Interpretations of QM are interpretations of the physical, though. They say nothing about what may or may not underlie, or be beyond, the physical, as far as I can tell.

Jeez, masturbation is boring enough!

Oh, so you thought it was an offer? Sorry for the misunderstanding...
(I know you didn't really, I'm just playing along for the sake of derailing this thread).

From the Higher Level to meaninglessness (to get back on track).

:lol: I was thinking of the relationship between Heidegger and Sartre, but now you've gone and introduced a whole other dimension I'm not comfortable with... :razz:

:lol:

That's the "low blow"! :sweat: — 180 Proof

A blow may be low, but true nonetheless; Sartre was greatly inspired by and acknowledged his debt to, Heidegger.

Unless you were referring to anal sex...or fellatio... :joke:

IE, if we can never determine even in principle whether the proposition "a multiverse exists" is true or false, then the "multiverse" must remain a fictional entity, as a unicorn or Conan Doyle. — RussellA

The difference is that we know that fictional entities we have created for our diversion are fictional entities; we know they don't actually exist. We have imagined the multiverse as a possibility; we have no way of determining if it is an actuality; which is to say we have no way of knowing whether the proposition 'the multiverse exists' is true or not. So, my question is as to whether we can even sensibly speak of the multiverse in terms of being actual or not actual.Intuitively, of course, it seems we can; but if that's right then we do think that untestable conjectures can be true or false. So we think they can be true or false, but can they really be true or false, or is that question incoherent?

Where subject and object stand or fall together, meaning is always the sole property of the subject, never the property of the object. — boagie

Sure, it's not the property of the object considered in abstracto or considered in objective, analytical terms as a mere present (id)entity. That's Heidegger's point: more primordial than that analytic "present-at-hand" mode of thinking is the "ready to hand" mode where all things are replete with meaning. And this meaning is not constructed by the "subject", but comes from 'being-in-the-world", which is altogether prior to the thinking that gives rise to "subject" and "object".

Banno Authenticity; you channeling Sartre channeling Heidegger. — Janus

Low blow. — 180 Proof

Wasn't meant as such. Re authenticity Banno said he was channeling Sartre; I was merely pointing out that Sartre was channeling Heidegger

There is no inherent meaning to the physical world as object, there is nothing in this world that has meaning in and of itself, but only in relation to a conscious subject. — boagie

The natural world is replete with meaning for animals. Culturally we build on that basic, biological, embodied meaning that varies with different kinds of bodies. Or we shrink from that and imagine other-worldly meanings.

Authenticity; you channeling Sartre channeling Heidegger.

So we can reply to

...but nonetheless even apparently 'static' entities are be-ings. They are also, despite their apparent stasis, becomings. — Janus

Static entities do not get to choose what to do. This is the relevant sense of "becoming". — Banno

If any static entities, entities which don't change at all, exist, then by definition they are not becoming."Apparently static" entities, however, are only relatively static; so they do change and thus can be said to be "becomings". The point you have highlighted is the difference between entities which self-organize their becoming to some extent and those which don't. I have no argument with that.

2. The absolute presence of the thinking subject and its object. Although the absent is still lurking in the form of the transcendent. — Janus


Unpack what you mean in the second sentence for me a bit, if you please. — Xtrix

I probably should have used the term 'transcendental'. We understand the world through our models; thus it is present to us in the "vorhanden" sense. In our self-understandings we are also present to ourselves in this kind of sense. In the senses of zuhanden and dasein the world and ourselves are transcendental. " The map is never the territory".

Considering "there is a god beyond our comprehension" as an example of a proposition which we can never know even in principle whether true or false.
So, the answer to T Clark's question is yes, a proposition such as "there is a god beyond our comprehension" not only can be true or false but must be either true or false.

In answer to @SophistiCat's question as to where does this lead, it leads to the knowledge that there are some things that are beyond our comprehension. — RussellA

@T Clark had said that the question of God's existence is truth apt (unlike absolute presuppositions; a point I'm still not clear about). Someone else raised the mutliverse conjecture, and someone said we may answer be able to answer this. I don't think this is correct; the truth of even testable scientific theories can never be determined; all we know is they work...until they don't...or another theory works better.

So, now we have two examples of possibilities we can imagine the truth of which can never be determined, even in principle. It seems natural to think that despite our inability to determine the truth status of such imagined possibilities, that there must be some truth of the matter regarding them.

I think that the truth-status of such conjectures is undecidable; that is I can't decide whether we should say they could be true or false, or that they cannot be true or false.

This doesn't seem to lead anywhere, because it involves a vicious epistemic circle. Truth or falsity are established in the framework of some epistemic standards. Janus's statement questions one epistemic standard, which is fine, but the resolution will require some other epistemic standards, distinct from the one that is being questioned. — SophistiCat

The question in my mind was not about establishing truth or falsity, but as to whether we should think that there could be truths that can never, even in principle, be established. Of course, it is true that anything we could never establish could be of no import to us. But the question is not about whether something is of import to us, but whether truth is completely independent of our interests or our ability to establish it.

You're right about one thing, though; the question doesn't really lead anywhere, especially if you think, as I do that it is undecidable. The best it could offer would be by way of the most general orientation to things.

I'd be interested in how such views are compatible with Heidegger's work on being (and no I am not trying to be a dick) I am always curious how complex theoretical positions translate into or are compatible with world-views such as these. — Tom Storm

As I read it, Heidegger's analysis of beings as ready-to-hand and present-at-hand offers a way t understand the rise of technology and capitalism. Heidegger says that entities are ready to hand for dasein, meaning that primordially they present themselves to us as to-be-used. This is not conscious, we just use things for our purposes, and this is normal, both for humans and animals.

When things go wrong or we have nothing to do, we may begin to contemplate entities as "present at hand"; something to be wondered about, analyzed and understood. This is where science begins. The understanding that comes from this ever more complex present at hand analysis of entities leads to more advanced technologies which. accompanied with the basic unreflective ready to hand view of entities as "to-be-used" leads to the idea of nature as a "standing reserve: to be exploited at will. Thus capitalism arises.

A nice summary!

!. Yes. being becomes associated with the form, soul, eidos or substance, and in turn with God. What Heidegger refers to as "ontotheology".

2. The absolute presence of the thinking subject and its object. Although the absent is still lurking in the form of the transcendent.

3. I'm reminded of the other thread re Collingwood and the idea of absolute presuppositions that we are unaware we are making at our peril.

4. The rise of science, technology and colonialism in the West (which was around the 10th century well behind China technologically) can be understood to be on account of the scholastic idea that, apart from the revelation of the scriptures, God reveals himself in the Book of Nature written for the benefit and understanding and use of Man. There is an interesting reversal in the notion of nihilism as presented by Nietzsche; (if memory serves), he saw Christianity itself as nihilistic insofar as it imposes meaning from above and deprives humans of the possibility of creating their own meaning from the ground up, so to speak.

The twin evils of scientism and capitalism, with their total disregard for nature, stand in the way of any new socialist order which would seem to be the only hope for civilization going forward. That our destinies are determined by a tiny cabal of individuals and giant corporations who would rather see the world burn than give up their power and privilege is quite an horrific scenario to contemplate.

On the one hand we have to listen to what science is telling us about climate change and the devastating effect of capitalism on the ecosystem and on the other hand we cannot expect science (in the form of technology) to save us if we want to survive. As Heidegger pointed out the way to destruction is to see nature as a "standing reserve", rather than as something to be nurtured and preserved.

Sartre was a close reader of Heidegger and acknowledged his debt to him. The distinction between being in itself and being for itself comes from Hegel.

So to you the question, does everything that happens have a cause? — tim wood

A cause? Everything that happens, as we understand it, has a multitude of causes or conditions, doesn't it?

Ha, thanks. I could introduce another (faux) wrinkle in the fabric by saying that I can't decide whether the question as to whether propositions that are undecidable for us can nonetheless be true or false is itself undecidable or not, but I think that would be verging on the perverse.

It reminds me of a line that always stuck with me from the Two Ronnies, where one of the Ronnies says to the other: " I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less".

I am left with the strange feeling that I should apologize. :chin:

So I guess here's the real difference in our views - As I see it, if we cannot definitively demonstrate the truth of a proposition, even in principle, then it has no truth value. — T Clark

I don't hold the opposite view to that; I think that whether or not something whose truth value is undecidable nonetheless may be true or false, is itself undecidable. Purely logically speaking it would seem it would, but logic is not always enough to be convincing.

Anyway, it's been a good conversation and when I said it has been only somewhat clarifying, that does not reflect on the conversation in particular, but reflects the fact that for me everything is only somewhat clear.

I have read the book, and I believe I have understood it. Must I then agree with it? I agree that all systems of thought have their founding or grounding presuppositions, the truth of which cannot be questioned from within the system. But I don't understand that to be the same as to say that those propositions are incapable of being true or false tout suite.

How would you characterize your philosophical understanding of the nature of reality? Realism, materialism, idealism, physicalism? Is objective reality all there is? Is reality just information? Is it just an illusion that only exists in our minds? For me it's easy - I'm a pragmatist, which means you can't tie me down to anything. When I was young, though, I was a strong materialist. Wore the label proudly. It seemed self-evident to me that the world is just the physical stuff that we interact with. — T Clark

I don't have a settled ontological view. If you ask me whether the universe existed prior to human beings I would say yes. Does it follow that the universe is mind-independent? It would seem so, but it depends on what you mean by "exist". That we cannot definitively answer such questions I would agree, but that there is no truth of the matter I don't have a settled opinion about.

I don't really see that running through this will resolve the disagreement we have, but I thought it might be interesting. — T Clark

I'm not even sure we are disagreeing. Remember that I said I don't know what Collingwood means by saying that absolute presuppositions are not capable of being true or false. If all he means is that their truth cannot be questioned from within the systems that they are foundational then I would agree. Do you think he wants to claim more than that?

Anyway it has been interesting and somewhat (which is probably the best we can hope for) clarifying; so thanks.

Being-towards-death certainly reminds many of Kierkegaard, but the feature of Heidegger’s analysis of death that I find valuable doesn’t rest on death as the end of life but death as the end of every moment of time. That is, the finite nature of temporality , the fact that each néw moment of time is the death of a previous sense of meaning. So I link death directly to the nothing , angst and the uncanny. — Joshs

Exactly! Death for Heidegger doe not represent (merely) the end of life, but the closing of of possibilities; hence angst and the desirability of living authentically in full acknowledgement of that closing off.

You’re right about Dreyfus’s interpretation, but Dreyfus has gone out of fashion as a reader of Husserl and Heidegger. I suppose I’d could call Heidegger an idealist in the sense that I don’t believe that things have an indeed et existence for him. But neither do contents of the world conform to faculties of mind ala Kant. Instead , world and self mutually form each other , which makes for an odd kind of idealism. — Joshs

If I understand correctly Heidegger rejects the notion of the transcendental ego as constitutor of the self and world. The mutuality of self and world as an interactive process then would seem to lead to the possibility of enactivism. Whitehead also seems to have run with this kind of idea in a very different way, and his philosophy also seems to be either an odd form of idealism or not really idealism at all. Not realism as usually understood, either. Maybe relational realism.

The point is that they were - are - all true in the sciences for which they are absolute presuppositions, — tim wood

I don't think 'true' is the right word; useful or valid would be better.

Your mistake. The idea isn't to be free of them - for that is impossible - but rather to know them for what they are. — tim wood

I am not convinced that you or Collingwood do "know them for what they are". You certainly haven't demonstrated that you do.

For Newton, then, some events caused, some not. For Kant, all caused. For modern physics, no events caused. And this not up for debate because Collingwood's metaphysical analysis shows these all a matter of historical fact. — tim wood

I understand that if Newton supposed some events to be caused and some not, and if Kant supposed that all events must be caused, and if modern physics supposes that no venets are caused, then the truth of those suppositions will not be questioned. But that is not the same as to claim that they are neither true nor false.

A benefit for any attentive reader is that, having read, he or she is forever inoculated against all manner of dogmatic nonsense. — tim wood

That is obviously what you believe has happened to you, but beyond that it just sounds like more "dogmatic nonsense".

Thanks although I think that differntiation obfuscates as much as clarifies. I prefer E F Schumacher's ontology in his Guide for the Perplexed - that there are levels of being. — Wayfarer

I remember reading that book thirty years ago when I was interested in Gurdjieff's ideas. If memory serves, Schumacher was heavily influenced by Gurdjieff and references him in that work, but I could be confusing it with another book. Gurdjieff certainly thought there were different levels of being in terms of ever more subtle "energies".

I don’t know that the being of things has any status for Heidegger except as a distorted and flattened modification of the ‘as’ structure’ of disclosure. Objective presence is deconstructed over and over in Being and Time. The being of things as presence implies extension, duration and self-identity. Heidegger shows such thinking to be in need of clarification. — Joshs

I know of one interpreter of Heidegger, Blattner (Heidegger's Temporal Idealism) who seems to be interpreting all being for Heidegger as "being-for-us" only, which could be seen as a form of idealism. Dreyfus, if I remember right, sees Heidegger as a realist in the sense that he acknowledges the mind-independent existence of things. It is quite a while since I read Being and Time, Blattner, Dreyfus and others so it's hard for me to judge now without going back to the text (which I don't have time to do); do you see the Heidegger of B & T as an idealist?

What the shift to the mode of authenticity does is take this pragmatic engagement and make it thoroughly self-reflexive. We become concerned with Being as whole
rather than beings. But as Heidegger says, only on rare occasions do we think authentically. — Joshs

It's seems to be true that it is only in self-reflective moments or with those who are highly concerned with living an "examined life" that authentic thinking commonly occurs. The concern with authenticity and being-towards-death are more aligned with the existentialist dimensions of Heidegger's thought, I'd say.
Some Buddhists are also interested in this aspect of Heidegger as can be seen here.

Furthermore, living beings embody the dynamic nature of being - the fact that it's a verb - more so than minerals and inorganic substances. — Wayfarer

I can see the distinction you want to make, but nonetheless even apparently 'static' entities are be-ings. They are also, despite their apparent stasis, becomings. We also have dynamic non-sentient entities such as tornadoes and lightning.

To return to the subject of this thread, Heidegger distinguished between beings and being in his use of the terms 'existential' and 'existentiell':

Existentiell and existential are key terms in Martin Heidegger's early philosophy. Existentiell refers to the aspects of the world which are identifiable as particular delimited questions or issues, whereas existential refers to Being as such, which permeates all things, so to speak, and can not be delimited in such a way as to be susceptible to factual knowledge. In general it can be said that "existentiell" refers to a "what", a materially describable reality, whereas "existential" refers to structures inherent in any possible world. In other words, the term "existentiell" refers to an ontic determination, whereas "existential" refers to an ontological determination.

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

Heidegger distinguishes between the being of things in the world and the being of dasein. We enjoy an additional dimension of being beyond that of a present at hand or ready to hand being. All existents are, by common definition or usage, beings. Remember that being is really a verb. So an existent is an existing in a similar sense that all entities are be-ings. We and the animals are sentient beings. Things like mountains, rocks and (probably) trees are insentient beings.

Just between you and me, authenticity and death are two foci of analysis in Being and Time that lead to confusion and, as far I’m concerned, can be removed without losing much from the heart of the work. — Joshs

I don't agree with this. I think those ideas are central to Being and Time. They may lead to confusion in some readers, but they certainly don't inevitably.

As far as I am concerned there is no "cult of Heidegger". Perhaps Heidegger was, politically speaking, an idiot. Perhaps he was, on a personal level, what we now refer to as a psychopath or sociopath. I don't care about Heidegger the man, or Heidegger the Nazi, my interest is only in the philosophical brilliance of the early (not sure about the late) Heidegger.

There is a reverse cult of Heidegger, those who as I said earlier "make a weird fetish out of detesting him", and you may well just be its grand master. Have you Heidegger haters organized yourselves into a coven or lodge yet?

Firstly I haven't dismissed Collingwood, I've just said that I don't think what he's doing in that book counts as metaphysics, according to the "ordinary" definitions of classical and modern metaphysics. Secondly, I've a;ready copied and pasted the headings from the SEP article on Metaphysics that show the range of concerns of metaphysics as they are generally understood.

I have read Collingwood's book and I still don't really understand what it could mean to say that metaphysical propositions or axioms are not true or false, unless you were to follow the positivist line in saying they are "not even wrong". But I don't think that's what Collingwood means. If you think you can explain it, then by all means have a go.

-

Can you provide a Buddhist source that uses this formulation, "responding to the hindrances"? — baker

I recently read a book, the link to which I provided to @Wayfarer, which deals with the hindrances. I'm not claiming my terminology is "normal". Abandoning the hindrances would be to cease to respond to their demands, would it not? To abandon them would be to be liberated from them, no?

In Buddhism, a deva is not a permanent identity, it's a type of body that one can be born into if one has the merit. — baker

Yes, I'm aware of that. What's your point?

:ok:

Good move (to the mountains). I seem to remember there being a Sydney Zen Centre which practiced zazen, with a lady roshi and a retreat out near Wisemans Ferry somewhere. I looked at it years ago, but never attended. Not sure if it is still going, but you were probably already aware of it anyway.

Right, Heidegger has been, and continues to be, a powerful influence. It sound like you've read more of his later work than I. There are a constellation of early works (mostly compiled from his lectures) and those of which I've read or dipped into: History of the Concept of Time, An Introduction to Metaphysics and Basic Problems of Phenomenology to name a few off the top of the dome, I found, with a little effort, clear enough.

As I've noted previously, the existence of God is a matter of true or false. As such, it is not a metaphysical question. — T Clark

I'm not sure what you mean by saying that absolute propositions are not true or false. Can you give an example? It seems to me that the truth-aptness of the existence of God is equivocal. It would depend on what you mean by "exist". Empirical propositions on the other hand are unequivocal, except in extremis or radical skepticism.

That may be because the other metaphysicians never actually understood what they were doing, while Collingwood did. — Olivier5

Do you mean they didn't understand the logic of the systems they created? Or they didn't understand that their systems were grounded on groundless axioms?

I miss Jundo — praxis

I don't miss Jundo, since apparently I missed, or at least fail to remember, Jundo altogether.