Much of what you say, I agree with. Some of it I don't. For the sake of this thread, I'm not interested in Brassier's criticisms. I'd rather just follow this path where it goes.

Yeah, I won't ask you to hew to the Schopenhaueran letter.

I don't think any violence is done to common sense by saying e.g. "it was only at some point in time that it became true that Alice was ten years old." Most people would agree. They'd say that the point in time at which it became true that Alice was ten years old was a point ten years after she was born.

So I'm assuming your later characterization is more what you're aiming at: Not that something presently becomes a certain age, but presently comes to have occurred at a certain time in the past.

Is that fair?

If so, at what point in time did it become true that the fifty year old artifact came into being in 1966?

Thought this was pretty clever. If I read it right, it's an appraisal of the republican reaction in the style of a scalia-type originalist giving a SC opinion.

ha no still planning on responding re: schopenhauer. Just havent had the time to do it right. Its a delicate thing.

The Illumintatus! trilogy is a little too cutesy for my taste. It feels like having a conversation with an aging hippy you meet at a bar and he's just so sure his style and anecdotes are gonna dazzle you but it feels like he's done this routine a million times before. It's just too slick. In terms of pomo gnosticism, I'd recommend P.K. Dick's Valis and his Exegesis. The Exegesis is endlessly fascinating (and explicitly gnostic). Dick obviously passionately believed in the truth of his 'revelation.' Wilson ---idk, he feels a bit opportunistic.

I'm envious about reading Borges in the original though. Have you read Calvino's Invisible Cities? It's got a Borges feel but is also its own thing.

duuude write it! what fantasies/epics/religious texts have you been reading?

ha, well I can agree with Wittgenstein as a guy with mental illness. (Have you ever read Thomas Bernhard's The Loser? ((An analogue of )W's the loser) It's brilliant and pessimistic and very funny. I honestly think you'd like it. )

Kant didn't promise enlightenment. Nor did Wittgenstein. I have my problems with both thinkers but at least they're interesting. UG just isn't very interesting. The hypocrisy of wisdom-peddlers is interesting, the first time you come across it. Calling out people for being 'jokers' in interesting the first time you meet a no-holds-barred straight-talking dude. My very close friend is a lobsterboat fisherman and his colleagues are strictly no-bullshit and you like them for it. But the ideas get old really fast.

Cioran had very well-styled hair - like Schopenhauer - and wrote very lyrically about how hard it was to deal with the pain of thought. And how beautiful it is to deal with the pain of thought. But after a certain level of exposure, Cioran gets to seem a lot like a suburban kid in a band who sings about how hard his well-cut peacoated life is. Sorry Cioran, seems tough. But you already made your point in the first 1000 words you wrote. Why go on? Why go on UG? The suspicion is they go on because, cold and bold as they are, they cant do without people talking about them. My hunch is UG resented J Krishnamurti's success. Which isn't to say I buy into J's ideas. It's just painfully obviously that UG has a bone to pick.

There's a hilarious Cioran quote where he talks about seeing Samuel Beckett on a park bench and he's just in awe of how much he seems to be suffering. You can feel the jealousy. UG seems to have the same lyrical attachment to suffering EC does, just in an eastern register. And it couldn't be more boring.

U G's a fraud. Yeah he didnt peddle snakeoil feelgood spiritualism - and good on him for that - but he tries to portray himself as this dude who realized the vanity of quests for truth and didnt even care about propagating his message - people just came to him! - but then dictated his "swan song" which reads like dimestore cioran spiced with buddhism. Dude loved his persona and loved ppl having trouble with it.

@StreetlightX the closest thing I ever had to a professor-mentor once told me (apropos of Deleuze & Joyce) that you devour the literature because you love it but, after a certain point, keeping up with the sheer volume of literature turns it into somethong you hate (pity my one "mentor" was so depressed.) I haven't read enough secondary literature to weigh his world-weary claim on the basis of personal experience, so I'm curious: has there come a point where the fresh vibrant vital insights come to seem sclerotic and tired?

Sorry tgw some unexpected life events swallowed all my time
I'll post soon as I can.
And sorry@John those same life events were stressing me out big time and mad me a little testy. I think youre a good poster and I apologize for being a dick.

Just retaliatory measures. You make me sad! I ♥ being and hate to see her scorned.

Idk. I've done my best to show why unexperienced objects *are* a problem and you responded with a stew of 'Wittgensteinian silence' & 'i guess its a matter of taste'. If thats where we're at I don't see much point in laboriously explaining a sophisticated way of dealing with unexperienced objects constructed by those who aren't willing to prudently turn away from such paradoxes; and to do all that just to then show you how to undermine that very account. It seems like a waste of time. You've pinpointed why the correlationist is wrong from the outset (we know very well the difference between in-itself and for-itself, just look at how we talk), so you've no real need to wander down the maze they've built around their initial, mistaken, insight. After Finitude simply wasn't written for you.

I think, provided what you've said so far, the best way for you to approach After Finitude is like so: 'Some people are silly enough to think that the very idea of the in-itself is fundamentally compromised. They went through a lot of trouble to do away with that idea by finding new ways to talk about things like e.g. scientific discourse There exists a writer silly enough to take these people and their ideas seriously enough to argue against them on their own terms. This kind of thing is not worth my limited time. There are other, actually lucid philosophers to read.'

If only someone nominated Basically all of Philosophy is Silly But Here's Just a Few Brief Synopses of Philosophical Schools of Thought, Just The Bare Minimum Necessary To Allow The Reader To Speak Knowingly and Sardonically About Them & How To Pretend This is Pragmatism by Arnold Z. Heideggerwasanazi

What Meillassoux goes on to fret about, as I understand him, is that in a certain scientific schema, we 'know' beyond reasonable doubt - indeed we can 'know absolutely' - that certain events happened in certain time-scales before homo sapiens, via radiocarbon dating, and that because of this, all we think we know about contingency and necessity has to be rethought. For myself, that's where I don't follow him. — mcdoodle

The ancestrality problem has no direct bearing on M's discussion of necessity and contingency. Ancestrality is only a relatively short portion of the book. Its meant to be a visceral shock to the correlationist view which segues into a close consideration of correlationism's inner logic (which logic M endorses, but believes that, if considered closely, implies a dissolution of the correlationist circle). Thats where necessity and contingency come in. In fact, the central argument book could function without ancestrality altogether really.

I'll explicitly explain why I think schop's account is problematic later this evening. I want to do so carefully and precisely. As I hope I've demonstrated, I "get" the paradox of trying to think an "in-itself" outside of experience.

I've presented my reasons for thinking that Meillasoux' argument fails, that the so-called "problem" with ancestrality is a faux problem. — John

I'm a bit confused John but it may just be because I've misunderstood your stance. You think there *is* some in-itself, no? You think the correlationist is wrong, yes? Because Meillassoux's ancestrality is meant to be a problem for the correlationist. If you're unmoved by correlationist's account then you needn't bother with ancestrality at all. But then you also have no reason to read Meillassoux. He's making an argument *against* the correlationist but (attempting) to do so from within, by granting most of their points. You keep talking as if Meillassoux, with the ancestrality problem, is trying to provide a positive ontological thesis which you disagree with. But the point is rather to make the correlationist a little uneasy about the sophisticated account they reflexively roll out. If youre not moved by - or acquainted with - that account, then there's not even a faux-problem for you to find - there's just confusing shadowboxing.

That you appear to be arguing the failure of the ancestrality thought experiment against TGW makes things even more muddled. He doesn't think it works either.

If you (1) find the correlationist's account to be hopelessly confused and (2) think that M's argument 'fails' then my question to you is: fails to do what?

Having read most of the Haugeland piece, I don't really think the Dennett piece *must* be read ahead of time. Also, the Dennet essay is much harder to find online. I really like the Haugeland essay.

But is there some point, the advent of givenness say, where the 'distance as time ' ceases to be problematic?

Of course we could never know when that change in ontological status occurred or how we could possibly make sense of it. That's essentially the problem I see with Meillasoux' 'ancestrality' issue — John

First and foremost I think it's important to remember M is arguing against the correlationist so *he* isn't claiming different ontological statuses for this object or that; he's seeking argumentative fulcrums.

Secondly, I'm not quite sure what you're asking. Can you expand or reword?

@John
I cautiously agree with you regarding the "in-itself" but I think it's incumbent on us to think through the difficulties close examination of the concept presents. And man are those difficulties tough.

I'll lay my cards on the table and say I lean toward a panpsychist stance.

Also down with that Bitbol piece.@Pierre-Normand I only saw dogville once when I was 17 and trying wayyy too hard to immerse myself in highbrow culture (prob to escape the psychological fallout of a comfy middle-class to food-stamps-might-not-even-cover-us-this-week slide). I liked it a lot then because it felt necessary to like it a lot but nothing stuck in memory. I really wanna see it now when i might *actually* appreciate it. In any case, I'd heartily reccomend Melancholia, Antichrist, and Nymphomaniac vol. 1 ( vol 2 is so-so but 1 is greeeat. It feels in some ways like a cinematic take of W.G. Sebald's prose style (who I'd also heartily reccomend.)

You're leaving out a fifth option: the it-in-itself is nothing. A feature which has no element to describe or phenomenological manifestation to talk about. Something humans can understand perfectly well because there is nothing more to say about it. A logical feature which isn't more than "the thing itself' and so does not manifest as any sort of chainlink (which we might describe as steel, strong, long, grey, etc. etc., ) between the objects and language/experience. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This reminds me vaguely of how Sartre treats the "being" of an object in the opening of Being and Nothingnes. (The opening is all I've read of the book.) But, as your characterization of the in-itself as mere "logical factor" already implies, this ultimately cashes out as the in-itself being an in-itself for-us; it remains a species if strong-correlationism.

@mcdoodle
I'll reply in full probably tomorrow. Yeah, the experience of light whose source is lightyears away *does* work just as well as the archefossil precisely because the scientific explanation of the former brings up *temporal* considerations (of a time antecedent to the emergence of consciousness) Distance is involved for sure but its what this distance means in terms of time that makes it relevant.

I also think it's worth noting that Schop explicitly says this formulation deals with world as idea and that alone. The "will" aspect, left out here, is what really interests me, tho i'm left unsatisfied by both schop's account and his terminology.

I "get" it. I'm just not convinced by it. (I'm torn between a (humanly inconprehensible) in itself and a (humanly incomprehensible) panpsychism.)

So the solution is to beg entry from the dumb people who run dumb institutions, in hope of being part of them?

Idk, I kinda doubt it. The Oscars is indeed an index of - and an influence on - people's attitudes about class and race but I'd say a better route would be to undermine its perceived authority. * What I found silly in your post was the idea that the Oscars don't matter because you think they have no artistic importance.

And I am extremely skeptical of the claim that media portrayals influence attitudes, rather than vice-versa.

Well, quite obviously attitudes influence media portrayals. I don't recall anyone arguing otherwise. Are you really skeptical of the claim that media portrayals influence attitudes or do you just not like the way some people talk about media influence?
---------------------------

*This is where you can say 'yeah but the *material conditions* are what most urgently need to be addressed. I don't disagree with this, but, considering the only way to address suffering you seem to find permissible is antinatalism (the mass espousal of which I'd hope you admit is sheer fantasy) I have trouble taking anything you say about changing conditions as sincere.

Peter Sloterdijk - Rules for the Human Zoo

It's fairly accessible, entertaining, and created a huge stir in German when it was released. It's intentionally provocational but still quality stuff (kinda like the philosophical equivalent of a Lars Von Trier film.)

Thanks for the reply. I think I'm much more familiar with your general position than I thought I was; your analytic philosophy references and turns of phrase primed me to assume you had a much different stance than you do.

There are two primary reasons accounts of the sort you lucidly present here leave me dissatisfied:

(1) Ancestrality (as discussed by Meillassoux)

(2) "Worldless" experiences (of the sort TGW often likes to discuss.)


I'll only address the first reason in this post.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with Meillassoux's discussion of ancestrality. I think it shows shows how the quasi-idealism you espouse is not all that 'innocuous.' Since I'd already gestured toward the relevant passage in my last exchange with @John, it seems worth discussing. I'm going to take the lazy path and mostly just quote Meillassoux.

As regard the question whether red objects still would exist in our universe if we became extinct, or never came about, the answer is simply yes. Bus then this is just a simple counterfactual modal claim similar to the claim about currently unobserved or far away red objects. It still refers to *our* universe and *our* concept of redness. — PN

[Meillassoux speaking as a hypothetical correlationist] It is not difficult to conceive the status of the un-witnessed in the context of a datum which must be essentially considered as lacunary. All that is required in order to re-insert this type of occurrence within the correlationist framework is to introduce a counter-factual such as the following: had there been a witness, then this occurrence would have been perceived in such and such a fashion. This counterfactual works just as well for the falling of a vase in an empty house as for a cosmic or ancestral event, however far removed....

...[Meillassoux speaking as himself]The objection against idealism based on the distal occurrence is in fact identical with the one based on the ancient occurrence, and both are equivalent versions (temporal or spatial) of what could be called 'the objection from the un-witnessed', or from the 'un-perceived'. And the correlationist is certainly right about one thing - that the argument from the un-perceived is in fact trivia and poses no threat to correlationism. But the argument from the arche-fossil is in no way equivalent to such an objection, because the ancestral does not designate an ancient event - it designates an event anterior to terrestrial life and hence anterior to givenness itself...

....Let us be perfectly clear on this point. The reason why the traditional objection from the un-witnessed occurrence - it being a matter of indifference whether the latter is spatial or temporal - poses no danger to correlationism is because this objection bears upon an event occurring when there is already givenness. Indeed, this is precisely why the objection can be spatial as well as temporal. For when I speak of an event that is distant in space, this event cannot but be contemporaneous with the consciousness presently envisaging it. Consequently, an objection bearing on something that is unperceived in space necessarily invokes an event and a consciousness which are considered as synchronic. This is why the event that is un-witnessed in space is essentially recuperable as one mode of lacunary givenness among others - it is recuperable as an in-apparent given which does not endanger the logic of correlation. But the ancestral does not designate an absence in the given, and for givenness, but rather an absence of givenness as such. And this is precisely what the example of the spatially unperceived remains incapable of capturing - only a specific type of temporal reality is capable of capturing it; one which is not ancient in any vague sense, nor some sort of lacuna in that which is temporally given, but which must rather be identified with that which is prior to givenness in its entirety. It is not the world such as givenness deploys its lacunary presentation, but the world as it deploys itself when nothing is given, whether fully or lacunarily. Once this has been acknowledged, then one must concede that the ancestral poses a challenge to correlationism which is of an entirely different order than that of the unperceived, viz., how to conceive of a time in which the given as such passes from non-being into being?. Not a time which is given in a lacunary fashion, but a time wherein one passes from the lacuna of all givenness to the effectivity of a lacunary givenness...

...So the challenge is therefore the following: to understand how science can think a world wherein spatio-temporal givenness itself came into being within a time and a space which preceded every variety of givenness. — Meillassoux

Schopenhauer was perfectly willing to countenance the paradox of ancestrality by doubling down.

But the world as idea, with which alone we are here concerned, only appears with the opening of the first eye. Without this medium of knowledge it cannot be, and therefore it was not before it. But without that eye, that is to say, outside of knowledge, there was also no before, no time. Thus time has no beginning, but all beginning is in time. Since, however, it is the most universal form of the knowable, in which all phenomena are united together through causality, time, with its infinity of past and future, is present in the beginning of knowledge. The phenomenon which fills the first present must at once be known as causally bound up with and dependent upon a sequence of phenomena which stretches infinitely into the past, and this past it self is just as truly conditioned by this first present, as conversely the present is by the past. Accordingly the past out of which the first present arises, is, like it, dependent upon the knowing subject, without which it is nothing. It necessarily happens, however, that this first present does not manifest itself as the first, that is, as having no past for its parent, but as being the beginning of time. It manifests itself rather as the consequence of the past, according to the principle of existence in time. In the same way, the phenomena which fill this first present appear as the effects of earlier phenomena which filled the past, in accordance with the law of causality. Those who like mythological interpretations may take the birth of Kronos (χρόνος), the youngest of the Titans, as a symbol of the moment here referred to at which time appears, though, indeed it has no beginning; for with him, since he ate his father, the crude productions of heaven and earth cease, raid the races of gods and men appear upon the scene. — Schopenhauer

The problem of ancestrality seems very real to me, though I've no idea how to deal with it (Meillassoux's answer has all sorts of problems, imo). But Schopenhauer's explicit affirmation of what the correlationist only implicitly avers - it just doesn't work for me. I can unpack that not-working, if you like.

The thing is, as dumb as the Oscars may be, a lot of really dumb people are influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the dumb decisions dumb institutions make when those dumb institutions are seen as having some sort of cultural authority (which so many dumb people imagine the Oscars to have.) And these dumb people are the same dumb people who occupy positions of power or influence in other dumb institutions (whether as DA or as jury member.) So as dumb as the dumb Oscars may be, they still have legitimate influence on things that actually matter (unlike the dumb oscars.)

I don't know how much you talk to non-academics, but it's very clear that, for many of them, their perceptions of other races (whether that means white or black or latino or asian or whatever) has a whole lot to do with how they're portrayed in film and television. And, for better or for worse, what type of performers wins oscars is directly correlated with what roles are allowed to be considered 'serious', and which people are allowed to play such roles.

Unfortunately, your average jury member likes Hollywood more than Cioran, as dumb as that may make him.

@John

Sorry to respond so briefly and to such a small portion of what you've written, but I don't have enough time to mount a full reply tonight.

All I want to emphasize is that we all know just as well what it means for the tree to be there on the other side of the hill when no one is looking at it as we know what it means for the tree to be there in front of us when we are looking at it. — John

What's important to note about this example - as opposed to full-bodied conscious-less circumstances - is that our world, with its temporal and spatial scales, is still in full operation, with the concealed tree representing a sort of blind spot within that world. Thus, though the tree remains unexperienced, it does so in a certain place in our world and for a certain duration of time, all of which rest nicely within the spatiotemporal scale of the world we inhabit (i.e. we 'know just as well what it means for the tree to be in unexperienced space x" because we implicitly understand the space and duration of this tree's unexperienced existence as unfolding in the same way as experienced space and time around it. This is precisely why Meillassoux draws our attention to ancestrality and Brassier draws our attention to the post-human future. They recognize how adroitly the correlationist can account for exactly the type of thing you describe. (If you want, I can look up and cite the passage in After Finitude in which Meillassoux addresses this in order to show why it is necessary to find different examples to counter to correlationist. He explains it much better than I can.)

Yes, but plenty of people know the use and context of 'God' (implying, among other things, omniscience, omnipotence & benevolence) as opposed to 'mortals.' But once you start thinking deeply about the concept, all sorts of problems crop up. We know very well what it means, we think, to talk about the earth rotating around the sun even when there is no conscious being remaining. (I personally believe such rotation *will* occur in these circumstances, don't get me wrong.) But, as I tried to show with my thought experiment, it's actually very very difficulty to imagine what this would be like without smuggling in a human-like observer.

The problem with relying on 'ordinary use and understanding' is that ordinary use and understanding changes drastically over different eras and between different groups. That many readily understand the distinction between God and Mortal does *not* mean we ought to accept their claims about God.

(also note that reducing the distinction between for-us and in-itself to linguistic use echoes the Hegelian reduction of for-us and in-itself to a conceptual distinction, implying that the distinction itself is internal to the conceptual, as Brassier carries on about in this paper.)

If we think our experience is 'for-us', this is always already a case of presuming our limited access. This presumption is based on a (Cartesian) belief in the infallibility of introspection, that what thoughts and concepts and perception are is somehow transparent to us, so that we can understand what it means for something to exist for us, but cannot possibly understand what it means for something to exist 'in itself'

This seems like a cognitive-sci-phi talking point misplaced. I don't disagree that we can be mistaken during introspection, but I don't see what bearing our introspective fallibility has on our capacity to understand objects as they'd be outside human perspective.

If sortals are co-eval with the objects that fall under them, then how are we to consider the Pluto case? Since it came down to a vote, do we take it on faith that the right description of the sortal planet was championed by the majority; ought we to believe that the minority view of what 'planet' means lost because the true description will always find support among the greatest number of scientists? Or is it that there may be temporary diversions down wrong paths during particular historical eras (e.g. the luminiferous aether) but that scientific inquiry is inherently self-correcting, slowly drawing itself toward the final, true, definition?

Or should we say instead that had the minority view prevailed, that would indeed be the correct definition?

[this is tangential, but another reflection. If sortals are co-eval with the objects that fall under them, this means, of course, that they don't pre-exist (acknowledging the vagueness of 'exist' here) the objects which 'instantiate' them. Note how strange this term is here. When one says 'x instantiates z', it generally means that x depends on something that does not depend on it, that x actualizes z in a particular, contingent circumstance. But, in your usage, not only does x rely on z, but z relies on x. The material conditions of x's existence make possible the sortal which it 'instantiates.' x instantiates z at the same moment x makes z 'exist.' X depends on z which depends on x which depends on z which depends....]

Everything you've written about sortals seems to imply human purpose and understanding. Indeed you said as much in the Quine thread.

But there is a seeing as, a sortal concept, that makes something -- or rather singles it out as -- a bean. The question that can't possibly be answered through appeal to 'things as they are in themselves' is "How many objects are there in the pod?". Atoms are objets, so are bean parts, bacteria, and two beans stuck together may count as an object (for some purpose or other). Strip away all purpose and understanding (by us) and you dispense with all sortal concepts. — PN

"Strip away all purpose and understanding (by us) and you dispense with all sortal concepts."

Taken in conjunction with

"Planets existed as planets, and were thus discloseable as such, for as long as there have been planets."

I can only see two ways of making sense of these claims taken together.

(1) Pre-human existence must implicitly have a sort of anthropo-soteriological dimension. Planets existed as planets before human existence precisely because, when humans arrived on the scene, they would finally bring about the 'purpose' and 'understanding' planets and their sortal had awaited. A kind of AP rendering of Schelling.

(2)There exist as many sortals as there are possible - human or non human - ways to relate to and understand an object, as in a sort of logical matrix. Thus there is the sortal 'planet' (which is our current understanding of 'planet') and there is the sortal planetx (which are those bodies which correspond to our previous understanding, plus have the existence of at least one red-spot-like storm) and there is the sortal 'lol' (which includes those celestial bodies which are (1) closer to the periphery of a galaxy than to the center & (2) that have been struck by a number of asteroids n where n is less than the number of black holes in a sphere of which 'lol' constitutes the center and whose radius is n lightyears.)

(Fwiw, your view strikes me as Heidegger in Fregean Clothing)

so what if we 'tacitly make use of the scales and perceptives we inhabit in trying to understand the truths we utter'?

Bluntly: our understanding of things would remain 'correlationist' since those scales and perspectives are, indeed, for-us. (Spatial or temporal) 'Perspectives' and their accompanying scales can only be introduced metaphorically into a conception of a sentience-less world. (I know some latch onto the theory of relativity to try to show how perspectives are indeed part of space-time itself, but I take it we both understand the misunderstanding at play here and can safely pass it over.)

Perhaps such scales and perspectives can afford us access (though 'access,' as tgw rightly notes, is a troublesome metaphor) to that which isn't for-us. Perhaps they can afford us access, that is, to non-perspectival 'truths.' But if we can only understand those truths by retaining a perspectival supplement - well I think this leaves us four options:

(1) We can speak truths about the in-itself, but our understanding will be forever correlationist. A psychoanalytic metaphor: We 'speak' unconscious truths while remaining deaf to them, entangled, as we must be, in quasi-fictitious accounts of ourselves. These truths could be heard by an analyst, if there were one, but there is not.

(2) We're wrong. There really isn't an it-itself. Strong correlationism.

(3). It would be nice to talk about the in-itself, and man there probably even is one, but there's no way to get at it. Weak correlationism.

(4)Panpsychism

I don't really see any other way. I read Brassier's Nominalism, Naturalism & Materialism about a year ago and found it pretty unconvincing. I'm sure we can fruitfully approach speech-patterns (or concept-patterns) as natural processes and glean some insights. But the idea that we might discover some connection between those patterns and the patterns of the things they represent (but not mirror!) seems hyper-speculative. How would one go about demonstrating that a pattern of ‌•orange‌• occurences is structurally linked to some kind of extralinguistic pattern involving (constituting?) oranges? Harder still: How would go about linking that speech-pattern to orange-patterns that are independent of the orange's incorporation into a speaker's culture?

@Pierre-Normand
Haven't had much free time recently. Just a placr holder to let you know I plan to respond tonight or tomorrow.

Peter Sloterdijk - Globes (Spheres vol. 2). The spheres trilogy is continuing to blow me away. Sloterdijk is rapidly becoming one of my top 3 favorite thinkers. Also listening to Dennet's Consciousness Explained during my morning commute just bc I was curious to see if it was as bad as I'd heard (it is).

Thanks for such a detailed reply!

I'm in thoroughgoing agreement that some kind of transcendental background is necessary to get cognition going. It will not do to begin with raw sense data and nothing but.

But just what is the ontological status of these sortal concepts? Do they exist (insist? subsist?) waiting to be discovered? Are they somehow baked into the objects they determine?

Since "planet" is the sortal we've been playing with, it seems a good candidate for close examination.

An object such as Saturn can't cease to be a planet, just like President Obama can't cease to be a human being. If something (a large celestial mass, say) ceases to constitute a planet, for some reason, then this celestial mass can't constitute Saturn anymore. It constitutes, at best, a remnant of Saturn. So, sortal concepts are rather akin to essential properties. But it can't be an a posteriori law of nature (something empirically discovered) that Saturn essentially is a planet. It is rather more akin to a conceptual truth.

Yet (as you noted on the Quine thread) there exists a certain celestial mass that has ceased to constitute a planet. Is there no longer Pluto, only a remnant of Pluto?

As you probably know, the revised definition of planethood responsible for Pluto's exile was established by a vote. This vote was motivated by the discovery of new celestial bodies which, according to the definition which afforded Pluto planethood, might themselves qualify as planets.

The reason for Pluto's change of status was not a realization that our conceptions of it were mistaken; rather a new definition of what "planet" meant was constructed .

Now whether or not a given body satisfies the definition of planet indeed depends on the characteristics of the object itself. But, as the vote illustrates, the very concept of 'planet' is a contingent human construction, informed equally by empirical discovery and categorizational expediency. While we may assume that pluto existed before humans, it makes little sense to say that the sortal planet did.

(This is unpolished and I have more to add but im posting from my phone at a bar because I'm itching to get something out. I may refine and add-to soon)

In fact it might be a useful definition of being - that which does not change just because we change how we talk and think about it. Or is that horribly naive?

Sounds a lil like that old P.K. Dick quote: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

Intimate relationships can - and often do - change as a result of how we think and talk about them. Do intimate relationships exist?

Indeed, he makes exactly the same criticism: that a state must have conceptual expression, else be incoherent, as it isn't any specific finite state — willow

Where? Where does he make this criticism? (bonus points if you cite a passage that hasn't already been cited in this thread.)

According to the second reading, for Saturn to exist is independent of the sortal concept under which it falls when we think of it, perceive it, or talk about it, as whatever it is that it indeed is (in this case, arguably, a planet). But this is quite implausible. The reason is that reference just can't get any grip on anything objective without some minimal conceptual ground with which to anchor conditions of persistence and individuation that determine what it is one is referring to (in thought, talk, or demonstratively)....Yet, Brassier seems to want to deny this.

You can understand what motivates his denial though.

Do sortal concepts (or sortal conceiving) exist in the absence of conceiving beings?
If no, and if Saturn's independence of sortal concepts is implausible, then there cannot be a Saturn without such beings.
If yes, then what exactly is this 'minimal conceptual ground' which is independent of conceiving beings? And how can we maintain such a ground without reverting to idealism?


The closest thing to a positive characterization of an alternative comes in section 29:

The scientific stance is one in which the reality of the object determines the meaning of its conception, and allows the discrepancy between that reality and the way in which it is conceptually circumscribed to be measured. This should be understood in contrast to the classic correlationist model according to which it is conceptual meaning that determines the ‘reality’ of the object, understood as the relation between representing and represented. — Brassier

I'm not scientifically trained but I have my doubts that scientists see themselves as 'measuring the discrepancy between really and its conceptual circumscription.' I'm not really sure what 'measure' is even supposed to mean here.

In any case, it seems like Brassier wants is a radically nonconceptual...something (ground/matter/x?). A something from which concepts can arise, concepts which grant (necessarily limited) access to the nature of that something, but which, being necessarily limited, cannot claim to ever exhaust it.

As to this:

Hence, people who refer to Saturn without knowing that it is a planet must at least know that it is something like a 'celestial body', say, that is, something objective that can be seen in the sky and will likely not reappear under the bed. This means that Saturn, thus conceived, falls under a determinable (vague) sortal concept that awaits further determination or revision. But the sortal concept under which it falls, however imprecise, still is a part of our conception of Saturn, and partly determinative of what it is. — PN

Heartily in agreement. I really don't know what Brassier was thinking. This is an amateur error.

Hence conceptual expression is not, as is commonly thought, a mere feature of awareness in experience but rather of objects too. — willow

This is decidedly not what Brassier is saying. It's almost the opposite. I'm sincerely confused as to why you think Brassier is saying something like this.

Thought is not guaranteed access to being; being is not inherently thinkable
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The real itself is not to be confused with the concepts through which we know it.
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— brassier