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.

And if they changed the laws tomorrow you would dutifully follow it, given that the words cause your actions. — NOS4A2

That has nothing to do with the discussion.

And none of that is because of the Declaration on Human Rights. That has no effect on anyone.

It is because of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Absolutely I believe that free speech must be protected in the law. Government can’t tell anyone what to think or say about anything.

That is the starting point.

Thank God words cause actions. Now I can tell the government to fuck off, unless they rightfully identify some law (words) that I am breaking. If I am being lawful, and the government doesn’t like what I saying, I can say it anyway, pointing to the law (words) requiring them not to arrest me or even chill my speech.

None if this would make any sense if words did not cause actions.

You keep utterly missing the point.

What forces the police to arrest people? They just magically know what is legal and what is illegal? Or do they follow the code book (words)? Why do they have to read those the arrest their Miranda rights (words), and if they skip reading those words, let them out of jail? What causes the police to be police and not just bullies?

Come on man. You should rethink your position.

You can’t have a government of laws (words) based on a constitution (words), ratified by vote (words) and say “words don’t cause actions”.

You are trying to talk metaphysics and theory of mind on a thread about politics which already has to assume words are sometimes hammers that break bones.

All laws, written down, are words meant to influence actions. That’s what the law does. That is how it works.

If this is a serious discussion about free speech laws, these being, laws written down to influence what people do and do not say, then NOS4A2, I have to say, you are making absolutely no sense.

According to your position, namely, that words cannot be the cause of actions in others, there is no point to there being any law whatsoever. How could it matter what the law says if we each can only chose to speak, like every other act, without any verbal influence from another possibly intervening?

You are missing the whole point of the law if you think words cannot cause actions, making any mention of “free speech laws” absurd.

Even 'understanding the nature of being' sounds artificial, when expressed in such bald terms, but to see a real master at work, in whatever capacity or occupation they are engaged in, is to see what that understanding means. — Wayfarer

I agree. It is difficult to sound genuine when speaking of being qua being - sounds like word salad from a history nerd who probably couldn’t hang for one minute with Aristotle or Wittgenstein or any of the real thinkers.

But philosophy, to me, is the meta language of all doing.

So philosophy is too immediately both self-aware and bound to its language. It is unlike playing music or any other act that we do. One cannot make doing philosophy a meditative act, like one does other things.

There is something utterly non-physical about doing philosophy. This builds no groove or rhythm that might facilitate true mastery.

And there is something essentially dialectic about philosophy that forever distracts one from such a rhythm.

No good philosopher believes they know enough to call themselves a master. (You can master academia and history, but not master thinking such that you would discover any of the ideas that those philosophers discovered.)

At least I have not seen it. Even a poet or prose writer can probably allow the muses to carry one towards a mastery of language unlike a philosopher engages language.

The closest one can get to being consumed in doing philosophy, the way a master is consumed while practicing his trade, is the moment when philosophizing becomes mystical contemplation. Words and self-awareness dissipate at that point, so you are not really doing philosophy anymore, though you may be thinking about being, or self, or language qua language, or the thought of nothingness.

So I agree, practice makes perfect, where more meaning can be found in the practice than in the perfection. But I did not learn this from philosophy. I analyze it when doing philosophy, but can’t be as such while philosophizing.

Does that track anything with you?

A Theory Of Everything, in philosophy, would naturally have to include a theory of explanation itself -- what counts as explanatory, how explanations do in fact make sense of things, how we recognize an adequate justification, and much more. So to avoid circularity, a TOE will have to provide this account on a different level than the theory-internal explanations of other things. — J

More clarity. Cool.

Explanation has to be on a different level than the thing it explains. Always leaving the explanation itself lacking an explanation.

This put me in mind of the use of metalanguage in Tarski, a hierarchy in which the truths in each language are set out in it's metalanguage, and infinitum. — Banno

Is this a positive observation, or does it point to some kind of deficiency to the language process?

After understanding these features of explanation, do you now possess some kind of tool when doing philosophy, or is this another example of the impossibility of metaphysics?

There has to be something outside the theoretical construct….
— Banno
What exactly does this mean — Harry Hindu

It certainly sounds metaphysical. It sounds like there certainly has to be something outside of language. Which I would agree with.

if one goes in assuming all problems are pseudoproblems, it lends itself to a tendency to ignore argument in favor of appeals to having "unmasked the pseudoproblem." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Discussion becomes a bait and switch. They posit something, thereby staking a metaphysical position, but then, if someone disagrees, they switch the conversation to one about what is or is not metaphysical and what one can or cannot say about anything. The belief that the the goal posts are always moving allows for a consistent defense against all who disagree.

When they agree with each other, they sound like metaphysicians.

But I guess this is off topic, although not really since the topic poses a metaphysical question.

As a person more interested in discussing world views and seeking truth, another response to this great post might be:

I’ll admit I might be full of shit, if you’ll admit you contradict yourself in saying I can’t be full of truth.

This is well-put as usual, which is why you are such an interesting thinker.

There are those who arrive with their Philosophy, and expound it at length, explaining The Way The World Is, — Banno

I don’t have a philosophy, but this describes me pretty much. I have some beliefs about what the world is and what human experience is, and why we in fact care to discuss it.

So despite your basic denigration of those who might ask and care about “what is your philosophy?”, and despite the lack of any complete system that is yet to give an answer, I am most interested in pursuing an answer to this precise question. What is your world view and why, despite all of the difficulties with saying such.

Instead, I found myself reading many, many papers, delving in great detail into the logic and language of each, looking for where what was said hung together and where it fell apart, and how it sat in relation to all those other papers. — Banno

This is the aspect of philosophic study that makes it a science. Descartes, the mathematician, was skeptical, to the point of seeing nothing certain. He salvaged the seeing. But tried to dissect it all. And Sextus Epiricus, the physician, didn’t buy any of it.

This is an important spirit towards rigor in what I see as the science which is philosophy.

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

This was said in passing. But is the heart of the matter to me. You cannot say what the world is without inviting rigorous dissection of what you said, but there is nothing to dissect without human experience spoken of.

Philosophers MUST care about both, or there is no subject of our study.

however a theory that explains any eventuality ends up explaining nothing, and for a theory to be useful it has to rule some things out. — Banno

I don’t understand the first part of this. Seems like it is missing something. “…a theory that explains any eventuality ends up explaining nothing [unless it…does what?].”

I agree with the second part - useful theories rule things out. But the first part says explaining eventualities always explains the same thing, namely, nothing.

Gödel showed us that no sufficiently complex formal system can be both complete and consistent. If we apply this insight philosophically, we see that striving for a complete worldview may not only be impossible—it may be misguided. — Banno

It may be. But isn’t that a complete and consistent reason not to say what Gödel just said. I am happy to be 50% uncertain in the hopes of being accidentally right about the world and human experience, and keep testing and testing the theories. This forum is a laboratory.

Much better to have an incomplete theory that is right that a completely wrong theory... — Banno

“Theory that is right”.
Interesting invocation. Theory about what? Right about what? Theory about theorizing, or about the world theorists need and use to exchange their ideas and theories?

“Better” to have a theory about theorizing or a theory about the world that is incomplete?

Isn’t Godels theory (completed in the sense that it is a theory) simply that theorizing about the world is never complete? That says something universal about human experience. I’m interested in that, not just the proofs and analytics that back it up.

I don't agree philosophical practice is strictly binary, — 180 Proof

Me neither. I think this all overlooks philosophy’s relationship to the mystical. There are forces begging our questions even after one concludes the questions cannot be answered.

Human nature is an absurdity. But that is still a nature. That can still be a metaphysical truth of interest to the scientist.

others who want everyone to think like them. — Tom Storm

I am interested in what others think, what I think, and most importantly what we all think is the truth. I don’t want others to think like I do. That belittles everyone involved. But I do humbly think there are truths all rational people must accept. That, can seem like I want others to think like I do, but it is not. It’s like saying Einstein was psychologically trying to get others to think like he thinks about energy, when psychology was not not of any interest.

So we might describe a chair variously as constructed from multiple pieces of wood, or as a collection of gluons and forces, and yet have both descriptions as equally true, but differing in intent. — Banno

But isn’t that all blathering about ourselves, meaningless in the world, only for the sake of being reinterpreted into some other blather, if in fact “the ‘chair’ is always already in a language”?

(You said “the world is always already in a language”. Here, applying this theory, your world is a chair. Or should I say a ‘chair’?)

I mean, what could possibly be the point of trying to put into words that which distinguishes wood from gluons, without a pre/non-linguistic world/experience that necessitated different words for different things, regardless of any intent? Are you just gaming the listener, and if so, why ever settle on any distinctions? Gluons are wood, and forces, and are not forces, etc. as long as they remain in a language to be reinterpreted, promising no end.

Either something determines language or usefulness, and is thus prior, or nothing does. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly. And if nothing determines language, then all that we say is arbitrary.

the idea that language or what we find useful can be "any which way," is deeply contrary to experience. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Although language can be any which way to the equivocator who is not interested in truth, who is only interested in some sort of meaningless game. But for anyone who uses language to convey meaning to another about the world we share in common, it is certainly contrary to experience.

being cannot be grasped outside language"↪Banno. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Existence, actual things, the world. What is. Being.
Cannot be grasped outside of language?
How about with a hand?
Or by “grasped” do we mean “understood”? Then how about as an intuition, too vague to be put into words but nevertheless grasped? Or analogously as sensation, or sense knowledge?

the world is always already in language, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right. That is a metaphysical claim. About language and the world.

Aesthetics entails a metaphysical standpoint.
Ethics entails a metaphysical standpoint.
Which is why threads starting along those lines, like this one, when placed in the hands of the Wittgensteinians, end up in this same conversation about language and not the thing language is speaking about (whatever the thing is). Sparring for the most consistent use of language instead of saying something about the world that another person might also say about the same world.

Doesn’t there inevitably have to be something else to talk about besides talking?
By talking, people inevitably make metaphysical claims. Why is it so hard to make that obvious point?

a process that promises no end. — Banno

…or beginning…or even a specific process…

An eternal reinterpretation…of the same process…

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

How not arbitrarily? From whence comes that which prevents arbitrariness?

If not arbitrarily or as illusions, then it seems to me you should be agreeing with Count.

And if not arbitrarily, you have promised an end, namely, something that is not arbitrary or illusion (also namely, the truth).

Banno, although I think my questions follow from the position you are articulating, (or are in the process of articulating), I’d much rather see you respond to Count’s post just above.

Inherent suffering. Suffering seems to be inherent to life, — Martijn

I think there is another aspect to this discussion relating to change, labor, and the ability to accept and overcome suffering.

Take all of the obvious emotion and empathy out of it just for the sake of discussion. We can put that back in later and see what happens.

Instead of calling it suffering, call it striving or even just labor, for a moment.

Whenever something new comes to be, something else must be consumed and pass away. This is what change is, what it does.

In order for a boulder to individuate itself as a boulder, a huge rock must break away from the mountain. We can see this as the mountain being broken (suffering) or we can see this as the boulder being born. Or, because mountains don’t suffer and boulders are not alive to be be born, the fact of the mountain and the boulder that comes from it can be seen simply as change.

Change, coming to be and passing away, requires suffering.

Applied in living beings, change is often accompanied by pain. This is true whenever one works hard and strives to produce something. Let’s say one is gathering food and building a house. One shops down trees for wood, drags logs up hills, chops down wheat fields, bruises one’s body, blisters and callouses, is cut and bleeds accidentally, but labors through the pain, day after day, through sickness when it is harvest time, to build a house and fill it with food. Living things must consume (destroy) what they eat, robbing the atmosphere of oxygen, drinking up the rivers. Living things speed up the normal process of change by seeking out things to hunt down, kill and consume.

This is what nature is.

So, when in pain, one can see that one is privileged to exist at all, to know both pain and peace. It can be one helper towards accepting pain, or better said, overcoming pain or even welcoming it, to know what future things may come to be from it. Like labor pains, the baby and a next generation, with its hope for more peaceful moments, make the mother push through the birth, and strive towards something better through the pain. And maybe so much so, she has many children, making even more chances that the next generation will have enough people to help each other towards peace. We can labor now to build a future with surplus and less labor in it for that next generation.

None of this matters to the child who is dying of cancer, and perhaps in pain for weeks and months or years before an untimely death. And none of these motions of change matter to the mother of that child, and the future robbed of her joys that she will endure into her death. For such people, the rest of us owe charity and the gifts of our surplus. We owe them from our surplus of joy as much comfort and consolation as we can give.

But only if there is an afterlife, hope for all of the futures that have been cut short in pain and death, can we find a way to truly accept and overcome so much of the suffering that life and change necessitate. Even the Buddha called this an end to rebirth. Something truly transcendent, untouched by this universe, unchanging, that we may be blessed to discover while we live, is the only real way to overcome the labor of living. But it can help us work and strive and labor to build for others, and ourselves, a more peaceful existence, where striving and change reveal to us life’s beauty and love and goodness, and not just pain and death.

I think I am simply saying, if one wants to tell someone else “you are wrong” than one is operating from the standpoint that something is objective between them.

If you have the opinion that I am wrong, you also have the opinion there is something objective.

With regard to relativism, if the only basis you operate from to judge another person right or wrong is your own, subjective point of view, then you would be more consistent with your viewpoint to never see anyone as wrong. They would just be different, from their point of view, not yours.

Incoherence versus coherence is an agreed upon game, but then the agreement takes the place of objectivity. We don’t get to agree to do math and each say 2+2 equals all sorts of things. How math works becomes objective and is not subject to opinions about how to do it, if you want to play math.

They say ritual human sacrifice is good and beautiful.
You say it is not.
The relativist might say it’s culturally dependent and so it is both good and not good depending on who you ask (so neither good nor not good objectively speaking)

If there is nothing objective, then all opinions may seem different, but what else is there to say?

So if you want to have the opinion that someone else is wrong, you can’t have any opinion you want.

Since we now know about frank’s friends, your answer is probably better — T Clark

:lol:

Are you sure you were teaching them addition and plus, not quaddition and quus? Or maybe it was laddition and luus? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Don’t these other ideas have to come after addition, if they don’t actually include the idea of addition anyway?

But ok.

But doesn’t this just raise a version of epistemological problems with understanding anything independent of our minds?

It is true, there is the line between the other one’s behavior/ words, and the understanding mind behind that behavior/words. We are many layers divided from each other and the thing-in-itself.

And really, is it disrespectful to presume we could understand such a thing as what another one understands?

But how do we seek to understand anything?
We seek evidence.

So the question becomes how could we elicit evidence of another’s understanding?

And this question becomes what is it we understand that we are seeking evidence of, in another?
We seek evidence of an understanding out there, that matches our own.

To seek this, we must first put our understanding into words to give the other one something to understand.

Words are the fulcrum in this whole inquiry.

They are my words first, telling the other person what I want them to understand. So now there is my understanding, and then there are my words.

Then the other person takes my words and understands something of them.

At that moment I can ask “do they understand me?”, and I can seek evidence of what it is they’ve understood from my words.

So now, if they can speak back to me different words than mine, but nevertheless draw for me the same idea that I am understanding, we’ve both provided evidence (words behaviors) that in themselves don’t match each other (different words/behaviors). But, if we understand each other, we nevertheless demonstrate the one same idea understood in those different words.

This draws a line distinguishing our words which are different from each other, from the one same idea those different words both now convey. If I can gather the same idea from the different words, I have strong evidence that the other person who said those different words understands me.

We have isolated our two understandings from the two different words and the behaviors exchanged, a now can show those two understanding correspond and are the same.

This os all another a long winded way of saying, tell them what you mean and ask them to show you they understand.

Let’s do this right now. The “How can I tell whether you understand me?” example test:

What I understand is a number. A certain quantity, if you will. To be more specific, one way of understanding this single number is as “equal to 3.3 + .7”. That is enough to give you the idea about which I am asking ‘how can I know whether anyone understands me?’
If you do understand, you might say my idea is the same as “one and one and one and one”, or maybe “117, but after taking away 113 from it”. This idea helps organize a great golf outing, or a game of horseshoes.

I can tell whether you understand something of this idea I’ve spoken about, if you can say something I haven’t said about it.

And if you can, how does it not mean that we each now can tell we both understand each other?

The words are the fulcrum between two understanding minds, and what they each understand. Words are the best evidence we can gather to most intimately know what another understands. I need words for you to understand me, and can elicit words from you to see if you understand what I understand. And the test of the same understanding requires different words from each in order to strengthen the evidence of the same idea in each.

I’m sure this example is not perfect, and I’m sure it does not prove either of us understand anything, let alone understand each other’s mind. But if “4” crossed your mind, during the test, I bet you could explain to me what I am trying to say here, maybe show not only that you understand it, but how it is flawed, and how we might still not know each other at all.

But I still say we understand each other and so understand what each other understands.

In fact, IMO, it is precisely because people can speak their minds, and that people can admit words capture their own minds, that we can know people better than we can know anything else.

We can’t understand the-thing-in-itself; there is the brightlne wall never to be crossed. But people, can seek to know the other person’s understanding-in-itself in a different way, unlike people seek to understand any other type of thing. Because the other can make themselves vulnerable, sort of let down the wall between two things in themselves, and reveal themselves seeking to be completely known, to make clear in words and by questioning confirming, what is one’s understanding and whether the other one is listening.

Brilliant!

This will be a short thread now that we have that all worked out. :rofl: