This seems to be an important for you. How would it look if it could be done? It's difficult for people to see past Biblical literalism or scientism or naïve realism for the most part, just how would such nuanced philosophical thinking enter people's lives?

Philosophy giveth, and philosophy taketh away, and you are saying that philosophy is so taxing to understand it could never be the social institution religion has been. I recall reading that Wittgenstein once recommended going to church, participating in the rituals and so on, simply because this dimension of our existence was too important to reduce to utterances and argument. He also drew from Tolstoy's depth of conviction, and note the way his protagonists like Levin from Anna Karenina realize what is profoundly important in life in living a kind of holy life working on the farm, rather than talking about it. And you can hear Kierkegaard behind this in the praise of the Knight of Faith, a simply lived life, but lived so completely in, if you will, the light of God, in everything done. The doing, and not the thinking, theorizing: this thinking and theorizing UNDOES the, call it non-natural (not part of "states of affairs") and mystical bond with divinity. And, of course, to even say this in an explanatory context, is nonsense, because we have left the extraordinary intimations of myth and moved into propositional truths in doing so, and this does harm to the most important part of the Tractatus: that which should be passed over in silence.

The reason Witt's Tractatus is so important, as I see it, is this: when he draws the line between the sayable and the unsayable, THEN calls the whole affair nonsense because such lines are impossible, and this is because a line implies something on both sides to make sense, and this contradicts the matter of something not being sayable as one has essentially just said it in talking about lines drawn. But what does this come down to? Extraordinary, and completely right, I say: lines cannot be drawn not because there is nothing THERE, but because the thereness is IN the world; the world IS metaphysics that comes to us when language is "bracketed", and this is, obviously, a term from Husserl and his reduction.

And so I ignored your direct question, I know. Something like this: how can something--if you are on Witt's side, so deeply important that must remain silently possessed, or as to your thoughts that the saying it can be, in my thinking, spoken about and will one day replace religion-- put institutionalized in a society?

The process of religion as we know it perishing has been fairly gradual, but I couldn't help but notice last night watching the New Year come in on CNN, that the song chosen to announce this occasion was John Lennon's Imagine. Now, I try not to read too much into things like this because culture is so entangled and impossible to read, but CNN is a major player in American culture, and Lennon's song is an explicit repudiation of religion. I get the impression things are going to move fairly quickly away from religion as the older generation disappears.

The way such a difficult philosophy will become the new religion I think is found in the way the 60's attempted a kind of interfaith movement, bringing Hinduism, Buddhism, paganism, and so on into the fold. Buddhism, for example, is very close to the kind of alignment I try to conceive between Husserl's epoche and Wittgenstein's Tractatus' insistence on silence. Meditation IS silence; silence that keeps at bay (brackets) interposing thoughts that would steal attention away from the "pure" phenomenal encounter. — Tom Storm

This wider relevance is not peripheral to , or separable from, S is P, but inextricable to its very sense. It is what, on any occasion, we are really on about when we say ‘snow is white’. What the logical proposition does is equivalent to the way an empirical statement of fact in a natural science seems to make our affective involvement with the meaning that is being presented either non-existent, or utterly inconsequential to and separable from the apprehension of the facts. — Joshs

Wow.. This is probably confronting for those of us who think that some stable meaning can be arrived at using language. I hadn't considered the 'transformative' power held by words like 'is' and 'as'. — Tom Storm

I've argued elsewhere at considerable length that there is no general account to be given of truth beyond that found in T-sentences. Your demand for such an account asks the wrong question.

Are we done? — Banno

Since you mention Rorty in relation to epistemology , would you agree with the following? Rorty rejects epistemology in favor of a hermeneutic approach. In doing so , he is avoiding the problem of skepticism that arises out of epistemological thinking , the presumption of a grounding for knowledge claims and the attendant problem of figuring out how our beliefs ‘hook onto’ the world. — Joshs

↪Constance, in your first post on this thread you gave us:
The reduction I have in mind is Husserl's. The idea is to consciously dismiss presuppositions that implicitly give us the familiarity of the familiar world in a perceptual event.
— Constance
My reply, to you and to various others, was summed up in what you quoted above,
(it) pretends that our sensations are prior to our "being in the world". It assumes the perspective of an homunculus.
— Banno
Your response was
You shouldn't raise questions about things you don't really have an interest in.
— Constance
To which I asked
What?
— Banno
eliciting in turn your enigmatic response. If you think that T-sentences do not answer your question, then have a go at explaining what it is you are asking. "(H)ow epistemic connections work between knowledge claims and objects in the world" is an ambiguous question.

It's not enough just to read a bunch of philosophers and pick the bits you like. We are not doing philosophy until we engage with and critique those views. I think you agree with this.

That is what this thread involves. It sets out various ways of understanding the notion of ineffability, and seeks comment on them. It gives folk enough rope, a place to set out a part of their thinking or the thinking of their betrothed, with the aim of identifying problems and inconsistencies therein.

The problem is that you have still to set out what it is you are asking. — Banno

The cup has one handle" is true IFF the cup has one handle. — Banno

What's difficult here is sorting out what it is you expect me to provide. — Banno

That, of course, is the wrong question.

It's the wrong question because it is based on the presumption of an "in here" and an "out there".

Out there, of course, is my cat, and in here is my brain.
— Constance

The cat would have difficulty getting onto your brain because your brain is enclosed in a skull.

Yes, I understand that you want the question to be understood figuratively. But then, what is it that you are asking? How it is that you are aware of the cat? How it is that you divide the world up in such a way that there are cats and non-cats? How it is that your cat-sensations lead you to infer that there is a cat-in-itself? Which of these is supposedly represented by "How is it that anything out there gets in here?"

What is it that you actualy want an answer for? — Banno

“We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.” From Mill, On Liberty — Richard B

What? — Banno

The problem here is the truncated "nothing but" pretends that our sensations are prior to our "being in the world". It assumes the perspective of an homunculus. That's pretty much the assumption of Joshs and @Constance, too. — Banno

But for now, I think it best to leave things here, and think the thoughts that come. — Moliere

The household meaning is the important meaning -- not the philosophers meaning. It's the household meaning that holds the house together, that connects the family to the community, that provides consolation and guidance and a means for talking about and to one another so that the family can live its life in economic productivity and safety. — Moliere

And then it's pretty easy to see how people experience these things differently, upon listening to them. In some way I'd have to accommodate the apparent inconsistency. — Moliere

But it's not consistent. And so it seems we've left the standards of reason behind in seeking to speak truth about the mystical, when the mystical is neither true nor false. — Moliere

Heh, that might be a agree-to-disagree. We can mark our departure, at least. If philosophy has a grounding, I do not see it. Maybe it's firm. But I think it just goes back to an individual's convictions and desires (themself a social product of the process of life). — Moliere

Yeh, but here I'm saying -- bury the hatchet. This distinction will be forgotten because it's just a blip in the history of philosophy. — Moliere

This probably goes some way to our disagreement, too, and goes some way to elucidate what I mean by everyday/exotic experience.

I was raised in a very religious household. I figured out science later. The arguments from experience and all that were my bread and butter, and I've seen how people in communities react to and use such arguments "in the wild", outside of the philosophers concerns. My skepticism in such things is based in experience -- hence my doubts about phenomenology leading one to God, but rather, from my story, it leads one to nature. — Moliere

Language does not prohibit hallucinations either. — Richard B

So if p then q, p, therefore q is based on intuition. I don’t think we are using “intuition” correctly. — Richard B

No, I would say he was bound by the success of make predictions of future stimuli. — Richard B

This is incorrect, we encounter trees, apples, humans. Also, it does not make sense to say ALL we ever encounter in the phenomena, is phenomena. — Richard B

In science, there is a certain inaccuracy with measurements. Is this a concern? Should it impede progress? No, they march forward. They apply the measurement, where there is practical gain, and live with the uncertainty, or strive to improve. Some philosophers could learn from this example. — Richard B

In that light, I'd say that neither materialism nor phenomenology are terms worth fighting over, because only people educated in this stuff would really get something out of the distinction, — Moliere

Husserl is one I've read selections from -- I have a reader I've read but I haven't done the deep work. So, yes I've read parts, but no I haven't read it all. He's someone I need to, but he's still far enough away from present interests that I've sorta just kept him there — Moliere

I think the differences are institutional, and what's more what is institutionalized are aesthetics of reason. Aesthetics are a necessary component to human judgment, and certainly needed to teach human judgment -- but are they true? Are they the sorts of things which lead us to say, this is the one way to do philosophy? I think not. — Moliere

Truth is bound to language. And if the mystical is not true, because it is outside of language, in what way can we claim that it is reasonable? — Moliere

But if one is seeking the mystical, to be unbound by language, then I think that's likely when we've hit the boundary of philosophy. (also, something funny here -- when mystics disagree) — Moliere

Rather, given I don't even have institutional ambitions, philosophy is more personal, social, and connective. It is something done for pleasure, rather than a competition. — Moliere

Well, that at least gave me a laugh. — Banno

Certainly not of one like the third — Philosophical Investigations

There's something very unconvincing about using biography to impute philosophical argument. It results in simplistic overgeneralisation. I'll leave you to your misleading biographical speculation. — Banno

You asked how "foundational matters" are worked out in analytic philosophy. On Certainty sets out why foundations do not matter... indeed, are — Banno

"Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is." Wittgenstein PI124 — Richard B

o say that science needs a foundation that only phenomenology can supply because there appears to be a "philosophical problem"-yet science manages to successfully march forward with progress- is itself the problem you should examine. Your longing for foundations is due to what Wittgenstein said "when language goes on holiday" — Richard B

And yet science continues to make successful predictions and enhance understanding.

Maybe to phenomenologist, and for Quine sensory surfaces, but most scientists they continues doing what they are doing without worrying about phenomenologist's subjective content, or Quine's cultural posits, pragmatically speaking. — Richard B

So move past the Tractatus and on to On Certainty. Instead of looking for what it makes sense to believe, look to what it makes sense to doubt. This post, here, now? — Banno

It is simply not the case that there is a binary choice between science and phenomenology. Which is just as well, since phenomenology remains vexed. — Banno

So how does Quine come to such a position. (From the Pursuit of Truth): "From impacts on our sensory surfaces, we in our collective and cumulative creativity down the generations have projected our systematic theory of the external world. Our system is proving successful in predicting subsequent sensory input." And thus we have the start of Quine's naturalized epistemology. In a nut shell, our information about the world comes only through impacts on our sensory receptors. In contrast, I presume, phenomenology starts with appearance of things, or things as they appear in our experience, from a first person point of view, then attempt to define the phenomena on which knowledge claims rest or achieve some sot of knowledge of consciousness. — Richard B

our information about the world comes only through impacts on our sensory receptors. In contrast, I presume, phenomenology starts with appearance of things, or things as they appear in our experience, from a first person point of view, then attempt to define the phenomena on which knowledge claims rest or achieve some sot of knowledge of consciousness. — Richard B

I think Quine would think that philosophy is continuous with science, but in a more general way. So his “ilk” would be Einstein, Newton, and Bohr. — Richard B

I’m wondering if you are familiar with the ways in which Husserl and Heidegger, respectively, burrowed within the grammar of formal logic to expose it as a derived abstraction of more fundamental constituting performances ? For instance, are you aware of how Husserl, in Formal and Transcendenral Logic, took Frege and Russell’s starting point in the propositional
copula and traced it back to a developmental sequence of constituting intentions? — Joshs

but the problem here is that such a method becomes a beetle in a box. — Banno

I wish to cross-reference. If I can’t do that, because I can’t get what I need for it, I’ll stick with what I know. Destructive because, as far as I know, that was not what he said. — Mww

Yes. Your translator’s reading doesn’t match any of the four of mine. It’s a technicality for sure, but in a system built on them, such ambiguity is either confusing or destructive. — Mww

What about the not-ideas?

Facts and fictions are composed of words, I'd say -- language, rather than logic. Rather than focus the copula and the categories I'd say that language is more powerful than these logics, that language is what makes logic comprehensible in the first place rather than the other way around. — Moliere

I look at philosophy anarchically. Each philosopher defines for themself what is important, and ranks things in accord with their philosophy. Philosophy is one of the most unlimited disciplines. Only institutions, I'd say, have notions of what is proper to philosophy. And that is important, because philosophy is actually difficult, and it's difficult to teach, and to learn we need standards put before us. But eventually, we are simply free.

So, from that vantage, I see onto-theo-philosophical examination of our "thrownness" into a world as very interesting. Each philosopher defines their own project, really, and that's the whole point. It's why it's mind-expanding.

But I don't see it as being any more proper than any other way of doing philosophy. — Moliere

I agree that religion has never understood itself, and I find that pursuit to understanding religion very interesting. It's pretty clearly connected to how human beings function in the world, given how it's literally part of every culture ever and secular thoughts are relatively new, in the scheme of all written history.

I'm not sure I'd say value-talk is less determinate than truth-talk, though. I'd say that value-talk ends in convictions, rather than in values. And convictions, given that people have different ones, lead to conflict, but for all that, we still cling to them. — Moliere

I don't think that there's really a question of deeper than science or shallower than philosophy. What is "depth", other than the desire for meaning in life? — Moliere

When I ask, what is it I am confronting in the world, in actuality, I see a natural world. And meaning in it is had by living happy lives with others for the time you get. There's not a grand answer to it all -- we simply are born without purpose, and die without reason. Everything we care about is just that -- what we care about. In actuality, I think there are no deep mysteries. — Moliere

Moore's concept of ethics is super interesting to me. I'd say he's right, and that there are no non-natural properties, and therefore, there are no true moral statements. Goodness is what we care about, and it is our human responsibilty to act on it, or to not -- we get to choose. If we care about it, we can pursue it. But if we stop caring about it, then we can choose not to. Hence, the natural world, especially as we gain more power over it, is our responsibility exactly as it is. But it's still natural for all that. And it's a collective responsibility, not an individual one. — Moliere

Whose translation is this? — Mww

I'd say that narrative is not logical -- or, at least, narrative brings with it its own logic, if we wish to logicize a narrative. Something along the lines of "with each sentence time progresses", or whatever -- but then there's always a storyteller out there who notices that people are logicizing stories, then changes it up to thwart the logic. — Moliere

I can get along well enough with phenomenology-talk that I don't feel the need to clear it with another theory. One starts somewhere, after all. My doubts aren't based in a notion of what philosophy ought to be, as much as based in particular experiences of people claiming to have so-called special knowledge.

And sometimes phenomenology is very grounded and attending to our experience, and sometimes it goes off the deep-end and claims that everything is consciousness correlated to the special ideas the phenomenologist can see.

It's the latter that I think goes off into what Kant called noumenal speculation. Maybe to the speaker, they can see something special. That's what mystical experience is about -- seeing something others cannot, and purportedly attempting to translate what cannot be translated for people who do not have that mystical experience. And, religiously, perhaps that flies -- but I've yet to make sense of such talk in a rational manner, at least -- though I remain interested. — Moliere

I think that's a warning sign, for myself at least, that I've fallen into a transcendental argument -- it's valid, but it's also easy to construct and usually based on an unstated feeling (what, Kant acting on unstated feelings?! He's a being of pure reason! ;) ) — Moliere

When I feel I don't know what the negation of some philosophy is, I'm focusing on some universal idea -- a totality, one might say, that encompasses, explains, relates, feels, connects, guides, and soothes. Something like God, but in a phenomenological world -- so God can be replaced by Man, ala the Enlightenment, or something else, but it's all religion at the end of the day. Magical beliefs, big-M Meaning, the mystical -- these things are more important because they make life worth living. — Moliere

And so the transcendental argument springs forth -- how does anyone really do/experience/say/be anything at all? Phenomenology is the only possible way we live our actual lives, and clearly we do live actual lives, therefore phenomenology is the way. To bolster the first point we must first list all the possible alternative ways, and defeat them until Phenomenology is the one that stands -- then say, abductively, "See if you can come up with a better explanation"

The problem being -- it all relies upon what sounds good to the speaker. It's just as easy to set up the exact same argument with materialism. It follows the same pattern (and is akin to the moral arguments for God's existence): — Moliere

How does anyone really do/experience/say/be anything at all? Materialism is the only possible way to explain our lives, and we clearly do live ("some of us, anyway" scolding the eliminative materialists), therefore materialism is the explanation at least until something better comes along, but all these other explanations are bad for these reasons. — Moliere

What is the ethical dimension to Husserl's thought? — Moliere

“We encounter phenomena first. Period.” Wow, this sounds so definitive. Can’t be argued without sounding absurd. Let me try. What do we humans encounter first? I would say a very hostile world in which we need to survive. We encounter objects that we need to run or hide from, we encounter objects that will aid in our survival. To call this ‘phenomena’ sounds like a cold abstract thing that is ruminated on rather than experienced.

“…examines the foundations of being a human being”, is this discovered like a pair of shoes hidden in a closet? Or just created by a phenomenologist that gets everyone to go along with it? Or maybe its just what Wittgenstein said about “absolute simple objects”: “But I do not know whether to say that the figure described by our sentence consists of four letters or nine? And which are its elements, the type of letter, or the letters? Does it matter which we say, so long as we avoid misunderstanding in any particular case? — Richard B

First, you think Wittgenstein was not an analytic philosopher. Well, I and the rest of the world count him an analytic philosopher because he did his philosophy by using logic to analyse the language of philosophical problems.

Next, you think that I have not addressed the "content" presented. Doubtless this is because I have been unable to grasp what you are getting at, but so far as I have understood it, I maintain that Wittgenstein thought that any value in ethics was in the doing, not in ethical theory. — Banno

Here's what I understood.

First, you think Wittgenstein was not an analytic philosopher. Well, I and the rest of the world count him an analytic philosopher because he did his philosophy by using logic to analyse the language of philosophical problems.

Next, you think that I have not addressed the "content" presented. Doubtless this is because I have been unable to grasp what you are getting at, but so far as I have understood it, I maintain that Wittgenstein thought that any value in ethics was in the doing, not in ethical theory.

You seem to think that Quine showed the indeterminacy of meaning, rather than the indeterminacy of reference. Roughly, I agree, but think that Davidson deals with the issue better, and that, following Wittgenstein, the mooted indeterminacy is an outcome of meaning being the use to which we put language as we do things.

And I continue to think that the "phenomenological epoché" cannot be made coherent. — Banno