What is "really real"? Why use that phrase instead of just "real"? — Terrapin Station

Mostly because we use 'real' in all kinds of ways. 'Now that was a real smile.' Or 'here is a real scoop.' Or 'let's get real.' Or 'is this money real?" And so on and so on. IMV, there are all kinds of senses of what it means to be, so that nailing down what is 'really' real is questionable when attempted outside of any and every human context. But I also think that's what a lots of philosophers are interested in, the true real, the official real, the realest real, the bottom-line real, the ground of our most important truths. I don't think such a ground can be stably clarified, though I do think there is a vague and yet massively important sense of true-for-us-and-not-just-me that people try to make explicit in this or that explicit rendition of the really real.

That is really illuminating and useful post, thank you. — Wayfarer

Thanks for saying so.

, a profound shift in the human conception of itself. — Wayfarer

That makes sense, but I would add that the feel of the conception is essential here. I'd say that our grasp of ourselves is only 'only conceptual' when strive to nail it down with words.

humans lived in a 'I-thou' relationship with God; the sense of 'otherness' to the world which becomes so pronounced in modernity, the sense of being accidental by-products of a mindless process, couldn't even have been conceived. That was a major reason why the transition to modernity was so wrenching. — Wayfarer

That sounds plausible to me, and I think the word 'sense' is appropriate. As I've been exploring in other posts, one way to understand the modern worldview is the sense of nature of a dead machine, and that's how I sense it, 'pre-theoretically,' having grown up in this culture. I think that young adults have to repeat this process of being wrenched. Capitalism echoes nature as dead machine, too. The young adult feels himself within a machine within a machine, with the inner machine wanting only his work and the outer machine not wanting him at all. I don't at all think that this modern worldview is simply bad or good. It's a change. It closes some possibilities and open others. It can be viewed in terms of 'true' adulthood in that the alienated orphan becomes his own parent. But this orphaned adult has paid for grand interiority with the loss of a dominant public sense of what it all means, assuming that the orphan doesn't fall apart while constructing a personal meaning from the chaos of meanings available in the first place.

Post-Enlightenment, man becomes, instead of imago dei, simply another species thrown up by 'the accidental collocation of atoms' (in Russell's memorable phrase). A 'stranger in a strange land', so to speak. — Wayfarer

Indeed. But I'd say that his sensing himself a stranger in a strange land is possible through other means too. 'Philosophy begins in wonder.' Is there terror in wonder? In some shades I think so. But other senses of wonder perhaps come with a sense of familiarity and trust. I mention this because 'strange land' reminds me of both terror and wander.

nihilism =/= I don't care
Nihilism = no matter how much I care, all of my cares are subjective and not objectively correct. — khaled

I pretty much agree. I'd just say that this is existential aspect of the basic scientific worldview. Nature is a machine that doesn't care about us. I do think you use 'objectivity' in a narrow way that doesn't exhaust its sense.

objectivity (countable and uncountable, plural objectivities)

The state of being objective, just, unbiased and not influenced by emotions or personal prejudices
The world as it really is; reality
That which one understands, often, as intellectually, of all and everything, of what is sensed as felt, thereof
That which is perceived to be true to understanding
The object of understanding — Wikictionary

It seems to me that to identity the 'really real' with the output of natural science (however defensible that position is) is not trivially 'unbiased' or 'not influenced by emotions or personal prejudices.'

To be clear, I share the vision of nature as a machine that doesn't care about us. So for me this isn't some way to sneak in God, etc. Instead, I'm trying to be 'objective' as I point out the presupposition that the 'really real' is stuffed into one human language game among others. One of many problems with such a view is that this same language game (science itself) becomes not really real and yet somehow is supposed to manifest the really real. While the temptation might be to interpret this criticism as 'anti-science,' I think that gets it wrong. What I oppose is whaet I perceive as a kind of ignoring this position has with respect to its own foundations.

If we say that science reveals the 'really real' (which I very much understand in the usual ambiguity), we ignore that our equations are embedded in a wider language. Do we think 'E=mc^2" is out there? Do we think our concept of an electron is really out there? But that means 'ideas' are really out there, which is exactly what this position denies.

A note on 'continental' versus 'analytic' philosophy, which invites a reply from anyone:

First these categories are already cartoons. But even the routine cartoonish intelligibility of chatter has a positive content, by which I mean that, however crude that distinction it is, it has some 'initial' meaning.

I think this is best explored in terms of the wideness or narrowness of one's image of philosophy. For instance, does one find Dostoevsky adjacent to philosophy? Is philosophy adjacent to or even entangled with and inseparable from literature? Or is philosophy a far more specialized disciplined, a science of science, propositions about propositions, which is best professionalized and pursued as more adjacent to STEM than literature?

Either position is defensible, though I am strongly in the first camp. Is this because I don't love science as much as I love literature? No. Instead I think literature falls within some higher concept of science with seeks to clarify our existence as a whole, including not only the traditional sciences but also their relationship to the rest of existence and their foundations. And this higher 'science' (in grandiose terms 'Science') will (no surprise) look into own foundations, perhaps as its most radical or essential activity. Such foundations will include motive and an investigation of meaning itself, insofar as such a ting is possible --and into how such a thing 'is' possible or impossible. If this sounds dangerous 'subjective' or 'phenomenological,' I think it is indeed. Now doubt narrower conceptions of science are more exoteric and reliable. But if we stick with the exoteric, then philosophy's traditional question for a wider science in the context of a 'spiritual' passion will just continue to exist under a different name. In some sense man 'is' metaphysics, which is an indulgent way of saying that maybe the quest to clarity and question existence is 'essentially' human. Even if we reserve the word 'philosophy' for an exoteric (reliably intelligible) self-consciousness of natural science, we will in fact as individuals do that other kind of esoteric or suspicious philosophy. Whether one encourages or discourages the public version of this 'private' clarification of existence is presumably a function of that private clarification. If 'Hegel is rot,' this is not only about Hegel but perhaps especially about he who says it (and I understand the suspicion of ambiguity, which is a hard-won suspicion that has proved itself in experience.) This paragraph of mine is, I suppose, an example of 'cont. philosophy,' since it traces distinctions back to a wider context, into their perhaps dispersed and only imperfectly graspable foundations. It is motivated by suspicion's counter-passion, which is to say curiosity. But it is also an elaboration of that same suspicion what has finally got around to questioning itself (not quite right, but I'm trying.)

Much more can be said far more eloquently, I'm sure.

Staying away from the continentalists is a good idea in general. :yum: — Terrapin Station

I know you're joking, but really the continentals are the good stuff, the exciting stuff. Yes, some of them are ridiculous at time. Yes, they encourage some puffed-up nonsense at times in their readers. But on the other end of the spectrum (an opposite vision of philosophy) there are 'neckbeards,' who are methodologically stupid. A perfect example of over-correcting the indulgence often perceived in cont. phil. is the objectivism of randroids. A vague conception of rationality is presupposed as an absolute. One ends up with a 'religion' of the word 'reason' that simply flees from criticism that doesn't already accept the very presuppositions and initial understanding of this 'reason' it seeks to clarify or criticize. So objectivists have their own forums, since they don't know how to play well with others.

I'd say that radical criticism (reason at its most active) is always going to be unintelligible at first, precisely because it strikes at what is taken for granted, which has silently and invisibility operating as 'beyond question,' or rather not even available for questioning, because not till then 'disclosed.' Such disclosure is not the result of argument but rather of 'formal indication' or phenomenological 'pointing.' If this sounds suspect at first, I understand. But it's hard to avoid if one starts asking what arguments are about.

Maybe read a philosopher who isnt just a big mishmash of gobbledygook instead. :joke: — Terrapin Station

Ha. Well I understand your frustration. Some of Hegel doesn't seem worth the candle. On the other hand, his actual lectures (which were hugely popular) are quite approachable. His Lectures on Fine Art, while a little abstract, are especially profound. His book on history is also considered a relatively concrete introduction to his system. I have Kaufmann's translation of the famous preface. While a few lines are still obscure to me (I don't claim to grasp Hegel as Hegel grasped Hegel), much of it is comprehensible right away and some of it becomes more comprehensible on rereading.

And the difficultly of interpreting Hegel relates to my central theme of holism. One slowly gets a sense not only of Hegel's basic grasp of existence but also of the feeling he had about it that motivated him to share it. Occasionally he gave speeches to the general public. These especially reveal his motivation, which puts his entire project in the context of his sense of himself and of philosophy.

This science has sought refuge among the Germans and survived only among them; we have been given custody of this sacred light, and it is our vocation to tend and nurture it, and to ensure that the highest [thing] which man can possess, namely the self-consciousness of his essential being, is not extinguished and lost.[11] But even in Germany, the banality of that earlier time before the country’s rebirth had gone so far as to believe and assert that it had discovered and proved that there is no cognition of truth, and that God and the essential being of the world and the spirit are incomprehensible and unintelligible. Spirit [, it was alleged,] should stick to religion, and religion to faith, feeling, and intuition [Ahnen] without rational knowledge.[12] Cognition [, it was said,] has nothing to do with the nature of the absolute (i.e. of God, and what is true and absolute in nature and spirit), but only, on the one hand, with the negative [conclusion] that nothing true can be recognized, and that only the untrue, the temporal, and the transient enjoy the privilege, so to speak, of recognition – and on the other hand, with its proper object, the external (namely the historical, i.e. the contingent circumstances in which the alleged or supposed cognition made its appearance); and this same cognition should be taken as [merely] historical, and examined in those external aspects [referred to above] in a critical and learned manner, whereas its content cannot be taken seriously.[13] They [i.e. the philosophers in question] got no further than Pilate, the Roman proconsul; for when he heard Christ utter the word ‘truth,’ he replied with the question ‘what is truth?’ in the manner of one who had had enough of such words and knew that there is no cognition of truth. Thus, what has been considered since time immemorial as utterly contemptible and unworthy – i.e. to renounce the knowledge of truth – was glorified before[103] our time as the supreme triumph of the spirit. Before it reached this point, this despair in reason had still been accompanied by pain and melancholy; but religious and ethical frivolity, along with that dull and superficial view of knowledge which described itself as Enlightenment, soon confessed its impotence frankly and openly, and arrogantly set about forgetting higher interests completely; and finally, the so-called critical philosophy provided this ignorance of the eternal and divine with a good conscience, by declaring that it [i.e. the critical philosophy] had proved that nothing can be known of the eternal and the divine, or of truth. This supposes cognition has even usurped the name of philosophy, and nothing was more welcome to superficial knowledge and to [those of] superficial character, and nothing was so eagerly seized upon by them, than this doctrine, which described this very ignorance, this superficiality and vapidity, as excellent and as the goal and result of all intellectual endeavor. — Hegel

Will you agree that at least Hegel is clear in the above?

I realize that you may not grasp philosophy as he does (quasi-religiously but intensely humanistic). I just provide an example of how clearly he can speak or write at times. The above only indicates a general direction. For him 'positive content' and not just a general direction (the absolute as inarticulate feeling) is a big theme. Sometimes he seems too thorough, especially in the light of 20th cent. insights about language. But on the whole he is a profound personality.

. Even in After Finitude things get exceptionally chaotic. I dislike that in untethering time from experiential temporality through the arche-fossil argument he also untethers becoming from forming stable structures. But I think the arche-fossil stands alone as an excellent argument against a strict dependence of being upon an observer situated within it. — fdrake

If you feel like expanding on that first idea, I'm all ears. I do think the arche-fossil argument is valuable, and I agree that it doesn't make sense to make being dependent on the observer. And I enjoyed your reply generally. Thanks.

Here's a thread which you may or may not feel like picking up with me:

One of the charms/problems of AF is its dependence on Cantor's work. Now Cantor's work is beautiful, but constructing a metaphysics on it maybe takes mathematical foundations for granted. Clearly one can prove the existence of uncountable sets, but one is thrown back on the issue of how such sets exist. IMV, there is certainly a strong intuitive component operating in math, but its epistemology is more formal and machine like. Proofs can be checked by computers and recognized as proofs without anyone finding 'meaning' in them. The computable numbers have measure zero, which means that most real numbers exist only as background that can never be foregrounded. In one sense this is unnerving. In another sense it is the perfect metaphor for that dark place from which we listen --that 'global' know-how which we cannot make fully explicit (the possession of a language that moves through existential time.) Another mathematical metaphor for this global would be artificial neural networks (unsurprisingly, since they are inspired by actual neural networks.) The 'distributedness' of meaning is what I have in mind, with a special focus on its spread 'over' time, as I think you already grasp.

I think your reading of Hegel accurately reflects his method but also hints at how difficult it is to proceed in a manner that provides "the result along with the process of arriving at it. — Valentinus

Thanks for the reply. Yes, it is difficult, isn't it? And then existence is always underway, unfinished, further clarifying itself, including the how of this clarification -- such as Hegel seeing the emptiness of slapping on minimally in-formed predicates.

The Gregory Bateson essay I mentioned earlier in this thread does a particularly good job at showing how "comparisons of differences" cannot be a reduction to a single scheme. — Valentinus

That sounds great. I'm sorry I didn't pay more attention to that the first time around. I will def. check it out.

In trying to "grok" different systems, what is being discussed looks different if being understood as bringing something to an end, a last word that does need further thought, or as a directions on a map, suggesting we travel in a certain direction. — Valentinus

Beautiful way to put it.

The very notion of point, of purpose, stems from wanting, from feeling a desire. Something has a point because you want it, when you don't want it you don't see a point. It's not that life is pointless, it's that it appears pointless to you when you don't feel desire. — leo

I agree. Well said.

The quest for purpose is a quest for desire. When you don't feel love you ask what's the point of love? But when you feel love you see precisely the point.

We think that feelings are meaningless while it is feeling that gives meaning. Physicists want us to believe that we are a heap of elementary particles devoid of feeling, that feeling is an epiphenomenon, an accident that has no influence on anything, then you discard your feelings and you find life pointless, but see that they're wrong and focus on what you feel, and then you'll see the point. — leo

While I don't think physicists (in general) want us to believe that, I do think the modern vision of nature as a blind machine that doesn't care about us takes some time to process. What comes with that vision? Our deaths and the toppling of all absolute authority. 'All is vanity,' despite what the self-deceived and the lying manipulators who 'also see the void' say. This dark 'truth' (vision of existence among others) has the appeal of at least some kind of brave honesty. On the other hand, the same vision mocks every brave pose. And maybe some people don't get a conscious thrill from facing it but instead are simply horrified, when they aren't eating a sandwich like everyone else.

Anyway, one just adapts to this background nullity of all things. To agree with and paraphrase what you say, 'feeling is first.' Desire imposes a structure on the world. To be in love (requited or not ) is to find life almost too meaningful (at least when one is younger and hasn't settled in to a warm, reliable buzz.)

I agree too with what you imply. It's our philosophical interpretation of science (and for some politics) that drives us to despair, angst, etc. Under or through a different interpretation that same view of the blind machine has a bitter beauty. Something like our freedom and dignity might even depend on it.

What in god's name is a "poetic" state of mind? — Bitter Crank

Come now. Do you like Patti Smith's album Horses? I think she and her band were there.

The written word alone can get there too:

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful. — Auden

Then there's the state of mind in which one writes poetry. Even philosophical prose can catch fire. Some of my favorite passages from the therefore-greats are passionate and (conceptually-metaphorically) visionary. For instance, consider this interpretation of the Christ personality. Is this love or hate? It's in The Antichrist.

What the “glad tidings” tell us is simply that there are no more contradictions; the kingdom of heaven belongs to children; the faith that is voiced here is no more an embattled faith—it is at hand, it has been from the beginning, it is a sort of recrudescent childishness of the spirit... A faith of this sort is not furious, it does not denounce, it does not defend itself: it does not come with “the sword”—it does not realize how it will one day set man against man. It does not manifest itself either by miracles, or by rewards and promises, or by “scriptures”: it is itself, first and last, its own miracle, its own reward, its own promise, its own “kingdom of God.” This faith does not formulate itself—it simply lives, and so guards itself against formulae. To be sure, the accident of environment, of educational background gives prominence to concepts of a certain sort... But let us be careful not to see in all this anything more than symbolical language, semantics, an opportunity to speak in parables. It is only on the theory that no word is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. — Nietzsche

Thanks!

rehearsing the arche-fossil argument from Meillassoux; which you should look up if you are unfamiliar, — fdrake

A beautiful book, but hardly the last word. I think Meillassoux is subject to some of the criticisms above. Have you looked into his other work? He insists on the possibility of a resurrection of the dead. I refer to Harman's critical anthology, Philosophy in the Making. He seems like a strange theologian after all. I don't mind this. I say bring on the creative thinking. But he might not be your ideal go-to retort here in light of that.

We have seen that the experimental sciences are unable to give an account of the qualitative excess of life beyond its material understanding, and clearly this is not their goal. They do not even aim at such an explanation, which is simply meaningless with respect to their procedures. We have none the less shown that the incapacity of experimental science to touch remotely on this problem does not doom every rational approach to it, as long as we accept the disjunction between reason and real necessity.
...
What we call divine ethics rests on the real possibility of immortality, a possibility guaranteed by factial ontology. ...Since the rebirth of bodies is not illogical it must also be possible; it cannot even be deemed either probable or improbable. For if rebirth suddenly occurs, it ought to occur suddenly in the very fashion in which a new Universe of cases suddenly appears in the midst of the non-Whole. Rebirth can thus be assimilated to the improbabilizable advent of a new constancy in the same manner in which life suddenly arises from matter...

Following the three Worlds of matter, life, and thought, the rebirth of humans ought to be distinguished as a fourth World: if a World were to arise beyond the three preceding ones, this World could only be that of the rebirth of humans.
...
The core of factial ethics thus consists in the immanent binding of philosophical astonishment and messianic hope...

Divine inexistence fulfills, for the first time, a condition of hope for the resurrection of the dead.
— Meillassoux

excerpts from The Divine Inexistence

I'm still quite sure that there is an anti-'scientific metaphysics', through the opposition of scientific reductionism to some kind of ontological holism, operating in the response you had to Wayfarer. — fdrake

I'd say it was more like holism versus anti -scientistic metaphysics, but even this 'scientistic' too specific. I'm working from a perception/understanding of language (formally indicated by others but to some degree just grasped directly by really looking and caring) that inspires me to apply it to old debates in a way that opens up mutual understanding (synthesizes them) or reveals them as trivial disagreements. The value in this is primarily personal, but it's just fun to work this out in conversation with others. That makes sense, since bridging gulfs between jargons should be what it's good at, or at least trying to be good at.

So yeah, apologies for a hasty reading of you. — fdrake

Thanks.

What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar”. When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something valid, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. Apprehending and proving consist similarly in seeing whether every one finds what is said corresponding to his idea too, whether it is familiar and seems to him so and so or not.
— Hegel

I am recontextualizing some nice passages from Hegel for my own purpose (not the best way to understand Hegel the person, but a nice way to read the old man in the light of 20th century linguistic concerns.) This 'flitting between secure points' and going 'merely along the surface' is roughly the kind of thing that I notice and want to point out. And it stems from ignoring the issue of the right approach for the 'object' being investigated. For instance, an atomic theory of meaning can function as a kind of default background, trapping us on the surface.

Dogmatism as a way of thinking, whether in ordinary knowledge or in the study of philosophy, is nothing else but the view that truth consists in a proposition, which is a fixed and final result, or again which is directly known. — Hegel

For me this is a criticism of yes/no questions like 'Is Idealism Irrefutable'? We decide a proposition with our logic machines is the idea. Argument is foregrounded and disclosure of the entities in question is backgrounded, so that we don't know what we are arguing about --or not as well as we could. I don't think we can ever become completely clear on the atomic level of meaning. 'Idealism means exactly this.' 'Being refutable means exactly this.' Meanings are caught in 'living time' with other meanings. Timeless propositions are nets for sand. <---And that proposition 'knows' that it is not really timeless. It expects to be caught up in a living contemplation to be developed and recontextualized.

Where could the inmost truth of a philosophical work be found better expressed than in its purposes and results? and in what way could these be more definitely known than through their distinction from what is produced during the same period by others working in the same field? If, however, such procedure is to pass for more than the beginning of knowledge, if it is to pass for actually knowing, then we must, in point of fact, look on it as a device for avoiding the real business at issue, an attempt to combine the appearance of being in earnest and taking trouble about the subject with an actual neglect of the subject altogether. For the real subject-matter is not exhausted in its purpose, but in working the matter out; nor is the mere result attained the concrete whole itself, but the result along with the process of arriving at it. The purpose of itself is a lifeless universal, just as the general drift is a mere activity in a certain direction, which is still without its concrete realization; and the naked result is the corpse of the system which has left its guiding tendency behind it. — Hegel

For me this is a good sketch of the futility of taking categories like 'realist' or 'idealist' seriously. Their quasi-timeless content offers only a bare suggestion. I need to scan quite a few paragraphs of a poster on this forum, for instance, to even begin to learn his/her somewhat-private language as a 'system' or whole --the only way science/knowledge does (and not merely 'ought' to) exist. In the real world we do this all the time. We meet personalities as personalities, 'systems' grokking 'systems' as systems in order to make sense of this or that emission against a background understanding which is crucial. The naked result is almost nothing without its history/context. It cannot trap all the meaning that led up to a pithy summary. The summary is enjoyed (and meaning-rich) only after its engendering is repeated in the listener's mind (approximately repeated, since 'perfect' clarity is a ghost too quick for us.)

Cant's see the forest for the trees' usually connotes the need for part-whole aspect shift. The connotation in macrosoft's post was that the observer and their theories should be seen as part of a corpuscle with the rest of reality and its behaviour; — fdrake

Thanks. Yes, this is closer. But more specifically I mean that individual words have very little signifying power. Nevertheless it seems fairly common to get hung up on words, arguing about whether something exists without making sense of whatever it is that is supposed to exist or not. We can make sense of 'making sense of whatever' is in terms of clarifying 'how' it exists, which (among other things) is to clarify its relevance to those talking.

IMV, we need only look at our own reading and writing to see that words don't fit together like legos. They exist in a kind of 'existential' time. As I read a sentence, I am already ahead of myself in expectation of what will follow. And what I have already read 'hangs' over my scanning of the 'present' word. In short, meaning is not instantaneous. The time of language (human time or the human as this kind of time) does not seem to be well modeled by some segment of R, and the often-implicit idea that meaning is snapped together from bricks of instantaneous meaning becomes especially questionable.

the role science plays in secular culture as the ‘arbiter of truth’ or ‘umpire of reality’ - i.e. as the final court of appeal for what ought to be considered real — Wayfarer

This is closer to my concern, and it doesn't only concern science. One of the things that IMO philosophy works against is an unsophisticated sense of how 'real' and its synonyms are used. If someone just tells me that matter or God or ideas or whatever is the really real, they have told me almost nothing. Hegel critiqued this kind of bare result approach pretty well in the PoS.

Among the many consequences that follow from what has been said, it is of importance to emphasis this, that knowledge is only real and can only be set forth fully in the form of science, in the form of system; and further, that a so-called fundamental proposition or first principle of philosophy, even if it is true, is yet none the less false just because and in so far as it is merely a fundamental proposition, merely a first principle. It is for that reason easily refuted. The refutation consists in bringing out its defective character, and it is defective because it is merely the universal, merely a principle, the beginning. — Hegel

That is quoted for its eloquence and not as if Hegel is some authority. I interpret 'system' in terms of a whole. This 'whole' is not only the 'concept system' as a whole, but embodied existence as a whole, though I have the sense that for Hegel it was more strictly conceptual. For me the 'system' is less crystalline and includes the know-how we can't make explicit, such as our ability to write and understand paragraphs like the one quoted. This ability is in some sense the actual beginning of philosphy --batteries included, mysteriously able to operate with 'global' linguistic knowhow that we never quite get 'behind,' since we depend on this knowhow to try.

The atomic approach is like a cat, lovely and complex, trying to understand its own existence in terms of paper airplanes. Somehow the paper airplanes (little snapped together sentences) are supposed to 'dominate' their source and fold paper into a leaping torty.

No disagreements on your post except its misunderstanding of the themes I'm exploring. The opposite of holism as I understand it is taking a piece of what is being examined out of its living context as an initial approach, without first getting a sense of what is going on. This is often a word from a sentence or a paragraph from a book. But it can also be an entire language game ripped out of the larger context of lots of language games.

Here's how you scanned me before approaching:

Not that I've payed much attention to the discussion, but this seemed nice to reply to. — fdrake

And (no big deal) but right away you read me out of context and lumped me into a group of your 'bad guys,' the 'bad guys' who think scientists are the 'bad guys.' I think we both agree that it's boring to be and see such cartoons. I am striving to avoid one-sided perspectives (such a striving is a decent description of philosophy itself.) There are plenty of old moves that only need to be seen once or twice. And I'll even confess to rehashing old moves, just not exactly the one you accused me of (my concerns lately are those of late Witt. and early Heid., to sketch them briefly.) Your defense of science (with which I agree) is probably itself an old move. We learn them, make them our own, and then try to share them. Probably we have to master quite a few old moves to make a new move possible. I'll settle for a nice paraphrase here and there, a fresh metaphor.

Some realists do deny this, at least when it comes to perception. Direct realism denies that there is an idea or sense impression in the mind mediating the thing itself. As such, you're aware of seeing the tree, not a mental image of the tree. — Marchesk

I like direct realism, actually. 'I see the tree.' That captures it well enough for me. But I know what others mean by other expressions. The pragmatic way to cut through the noise is to just look at how or how not various theories affect the way we behave. And a charitable or sincerely curious listener or maybe just a good sport tries to look beyond individually objectionable words to what their conversational partner is really getting at and why.

But why keep changing the topic to epistemology, to semantics, etc.? — Terrapin Station

Isn't the OP directly tangled in those themes? 'Irrefutable.' And don't we have to explore what is even meant before we can get out the old logic machine? One might say that the logic machine is the trivial part. The real work is (or often seems to be) figuring out what the hell the other person is even talking about ('has in mind') and why they or anyone should care.

Sometimes one looks back on old issues that seemed real and wants to share why they are somehow unreal or tangential or the result of a bad way of asking the question in the first place. Of course this 'just' preference.

Imagine if you were a musician and you were to go into a recording studio, and anytime you try to talk about or work on anything in that situation, one guy in the band were to only talk about how soundwaves travel through the air, how they work as electrical signals in cables, the mixing board, etc.

That's fine and it's certainly a factor but if that guy seems to ONLY be able to talk about that, he'd drive you crazy--you'd think something is wrong with him, in some sort of weird OCD way, and it would be frustrating in that you'd not be able to work on anything with him, because he just constantly obsesses on soundwaves and how electrical signals in cables amount to sound transmission.

That's what it's like when people keep obsessing on epistemology, semantics/semiotics, etc. regardless of what topic you're talking about. — Terrapin Station

I think this is a great post. It puts everything in the proper human context.

That said, you just described my objection to what I'd call scientism. I refer to semantic holism again and again because I think metaphysicians have an OCD that makes them interpret everything in terms of epistemology. In their obsession, as I perceive it, they insist on interpreting the words of others the 'right' way. Instead of grasping the person as a whole and cutting through the noise, they get hung up on terminology. 'I'm a realist.' 'I'm an idealist.' When Berty Russell told his folks he wanted to be a philosopher, they teased him with 'no matter, nevermind.' From my perspective, lots of philosophers just have weak communication skills, and they sell this to themselves as a virtue. Admittedly a certain kind of academic/technical conception of philosophy is possible, but this seems like the zombie version of philosophy. Propositions about propositions can be fascinating, but surely this fails a different vision of philosophy as humanity's attempt to grasp the heights and depths of its existence conceptually.

Lemme end on a lighter note.


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A ham sandwich is better than nothing.
Nothing is better than God.

A ham sandwich is better than God.
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When we imagine the world from the viewpoint of scientific realism, then we just picture an empty universe, with nobody in it. Of course in empirical terms, there was a time when the universe was just like that - but we're overlooking the fact that this is something that is still being understood or imagined from the human perspective. — Wayfarer

Exactly, and well said.

But that takes too simplistic a view of what 'existence' really means. — Wayfarer

I'd even extend this to saying that the 'how' is again and again lost in the 'whether.' Whether something exists or not is only important in the first place as a function of how it exists. What does it mean for something to exist? Not just one thing, that much is clear. Ideals don't exist as shoes exist. Persons don't exist as clouds exist --except in certain models (acts of imagination) that break ordinary objects down into virtual entities --for certain purposes among many others. Are these entities real? Sure. We use them all the time. But how are they real? And what kinds of questions are these? What kinds of answers can we hope for? Final answers? Or just answers that might improve or degrade the way we exist as a whole and not just as proposition-machines?

Which indicates to me, that it's not just a matter of sheer rational analytical ability (which Einstein had in spades) but a gestalt shift, a qualitative insight into the nature of knowledge. — Wayfarer

I agree. 'Qualitative' is nice. For me semantic holism is a key insight at the moment. Or in folksier terms, we don't see the forest by staring at individual trees. And as we look out on the forest(s), we ourselves are 'forests' with both a history and a future that exists as possibility. We aren't passive truth-detectors, though this is a role that we can include in a wider itself-non-passive project.

You're making up stuff so that it's not simply something stupid to say. — Terrapin Station

I'm paraphrasing the context of such statements as I am familiar with [some of] them.

That's overly charitable--to a point where it's rather detrimental. It's better to simply acknowledge that people--no matter who they are, sometimes say stupid things, sometimes write poorly, etc. — Terrapin Station

Sure, people can just be stupid sometimes. But with philosophers it's maybe better to be careful. And then there's this passage, which tries to head off misunderstanding:

The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.

One might say that the gist of the transcendental approach is to be become more conscious of the intensity of our mediation. Again the question is how certain things that are said to exist are supposed to exist. If we talk about a pre-human world, then what can this mean for us? I agree that there was one, but what was it that was there? On one level I am curious about clarifying these concepts for their own sake, and on another level I'm trying to make explicit the linguistic tangles that keep two perspectives from understanding one another.

Let's look at the context and see if I can at least illuminate why a smart person would say something so apparently ridiculous.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.

Note that we are talking about the objects of empirical knowledge. ---for humans, already digested by human language as objects of knowledge. If we imagine the earth before humans appeared, then what are we imagining? It probably looks quite a bit for us in our imagination as it does for our senses. Maybe we see a green and blue sphere from outer space. Does the world have a color independent of an eye and brain that translates photons? Maybe we see trees, mountains, rivers, insects, birds. And we know what these things are and how they interact. Does the world 'really' break into little interactive pieces? Or do humans choose these pieces according to the utility of various analyses?

So maybe we abandon that approach and start thinking in terms of equations and the theoretical entities of physics. While this language of quantitative relationships modelling uncontroversial public experience is perhaps the most-tribe independent perspective we can take, it is still a human perspective, especially if one considers math phenomenologically. Math exists in some sense for consciousness. Do we think that the math is really outthere somehow where we are not? I understand that we think that some kind of substrate is out there and presumably 'obeys' the same laws. But what is it that really obeys laws in the world for humans? Our measurements. Are these equations, concepts and measurements still there in the pre-human world?

In short, once we remove everything human from the world-for-us, there's pretty much nothing left. We forget when that when we are imagining the pre-human world that we do this imagining as humans.

The ability to agree with each other tells us there is some consistency between our realities, but in some aspects our realities may be widely different, I may experience things that you don't and vice versa, so how do we communicate about it then?

There are things we seem to be able to communicate through looking into someone's eyes, through some behavior, that we can't communicate with words.

The way we use language rests on a bunch of implicit assumptions, yet we feel as if we can talk about the whole of reality by using words, but we're just fooling ourselves. — leo

Well said.

"Prior to life, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding."

Is that the case? — Terrapin Station

No, I wouldn't put it that way at all. But I see what is being driven at. In my view it's more like a figure 8. The world-for-us depends on the 'material' brain which exists in the world-for-us. We dream of something that is outside of the dream, but it is only a 'dream' because we 'dream' of this outside-the-dream.

Distinctions tend to break down when we make one side or the other absolute. They are born in and for practical life. This isn't to say that we shouldn't try to do exciting things with them. It's only to warn against getting tangled up in our words when we'd really like to talk about what motivates us to stretch these words until they snap in the first place.

but the question is, is that truly all you can hope for in this life? — Rhasta1

I understand your question, but that is the question of a particular mood. When we are joyfully immersed in some form of love (from flirting to constructing philosophical systems to making our best pot of chili ever), it never occurs to us that something is lacking. We might say that the mood that asks for more is like the chain slipping off the sprocket as we ride our bike.

As I see it, my entire notion of 'Heaven' or 'transcendence' is derived from actual experiences that I would just like more of and perhaps at an even higher intensity.

In some way searching for an explicit justification of existence (what it is all about) is like wanting life to take on the linear structure of a video game. How does one 'beat' life? There is something wrong with life because there's no final 'boss' to defeat.

i dont know what else im hoping — Rhasta1

Bingo. Think deeply about this. The question dissolves as we try (and fail!) to imagine what kind of answer would satisfy us. Examples: let's say there is God. Somehow you know this without a doubt. Moreover, He or She or It has rules for you. Do this and get rewarded. Do that and get punished? Does this really illuminate anything? Or is this just a familiar human pattern? Another parent-child or employee-employer relationship with no new depth. The only 'meaning' that really matters, as far as I can tell, is in the realm of feeling. But feeling is temporary, right? And that's not good enough. Why not? And what can we learn from our terror in the face of our mortality? Does mortality 'force' us to see that what dies with us is not what is essential? That what is best in us also lives in others? In the children that replace us? That therefore (in some special sense) we do not die? (Or not until the species dies, but our interest fades out as we scan the distant future.)

To look for an existential answer in terms of a metaphysical equation is like looking for ice in the desert. The 'truths' that matter are hidden in 'music.' At their best religion traditions (understood metaphorically) point to possibilities of experience-as-a-whole, things that are 'only' 'subjective.' Along these same lines, there is no final or deep explanation of existence. This concept is related to that concept. The 'presence' of things as a whole, mysteriously disclosed so that we can sketch these relationships in the first place, cannot be captured by such a relationship, since there is nothing outside of the 'whole' to put the whole in relation to.

I hope some of this helps. You are wrestling with fundamental issues. All I have done is shared some of tools that worked for me.

If the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, then how can that be "true of the Earth before there was life"? — Terrapin Station

The world as it 'was' before consciousness is like the thing-in-itself. I put 'was' in quotes because this is already a human concept and already an addition of content. No one really doubts that it was there in some sense, but it's very hard to specify that sense. Our scientific vision of this world-before-us is our vision. It is linguistic and mathematical, human through and through, even as it reaches for the pre-human and the trans-human. No one doubts it exists, but the way it exists is problematic, if/when we are in the mood to problematize it.

That is solipsism, not idealism. It is one of the consequences of Cartesianism, that I can only be certain of *my* own existence. — Wayfarer

Yes, I understand that. Perhaps I should have been clearer. Idealists are realists in the sense that they believe in some world outside themselves, and realists are idealists in the sense that they understand reality to be mediated by the self (from sense organs to personality as a whole). I get the impression that some idealists think realists deny mediation, and that some realists think idealists deny a world outside themselves. Beyond that it seems like a question of emphasis and preferred terminology.

That's a great quote. While some may really not 'get' why mind might be said to come before matter (a friend of mind just could not understand my defense of this view once), others (like myself) view the issue stereoscopically. The world-for-us cannot arrive before we do, since it's the world for us (meaningfully present, nameable, calculable.). This point can be made individually (along the lines of solipsism) or in terms of human communities (along the lines of idealism.)

IMV, this is an important realization, largely because it can loosen up a taken-for-granted scientism that identifies the real with the input, output, and conceptual supplements of our algorithms. This kind of scientism thinks of 'value' or 'meaning' as a kind of inessential icing on a cake of dead but real 'stuff.' This same scientism often ignores that it itself is this 'illusory' icing. In short, it denies its own reality and cannot give an account of what it itself is. The driving image seems to be a transcendence of sentimentality and bias, but the scientism I have in mind still has a passion for truth that it does not account for. Pragmatism and instrumentalism make more sense and seem less 'sentimental.' If we are just randomly evolved animals (an idea I find plausible if not the last word), then we need an account of why randomly evolved animals are sentimental about transcending sentimentality. (Some have postulated a transformation of the passion for God or gods into a passion for 'useless' Truth. )

*I'm not accusing TS or anyone in particular of scientism.

I wouldn't say that "perfectly"/"imperfectly" makes much sense here. It's rather a matter of how individuals think about it, however they're applying meanings, assessing the relation between a proposition and whatever else they're using in a given instance as the truthmaker, etc. — Terrapin Station

What I had in mind is that we are giving up a certain amount of complexity or detail as we categorize. For instance, we don't switch between our theories (plural) of truth as we change gears on a bicycle. The connectedness of mental life is smoother than that IMV.

Did somebody suggest that you were going to get paid forever? — Bitter Crank

Oh, if we are mixing the two ideas, then I'm sure I would get bored of being a philosophy professor in a century or two. Maybe I'd become a virtuoso on the piano. Might take me 300 years, but I'd get there.

I guess we could make the question more difficult by only offering total immortality or nothing at all. Then I really don't know what I'd choose. I may play it safe and just die (not on the spot, but in the usual way.)

For me the question is whether people believe in the existence of other people who share a world with them. The answer is: of course we do ! We just argue endlessly about how the details ought to be conceptualized -- perhaps as unconceptualizable.

Will 'something physical' still exist if somehow all conscious life were to vanish? Yes and no. It depends on what you mean by 'exist.' Does anyone really doubt that the mountain on a lifeless planet is there in some sense, even if no one ever sees it? One can make a case that consciousness is being itself. One can make a case that consciousness emerges from being and can vanish leaving being behind. Correct me, anyone, if I am wrong, but I think it's easy for most of us to understand why either position might be embraced. Both views take something important into account.

While there is often a 'scientistic' investment in the second view, there is also a less theoretical 'argument' for it. We were thrown born into this world, picked up and fed by those born before us. We were shown pictures and told stories. Clearly the world was busy with love and war and work long before we arrived. And most of us have lost grandparents if not friends or parents. Or maybe just celebrities who were important to us. We and the rest of the world are still here. Do we call this sense of a world that precedes and outlasts us 'realism'? I don't know. The terms mostly express nothing fundamental but rather more specialized grasps of existence. We perhaps even exaggerate our differences in a sort of play (with maybe some vanity and maybe some virtuous concern for getting things as exactly right as we can.) I'd guess we mostly pick our terms according to how they fit into the larger context of who we have been and want to be.

I think enforceability is one problem for morality. — Andrew4Handel

Indeed, and sometimes that is a good thing ---if, for instance, human beings are understood as property or if homosexuality is considered evil. We don't want some people to have the power to force us to live according to their version of what is moral or right. I suppose the basic idea of freedom is that on matters that are questionable the individual decides. This is a gift and a burden. Part of us just wants to be told what to do to avoid wrestling constantly with our unstable understanding of right and wrong. 'Give us, say, ten laws that are absolute. And let's make it a rule that those are the only rules. And let's make it a rule that those rules never change.' One problem with some short list of rules is that they will not at all be complex enough for high-tech life. In life as we know it, we have experts spend years in law school only to specialize in one little aspect of just the written rules, nevermind the unwritten rules that cannot be formalized and yet are perhaps the most decisive. And of course the way we live is always changing, so that even a great set of rules can become inappropriate for the beings we become as we start to use new tools.

It is almost like force triumphs over ideology. — Andrew4Handel

This realization goes back at least to the Greeks. On the other hand, individuals aren't that powerful away from groups. Any force sufficient to triumph on a large scale is therefore to be expected from a group. Such groups depend on some kind of morality within the group, even if those outside the group are not recognized as deserving consideration. This suggests a complicated relationship between force and ideology. We might say that one ideology triumphs over another through ideologically-organized force, but an ideology can often take over without force or even the threat of force, by means of what we might call seduction. If I tell you a new story about your place in the world and what is right and wrong than the one you already have, then you may well adopt this story as your own. While logic is going to be part of that, I personally think it's naive to understand this seduction only in terms of logic. Thinking is motivated. We usually know what we want to 'prove' ahead of time. Then we creatively reach for arguments and potent metaphors. And if the conclusion appeals to us, we may be a little lazy about sniffing out fallacies.

Of course that's just one way of looking at it.

I don't see the point to death. So much is lost in that imposed feature of life. To live forever means that death can be overcome and the loss of life. I don't suppose you would disagree with that. — Posty McPostface

Yeah I agree. My only concern is that not being able to die (say after one million years) could be maddening. Or maybe not. But anything endless deserves careful consideration.

Barbara Ehrenreich said something to the effect that death doesn't interrupt life. It's just that life temporarily interrupts sleep. — Michael Ossipoff

That's a good point. Sleep is beautiful and in some sense death is nothing to fear. It's only the living who can lust for more time to play. But we do --except when we get sleepy.

What do you mean by that? — Posty McPostface

Maybe you are young enough to not viscerally feel the finiteness of time. Or maybe you are just asking me to expand as if you are clicking on a hyperlink, because you like the theme. I'm saying we die too soon in terms of what we are capable of being mentally and spiritually.

We see human beings focus on one activity and perhaps actually push to the limits of their brain and soul in that domain. But what if these human beings could spend the next 50 years doing something totally different. And then the next 50 years doing something else? And what about the mutual enrichment of all this mastery? And then beyond all these 'impressive' things there is the subjective question. How might existence be experience in the context of 10 or 100 times more personal history as context? I feel far more sophisticated and attuned than I did when I was younger (a mere 20 years ago). Give me another 100 years and who knows how I might feel just walking along. And then imagine marriages that last centuries and keep evolving. Or friendships, artistic partnerships. I just think we have it in our brains to be more than our fragile, aging bodies allow us time to become.

Hi, Posty. I'd like the option for living as long as I like, hopefully in a body no older than this one, preferably in the one that I had at 17.

Why? Primarily to take more paths. To name just one example (I could pull them out of my hat like rabbits), I'd like to learn German backwards and forwards and maybe even translate my favorite German philosophers into English. In another life I could have become a scholar of German philosophy. It's not the status I covet so much as being paid so that I can concentrate on one thing. Being independently wealthy would work even better (think Schopenhauer's life, but less gloomy --and happily married, maybe to someone with a passion for German literature.)

In this world and with this lifespan one can't get around to everything. The full potential of the brain and the soul is not realized. (Or maybe there are certain peaks that are realized intermittently, but I have something else in mind).The time may come (who knows?) when we as a species actually achieve this. Especially if we can get off this little planet, our short lifespans will lose their utility as a way to control population. We'd have a new frontier. We'd have the technology to feed as many as we could make and plenty of space for them too. Maybe after 10,000 years or 100,000 years death would be fascinating as something truly new. We might feel ready for it. As it is, I think we mostly feel ready for it (if and when we do) because our bodies are worn out, our hormone levels, etc., contribute to an apathy. As our personal futures recede, we partake in the futures of those younger. They can keep the game going. Our old bones are sleepy.

I guess I'll stop there.

that sounds beautiful, but first of all what if you aint got none to be all cute with. and then after that we both know that poetry even though is super fulfilling when it's present in our lives, it's absent most of the time — Rhasta1

That's true. And really sometimes life is hell. I think hope and fear keep us hanging on through those hellish times.

As far as 'the poetic' being absent most of the time, I think that really varies. I think we can become more generally open to life (a thing of the heart and the body as much as it if of the theoretical mind) so that it is more often poetic. In my own experience, I got better at staying in that poetic state of mind. That doesn't mean that one ever escapes the possibility of more hell. Nor do I claim to have a theoretical justification or cure for life. I'm just saying that love is at the center of why we bother to survive, despite the possibility and actuality of 'hell.' (Not that we should or should not 'carry on,' but only why we usually do.)

I know I focused on romantic love, but friendship can be powerful. Just having coffee and taking a long walk and talking about everything heavy and grand and terrible can be pretty great. And really there's a lot of pleasure to be had alone, pursuing one's hobbies. Finally (and I'm serious) watching good TV is not be dismissed. In some ways it is hyper-real. It is poetically denser than ordinary life.

I like Camus. I hope the old boy is indeed smiling down (surprised to still be conscious, if so.)

love just because of simply the act of loving or expecting something in return? — Rhasta1

I'd say look beyond categorization and try to remember some of the best moments of your life with people, or some of your best moments this last week with people. A great example is a couple of lovers pillow-talking, smiling and joking with another. They don't experience much of a sense of separateness. The boundaries between the so-called self and the so-called other break down in moments like this. Philosophy is maybe weak where poetry is strong. The categorizing-analytic approach tries to break a continuous whole (life as it is lived) into nice little fragments. A nice example is a bicycle. Let's say you take it apart and stare at the parts individually. This isn't really a bicycle anymore. It doesn't work unless all the parts have a living relationship. Similarly life as it is lived resists being trapped in our categories.

When all is going well in life we don't even think to ask for some abstract justification of its value. We live that value. And if we question the value of life, we are even then living the value we find in questioning and being analytical.

so what keeps you alive, and why? — Rhasta1

Dead Poet's Society. Applied science is how we live, and what poetry addresses is why. In one word, love. We love what's on this side of the grave, even if it and we are mortal, and perhaps even more because it is mortal, because there is no one meaning that dominates all the rest.