but unfortunately, even those who have studied Wittgenstein for years can't seem to untie some of the knots. It could be argued that even Wittgenstein was confused on some level, viz., on the reach of language. — Sam26

Yep, you can see in Wittgenstein’s writings he spent the last twenty years of his life trying to untangle the knot called Tractatus.

Causal explanations in scientific settings, moving down the line to physics, which is the resting place for inquiry. How THAT can account for things like value and knowledge I would like to know. How is a causal relationship an epistemic one? — Constance

Let's consider this from Quine (from Two Dogmas), " As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries - not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posit comparable, epistemologically, to gods of Homer, and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proven more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience."

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

To continue with this thought, if I ask someone “do you know how to ride a bike”, and she proceeds to repeat the manual on how to ride a bike. Does she have knowledge, or just demonstrated recall of a manual? I give her a bike and she cannot ride it, she does not know how to ride a bike.

You think like this because you likely think like Quine and his ilk think, that scientific models of what things are and how to talk about them are models for philosophical thinking. One has to think, if you will, out of the box. — Constance

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

I like this quote from Wittgenstein in Culture and Value, “People say again and again that philosophy doesn’t really progress, that we are still occupied with the same philosophical problems as were the Greeks. But the people who say this don’t understand why it has to be so. It is because our language has remained the same and keeps seducing us into asking the same questions. As long as there continues to be a verb ‘to be’ that looks as if it functions in the same way as ‘to eat’ and ‘to drink’, and as long as we still have the adjectives ‘identical’, ‘true’, ‘false’, ‘possible’, as long as we continue to talk of river of time, of an expanse of space, etc. etc., people will keep stumbling over the same puzzling difficulties and find themselves staring at something which no explanation seems capable of clearing up. And what’s more, this satisfies a longing for the transcendent, because in so far as people think they can see the “ limits of human understanding”, they believe of course that they can see beyond these.”

Yes, we experience only fleeting images, impressions and sensations, and out of that common experience we construct the collective representation which is the world of stable objects and entities. — Janus

I believe you have this backwards. First, we come to learn a language from our follow human beings in world of stable objects and entities. Afterwards, we begins to learn more sophisticated concepts like images, impression and sensation against this stable background.

Sure, they are not determinate things, else they could be talked about, but they are not nothing. You seem to be developing the nasty habit of picking up the fruit which has already fallen; not a habit conducive to fruitful conversation. — Janus

Wittgenstein PI 304 "And you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a nothing.- Not at all. It is not a something, but not a nothing either. The conclusion was only that a nothing would serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said. We have only rejected the grammar which tries to force itself on us here."

and PI 293 "The thing is the box has no place in the language game at all; not even as a something for the box might even be empty.-No, one can divide through by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant." (The box in this case is some inner world of sensations.)

No, you're still misunderstanding. I am telling you that there are things I cannot tell you, not trying, per impossibile, to tell you what I cannot tell you. And of course the things I cannot tell you cannot be part of the conversation, but the fact that there are things I cannot tell you can be, and should be an important part of the human conversation. — Janus

Yes, the important part of the conversation is the language game that gives rise to such conversation, the language and actions that take place in the stream of life.

That, indeed, seems to be what ↪Janus is claiming... or reporting. He is trying to tell us of something of which he cannot tell us. And like the beetle it must drop out of the conversation. So one could not claim, for example, that one is following in the footsteps of other phenomenologists, because to do so would be to say that there was something shared, or at least something similar, in the face of the claim that despite this it is ineffable. So that internalise is esoteric, mystical.

Now that's not so far from Wittgenstein, except that the phenomenologists seem to insist on continuing the impossible conversation were Wittgenstein would be silent, choosing instead to enact, and perhaps show by enacting. — Banno

Well put. I eagerly await the response. As I wait, I shall meditate.

Public narrative? The question here is the public narrative embodied in the subject, the historically constructed individual, the center of institutions embedded in language and culture that we call a self--what happens when this kind of entity examines the foundations of being a human being. We encounter phenomena first. Period. The social and the real are first order terms that begs the further foundational questions. — Constance

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

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

If I seem to be having an experience then I am having an experience: I can only see absurdity in trying to deny that; in saying "I don't really have an experience". — Janus

I am going to try to give this idea of “seeming to have a experience” some sense. But we will have to accept that a human is just a machine and that there is a world that we experience. Lets assume there is a color detecting machine. You place a red object in front of it and on its screen it will report what color the object is. The machine goes on working fine but one day it reports that the object is red when no object was placed in front of it. Do we want to say the machine seems to experience red? Or would it better to say it is broken and needs to be fixed? What about human making such a claim of experiencing red when there is no red object? Does the human seem to have the experience or is just broken?

and mostly suspicion. — Banno

Correction from the “public realm”…thats how it should be

Seems to me there are so many intense personal takes on phenomenology that no two devotees seem to agree as to what it is and how it works. — Tom Storm

This should not be a surprise. They ask us to retreat into our inner private sanctum with the hope of emerging with all sorts of revelations to be shared. But the language they use is borrowed from the public realm, so if you to try to clarify, your are left with a feeling of wonder, puzzlement or suspension depending on your natural inclinations.

Okay! I can't help but argue though. — Constance

Ok, why are you arguing when you should be bracketing. Why are you trying to convince someone, when you should be detecting the pure presence of phenomena.

Thanks for minimizing the philosophical jargon, this helps to improve the dialogue.

When you face the world with understanding, it is not that the world is sitting there telling you what it is. — Constance

Not exactly, another human being is part of this world and they can tell me who they think they are.

What makes the world the world is your history of experiences, and this is what separates your world from a "blooming and buzzing" infant's world. But if it is education that informs the understanding, then how is it that the this education can ever access the "out there" of the world as it really is, given that the understanding is all about this stream of recollection? Sure, there is something before me, a tree or a couch, but isn't this recognition of what these are just the occasion for memories to be brought to bear in the specific occasion, and the palpable things of the world in their "really what they are" ness just an impossible concept; impossible because to have it as an an object at all is to be beheld AS a kind of regionalized set of memories, you know, memories about couches kick the moment you see a couch and there is no "in between" time to catch the couch in all its "pure presence". — Constance

I do not share your causal commitment here. We don't have a world because I have memories of it, but I have memories of it because there is a world.

I don't find there is much sense or value talking about "out there" of the world as it really is. If Husserl came to this concern through thinking of the metaphysical implications of illusions or hallucinations, I am not sympathetic to this worry. Talk about "real" loses its meaning because those who theorize never put forward what we are suppose to confirm, verify, detect to determine what it real and what is not. As for its value, I think CS Peirce said it best when he ask readers what would be wrong with a metaphysical theory that claimed a diamond is actually soft, and only becomes hard when it is touched. "Peirce argued that there is "no falsity" in such thinking, for there is no way of proving it. However, he claimed that the meaning of a concept is derived from the object that the concept relates to and the effects it has on our senses. Whether we think of the diamond as "soft until touched" or "always hard" before our experience, therefore, is irrelevant. Under both theories the diamond feels the same, and can be used in exactly the same way. However, the first theory is far more difficult to work with, and so is of less value to us." (from The Philosophy Book, Big Ideas Simply Explained)

But it goes directly to the issue of ineffability, for what is really on the table here is whether it makes sense to talk like this at all. — Constance

And yes, it makes sense to talk about the table, its shape, size, color, etc and to doubt the sense and value of such talk is foolhardy.

memories about couches kick the moment you see a couch and there is no "in between" time to catch the couch in all its "pure presence". — Constance

Just because I name that object "couch" and a teach a child to call that object a "couch" it is quite a reach that we both don't detect the "pure presence" of the "couch". But how would you know anyway, it is not like you have any privilege access to my experiences to characterize the presence as "pure" vs "impure."

Please sing with me:

I have decided to follow Husserl;
I have decided to follow Husserl;
I have decided to follow Husserl;
No turning back, no turning back.

Maybe, one day, philosophy will weave in music into this form of life.

But the evolving he has in mind follows science's lead. — Constance

Not exactly, from “On What There Is” he says “Here we have two competing conceptual schemes, a phenomenalistic one and a physicalistic one. Which should prevail? Each has its advantages; each has its special simplicity in its own way. Each, I suggest, deserves to be developed. Each may be said, indeed, to be the more fundamental, though in different senses: the one is epistemologically, the other physically, fundamental.”

Though, you are right, I would say Quine favors the later.

he first—“so much appearance, so much being”—is borrowed from the Marburg School. Over against this ambiguous proposition, owing to the double signification of the term “appearance,” we prefer this strict wording: “so much appearing, so much being.”1 The second is the principle of principles. Formulated by Husserl himself in §24 of Ideen I, it sets forth intuition or, more precisely, “that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition”2 and thus for any particularly rational statement. In the third principle, the claim is so vehement that it clothes itself in the allure of an exhortation, even a cry: “zu den Sachen selbst!” The fourth principle was defined considerably later by Jean-Luc Marion in his work Reduction and Givenness, but its importance hits upon the entirety of phenomenological development as a hidden presupposition that is always already at work. It is formulated thus: “so much reduction, so much givenness.” — Constance

What can I say but that:

This passage has an ineffable quality of sophistry

Thank you for the list!

On the other hand, Putnam, one of Quine’s heirs, wrote:
“Thus we have a paradox: at the very moment when analytic philosophy is recognized as the "dominant movement" in world philosophy, it has come to the end of its own project-the dead end, not the completion.” — Joshs

Furthermore, in one of my references on philosophy, they indicated that Husserl, toward the end of his career, wrote that the dream of putting the sciences on firm foundations was over. Rather tragic end to one who began phenomenology to put all the sciences on secure footing. Talking about a dead end

Give folk enough rope. — Banno

Indeed. I am open to evolving language; however, pragmatism, parsimony, and a sprinkle of aesthetics will put pressure on what is accepted.

The idea is to consciously dismiss presuppositions that implicitly give us the familiarity of the familiar world in a perceptual event. — Constance

Please list the presuppositions that I have to consciously dismiss that give me the familiarity of the world in a perceptual event.

No wonder anglo American philosophy is such a dead end, so busy trying to squeeze meaning our of ordinary language. Well, the world is not ordinary at all. — Constance

This may be limited characterization of Anglo American philosophy. W. V. Quine, one who belongs is such a tradition, said the following in Word and Object, "There are, however, philosophers who overdo this line of thought, treating ordinary language as sacrosanct. They exalt ordinary language to the exclusion of one of its own traits: its disposition to keep on evolving."

et my concept of "mountain" cannot be the same as anyone else's. My concept has developed over a lifetime of particular personal experiences, as is true for everyone else. A Tanzanian's concept of "mountain" must be different to an Italian's concept of "mountain". My concept of "mountain" is private and subjective, inaccessible to anyone else in the same way that my experience of the colour red is private, subjective and inaccessible to anyone else. — RussellA

Are you making a claim here? Something that is either true or false. But it can't be either by the very way it is defined. If someone's experience is private and inaccessible, how could one determine whether it is the same or different? By definition, we could not make this determination; thus, making a claim that "my concept of 'mountain' cannot be the same as anyone else's." cannot be determined to be true or false because you do not have accessibility to my experiences to compare nor do I have accessibility to yours to compare.

However, if you start using "mountain" in new or unusual ways with your fellow human being, you might begin to think that you have a different concept of "mountain".

No wonder anglo American philosophy is such a dead end, so busy trying to squeeze meaning our of ordinary language. Well, the world is not ordinary at all.

If trying to get “straight” our concepts about our shared reality is a dead end, I will enjoy the fruits as I build roads to new frontiers. If the alternative is listening to some phenomenologists talk about a privilege and private realms of deep insight, I think I might get more by learning a Gregorian chant.

As Frank Ramsey so humorous said of early Wittgenstein, "What we can't say we can't say, and we can't whistle it either."

I like to consider how later Wittgenstein might have consider "The Ineffable".

From The Blue Book(1933-34) he says, "But let's not forget that a word hasn't got a meaning given to it, as it were, by a power independent of us, so that there could be a kind of scientific investigation into what the word really means. A word has the meaning someone has given to it"

Lastly, from Philosophical Investigations, "'But you will you surely admit that there is a difference between pain-behavior accompanied by pain and pain behavior without pain?'- Admit it? What greater difference could be there be? - 'And yet you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a nothing." - Not at all. It is not a something, but not a nothing either! The conclusion was only that a nothing would serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said. We have only rejected the grammar which tries to force itself on us here. "

So, I would say there is no discovery of what "Ineffable" really means, however, we certainly can give it meaning such as "She felt ineffable joy at the sight of her children". However, if we start philosophically analyzing "Ineffable", we start going down the path of a grammar trying to force itself upon, like in the "pain" example, in which nothing could be said.

Why metaphysics is not legitimate?

Spendings time dwelling on whether “unactualizable impossibles” exist or not.

There is a world not external to anything nor internal to anything.

As the above makes clear, I don't think so. I think Hume's idea is that it's irrelevant what the source of our impressions is; however they come to mind, they are now mental phenomena, and whatever principles govern the relations among mental phenomena must be mental principles, not such principles as we imagine govern the behavior of external objects. — Srap Tasmaner

The study of physics, energy, mass, space and time, is how we make prediction of the objects around us. Not the study of mental phenomena.

Ultimately, Hume is trying to convince his perceptions that they are perception. And this demonstrates the absurdity of his position. Our starting position to understand another human being is our shared reality….tables, apples, hands….not private notions of perceptions, impressions, etc

Therefore if an AI passes the Turing test (over a very large number of conversations), it is likely that the AI can be considered to be a "brain-like system", and therefore conscious. — tom111

The problem with this conclusion starts before we even need to analyzed these theorems. Specifically, how do we define the input to show a particular system in conscious? Will any series of questions be OK? If not, then how is this going to be defined? We don't go around asking folk, “by the way are you conscious?” What would one say? Wait let me ask myself a series of questions that so called experts put together to make this determination.

I bet we can construct of series of “inputs” where we would exclude not only AI as conscious but also a good portion of humanity as well. Alternately, we could construct a series of “inputs” to encompass all of humanity and most systems, like calculators, as conscious. This does not demonstrate the need of further refinement, but to just give up this sorry attempt at defining conscious as a series of “inputs” and “outputs”.

Besides, if Jesus/Bible/St. Paul didn't do any better than scientists then why should anyone believe they are teaching divine truth? — Art48

Alternately, a believer might just say that it not “divine truth” that get us in trouble but the fallible human that gets confused.

And the main point is just because disagreement exist does not necessarily mean “divine truth” is futile.

Scientists may disagree on the meaning of experimental results, but we would not go as far to say it is futile to think that there may be a better theory or a better experiment to perform.

Anyone who has frequented religious forums has probably seen a similar discussion. Such discussions show the fatal flaw in the teaching of Jesus: sincere Christians can’t agree on what he taught and what is true doctrine. — Art48

Yeah, and you can see the same kind of discussions about quantum mechanics and what is the “true” interpretation, or is “realism”or “idealism” and which is the right metaphysical view, etc…..

And so, do we want to say this demonstrates the fatal flaw of anyone’s views and philosophies around these topics?

I think not.

Here is another thought:

There is no end at all for the self since there is no self that ends. That at each moment the individual dies because they change to a different individual.

Birth and death merge into one and thus disappear into eternity.

To say "This rock exists" is saying something about the rock. Can this same something be said of the rock of yesterday or tomorrow? — hypericin

To say “This rock exists in location X” is saying something about the rock and its location. Can this same something be said of the rock if it is move to location Y and back to location X, does it exist in location Y still?

The present is 2022 AD. I exist.

We're in the future relative to 1997. I exist.

We're in the past relative to 2060. I exist. — Agent Smith

I think all that was said was that you exist in 2022.

I make no claim to philosophical depth, but you are the one confused — hypericin

It is true, that I am confused - like if someone ask me how many touchdowns were scored in a baseball game.

This rock" merely points attention to the rock. — hypericin

And “This rock exist” does not do the same?

To say "This rock exists" is saying something about the rock. Can this same something be said of the rock of yesterday or tomorrow? — hypericin

To say “This rock exists” is saying something about the rock. But have I said anything less if I just pointed to the rock and said “This rock”. And would I say anything more if I said “This is the rock I stubbed my toe on yesterday and by the way it still exists. You mean now? No, I mean still exists in yesterday.”

This is good example of confusion disguised as deep metaphysical musings.

I find a watch upon the ground, and it so finely tuned of an object to make such precise movements, there must be a maker of such exquisite craftsmanship. And yet such a device cannot fit in my coat pocket.

Worthless!

Thus, God almost existed.

So, it seems material objects are actually theoretical constructs, i.e., ideas we experience based on our sensory input. (Some philosophers go further and claim this disproves materialism. I don’t agree. But it does reveal the epistemological basis of materialism, i.e., materialism is an ontological construct not an evident, directly experienced reality.) — Art48

Maybe we can start by agreeing that the ideas of “material object” and “sense data” are theoretical constructs. But how did we come about to learn such ideas? Let us start with “material object”. We learn to point to objects like trees and apples and teach others that we call such objects “tree” and “apple”. If we see others react to such objects and use the words “tree” and “apple”, well we have the building blocks of language. Later we can generalize a bit and call these trees and apples under the concept of “material object”.

Next, let us look at “sense data”. I think we can agree we don’t learn such a concept by pointing externally to sense data to teach others what we mean. Additionally, we don’t internally point to sense data to teach what we mean because other are not privy to this internal private act. We come up with this theoretical construct of “sense data” when we want to explain odd reporting of objects that are called hallucinations and illusions.

So looking at it this way, I would say the idea of “sense data” is more theory laden than I would say the idea of “material object”.

But I'm not talking about what practically matters. I'm talking about what matters to the philosophical questions on epistemology and ontology. We want to know if the things we see exist independently of us, and if they are (independently) as they appear to be. We want to know if a thing's appearance justifies any claims we make about what that thing is (independently) like. If you're not interested in these questions then by all means ignore them, but if you are then you can't address them simply by arguing that "I see a tree" is the conventional way to speak in English, and this seems to be where so many in this discussion get lost. — Michael

I think we both would agree that Pragmatism is consider a philosophical approach that was expressed in the 19th and 20th century by philosophers such as C. Peirce, W. James, and J. Dewey. These philosophers dealt with these very issues that are being discussed in this post. For example, Peirce asked his readers to consider the following: what is wrong with the following theory, a diamond is actually soft, and only becomes hard when it is touched. Peirce thought there is no way of disproving it; however, he claimed that the meaning of a concept (such as "Diamond" or "Hard") is derived from the object or quality that the concept relates to and the effects it has on our senses. Whether we think of the diamond as "soft until touched" or "always hard" before our experience, therefore, is irrelevant. Under both theories the diamond feels the same, and can be used in the same way. However, the first theory is far more difficult to work with, so of less value.

Pragmatism. Ordinary Language philosophers, and Logical Positivist are philosophical traditions that have attempted to delineate what is meaningful vs what is non-sense. So, what is discussed in epistemology and ontology is fair game. We all learn words like "independent", "appears", "exist" in the ordinary course of life. However, if one takes the ordinary concepts and starts putting a metaphysical spin to them; followers of aforementioned traditions start to smell something fishy. Now I am sympathetic to the idea that one can treat ordinary language a bit sacrosanct and not appreciate its disposition to keep evolving (as Quine so nicely put). But like evolution, ideas will survive or perish, and one of driving forces that picks a winner would be the practical value it has upon the human beings that use them.

What matters is whether or not things independently have the shapes, colours, sounds, tastes, and smells that they are perceived to have and as they are perceived to be. — Michael

This is strange statement that what matters is whether or not things independently have shapes….that they are perceived to have. Why should one worry about such a thing. If I look at what appears to be an apple and grab it, smell it, cut it, and taste it, and by all indication it is an apple. What error am I concerned about making in this scenario. My biological apparatus did a good job of picking out an object to nourish myself. What matters is if another human being has difficulties picking out such an object and what scientific/medical discoveries have be made to help that human being correct their biological apparatus to make better judgements about the external world around them. Additionally, if my apparatus is functioning as expected but I am fooled somehow that what appears to be an apple turns out not to be, and it becomes a consistent problem, well it may be time to do some creative thinking and come up with new detection method to help screen out the false positives.