How certain would you like to be about your theory about the desire for certainty? — plaque flag

It's actually Wittgenstein, but the claim is made on the evidence of the things we say when we discuss these things: knowledge, intention, meaning, excuses, etc. His method is now referred to as Ordinary Language Philosophy. Drawing out the implications of the way we talk to show how these things work. The "proof" is if you can see it for yourself; come to the same conclusion. I would say the idea of this kind of Truth is that it is accepted, adopted more than justified, which I would agree gives it the feeling of being not tied to specific grounds of the here and now.

I agree that responsibility (responsiveness) is the key to understanding this issue in a new sense. Instead of knowing ahead of time the, say, process of our brains, or my meaning or intention, we should see these issues as a historical process (as Nietszche grasped) to examine what was intended (afterwards) when we deviate from ordinary implications in the context of a case. “Did you intend to do that [unexpected thing—fishy Austin says]?”

I’m not sure of a few things. My claim would be that both philosophers and scientists are prone to the desire for certainty. I guess the “costume” would be the hats we wear in pushing an agenda (of predetermined universality, overlooking our ordinary criteria).

I also wonder what you mean that “unity” and “self” should be taken as the same thing. Thoreau characterizes our self as two, Freud as three. I imagine you mean that we are fated to be held to all of our acts in relation to our (one) self. So when you say we “can’t disagree with ourselves” you are underlining that who we are is subject to all our acts in our, or others’, desire to put us together as a coherent self.

@Fooloso4@Nickolasgaspar@green flag@fdrake@RogueAI@Benj96

I will try to help with the philosophy though I am late to the game. In an attempt to impose certainty on our knowledge of ourselves and others--to try to have control over who we think we are and what we say—philosophy created the idea of "consciousness" (along with subjectivity, internal intention—“my” meaning, qualia, etc.)

Our individual "experience" does not happen in a unique way, unpossessable by others. At times we alone experience something unique, perhaps even inexpressible (a rare sunset). But our self awareness does not characterize our relation to ourselves (define “us”), or to others, or to the world. Wittgenstein saw that, to the extent we come to agree that our pain is similar, it is the same (though we are not "the same" as if identical).

Taking "me" as given and special and building our understanding around that desire is an attempt to remove the unpredictability of people, the vagueries of communication, and our ongoing responsibility to make ourselves intelligible and to respond to the claims of others. These things cannot be secured in advance by the wish for knowledge of something inside ourselves or of others that could be followed, or expressed without having to stand behind what we say and do and be defined by that.

So, what everyone is searching for to either know by science or explain through philosophy is a bogey created by our need for (mathematical-like) certainty or ownership of something that makes us special by default.

I find much of philosophy, however impressively intellectually acrobatic it might be, tedious and uninspiring. If it lacks poetry, then I lack interest — Janus

I find Emerson inspiring, though it can be hard to make out how he is doing analytical philosophy (following Kant and Descartes and Socrates). Nietzsche is as arcane unfortunately. The later Heidegger (Poetry Language Thought in particular) is a kind of poetry. I would try an essay of J.L. Austin’s too. Although pedestrian, it is refreshing to see him actually get somewhere with issues that tie others in knots, though again it can be hard to take him as dealing with the same issues as the tradition.

an acceptance/knowledge of death is a liberation from dread and anxiety and an open door to freedom? — Tom Storm

When Socrates, in the Pheado, says philosophers "practice death", he meant that, as death releases the "soul" from the body, so do philosophers release pure truth from the deceptive body, distracting desires, opinions, biases, etc. Cicero believed we should "meditate" on death, and Montaigne picked that up in saying: "Where death waits for us is uncertain; let us look for him everywhere. The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learned to die has unlearned to serve." Essay #20. His point being that if we are not afraid of losing life, we are free to live it.

Ignoring death--not being afraid of it happening, of our losing life--can look like we are focusing on "life". We are "in the moment" and pursuing "feeling alive"--Derrida refers to this, I believe, as Presence. However, if you ask any psychotherapist they will tell you that we do not fear death so much as we fear life.

It has been said that those who are afraid to die are afraid to live.... — Janus

Perhaps dread is a terrified resistance to the endless rush forward of life, as if one note from the horn refused to die to make way for the next.... Is the expansion of identity precisely the destruction of its pettier identifications? — green flag

Emerson believed that we grew in partial circles which we had to close in order to form each version of our self. The picture is an adolescent becoming an adult, first having any and every opportunity open to them, but then stepping into the world and becoming a lawyer, etc. It's also pictured as the time before speaking (before suffering I think the Buddhist would say), when our experience of the world can be immeasurable, and so fitting that into a word is a kind of violence, and expressing it to others is putting it on the record--as if thought were alive and writing was dead.

As I read Heidegger his notion of death does not refer (predominately at least) to physical death, but to the closing off of many possibilities that comes with committing oneself to anything. — Janus

So I would agree that "not fearing death" is not to ignore it, or think of it always, or to focus on "living", but to have the courage to define ourselves in committing to form and structure and institutions and the judgment of others; to speak despite the inadequacies of our expressions and still be held to our words as if all that we are was in them, with everything else dying each time.

I presume sensory simple mistakes are not the essence of the question. — Alexander Hine

Not sure who you are responding to, but, for my part, the whole exercise of looking at mistakes is to see that we judge them based on what act was being done and how any deviation could be excused by a response from the actor. So the essence of the issue is our criteria for judging what matters to each type of action (and also in this instance)--what counts. So a "[simple] sensory mistake", if I understand that right as, say, seeing something (mistakenly) as something it is not, could be what matters when I shoot my neighbor's donkey instead of mine. The excuse would be that "my eyes played tricks on me" or something similar, but this only shows that that particular excuse is rare and not "essential" to most acts. But the ordinary excuse would probably take the form of: "I wasn't paying close attention", as there is the expectation of care in acting, especially shooting something, and it is the expectation which is important here, not our sensations or my experience of the incident.

a failing in any part (knowledge to execution) can lead to an undesired outcome and thus a mistake. — Benj96

My point (well, Austin's) before was that we have to be clear about the circumstances and describe them accordingly; a mistake is different than an accident, etc., and not every act incorporates all the list of things that an act can. You may not have knowledge, or planning, have executed it perfectly, etc., and this comes into play in judging and excusing.

And, as you say, nothing may go wrong at all in our view, which is what I take you to mean in doing a "good" thing. And this would be something you would justify if someone disagreed, not beg to be excused. You would argue it was not a bad or wrong act. Again, there is admitting I did it and justifying that the act was right or good, but, separately, denying it was me that did it, or that I (fully) did it.

For me, whether a mistake is forgivable or not is primarily based on intent. Intent can be good or bad. How you act out intent can also be good or bad. — Benj96

Which brings me to my main point. Austin will comment that, in philosophy, there is a lot of hand-wringing about "cause", "intention", "effect", "consequence"--thus Hume's attempt at explaining the moral compass in each of us (and our praise and blame) and Kant's reaction to try to remove our feelings from moral consideration altogether by making our judgment logically necessary or categorical (beforehand). What Austin is doing is taking every single act as its own category (with different--mostly external--criteria for what makes up a mistake, accident, etc.) as well as taking into consideration the exact situation (context) and this specific occurrence (here, now, to be drawn out as much as necessary).

My point is that judgment based on one's intent is taken from an oversimplification of action pictured as happening one way; Austin uses the example of pushing a rock (Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is about looking at tons of examples). In the simple (generalized) case, we make a conscious decision of what to do and how, we "cause" ourselves to move, and we anticipate (intend) a particular result or consequence. However, more types of examples show that we so rarely consider our acts or decide or think what exactly to say--much less that we can even be aware of all the implications, which do not depend on us--that we will find that intention and causality are internalized by philosophy onto every instance only in order to have control, universality of theory, "knowledge", when both are actually only investigated after the act and determined not by our good or bad intention (as some ever-present internal force of mine) but through parcing it out from the shared expectations of this situation (Wittgenstein calls these an act's Grammar, which are the criteria Austin is drawing out for each type of excuse--what makes something a "mistake"). We only ask about intention when something is unexpected: "Did you intend to do that (bad, weird, unexpected act)?" "No, I didn't even cause it to happen; he pushed me!"

That is not to say that with some acts it does matter why (or whether) I did choose to do something--judging between 1st and 2nd degree murder; judging someone who chose to send a missle or did it mistakenly (they wanted to send something else), or, more likely, accidentally (Whoops! Wrong button!) The imaging of ever-present "intention" or "cause" gets at our relationship to responsibility (and freedom) for our actions. But looking at all the different ways we get out of responsibility or say our freedom (to act) was limited, shows it is not always (or even most times) the case there is a good or bad motive. This also shows that having a predetermined judgment of what acts are good and which are bad is not what is really a "moral" situation (just following rules), as most moral theory struggles with and stumbles upon. This is why Nietszche implored us to move beyond good and evil (side-stepping the deontological-teleological-emotive debate).

J.L. Austin has an essay called "A Plea for Excuses". It is actually about morality, looking at how a normal act gets screwed up, to see how we make amends, learn our responsibility, understand our freedom, etc. He says it starts with someone being accused (even ourselves) of doing something (wrong, bad, poorly, etc). Now admitting the act and denying it was bad is to justify it, which is what most moral theory tries to do (even beforehand -oo- Kant). But to admit it was bad but deny responsibility is to make an excuse, which turns on how (me) doing something works at all.

He looks at the things we say (doing Ordinary Language Philosophy) in making excuses to see how action works. He learns it is broken into parts: knowledge, decision, planning, resolve, execution, etc. But in the case of a mistake it falls under a failure to realize or appreciate the situation. Ultimately every case has its own standards and some excuses fold together, even here with inadvertence, absence of mind, not to mention sheer, mere, simple, etc. but sometimes these distinctions are everything; the more serious or complex the act may call for a closer look at the details of the situation, the context in that case.

To the point at hand, he says "In an accident something befalls; by mistake you take the wrong one; in error you stray..." Philosophical Papers, pp. 201-202. His example of a mistake would be writing Dairy instead of Diary on your new book, but elsewhere he says you may go to shoot your donkey and find you have shot your neighbor's--by mistake (mistakenly taking one for the other). If you go to shoot your donkey and miss and hit his cow--that's an error. If the gun misfires and kills anything, that's an accident.

Now you go to plead your case to your neighbor, and out will come any mitigating circumstances (no coffee blurry-eyed; donkeys all look the same; he just bought a donkey? you didn't know!). Does how bad you feel have anything to do with whether your neighbor will forgive you? Maybe; depends. Will it matter in the case of labeling your journal Dairy? Depends on the judge.

There are activities that can only be enjoyed individually — javi2541997

I think I was trying to say the same thing. What I meant was that, yes, we have singular experiences but there is nothing that ensures our individuality (nothing taking the place of the metaphysical "mind").

to reach a real ordinariness, we have to stay away from the "mass" of other ordinary people. — javi2541997

And I agree here as well I believe. Emerson calls it aversion to conformity in Self Relience; Nietszche will call it rising above (roughly). The idea of a shared culture and language can be turned from, or continued on, or, as Wittgenstin will say, torn down and built again from the rubble (PI 118)(not, however, gotten outside of, even if only a scream or a splotch of paint).

My point would only be that this: I Am!, is an action, a process; who we define ourselves to be, say, against the crowd, is not given to us as an inherent fact. People believe they have "thoughts", and those are precious gems that come from who they are, their identity as a singular person, something special from inside only them, when most of the time they are platitudes or regurgitation--though sometimes what is common is most true (it all depends). As Heidegger says: what is most thought-provoking is that we are not yet thinking.

Thank for taking the time to read it again, and I hope that makes it clearer if you are interested @Jamal

I'll try this one more time. Dismissing someone out of hand is doing you no favors in being able to learn anything new, and no one wants to respond to someone who just says they are wrong because of your opinion. I suggest seeing what you agree with first and then asking questions about the parts you don't understand and just wait on what you think you disagree with. Also, my object this to get you to see something you may be missing, not that I know something I can prove to you; so if you don't see it, and won't let me help you possibly to, I can't force anything on you, say "logically" or factually (you in a sense have to see it for yourself). Also,,I clarified the original post.

If you're interested, I rewrote the OP to be, I hope, clearer.

Sorry, I didn't make clear that the "special" I am arguing against is not being distinguished, more intelligent, unequal in social or economic position (I've tried to edit that into the OP). What I am trying to root out is the idea that we have an individual "consciousness" or "thoughts" or "our" "meaning"--say, as casual or which is "me".

That being said, saying "we have the real version of ourselves" makes me nervous because, although we might have secrets (and from ourselves as well) and can present a facade (a false "image") there is not a "real" version of us that we "have" by default, much as the world is without a "reality".

But, yes, we are all ordinary humans, individual as separate bodies, but under the same condition/human situation. Reaching out from this state does not seem "impossible", and it is our (political, cultural, economic) circumstances that are the hurdle we must reach over. But, yes, this is an ethical plea as well; if our internal state of affairs are not direct, determinate, controlling--as if metaphysical, or physically (scientifically) distinctive--then our ordinary words and concepts are enough, if we let them be.

Yes, the claim of the skeptic is about the entire human condition. Finding a logical inconsistency in what you take their claim to mean is not to dismiss that our knowledge of the other is inadequate nor to resolve the real outcomes of living in the grip of skepticism. We believe ourselves more powerful than we are if we think our knowledge of the other is sufficient.

But wouldn't a real skeptic (in genuine doubt rather than theory of knowledge hubris) just not know much about me — green flag

But the skeptic wants to be sure about you or deny you entirely. Granted, "exist", is a loaded word, but, non-metaphysically, we are still talking about you not mattering, me not wanting to be responsible to you personally, to acknowledge your claim on me, thus the skeptic's insistence on science, which draws its conclusions regardless of the individual; and their need for the world to be "real", creating frameworks like “objective”, “reality”, “consciousness”, etc.

Yes, we cannot be factually certain of others and the world (except math, though that only makes the desire worse) and that the results of solipsism can be real. I suggest you take this seriously and start working to understand the philosophy as well as take steps to make sure you are safe. I have requested your account be reviewed to give you time to do so. Good luck.

I'm not sure what you mean by that exactly. — Darkneos

The way this would work is that you ask a question about which part or parts you don't understand, or, even better, you take a stab at echoing or paraphrasing what you think was said, or you assume you know what was said and disagree, stating your objections.

I think I can forget about it as long as I stop feeding it and focus on other stuff, or at least see a therapist about it. — Darkneos

A therapist is not going to help you with a philosophical problem like solipsism, though they can help with reasons for turning our human condition of being separate from others into an intellectual problem where we think we are lacking some knowledge. I would suggest both, especially given that you will come back to it again and again, but I t doesn't sound like you are ready to work on the philosophy yet. I ask that you not post here again unless you are serious, as you must realize you've wasted the time of earnest people actually trying to do philosophy here. If you continue in this vein, I will ask that you be banned until you can convince the admins of your sincerity in wanting to do the work. Good luck.

I just want to know if the links I give prove it or not — Darkneos

What I’m telling you is, yes, what leads to the conclusion of solipsism is true about our human condition. But having certainty that others exist, knowing that, is not the only consequence of the truth of the skepticism that leads to solipsism, as knowledge of the other and the world is not our only connection.

And you will not forget about this because your isolation and doubt and disconnection are based on something true. The danger of philosophy is why Socrates was killed, why Descartes’ Meditations was not taught to young adults, and why Wittgenstein kept telling people to give up on philosophy after his conclusions in the Tractatus. It is too late for you , however, so I would use your mind to overcome your mind.

Every thing I’ve read just seems to erode my mind a little more each day — Darkneos

You’re just reading the wrong works. I appreciate the effort in reading the Cavell. Where did you stop understanding it? If you can work to formulate questions, I can probably answer them (no one understands meaningful philosophy at first glance; its process requires your becoming someone different). The most important part is the end where he finds the truth of skepticism (that solipsism is real and an ongoing threat) and then analyzing the uses of knowledge to find the route of acknowledgement as our human relation towards others (apart from insisting on knowledge of them that is certain). I stand ready to help if you are willing to put in the work, but, yes, stop reading anything that is attempting to dismiss or disprove solipsism (and ignore @Judaka and @green flag tell you you’re crazy or that the position is ridiculous) as it is a important part of the human condition.

I know I exist because I have a first person point of view in my world
Other things have a third person point of view in my world
Things are not both first person and third person point of view at the same time in my world — Darkneos

In saying the skeptic and the other are not in the skeptic's world together, is to say that the skeptic does not know whether the other is them (the skeptic), or whether the other's point of view is the same, say, their pain is just like the skeptic's, so that they would exist, based on the ground that the skeptic takes themselves to.

Given that doubt, that lack of certain knowledge about the other, "there is only one 'me' in my world." From that requirement for the existence of the other, there is no stopping the conclusion that follows.

the first person point of view is not in other worlds
Hence, other worlds don’t have a “me” — Darkneos

The converse of not having knowledge of the other, is that I cannot explain myself to anyone either. I am inexpressible; no one can know me--no world has whatever is unique to me fully out of me, in it.

If there is a subjective world, there can only be one such subjective world — Darkneos

Thus, if there is to be a me, a me that I am certain of, then no one can have the ability to see me, to know me in the same way I want to be sure of myself. So the other cannot exist, as they threaten the grounds of my existence because they may know me better than I know myself, and then what do I know if not even myself?

The only way out is through. If you read that one and don't get anything meaningful from it, I'll eat my hat. Plus, you haven't commented on any of my posts I worked very hard on for your benefit, so you owe me that much.

I would suggest the Cavell essay on other minds that I attached above, but I will review the post, thank you.

The thread with the argument for solipsism is broken for me. Just copy the text here.

If you take needing certainty for knowledge then you really have nothing. — Darkneos

Yes but that desire is what allows the skeptic to see the truth that we do not have foundational, unreproachable knowledge of others and the world—that the impetus to solipsism is true. Isn’t that what you were looking for, one way or the other?

I think this other fellow is more on target. — green flag

I would tell you that reality is an illusion, that everything exists from the perspective of the individual, the individual holds a privileged position to dictate what is and isn't true, and to legitimatise their way of interpreting and characterising all concepts and things — Judaka

Not to drag @Judaka into this, but solipsism is not a better, more powerful position; it is seen as the the only available position, but a powerless one. I cannot know that you exist, or, in a less dramatic example, know your pain. And the idea of "reality", as a quality everything has or that we compare things against, is the measure that makes the world illusory to us.

You only need to sufficiently doubt the idea [ solipsism ] — Judaka

.

And although many of the conclusions of solipsism can be doubted, the truth of it is that knowledge fails to provide us with certainty of others and our world.

I am convinced or sure that I cannot have absolute irrefutable knowledge. — Antony Nickles

Who would refute it though ? And what would refutation mean ? If the self is all there is, there is nothing the self can be wrong or right about.

What I was doing with the statement above was re-wording your comment that: "I am certain that I cannot be certain". The skeptic is not "right" that the self is all there is. His truth is that there is no fact to make us certain of others or the external world. We can be all alone in the world; it can be that the world does not meaningfully exist for us.
— green flag

How could logical norms be binding? — green flag

They aren't.

Unless there is something I can be wrong about, what can uncertainty mean? — green flag

Lack of justification by knowledge; not being sure--having doubt. Now if we want to say "unless there is something to doubt..." it is not that the skeptic doubts the world exists; they doubt we can be certain it exists.

This is not a mathematical proof but an attempt to make visible the basic unintelligibility of solipsism. — green flag

I agree this is not math, but, again, your resorting to calling it unintelligible does not refute it--it's giving up.

it's not clear as it stands why desire is not a personal feeling. — green flag

It would maybe be clearer to say, their argument has a logical prerequisite.

I can answer any questions about the posts I have made, but probably the most helpful might be reading the attached essay of Cavell's where he dissects the truth of solipsism from what we feel compelled to make it mean.

"I am certain that I cannot be certain." — green flag

These are two different senses of certain. I am convinced or sure that I can not have absolute irrefutable knowledge. More to the point though, it is the skeptical conclusion of the solipsist, not their salvation or any kind of refutation of skepticism.

If you are making something like a psychological point, then maybe I agree." — green flag

Part of the history of analytical philosophy is that Plato and Descartes and Kant and the Tractatus, wanted something particular from philosophy, that is a desire, but not a personal "psychological" feeling. It is a logical prerequisite, which leads to an oversight.

In the case of this thread, my hypothesis is that the fear of solipsism is actually a fantasy of solipsism. — green flag

Cavell will say there is both. The desire to remove the faulty human from knowledge is also the wish to be unknowable, special, not responsible.

When entertained as a philosophical thesis, subject to rational norms, it's absurd — green flag

If we dictate the terms on which we accept anything, it's easy to dismiss everything. But at the basis of skepticism (leading to solipsism) is the truth that there is no fact to give us a foundation of certainty in knowledge; that if we require that threshold criteria, the world does fall apart in our hands, our moral realm becomes unnavigable, others are unknown to us--not as a fantasy, but actually--that these outcomes can be true. There is no refuting this without calling it absurd or illogical or just a theoretical issue, or having god or the Forms save us, or cutting off the need for anything meaningful (abandoning what is essential about anything in barring the thing-in-itself).

What is the minimal concept (in an epistemological/metaphysical context) of a world ? Of a self ? The world is something that I can be wrong about. — green flag

The skeptic would say that acceptance that we can be wrong does not provide any foundation for our knowledge of the world--they can always fall back on the irrefutable position that everything can be uncertain, wrong. What I am suggesting is that there is a way not to refute skepticism, or dismiss it, without taking the bait that it is necessary to prove our knowledge of the world, because knowledge is not our only relationship to the world and others (see above).

solipsism has basically been proven wrong (or absurd or confused. — green flag

true - but irrelevant. — Manuel

foolish and impractical it is for one to believe something while knowing it makes them miserable. — Judaka

...someone ended up proving solipsism true." — Darkneos

Solipsism, born from skepticism, is not ridiculous, or just illogical, or wrong.

Cavell (through Wittgenstein) shows that there is something that the skeptic is getting at that is true. If we want only to rely on justification, proof, certainty, than we see nothing else, and so are only left with their lack, sliding right through the cracks of the world into a void--there is no fact to solve this. But knowledge is not the only way we relate to the world. The truth of Skepticism is that part of being human is our part, to step forward with courage, to treat the other as if they are a human (as if they have a soul Wittgenstein would say), meaning not as if they were real, because I don't know your pain, I react to it (or ignore it).

I can understand as someone whom philosophy changed dramatically. I was searching for what had or made meaning, and ran straight into Plato and Descartes, only coming out through realizing, in Wittgenstein, and Emerson through Cavell, and Nietzsche analyzing Kant, that it is not "appearance" vs "reality", because that whole picture is created by our desire to have certainty; the criteria we create and require. So if nothing satisfies that need, you live only in that skepticism until nothing has meaning.

The thing is, the world does have solidity. The criteria for a thing being what it is, for its "existing", have developed through our whole history. The difference between what is a plea and what is a claim, is actual, ordinary, common. You know what an excuse is, different than a reason. These are the bounds and points of flex of our culture, not by fragile agreement, but through the thrust of our ancient lives carried on by what we claim as our future duties. All of this: is outside you. Yet still, rather than accept it, its uncertainty, you can kill the whole world. Up again old heart, as Emerson says, and, also, that patience and hope are needed for insight, more than thought.

This made me think of one of my favorite quotes from Stephen Jay Gould, a great science writer—In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' — T Clark

Gould spoke where I went to school at Willamette about rapid evolutionary changes. When someone asked about creationism, he started yelling at them (as if they were perverse). The point about science is that it does not need assent. The method could be done by anyone and the results are the same. Your moral claim on me needs to be acknowledged by me (or rejected). You swear allegiance to a country. But we do not agree about science (disagreeing with someone's science is to say it was done poorly). Now you can ignore science's facts or exagerate their significance, but those are political moves, not scientific ones. Gould is right in saying science is confirmed; and this just means we've done the same experiment enough times to be sure it wasn't a fluke, not that we are confirming our hypothesis against anything--"the world" or "reality".

So, again, to say my belief (opinion, theory, etc.) is justified (say by the facts of science) does not make it a higher order of belief, now deemed "knowledge". It's just a statement of fact; the only relationship to belief which it has is the kind of belief that is a guess, to which the fact is an answer with certainty--"I believe it's raining out" "Well, let's go and look and we will know". But there are other senses of belief that are not just uncertain guesses, such as "I believe in my son".

Humans have knowledge when they demonstrate the application. — Richard B

I would go one further and say that we have knowledge when we meet the criteria for someone to say we have the knowledge (criteria as the term is used by Wittgenstein in the Investigations). One difference being that there are different kinds of "knowledge" and so different criteria. One overlooked use is as acknowledgement. "I know you are in pain" being a recognition of your pain, your plight, your claim on me morally to react to your situation, etc.

Calling all knowledge belief justified to be true is an imposed (made up) criteria, desiring certainty before looking at how various kinds of knowledge actually work. Science is not justifying beliefs; it is a method. A fact is something you or I or anyone can replicate through a competent experiment. We know that oxygen has a weight of X because when anyone yada yadas it, it always comes to X. The reason for the desire for something certain and the invention of abstact criteria are more complicated, but one reason is that we create "justification of truth" as a way to avoid our responsibility for offering ordinary reasons and standing behind them.

So maybe, is there some core thing to which all of these various areas of interest contribute mutually, whether individually or in concert? Time and again the answer seems to be the self or... the sefl-in-sociey — Pantagruel

I agree. Though philosophy obviously has made contributions in: say, starting science, creating the model for psychotherapy, etc., I would argue that searching for certainty (scientific knowledge) is not really doing the core of what philosophy is anymore (con-tra-visy!!), which is the betterment of me, and my relationship with the other.

A lot of philosophy is simply analogous to the human condition. The Republic is not just about society and politics. We are the Republic; we are rulers over the domain that is our self--it is about how the human self works, as is The Prince, The Bhagavad Vita, Zarathustra, etc. Wittgenstein's Investigations is not about language, as most take it. He is looking at the things we say about the world as evidence of our desires and what matters to us about it--seeing the ordinary things we say as a reflection and/or projection of our self (analogously, in a sense).

Logic, modern "ethics" courses, and how the brain works don't make you a better person the same way as struggling to really understand philosophy through the process of reading it (allowing yourself to be read by/through it), rather than just getting the gist of it off wikipedia or imagining you understand it (or other's posts) at first glance, say, thinking we can summarize it, label it, dismiss it.

And not everything is philosophy. Its peripheral tasks have been peeled off into science, sociology, anthropology, behavioral psychology, etc. So to say it is a matter of interest just means you have other interests than the central domain of philosophy, or just have an end game for "philososphy"--say, fixing skepticism with science or logical theories.

I think this is the basis for a kind of meliorism.... — Pantagruel

I take philosophy as a process, more akin to psychotherapy than science or pragmatism or teleology--examining hidden implications, uncovering frameworks created by our desires or judgments, making our ordinary overlooked lives explicit--basically, reflecting on ourselves (even through investigating the world, e.g., Socrates, Hegel, Wittgenstein, etc.) Emerson and Nietzsche and Cavell call this perfectionism, but it is a journey of personal growth, not the establishment of a theoretical attitude.

When I say (perhaps too flippantly) that Kant "erased us", I was referring to his pre-requirement for logical necessity and predetermination which forced him to remove, in a sense, the individual--say, as in science, where it does not matter who is doing the experiment correctly, the answer will be the same. Nietzsche is reacting to that move in reintroducing "the human", along with history, cultural context, and our continuing responsibility.

Real human individuals, in the form of “finite human beings” never are alone sufficient for that which exemplifies philosophical thought — Mww

Wittgenstein would point out that the requirement to be considered "sufficient" to be philosophy is imposed by our desire for certainty, or, as Kant would say:

[ the ] transcendental unity of apperception is established as the absolute requirement of experience — Jamal

So “us” may have referred to philosophers — Jamal

I was referring to "us" as the condition of human uncertainty faced (or ignored) by each person, making philosophy our ticket to seeing our part (and with others), thus bettering our response, ourselves.

So would it be fair to say you see philosophy itself as kind of enlightened humanism? — Pantagruel

I think philosophy is about texts, or discussions, and so not limited to a position or theory or topic, but I think I see what you are wondering about. And I would say that there is a tendency to avoid our failings and vagaries in hope of something certain and determined, etc., and, to the extent philosophy is tempted to remove our responsibility to ourself, is one way we end up no longer doing the work of philosophy.

I'm interested in what people think best exemplifies philosophical thought. — Pantagruel

The fundamental example that philosophy provides is the betterment of the self. Socrates' questions were to learn about, say, the good, but the reason was to become more, grow, change, and expand our understanding of who we are. In the modern era, Nietszche was creating the space for this after Kant erased us from the picture, Hegel showed us a method to loosen our rigidity, and Wittgenstein took up Socrates reflection on our concepts to find that our desires and interests are within them. Stanley Cavll is my favorite current practitioner, most explicitely in the introduction to Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome, which are essays on what he calls moral perfectionism. Most other philosophical areas are just specialized interests on this theme, or attempts to ignore or circumvent the process entirely.

How can it be said the meaning is a property of the expression—its use, its context, its syntax, its content, its whatever—if Y could not derive from it its meaning, and if Z has not expressed anything? — NOS4A2

Without getting clear about any antithetical claim (or what criteria are being used to judge), let's take the definite position: meaning is a property of the expression. One corollary is that, X has something more than Y does, than Y ever could. One imagining is that this is an object--as @Banno was trying to point out--that the explanation would be based on the picture of how we treat "things" (say, here the word, there the thing). However, the claim is true if we shift the "thing" which X "has", to be: the responsibility. The "property" of the expression is not imbued by X and not Y (X's "meaning"). It is simply that Y cannot be held to account for speaking X's words (or could, only unjustly). Y will point to X (unless Y is quoting, etc.) The extent X "means" them is the extent X will stand up for them. X does not "use" them any more than Y does. That they are X's "expression", and not Y's, is only that X is the individual who owns (up to) them (or disowns them). The "meaning" is also not "in the expression" (taken as: the words); the question of meaning does not come up unless Z has to ask, and then Z asks X. Without any X, Z may conjecture from evidence (context, etc.), but Y cannot help; in fact, X may know less than Z can confidently piece together. We could even say this interpretation is an expression of Z.

some people look past the text’s attempt to analyze consciousness and the meaning of geist there are harsh criticisms that the book has inspired fascism, communism, and overall totalitarianism. I — Dermot Griffin

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In reading the Phenomonolgy of Spirit, I understood his discussions of topical situations to be created as examples, to illustrate our tendency to want to think in dichotomies, and not a claim about the state of the world. I find this use of examples like Wittgenstein's--though not as self-aware, open to acknowledging his limitations, less humble--in Witt's investigation of our tendency to desire certainty. My understanding of the terms is that this focus is analytical (about us, our desire for simplicity) rather than continental (a comment on society, e.g., Arendt or Foucalt), but to discuss our concpts is to discuss the world, so maybe it's a matter of interest.

Can you provide an example of this [understanding another’s speech on their terms, treating it as expressions of their interests, as possibilities of a human life] in action in one of the purported democracies? — Tom Storm

In the essay of Dewey's that I attached to the original post, he claims, more even than not purporting a explicit version, that democracy is not maintained in institutions at all (separation of powers, voting, protesting, etc.), but personally by us and interpersonally in how we treat others. It might not look like it, but this is analytical philosophy; he is describing the limits of the category of democracy as Kant uses that word--the necessary conditions and threshold criteria to judge whether what is happening can be categorized as democracy (at all).

That being said, an example is always a good idea, but it would be an example of a political dispute (different than a moral dispute or a factual dispute). What makes a dispute political is that no one is in an authoritative (better) place to make an assertion (say, to claim what is right); it is in that way that we are all equal (this is the same position each person is in when doing Ordinary Language Philosophy--like Wittgenstein--it is in finding for yourself grounds for my claim that it has validity as evidence).

So we are using a democratic method to approach a dispute. The Dewey essay is actually quoted in a book I just read on philosophy of education, The Gleam of Light (a bit repetitive and explaining to the inside of a bubble of understanding already, but); the claim is that education should not be held to a scientific standard but to the measures of a child becoming their future selves. Now, democratically, Dewey wants us to learn what desires and needs are attached to conditions as they are, in this case, let's say: how a child learns to come into themselves. My interests are not something I would tell you, only in this case in some way different than opinions and argument. My desires and needs are able to be investigated and described without me--though also through what I say. (To clarify, learning about my interests has been interpreted as my self-interest, which is taken as only what benefits me; for Dewey, what I am interested in is more like: what I am focused on.) I would say that Dewey is interested in allowing a child freedom and the ability to express themselves, including questioning the status quo, so that they learn about themselves and develop their interests and fulfill their needs; not necessarily in conflict with the State, yet possibly apart from it. The interests of using a quantitive measure of outcomes could be said to be to allow for a standard that is certain--comparable, calculable, able to measure the effects of change, etc. Not a very personal claim, nor a dispute over the administration of such educations, but I hope that shows the methodology and difference of Dewey's approach to someone's claim in a political dispute.