Nothing of the sort. I am just pointing out that Wittgenstein starts from assumptions about the nature of truth and knowledge that were common to his niche, but which are not common to philosophy more broadly. His conclusions follow from these assumptions.

If one starts with different assumptions (which presumably might stem from different hinge propositions), then it doesn't seem like Wittgenstein's conclusions will follow. Yet presumably his conclusions are supposed to be universal, covering the whole of epistemology.

For instance, I don't think one has the demonstrate that a faculty of noesis exists in order to point out that presupposing as a given that it doesn't seems unwarranted. So too for the assumptions about the relationship between truth/intelligibility and language.

If one is troubled by Wittgenstein's conclusions the most obvious next question is: "are his premises true? What reasons does he give for us to accept them?"

They certainly don't seem like premises that "must be accepted as the very basis of using language."

I suppose the above also gets into notions of "virtue epistemology," not just virtue ethics. Perhaps a broader question would be: "is philosophy—the love of wisdom—primarily about discursive reasoning?"

Now, on the one hand, I think the person who answers in the affirmative has a strong case, in that they can point to what virtually all professional philosophers spend all their time doing. At the same, this wasn't always the case, the Christian and Buddhist monastic traditions being the most obvious examples. Kneeling in your cell and repeating "the Logos is without beginning or end," until all your sense of desire and self-will dissolve isn't really discursive reasoning. As Hadot and others have documented, "spiritual exercises" and asceticism were also major components of pagan philosophy and education as well.

Which leads to the question, how important is such "praxis" for doing philosophy (or theology)? Or ethics in particular? Either past practices were quite misguided or current ones are.

The challenge of accidental crap counting as masculine or feminine poses to thinking of what counts as masculine or feminine as manifestations of a Jung-flavour archetype is rather great. The archetype either needs to explain too much, or obviates itself of the need to explain some of its manifestations - ie its capacity to explain anything. Like what @Tzeentch just did, to my sights. You pick universality or exceptions, not both.

I think it's probably unhelpful to look at archetypes as being something like sets or some sort of ranking on a spectrum.

It might it make more sense to say that, while sex is always filtered through a particular human culture, it is in some sense prior to it. There are not, and have never been "humans without culture," so this filtering always occurs.

I would liken it to how light looks after passing through different panes of glass or filters. How the light looks as it passes through the panes closest to the viewing screen depends on the properties of the panes further back (closer to the light source). And, to allow the analogy to encompass human individuality, we might suppose that each viewing screen is also different, and will reflect the light in its own distinct way (although obviously how it looks will always depend on all the intervening panes).

If one were faced with such a set up, it would obviously be easier to alter or change out the glass/filters that are closer to where we sit, as opposed to those that are further back. So for instance, the association of newborn girls with pink and boys with blue might not run very deep. Associations like parents (particularly mothers) having a preference for their own children, by contrast, appear very hard to change (as evidenced by the failure of attempts at communal child rearing by populations who were very ideologically committed to making it work).

The exact way in which an archetype is expressed in a given culture is particular to it, just like the phenotypical expression of the same gene might vary according to environmental triggers.

This might at least explain some of the paradoxes of equality. For instance, as equal opportunity for both genders opens up in economies, we see fields like early childhood education becoming less, not more diverse.

Universal maxims or discursive reasoning in general may not be what's required in order to transform the ethical egoist (or, I suppose, the emotivist, though I haven't given serious thought to them) into an ethically solid character. After all, a well-known authority on the subject urged, "You must be born again," and preached compassion and mercy, not rational ethics. In fact . . . metanoia is all about noesis, isn't it?

I think that's exactly right. A more deflated view of reason tends to "democratize" things, devaluing the role of praxis and progress. Yet in so much ethical thought praxis is the focus, and what must come prior to understanding.

Yet if man suffers from a "darkened nous," then the healing of the nous (accomplished through ascetic practice) has to come prior to a fuller understanding. I think there is an overlap here between Patristic understandings and post-modern critiques of epistemic institutions (e.g. the natural sciences, educational institutions, journalism, etc.). So long as there is still a "civil war in the soul" (Plato), or we are trapped in the "Wheel of Suffering" or "slavery in spiritual Egypt," and beset by the passions and appetites, our epistemic efforts will corrupted by our orientation towards various other goods (i.e. not the good of true understanding).

Post-modern criticism tends to look at economic interests, or the prerogatives of gender/racial identity, which corrupt judgement, but it's easy to see how these critiques could be more broadly applied at the individual level. E.g., the body builder with some level of body dysmorphia might be very intelligent and knowledgeable about steroids and stimulants, and nonetheless have their understanding clouded by their passions when considering the health risks and benefits involved.



Indeed, but I don't really see this as anymore of a challenge to ethics than persistent "flat-Earthers" are a challenge to geography.

Sometimes, it's presented as: "if we had a scientific demonstration that x was good, people would agree and do it." This appears to be Sam Harris's assumption in large parts of The Moral Landscape. I think this is obviously not the case. We have very good evidence that smoking leads to lung disease and dental issues. Smokers agree that they don't want bad teeth and lung disease, and that smoking is going to cause them to end up with these. Yet they often don't stop smoking. The same is true for unhealthy eating. Others claim these things aren't really (that) bad for us, perhaps "the darkening of the nous by the passions."

I suppose that points back to the importance of practice. Orthodox thought tends to rely heavily on medical imagery. Man is in need of healing. And sometimes illnesses themselves lead us to be unaware of our sickness (e.g. the person with a head injury who doesn't know they are acting strangely). Likewise, sometimes people doubt the treatment, and so they don't follow the doctors' advice.

The theme of "living by example" is very big in the East though. The paradigmatic example is the Desert Fathers and Mothers, who didn't run out into the desert to become authorities and teachers, but rather became authorities and teachers because of what was accomplished in the desert, which was recognized by visitors, who then told others who also came seeking wisdom (some tellings of Laozi in the wilderness are similar, or the more well documented life of Saint Francis). "You will know them by their fruits" (Matthew 7:16).

Why would your interlocutor agree that "stomping babies is bad" unless they equated "stomping babies is bad" with "stomping babies is bad for them"?

Well, if they are an emotivist, presumably they agree because baby stomping has negative emotional valance for them as well, and for no reason other than this.

The conclusion I was hoping to draw was merely that at least some facts about the human good seem quite obvious, and appear to be empirically verifiable. This is not to suggest that ethics can be reduced to biology, medicine, or "science," but rather than it seems prima facie implausible that there are absolutely no facts about values as respects what is good for man in virtue of his being man.

But I'd also suggest that emotions follow from such facts. And of course, lots of moral realists have a large role for the emotions in ethics. Plato has the"spirited part of the soul," as the key ally of the rational part in ethical life. As Lewis puts it: "In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment," but rather spirit and sentiment. Ethical education then, involves habituating the passions and appetites to what is truly good, their alignment with the human good. This is the education, and particularly philosophical education, has had an aesthetic component for most of history.

But you're right, it's somewhat beside the point about emotivism. I wanted to flag it because the gap between "bad = destructive/deleterious/harmful/etc." to "ethically bad" is so often leaped over as if it didn't exist.

I think the post-Reformation presupposition that "moral good" amounts to a sui generis "type of good" distinct from other goods is one of the more deleterious things that has happened in this history of ethics. And with this distinction often comes the demand that the unique "ethical good" be formulated in terms of universal maxims or "laws" (this focus on "laws" is a place where Reformation theology continues to dominate even secular, atheist ethics).

To be sure, what is good sometimes depends on where you stand. When a lion catches a gazelle, it is good for the lion and bad for the gazelle. I think human ethics needs to begin from a consideration of the human good, and it certainly seems like it is possible to say some things with confidence about what is good for man, the good life, happiness, etc.

I would just note that this approach was hardly unique to the Greeks or Romans either, but that a broad virtue approach defines much Buddhist, Hindu, and Chinese thought as well, and it seems far more profitable to me to begin from a consideration of general human excellence rather than trying to bracket off "moral good," particularly if this bracketing is also going to require the extreme precision needed to formulate unimpeachable laws.

I never claimed that were the same. Emotivism, at least in most of the forms I am familiar with, claims that all value statements reduce to emotion, not just "universal moral maxims."

But, referring back to our past discussions, this seems to once again be the Enlightenment demand that "if one is to do ethics or aesthetics, or to discuss values at all one must do so in the form of universal maxims."

I don't think this is an appropriate demand. I think one can investigate the "human good" without focusing on universal maxims. Perhaps such a study might produce such maxims. Perhaps not. But I hardly think it is necessary to formulate any statement of the human good in universal maxims in order to say that some things are good, or generally good ceteris paribus, for man.

I don't believe there are any "scientifically verifiable facts" that will help here.

Why? Because it is impossible that there be facts about human nature that demonstrate that it is bad for an egoist to be an egoist?

BTW, an egoist might very well make the same case I am making. Disciples of Rand have long justified rational egoism on empirical grounds for example (i.e., it is truly better for all if we act like rational egoists).

But what's the source of agreement here, if not an immediate emotional response. Most likely some form of disgust or anger?

I think it's important to note that people who reject emotivism do not deny that emotion plays a role in motivating people's value statements, nor is the fact that emotion plays a role in ethical decision-making evidence for emotivism. Emotivism is the claim that there is nothing else to statements of value but emotion, that such statements reduce to "hoorah" or "boohoo," but do not involve facts. However, one might as well argue that emotions are determined by facts about value, leading to a non-emotivist conclusion.

So on this view, "it is a fact of medical science that stomping babies is bad for them," being a value statement, would amount to "boohoo for baby stomping," but could not relate a fact or be based upon a fact.

No doubt, if we heard that Russia had just launched all its nuclear weapons at Europe and the US we would have a powerful emotional reaction, but this would not seem to demonstrate that "nuclear war would be bad" reduces to "boohoo for nuclear war," with there being "no fact of the matter," about whether or not nuclear war is actually bad. Likewise, to claim that, at his peak, Michael Jordan was a better basketball player than LeBron James doesn't seem to simply be a statement of "hoorah for Michael Jordan."


Sometimes the emotivist tries to bracket out a sui generis "moral goodness" from other forms of goodness. I think this makes emotivism more plausible, at least at first glance, but I also don't think the distinction is at all appropriate. However, it would at least relieves folks from having to argue that "a Corvette is a better drag racer than a Toyota Prius," has no truth-value, and that our answer would amount to "hoorah/boo-hoo for the Toyota Prius," rather than a statement of fact about which vehicle is better at drag racing.

This doesn't seem like a very serious discussion, at this point. The dedicated emotivist is only committing to rejecting an objective claim to wrongness. I'm more than welcome to agree that stomping babies is bad. That's my position. It doesn't rely on anything but that. I am not committed to saying anything else. It just so happens our emotive positions are the same (I addressed this earlier:

That isn't agreement. I said that "'stomping babies is bad for them ' is an obvious empirical fact of medical science." To say "I agree that stomping babies is bad, but this us only because of how I feel about it," is not to agree with the fact claim made.

So, I take it you actually do disagree with: "stomping babies is bad for them is an obvious empirical fact of medical science."

Second, I don't think emotions spring from the aether uncaused. Human emotions spring from human nature. Certain things are good or bad for humans because of what humans are. This is scientifically verifiable fact. Again, to deny this is to deny that medical science can tell us things like "injecting babies with pesticide is bad for them."

To say: "I agree that 'injecting babies with pesticide is bad for them,' but this is just a statement of emotion and not facts," is not really to agree. It's to deny that it is a scientific fact that injecting babies with pesticide is bad for them, and to say that it is rather a "subjective feeling" held by individuals alone. Which, I think is patently ridiculous, but others disagree.

Now, I suppose an emotivist could grant that there are facts about values, but then deny that morality has anything to do with them. That seems like an odd position though.

And note that a blanket denial of the facticity or truth-aptness of all value claims leads to pretty ridiculous conclusions. It would mean that propositions like:

"Michael Jordan was a better basketball player than your average kindergartner"

...have no truth value because they are statements of value. But that seems prima facie absurd.

But what language an archeological text is written in is an empirical question, no? It's only obvious if you know the language in question, otherwise it's something you can discover. I know Latin well enough that I can identify a Latin text, maybe, but it is by no means obvious. I might need a book, Italian can be pretty close. "This is in Latin" is definitely something I might be mistaken about.

Anyhow, I still don't see the relevance of the example. Are you claiming that Wittgenstein's epistemic presuppositions are "just seen" and essentially unimpeachable, beyond analysis, and beyond repute?

If this is so, why did most philosophers for most of history not accept such presuppositions? And if if Wittgenstein's presuppositions only appear relatively recently, how are the conclusions he draws for them "absolute" such that they apply to all epistemology and not just people making the same assumptions?

To be honest, "I am right about these contentious premises because it is impossible to think otherwise because it is the very prerequisite for thinking/language" strikes me as very much the same sort of thing the empiricists lampooned the rationalists for when they claimed thought was impossible to challenge their conclusions because it is impossible to think without their "innate ideas."

I don't understand the relevance of the example. That certain text is written in a given language isn't the sort of thing that would be a hinge proposition, nor would it be an assumption that is relevant to Wittgenstein's conclusions (nor would it be controversial).

Unless you think:

"Noesis is impossible."
"Truth is strictly a property of propositions,"
"Judgement is only proper to discursive reason, not to simple (reflexive) understanding,"
"Everything and anything is only intelligible and true or false as respects its context in a language or some belief system," ... etc.

Are as obvious as the fact that this post is written in English or that you have hands? What's the idea, that somehow these presuppositions are necessary for language? But that seems obviously false, because they weren't positions held through most of the history of philosophy.

Or maybe people have emotions vis-á-vis questions of value because the events in question are good or bad? That is, "I feel repelled by x because x is evil," as opposed to "x is evil because I feel repelled by x."

To use the unpleasant example brought up earlier in this thread, that "being stomped" is bad for infants would appear to be about as obvious of a truth of medical science as there is. We might suppose that people have negative emotions as respects "baby stomping" in virtue of this fact.

However, the dedicated emotivist often ends up resorting to claims like: "being stomped isn't actually bad for babies," and defending this claim (which I think most would judge to be obviously false) by appealing to the notion that all value judgements are just statements of emotion. But that's obviously question begging.

Even if emotion always accompanied value statements, this wouldn't indicate much. Presumably, a sense of conviction also always accompanies genuine statements of knowledge (assertions of facts). Yet the fact that the two coincide hardly should suggest that "language about truth is just language about a sense of certitude and conviction," or that "truth is nothing but a subjective feeling of confidence in speakers."

I figured people in this thread might find a perspective outside the Western tradition interesting:

The Nature of Faith

It is the Orthodox Christian faith – the faith which was once delivered unto the saints[xxi] – that will be addressed here, a faith uniquely distinct from what is articulated in other religions and other Christian faiths. Furthermore, “Faith is not a psychological attitude,” as Alex Nesteruk states, “it is a state of communion with God that provides ‘an ontological relationship between man and God.’[xxii]”[xxiii] Faith, in other words, is a way of being, a way of existing in communion with God that restores the nature of man in the deepest sense.

Let us now consider how faith relates to knowledge. Just as there is assumed knowledge particular to philosophy and science (assuming that knowledge can be sufficiently grounded and justified), there also exists knowledge that is particular to faith. Unlike the West’s project of Natural Theology, however, the Orthodox Church makes no separation between natural and supernatural revelation. For as Dimitrue Staniloae explains:

Natural revelation is known and understood fully in the light of supernatural revelation, or we might say that natural revelation is given and maintained by God continuously through his own divine act which is above nature. That is why Saint Maximos the Confessor does not posit an essential distinction between natural the revelation or biblical one. According to him, this latter is only the embodying of the former in historical persons and actions.[xxiv]

Therefore, there are those things which human reason can discover from nature only if grounded in the light of supernatural revelation, and then there are those hidden mysteries of God that require special divine revelation, without which they could not be known.[xxv] By the assistance of grace from God, faith is seen to be of a different order than the knowledge obtained from natural revelation through discursive reason, which relies on sense perception and experience, and is often assumed by those outside the faith to operate on the powers of the intellect alone.[xxvi]

In Orthodox theology, knowing (scientes) about God is done primarily through humility and ascetism...

Recall Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai when he is told that no one can see God’s face and live. On the surface this is a puzzling passage, since it causes one to wonder how God, who is Life itself, could cause death upon seeing Him. However, St. Gregory of Nyssa explains this passage and the relationship between life and intelligibility in his Life of Moses:

Scripture does not indicate that this [to see God’s face] causes death of those who look, for how could the face of Life ever be the cause of death to those who approach it? On the contrary, the divine is by its nature life-giving. Yet the characteristic of the divine nature is to transcend all characteristics. Therefore, he who thinks God is something to be known does not have life, because he has turned from true Being (tou ontōs ontos) to what he considers by sense perception to have being. True Being is true Life. This Being is inaccessible to knowledge …. Thus, what Moses yearned for is satisfied by the very things which leave his desire unsatisfied.[xxviii]

According to St. Gregory, “to think that God is an object of knowledge is to turn away from true Being to a phantom of one’s own making.”[xxix] This is why, at least in part, the West’s scholastic project of natural theology as an attempt to seek God as an object of knowledge and prove His existence using philosophy leads the West to worship their idea (the phantom of their own making) of God rather than God Himself.

https://www.patristicfaith.com/senior-contributors/an-orthodox-theory-of-knowledge-apophaticism-asceticism-and-humility/

https://www.academia.edu/45384040/An_Orthodox_Theory_of_Knowledge_The_Epistemological_and_Apologetic_Methods_of_the_Church_Fathers

The term "noesis" has been revived by modern thinkers in a number of ways that are quite different from the term's historical meaning, so perhaps that is a source of confusion here. I mean noesis as in "the direct, non-linguistic, non-discursive, reflexive grasp of truth by the intellect" (e.g. as detailed here https://theses.gla.ac.uk/2741/ for instance). I think it's fairly obvious that Wittgenstein doesn't think such a faculty exists, and that if it did, the entire theory of hinge proposition wouldn't be required. What makes things intelligible, on the view of most accounts featuring a faculty of noesis, is the intelligibility present in things, which is grasped by the mind, not things' place in a language game for instance. Likewise, truth in these theories if often framed in terms of identity instead of correspondence (e.g. Plotinus and the reception of Aristotle in Islam). That's a substantial difference that emerges from these different premises.

Just for one concrete example, Aristotle deals with a very similar set of questions in the Posterior Analytics. But he comes to a radically different conclusion about the nature of truth and human knowledge. I don't think either Wittgenstein or Aristotle's analysis is inconsistent or in error, at least not in particularly problematic ways for their main conclusions. Both were great logicians. However, their starting assumptions differ.



Again, I agree that Wittgenstein's conclusions seem to be true given his starting assumptions (or a view similar to them, e.g. the modern analytic view of "correspondence truth" you begin from). You seem to agree with his starting assumptions. Fair enough. But are his starting assumptions (e.g. that truth is primarily about language and statements, that "truth only takes place within language games") unimpeachable?

I don't think they are, and I don't think his conclusions hold if you don't grant him this and other premises. But my point is that people with different hinge propositions will clearly not grant Wittgenstein the premises he presupposes in his analysis, as evidenced by the fact that they are historically unpopular positions (and really, relatively recent developments which never supplanted the dominance of a view that holds to a sort of ontological truth in "physical things").

So, I don't see how the fact that "Wittgenstein's conclusions hold up if we make similar assumptions to him," says much on this particular issue. I'd agree with that. But for the conclusions to apply to epistemology tout court, they need to either rely on uncontroversial premises (they don't) or the premises need to be demonstrated (they aren't).

I'll just refer back to the quote I shared earlier, from a quite influential thinker/authority from an earlier epoch:

...neither are all things unutterable nor all utterable; neither all unknowable nor all knowable. But the knowable belongs to one order, and the utterable to another; just as it is one thing to speak and another thing to know.

Saint John of Damascus - An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith

There are obviously different assumptions about the role of language in "knowing" and "truth" here. For the Damascene, one can know what is unutterable.

I see your edits and they seem to me like just throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks. How exactly does the fact that 20th century Jews appreciate Nietzsche support the assertion that "academics" think that the ancient Hebrews were slaves? What does Philo have to do with the assertion that all the Abrahamic faiths were originally embraced primarily by slaves?

That Nietzsche's diagnoses might be taken to fit for 20th century Jews makes way more sense. The Jews became an oppressed diaspora people. The ancient Hebrews, Christians, and Muslims, however, were not.

Gotcha, against the consensus of historians and the claims of the texts themselves, the authors of the Scriptures were slaves because Nietzsche said they were. Nevermind that the temple cult was developed under an expanding and prosperous, independent Hebrew kingdom under the auspices of that society's elite.

Apparently, if you read Nietzsche and actually understand him you must become convinced of his infallibility.

And I'm the dogmatist!

You're little spat there means nothing compared to these scholars who have actually impacted the world while you loaf around here trying to say small things in defending a life denying dogma.

But Nietzsche levels lots of scorn at Plato, Aristotle, and Kant. If having a great name makes your interpretation of history or philosophy correct, then surely he falls victim to the same deficiency. After all, he calls Socrates out for being weak and ugly in Twilight, yet Socrates not only fought the Spartans man to man in battle, but exceptional heroism and ferocity was attributed to him by his contemporaries.

Anyhow, you are indeed correct. Nietzsche is, I would imagine from bookstore shelves and online philosophy spaces, by far and away the most popular philosopher of our era. I find cruel irony in that though. First, that he who disparaged the crowd became the "philosopher of the masses," and second that he became the philosopher of the masses in this era, one which he would surely see as the Age of the Last Man. But to me it makes a certain sort of sense; the Overman is the fever dream of the Last Man. The latter gives birth to the former.

I imagine there is also a connection to be drawn here between C.S. Lewis's contention that modern society raises "men without chests," and young men's perennial attraction to Nietzsche, but I digress.

Nietzsche was not a religious scholar and never seriously studied the traditions he was commenting on. A lot of his "history" is just made up speculation to suit his points. I would advise against swallowing it uncritically. From the standpoint of history, it is more on the level of creative fiction.


For instance:

The Abrahamic religions grew out of a necessity to justify the lives of slaves against those who treated them as property and trash to be disposed of. Think of it as a style of metaphysical capoeira that armed the masses against their masters

Who exactly were slaves here?

The compilers of the core of the OT were most likely caste priests, elites in their society, working under the auspices of the royal authority of an independent kingdom. Most of the Biblical literature predates the Exile (and at any rate, the Jews were not slaves in Babylon, but kept their class structure intact).

The later books were written by the victorious party in a war against the Seleucids, an elite celebrating their own victory in war against one of the great powers of the period.

None of the Apostles were slaves. Indeed, one Pauline epistle in the NT is to a slaveholder about a slave that Saint Paul has converted while in prison. Mohammed was not a slave, but rather a scion of a dominant tribe and a leader who oversaw a rapid conquest. If one accepts the longer compilation period thesis for the Koran then it was composed over a period in which the composers were engaged in a massive expansion by conquest. They were the ones taking slaves, not the slaves.

Whereas the spread of Christianity seems to have occurred across classes, but was already a major influence in the intellectual/elite sphere in Alexandria by the time we get a more consistent history in terms of primary sources.

If one goes with mainstream secular history the Hebrews were never even slaves in Egypt.

In general, I would be skeptical of claims to have successfully psychoanalyzed the intentions of anonymous authors from millennia ago at any rate. Nietzsche's critique is apt for some forms of Christianity, Platonism, and asceticism, and indeed these forms are also inveighed against by many of the Church's saints. For instance, St. John Cassian and St. John Climacus actually point to similar issues with poorly motivated asceticism (a sort of misunderstanding and wrong motivation), and obviously there was a great deal written about body/life denying readings of the Phaedo vis-á-vis the Gnostic heresies by the Patristics as well, that often touch on similar notions. I think it's fair to say though that Nietzsche doesn't really transcend his own upbringing here, and is often backwards projecting problems he finds in 19th century lay German Protestantism onto three plus millennia of quite diffuse history and thought.

The actual existence of God is sort of besides to point IMO. The point would be that people have often held conceptions of truth that would invalidate Wittgenstein's conclusions. Hence, Wittgenstein would need to prove that his presuppositions about truth must hold for everyone for his epistemic conclusions to be universal. Yet as far as I can recall he doesn't really take these on, he just assumes the core premises as obvious (see below).

The example from noesis is probably better than the examples from the relationship between God and truth, but I would imagine not everyone is particularly familiar with the concept.

There are many definition of "truth", but for me the most informative definition of truth is the correspondence between a proposition in language and a fact in the world.

Wittgenstein's hinge proposition is a foundation of the language of which it is a part, regardless of any correspondence between the hinge proposition and a fact in the world.

Therefore, the fact that the same hinge proposition may have different meanings in different language games does not break the LNC.

Wouldn't this solution require the two assumptions that:

"Truth is primarily about (linguistic) propositions," and;
"Everything and anything is only intelligible and true or false as respects its context in a language or some belief system."?

But these are oft contested claims. For example, I would argue that it was true that the Moon orbited the Earth in 65 million BC. No languages existed then, yet this was still true. And further, I'd say that the truth of things (ontological truth) is the measure of the truth of the human intellect (the intellect's adequacy to being), rather than a human language being the measure of truth. I would imagine that I am in the vast majority today and historically in holding a position that is something like this. Which doesn't mean that we're correct, only that the conception that truth is actually about language needs to be justified.

Second, I'd also defend a notion of sense knowledge. Other animals also possess sense knowledge. Yet sense knowledge is obviously not linguistic. So either it isn't really knowledge, or not all knowledge is linguistic. Likewise, one can know how to ride a bike," and yet this knowledge is neither propositional nor linguistic, and its truth is signified in successfully riding a bike (whereas linguistic utterances would be signs of truth in the intellect). If all truth and knowledge were linguistic those with severe aphasia would cease to know anything, yet they seem to still know many things.

Demonstration? Were is the "demonstration" that this text is in English? Where is the "demonstration" that this is a hand?

"This is a hand" or "we have bodies" are general assumptions that most have held throughout human history. Whereas:

"Noesis is impossible."
"Truth is strictly a property of propositions,"
"Judgement is only proper to discursive reason, not to simple (reflexive) understanding,"
"Everything and anything is only intelligible and true or false as respects its context in a language or some belief system," ...
and the like, are hotly contested philosophical issues. Indeed, Wittgenstein's presuppositions here are the fringe position in the broader history of philosophy. Yet, if noesis is possible for man, if the Thomists are right about the nature of truth, etc., then Wittgenstein's conclusions would not hold up.

Can he just presuppose these controversial claims as the "rules of doing epistemology?" If they are the "rules of epistemology," then why did most philosophers for most of history think Wittgenstein was wrong about noesis and the nature of our access to truth, or of truth itself?

The view that different things could be "true for different people" based on different hinges is far more akin to the popularity of "we do not have bodies" or "other minds do not exist." That is, it is a radical conclusion. But if one is going to draw a radical conclusion from controversial premises, will it do to simply claim that the premises are beyond demonstration (and thus presumably beyond repute)?

It reminds me a bit of the late-Hegelian position that "because the system is presuppositionless it is infallible."

Where is the demonstration? Asserting something with no support is not a demonstration. The opening of TLP is just dogmatic assertions. There is certainly no investigation and refutation of contrary positions, for instance, or even concrete examples of how what is asserted will actually cash out.

I think you're probably correct about Wittgenstein, but I have seen later sympathetic commentators try to link together all of humanity (or all embodied lifeforms in our universe) through a "shared form of life," that grounds important constants (generally as a way to defend Wittgenstein from charges of extreme relativism).

But then the "form of life" must be explained, since it is very vague in Wittgenstein's own work, and is doing a lot of lifting here. If this is done in terms of a broad paradigm of scientific realism, it does seem to get quite far from Wittgenstein's original thought, at least as far as I can tell.

Maybe try reading (and quoting) the entire sentence? For most Patristic thought, all men begin fundamentally deluded about truth, and we remain so for as long as we are focused on the mutable world and are not "climbing the ladder of virtue" (so for most of us, our entire lives lol). It would hardly be unique to Wittgenstein. It's like how Epictetus says "most free men are slaves (to the passions, etc.)"

Yes, based on many past theories of knowledge, Wittgenstein's assumptions are radically wrong. In exactly the same way, according to Wittgenstein's thought, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Avicenna, etc. were also deluded, "speaking nonsense," and writing a great deal where they should have remained silent.

Philosophers disagree. One cannot maintain that Wittgenstein is right and that many other's were not gravely mistaken or vice versa. They put forth contradictory theories of knowledge.

In the same way, if a contemporary physicalist is correct, Berkeley would be deluded.

But yes, I do think Wittgenstein was deluded about the nature of truth and knowledge. He never read much philosophy outside a very narrow niche and it blinded him to other options. I still respect his work and find it interesting. You seem to be falling into the trap of: assuming that if anyone disagrees they cannot possibly have understood (which brings up the question: "why do so many great thinkers passionately disagree with one another? Did they all fail to understand each other's work?"

Kant accuses virtually all prior thinkers (most of which he never read a page of) of being dogmatists for instance. Nietzsche's claims about Christian and Hindu ascetics are not flattering (the man studied neither tradition). Either their critiques are valid, or they aren't. It follows that if some people are right, others are very wrong (but maybe wrong in informative ways).

Edit: I don't mean to imply above that Kant is guilty of some grave error for not wading through thousands of pages of historical analysis. He had other things to do. Rather, philosophy has perhaps been collectively guilty of receiving the critique too dogmatically.

Wittgenstein already won this particular game by pointing out that it is not so much what we say as want we do that is of import.

Saying is a doing.

I win.

So the winning move reduces to: "it's not so much what we do as what we do that is of import?" :rofl:

I wonder if part of the problem lies in the choice of "red". I thought that picking an irreducible quale would help us see what's going on with "meaning," but maybe not. In a certain sense, "red" is like a proper name, in that it's "just there," and can't be defined further, at least not in a way that's relevant to the phenomenology.

Do you think it is possible today to give an accurate (if perhaps still imperfect) account of why different people experience all red objects as red?

The (radical) empiricist wants to demand that many aspects of human experience are "off limits" for philosophical, or at least epistemic consideration. However, my view would be that, if we are able to understand the metaphysics and physics of sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge, then there is no reason for us to exclude phenomenology, quiddity, etc. from our analysis.

Anyhow, I would just note that it is easy to go further than Wittgenstein and begin throwing up radical empiricist critiques of him as well, to go "full behaviorist" (and "full eliminitive materialist") and to demand that language be reduced to use, which is actually just stimulus and response. After all, what else is "observable?" The challenge is thus: "Show me an observation of a 'language community' that cannot be explained in terms of stimulus and response and mechanistic causation? You cannot."

This would give us conclusions like "LLMs use language appropriately, so LLMs are language users," etc., and "LLMs are conscious so long as their behavior makes us refer to them as such. There are no "facts of the matter" about consciousness. In a way, it's the Cartesian view of animals expanded to include man.

The objection here is generally that: "the hyper empiricist is leaving out a whole swath of human experience, indeed the very arena where knowledge and understanding occur for us."

But I always find it ironic that this charge gets leveled at the hyper empiricist by the (less) radical empiricist.

As the hinge propositions of the Christian and Atheist are tautological truths, they do not undermine Wittgenstein's conclusion, which is also a tautological truth.

But are Wittgenstein's conclusions "tautologically" true for both the Christian and the atheist as well, or just for fellow Wittgensteinians?

From the perspective of the Patristics, or say, Thomism, Wittgenstein is simply deluded about the nature of truth, knowledge, and justification. If their disagreements come down to differences in hinge propositions (which they might), then how does the Wittgensteinian justify the claim that his conclusions are true not just for himself (and other Wittgensteinians) but for all human beings (and presumably, all rational agents)? Or does he not, and Wittgensteinian epistemology is simply "true for Wittgensteinians," just as you say "God exists" is true for theists, and not for atheists.

For, leaving aside the proper interpretation of Wittgenstein, to say that "God exists" and "God does not exist" can both be simultaneously "tautologically true" obviously requires a view of truth that is likely to differ fundamentally (i.e. in terms of bedrock understanding) from most historical views, under which claims that something is simultaneously both true and not-true, without qualification, is absurd and "senseless."



Belief in God is not "epistemically neutral" however. It isn't something you can just choose to first "bracket out," if you are then to declare that your "bracketed consideration" applies equally for atheists and the faithful. For, the concept of divine illumination would contradict the idea that it is impossible to "know" without discursive justification. Yet this sort of simple knowing would challenge the notion that "I have a body" is the sort of thing that "cannot be known."

To assume that God can be "bracketed out," is to assume that God is irrelevant to the fundamentals of epistemology and the nature of truth.

This is a problem that I think is endemic to a lot of philosophy, from all eras, but maybe particularly contemporary analytic thought. The idea is something like:

"You can't say anything about metaphysics until you tackle how we can know anything. So we will bracket out metaphysical and physical concerns and just focus on epistemology."

But of course, it seems fairly obvious that metaphysical and physical considerations of "how we know" might indeed have crucial implications for how we want to construct our epistemology (e.g. as a "metaphysics of knowledge"). Moreover, as Przywara makes a good case for, this bracketing is never actually successful. One cannot actually set aside all considerations of being qua being (of parts and wholes, act and potency, etc.) and do any analysis at all. What ends up happening here is rather that metaphysical and physical assumptions are let in, and simply not acknowledged as such. For instance, "we shall bracket out the question of universals and proceed with a consideration of epistemology" amounts to "we shall assume nominalism is true, and develop our theories from there." But of course theories of universals and abstraction play a massive role in realist epistemologies, so this just becomes a sort of implicit question begging.

You can see the same sort of thing at work in the position that: "we shall begin with an analysis of language, since we must know our tools before doing any inquiry into epistemology or metaphysics."

This is not an entirely bad idea, but its implementation can be pernicious.

This is an interesting case, because God was often considered as the ontological ground of truth. Truth is most properly in the Divine Intellect, secondarily in things' adequacy to the Divine Idea/Logoi ("ontological truth," e.g., Scotus), and finally in the adequacy of the human mind to the "truth of/in things" (hence man is not the measure of truth in these theories, which the hinge proposition theory seems to reverse to some degree).

You are, rightly according to most readings of Wittgenstein, applying Wittgenstein's conclusions to all knowledge. However, as mentioned above re noesis, the existence of God—particularly of God as "truth itself"—would seem to undermine Wittgenstein's conclusions in a rather radical manner. That "I have hands" is a "hinge proposition" in Wittgenstein's sense of "hinge proposition" would itself rely on accepting certain hinge propositions (namely the denial of many Christian, Platonist, Islamic, etc. theories of truth and the fundamental beliefs that underpin them, since these would presume a different notion of the truth of "I have hands" and of reason, justification, and understanding themselves).

Yet belief in God certainly seems like it could qualify as a "hinge proposition," and yet it would seem that if it is embraced it refutes the notion of a "hinge proposition" as Wittgenstein sees it.

I suppose part of the issue here is a claim to universality by a theory that seems to deny the universality of truth. This parallels the classic problem of the post-modern contention that there are no universal/absolute truths, or that everything is mutable (claims taken to be universal, absolute, and immutable, some hand-waving about how their sense might shift notwithstanding). One would have to assert that the presuppositions of the theory are universal and beyond repute.

Why?

Does Wittgenstein demonstrate things like:
"Noesis is impossible."
"Truth is strictly a property of propositions,"
"Judgement is only proper to discursive reason, not to simple (reflexive) understanding,"
"Everything and anything is only intelligible and true or false as respects its context in a language or some belief system," ...
and the like?

I don't think he does at all. I think he dogmatically assumes these as a given and goes from there (maybe because he exposed himself to no other philosophy in his lifetime).But if noesis is possible his entire analysis is wrong. If this is not the case, can you show why?

It's sort of like Hume's "Problem of Induction," which just dogmatically presupposes Hume's deflationary account of causation and nominalism out the gate, and then goes from there (i.e. a sort of question begging that gets ignored because the presuppositions are common).

Wittgenstein's hinges are foundational convictions that have no justification

Yes, my point was not that hinge propositions involve noesis (indeed, the concept presumes there is no such thing as noesis). Rather, it was that, for Wittgenstein's analysis to hold up, noesis must be denied as a possibility. It must be the case that we cannot possibly know truth as truth outside the context of discursive justification (or, on some later interpretations, that truth and knowledge are definable exclusively in terms of "systems/rules" of discursive justification).

Otherwise, if there is noesis, then there can be knowledge of truth as truth without discursive justification (which is also not dependent on language). Noetic understanding is justified in that it knows itself as true (and indeed there are arguments that judgement is itself most proper to understanding and not reasoning/ratio, e.g. https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/QDdeVer15.htm, article I). But then beliefs regarded as "hinge propositions" might not be senseless to question, and might be very well "knowable" (given the far less restrictive definition of knowledge this opens up).

Or, perhaps one way to frame the presupposition that is needed would be to say "all justification for judgements lies in discursive reasoning/ratio, not simple understanding," with maybe the added caveat that "all justification makes use of language, and only occurs in this context."

But the existence of noesis itself seems like it could be the subject of a "hinge proposition." Yet if it can be, then Wittgenstein's conclusions themselves would only apply given certain hinge propositions.

Are the hinge propositions that hold up the analysis common to all, or at least most men then? It hardly seems that they can be given transcendent apriorism was the dominant epistemology for about two millennia.

This seems like a problem for folks like Rorty who would like to use Wittgenstein to say things about language and the possibility of metaphysics for all of philosophy.
.

Yes, perhaps I wasn't very clear there. I meant an "intellect" in the classical sense (nous), as in "being capable of noetic intuition, a simple, non-discursive, reflexively known grasp of truth (i.e. one that is self-justifying because the knower is identical with the intelligible known)."

If this was true, then Wittgenstein's analysis of justification would have to be radically altered. Such a hinge proposition would be the difference between his conclusions re "where justification must end," and something like Aristotle's consideration of the same question in the Posterior Analytics (which comes to quite different conclusions).

Now, many justifications of noetic intuition or "transcendental apriorism" exist, but that is sort of beside the point. It can also be taken as a starting point (and indeed, often is in many strawman presentations of the tradition :rofl: ). But if it is taking as a starting point, the conclusions about truth and knowledge will look quite different.

This seems to me to introduce a sort of self-undermining instability into the epistemic conclusions drawn from the analysis.

Are propositions like:
"There is no such thing as noesis,"
"Truth is strictly a property of propositions,"
"Judgement is only proper to discursive reason, not to simple (reflexive) understanding,"
"Everything and anything is only intelligible and true or false as respects its context in a language or some belief system," ...
and the like hinge propositions for accepting a "Wittgensteinian epistemology," or does Wittgenstein's thought apply to all epistemology?

If "I possess a nous/intellect" can be considered on par with "I possess hands" then it would strangely seem that Wittgenstein's points simply wouldn't apply to those in the "I have a nous and am thus capable of intellectual apprehension," camp. Or would Wittgenstein's conclusions still hold true for all "systems" (even those that deny that they are systems, or that knowledge primarily involves systems or language) regardless of hinge propositions?

If the latter, how could this claim to universality be justified? If it isn't justified, wouldn't it just be one of many possible hinge propositions?

I hadn't thought of it before, probably because I vigorously disagree with Wittgenstein's presuppositions, but I think it's possible that there is something self-refuting here, even when taken in its own terms. Or if not self-refuting, then at least self-undermining. The conclusions would be "what is true, given certain presuppositions." But then, many people think Wittgenstein's view of knowledge is pretty dismal, resting far from "certainty," (indeed, it wouldn't even be called "knowledge" in much thought) so why wouldn't we just reject those presuppositions and choose to "play a different game?"

Consequentialism would seem to provide a useable answer here - given the present environmental crisis, this is precisely a time in which cooperation is needed.

If masculinity is associated with a lack of cooperation, then yes, that makes sense. I'm not sure it is though. The idea of cooperation, of sacrifice for the whole, is sort of an ideal in military/sports contexts. It's something they try to drill into people, one of the few places left where they openly admit to a period of "indoctrination." But militaries have always required extreme levels of cooperation, coordination, and the subjugation of the needs of the individual to the needs of the whole. Or, to use maybe a bad example, the Third Reich was very much "masculine focused," but it was able to get its population to largely support pretty drastic reductions in consumption and real wages during peace time in order to achieve progress on autarky and other prerogatives.

Likewise, stoic and ascetic ideals, which certainly have been historically consistent with masculinity, also fit with something like 's "degrowth."

Hence, I would caution against conflating "masculine" and "right wing" policies. Traditionally, a lot of left-wing movements very much embraced masculine imagery; it seems to me to be a more recent phenomenon that the left has become "masculine skeptical"

Yes. I think at the higher studies level we're at the point where similar incentive structures that were made for women in STEM should be made for blokes in other fields, a similar drive and marketing campaign anyway. But I don't think this is zero sum - it would still be nice to see "women in construction" alongside the occasional "men in nursing" adverts I sometimes see!

It's unclear how well these work in practice. There is a well-observed phenomenon of some vocations becoming more gender segregated as societies move towards greater gender quality on high level metrics. Elementary education is one strong example.

My question would be "why is this important?" If men and women are identical, then it isn't a useful category to worry about. But they clearly aren't identical. And so, since they aren't identical and interchangeable, we should hardly be surprised that they might self-sort into different sorts of careers.

I've long thought that Francis Fukuyama's "Last Man Thesis" (oft neglected, because everyone focuses on the "End of History" thesis), goes a long way to explain the rise of the "Manosphere."

From an article I wrote a while back:

One problem for Fukuyama is that his thesis leads to a “paradox;” one he is happy to acknowledge. The end of history will be an age where liberal democracies meet the [basic] economic and psychological needs of every citizen. There will no longer be a need to struggle for respect, dignity, and recognition. However, part of what makes us human is our desire to be recognised as something more than just creatures with basic needs to be met. This leads to a paradox because when we will have finally arrived at the end of history, our basic needs are satisfied, and there will no struggle by which our superiority to animals can be recognised.

-David Macintosh — The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama

This is the “Last Man Thesis.” No longer having to struggle, the human being, whose basic needs are now easily met, sees themselves degraded into a bovine consumer. The name comes from Nietzsche:

For this is how things are: the diminution and leveling of European man constitutes our greatest danger, for the sight of him makes us weary. — We can see nothing today that wants to grow greater, we suspect that things will continue to go down, down, to become thinner, more good-natured, more prudent, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more Chinese, more Christian — there is no doubt that man is getting ‘better’ all the time. —

Friedrich Nietzsche — On the Genealogy of Morals

I would argue that this problem has indeed materialized. It is made all the worse by steep declines in religiosity, and even steeper declines in the share of people who belong to civic organizations, clubs, and unions, as well a drop in the share of adults who are parents or in romantic relationships (all important sources of identity and meaning).

That many people are forced into unfulfilling, alienating jobs, or else become reliant on welfare programs, also makes this problem worse. One’s career can be a powerful source of meaning and identity, but it can also be a source of shame. It’s not uncommon in America to see someone denigrated precisely because of their vocation. “Don’t listen to him, he’s a pizza delivery guy,” or “you’re a failure, look at you, you bag groceries for a living,” etc.

You are correct that many adherents to the Manosphere are not particularly "privileged." They are often downwardly mobile men who feel they have had the "rug pulled out from under them" vis-a-vis their capacity to earn enough to support a household, etc. (although it is worth noting here that consumption patterns contribute to this inability, and people spend a great deal of their income to buy masculinity/status symbols in some cases).

This phenomena isn't unique to the far-right. I think it explains many trends across our culture, e.g., the widespread popularity of post-apocalyptic media. The basic idea is: "if everything falls apart I can actually become a hero, actually have a meaningful life, rather than living a meaningless life reduced to a bovine consumer," or even "war or crisis will help make me into something more heroic." And this also helps explain other changes in patterns of consumption (e.g. "tactical" everything flying off the shelves, people driving off-road vehicles for their suburban commutes, etc.).

The effects of this sort of thinking are particularly strong in the sphere of gender politics because sex is one of the last elements of human life not to be wholly commodified. Hence, sex remains a strong source of validation, a source of self-worth. And yet, as de Beauvoir points out, Hegel's lord-bondsman dialectic ends up playing out between men and woman here, because the misogynist, having denigrated woman, can no longer receive meaningful recognition from her. This search for meaning helps explain why far right enclaves like 4chan have also surprisingly become "the new home of the elite reader."

However, I think the analyses so far provided are usually too one sided, not only in the threads here, but also in general.

Absolutely. For instance, while there is much of worth in Donna Zuckerberg's Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age (her analysis of why Tyler Durden of Fight Club became such a cult icon is spot on for instance; men want to rebuild themselves and assert themselves). However, it falls into the habit of cherry picking the most radical misogynists and painting the entire loose "movement" with this brush. It's a way to dismiss the group rather than seriously engaging with it. It is not unlike how liberal pundits and media outlets moved to brand anyone speaking of "replacement migration" as Neo-Nazis, despite the fact that the UN and liberal think-tanks had themselves long spoke of "replacement migration" as a solution to labor shortages, or that one might have non-racist concerns about rapid demographic change (e.g. German children born today will be minorities in Germany by middle age, that is a sea change, and it is hardly clear to me that concerns over that level of change are necessarily racist.)

That can be quickly dismissed as the whining of losers, but there is some scientific support for this hypothesis. From a study on delinquency and dating behaviour: "Of particular importance, results suggest that delinquency does not appear to increase dating by increasing the delinquent's desire for dates. Instead, they suggest that delinquency increases dating outcomes by making the delinquent more attractive to prospective mates.

Right, being a low-level gang member does not actually pay much better than unskilled wage work and comes with significant risks. As my police commissioner put it once in a budget hearing on social outreach programs: "if women stopped wanting to date gang members, guys would stop joining." That's obviously a bit simplistic, (men also join for the status they receive from other men), but I think her point had some merit.

I consider masculinity, femininity, homosexuality and all other gendered concepts to be social constructs which interpret biological features in ways that vary from era to era and culture to culture. What you seem to be doing is turning one such era-specific construct , the masculine-feminine binary, into a biologically essentialized universal and then using it to explain traditionalist thinking on the political right in the West today. I argue instead that what you understand as masculinity and femininity are not only culturally relative constructs, but do not explain right wing populism. Rather, they are themselves subordinate elements of a larger traditionalist worldview which is about much more than gendered behavior. Do MAGA supporters embrace guns, authoritarianism, oppose abortion, immigrants, climate science, Transgender rights and feminism because of masculine thinking, or are the very concepts of masculinity and femininity they espouse reflections of a traditionalist worldview?

A lot of the Manosphere and "nu-Right" is not very traditionalist though. They tend to be atheists. They tend to have little respect for traditional loci of authority. For example, Rollo Tomassi's The Rational Male is a sort of "Manosphere classic," and is one of the more bearable reads. It tends to frame human relations in terms of a reductive account based in evolutionary psychology. Most of the "Pick-up Artist" literature reads in this way. It is very modern in many respects. The Alt/Nu-Right tends to be even more post-modern. It's a movement loosely aligned to traditionalist elements, e.g. traditional religious organizations, Evangelicals, etc., but also quite different.

There is, of course, a strong attraction in these circles to a certain sort of traditionalist aesthetic, and more traditional fascist elements that have infiltrated these spheres do tend to have their own modern-traditionalism they try to push. But this is often very much skin deep; the aesthetics of Rome are borrowed, maybe guys watch 300, but they're not reading Cicero or Horus. In terms of the intellectuals popular there, e.g. Land, Alamariu, and Yarvin, these guys are referring to Foucault and Nietzsche, not St. Augustine and Aristotle.

I would imagine atheism is major component in this. So much of "traditional" world views, including pagan ones, are grounded in religion that it becomes inaccessible. The big counterexample might be this broad sphere's embrace of Stoicism, but this petered out fairly quickly, and at any rate it was a modernized, athiestatized, less ascetic Stocism that got popular. So much of the philosophy here is based around the idea of freedom as freedom to consume and control, the have one's prerogatives recognized and met (in line with modern welfare economics), that the widespread asceticism in much traditional thought makes it anathema. Striving and pleonexia are almost virtues in this sphere, rather than vices, while humility, a prized virtue, becomes a sort of vice.

Ah look, I found the perfect location in Egypt to set up shop. It looks vacant. Maybe in rough shape, but nothing some fresh paint and some elbow grease can't cure (although I can't vouch for how centuries of desertification might have impacted the availability of drinking water...)



Who wants to join me? :rofl:

It makes me wonder, does any institution teach "philosophy as a way of life," as in, fully embracing the "ascetical education" that defined much of philosophy for many centuries?

Obviously, there are still monasteries, but that is:
A. A religious vocation (although it does involve a deep, "lived" study of many thinkers);
B. A lifetime commitment, as opposed to a time-limited education.

I know that, for Catholic priests, there are the Oratories, which are very similar to religious orders, but are only temporary, for parish priest formation. And I know of "secular" projects in terms of communes and intentional communities, but again, that is more of a long-term, "lifestyle" commitment than a program of education.

I wonder what the appetite for it would be, if you could even get students. There are outdoor education programs that are quite strenuous, NOLS being the big one, so I don't think the hardships would necessarily be the limiting factor. I am not sure if secular interest would be enough to keep a program open, but it certainly seems like there is enough interest in retreats and monasticism in the lay religious community that something like that could flourish.

From a purely business lens, the good thing about an ascetical school is that I imagine it is very cheap to run. All you need is some shacks and daily ration of lentils! Since labor was always a big part of "meditative focus" and the cultivation of humility (often farming, but crafts like basketweaving and ropemaking too), you could maybe even make things self-sustaining to some degree (although in my experience having novices help with organic farming and construction is normally a pretty fraught affair unless you have a long time to train them).

All I know is that, if I opened one, we'd definitely bring back the old "philosopher's cloak" as a uniform. Dress for success!



Of course, to this day universities still have modern students dress in the garb of medieval ascetics for graduation, a sort of funny holdover.

Doesn't that amount to demanding that the absurd premise in a reductio be true in order for a reductio to be successful?

A "demonstration" would generally be a syllogism in this context, although obviously there is a sense in which demonstrations can be less formal.

Ummm . . . but you don't think this works, do you? How does it not simply beg the question?

Points 1-6 are a discursive demonstration. The skeptic is claiming to have demonstrated that discursive knowledge through demonstration is impossible through the use of discursive demonstration. Hence, I don't think it's question begging, it simply shows:

A. The skeptics' argument is self-refuting (they are claiming to be able to demonstrate the insufficiency of demonstration).

B. The conclusion that discursive knowledge is impossible is absurd. But when one reaches an absurd conclusion the first step should be to check one's argument for validity and one's premises for truth. This intuition is often ignored today, and instead we follow out the absurdity and try to build whole "systems" atop it (e.g. instead of questioning Hume's premises, we accept a standing "problem of induction.")

C. It is also the case that the skeptics' argument flows from premises that are less well known (the nature of logic and knowledge) to a conclusion that seems very well known, our capacity for discursive learning and for the productive arts/techne that rely on it.

That would depend on whether the skeptic believes that it's discursive knowledge itself which is leading them to conclude that discursive knowledge is impossible. I have little sympathy myself for radical skepticism, but in fairness I think the skeptic can rebut the claim without also needing to claim that the rebuttal is discursive knowledge. Or, if "rebut" is too strong, let's say "show the claim to be highly implausible."

Perhaps, but Aristotle is responding to those who are claiming to demonstrate their claims through discursive reason. Yet if someone claims to have a noetic intuition that logic cannot yield knowledge or truth, I'd see little reason to believe them.

I understand that noesis and intellectus are meant to come to the rescue here, as in so many other places where Greek thought is contrasted with 20th century emphases on strictly (and literally) "rational" thought. Making this rescue attempt attractive is hard, even though I suspect it's correct in some fundamental ways. I'm reminded of this, above:

One cannot justify reason and argument through reason and argument in a non-circular manner. Hence, the misologist can never be refuted without in some sense begging the question and presupposing the proper authority of logos. Reason is defenseless. Likewise, proof, demonstration, argument, etc. must presuppose at least some inference rules (e.g. the laws of thought) to even get off the ground. One cannot justify all of one's inference rules without presupposing at least some. As Gadamer says, prejudices are a prerequisite for inquiry.

I don't think we need a "rescue attempt," but even were this so, it would be attractive at least in principle because the main alternatives seem to be dressed up versions of logical and epistemic nihilism (sometimes in democratized formats), and a radical divorce from reality.

However, "noetic position" is normally badly strawmanned as the hand-waving claim that "some things we just know," with little further investigation. However, I think there is a strong practical, psychological, and effective argument that can be made for the authority of logos that is developed through Plato's psychology and notions of freedom, and which reaches (IMHO) its greatest formulation in the Patristics, Desert Fathers, and the later Eastern ascetic tradition. Whereas there is also a physical and metaphysical justification that runs through Aristotle up through today (since obviously it is informed by advances in the natural sciences, etc.). Of course, acceptance of such discourses, their "attractiveness," will itself be contingent on the acceptance of the authority of logos, leading back us to the original dispute.

What can be said? "There is no arguing with a misologe" seems like a truism. One cannot expect to convince someone who denies the authority of reason and argument through reason and argument. But this is perhaps precisely why the neglect of the affective/emotional and practical path that runs through Plato and the Patristics, and the neglect of "epistemic virtue" (regulative and faculty) could stand to be remedied. The myopic focus on method presupposes that method can justify itself.

Related, Mark Burgess has a pretty good dissertation on the sorted history of critiques of noesis (what he calls "transcendental apriorism"), and at the very least it's true that engagement with it has generally been quite facile. Actually, it's a great reminder of how "great names" can accidentally poison discourse for generations, e.g. where you have Kant dominating views of a tradition he did not understand, Nietzsche dominating reception of an ascetic tradition he never seriously studied, etc.

Posterior Analytics 1.2 is the big discussion. It shows up in other parts of the Organon more tangentially. From the SEP article on "Aristotle's Logic:"

1. Whatever is scientifically known [i.e., known as necessary, through its causes] must be demonstrated.

2. The premises of a demonstration must be scientifically known.

[Critics] then argued that demonstration is impossible with the following dilemma:

1. If the premises of a demonstration are scientifically known, then they must be demonstrated.

2. The premises from which each premise are demonstrated must be scientifically known.

3. Either this process continues forever, creating an infinite regress of premises, or it comes to a stop at some point.

4. Either it continues forever, then there are no first premises from which the subsequent ones are demonstrated, and so nothing is demonstrated.

5. On the other hand, if it comes to a stop at some point, then the premises at which it comes to a stop are undemonstrated and therefore not scientifically known; consequently, neither are any of the others deduced from them [how Wittgenstein is often interpreted].

6. Therefore, nothing can be demonstrated [or at least not prompter quid, from causes, from premises that are better known than their conclusions].

A second group accepted the agnostics’ view that scientific knowledge comes only from demonstration but rejected their conclusion by rejecting the dilemma [see PA 1.3]. Instead, they maintained:

1. Demonstration “in a circle” is possible, so that it is possible for all premises also to be conclusions and therefore demonstrated.

Aristotle does not give us much information about how circular demonstration was supposed to work, but the most plausible interpretation would be supposing that at least for some set of fundamental principles, each principle could be deduced from the others. (Some modern interpreters have compared this position to a coherence theory of knowledge.)

But Aristotle reasons:

If the skeptic is right, discursive knowledge is impossible.
But discursive knowledge is possible.
Therefore the skeptic is wrong.

(Note, if the skeptic rebuts this claim, they cannot possibly claim to know their own rebuttal's truth without contradicting themselves).

Wherefore Aristotle launches into his discussion of noesis, intellectual consideration, although sense knowledge is important here too (Aristotle recognizes many more "types of knowledge" than most other philosophers, but even Plato has 4-5, versus often just 1-2 today). But the case for noesis isn't fully made in the logical works, since it is supported by the psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics of De Anima, the Physics, and Metaphysics, which amounts to more of a "metaphysics of knowledge" than a modern epistemology, in that it doesn't start from skepticism in the way most modern epistemology does.

The recognition of the crucial role of intellectus as opposed to solely ratio (discursive computation-like justification), is, in part, what leads to the dominance of "virtue epistemology" for much of philosophical history, until Descartes introduces the alluring idea of "tearing everything down" and then "building it back up with the perfect method."



That makes sense. The dominant form of "realism" has become loaded with a host of metaphysical assumptions, making the distinction somewhat fraught. So, for instance something like John Deely's semiotics, based in the tripartite semiotics of the Doctrina Signorum, is "realist" but does not hold to the axiomatic assumption of much realism, that consciousness is a contingent, accidental representation of a sort of "bare noumena" reality. Signs, meaning, are present virtually in things. And while it would be hard to claim that the Thomist position is "anti-realist" it is also not "realist" in the sense of ontological truth lying outside Intellect. I suppose Hegel would be another example where the suppositions "realism" is often loaded with is fraught.

The last book also reminded me of some interesting parallels between the Desert Fathers and Mothers and the early friars and existentialist thought, the Beatniks, and the Hippie movement, with elevations of similar virtues, although there would be obvious differences.

Notably, some of the heretical sects in some of these movements did adopt a sort of "free love" attitude but these tended to be relatively short lived outbursts (especially when compared with intentional communities/communes spanning millennia).

I've been reading three related books:

Dorotheus of Gaza and Ascetic Education (a comparison of monastic Christian education and the pagan education of late antiquity, framed largely in the terms of contemporary secular philosophy).

Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Foucault was himself a big fan of Hadot. This is a look at the role of spiritual exercises in ancient philosophy, with a focus on pagan thought and particularly Stoicism and Socrates.)

Sites of the Ascetic Self : John Cassian and Christian Ethical Formation (A study of St. John the Ascetic in largely post-modern terms, building off Foucault's late interest in asceticism, and using some elements of feminist theory and queer theory).

They are all related in that they are studies of ascetic education and philosophy as a practice. I have a lot of ideas about this and maybe I will start a thread on it some day.

The first is definitely the best, at least for my uses, since it is a quite detailed look at actual pedagogy from a period where philosophy was a "way of life" (and were all great philosophers were expected to be saints). But all three do a good job showcasing the much larger role for emotion in epistemic pursuits and the much broader notion of the intellect in ancient thought (whereas Charles Taylor's A Secular Age does a good job showcasing how the intellect and epistemology because distanced from the rest of the human person and their environment).

The last book does show some of the more serious pernicious effects of siloing in philosophy, with claims like "people were generally uninterested in asceticism due to Nietzsche and Weber's critiques until Foucault revived interest by showing how it could be transgressive." I am sure this "lull in interest," would come to a shock to the thousands of Christian and Buddhist monks and nuns living in contemplative orders over this time period, or even to the laity in traditional churches (a large majority outside the Anglophone world), for whom monasticism has continued to be a major influence (particularly in Eastern Christianity).

But it's also a great example of what Charles Taylor points to using Hume and Gibbon, the way the "disinterested scholarly frame" ends up choosing what to "bracket" out of consideration (Latour's late work makes a similar charge). So here, any consideration of the truth of the religious claims of Cassian, or of the metaphysical underpinnings of his practices, gets bracketed out, but the ethical and aesthetic values of the modern secular Western academy (particularly its post-modern side) are definitely very much assumed and "left in."

That said, it's still an interesting book because it makes some solid connections between early Christian thought and contemporary "Continental" thought. One example is the way Cassian's psychology is generally in line with embodied cognition and a sort of enactivism (which is not unusual for his period).

But I've long thought there was actually a strong overlap here that gets ignored. In many cases, "radical new ideas" such as non-overlapping hermetically sealed magisterium or disciplines as discrete language games are actually present in ancient or scholastic thought (in this case in Averroes double truth doctrine and Latin Averroism).

It would then seem that the stance is secretly a list of propositions and attitudes toward them, rather than a means of assigning propositions to attitudes given a context.

I think the response here might be that this is an overly reductive account of the "stance." The adoption of a stance no doubt involves some propositional beliefs, but on any account leaning towards virtue epistemology, the idea of science as primarily a virtue, a focus on "intellectual habits," the idea of intellectual faculties being more or less developed, etc., "attitudes towards propositions," will fail to fully explain a stance. In part, this will be because attitudes towards key propositions will themselves be determined by the possession of certain intellectual vices/virtues, the strength of relevant faculties, etc.



And even older still. The concerns that dominate much of Wittgenstein's On Certainty are also core concerns of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, and Aristotle himself is replying to going concerns about "where justification terminates" and "syllogism skepticism" that were apparently common enough to be major philosophical issues back in ancient Athens. Similar concerns show up in ancient Eastern thought as well.



This might be a position that could be added to 's initial list of stances. And it does show how, to 's point, propositional beliefs end up playing a constitutive role in both the adoption and development of stances. If the intellect (and so reason, knowledge, belief, etc.) is defined in terms of language and discursive ratio, we get a different stance where the very intelligibility of any thing is bound up in particular, mutable systems of interpretation.

Would it shock you to learn that I find Hume's aesthetics to be horrifically deflationary as well? :rofl:

Now Jacques Maritain, he outlines an approach I think bears a good deal more fruit.. I can get behind:

The moment one touches a transcendental, one touches being itself, a likeness of God, an absolute, that which ennobles and delights our life; one enters into the domain of the spirit. It is remarkable that men really communicate with one another only by passing through being or one of its properties. Only in this way do they escape from the individuality in which matter encloses them. If they remain in the world of their sense needs and of their sentimental egos, in vain do they tell their stories to one another, they do not understand each other. They observe each other without seeing each other, each one of them infinitely alone, even though work or sense pleasures bind them together. But let one touch the good and Love, like the saints, the true, like an Aristotle, the beautiful, like a Dante or a Bach or a Giotto, then contact is made, souls communicate. Men are really united only by the spirit; light alone brings them together, intellectualia et rationalia omnia congregans, et indestructibilia faciens. 74

Art in general tends to make a work. But certain arts tend to make a beautiful work, and in this they differ essentially from all the others. The work to which all the other arts tend is itself ordered to the service of man, and is therefore a simple means; and it is entirely enclosed in a determined material genus. The work to which the fine arts tend is ordered to beauty; as beautiful, it is an end, an absolute, it suffices of itself; and if as work-to-be-made, it is material and enclosed in a genus, as beautiful it belongs to the kingdom of the spirit and plunges deep into the transcendence and the infinity of being.

There is much to like too in the more cosmic view of Beauty found in the likes of Saint Maximus the Confessor, or in the Romantics, in Schelling, Goethe, Schiller, etc., or in Morrison or Kundera in more recent times.

I really do think dominant theories of aesthetics affect art too. The Romantic period is full of great art.

I think one of the advantages of the tradition that Chesterton is writing out of is that it recognizes that determinism does not preclude self-determination. It also allows that we can be more or less self-determining (e.g. an infant versus an adult or a well-developed, intentionally directed life versus a life ruled over by vices and circumstance, etc.). Additionally, the institutions we are embedded in (the family, workplace, civic organizations, states, etc.) can also be more or less self-determining, allowing for a sort of development and enhancement of freedom across the social and historical dimensions.

Determinism only seems to drain the "life" out of the cosmos when it is paired with assumptions like smallism/reductionism (e.g. man is but a "cloud of particles") or a similarly totalitarian "bigism" (e.g., the universe is just one universal process) or other ideas, like the notion that consciousness can be nothing more than an accidental and causally inefficacious representation of being.

I certainly think we can answer your questions in the affirmative. Here are just two historical examples:

First, being very interested in Marxism, I have read a lot of history focusing on communist movements. Here, activists' faith in the eventual triumph of communism, its inevitability, was often a potent force motivating their persistence in the face of adversity.

Second, many wars have been started because one side sees war as "inevitable" and also assumes that they will become weaker vis-á-vis their enemy in the future (due to shifting demographics, disparate economic growth, etc.). This sort of thinking played a role in the outset of the American Civil War, the Third Reich's decision to invade the Soviet Union, the Lebanese Civil War, the Japanese decision to strike Pearl Harbor, etc.

Essentially, the fear that war must come motivates people to actualize that very fear, hoping to start such a conflict on more favorable terms, rather than seeking to avoid a conflict, since they see time as "on the side of the enemy."

This sort of decision-making plays a key role in the tendency of "rising powers" to engage in wars with the dominant hegemon, what Graham Allison terms the "Thucydides Trap." Historically, it is rare for a hegemonic power to be replaced peacefully (although it does happen, e.g. the US and UK in North America—a few attempts to invade Canada aside lol*—and the US war with Spain to take on total hegemonic control of the Western Hemisphere was not particularly bloody.)

*One of the oddities of history is that, before other colonies even entered the Revolutionary War, New York and Massachusetts attempted a cross alpine winter invasion of Canada, and actually managed to sack Montreal. It always cracks me up to envisage the thinking that went into that one.