But the other point is, this allows Kant to be both an empirical realist, and a transcendental idealist. He can accept (as I do) the empirical reality of the age of the Universe etc, but at the same time, insist on the fact that the 'intuitions of time and space' are still intrinsic to the observer and not to the so-called objective world. — Wayfarer

What could maybe be added here is inter-subjectivity. Or rather I think 'inter-subjectivity' is still too theoretical but points to what I have in mind. Science is a community effort. Objectivity is (and I think you'd agree) not about stuff out there but precisely about separating science from non-science. An statement is objective/rational or not. Objective reality is science's (or philosophy's) determination (ascertainment not construction) of reality. Objectivity is about the social and not the physical. The physical does indeed offer intense objectivity, but collapsing objectivity into objects creates a mess I think we both agree on. I could summarize by saying that it's impossible for an isolated subject to be rational or scientific. (This doesn't mean that I can't run off to the woods having been raised/educated and do science. But I'm still in a world that knows my language.)

The first meaning of idealism given by the SEP is

something mental (the mind, spirit, reason, will) is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of reality — SEP

From the 'idealistic' point of view I want to present, the definition above is a misunderstanding of idealism. Or rather the idealism I'm equating with philosophy itself is obscured by the definition of idealism above. A less deceptive name in this context might be meaning-ism. If that sounds trivial, good.

My suggestion is that idealism is trivial, another name for philosophy itself. I think this is revealed by something like a phenomenology of philosophy. How does philosophy show itself?

The philosopher brings me the meaning of reality, its conceptual/objective determination, what it is in more or less detail. What I have in mind is something like the philosopher opposed to the sophist, the ironist, the anti-philosopher. The philosopher claims to know or claims to aspire to know the objective/unbiased truth about reality. He may tell us that reality is made of meaningless objects, but this is still the meaning of reality we are to accept as the unbiased truth --to the degree that we recognize the claim of rationality/objectivity (and are fully human?).

How do we know that he is unbiased, objective, rational? Philosophers challenge one another with different presentations of the meaning of reality, its intelligible structure, including the meaningfulness or not of sentences. This forces the turn to reasoning about reason itself (for instance, linguistic philosophy.) To the degree that linguistic philosophy is ' the view that philosophical problems are problems which may be solved (or dissolved) either by reforming language, or by understanding more about the language we presently use', Hegel was a supreme linguistic philosopher, who just watched philosophy go till he saw the structure of its movement (or at least an illuminating approximation of it.)

'Idealism' is the phenomenology of philosophy, unveiling its basic structure. It points to what philosophy is doing without noticing it is doing, further revealing reality by uncovering philosophy's own role in this reality. Philosophers determine ('ascertain or establish exactly') just what reality is. This determination is meaningful, articulated. This is the 'ultimate foundation' in the quote above. A better phrase is the ultimate determination of all reality. This is ultimate as final, the last word. The philosopher aspires to the last word about reality. The philosophers belong to a community in the world. This community with its practices and standards is the 'spirit' that determines (makes sense of, decides the meaning of) reality in the first quote. Its philosophers focus on the fundamental, the primordial, the big picture, the authoritative. 'Spirit' hasn't aged well given modern biases. But 'mind' suggests disembodied individuals and a distance from the intelligible objects of everyday life. Such objects are not denied as 'mental,' they are merely recognized as objective, intelligible without bias. 'Reason' is perhaps best, but again this tempts some to imagine an isolated as well as disembodied private language locked in a theoretical a-historical subject, a questionable construction.

Just like the average person is willing to accept scientific values, so also professionals need to accept philosophical values. — BrianW

For what it's worth, I think politics is the effective manifestation of philosophy in the world. I don't mean 'effective' as in good or bad. I just mean that arguments about value are played out for most people in political discourse. Arguments about bathrooms, taxes, wars, education, etc. are arguments about who we should be as a community at a less abstract level. Some voters are indeed informed by philosophy proper, but most people think in more concrete terms, issue by issue. If prodded, you can probably get them to sketch something like a metaphysics. But doing so hasn't become a personal project for them. Indeed, some people are wary of an approach that is too abstract, too unworldly in its love of grand theories.

You make a good point. All I get from the argument is that determinism is not rationally justified if determinism is true. This doesn't (obviously, to me) mean that determinism is false. Now his point may simply be that it is not rationally justified, and so (as beings invested in being rational) we ought not accept it as true.

Though for me it was - and occasionally still is - alcohol. And sometimes adderall. But it was very much about doing whatever was necessary to get to a state where I could try to connect with others, at whatever cost. It does sometimes work, is the thing. I'm of two minds here. — csalisbury

Indeed. It's tricky. Because I know a few people who have been just eaten up by substance abuse. I'm probably lucky in that I don't like alcohol that much without stimulants. And I am very slow to go scrounging for such stimulants (my nicotine gum and coffee vice is bad enough.) If I had just two weeks to live and could have whatever I wanted as a comfort, I might just include a pile of cocaine. I see drugs as heaven and hell, intensities of good and/or evil, re-humanizing and de-humanizing.

It's only becoming clear to me now that the real gem of the book is how it deals with the art(?) of integrating ecstatic and nonecstatic states. — csalisbury

'Art' seems like the perfect word.

I've been toying with another idea that the point of nonecstatic interludes is to fashion a soul or self that is able to retain the insights of the ecstatic moments without being disintegrated — csalisbury

I like this. It makes perfect sense to me.

How, but by the medium of a world like this?" — Keats via csalisbury

I love both quotes. Keats is offering a pretty good theodicy. It reminds me of early more spiritual Feuerbach. The 'species-essence' ('Christ') develops in billions of different ways. Its richness can only be manifest as a plurality of personalities if it is to be infinite. To me it's like finding the infinite in the finite.

What is a good party? I am there as me in my strangeness. Others are just as distinct, just as quirky. And yet we all love and value one another not only despite but mostly because of these differences which can surprise and delight us.

In the introduction to Thoughts Feuerbach assumes the role of diagnostician of a spiritual malady by which he claims that modern moral subjects are afflicted. This malady, to which he does not give a name, but which he might have called either individualism or egoism, he takes to be the defining feature of the modern age insofar as this age conceives of “the single human individual for himself in his individuality […] as divine and infinite” (GTU 189/10). The principal symptom of this malady is the loss of “the perception [Anschauung] of the true totality, of oneness and life in one unity” (GTU 264/66).
...
Feuerbach urged his readers to acknowledge and accept the irreversibility of their individual mortality so that in doing so they might come to an awareness of the immortality of their species-essence, and thus to knowledge of their true self, which is not the individual person with whom they were accustomed to identify themselves. They would then be in a position to recognize that, while “the shell of death is hard, its kernel is sweet” (GTU 205/20), and that the true belief in immortality is

a belief in the infinity of Spirit and in the everlasting youth of humanity, in the inexhaustible love and creative power of Spirit, in its eternally unfolding itself into new individuals out of the womb of its plenitude and granting new beings for the glorification, enjoyment, and contemplation of itself. (GTU 357/137) — SEP

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/

Forgiving the 'species essence' language, which is dated, I enjoy that as something like the core of a spirituality of this world that doesn't hide itself away. It's not anti-flesh. It's not anti-sex. Indeed, the sex-death is central. Of course I think it would be terrible to interpret this as a kind of cheap anti-egoism that basically hates the human being. I believe that there is a healthy self-love that makes the love of others possible and sincere. To love the self in the right way is to love others in the right way and the reverse. Or that's what my guts tell me. I hope this isn't too much of a digression from the Keats quote.

Anyway - I have to log out for a good few days - I am doing a number of self-directed training courses this week for a software project starting early in the NY and really have to concentrate, I get on here and the hours just fly past. But, a great exchange and I thank you for it.

__//|\\__

Wayfarer — Wayfarer

Yeah, I've really enjoyed it too. I look forward to your return.

Do you know Horkheimer's The Eclipse of Reason? That was written in the aftermath of WWII as a reaction to Nazism. But Horkheimer's analysis of the main point is exactly this - that meaning is - well, not objective in the modern sense, so much as transcending subjectivity and objectivity. But you will notice how thoroughly philosophies of meaning are relativised and subjectivised here. — Wayfarer

I've looked into Horkheimer. I liked what I read.

You mentioned 'subjectivization' of meaning, but the annihilation of the isolated subject seems like a big theme in continental philosophy. The subject has its substance outside of itself. The mighty ego is being brought down to something spoken by Language. What I can imagine you not liking is the thought of dissemination, the out-of-control-ness of the meaning process. And I read Derrida as someone who just wants to tell the truth. I'd bet he was tempted by nostalgia, but he seems to have embraced the openness, the ambiguity, the play.

I think we basically have the same vision of what life is good for. What may open or close certain thinkers for us is the political aspect of our thinking. I'm basically a stoic when it comes to politics. I don't believe that I have significant power to change the course of the world, and I therefore don't worry about it. Sure, vulgarity and stupidity dominate from the perspective of one who has become more sophisticated. Indeed, vulgarity and stupidity are in some sense the shadow cast by exactly this sophistication. The social version of humanism (which can indeed be a holy humanism, open to the divine) is maybe for me a daydream. Or I can live it here and there with people in my life on a small scale. Or I can have profound conversations about the higher things online with people who aren't afraid of that sort of thing. I'm not saying that you should be like me and not worry. I really don't know. I guess I just enjoy the sense of seeing what is, finding general structures.

Actually it was a quote about Aquinas' theory of knowledge, which draws on and elaborates Aristotle's hylomorphic dualism. I'm really labouring to try and impart this basic principle: that the 'intelligible form' of things, and also their mathematical qualities, can be known in a way that the material, particular, individual cannot. The 'active intellect' (nous) draws together the (material-sensory) datum with the (intelligible-rational) form to understand meaning by way of 'the concept'. And I think that is the origin of the idea of 'the real as rational', originating with Plato, neoplatonism, and Aristotle. Nothing really to with cyclical at all, sorry. It has to do with the 'intelligible forms of things'. — Wayfarer

I get it Aquinas, Aristotle, Hegel. Indeed, the idea of the idea. No complaint. We are on the same page as far as I can tell on that particular issue.

As far as denying the importance of cycles, I think you are missing the connection. Of course the concept is what knowledge is made of. But how does the philosopher know if/when his knowledge is complete? How can I know the nature of the dog, for instance, if I haven't seen everything that the dog can manifest? Now let's consider how the philosopher could have a complete knowledge of man himself. His own nature has to be a more complicated version of an animals' nature, manifesting a finite number of modes which can be integrated in concepts via memory. I don't claim that this gets it all just right or is the final story, but I think it's good theme. Time is a fundamental issue. Does reality become more complex? If so, we would expect later philosophies to give better accounts. On the other hand, a certain 'eternal' core of human nature could be manifested very early in human history.

On this view, they're stable because they perceive 'what things truly are' by the knowledge of their forms and types. — Wayfarer

Thanks for the Aristotle quote. I think it's quite clear that they were at one on this issue. Meaning is not subjective. It is objective. It is the possibility of knowledge, the form of knowledge. I still haven't studied him as I should. I am aware of Hegel is often compared to Aristotle, and I think it's clear why. The difference is time, at least judging by Kojeve's interpretation.

For Kojeve anyway, Aristotle could have knowledge of the world because everything in it was cyclical. We can watch animals be born, mature, reproduce, and die. We can gather this distribution through time up into a unity. No problem, right? And then even in politics we have just a few systems that repeat. HIstory doesn't really move forward! The circle can be grasped by studying history. Reality has a stable structure behind all its movement. Note that Schopenhauer actually took this position, denying essential change.

But (as I understand it) Hegel was reacting to Newtonian science, the French revolution, and the Kant-inspired idea that the knowledge of the impossibility of true knowledge was the highest knowledge. This of course lowered the value of man's rational essence. Hegel was a 'Satanist' on the level of the 'we.' The thing-in-itself was an alienating humiliation to be broken over his humanist knee. Anyway, the unification of all humanity and its eventually technical conquest of the world became a living possibility. Moreover 'man' was becoming autonomous. At the same time there was a knowledge explosion. There was something new under the sun everyday. Time was no longer the repetition of the same. It was creative. Hegel wrote that philosophy could only understand what had already happened. So only at the end of history is perfect knowledge possible. Maybe Hegel thought he could see the beginning of the end of history in Napoleon, that world-spirit on horseback, spreading a world-wide culture of self-conscious freedom --of masters and slaves synthesized as citizens. It's one hell of a dream.

Anyway, for me the instability of meanings is related to their being about one another (texts on texts on texts) and in our accumulating knowledge of the world. We are creating the world as we try to make sense of it. Note that Derrida is in this same tradition of Aristotle-Hegel-Husserl-etc. And so are Wittgenstein and Heidegger. But they are thinking the depth of the incarnation. We can't peel the flesh off the essence. We can't find the artichoke beneath its leaves. So we get something like an embrace of the mess that is trying always to climb out of itself.

I'm left nonplussed by this sort of wording. As in, "so surprised and confused that one is unsure how to react", not the incongruous American nonplussed.

Essences are bunk; "The Real" is language on holiday; concepts are fraught with issues. All together the OP is a fundamental misuse of language.

But then, that's Hegel in a nutshell. Nuts. — Banno

Before I argue with you on this, let me say that I recognize your intelligence, even if we disagree. Maybe this is unnecessary, but I'd say real conversation is only possible with a minimum of friendly respect. So take my response in this light.

******

'Language on holiday' is 'language on holiday.' What am I to make of this metaphorical verbiage? What is this personification of language? Language isn't a lad who can go on vacation. That Wittgenstein sounds like a real poet (said with disgust at poetry masquerading as Science.) Surely you see how 'metaphysical' 'language on holiday' is? And God stepped off that train and parted from the Light from the Darkness, language in a hard hat from language with a beach towel.

More seriously, I love Wittgenstein. But he can be transformed all too easily into one more meta-physician. Before long our true Wittgensteinian can embrace a methodological stupidity. Anything that requires interpretation is 'language on holiday,' nevermind that 'language on holiday' (some secret re-installed at the heart of the great 'demystifier') requires an army of specialists for its infinite explication. One way among many others to grok WIttgenstein is to just start really listening to people and stop trying to fit talk into artificial theories of talk. Is this the fundamental fantasy ? An escape from the burden of interpretation? An excuse to write off the pesky other who just won't confirm us in our prejudices wisdom?

Moreover you repeat the pattern that Hegel describes. What Hegel is saying is 'language on holiday.' Therefore it is unreal or silly or not worth acknowledging. And if you get together in a gang of Hegel-haters, then Hegel is unreal, unread. His whole point is that the 'real' (what we take seriously and recognize) is mediated by a group that (insasmuch as it has become philosophy) identifies itself with the rational, the sensible, the non-silly. Choose your synonym. I had to grab one synonym or another to point at a basic structure.

When Hegel wrote that all philosophy was idealism, that of course didn't make sense to me at first. And that's because I had a cartoon notion of idealism in my head ---that idealism was about ghosts in individual heads, a radical misunderstanding. To the degree that you dismiss Hegel in terms of some sense of universal rationality, you confirm him in this regard by ignoring or denying what is unintelligible or irrational to you. Only what we can make sense of (verify through critical discussion) is what our kind of people take as real.

Wittgenstein's 'form of life' is a repetition of Hegel's universal spirit. It's a groundless ground. The 'thing-in-itself' is nowhere to be found. Nothing is hidden. I'd say if you open your mind that there's a very nice continuity to be seen. Of course Wittgenstein had a different feeling about philosophy. Hegel was grandiose, a optimist, a humanist with organ music. Maybe his dream embarrasses us. We must all be tiny technicians, sweeping away the language that is trying to sneak out for a smoke break. Gellner's critique is at least well aimed at the potential of Wittgensteinian lingo to become a theology of complacency. And note that your linguistic-philosophy justified denial of Hegel just makes the Logos primary all over again, repeating what it thinks it is criticizing. And you are truly missing out if you haven't found anything fascinating in Hegel. That's like a jazz fan who hasn't really got into Coltrane from my perspective.

My approach has generally been a 'where did we go wrong?' type of approach. What I mean by that is, I see the adoption of scientific or philosophical materialism as a kind of catastrophe that befell the Western cultural tradition. — Wayfarer

I think I see what you mean. Natural science is the 'god who delivered.' Everyone, independent of their ideology, wants (to varying degrees) the comfort and safety that technology has provided. But we seem to be out of control as a species. Who knows what will happen? We've built things that might extinguish us as a species. Mostly we just concern ourselves with the near future.

Ideologically we seem to have a battle of the humanisms --if one includes religion as a kind of humanism. We could also include humanisms as kinds of religions. What I have in mind is a cultures object of ultimate concern, the authority with which it determines the real and also the virtuous human being. As I mentioned before, I don't think materialism is the essence --except to the degree that the denial of afterlife makes this world the center of attention. From my perspective, vegetarianism or animal rights activism or over even men's rights activism are all 'spiritual' expressions. Humans mostly impose themselves in terms of the same old divine predicates. Justice, mercy, omniscience, love. So from my point of view, the problem is a pluralism that might prevent any unified/organized approach to solving the technological threat.

Can we bring ourselves together? Or do we just thirst for an other? Do we need an enemy? I don't know, but I suspect that this compulsive 'othering' is part of the problem.

From my observations, the more intelligent (possibly rational) a subject is made out to be, the closer it approximates to reality. This is especially seen in the evolution of the theories of the atom and is seen in its infancy in the theory of dark matter and energy. — BrianW

Exactly. And note that we have a movement from less to more rationality. We have increased complexity in our determination of reality.

To give it my own specially twist of irony, there are branches of spiritualism which define spirit as the intelligent principle of life. — BrianW

Yeah, and I think there is some truth in that. Hegel, right or wrong, thought of reality as a kind of seed that grows into a self-knowing tree. The dialectic was going somewhere specific. One thought or position quietly determined the next position. But this only becomes visible as thought becomes aware of or determine its own nature. Spirit has to become aware of itself as the process of becoming aware of it. This is all quite seductive to me. But I can't say that I just simply believe all of it. I think much of it is indeed just a description of what is going on. But does the seed have a fixed future? I'm not so sure about that.

We can't deny the part intelligence plays in our understanding of reality and we can't deny that we 'know' more from our observations of the many aspects of reality than what is directly derived from sensory-inputs. — BrianW

Indeed. Language is 'there,' like the world. To deny it is to employ it. Within language we can speak of a world prior to language. And we can also speak of round squares. The world prior to language may be something like the shadow of pure meaning, pure mind. If language is thoroughly 'incarnate,' if the word is always already also flesh, then our very distinction of meaning from non-meaning ('sensation') is troubled by an ambiguity. Indeed, all of our distinctions become troubled by context and embodiment.

So, what determines whether we walk the rational path? — BrianW

For me this is the humanism. We are dealing with the perception or experience of value. 'It values.' I think rationality is today's holy ghost, the 'substance' of the individual that makes him worthy of being recognized as truly human. Stirner theorized an archetype of the 'sacred.' I think he's on to something. Human's have a god-shaped hole into which various 'divinities' can be plugged. The transformation of divinity is not just a matter of dialectic (debate) but also of war and work in the 'material' world. The terrible 'other' of philosophy is a violence that feels no need to justify itself in rational terms. This 'satanic' 'I' is, when transformed into a 'we,' more or less 'absolute spirit' --a community that experiences itself as the living body of the divine. So the 'evil' position is separated from the perfected humanism by a mere pronoun.

This is as heavy a topic as I've seen. — BrianW

Hopefully in a fun way! But yeah it does seem to strike right at the heart of philosophy --a description of its basic project or grasp of itself in relation to the world.

(Have a read of this very brief passage, Augustine on Intelligible Objects, which I think conveys well the traditional/Platonic notion of 'intelligibility' which is mainly lost to the modern tradition.) — Wayfarer

I did look at it. It reminds me of Husserl, who of course is rekindling old insights. We definitely seem to agree on these objects. For me the tricky part is in the genesis of concepts and how they work together. We have intelligible sentences. We create new meanings of amazing complexity. How stable are these meanings? They are stable enough for human purposes, but I think a certain ambiguity haunts all meaning.

I think the key term to understand in what Hegel is talking of is the Aristotelian/Platonic idea of 'intelligibility'. — Wayfarer

I very much agree.

The meaning or sense of which we speak is none other than the essential or the universal, the substantial in an object, which is the object concretely thought. Herein we always have a double aspect, an exterior and an interior, an external appearance which is intuitively perceptible and a meaning which, precisely, is thought. Now, because the object with which we are concerned is thought, there is here no double aspect; it is thought itself which does the meaning. Here the object is the universal; so we cannot ask about a meaning which is separate or separable from the object. The only meaning or determination which the history of philosophy has, then, is thought itself. Herein thought is the innermost, the highest, and one cannot, therefore, settle on a thought about it. — Hegel

ut all of that said, the original notion of 'intelligibility' was derived from Platonist epistemology, whereby the mind knows intelligible objects in a manner different from the knowledge of sensory objects. Rational knowledge was in that sense apodictic and universal, whereas sensory knowledge was grouped with opinion and belief. This is how knowledge of the mathematical structure underlying the phenomenal world became esteemed in Western culture. — Wayfarer

Indeed. The issue not touched on here is the gap between mathematical and non-mathematical concepts. Clearly mathematical concepts are relatively stable. They seem to be about as eternal as anyone could ask them to be. It's the same with logic. But away from math we enter the wilderness of metaphor and context. This is where Wittgenstein and Derrida shine. Clearly there is meaning, but perhaps most meaning is just not cleanly separable from context and it's vehicle. This is 'god' (as pure meaning) becoming entangled in the world of action and ambiguity. We still have idealism, but we have an idealism that opens itself to contamination or rather confesses/discovers its contamination.

But Hegel was an heir to the rationalist tradition. So when he talks of the 'rationality of the real', I suspect it's derived from that traditional understanding of the 'intelligible nature of the world' more so than anything that modern mathematical science would countenance. — Wayfarer

Indeed, and that's because science is not interested in (does not have as its project) looking into its own ground. I love philosophy, but one can always take an anti-philosophical pragmatist position and just identify the rational with the tools that work. I have played with this idea myself, but there's a certain emptiness to it. As it enlarges into a theory of theory, it starts to repeat something like Hegel's dialectic of breakdown and repair. We only question the tool that works against us and stop questioning as soon as we get it working again. But we get back to Hume's perception of our blind faith in induction.

Loops often come to my mind when thinking about reality. Self-awareness is like a camera pointing at it's monitor and creates a visual feedback loop of a "infinite" corridor. Natural selection is basically environmental feedback - the environment shaping itself. — Harry Hindu

I agree. And on one hand this points to an aporia, an M.C. Escher 'impossible' vision of reality. On the other hand we have some kind of Hegelianism.

Constituted as it is, this process cannot belong to the subject; but when that point of support is fixed to start with, this process cannot be otherwise constituted, it can only be external. The anticipation that the Absolute is subject is therefore not merely not the realisation of this conception; it even makes this realisation impossible. For it makes out the notion to be a static point, while its actual reality is self-movement, self-activity.

...Everything depends on grasping and expressing the ultimate truth not as Substance but as Subject as well. At the same time we must note that concrete substantiality implicates and involves the universal or the immediacy of knowledge itself, as well as that immediacy which is being, or immediacy qua object for knowledge. — Hegel

We have something like the entanglement of language in non-language. The real is intelligible. It includes this very discourse about itself. But intelligibility is not a matter of the 'private' subject. To be in language is to participate in a group subject. What the community takes for real is just the real, inasmuch as the real is intelligible.

But this especially includes worldly objects. Indeed, we tend to collapse objectivity (unbiasedness) into these objects, forgetting intuitions of logic that don't depend directly on sense organs. From one perspective objects and concepts are two ways of saying the same thing. The chair is grasped as a chair. As Husserl has shown, objects already transcend our perspectival viewing of them. If we walk around the chair or close our eyes and open them again, it is the same chair. The chair is never completely devoured by the eyes. So this 'involuntary' concept is just the object as object as the 'kernel' of sensation. But we can of course take meanings as 'objects' in a shared 'mental' space, and we call them 'concepts.'And concepts-objects exist in a network, getting their determination from one another. At the level of reason (conversations like this), we have something like the real's determination of itself. To the degree that what I am saying in these public signs is rational, 'I' do not speak as some isolated subject. We co-determine the real ---as that which is co-determined through a distributed rationality with a variety of bodily perspectives on the world.

It is deep... If the relationship between epistemology and ontology is problematic in the thesis, maybe it is troublesome outside of it. — Valentinus

Well I do think the relationship between ontology and epistemology is deep indeed. I've been thinking about Hegel lately. The real is rational and the rational is real. This collapses ontology and epistemology. What we as rational inquires acknowledge as truly/objectively there is a product of rational debate. And merely approaching reality as if reason can reveal it already implies that it is essentially rational. Moreover, engaging in philosophy implies that it is good to reveal reality rationality. This is certainly an oversimplification, but I'm quite taken by this interpretation of Hegel's insistence that all philosophy was idealism. (and Derrida's that it is all humanism, albeit a humanism always trying to surpass itself.)

And again, because they saw that all this world of nature is in movement and that about that which changes no true statement can be made, they said that of course, regarding that which everywhere in every respect is changing, nothing could truly be affirmed. It was this belief that blossomed into the most extreme of the views above mentioned, that of the professed Heracliteans, such as was held by Cratylus, who finally did not think it right to say anything but only moved his finger, and criticized Heraclitus for saying that it is impossible to step twice into the same river; for he thought one could not do it even once. — Valentinus

Ah yes, the gap between us and the absolute is taken as the absolute itself! And of course such thinkers don't acknowledge the intelligibility of their own discourse which establishes the absolute impossibility of the absolute. It occurs to me that rejections of absolute knowledge just make our finite knowledge in its plurality absolute. It is all the absolute we can hope for and therefore the functioning absolute.

In regards to the Heidegger approach to contending points of view on the matter of experience, I prefer Sartre who noted that not all of our experiences of awareness require the "Ego." That view is less entangled with what we mean by meaning and how objects are what they are in relation to being an object. — Valentinus

Sartre is great too. He touches on some stuff that I've just never found in Heidegger.

I haven't read Shaw but I think I will like him more than Nietzsche. I have often thought that Nietzsche's irony was too much and a subtle way to mask his irresolution. — BrianW

I respect that. I'd say, though, that we have a plurality of Nietzsches (who loved to talk about masks). In some modes he was a mystic. In others the supreme critic of any kind of fixity.

Unfortunately, we don't get to have a panacea for all of life's ills. I believe one answer gets us to one step, then it's back to the drawing board for another answer. It's a tireless process and we are exhausted beings. — BrianW

That sounds about right.

That 'homeopathic' idea always has its charms. Isn't this part of romanticism in general? That civilization corrupts some kind of natural virtue? I think there is some truth in it, but of course the other side has its claims too.

Shaw is really quite the fusion of contradictions. I learned quite a bit from his prefaces and plays. He really is just a delight to read. 'Back to Methuselah ' starts in some rethought Garden of Eden and jumps into the future when humans become dematerialized vortices. He wanted to give humanity a religion of creative evolution. In some ways he was Nietzsche with more discipline, less irony. I'm not saying he's better than Nietzsche. To lose the irony is to lose the essence, one might say.

. Because philosophy is a bigger picture than the other branches of study, it is best suited to act as a control measure for them. There may be a great degree of specialisation of knowledge but we need philosophy to mediate between those many seemingly diverse branches e.g. to remind us in scientific endeavours that ethics is important and an integral part of all undertakings, to remind us in mathematics that numbers have a relation to nature and to reality and therefore there is a way to interact with them and that they are a part of us. — BrianW

I agree with this role for philosophy. It organizes everything else. On an individual level it allows me to prioritize and synthesize. It helps me feel at home in the world. It helps me find an ought-to-be that I can strive toward or already enjoy as having partially attained. It 'places' natural science in the context of the 'lifeworld.' Maybe it teaches me a playful open-mindedness that also knows how to get serious and talk in the ordinary way to get the ordinary work done.

believe the problem with modern culture is the prevalence of the 'quick fix' or 'shortcut' mentality. If we have a problem with the environment, we start looking for ways to fix it right then and there. Most people don't consider that it is possible to start something that may take decades, perhaps centuries, of continuous effort just to get things back on track. And, often enough, as soon as the 'quick fix' seems to stall, it is often abandoned and another solution is sought out. In the end, it takes us decades just to realise we're taking the wrong approach towards a lasting solution. By then, most people, especially those with the capacity to work out solutions, have given up because they realise there won't be any significant degree of success during their lifetimes and, therefore, embark on a journey of self-ambition aimed at personal gains. — BrianW

Have you checked out this? Shaw had a wild idea that what mankind needed most was an extension of its lifespan, precisely so people could care enough to fix big problems. 'I guess I'll spend a century on getting this in order to better enjoy the next four centuries.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_Methuselah

It's just like it's not possible for others to perform the act of "translating" sheet music, say, into an instrumental performance for you. That's something you have to do. — Terrapin Station

OK, I think I understand you and agree. Correct me if I am wrong. The sign as mark or noise is meaningless as it moves 'between' those who intend and interpret it. I don't object to this at all.

it's also not that you're constantly thinking, "I'm translating these marks into a musical performance on this instrument." — Terrapin Station

This is what I meant by the 'transparency' of language for us. Our first person experience is something like a 'living' in these signs as publicly meaningful. Indeed, we can think about it and decide that 'really' the individual brain is interpreting and sending dead/arbitrary signs. That's fine. That vision of the real (something like the real of physical science) is too useful to ignore. It is still a metaphysical position, and it does neglect that the image of this scientifically real is determined within the signs in their virtual publicity. The scientifically real is established by a community. Science is only intelligible within a community linked by signs that can critically accept or reject candidates for objective truth. So the physical as the ground of the meaningful also has the meaningful as its ground (its very being even).

If I have learned one thing from following this discussion, It is that the "identity theory" Terrapin Station is espousing is decidedly not a child of any German Idealist. First of all, there are no "phenomena" because that term implies a separation between the spectator and the show that the theory is trying to disappear. — Valentinus

I looked into it, and I agree. There is a vague similarity in an attempt to overcome dualism, but that's all I see from a brief perusal.

Seeking an alternative to the classic dualist position, according to which mental states possess an ontology distinct from the physiological states with which they are thought to be correlated, Place claimed that sensations and the like might very well be processes in the brain—despite the fact that statements about the former cannot be logically analyzed into statements about the latter. Drawing an analogy with such scientifically verifiable (and obviously contingent) statements as "Lightning is a motion of electric charges," Place cited potential explanatory power as the reason for hypothesizing consciousness-brain state relations in terms of identity rather than mere correlation. This still left the problem of explaining introspective reports in terms of brain processes, since these reports (for example, of a green after-image) typically make reference to entities which do not fit with the physicalist picture (there is nothing green in the brain, for example). To solve this problem, Place called attention to the "phenomenological fallacy"—the mistaken assumption that one's introspective observations report "the actual state of affairs in some mysterious internal environment." All that the Mind-Brain Identity theorist need do to adequately explain a subject's introspective observation, according to Place, is show that the brain process causing the subject to describe his experience in this particular way is the kind of process which normally occurs when there is actually something in the environment corresponding to his description. — https://www.iep.utm.edu/identity/

As far as I can tell this is the same old grasping of 'internal' and 'external' experiences in the same causal network. Is it any deeper than saying that opiates makes the pain go away?

And is phenomenology about the internal environment? https://medium.com/@LancePeterson/heidegger-s-lectern-1919-4c5a3ca47ccd

The genius of Heidegger was to show that the theoretical gaze is a devivification of world-with-others-in-language and the postulation of an isolated a-historical subject. It installs the gap itself! I am not an 'I' for myself most of the time and objects aren't just there to be stared at. The world is more like a using-of-objects, neither subject nor object. An event. 'It worlds.' The 'mysterious internal environment' is a creation of the same approach that objects to it. It's just the shadow cast by the fiction or implement of the deworlded ego (impossible to think of without its object.)

Much more can be said (it's more complicated than this, I confess!), but I'll stop there.

t what would happen if someone never heard anything else about Philosophy (or any other subject) but studied it in isolation? Would they bring something new to the table? Would it be more useful? — TogetherTurtle

That seems possible. Just as there are outsider artists there are outsider philosophers. Of course they have to start from somewhere. They are already in a community. If they do find something new, it will have to be woven in to the thoughts already at the table in order to be brought to the table, I suppose.
Wittgenstein hadn't read much philosophy when rose to frame. I'm pretty sure there are lots of classics that he just never got around to. So I guess he's already an outsider philosopher (to some degree) who was adopted as canonical, a must-read.

Philosophy is much like Science and Math, because most people in those fields will never come up with something new. It is enough to understand though, so you can at least feel smart. — TogetherTurtle

Yeah. To give the people in those fields a little credit, I think they pretty much have to squeeze out something new to get a PhD. But this new thing can be very small, a mere footnote.

I agree that it is enough to understand. We can't all be Einstein. To be all torn up about it would be like not enjoying a middle class comfort because one isn't a billionaire. And I roughly believe in a basic insight of freedom. A person can roughly grab the essence of life and the essence of philosophy, without ever mastering all of its clever elaborations. Basically we can have a friendly conversation right now because we recognize one another's essential dignity/freedom/value (whatever you want to call it.) We recognize that the other is 'cool' enough to talk to and listen to.I'd joke that the point is to get cool and stay cool, knowing that this word 'cool' is a little awkward here, a little uncool.

So, information is not lost when going to a lower dimension? But, then how can "time" exist in 3-dimensions? — Wallows

That depends on the metaphysical interpretation that one gives math. The real numbers are very strange if one looks into them. 'Most' real numbers contain an 'infinite' amount of information. They can't be compressed into a program that generates arbitrarily accurate rational approximations of them. But this means most real numbers exist only as a background that can never be foregrounded. It's pretty psychedelic and yet it's mainstream math.

As far as time goes, I'm personality inclined to separate the mathematical representation of time from time itself. We can usefully spatialize time in our theories, but who is to say that this is time itself and not some handy image of time? For some philosophers time is the name of the existence. To be alive is to be time or live time, drag a memory into a desired future.

What comes to my mind is a godless form of life. If everyone around you thinks religion is just too silly to bother with, then that becomes a kind of automatic truth not worth questioning. And we can imagine the reverse situation, where atheism is just so obviously silly as to be not worth thinking about. This would be a 'pre-rational' stance on the issue.

A reasonable person (who embraces taking a rational stance) might try to understand what some clearly intelligent people have in mind when they say the word 'God.' Some of them are of course doing bad science. But then there are people attached to 'rationality' also with crude understandings of the rational.

Philosophy (once the dream is born!) can be understood as idealism-meets-humanism to the degree that it only admits what is rational as real. 'God' either doesn't exist or the issue is undecidable or nonsensical because rationality (thinking in words) has determined it so. This is the 'idealism.' The humanism is understanding/projecting human virtue in terms of a universal rationality. I am most human when I sacrifice my wishful thinking to the fire of universal reason, the 'god' within me that gives me as an individual a voice worth recognizing inasmuch as I 'incarnate' that god. To be clear, I embrace this idealism/humanism. But to embrace it is to obsess over what it still gets wrong.

[Nevermind. Don't want to interrupt.]

I have no idea what a distinction being "perfect" would amount to. — Terrapin Station

The point is whether you can do something like perfectly cut the sign's meaning from its material 'body.'
Can I perfectly distinguish the meaning from its arbitrary vehicle? And this already forgets the massive dependence of that meaning on the context of other signs/meanings. We evolved to be quite good at language in practical contexts (or rather we've survived this long), so we have sufficiently clear meanings-apart-from-signs and sufficiently translatable texts in that regard. But does the situation allow for some exact formulation? Could the project of an exact formulation encourage us to ignore the nature of language as we usually live it?

"Thought of the isolated ego"? You might as well be typing to me in Swahili.

I wish you could write a sentence that I'm not stumped about. — Terrapin Station

The subject alone with meaning is perhaps the wrong place to start in thinking about language. For the most part I don't theorize myself. I glide through life responding to its significance, immersed in my doings, using language without being conscious of it. The others aren't alone in their heads gazing at the meanings of my words. We are in the words-as-world-together.

What does it mean to say that nothing is hidden? 'The universal Spirit develops in itself according to its own necessity; its opinion is simply the truth.' Universal spirit is the groundless ground of a form of life. The pre-theoretical anyone puts language to work, not on vacation. It knows well enough what it means when it flips the bird or stops at a red light. It knows how to flirt and make a graceful exit. It doesn't stop to misunderstand language in terms of some theory. It lives in language. (We can talk endlessly about what it is to live in language.)

Theories of language are in some sense theologies. The essence of the world is the universal spirit is the chatter of the they, the groundless ground in which no depth is hidden. One knows how to use language as one knows how to chew one's food. Language is there, like the world, as the essence of the world entangled in the doings of the world. The illusion of depth is sustained by the theory of the theory that unveils. To see language is just to unlearn theories of language and start paying attention to what one was always already doing. And a further question might be whether Wittgenstein is what is most fascinating or rather the phenomenon of language he helps unveil. Of course we still have a theory here of a theory that unveils. It's the theory of theory as veil. What was it for theory to take itself as its own truest enemy? The lust for the pre-theoretical, life in the flesh, the real beneath theory and not above it. Incarnation.

Is there an 'experience of language' to be had? A basic insight? I'm tempted to say yes. Sincere listening and speaking is already language working. Dogmatic theories about speaking just clog up the works, switching off a know-how and switching on a far less sophisticated explicit theory.

And 'game' of course can become one more master word that draws us toward its expert-managed guru-tended secret. More theory. The anti-theory becomes pretty soon a body of sacred knowledge, requiring the assistance of a Virgil through its torments. Is it possible to avoid this role of preserving the flame? Defending the Correct interpretation? What is hidden is of course just how nothing happens to be hidden, the how of that nothing's hiding.

When are we not paraphrasing something that we have heard before? I've got a long road ahead of me in terms of reading in all of these things, but it's really the ideas that matter. — TogetherTurtle

It is indeed hard to get beyond paraphrasing. And I very much agree that it's the ideas that matter. I suppose I mention my sources so as to make clear that I can't take credit for them, even if I might want to. As I see it, most of us are lucky enough if we can just catch up with the conversation. But beyond the pleasant fantasy of saying something new and important that adds to the conversation, it really is just great to understand great philosophy. For me it's one of the reasons to be alive. Here's a quote from one of Hegel's best books, his lectures on the history of philosophy.

There is an age-old assumption that thinking distinguishes man from the beast. This we shall accept. What makes man nobler than the beast is what he possesses through thought. Whatever is human is so only to the extent that therein thought is active; no matter what its outward appearance may be, if it is human, thought makes it so. In this alone is man distinguished from the beast.

Still, insofar as thought is in this way the essential, the substantial, the active in man, it has to do with an infinite manifold and variety of objects. Thought will be at its best, however, when it is occupied only with what is best in man, with thought itself, where it wants only itself, has to do with itself alone. For, to be occupied with itself is to discover itself by creating itself; and this it can do only by manifesting itself. Thought is active only in producing itself; and it produces itself by its very own activity. It is not simply there; it exists only by being its own producer. What it thus produces is philosophy, and what we have to investigate is the series of such productions, the millennial work of thought in bringing itself forth, the voyage of discovery upon which thought embarks in order to discover itself. — Hegel

We may never get there. That may not be where we're going. I'm sort of afraid of unbreakable loops, but maybe that's just because I'm not ascended yet. only time will tell I suppose. I still don't think any of this means anything in the context of morality since nothing I've ever seen or heard of has been affected by right or wrong in the natural world. In the end, even if mankind ascends to godhood and can shift atoms into new and interesting forms, they may never know what is truly right or wrong, or if there even is a truth about it to know. — TogetherTurtle

Indeed, I'm more inclined to see an openendedness. And the right-wrong question is deep. I do postulate a kind of basic structure, though. If a person 'comes to the table' and debates, this seems to imply some sense of what 'we' ought to believe. So at least in the sincere mode of doing philosophy, arguing about what is real, there seems to be the implication that it is good to understand the real in this or that way. A person may argue that there is no objective morality, but by bothering to argue it they seem to be suggesting that it is better for us all not to believe in objective morality ---in other words, an objective morality. A person may also argue that all knowledge is conjecture, that the truth is unattainable. But just this knowledge becomes absolute truth, the truth about truth. I'm interested in what is implied by the act of philosophy, that which it can only deny by misunderstanding itself.

To avoid being locked in this ideology I'll have to find a counter-argument.

I believe that your interpretation of the fantasy of western culture to be accurate. It seems strange that the west is also associated with democracy and personal freedoms. — TogetherTurtle

For me the democracy and personal freedom would be related to the notion that god or the human essence is distributed. In some ways this is the essential path of humanism. We can look at Protestantism. Once the layman interprets the scripture for himself, we are already on the way to the idea that the individual has a direct relationship with the 'divine,' the authoritative. It doesn't take long for rationality to take the place of the holy ghost. No one 'owns' rationality. One participates in it or 'incarnates' it. And science is based on publicly repeatable experiment. The 'I' who speaks the truth is already a we, speaking in the name of an abstract principle (science, rationality, fairness, justice) that already points to the social. Who-we-should-be is a like a ghost that haunts every discussion of the real.

The incarnation is a smearing of the 'divine' across all individuals, at least inasmuch as they participate in the human essence. This 'distributed' god-as-men or Christ-as-rationality humanism conquered a humanism that imagined an alien object mediated by a priesthood. And of course we should note the replacement of the pictorial representation of the divine by concepts.

(None of this is original with me. It's just a paraphrasing of philosophers I like.)

We have slowly started asking questions about our nature, which leads to us understanding it more, which leads to us questioning more, and theoretically, this process continues until we completely understand ourselves and can change ourselves to understand the universe, then controlling all things. — TogetherTurtle

Indeed. So the question might be whether or not we actually achieve some terminus. Is the journey infinite? Or is there some kind of completion? Does philosophy only ever understand what has already happened? Or can it ever see the future and thereby neutralize it? (The future that we can calculate is already present, one might say.)

Man creating god from language is just a step in understanding ourselves then, in a process that culminates in us becoming gods. To understand is to control, and a god controls all things. — TogetherTurtle

Exactly! And that is the humanist dream that we find explored in German philosophy at least. And even Derrida in 'The Ends of Man' argues that the 'escape' from humanism has been nothing but the reinstatement of humanism at a higher level, again and again. He jokingly asks whether we've ever left the church (since humanism is born from Christianity through Hegel and others.). Critics of anthropomorphism/humanism ultimately argue that the essence of the human has been (so far) conceived in an insufficiently radical way. It's not humanism that's bad. It's the old humanism that's bad. What they are selling isn't humanism (and yet it is precisely again and again what is most worthy in man, what the human should strive toward.)

We should add, however, that later Heidegger understands the godlikeness of man in terms of letting beings be, responding to the call of being, being the shepherd of being. (I am only sketching and haven't read the later Heidegger carefully. I am mostly interested in his early work at this point.) So there are 'passive' understandings of human divinity. I'm not rejecting or accepting Heidegger's position. I'm just saying it's fascinating. He thought our need to control was out of control. So one could joke that he is still talking about control. Man needs to learn to control his need to control, etc. He once said 'only a god can save us,' but he meant this metaphorically.

That 'one true man' seems to be a central fantasy of Western culture. Jesus , Socrates, the philosopher-king, etc. I like Feuerbach's thinking on this one. He distinguishes between God-as-man and God-as-men. Do we imagine the 'divine' concentrated in one genius or ruler? Or do we understand the 'divine' as necessarily distributed? The 'species essence' takes on billions of individual shapes and paths, but all of these shapes/paths (individuals) are 'sewn' together by language. Metaphorically speaking, 'God' is something like a distributed personality whose body is this language that outlives the individuals who 'incarnate' it. For instance, right now we discuss our situation (our human essence) in a language that will survive us (ignoring nuclear annihilation, etc.) . So 'my' thoughts are already exterior to me as signs with an imperfectly repeatable meaning for those not born. In Hegel's view, this allows for human's to become progressively conscious of their own nature. Indeed, this revelation of human nature through language (which is also its construction) is perhaps the essence of human nature.

I don't think there is anything unchanging, — Terrapin Station

So should I not expect to find anything that doesn't change? Is that something I can't count on?

I don't think there is anything that isn't physical — Terrapin Station

Then apparently the physical itself doesn't think there is anything that isn't physical. That's fine, but it seems the 'physical' has become mind-like indeed. It talks about itself. Pretty soon we might have to divide the physical into the part that talks and the part that doesn't? (I find the purely mental to be as problematic as the purely physical, to be clear.)

and I see the "noble," good, etc. as a matter of individual preferences. — Terrapin Station

Of course conceptions of the noble and good vary to some degree, but I postulate that we tend to push our own sense of the noble and good outward. In this case it's hard not to read the very statement above as the suggestion that it is noble and good to understand the noble and good to be a matter of preference. The mere fact that we present our ideas to others and reason with others suggest some desire for consensus and mutual recognition of virtue and rationality. And civil discourse presupposes all kinds of consensus that largely goes unstated. We don't talk to people who insult or threaten us or have opinions that are beyond the pale. Basically I grant that there is wiggleroom, but we don't have anarchy. (And let's not forget jails and obeying stop signs! We can't utterly separate value and rationality.)

Maybe we are all just a bunch of stupid monkeys. — TogetherTurtle

Ha! Well, I like the humility in this. (By the way, you can quote me and respond line by line by highlighting until a button appears.)

But the fact that we stupid limit monkeys can dream of ourselves as stupid little monkeys shows that we aren't such stupid little monkeys. Or that's one way to read the situation. Can we ever sincerely abandon the pursuit of virtue? Is it not the essence of the human to strive beyond the human? And if we say that we are 'just monkeys,' are we not pursuing something that a monkey wouldn't pursue, a god's eye view?

Now we have technology that lets us see what our senses can't. Maybe the answer to all our questions lies within finding new things to measure, and what locks someone into an ideology is their fear of the unmeasurable? — TogetherTurtle

I really like that last line. I think fear plays a role. But also there is self-love, even a healthy self-love. Basically it just feels good to have the world figured out. As long as one's current way of living is successful, one is not even wrong. One has the world basically figured out. But the world changes, so the ways of thinking and doing have to change to keep up. So too much fear and too much self-satisfaction (self-righteousness) become dangerous. Or that's one way to look at it.

I guess the question is then what "locks" someone in an ideology? I understand the problem you're referring to, however. There are many "echo chambers" on the internet especially that refuse to even acknowledge that there could be another side. — TogetherTurtle

That's a deep question. Learning to be in a culture is just learning to take some things for granted as unquestionable. And then being in a bubble or echo chamber seems to repeat this process. One gets a sense of what one's peers will and will not tolerate being put into question. Each side can understand the other side of being locked in an ideology.

And both sides can be suspicious of a thinker who won't choose a side (though maybe they just ignore him). This outsider is in some ways the worst enemy of all, since he frames the spiritual project (the war between the sides) as itself a confusion or absurdity. I need my chosen enemy for my own sense of worth and superiority. I fear or hate anyone who questions my basic project from outside the war I understand myself to be winning. If you question my war and don't simply join on one side or the other, you are truly eerie, perhaps unintelligible.

Re the other comment, on the other hand, being so self-centered is probably not a good thing. The world doesn't actually revolve around you. — Terrapin Station

I get that. But let's note that people nevertheless pride themselves on being not self-centered. 'I'm less anthropomorphic than you.' 'I am less self-centered than you.' It's the same structure repeated of something being more noble or commendable than something else. I am interested in this unchanging structure in all philosophy. The noble or the good is the rational determination of the real. That's a rough approximation (and maybe only rough approximations are possible.)

Moreover, it's hard to make sense of 'rational' apart from some 'we,' some ideal community, perhaps only virtual. I can be alone with the truth, but what is it that makes the truth the truth? If the physical is the truth, then how do I determine the physical from the non-physical without help from others? The dream from the non-dream? Etc.

I propose that there is not a "good" or "bad" side of anything, just the side that we agree with now and everything else. — TogetherTurtle

This is basically 'universal spirit.' The real is the rational is the currently unquestionable, the currently taken-for-absolute.

I don't think Columbus was "evil" per se, and most of the things he did were just products of their time, but in hindsight, they were "bad", at least in the present train of thought. — TogetherTurtle

Some have speculated that humankind is trying to work out a consciousness of its own freedom over the centuries, through work, war, philosophy, etc. It's not obvious that we could have skipped what is called evil, anymore than the individual can skip painful experiences in becoming mature.

I sometimes wish I could go back and warn my younger self about certain misconceptions of reality. But would young me have believed time-traveling older me? Would older me be intelligible to younger me? Or was suffering the consequences of my mistakes that only real teacher?

A person locked in an ideology cannot 'hear' criticism from the outside of that ideology. Being lock in an ideology is precisely a kind of deafness. So ideologies can only crash in their own terms, by their own standards. This takes time, and the time of this crashing (which includes the birth of a new ideology that includes but transcends the old) is history itself. Or that's one view of it. And it can be applied to individuals or civilizations.