Okay, so as I promised yesterday, I want to try to analyze, or at least summarize, each section of this paper in mostly non-mathematical terms. This may turn out to be a really dumb idea that contributes nothing. But I think that the paper is so dense and mathematically sophisticated that it can obscure the more straightforward aspects of the argument. I’m therefore at least going to try and see where I can get by treating each section as providing an argument-structure typical of a basic Philosophy 101 paper, an argument which then gets fleshed out through the introduction of mathematical concepts and arguments.

Plan of the Investigation - Okay, the organization of this section is straightforward (though where he lands on certain philosophical questions certainly is not). He’s introducing the topic; orienting the conversation; telling us what he thinks is wrong with previous approaches; how he’s going to fill in this gap; what his argument will be. Again, like basically any philosophy paper.

These are the basic questions I think we should be asking ourselves in this section:

(1) What is the meaning of the title - i.e. the scope of the work?
(2) What is the problem the author is addressing?
(3) Which previous solutions or ways of thinking about this problem is he attacking? In what way are they wrong or misguided?
(4) What sort of solution is he going to offer us instead? How is he going to go about doing that?

Paragraph 1:

Literature Review: Geometry assumes as given — let’s call this ‘the Given’ of geometry — (a) the notion of space; (b) first principles of constructions in space.

But geometry gives definitions of this ‘Given’ in name only; the actual work of the sort that interests us philosophically (determinate truth) appears in the form of axioms.

Oversight in the Literature: This leads Riemann to a question which will guide the paper: What is the relationship between this taken-for-granted notion of space and constructions in space (the ‘Given’ of geometers) and the type of determinate truth which geometers arrive at via axiomatization?

Problem: I take it that this is a straightforward philosophical puzzle that actually interests most members of this forum: What does mathematics reveal about the nature of space? How does our intuitive understanding of space (derived from us being a particular sort of creature with a special type of bodily experience of space) affect our mathematics? Is it possible to achieve a more disinterested and perfect mathematical understanding of space if we remain steadfastly committed to untangling the role that anthropocentrism has played in various approaches to geometry? Is a wholly disinterested mathematical notion of space ‘more true’ than the sort of space in which we live and move and have our being? (These are all still very contemporary debates.)

Paragraph 2:

Literature Review: Philosophers and Mathematicians (including the most renowned) have failed to address adequately the concerns raised in Para 1. — Why? — Because of a conceptual failure to understand a new concept that I shall be introducing: Multiply Extended Magnitudes. (MEM)

Problem How should we understand a Multiply Extended Magnitude — and consequently answer the problem set out in this paper (see para 1)? Well, we will have to show how:

General Notions of Magnitude —> Multiply Extended Magnitude.

(So if you're having trouble with the math just remember to contextualize it in this way: We have a mathematical problem, GNM --> MEM, and we're going to see how answering this will be of basic interest to the philosophical problem which likely interests all of us.)

Consequences: (a) Triply Extended Magnitude is more general than Space (i.e. ‘the Given’ of previous geometry; i.e. intuitive space). (b) Experience alone distinguishes intuitive space from other conceivable triply extended magnitudes. (TEM)

Problem: If “experience” is the sole means by which we can understand intuitive space — how do we understand what “experience” is with respect to the role that it’s playing in our ability to understand space mathematically (viz. as one among many conceivable TEM)? How does the determination of ‘intuitive’ space work?

To answer the question of previous posters about “simplest matters of fact” I read this — perhaps stupidly — as a matter of the straightforward “relation” problem being dealt with in para. 1; do we get from mathematics to intuition via facts/theory/axioms/deduction, etc.? Or is there a different sort of intelligibility at work? If the latter then we arrive at the “several systems of matters of fact” — namely, that different creatures will so-to-speak “interpret" space differently in their lived experience, but there may be an insoluble gap between how we can understand these different systems mathematically versus in lived experience.

If I may put this in Heidegger terms. If the intelligibility of the ready-to-hand understanding of space is necessary to arrive at the present-at-hand understanding of space then we may not be able to get at the variety of ready-to-hand understandings which the mathematics suggests would be available to different types of embodied creatures.

To put this in terms of the “transcendental aesthetic”: Aliens may very well experience a different sort of ‘intuitive space’, but they would need this experience in order to understand how the TEM describes this space. Just as we need our intuitions in order to get from the TEM to our intuitive space.

To put the same point in yet another way: Euclidean geometry is possible only because we have lived in human space. An alien could not get to Euclidean geometry from within a different lived intuitive-space.

The Title: I’ll quote in full: “These matters of fact [viz. euclidean geometry] are - like all matters of fact - not necessary, but only of empirical certainty; they are hypotheses.”

Sorry this write-up was a little lame; hopefully in a couple days I will be less distracted and promise to do a better job of it. Really love everything I'm reading from you guys!

Hi all, really sorry I missed out on the first day - something serious has come up all of a sudden so unfortunately I may be posting a little sporadically over the next several days. @fdrake's posts are utterly fantastic so I'm going to try my best to address them today. I think following what just said, maybe the best way to do this paper is if I act as a foil to @fdrake, trying to respond to your posts from the perspective of having no mathematical knowledge. (It won't be that hard to pretend. :wink:) @Wallows -- I get the impression you know a lot more math than I do! What do you say to sticking together here and seeing how the paper comes out if we try to work through the math from a place of total ignorance?

@Moliere @SapereAude@Terrapin Station @Wallows

Hi all.

@fdrake has offered to lead a discussion of Bernhard Riemann's "On the Hypotheses which lie at the Bases of Geometry (1873)". Here is a link to the paper. If for some reason that link does not work for you, just google the paper - it seems to be pretty widely available. We will begin sometime around Sunday. It's a really cool paper so I definitely want to encourage people to read it - if you're not too busy it's sure to be worth the time you put into it.

Sorry Wallows, I was waiting till we get a bit closer to the 13th just to tag everyone and remind them that this thread was kicking off.

We're going to start with the Riemann paper on the 13th. I'm still open to what people want to do beyond that. It seems to me that we should probably just let that conversation go on as long as it goes. Meanwhile, people should feel free to nominate papers or books for discussion after that.

The author I'm reading seems to be saying "yes"...but my intuitions just don't agree with that. I think (though I don't have a good argument for why) it possible that two competing theories can be both pragmatically justified. — mrnormal5150

This is my intuition as well though I'm definitely not an expert. I know that you said you are unclear on how to argue for your intuition but for what it's worth I do think that there's enough room here that even if you were studying this in a class and the authority figure, like a Professor or TA, held the opposite view it would still be a good idea to write a paper exploring or arguing for your intuitions.

I'm fairly confused by your phrasing of the question and the explanation that you give leading up to it but assuming I've understood you correctly then the choice you have to engage either in Practice 1 or in Practice 2 plumps and so you are justified in picking either practice on that ground.

One of the top five best posts I've read on this site. Illuminating and thought provoking. :clap:

Thanks, I appreciate the recommendation. All I can really see from scrolling around that link is standard Cambridge UP books at exorbitant prices. Am I perhaps missing something or are you simply recommending Cambridge UP in a very general sense?

As long as this thread is bumped, I wonder if anyone has any insight into academically oriented websites that streamline the process of ordering the standardized editions of an author's collected works for the purposes of writing an article. Ideally a place where you could order an entire Gesamtausgabe at a discount rate in a straightforward way even if you're someone who is still in the process of familiarizing themselves with the thinker and a bit daft about the nuances of different editions.

It is certainly not hoping to go unnoticed. If you disagree, make your case. — Tzeentch

Would you kindly point out what I'm making my case against? I don't really wish to debate a tautology. It's one of the coolest sentences I've read on this site, but it's really wonky and I hope you see that. I probably can't be of much help if you don't.

:up: :up:

Whenever philosophy is biased towards anything other than truth, it is not true philosophy. — Tzeentch

This looks to me like epistemic and value claims hiding within a tautology hoping to go unnoticed. Either we ignore it and some notion of truth self-justifies by refusing to scrutinize itself further or we're off to the races with "What is truth?" and "What is the value of truth?".

Philosophy always cuts both ways and is awash in a sea of motives. There are likely deep personal reasons for your inquiring into philosophy's use as a justification for personal investment in society and the status quo as opposed to philosophy's use as a justification for resentment towards society and personal inability to cope successfully with the status quo. The only philosophical cure for bad philosophical self-justification is more philosophy. But as we all know too much philosophy usually destroys a person, so it may often be best to let people play in their sandbox of philosophical self-deception, or at least not to be shocked or dismayed when they prefer to do so.

I suppose that I see you raising a variety of separate concerns we might try to articulate, such as (1) the loss of public political spaces (our political space has been swallowed up by particularly dubious private corporate entities -- CNN, Fox News, Twitter, Reddit, etc.), (2) the economic mentality that permeates power structures (politicians and judges are now essentially brands being bought and sold on the political market), (3) the fracturing of political identities and ascendance of a style of politics which transforms politics into a competition between private interests for control over powerful institutions, and so forth.

Cool! What did you make of the book? Do you have a significant difference in mind between 'economic fascism' and 'inverted totalitarianism'?

I think the most interesting bits of that book generally have to do with his analysis of events he was alive for (e.g. FDR administration) as well as the aims of the founders, constitution, Federalist Papers, etc.

There's merit to the idea for sure. You should check out Sheldon Wolin's notion of inverted totalitarianism. :up:

Though I might say that the criticism isn't bourgeois morality as much as it is that neo-Kantian thought inhibits the working class and helps the bourgeois political order to justify itself. A bit of a slight difference, but I think I'd at least try to frame things in terms of political power and not morality (though there is an interesting tension in Marx showing here between his avowed nihilism and the fairly apparent moral impulse that generates the project in the first place -- not un-resolvable, but a tension) — Moliere

Interesting! My reason for thinking that Lukács is dealing at bottom with what he takes to be a moral concern is that Kant explicitly states (if I read him correctly?) that his metaphysics is ultimately justified on moral grounds (in the First Critique). I guess it's probably impossible to come to any definite conclusion about this underdetermined aspect of Lukács's paper but I would love to pursue the point a bit.

Basically, my reasoning for thinking that Lukács finds an inherent connection between idealism and bourgeois morality (which perpetuates a politically retrogressive ideology) was that he's playing off of this connection that Kant draws between his morality and his metaphysics.

For example, from the closing sections of the first Critique: "Hence theology and morality were the two incentives, or better, the points of reference for all the abstract inquiries of reason to which we have always been de­voted" (A853/B881).

So I think you're right that since I'm not a Marxist I may be missing the fact that thinking of metaphysics and morality as in this sense more fundamental than politics and ideology is a distinctly bad way of reading a Marxist thinker.

I like your way of looking at this but wonder if you might expand a tad? Definitely curious about how to work within the Marxist framework here to think through the difference between morality and the political order, as well as whatever personal views you might have about tensions in Marx's nihilism. (Isn't Lukács usually read through the lens of the discovery of Marx's early writings and the debate between 'early' and 'later' Marx?)

Likewise if Peter Singer is wrong, then we will have given to charity more than we need have and the economy may suffer. — Isaac

I get the rhetorical point but I don't know about this. I've always thought Peter Singer is the perfect foil for Heidegger's take on what pure nihilism-in-action would look like. An entire world of Singer taken to the extreme would be, in my opinion, less desirable than extinction. Seems relevant because Singer et al are every bit as nihilistic as the pessimists but without the refreshing transparency of aim and purpose.

I don't accept that you are serious about winning. — Jake

I don't accept that you are serious about winning if you refuse, after repeated entreaties, to do any sort of basic research on candidates you put forward for higher office.

This is a philosophy forum. Each person making a claim bears the burden for supporting their own claim. — Jake

Not when it's a basic fact about the universe. You should do your own homework.

This is a philosophy forum. Each person making a claim bears the burden for supporting their own claim. Again, I'm not going to do your homework for you, but if you present good evidence that Mattis is a Republican I will accept that conclusion. — Jake

Buddy, if you're unwilling to do your basic homework on who Jim Mattis is, his work at the Hoover Institute, his obsession with civil-military affairs being non-partisan, the role he played in helping to orchestrate the right-wing attack on Obama's deal with Iran....what's all this hogwash about "my claim" and "my homework"? You've put forward Mattis as a great candidate for the democrats. You talk as though you're interested in how to win an election and potential candidates yet you refuse to learn anything about the candidate you put forward. As I said earlier, I don't want to get into a deeper speculative conversation about the democrat's strategy in 2020 because it's been distinctly difficult and unpleasant to get you to accept basic verifiable facts about a human being that are available to you via google in less time than it takes to write a post. I can only imagine how difficult, unpleasant and time-consuming it would be to try and argue for a non-verifiable counterfactual with you when you're in attack-mode and have put this much energy into avoiding easy to look up facts.

but if you present good evidence that Mattis is a Republican I will accept that conclusion. — Jake

Not what I said. He is a life-long unaffiliated (because of his deep commitment to a non-partisan military) who has spent significant time in the right-wing institute and propaganda sphere. If you read his writing and that of his right-wing academic friends (e.g. Kori Schake) it is pretty clear where he lands on the spectrum politically (neoconservative). My evidence is you should take two seconds to google that shit.

So, I genuinely understand why some of this can be confusing. Mattis, for example, backed the Iran deal while in the Trump administration because he did not want to piss of America's allies. And his current position backing continued involvement in Syria seems reasonable because he is opposing an insanely fast withdrawal and betrayal of our allies. But I think you're mistaking this for him being a democrat. All this talk of "my homework" but it's basically on you to go read up on this and learn for yourself.

I've never said anything like this, and you are now just making shit up. — Jake

You're right, I misread. Mea culpa.

Well because it's your right as a voter to believe that some particular candidate is the most likely to win an election, or the only plausible winner, and to support that candidate 100% as the best person to put forward, on these grounds, as the nominee for your party. Personally, I think there are many excellent candidates available to the democrats. I also think you overestimate how dire the situation is for a party that won two presidential elections in a row then won the popular vote in the third election despite an historically disliked candidate, a massive October surprise, and significant foreign influence. Of course I want to beat Trump like any democrat, and I am not sure why you think this is in question.

My reason for not getting into the specific names that every reasonable observer is familiar with -- Sherrod Brown, Kamala Harris, Adam Schiff, etc. -- is that if you're reacting with such contempt to my presenting you with facts that you can verify for yourself, yet refuse to do so, I can only imagine how you'll react to a speculative discussion about potential candidates and their merits. You have obviously concluded for some strange reason that Mattis is the only plausible candidate. Strange, again, because he's not a democrat and you refuse to verify this fact because of something you heard one time on NPR.

The story I heard on NPR, a media outlet I trust a bit more than anonymous strangers on the Internuts, that Mattis has been a life long Democrat — Jake

Yeah, why trust a guy who gives you several verifiable facts you can check out for yourself when you can yell at him in all-caps instead.

If yes, who do you propose that would have a better chance of beating Trump than Mattis? I'm entirely open to that conversation. — Jake

If you're interested in an open conversation then I would suggest you consider following-up on facts which as they are presented and respond to reasonable comments without turning on the caps-lock.

I will admit to growing weary of the usual forum routine of "whatever somebody else says is wrong, but we have no solutions of our own to offer". That's lazy, raise your game my good fellows! — Jake

I will admit to growing weary of the usual forum routine where I reasonably correct people on basic facts pertinent to the thread and they react unreasonably.

So you realize Mattis isn't a democrat, right? (a) He's never been registered as a member of any political party; (b) He's a Hoover Institute guy who spent his pre-Trump time doing things like co-writing anti-Obama books with right-wing academics (Kori Schake). He's pretty unambiguously a neocon republican in all but name only. He shares virtually none of the values or goals of the democratic party.

It's entirely reasonable to point to objections anyone might have with Mattis, but if it's not Mattis, then who do the critics of Mattis have in mind? — Jake

A democrat, or at the very least someone who represents democratic aspirations and shares democratic values.

This seems largely right but it's clearly more than a mere incorporation or assimilation. It's also a challenge. Logos can no longer be understood apart or independently from God's oneness.

Well Verses 1-2: “In the origin there was the Logos, and the Logos was present with God, and the Logos was God; this one was present with God in the origin.” [...] Verse 14: “And the Logos became flesh and pitched a tent among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the Father’s only one, full of grace and truth."

So certainly the relationship between God as origin, God as flesh, and Logos is an open question.

But I hear you about the categories -- I probably wouldn't lump everything together that Lukács is lumping together. — Moliere

This does seem to be a problem of sorts for Lukács. It's the same thing he does with Sartre ("One would need a dissertation..."). It's clear that he has a strong perspective on a variety of topics and thinkers, and he doesn't really want to get bogged down in the sort of meta work required to justify his distaste for certain thinkers and trends. So he tries to pin the tail on the philosophical donkey by finding Kantian tendencies or forms of thought in a few phenomenologists and labeling the whole movement a type of dressed up neo-Kantianism. (To answer your questions, this is why I called Scheler and Sartre "weak" thinkers for him to pick on, because neither represents the existential or phenomenological method in its uniqueness or full strength.)

Unfortunately the consequence is that he tends to take a God's eye view throughout most of the essay and it seems to me that he's not particularly responsive to most of the interesting differences or distinctions among the targets of his critique. It is the philosophical equivalent of labeling anyone to the right of Marxism "right wing" and saying that their differences aren't particularly important because they all support something common (say, capitalist oppression).

So I think we have to just follow his logic here. In many ways the enemy in the background of the whole essay is Kant and the idealism he inspires, which is at bottom (for Lukács) an expression of bourgeois morality. That's why he is at such pains to argue that their is no 'third way' between materialism and idealism, and to argue that existentialism, phenomenology, etc. are consequently idealist philosophies. Their lack of methodological innovation is due to the fact that they are neo-Kantian (philosophically) and bourgeois (politically). Returning to the 'Marx' analogy: anything to the right of materialism is (I think on Lukács's view) in an important sense backwards and retrogressive and consequently cut from the same cloth with respect to the God's eye view he wants to take in this essay.

I don't know, do you buy this reading? If so, what do you make of his attack on 19th and 20th century non-materialist philosophies as merely 'neo-Kantian'?

What do you guys make of starting on Riemann in about a couple weeks; say, around 13 January?

Thanks! I think you're right, if I've understood your posts correctly, that the ideas being addressed in this thread are hopelessly entangled in a very broad set of meta-ethical concerns that are only being addressed by referring to 'you should read this book/thread'. I'm assuming that's why you asked at the outset whether the thread's thought experiment was intended to be persuasive to folks with a different meta-ethical stance or whether OP's already taking certain moral axioms for granted (of course there's nothing wrong with that if he wanted to have an ethical conversation that did not get bogged down in meta-ethics).

Personally I find McDowell and MacIntyre a lot more persuasive on meta-ethics than the anti-natalists being discussed in this thread, though I'm a hopeless dilettante w/r/t moral philosophy.

I'm not automatically dismissing it, as anyone following our dialogue can see, I've been providing a reasoned basis for rejecting your position. — S

I will testify to this. I've been reading this thread since the beginning (though I am trying to stay out of the fray) and it is clear to the outside observer that you are arguing in good faith.

Ethicists like Phillipa Foot, Alistair MacIntyre, John McDowell, Lucy Allais, to name just a few have all written books with opposing arguments. — Isaac

Had to quit lurking and post just to ask this: Does John McDowell ever discuss anti-natalism or the "value of existence" or anything of the sort directly in any of his papers? Can you point me to something?

I have read the paper and took fairly extensive notes which I had planned to write up into a summary, so I am really sorry that I dragged my feet on posting about the paper. Was definitely unfair of me since I suggesting we go ahead and read the paper straightaway.

Addressing some of your points....

So I might say that Lukacs criticism of existentialism comes from a couple of different levels. One is that existentialism does not reflect reality, and another is that existentialism does not present any new method but rather has roots in Kantian enlightenment era thinking — Moliere

I find the methodological points quite interesting. Nowadays, there's a tendency to use the term "existentialism" to refer to 19th century philosophers who take a specific stand on "life" from the perspective of their individual experience (Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche) and 20th century non-technical philosophers who do the same (Camus, Jaspers), which we tend to distinguish from phenomenology as a movement starting with Husserl, through Levinas, etc. Then we have the term "existential phenomenology" getting thrown around for some of these thinkers who, following Heidegger, are influenced by the 'non-technical' individual-taking-a-stand-on-existence side of existentialism and the 'technical' side of phenomenology as logical analysis of the nature of experience.

Lukács lumps existentialism and phenomenology together, claiming that they are expressions of a particular sort of methodology. This methodology gains traction, philosophically, in the attempt to overcome the debate between materialism (being) and idealism (consciousness) through the development of new philosophical techniques.

This is in my opinion the most disappointing aspect of the paper. He posits that (a) one needs to take a stand on materialism versus idealism, because this is the inescapable debate at the heart of philosophy; (b) the "third way" attempts one finds in 'existential' or 'phenomenological' thinkers is generated by a breathtakingly bourgeois motive -- to overcome taking a stand on real issues by looking for comfortable solutions which will incorporate obdurate antagonisms into the bourgeois order. Let's call this the bourgeois having your philosophical cake and eating it too.

(This leads him to make some eye-raising claims like Nietzsche is essentially a bourgeois working in service of the status-quo and the increasing focus on the role of embodiment is motivated by bourgeois self-absorption.)

since epoch-making philosophies are characterized by a novelty in method, existentialism is not epoch-making but rather a fad which has become popular because of the social conditions of the time in which it was written. Existentialism appeals to the feelings and needs of certain intellectuals and so escapes criticism, according to Lukács. — Moliere

Interesting! So I take him to be saying that the jury is still out on the extent to which "existentialism" (which we must keep in mind is essentially used as a stand-in for "Neo-Kantianism" and "Phenomenology" since all three are expressions of the same underlying way of going about things) will define the twentieth century. I think you're right that he thinks existentialism isn't epoch-making in the philosophical sense -- it doesn't open up the possibility of a new world the way that Kantian and Marxist philosophy did -- but I think he does genuinely worry that it might define the epoch insofar as it could aid decades of bourgeois grandstanding and avoidance of taking a stand on the era's meaningful philosophical and social conflicts.

I thought it was really interesting in our own context to be reading this with the historical knowledge that existentialism, phenomenology and marxism will all become marginalized very quickly by both postmodern thought and an increasingly trenchant capitalist system.

On a secondary level, I think, Lukács also notes how this philosophy helps bourgeois and reactionary political actors by isolating the individual from their. social relationships. But I really think the core of his argument has more to do with the above -- he isn't just saying that existentialism does not agree with Marxism, and helps the enemy, but rather that it fails on its own from proper philosophical considerations: it fails as a third-way, but is just a rehashing of transcendental idealism for the times it was written in. — Moliere

Mostly, I agree. I'm not sure the details matter because this is certainly the weakest aspect of his argument. He essentially hunts for the weakest thinkers then reads their neo-Kantianism into much stronger thinkers like Heidegger.

There was one point in the essay that made me think I'd like to hear more from Lukács where he said ,"A very specialized philosophical dissertation would be required to show the chains of thought, sometimes quite false, sometimes obviously sophistical, by which Sartre seeks to justify his theory of negative judgment." -- but, hey, then this wouldn't be so brief either :D. — Moliere

This is funny! I had the opposite reaction. That is the sort of thing I insert into an essay when I want to attack some big author or theme. I just sort of took that as short hand for "I think Sartre is b.s. but I have to acknowledge that I'm treating his arguments pretty flippantly." It would be interesting to know if he was sincere in thinking Sartre is worthy of a dissertation or not.

One thing I was hoping he might jump onto is the relationship between Nietzsche's interest in "positive judgments" (what we would now probably call "value monism") and Sartre's focus on "negative judgments".

It seems that he focuses mostly on Sartre at the end because he was the philosopher at the time most associated with popularity, one, and I suspect he focuses on Sartre too because he was a communist -- so that one couldn't say "well, even one of your own is an existentialist, so surely this is not a reactionary philosophy" — Moliere

I am pretty sure that he is writing before Sartre's turn to Marxism and essentially encouraging that turn.

One take-away that I really liked from the essay was Lukács' observation that absolute responsibility is only a shade away from a total lack of responsibility -- and similarly so for freedom -- so that one could feel that one both is responsible yet act cynically. I thought there was some truth to that. — Moliere

Yeah, I think this comes from the larger focus on neo-Kantianism. If you start with isolated individual experience and expand outwards you will inevitably distort the matter in question. The world is for your consciousness. The world is your responsibility. Your freedom determines the world.

Again, a lot of this is not all that complicated or difficult to understand. But the fact that he locates all of these problems in fetishism is extremely interesting and I definitely want to re-read that section and post about that idea specifically.

I'm not sure I totally agree with Lukács criticism, though. While I do think of phenomenology, at least, as a kind of "third way" between idealism and materialism, I don't think it's a way between as much as it passes over such questions as not worth asking -- at least, not with respect to phenomenology. — Moliere

I agree. In my view, I think there is a "third way" between materialism and idealism, which is best exemplified by Wittgenstein's work. To an extent I sympathize with Lukács's criticisms because I think he's right about the bad Kantianism that pops up time and again in a variety of thinkers in the early/mid twentieth century. (Hubert Dreyfus's attacks on Sartre mostly mimic Lukács here and went a long way to killing off interest in Sartre in the anglophone world.)

I suppose it would depend on just how serious you took phenomenology when considering questions of ontology, but it seems to me that one could easily be a phenomenologist and a materalist without tension. — Moliere

Yeah. Or, you know, perhaps we could actually just overcome the stupid materialism/idealism debate by drawing on phenomenology! Lukács merely posits the notion that this debate is necessary without offering much in the way of defense. And he attacks the 'third way' attempts to overcome this debate by dissecting and attacking inferior thinkers who, to my mind, exemplify the most feeble-minded aspects of the phenomenological tradition.

Yeah it's an interesting question nobody has the answer to. There's a huge mix of philosophers and scientists working together to better understand the issue. The two prevailing schools of thought are that either perception and conception exist along a continuum or concepts are unique to human beings and the acquisition of concepts totally transforms our basic perceptual experience of the world.

Very generally, if you take the former view then you think that e.g. catching a frisbee doesn't involve the use of concepts, if you take the latter view then you think that concepts play a role in catching a frisbee.

Someone or some people, at some point in time deduced the nature of certain projectiles and conveyed that information to others. By and by, it became kind of like common sense. But, all that means is there is a degree of reason in the reaction which also implies deduction. — BrianW

So we need concepts and deduction to learn how to duck from a baseball flying towards our face? Then how do dogs and cats learn to do these things?

Actually, such reactions are a consequence of prior deduction which conclude a situation to be unfavourable. — BrianW

Well if you extend the meaning of deduction so broadly that it captures the acquisition of coping skills in embodied know-how, then sure, of course. But the problem is this way of phrasing things tempts one into thinking that they can draw conclusions about some sort of conceptual or mental scaffolding going on (as you appear to do when you say "conclude a situation to be unfavourable", suggesting that you have in mind some thicker notion of conceptualization and self-consciousness).

Well if you want to talk about the relationship between perception and conception then I think you ought to consider perception on its own terms. Otherwise you're just conceptualizing perception off the bat. I agree that sticking a worry about 'reality' into concerns about the relationship between perception and concepts isn't particularly helpful or useful but that's how the thread was structured.

Yeah, I gotcha. But OP starts out by declaring "it's easy to determine the perception of phenomena which impact the senses" - already gesturing towards a pretty theory-laden, empiricist account of perception - then transitions to "these may be objects/subjects manifest through forms, forces and activities which we are directly aware of because of their impact on our senses".

We are already moving towards a picture of subjects, objects, and perception that will pretty naturally lead to the problem of deducing reality via concepts and mental representation. So when you transition the thread from deduction to the nature of a 'picture of reality', I'd say we need to stop and give a good think about perception and reality before worrying about concepts, theories, pictures, subjects, objects, representations, and so forth.

Sure, I think you can "get reality right" via deduction. — Terrapin Station

I think you concede too much. When I duck from a baseball about to hit my head I get reality right without having to go to the trouble of deduction.

I'm a big fan of Lukács and depending on your time and level of interest, I suspect we could discuss this paper while waiting on Riemann since it's so short and straightforward.

So my initial goal - to take on some theme or topic and explore it over the course of several months through weekly postings -- hasn't changed. But I also think if there is enough interest for people to use a thread like this to catapult discussions of essays they have been wanting to read, then I have no problem starting a second thread along the lines of what fdrake has done with Marx's Capital.

Though if interest wanes in this thread (as it seems to have) then I may just stick whatever I want to do in here.

I think that @Banno's point is that there's no smoking gun here. According to my handy PDF, neither the phrase "contingent necessity" nor some cognate pops up in the text. Yet that doesn't strike me as diminishing Banno's point at all, though I will let him speak for himself.

It's all good. I'm pretty easy going. I just want to talk about texts anonymously with some folks and learn a thing or two. :lol:

My first reaction was Ugh Rorty, then open it up and Ugh Derrida. But reading quickly I'm more impressed with the paper than I thought I would be! So I think that I could go either way on this. What makes you interested in it?

It is not an accurate description to say that the object which plays the role of "the standard" is itself the "means of representation". Rather, it is a better description to say that human beings use the object as the means of representation. — Metaphysician Undercover

"In this game, it is not something that is represented, but is a means of representation [...] we have given that object a role in our language game..."

Human beings use the object as the means of representation within a language game, no? So isn't he accounting perfectly well for the point you want to make? Or am I missing something about your objection?

Kripke had no problem with contingent necessities. A metre is a rigid designator, as I understand him, and hence the same in all possible worlds. It's the name of a length, not the name of a stick. SO it remains possible that the stick might not have been a metre long. — Banno

Right, so doesn't Kripke's solution require a fixed referent? It seems to me the scary thing about Wittgenstein's point - the 'it hurts my brain' part of it - is that there's no referent outside of our practices. The meter is a length and a process and etc. We can't boil down its intelligibility into something we can point to across possible worlds. So getting at how normativity and truth can function through human practices without reference to a natural or empirical meta-vocabulary would then be one of the major concerns of the book.

(I know this is said in the form of a statement but I mean it in the form of a question - 'What am I missing'? Enlighten me dear Banno.)

Maybe? A meter is a meter seems to be "in a queer sense" both a necessary and contingent truth, which hurts my puny human brain when I think about it for too long.

Here's what Baker & Hacker - always a good source when you're looking for the most extreme-bordering-on-parody reading of a given passage - have to say:

If ‘One metre is the length of the Metre Bar’ is not a contingent truth, is it then a necessary truth? Is it a necessary truth that the chess king moves one square at a time? [...] The question needlessly multiplies confusion at this stage. The better question to ask is: What is the role of this sentence? What do we use it for? What is its function in the language-game with metric measurement? The role of this sentence is not to describe how things are, but to present a norm of representation.

But surely, one might object, we can say that it is true that the length of the Standard Metre Bar is one metre? And if it is true, then is it not a statement of fact? We can indeed say that it is true. But the truth-operator is notoriously polygamous, and the moot question is what the truth-ascription amounts to. We can say that it is true that the king in chess moves one square at a time, but that does not make the assertion that the chess king moves one square at a time any the less a statement of a rule of chess. In both cases, all the truth-operation does is to reaffirm a rule. — Baker & Hacker

Like a lot of dubious Wittgenstein readers, I think that they arrive at the interesting question (What does this sort of truth-ascription amount to?) then duck it by claiming it is simply a 'moot' question for a 'confused' reader then proceed along unbothered by a question that - it feels to me - ought to at least puzzle us.