its neck, faces both the determinate and the indeterminate, as it lives and speaks in the world with the other language users.

I’m sure I’ve got this wrong (thanks, Banno). I am sure if I spent more time on it I’d revise it and improve it, maybe scrap it, and there are contradictions and vacuous moments. I’m also sure this nevertheless makes some sense of things, the same things that all of us sense as sentient beings in one world. But this paragraph here gives you my world view.

My philosophy is certainly unfinished, but it must contain elements of the finished, or it only contains nothing, and was finished before it started.

—-

Call x the determinate, and y the indeterminate, and z the mixture.
We live in, and are, z - a mixture in motion.
Because z is mixed with the indeterminate, z is more akin to x, the indeterminate. The indeterminate is the dominant gene, so to speak. The indeterminate poisons everything it touches turning determination into a best guess.

But I wouldn’t know anything of the indeterminate whatsoever, without the determinate. And I certainly know the fact of the indeterminate, so I must therefore know the fact of the determinate.

So I continue to believe seeking to distill X from Z, and distinguish X from Y, is the best use of my time as a philosopher. Where Banno said above “That seems to be our point of difference“ - this is what triggers my interest - discussion about the point (the world) that lies between people.

Do I sound authoritarian and close-minded and incapable to you? Is there anything above you would want to work with?

The whole architecture is authoritarian in form. The style of philosophising is structured to preclude objection. Each term is defined into place. Every disagreement is downgraded to a misunderstanding of the system. There’s no space for a counter-example, because nothing is allowed to count as one unless it already fits the scheme. That is the problem of the “grand theory”: not that it's false, but that it's closed.

So the come back will be that you haven't understood... becasue the monolith protects itself.

The question arrises, how this is to fit with J's idea of not critiquing until the whole is understood, when the act of understanding closes of critique. — Banno

As usual I’m probably missing something but I don’t think the concern is “everything”. It’s not a monolithic theory of all things. It’s about a unity, or just one thing.

One thing in the world. We strive to know the essence of that thing, because we understand there is something there. We don’t preclude critique in order to proceed towards that essence. Critique is welcome. But only after there is some positive move to criticize.

Philosophizing is one thing as well. You just said style of philosophizing, and gave it the essence of authoritarian. You said “whole architecture.”

“The monolith protects itself”.

This is metaphysical speak as much as it is critique of one particular “style” (which I would refer to as “aspect” but that’s may just be my style.)

Just as puzzling.

Aristotle has a distinction that I think holds up:

-Asytheta: truth as the conformity of thought and speech to reality (whose opposite is falsity); and

-Adiareta, truth as the grasping of a whole, apprehension (whose opposite is simply ignorance)

We can also consider the "three acts of the mind:"

1. Simple Apprehension, "What is it?" (produces terms - deals with essence)

2. Judging, "Is it?" (produces propositions - deals with existence)

3. Reasoning, "Why is it?" (produces arguments - deals with causes, or we might say "reasons" today because "causes" has been butchered). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Excellent.

So many ways to properly be wrong. :razz:

I still value and respect postmodern art, remain ambivalent around postmodern philosophy, and despise how postmodern humanities have weaponized relativism. — Jeremy Murray

:up: I like “weaponized relativism.”

If there is a discipline in which postmodernity fails most abjectly, I'd argue it is education. — Jeremy Murray

100%. History, and the best folks history could muster, are tools (if not wisdom), and we are robbing students today of so many great ideas and turns of phrase and experiences, in the name of trendy dalliances like patriarchy, and socially constructed body parts. Bring on the new ideas, for sure, but don’t throw out Shakespeare and Aristotle because a few things they said might offend certain western suburban sensibilities.

I'm a fan of challenging orthodoxy, but when you have 25 teenagers, the very premise that knowledge is forever relative is toxic and alienating. — Jeremy Murray

And gives them nothing to build with. I agree, it is important to challenge our deepest beliefs starting in high school for sure - the orthodoxy is always asking for trouble. But teenagers don’t need to be over-taught that challenging authority is a goal; most of them will challenge authority by nature as teenagers. My sense is that, if we reify the challenging of authority, and throw out all of the authorities and institutions before they get their own chance to rebel against them, they don’t ever really get past adolescence - we are building a world full of rebels with nothing worthy of their passion to struggle against and strive to out-pace.

In other words, I feel like we are projecting our own uncertainty as relativistic adults onto children who are not equipped to deal with premises such as the death of the master narrative. — Jeremy Murray

Exactly. Better to give them a master and teach them to kill, but don’t do the dirty work for them and just give them a dead master. And some of the masters are worthy of respect after all.

I just straight out don't get people that reject things like faith outright. — Jeremy Murray

Yeah - you can’t prove a negative after all. But I don’t get the Christian who judges the atheist as really any different than they are. We all know and think different things based on different experiences. No one can know a whole person’s whole life, or judge another persons soul. We are all just people doing the best we can, each deserving as much respect as we should each be giving.

I don't think atheism necessitates rejection of a 'true good'. It just makes it harder to work towards. — Jeremy Murray

I agree. It seems harder to me. But in the end, the good is less about what you think and can teach, and more about what you do. And regardless of any religious beliefs, some people just do a lot of good. I would call them blessed with a great disposition, or a good conscience, but however it came to be, a stronger sense of what is good and wise just is in certain people.

I'm not ruling anything out.

How postmodern of me? — Jeremy Murray

I’d say, how reasonable of you.

Cheers

But then what is wisdom
— Count Timothy von Icarus

And again, asking this supposes that there is a sequence of sentences such that their conjunct sets out all and only what is wise and excludes all that is not wise. — Banno

Asking “what is x?” doesn’t suppose anything, except there is x.

There's a stream that might be called 'analytical mysticism' in Catholic philosophy. At least, it has its mystical elements, from its inhereted neoplatonism and the presence of mystics in the Church (You've mentioned that you're Catholic). Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, William Desmond - all great philosophers in that tradition. There are many more. — Wayfarer

Mystics often make perfect sense to each other and can follow each other’s logic.

Appreciate the references.

Just to be clear, I like the two ways to philosophize thesis.

I just don’t give analytic dissection the priority. We need to assert, and then dissect. Whatever is left is truth about the world.

There is very little truth about the world that has survived the dissection. But I see it.

Banno and Count seem to be arguing what wisdom is.

Well it is not error or nonsense, and it is not a ham sandwich. So it is something. And I see it is worth scrutinizing to try to define better.

Surely we must know something about what exists — Moliere

Like “I think, therefore, I am.” Or have I already said too much?

In a lot of ways I think of knowledge as the things I know are false -- don't do this, don't do that, this is false because, this is wrong cuz that... — Moliere

It is one thing to call something wrong because it is incoherent or invalid. These are process problems - like, “you don’t follow the rules” or “that doesn’t make sense”.

But it is another thing to say “you are wrong because that doesn’t exist”. That is a positive assertion highlighting something that does in fact exist (namely, the landscape surrounding the hole you just carved where that thing you said doesn’t exist was supposed to be). Analytic skeptics can’t say someone is wrong about what exists, just whether their manner of speaking is coherent or valid.

Once you are talking about what exists, you need a metaphysician.

myth-making — Banno

How about theorizing?

Because who really needs to waste time critiquing a myth?

Your bias is showing again.

While world-building is part of philosophy, so is the skeptics. — Moliere

Absolutely true. We need at both to make a science of knowing the world, and more than science to know really people.

But the skeptics seem to be arguing you only need skepticism. Or only admit “perhaps” there is more to philosophy. I disagree. It’s not “perhaps”; it is certainly more than the skeptic that is doing proper philosophy.

There is room in experience, and can be reasons, and necessity to mistrust the mistrust. Even to trust the senses and learn from doing, and to learn without analyzing. There’s more. We should make leaps at times and analyze what’s been done later. We must analyze it later, to be rigorous scientists, but the skeptic should thank the metaphysician more often for giving them some content to play with.

Totally agree with that.

But the deeper problem here is that the “dissecting/disagreeing/critiquing” way of doing philosophy presupposes the “discourse” way of doing philosophy. — Leontiskos

Exactly. That is why I pointed out the underdevelopment of Banno’s admission in passing:

Perhaps you can't have one without the other… — Banno

That is a huge indictment against presuming one of the two ways of philosophizing is “better” than the other. Which Banno obviously presumes.

their choice of what to disagree with would still reflect their own positive positions and predilections — Leontiskos

Exactly. Which is why I keep saying if you want to point out error in another, you have to be upholding something objective between you both, such as the truth, as it can be found in the world both of you stand in relation to. Which contradicts the position that there is no such truth in the first place, and violates the PNC.

And further, I’ve noticed when two people who seem to agree on the fundamentals of the Wittgensteinian type of philosophic game are discussing “the world” they make metaphysical claims all of the time and sometimes agree about distinctions between essentially different things in the world without harassing each other for wandering back into theoretical metaphysics.

So it is not even a consistently analytic robot that ever comes across.

I’ll admit, I may just not be getting it. I do respect the conversation.

agents are assumed to have power to intervene in the physical world

This is exactly what we are talking about.

Like the assumption “all men are created equal” endowed with unalienable rights including “Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Pursuing happiness is a physical act. Free agency is the assumed state of nature here, before one can consider laws about speech.


NOS4A2 is just not talking about the same world that is assumed to exist in the constitution that coined the term “no law…abridging freedom of speech.”

Maybe he’s right, but then he should be talking about the uselessness of legislatures and constitutions as well as any other peoples’ words to regulate action.

Words and their meanings in the listener are one cause among many of the way people subsequently act. NOS doesn’t seem to understand “intervening” causation. Just because I may (or may not) have full control over my cerebral cortex (as he puts it) to direct my car down the road however I choose, doesn’t mean I don’t choose to drive on the right side of the road here in America be-cause of the law (other’s words). Words must cause physical effects or there can be no such thing as constitutionally based government by rule of law.

I think it is pointless to debate free will versus determinism in the context of a free speech debate. If free will is up for grabs, it will be nearly impossible to get to a practical application of laws about speech for free-agents. Which has been the case here talking with NOS.

Odd thing is - I think we all agree that free speech is important and difficult to protect in the law. NOS is just being hard-headed (like his argument and thinking can be analogized to a rock or other hard, physical thing in the causal chain).

His position that words cannot cause actions in others defeats his position that laws cannot limit and must protect freedom of speech.

We need not assume the dilemma that either there is one true narrative, or else all philosophical positions were equally wise.

I think we precisely must assume this. There must be one true narrative, or else, all narratives are equally born and equally soon to be gone.

Maybe there is not one true narrative. But then, in such case, never can there be error or accuracy in any narratives that may arise, if one remains the narrating type.




I am enjoying this. Wish Banno would finish his sandwich and teach me something. I feel like I’m on the usual precipice between everything and nothing. So few enjoy the view down here in the cave (or on the mountain, if you rather see Nietzsche in your company than Plato).

It sounds like there certainly has to be something outside of language. Which I would agree with.
— Fire Ologist
That is obvious. Why would we need Godel to explain something so trivial? — Harry Hindu

Because I’m trying to understand statements like this:

If the world is always, and already, in a context and a language, then there is nothing "external" to the interpretation. — Banno

And this:

“truths become available within human discourse”
— Banno

But then there is this:

“truths become available…not arbitrarily, not as illusions, but as intelligible articulations of a world we are always already in relation with.”
— Banno

This implies a world we are separated from - you need there to be me and separately the world logically before there can be me “in relation with” the world. The “already” is the ontological pickle (the chicken and egg portion of the discussion), but recognizing this tension does not collapse the gap that maintains a separate world to be articulated.

And what about this:

Of course being is not contained in language. Being is not contained in anything, and neither is language a container. Hence any attempt to step outside of all language to describe being “as such” is suspect. — Banno

And there is what you say above, that the metaphysics of it all is only a trivial observation.

My sense is that there is the world, and there is the language about the world. Language is always from the outside looking back in, fashioning a window into being. I say looking back in, because it requires reflection, a move from the world, processed in mind, back onto the world. This “back in” move reflects Banno’s “already in relation with” but accounts for the distance between me and the world that must exist for me to have a relation to the world.

To say “being is not understood outside of language”, and “language is not a container”, and there is nothing external interpretation - together these statements isolate language from attempts to use language to speak about the world. Maybe that is the intent. But then language itself becomes suspect. Interpretation becomes interpretation of a prior interpretation (language always in a con-text), and never an interpretation (or better, a translation into language) of the world.

The study of being is not the study of the word “being.” Studying is closer to the words. Being is closer to the thing being studied.

Having removed all "bias," nothing supports one view over any other. — Count Timothy von Icarus

A good example of this is the incoherence of saying gender and sexuality are malleable objects of choice. If we suspend the “bias” of “assigning” gender both an essence (male is one way, female another) and an application (this baby is a boy, that baby is a girl), there will be nothing on the landscape for someone to choose from when they might later decide to reassign themselves a new gender.

During adolescence, we must break from the authority of our parents in order to become fully formed individuals. Liberalism is the reification of adolescence as if it was full maturity, seeking always to break and tear down. The liberal forgets that as they destroy one institution, it gets replaced by another, or the destruction simply leads to a diminishment of life, just like the adolescent has not yet learned that there are reasons the adults constrain them, and that they will find they impose the same restraints on themselves and their children one day.

…more a reference to a visionary insight, noesis, perhaps, or gnosis, or something of the kind.

…But it is still part of the broader territory of philosophy (or at least used to be.) — Wayfarer

That was my point about there being a third way to philosophize.

Which is making me realize a fourth way might be seen as naive common sense. Non- analytic, non-metaphysical, immediate like mystical, but the opposite of transcendent.

still part of the broader territory of philosophy (or at least used to be.) — Wayfarer

Philosophical type activity moves from naive common sense, to the analytic dissection Banno enjoys, to the metaphyisical more constructive type (building more things to be dissected), then to more mystical transcending type (completely not worth the analytic’s time as it intentionally uses illogical gibberish (paradox and seeming contradiction) to make itself known in language.)

Do you believe laws cause your actions? — NOS4A2

All I need to say to force your brain to understand is bvgckdsfff. Thereby causing this conversation to end.

once you limit free speech it is no longer free speech. It’s censorship — NOS4A2

How can a law possibly limit free speech? A law is just speech from the government. You said speech can’t cause anything so it can’t limit anything.

See? You can’t say that in this discussion.

You have to make your point some other way or just concede you are not making sense saying words don’t cause actions. Right?

Like I tried to say nicely, not a serious discussion.

What I specifically do in response to the law is another discussion. Whether words have effects in our actions is another discussion (that you stink at discussing).

A third discussion is about free speech laws.

Added: you still don’t get it, do you.