how do I get to the present when the past is the very essence of "knowing" it is there at all? — Constance

Do not think. Thinking involves past and future. Just be there. Be aware. Observe. Perceive. This is the only way to be in the present. — Alkis Piskas

In terms of the Kierkegaard use of the term "Eternity" Constance has made reference to, the Moment that is possible to participate in that sense is not the same as the result of stilling the mind or getting the "monkey mind to stop chattering." If time is imagined as a river, that would be letting the current carry one along to find out what not pulling the oars is like.

The matter of agency in The Concept of Anxiety requires the Single Individual to become responsible for what happens that thrusts them into the immediacy of their decisions as actual events.
The encounter is outside the bounds of the psychology we use to understand experience.

Whether you agree or not, the basic idea is old and has little to do with who's best at reading a dog's mind.

Being stands out against non-being.

It's the the answer to the question you asked. — frank

It's an empirical claim is it not? Where is the empirical proof? My observations inform me otherwise.

It's an empirical claim is it not? Where is the empirical proof? My observations inform me otherwise. — Hanover

Which claim?

I don't know what an "empirical claim" is. There are claims. Justifications can be empirical. It's kind of rare for a claim to be justified entirely empirically. We usually like some logic in the mix.

The matter of agency in The Concept of Anxiety requires the Single Individual to become responsible for what happens that thrusts them into the immediacy of their decisions as actual events.
The encounter is outside the bounds of the psychology we use to understand experience. — Valentinus

Yes. The freedom one experiences requires a transformation of elevated consciousness, which brings sin into the world, for prior to the positing of spirit, one is not capable of sin. Of course, K rejects the rather common Lutheran notion of original sin as some horrible, unspeakable transgression committed by Adam (see the Smallcald articles that K refers to). He gives an existential, that is, phenomenologically descriptive account of why it is we are born to suffer and die. It is rooted in Augustine: it is our alienation from God, the absence of God in our affairs, and this absence is there, in the analysis of time, for to be more this world's than God's is exactly what it is to devoted to culture and its indulgences, which are inherited and possessed in recollection, what K thought "Christendom" encouraged.

Kierkegaard can be, of course, off putting with his Bible talk, but The Concept of Anxiety is a cornerstone of existential thought in its temporal analysis of freedom. It altogether bypasses the principle of sufficient cause as a refutation to freedom.What I want to say is that when I stand before my future in full sight of my possibilities, I stand apart of what would spontaneously set me to action, and in this no cause possesses me. Now this crossroads of will and sufficient cause cannot conclude in a violation of causality, because this principle is intuitively inviolable. But as I see it, this is not the point. The point is, when you make this qualitative leap from spontaneous action to deliberative action at the philosophical level, where the totality of existence is brought to a stand still, that is, you stand not simply before this or that possibility in some categorical determination, but before all possibilities, before Being itself, you suspend all that makes this world the familiar place that it is, and Inquiry has no possibiities before it, for there is only the eternal present, free of decision making. K calls the one can do this a knight of faith. For me, it is an extraordinary event, to stand before Being as such and make the world stand still. This is where philosophy is supposed to take us.

This should sound familiar, because it is something Eastern mysticism has been talking about for centuries.

How then do you explain a dog's ability to recognize the names of 1022 items, replete with a capacity to "categorize them according to function and shape"? Less extraordinary, border collies are notorious for knowing such things as their left from their right in herding sheep per the instructions of their caregiver. All this requires a good deal of conceptual contextualization regarding what sounds symbolize - with no language production on their part.

Heck, my own dog recognizes the difference between "go inside" and "go outside", be this the house, a specific room, or the car. A very abstract idea that is very relative to context. And this without any formal training; hence, no formal punishment and reward. — javra

You know, that is a very good point. So a well trained dog cannot, I think we can agree, produce an internal dialog. Sparky can't think, "Well, Jane is sleeping and I wish she would get up and put some food in the bowl. It was the same last week, I mean why own a dog if you're not going to......" There is no concept of time and space, no prepositional constructions, no conditional, negations that can be explicitly spoken internally. But: they do have familiarity that reaches conscious awareness; but then again, do they? When you say, "Let's go outside" does outside mean outside, or is it just a Pavlovian reaction? Of course, they feel good in this activity, bad in that one and they do make the connection between verbal noises and activities, they can anticipate. But is this knowledge?
Depends on what you mean by the term, of course. We say Sparky knows this and that, but we are being loose with this epistemic term. Safe to say, Sparky has no conceptual knowledge. But perhaps he has, and I suspect this si true, some kind of proto linguistic grasp of things. We have the conditional propositional form, and Sparky certainly follows events following other events.

Safe to say, Sparky has no conceptual knowledge. — Constance

Do you mean by this “knowledge by acquaintance of abstract ideas” or “propositional knowledge”. I of course agree they don’t have the latter. But, in the example I linked to, to categorize items by function and by shape demonstrates an acquaintance with abstract ideas, i.e. the awareness of concepts. Outside and inside are themselves abstract ideas addressing a relation between an enclosed space affixed to a relatively opened space and the directionality between these. But I think the example I linked to carries more weight. I by examples such as this conclude that language is not necessary for the apprehension of concepts.

...religion is a philosophical matter, and the reason this idea sounds counterintuitive is that philosophy, in the minds of many or most, has no place in the dark places where language cannot go, but this is a Kantian/Wittgensteinian (Heidegger, too, of course; though he takes steps....) legacy that rules out impossible thinking, and it is here where philosophy has gone so very wrong: Philosophy is an empty vessel unless it takes on the the original encounter with the world, which is prior to language, and yet, IN language, for language is in the world. Philosophy's end, point, that is, is threshold enlightenment, not some foolish anal retentive need for positivism's clarity. — Constance

Words of truth and beauty, to be sure. We need the language, though, for without language, philosophy is bound within the individual experience. After having contemplated the boundary of understanding, and having discerned "the idea", one will inevitably find that language fails, that the lemmas simply do not exist for sharing with another. So, in the lack of adequate linguistic invention, we equivocate, and all is lost...

The Moment that is possible to participate in that sense is not the same as the result of stilling the mind ... — Valentinus

Sorry, I can't get this ... "the Moment" and "the result of stilling the mind" are two things of totally different kind. One refers to time and the other to mental activity. How can these be compared?

The matter of agency in The Concept of Anxiety ... — Valentinus

Sorry again. You lost me.

I said a very simple thing and which can be applied by anyone and on the spot. How have you managed to make it so complicate? :smile:

Sorry, I can't get this ... "the Moment" and "the result of stilling the mind" are two things of totally different kind. One refers to time and the other to mental activity. How can these be compared? — Alkis Piskas

I was referring to the "Moment" in the way Kierkegaard uses it in talking about time and our experience of it. I don't want to derail the thread over the matter by quoting chunks of The Concept of Anxiety

but this gives a snap shot of his thinking:

The life which is in time and is merely that of time has no present. It is true
that to characterize the sensuous life it is commonly said that it is ' in the
instant' and only in the instant. The instant is here understood as some-
thing abstracted from the eternal, and if this is to be accounted from the
present, it is a parody of it. The present is the eternal, or rather the eternal
is the present, and the present is full. (CD 77-78; VI, 175) — Translated by Lowrie

I brought it up because it is central to what Constance is proposing and different from the notion of the present as what is experienced when one "stops thinking."

I said a very simple thing and which can be applied by anyone and on the spot. How have you managed to make it so complicate? :smile: — Alkis Piskas

Well, I have been fired from some jobs for doing that. I don't know if it is an art, in the Socratic sense, or simply a knack.

The paradox you mention is between logic and the actuality. If you go by Hegel, then the real's rational nature is only imperfectly realized in our current Zeit Geist: it approaches perfection in God's self realization, and because we see only as our unevolved reason permits, contradictions rise up. But all this is awaiting so sort of divine completion in which contradictions fall away. So, all relations do have the stamp of paradox, for one can easily find contradictions everywhere since knowledge falls apart with inquiry at the basic level. This is what, by Hegel's standard, contingency is all about: the imperfection of realizing God's perfect rationality.
Hegel was essentially on your side because he agreed that reaosn in the abstract had no great value. Kant's pure reason is not very important here. What is important is the way reason grapples with what is given, making science what it is. Hegel doesn't separate things from reason: they are parts of the same grand disclosure of Truth in God.
I think Hegel is interesting. Continental philosophers take him seriously (though not as he would like); analytic philosophers don't talk about him except in philosophy history classes. You have to go through Kierkegaard: reason and objects are qualitatively completely different. To me this goes directly to ethics: That pain in your side where you were assaulted with a baseball bat: THIS is rational?? No. It has nothing to do with reason. — Constance

Well, I don’t assume a singular progression of time as Hegel does, so for me the paradox isn’t between logic and actuality, but between the possibility of an absolute (rather than ‘perfect’) rationality and/or energy source. Is one a ‘beginning’ and the other an ‘end’, a telos? Or perhaps this is a balanced ternary logic (-, 0, +), qualitatively imagined?

Kierkegaard, on the other hand, assumes a perfectly rational singularity (God), so your jump to ethics in his relation to Hegel makes sense. Everything evolves according to Hegel, so reason in his abstraction cannot realise this eternal rationality (pure reason) that Kierkegaard assumes. Nor can it, in Kierkegaard’s subjective philosophy, ever determine the ethical rationality (practical reason) that Hegel assumes.

Pain has a quality that directs energy away from logic and towards action. It isn’t that it has nothing to do with reason. Rather, we assume an inner logic - an embodied rationality - in order to determine a qualitative (outward) distribution of energy (as attention and effort). The way I see it, reason ranges qualitatively from pure logic to pure energy.

This dualism of inner in relation to outer system is unavoidable, but the structure is highly variable. Kierkegaard’s system logically assumes God in order to describe subjectivity: qualitative judgements of affected experience. Hegel’s embodied system, on the other hand, assumes an unlimited process or source of energy (the progress of history) to describe a dialectic: manifesting past experiences of logical contradiction. With Hegel, it seems there can be no synthesis without a process of dissolving identification (thesis/antithesis), from which we then reconstruct history as a new dialectic develops.

I don't know if it is an art, in the Socratic sense — Valentinus

I don't know what is art "in a Socratic sense" ... I only know that Socrates was crystal clear in his arguments! I was 12, I had not a clue about philosophy and I could still understand him! :grin:

religion is a philosophical matter, and the reason this idea sounds counterintuitive is that philosophy, in the minds of many or most, has no place in the dark places where language cannot go, but this is a Kantian/Wittgensteinian (Heidegger, too, of course; though he takes steps....) legacy that rules out impossible thinking, and it is here where philosophy has gone so very wrong: Philosophy is an empty vessel unless it takes on the the original encounter with the world, which is prior to language, and yet, IN language, for language is in the world. Philosophy's end, point, that is, is threshold enlightenment, not some foolish anal retentive need for positivism's clarity. — Constance

Words of truth and beauty, to be sure. We need the language, though, for without language, philosophy is bound within the individual experience. After having contemplated the boundary of understanding, and having discerned "the idea", one will inevitably find that language fails, that the lemmas simply do not exist for sharing with another. So, in the lack of adequate linguistic invention, we equivocate, and all is lost... — Michael Zwingli

In the end, philosophy is supposed to be practical. We forget that in our academic pursuit of a theory of everything, a philosophical description of reality. Where language fails us, it is our own embodied relation that ultimately completes the structure of reality. It’s what’s missing from every written philosophy.

You know, that is a very good point. So a well trained dog cannot, I think we can agree, produce an internal dialog. Sparky can't think, "Well, Jane is sleeping and I wish she would get up and put some food in the bowl. It was the same last week, I mean why own a dog if you're not going to......" There is no concept of time and space, no prepositional constructions, no conditional, negations that can be explicitly spoken internally. But: they do have familiarity that reaches conscious awareness; but then again, do they? When you say, "Let's go outside" does outside mean outside, or is it just a Pavlovian reaction? Of course, they feel good in this activity, bad in that one and they do make the connection between verbal noises and activities, they can anticipate. But is this knowledge?
Depends on what you mean by the term, of course. We say Sparky knows this and that, but we are being loose with this epistemic term. Safe to say, Sparky has no conceptual knowledge. But perhaps he has, and I suspect this si true, some kind of proto linguistic grasp of things. We have the conditional propositional form, and Sparky certainly follows events following other events. — Constance

Dogs seem to have a more qualitative sense of the world. Our verbal expressions are like promises and threats: they have qualitative value, potential and significance for Sparky. They’re not understood (I think this fits better than known) according to objects in spacetime, but according to qualitative relations of embodied experience. When you say ‘let’s go outside’, they understand quality in the ideas you’re expressing: the arrangement of shapes and sounds in “let’s go” have an immediately inviting, inclusive quality to it; while “outside” has a more distant and variable quality related to possible smells, textures and tastes.

Which claim?

I don't know what an "empirical claim" is. There are claims. Justifications can be empirical. It's kind of rare for a claim to be justified entirely empirically. We usually like some logic in the mix. — frank

For one, the claim was that a dog doesn't know what "no" means. It is an empirical claim, meaning you are asserting a synthetic fact, claiming to know something about dogs. We know things about dogs by observing dogs and gathering data about dogs. I want to know what it is specifically that has been gathered about dogs that draws you to that conclusion. I realize that reason will be imposed upon your data. I wasn't arguing for some type of hyper exclusive empiricism.

I do wonder, though, whether the claims made about the limitations of what a non-linguistic entity may know really are just analytic claims about what propositional knowledge is. If we assume propositional knowledge refers only to the linguistic understanding of a sentence, it would be logically impossible for a non-linguistic entity to possess such knowledge. My position is not that, but it's that propositional knowledge is that knowledge that can be reduced to language, but the underlying content of the proposition pre-exists the language and exists separately from it, thus allowing the non-linguistic entity the ability to possess that knowledge.

That is, are you saying "a dog doesn't know what 'no' means"? or are you saying "a dog cannot know what 'no' means"? If the former, we have an empirical dispute and need to do research. If the latter, we have a logical problem regarding what "know" means.

We forget that in our academic pursuit of a theory of everything, a philosophical description of reality. Where language fails us, it is our own embodied relation that ultimately completes the structure of reality. — Possibility

:pray:

With or without "Bible talk", what Kierkegaard is calling for is theological in so far that it tries to locate an individual life in the ultimate conditions of its existence. Up to the point of recognizing the limits of language in carrying out actions, the view is in step with what described as "meaning is doing"

But Kierkegaard still has things to discuss and wants to develop a psychology that understands what it cannot understand. I am not sure how that difference between Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard relates to the philosophy you are calling for.

Do you mean by this “knowledge by acquaintance of abstract ideas” or “propositional knowledge”. I of course agree they don’t have the latter. But, in the example I linked to, to categorize items by function and by shape demonstrates an acquaintance with abstract ideas, i.e. the awareness of concepts. Outside and inside are themselves abstract ideas addressing a relation between an enclosed space affixed to a relatively opened space and the directionality between these. But I think the example I linked to carries more weight. I by examples such as this conclude that language is not necessary for the apprehension of concepts. — javra

Or perhaps better: Language as we know it in our complex symbolic dealings in logic and math, is not qualitatively distinct from what Sparky does when retrieving toys and such. That is, when I do modus ponens, an analogous structure can be found in Sparky's mind as he singles out circles from other things. Consider a pragmatist's theory of knowledge: it is the conditional structure that is truly at the foundation of knowldge about the world, or anything else. IF I hear, see this noise, these squiggles on paper, THEN something occurs with regularity. What is nitro glycerin? The answer goes to its forward looking meaning: IF X impacts a surface of resistance Y, in a given quantity and velocity, and IF X has certain properties (all analytically reducible to if...then...epistemic terms), then X is nitro. Properties? How does one "know" a property? Through its association with a symbolic designation, like a noise (signifier), such that IF I observe properties P (that furry moving organic thing), signifier S (a phonemic noise like 'dog') "works" to carry meaning.

Anyway, I do think our complex symbolic systems are essentially pragmatic, like a dog's relatively simple "cognition". And when the dog responds to spoken words, it shows basic conditional thinking. When you say he is aware of concepts, I think this means he is pragmatically aware, and this is true of all animals, that is, aware that some X follows from some P. To say this is Pavlovian is not to diminish what he does. We are Pavlovian, too.

Interesting: language, Derrida says, is a symbolic "standing in" for something else, separating thought from the what thought is supposed to be about. I think Sparky's training is the first step toward the creation of an internal world, set apart from things.

Just some musings really.

For one, the claim was that a dog doesn't know what "no" means — Hanover

I claimed that they don't understand negation. The "no" command is not an example of that.

I do wonder, though, whether the claims made about the limitations of what a non-linguistic entity may know really are just analytic claims about what propositional knowledge is. — Hanover

I think you've repeated this three times now, which is bad luck. I think you actually want to argue with the person who, in response to the notion that we think without speech, asks for an example of this cast in language.

I'm not that person, sorry.

I claimed that they don't understand negation. The "no" command is not an example of that. — frank

You're saying he couldn't generalize the comment of "no" to mean to do the opposite of what the affirmative comment is? If that's all you're saying, then I'll agree you're probably right, but that has to do with the level that dogs can conceptualize things. That isn't to say dogs don't understand language or that it means that if they did fully understand language he'd be able to figure out what you meant. It just means dogs have limits to understanding. I could probably teach my dog to gather 1 bone, 2 bones, or 3 bones, showing a full understanding of number concepts 1, 2 and 3. I'd probably lose him if I asked him to gather two times the number of bones that he had feet. I'm not sure that's a language issue though.

A five year old can't do calculus, despite having access to language.

You're saying he couldn't generalize the comment of "no" to mean to do the opposite of what the affirmative comment is? If that's all you're saying, then I'll agree you're probably right, but that has to do with the level that dogs can conceptualize things. — Hanover

Yes. And with that limitation on conceptualization, their behavior is probably more a matter of empathy and conditioning rather than analysis.

Or perhaps better: Language as we know it in our complex symbolic dealings in logic and math, is not qualitatively distinct from what Sparky does when retrieving toys and such. — Constance

Very much in agreement here. I like to think of it as there being no metaphysical division between human cognition and that of lesser beings ... only a gradation of magnitude. Principles of thought such as that of identity and of noncontradiction may not be cognized by lesser animals (nor children) but all life makes use of them to the extent that life experiences and then both acts and reacts relative to that experienced. Its hard to properly justify this, though it seems self-evident to me. And this degree of cognition, of course, becomes exponentially greater in adult humans in large part due to our capacity to manipulate symbols to a vastly greater extent, with human language as the prime example, so as to further abstract from more basic concepts. At any rate, enjoyed reading your views.

As an aside, having skimmed through some of this thread, as with @Alkis Piskas, I very much equate "the Word" not with human language but with Heraclitus's, and later the Stoic's, notion of logos. Heraclitus's can be confusing, but the Stoics more directly equated the logos to the Anima Mundi, the operative or animating principle of the world. Here, to keep to the previous examples, Sparky is as much of the logos as is his human caregiver ... as is anything that is part of the cosmos. I know, its a more mystical-ish reading of Genesis 1, but "In the beginning was the logos (the Anima Mundi and all it entails)" makes sense to me, whereas "in the beginning was the one linguistic term produced by some omni-this-and-that person" ... not so much. While I get we're not strung up on mythologies:

No language, no logos, for language is the bearer of logos, — Constance

I find that: no logos (e.g., no Stoic anima mundi, including its metaphysical laws of thought), no human language, for human language is dependent on such things as laws of thought which are themselves intrinsic to the logos / the anima mundi.

These being my own passing musings.

But the issue here has nothing to do with Rovelli or physics. Philosophy is not physics, nor is it abstract speculation. Think of eternity, for example, but withdraw from assumptions that are in place in the everydayness of affairs (of which science is an extension) and move into a more basic analysis, which is the structure of experience itself. The issue of time is fundamentally different, for time at this level is what is presupposed in talk about Einstein's time. Has nothing to do with physicists being wring and phenomenologists right; rather, these are modes of inquiry radically different from one anothe — Constance

Are they all that different though? Science informs philosophy and philosophy informs science. I’m not talking about Einstein’s time (and neither is Rovelli, although he starts there), but about what is presupposed. And it’s this presupposition that is explored in the second part of Rovelli’s book.

Philosophy, I am claiming, is where thought goes when the world exceeds all paradigmatic categories. Heidegger wrote Being and Time just to go here, to the place where thinking meets its terminal point and explanations run out. But (and this is a crucial idea) instead of thinking like a scientist and dismiss what is not known as something always coming, waiting to but constructed conceptually, theoretically, which is an essential part of Heidegger, where Heidegger looks for some primordial language that has been occluded by centuries of bad metaphysics, I claim the reduction to something primordial and profound lies in Wittgenstein;s eternal present. Put Rovelli aside, pick up Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety.

Again, NOT at all that Rovelli (I read a synopsis) is in any way wrong, but the terms of analysis are very different. Time, its past, present and future, are here features of the experience that is already in place antecedent to what a physicist might say. (Einstein knew this. He read Kant when very young. He just knew he wasn't going to take on philosophical issues). — Constance

I think you’re presuming that I’m deferring to scientific methodology, but this is far from the case. I’m certainly not proposing that we ‘dismiss what is not known’. And I don’t think you can so confidently assume you know what a physicist might say (just how many interpretations of quantum theory are there?) or how all scientists think. I recognise that the terms are often different - but I’m not looking for analysis (and neither is Rovelli in his book), rather coherence. So I don’t seek to understand the primordial or profound as a reduction to ‘something’, but more as the simplest totality of existence.

My recommendation of a book (and your evaluation of its synopsis) is not wholly indicative of my position. The way I see it, Rovelli’s process of deconstructing time as we understand it leads us effectively to Wittgenstein’s eternal present: living in a world without time, consisting of interrelating events (phenomena).

If we do not assume a priori that we know what the order of time is, if we do not, that is, presuppose that it is the linear and universal order that we are accustomed to, Anaximander’s exhortation remains valid: we understand the world by studying change, not by studying things....We understand the world in its becoming, not in its being. — Carlo Rovelli

His more recent book ‘Helgoland’ leads us beyond that point to the relational structure of reality. That he does this from the perspective of quantum physics demonstrates the symmetry at work here. These, for me, are checks and balances to ensure we’re on the right track. But they also suggest that assuming reduction to a singular primordial ‘something’ may be holding us back. Physicists, for the most part, are looking for the source of energy; theologians are looking for the source of quality; while philosophers are looking for the source of logic. The answer, I think, is at the intersection of all three. Where Wittgenstein defers to silence is where we must look to a broader understanding of energy and quality, beyond their logical concepts. Too many philosophers won’t venture here.

What is this, that, and questions are not simply playful antagomisms, but are indicative of the indeterminacy of language (something Willard Quine famously wrote about; and he hated deconstruction...while agreeing!) Concepts are, all of them, open. So what happens, I ask here, when the broadest concept imaginable, Being, stands in openness? THIS is an extraordinary event, to allow the entire conceptual edifice to be "suspended". My claim is that if this is done faithfully, allowing openness its full due, then the world qualitatively changes, for there is no longer any conceptual recourse, no body language into which one can retreat, no "totality" that can subsume all things, for one has breached into eternity.

Energy? Why not shakti, or Brahman? Or thathata? Of course, these terms have different meanings, all of them, but note something important: When Hindus and Buddhists use vocabulary like this, they are understanding the world as it appears, mixed with thought and affect; cognition is not separated from these and objects in the world. How does one privilege ideas in a system like this? According to meaning, and affect is no longer a marginalized phenomenon. It takes center stage in ontology. And saying something like God is Love no longer is just a romantic foolishness. — Constance

Ok, I think I’m (almost) with you now. What you’re describing here - a system structured according to meaning, with affect at the centre and ‘God is Love’ making genuine sense - for me constitutes a six-dimensional qualitative awareness. Your expression of it here is the closest to my understanding of this that I’ve read, so thank you. It is here that I find the triadic relation of energy, quality and logic - not as linguistic concepts but as ideas - also makes the most sense.

Incidentally, my reference to Rovelli is a grounding that for me prevents the tendency to separate thought and affect, cognition and objects. It’s more effective than what I currently understand of phenomenology - but I’m getting there, slowly...

but the Stoics more directly equated the logos to the Anima Mundi, the operative or animating principle of the world — javra

This is quite interesting!
You don't mean Anima Mundi logos like this one, do you?


Just a joke! :grin:
(BTW, you can find many such AM logos. But I have chosen this one as most interesting, because the letters complex also contains the letter 'Λ' (Greek capital lamda, 'L'), which can be said to represent "Logos"! Only this is a coincidence; they don't know that! :smile:)

I found about Anima Mundi and logos at https://thesaurus.plus/related/anima_mundi/logos . I know Stoics quite well, but I don't remember this data. (Well, there are a lot of things I don't remember about them today! :smile: )
It's great that you brought up this! :up: Thanks!

because the letters complex also contains the letter 'Λ' — Alkis Piskas

It was the first one I noticed. Before I read it stands for Animus Mundi... :smile:

Clever ... for a non-Greek! :smile:

Well, I don’t assume a singular progression of time as Hegel does, so for me the paradox isn’t between logic and actuality, but between the possibility of an absolute (rather than ‘perfect’) rationality and/or energy source. Is one a ‘beginning’ and the other an ‘end’, a telos? Or perhaps this is a balanced ternary logic (-, 0, +), qualitatively imagined? — Possibility

But why this absolute rationality taking center stage? Rationalism and telos is always a bankrupt idea because reason has no value, that is, a rational perfection refers to form, structure of thought only and carries no weight beyond this. Just an empty vessel, reason. It is only when something in the world is in play that purpose and meaning are brought in. This is why I insist on a qualitative "leap" into a deeper understanding of the world that philosophy can uncover. My tentative claim is that language and its logic is only pragmatically meaningful: its mission, if you will, is to realize value, and this puts the burden of meaning on aesthetics. The Good, Wittgenstein said, is what he calls divinity. He is not talking about contingent goodness, but something profound he thinks is above language. Of course, he was right and wrong about this.

Kierkegaard, on the other hand, assumes a perfectly rational singularity (God), so your jump to ethics in his relation to Hegel makes sense. Everything evolves according to Hegel, so reason in his abstraction cannot realise this eternal rationality (pure reason) that Kierkegaard assumes. Nor can it, in Kierkegaard’s subjective philosophy, ever determine the ethical rationality (practical reason) that Hegel assumes. — Possibility

You would have to tell me why you think K thinks like this. He doesn't hold those things.

Pain has a quality that directs energy away from logic and towards action. It isn’t that it has nothing to do with reason. Rather, we assume an inner logic - an embodied rationality - in order to determine a qualitative (outward) distribution of energy (as attention and effort). The way I see it, reason ranges qualitatively from pure logic to pure energy. — Possibility

This is why one has to, if the interest is in getting to the real foundation of what being a human being is about, look to what is prior to this kind of talk. Of course, not historically prior, but logically prior, something prior because it is assumed, and sits invisibly, because uninquired, at the base of all inquiry and discussion: always, already in the presuppositions of anything that can be brought up for theory and discussion. I'm talking about the foundational place of language to the world. I have been arguing that beneath anything we say there is the impossible unutterable noumena which is not outside of experience at all. Phenomena are actually noumenal entities. But what makes something noumenal? It is not that it is beyond language, but rather, only beyond language in its, to speak Hegelese, Zeitgeist, which actually reflects Kierkegaard's concept of sin. Sin (but put aside the Christian thinking here) is essentially being possessed by culture, but the manner of conceiving of sin is important: It is an existential break from something primordial. Heidegger will later dismiss K's religiousness, but move forward with this "break" saying K is right, we in our normal assimilated ways of living according to "the they" which is the thoughts that circulate so freely and dominate throughout society in the form of given institutions and ideas, are out of touch with something deeply important. He thinks there is some nonalienated original condition.
Thus, pain is, prior to being taken up in science, in evolutionary theory, in talk about energy, or "moving away from logic toward action," I am saying, given to us as a conditioned term, blunted by language's tendency bring all things down to a familiar level (they they, or das man, as Heideggger puts it). Language makes us forget, reduces the world to familar terms. We don't think this is so because we are IN this zeitgeist, and it takes philosophy to see it.

This is where philosophy has to take us if it wants foundational meanings to appear. And there is no where else philosophy wants to go.

This dualism of inner in relation to outer system is unavoidable, but the structure is highly variable. Kierkegaard’s system logically assumes God in order to describe subjectivity: qualitative judgements of affected experience. Hegel’s embodied system, on the other hand, assumes an unlimited process or source of energy (the progress of history) to describe a dialectic: manifesting past experiences of logical contradiction. With Hegel, it seems there can be no synthesis without a process of dissolving identification (thesis/antithesis), from which we then reconstruct history as a new dialectic develops. — Possibility

One has to be careful with Kierkegaard, making him sound like a rationalist. It is not that he thinks God is logically assumed, but that God is conceived as an actuality that is intimated in childhood, and realized (bringing in sin by this) later as an incompleteness that is evidenced by the calling, the existential anxiety which is realized int eh fateful moment when a person reaches self awareness and affirms this incompleteness in her existence. It is an existential dialectic, not a logical one. Of course, Hegel never thought empty logic was of any value, but to say "the real is rational" affirms God's rationality, and K will have nothing to do with this. My take on K has reason trying to deal with something entirely outside of reason because reason attempts to embody, encompass, "totalize" the world by bringing all things to heel.

I think you're right about Kierkegaard and Hegel, essentially.

My take on K has reason trying to deal with something entirely outside of reason because reason attempts to embody, encompass, "totalize" the world by bringing all things to heel. — Constance

Whatever else one might want to say about Kierkegaard, your description captures his rejection of Hegel fair and square.

No, I'm not saying that either. I am saying something that is frankly radical, but true. Observe the cat. In this observation there is a conceptual counterpart to the "presence" of what is there, and by presence I refer to what is not spoken, or speakable. Moore called ethics a matter, at the level of metaethics, of a non natural property. He was referring to, if you will, the qualia of pain and pleasure (and internal prohibition and valuation) Think, as Kierkegaard did, of the actuality over there on the sofa like this: in the broadest sense, it is an actuality that is qualitatively NOT a cognitive presence as an actuality. We, says Wittgenstein, bring meaning (and ethics and aesthetics) into the world, and take up the whatever it is there on t he couch as a cat, that way we can anticipate it when we see it, "know" about its possibilities, etc. This is what a thought is, a forward looking apprehension. BUT: the moment of apprehension is seized by knowledge in the forward looking event. If knowledge, this forward looking affair, can be put down, like a Buddhist or a Hindu puts down experience in deep meditation, or, via jnana yoga (philosophy), the world becomes a revelation--something altogether new comes to light. — Constance

I've come back to your three long replies several times, trying to work out a suitable response.

But I've just no clear idea of what your point is.

The quote above is by way of an example, a puzzle that doesn't seem worth solving.

If you do not think something is worth addressing, what is the point of saying that?
Why put down the inconsequential as you see it? Should not that all take care of itself?

It wasn't a putdown so much as a request for clarification.