@Fooloso4 and @Wayfarer

Please read these comments as those of a novice who is trying to understand (everything I say or write seems to come across as being critical). I have never got much from Plato and have always felt I was missing something (I guess at least I am not one of those who thinks they "have discovered some wonderful secret").

In the Phaedrus Socrates explains why he never wrote:

[E]very [written] speech rolls around everywhere, both among those who understand and among those for whom it is not fitting, and it does not know to whom it ought to speak and to whom not. (275d-e)

Plato's writing must be read in light of this problem. In other words, it must conceal itself from those for whom it is not fitting who read the book. The wily Plato does this by leading the reader to believe that he, the reader, has discovered some wondrous secret known only to those few who have ascended from the darkness of our ignorance to the light of truth. — Fooloso4

So "it" can't be written or shouldn't be written?

I am sure I am one of those for "whom it is not fitting", but what would be the danger in writing it?

This reminds me of people who defend the science of the bible by saying that god explained it in a way that people who lived back then would understand. Why wouldn't he (god) or they (socrates, plato, etc) just write the truth and when people are capable of grasping it, they will know it is correct? I can't see the danger?

Speaking of which, do you know the etymology of the Hindu word ‘Upaniṣad’? It means ‘sitting up close’, referring to the relationship between guru and chela (disciple), which is taken to imply that the teaching of the Upaniṣads was transmitted directly from one to the other. I think that’s exactly the principle that is being expressed by this ‘concealment’ - lest these matters of high philosophical import be seized upon by the hoi pollloi, to create something awful (like modern Western ‘culture’. ;-) ) — Wayfarer

This seems evidence that they might as well let the "truth" out, as the world just gets messed up anyway? Or is the modern world a mess due to mis-reading philosophy?

Or is the modern world a mess due to mis-reading philosophy? — ZhouBoTong

These are all deep and difficult questions and open to very different kinds of answers.

There's a political reading of Plato, which concentrates on the political implications of his philosophy. I think that is the most usual reading in today's culture.

But there's also 'the spiritual Plato' which was much emphasized by the adoption of Platonic principles by the early Christian theologians.

Each will give very different answers.

A traditionalist reading would probably answer 'yes' to your above question. So in that reading, what is preserved in writing is only one facet of a text, there is a kind of hidden meaning, or a meaning which is only able to be interpreted correctly by one who is suitably prepared.

Recall that above the gateway of the Academy, there was an admonishment, 'let nobody who is unlearned in geometry enter here'. In some ways, the Academy was almost like a guild or a secret society. Indeed that aspect of Plato is why Karl Popper regarded Plato as an enemy of 'the open society'. (It's no co-incidence that there's a relationship between philosophical traditionalism and reactionary political movements, as according to traditionalism modernity is basically a corrupt form of culture doomed to self-destruct (about which see Against the Modern World, Mark Sedgwick.)

However I was searching around recently for other interpretations of Plato and found this blog post. The blog owner says she is a professor of philosophy and published author, which I can't vouch for, but I favour the general drift of the interpretation given there. Also check out Lloyd Gerson's lecture, Platonism vs Naturalism.

What do you think was behind Husserl’s contention that ‘Galileo was at once a discovering and concealing genius?’ What exactly was ‘concealed’ by Galileo’s new science? — Wayfarer

I think what Husserl meant was that Gallleo took for granted, as a 'ready-made truth', the ideality of geometric concepts. Thus , he established an approach resulting from the invention of "a
particular technique, the geometrical and Galilean technique which is called physics. " What was concealed from Galileo was the practical activities of the life-world making possible the abstractions of modern science.


"In his view of the world from the perspective of geometry, the perspective of what appears to
the senses and is mathematizable, Galileo abstracts from the subjects as persons leading a personal life; he abstracts from all that is in any way spiritual, from all cultural properties which are attached to things in human praxis. The result of this abstraction is the things purely as bodies; but these are taken as concrete real objects, the totality of which makes up a world which becomes the subject matter of research. One can truly say that the idea of nature as a really self-enclosed world of bodies
first emerges with Galileo. A consequence of this, along with mathematization, which was too quickly taken for granted, is [the idea of] a self-enclosed natural causality in which every occurrence is determined unequivocally and in advance. Clearly the way is thus prepared for dualism, which appears immediately afterward in Descartes.
In general we must realize that the conception of the new idea of "nature" as an encapsuled, really and theoretically self-enclosed world of bodies soon brings about a complete transformation of the idea of the world in general. The world splits, so to speak, into two worlds: nature and the psychic world, although the latter, because of the way in which it is related to nature, does not achieve the status of an independent world. The ancients had individual investigations and theories about bodies,
but not a closed world of bodies as subject matter of a universal science of nature. They also had investigations of the human and the animal soul, but they could not have a psychology in the
modern sense, a psychology which, because it had universal nature and a science of nature before it [as a model], could strive for a corresponding universality, i.e., within a similarly self-enclosed
field of its own."

What was concealed from Galileo was the practical activities of the life-world making possible the abstractions of modern science. — Joshs

I mean, you could say that, or you could say that in general Kantian considerations are practically useless in modelling nature. The subject was never in the way of the world. Phenomenology seeking a primordial realm of practical coping, or the application of conceptual schemes, which renders scientific thinking derivative of that understanding will always miss that the subject is of the world and the world is of nature. The transparent veil erected by this wrongheaded thinking isn't really there; our senses are prisms more than prisons.

This is the key paragraph:

Galileo abstracts from the subjects as persons leading a personal life; he abstracts from all that is in any way spiritual, from all cultural properties which are attached to things in human praxis. The result of this abstraction is the things purely as bodies; but these are taken as concrete real objects, the totality of which makes up a world which becomes the subject matter of research. One can truly say that the idea of nature as a really self-enclosed world of bodies first emerges with Galileo. A consequence of this, along with mathematization, which was too quickly taken for granted, is [the idea of] a self-enclosed natural causality in which every occurrence is determined unequivocally and in advance. Clearly the way is thus prepared for dualism, which appears immediately afterward in Descartes ~ Husserl, Crisis of the European Sciences. — Joshs

Which describes the origin of modern scientific materialism. If you recall the thread on the Blind Spot it is no co-incidence that one of the two main philosophical sources quoted is Husserl, and it was on the basis of this analysis.

Kantian considerations are practically useless in modelling nature — fdrake

But they are invaluable in telling you what you miss out when you do so.

But they are invaluable in telling you what you miss out when you do so. — Wayfarer

And the phenomenological emphasis on the inadequacies of the natural attitude, or harping on about how unsophisticated perceptual naive realism and scientific realism are, will never provide an account for why when they're all harmonising we end up with a successful understanding of nature. Something phenomenology rarely emphasises, or shows deference to, enough.

Edit: I don't mean to poo poo on phenomenology here, what I take issue with is Kantian critique being used to undermine science, then distance oneself from the undermining.

the subject is of the world and the world is of nature. The transparent veil erected by this wrongheaded thinking isn't really there; our senses are prisms more than prisons. — fdrake

The subject is of the world and the world is of the subject. The subject enacts the world that it is 'of' . Our senses are interpretations. There is no nature outside of an interpreted world

when they're all harmonising we end up with a successful understanding of nature. — fdrake

Every understanding of nature is successful within its own terms and given the limits of its aims. Naive realism's unexamined presuppositions limit a priori the scope of its ciiteria of 'success'.

In response to your question about Husserl.

I’ve spent s reasonable amount of time reading Husserl (Crisis especially - keep in mind that work was incomplete as he died before finishing it).

The gist of what he meant was about how what is learned cannot be unlearned. This is of importance when looking at the ‘finite’ and ‘infinite’ cosmological view of The World. Previously (“pre-scientifically”) the world was finite. After Galileo, roughly speaking, the cosmological view shifted - The World view became ‘infinite’.

How much of Crisis have you read? What source are you working from?

Husserl’s project was quite simple. He was a scientist trying to address, and bring about, a firmer grounding for the scientific endeavor by addressing ‘subjectivity’.

And the phenomenological emphasis on the inadequacies of the natural attitude

This is certainly no the case for Husserl - the ‘father of phenomenology’. He says the exact opposite. He praises the natural sciences and his quest was to further reinforce science and ‘poo hoo’ science deniers.

Heidegger took it down a path Husserl had absolutely no interest in as Heidegger was focused on ONE aspect of the larger phenomenological investigation.

The only time Husserl shows any hint of distain for science is in his analysis of psychology and how it has clung fastidiously to empirical science at the denial of the whole subjective experience of the human condition - it is a reasonable criticism of psychology and why, even today, there is s confliction between psychology and neuroscience, where psychology is being ‘reborn’ to some degree as the empirical sciences (in the form of neuroscience; or now coined ‘neuropsychology’) has pretty much supplanted the core of psychology and thus given psychology a stronger reason to differentiate itself from empiricism - this is quite obviously being shown in the current climate of ‘social sciences’ (not that it is much of a science and we’re finding rhetorical use of data as a large part of politics today on a scale previously unseen).

How much of Crisis have you read? What source are you working from? — I like sushi

Dermot Moran's book on it. I find this summary illuminating:

In the opening sections (Crisis §§ 1-7) Husserl makes a number of bold and interrelated claims:

1. There is a crisis of foundations in exact sciences
2. there is a crisis brought on by the positivity of the sciences
3. there is a crisis in the human sciences since they model themselves on the exact sciences
4. there is an explicit crisis in psychology, the supposed science of human spirit
5. There is a crisis in contemporary culture (‘a radical life-crisis of European humanity’)
6. There is a crisis in philosophy (traditionally understood as the discipline which addressed the crisis in the sciences and in life)

All these crises are interlinked and they have, according to Husserl, a common solution: transcendental phenomenology with its secure and grounded clarification of the concept of subjectivity offers a way out of these crises.

From your very brief comments, I don't think you're seeing the point at all. Husserl was very much working from the Kantian tradition. Are you familiar with his criticism of naturalism? He wanted to devise a 'science' in a completely different sense from what I think you probably understand by the word.

why when they're all harmonising we end up with a successful understanding of nature — fdrake

Crisis? What crisis?

Er ... have you read Crisis? In the very first few paragraphs Husserl is about as explicit as he ever is regarding his view of science. It is positive.

If you don’t have a copy I’ll provide quotes if need be.

So what would be your interpretation of (2) and (3) above? In particular, what do you think ‘the positivity of sciences’ is a reference to?

Dermot Moran’s book is an introduction to the text and includes pretty well the whole text, along with commentary. Those bullet points are abstracted from the text.

I’m certainly aware about his use of the term ‘science’ as I’ve read the entire work cover to cover and reread parts - especially the opening sections.

(2) Is not saying he has a negative regard toward science. He applauds science (see below) and was actually a student of physics and mathematics prior to his work.

(3) This is what I already referred to regarding the attitude of psychology in contrast to the empirical sciences. Psychology has been, to a larger degree today, subsumed by harder sciences.

The ‘positivity of sciences’ is more or less what he goes further into later regarding the ‘finite’ and ‘infinite’ and ‘pre-scientific man’. If you’ve got that far into the book it may be worth considering this alongside his opening statements about the scientific endeavor and his attempts to outline a new ‘subjective science’.

Here is what I wrote over two years ago regarding Husserl’s opening and overall regard toward the natural sciences:

Husserl : Crisis Part I, §1-7

All quotes taken from "The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Inrroduction to Phenomenological Philosophy" by Edmund Husserl, translated by David Carr.

This was an incomplete work and has been pieced together after Husserl's death so there is repetition and may well be use of terms that are unfamiliar if you've never read Husserl before.

In this thread will address Part I of the book which is about 15 pages long and cut into 7 sections.

So ...

"Part I : The Crisis of the Sciences as Expression of the Radical Life-Crisis of European Humanity.

§1 Is there, in view of their constant successes, really a crisis of the sciences?

I expect that at this place dedicated as it is to the sciences, the very title of these lectures, "The Crisis of European Sciences and Psychology," will incite controversy. A crisis of our sciences as such: can we seriously speak of it? Is notnthis talk, heard so often these days, an exaggeration? After all, the crisis of a science indicates nothing less than its genuine scientific character, the whole manner in which it has set its task ans developed a methodology for it, has become questionable. This may be true of philosophy, which in our time threatens to succumb to skepticism, irrationalism, and mysticism. The same may be true of psychology, insofae as it still makes philosophical claims rather than merely wanting a place among positive sxiences. But how could we speak straightforwardly and quite seriously of a crisis of the sciences in general - that is, also of the positive sciences, including pure mathematics and the exact natural sciences, which we can never cease to admire as models of rigorous and highly successful scientific discipline? ...

... Physics, whether represented by a Newtonor a Planck or an Einstein, or whomever else in the future, was always and remains exact science. It remains such even if, as some think, an absolutely final form of total theory-construction is never to be expected or striven for. ...

... The scientific rigor of all these accomplishments, and their enduringly compelling successes are unquestionable. Only of psychology must we perhaps be less sure, in spite of its claim to be the abstract, ultimately explanatory, basic science of the concrete humanistic disciplines. But generally we let psychology stand, attributing its obvious retardation of method and accomplishemnt to a naturally slower development. At any rate, the contrast between the "scientific" character of this group of sciences and the "unscientific" character of philosophy is unmistakable. Thus we concede in advance some justification to the first inner protest against the title of these lectures from scientists who are sure of their method."

Hopefully these quotes will reassure the reader that Husserl is not out to destroy science, but to explore science and our humanistic attitudes towards theory and method in general.

§2 gives soem outline of the direction he goes in regarding subjectivity.

"§2. The positivistic reduction of the idea of science to mere factual science. The "crisis" of science as the loss of its meaning for life.

...

The indicated change in the whole direction of inquiry is what we wish, in fact, to undertake. In doing this we shall soon become aware that the difficulty which has plagued psychology, not just in our time but for centuries - its own peculiar "crisis" - has a central significance both for the appearance of puzzling, insoluble obscurities in modern, even mathematical sciences and, in connection with that, for the emergence of a set of world-enigmas which were unknown to earlier times. They all lead back to the enigma of subjectivity and are thus inseparably bound to the ..enigma of psychological subject matter and method. This much, then, as a first indication of the deeper meaning of our project in these lectures.
We make our beginning with a change which set in at the turn of the past century in the general evaluation of the sciences. It concerns notnthe scientific character of the sciences but rather what they, or what science in general, had meant and could mean for human existence. (trans note: menschliches Dasein) The exclusiveness with which the tot al world-view of modern man, in the second half of the nineteenth century, let itself be determined by the positive sciences and be blind by the "prosperity" (trans. note : Husserl uses English word) they produced, meant an indifferent turning-away from the questions which are decisive for a genuine humanity. (Menschentum) Merely fact-minded sciences make merely fact-minded people.

...

In the final analysis they concern man as a free, self-determining being in his behaviour toward the human and extrahuman surrounding world (Umwelt) and free in regard to his capacities for rationally shaping himself and his surrounding world. What does science have to say about reason and unresason or about us men as subjects of this freedom? The mere science of bodies clearly has nothing to say; it abstracts from everything subjective. As for the humanistic sciences, on the other hand, all the special ande general disciplines of which treat of man's spiritual (trans. note : geistig. The translating difficulties with Geist and its derivatives are too well known ... "spirit" ... "mental") existence, that is, within the horizon olf his historicity: their rigorous scientific character requires, we are told, that thex scholar carefully exclude all valuative positions, all questions of reason and unreason of their human subject matter and its cultural configurations. Scientific, objective truth is exclusively a matter of establishing what the world, the physical as well as the spiritual world, is in fact. But can the world, andx human existence in it, truthtfully have a meaning if sciences recognize as true only what is objectively established in this fashion, and if history has nothing more to teach us than that all the shapes of the spiritual world, all the conditions of life, ideals, norms upon which man relies, form and dissolve themselves like fleeting waves, that it always was and ever will be so, that again and again reason must turn intfo nonsense, ad well-being into misery? Can we console ourselves with that? Can we live in this world, where historical occurence is nothing but an unending concatenation of illusory progress and bitter disappointment?"

There are points here I find important to how Husserl procedes. The main one being the extention of the human subject int o an abstract proposition of objective reality. Also, for those opposed to the use of "spirit" here please simply add "mental". And for those opposed to "mental" simply add "subjective experience".

I could copy and paste the rest of my brief analysis from two years ago, but I don’t actually disagree with the gist of the bullet points. I do disagree that Husserl eve said he was interested in a ‘solution’ - he has, on more than one occasion, explicitly stated his dislike of ‘solutions’ and the whole phenomenological position is about absconding from ‘solutions’. It is meant to be a manner of approaching human experience not a ‘solution’ ... but I imagine there is more context to what Dermot says.

Anyway, this seems to be veering a little off-topic and I’m not immediately interested in revisiting Crisis right now but I’d be interested to throw my thoughts in in a separate dedicated thread.

Aside from the misprints and running together of words, which make these passages hard to read, I find them all perfectly consistent with what I understand of Husserl, and indeed I don't claim to be any kind of expert in him or even particularly well-read in him. But it doesn't actually address the question that started the whole discussion, which was 'Galileo as a revealing and concealing genius'. There's a lengthy discussion of that point in the Moran book, p97-98, which I will now go and read.

There is no nature outside of an interpreted world — Joshs

Dinosaurs called, they want their time back.

From your very brief comments, I don't think you're seeing the point at all. Husserl was very much working from the Kantian tradition. Are you familiar with his criticism of naturalism? He wanted to devise a 'science' in a completely different sense from what I think you probably understand by the word. — Wayfarer

Yes, I'm reasonably familiar with the critique of naturalism, and Husserl's attempt to provide a foundation for science based on the structure of experience.

You always pretend that I don't understand the issue, whereas I just disagree with you very strongly.

The only time Husserl shows any hint of distain for science is in his analysis of psychology and how it has clung fastidiously to empirical science at the denial of the whole subjective experience of the human condition - it is a reasonable criticism of psychology and why, even today, there is s confliction between psychology and neuroscience, where psychology is being ‘reborn’ to some degree as the empirical sciences (in the form of neuroscience; or now coined ‘neuropsychology’) has pretty much supplanted the core of psychology and thus given psychology a stronger reason to differentiate itself from empiricism - this is quite obviously being shown in the current climate of ‘social sciences’ (not that it is much of a science and we’re finding rhetorical use of data as a large part of politics today on a scale previously unseen). — I like sushi

Yes, I overall like Husserl's intentions, as far as I'm aware of them anyway. From what I understand of it, I disagree with the use of intersubjectivity as a foundational concept for regularities in nature (this may not be Husserl's own view, it is probably my limited experience with it from a few papers and snippets of his books over the years), but I like the emphasis on intersubjectivity as foundational for perceptual regularity.

No misprints. I hand typed it and haven’t bothered to fix the small errors as they’re obvious enough.

Husserl is referring to the use of mathematics in ‘science’. Mathematics made nature ‘factual’. From what I understand it was Husserl main interest to address the inevitable conflation of ‘truth’ and ‘fact’.

Does Dermot bother to explain what Husserl meant by ‘genius’? I imagine he did. Basically it is what I said in my original response. What is learned cannot be unlearned, that is the gist. Galileo could not simply ignore what he learnt through his use of mathematics as a means of understanding natural phenomenon. This is something Husserl tended to refer to as ‘sedimentation’, meaning that once we see anew naivety is broken. Our new way of seeing The World - in the ‘measuring’ manner - necessarily covers up our previous disposition.

You could kind of say it is analogous (loosely!) to being in awe of a ‘magic trick’ and then being shown behind the curtains ... you will never be able to look at the trick in the same way again. Something has departed from the raw experience of the trick.

The difficulty I believe most people have with Husserl is extrapolating beyond this kind of crass analogy and applying it to phenomenon - or, in my view for Heidegger, OVER applying it and leaving more and more in the wake of one’s regard to the phenomenon.

I’d highly recommend reading The Vienna Lecture (only around 30 pages). It’s a more condensed overview of what he was trying to refine in Crisis - and remember it is NOT complete work, he died before he could finish.

There are many points Husserl talks about that I wish I had more time to dedicate to. His use of ‘poles’ is something quite bizarre and I do believe, as much as he seems to try not to, he does also step over the line too from time to time.

As the vaguest of hints where to look ... I’d suggest you take into account the ‘intersubjective’ as being what binds the ‘prescienctific’ with the ‘scientific’ - Husserl’s deeply ambiguous rant about ‘thematic’ is something I don’t confess to be completely satisfied with and I’d need to look MUCH more deeply into his earlier works to guess the true context of his meaning.

His ideas visibly change over time which is nice to see yet at the same time it makes it hard work to keep a grip of the appropriate meaning relating to the appropriate text - kind of funny if you appreciate the main ‘purpose’ of phenomenology as an endless exploration! Haha!

You always pretend that I don't understand the issue, whereas I just disagree with you very strongly. — fdrake

FYI those comments were directed at ILS. And, I'm absolutely fine with being disagreed with, that's why we come here after all.

Husserl is referring to the use of mathematics in ‘science’. Mathematics made nature ‘factual’. From what I understand it was Husserl main interest to address the inevitable conflation of ‘truth’ and ‘fact’. — I like sushi

I really hate to sound contrary, but I just don't think this hits the nail on the head. It's a big topic, and I am not going to have a lot of time these next few days, so a few brief remarks.

In respect of the statement ' 2. There is a crisis brought on by the positivity of the sciences' - I'm sure 'positivity' here refers to 'positivism'.

Finding instances of 'positivism' in the Moran edition of Crisis gives us these examples:

Husserl consistently criticizes empirical psychology (especially positivism and behaviorism) for its naturalism and objectivism...

The Vienna Circle advocated evaluating statements on the basis of whether they were meaningful (i.e. verifiable) or simply meaningless. In opposition to this general kind of scientific positivism, Husserl strongly opposed the view that the ‘natural conception’ of the world (understood as ‘naïve’) can be simply replaced by the ‘sophisticated’ scientific conception. For Husserl, entirely different attitudes are involved—and the scientific attitude isolated and formalized only what was measurable in the larger world of the subjective-relative.

Naturalism, positivism, and objectivism, are all forms of loss or distortion of subjectivity properly understood.

Husserl’s real target is the then-current positivist and neo-positivist interpretations of modern science (Crisis § 3), associated with Comte, Mach and the Vienna Circle (Husserl was familiar with Schlick and Carnap). The nineteenth century had been the great age of positivism, the doctrine that rejected all forms of speculation and restricted knowledge to be the contents of sensory experience. Auguste Comte (1798-1857), for instance, championed modern science against religious-mythic and metaphysical thought. For the positivists, science was objective, inductive, and experimental. Husserl regarded the positivists as holding an essentially mistaken conception of science due to their deliberate narrowing of the concept of reason: they denied the essential contribution of subjectivity and as a consequence had ‘decapitated’ philosophy (C 9; K 7).

My bolds, and the main point.

So, I'm interpreting him as a critic of modern scientific method insofar as this claims to be an all-encompassing philosophy of the kind that positivism envisages. He completely disagrees with that, he's the polar opposite of the Vienna Circle, Logical Positivism, and everything of that ilk. In today's lexicon, he's a critique of 'scientism', of science mis-applied or misunderstood in respect of, as he says, 'the essential contribution of subjectivity'.

Husserl adopts what he regards as a rigorously scientific approach to phenomenology and psychology, but it is nothing like what the Anglo-American world would regard as scientific. The German university system has a marvellous word, 'Geisteswissenschaften', 'sciences of geist' (where 'geist' can be spirit or mind), which literally has no equivalent in the Anglosphere; both Husserl and Heidegger were professors within that family of disciplines.

Anyway, I'm going to be scarce for a couple of days, but look forward to picking it up later, and will do some more reading. ciao.

So "it" can't be written or shouldn't be written? — ZhouBoTong

Not everything is said and what is is written in such a way that the reader must read between the lines, connect the dots, note and reconcile contradictions.

I am sure I am one of those for "whom it is not fitting", but what would be the danger in writing it? — ZhouBoTong

On one hand, it could be dangerous to the author. Consider the fate of Socrates. The things that Socrates was accused of - atheism and corrupting the youth, are some of the things that Plato wanted to protect himself from being found guilty of; but, on the other hand, they are things he sought to protect the reader from. He recognized the importance of religious belief and so provided a salutary, exoteric, quasi-religious teaching that would be beneficial to the well-being of the soul and the city. At the same time it gives the appearance of harmonizing philosophy and theology. Then and now, rather than noting the absence of gods in the realm of truth, the theologically inclined conflate the Good with God.

Why wouldn't he (god) or they (socrates, plato, etc) just write the truth — ZhouBoTong

Socrates was a skeptic. Knowing that he and everyone else does not know the truth of such matters poses a threat. If the truth is not known then everything and nothing can fill the gap. So Plato provides a salutary teaching in place of the unknown and perhaps unknowable truth. But in order for this teaching to be accepted it must appear to be the truth itself.

In the dialogue Phaedo, which takes place when Socrates is about to die, the discussion turns to the fate of the soul. Although he is not afraid to die, some of his friends are fearful of death and so he attempts, as he says, to "charm away their childish fears". Someone objects that what he want is the truth. He offers various proofs and stories about the immortality of the soul, and while the careful reader is led to see that all of them fail, to this day some still believe that here we find the truth of the soul's immortality. But no one knows the truth of what happens to the soul at death or even what the soul is. This leads to what is called "misologic". Socrates says that there are some who fall in love with philosophy because they believe it will make them wise, but when it becomes clear to them that philosophy is unable to answer such questions they come to despise it for what they see as its failure. Socrates did not, so to speak, want philosophy to die with him. Those who are to philosophize must eschew childish stories but must not expect philosophy to do what it cannot do.

Of course he means “positivism” I was just stating the context. It’s there in black and white, but the issue surrounds how we understand other terms used by Husserl (including ‘prescientific man’, ‘finite’ and ‘infinite’).

I assumed you weren’t asking what ‘positivism’ means in general.

As the vaguest of hints where to look ... I’d suggest you take into account the ‘intersubjective’ as being what binds the ‘prescienctific’ with the ‘scientific’ - Husserl’s deeply ambiguous rant about ‘thematic’ is something I don’t confess to be completely satisfied with and I’d need to look MUCH more deeply into his earlier works to guess the true context of his meaning. — I like sushi

For my general perspective on the issue:

I think there's a shallow (but correct) way to take this, and an interesting (but harder to develop, but I suspect is right for the most part) way to take this. It's pretty clear that scientific methodology develops collaboratively, we check each-others' work. More fundamentally, we use each other's work. You can look at the capacity to use each-others' work as displaying an intimate relationship between concepts, interpreted non-psychologistically, and norms of language use. That the specific results of scientific studies interface with nature is trivially true in this line of thinking, being empirically realist, but the question of concept work (crystallised norms of language use which thematise nature) in science or scientifically influenced philosophy articulating our connection with nature gives us the radical prospect of a subtle transcendental realist project which underpins the 'mere' transcendental idealities of our conceptual schemes, or deep structure of our experiences.

It's not just that we look out on nature through the prism of our concepts, the prism adapts to nature and responds to the texture of ecological affordances . Or for @Joshs, the circumscription of regional ontologies actually takes its cue from their ontic structure rather than inheriting their ground from the existentialia they allegedly derive from.

Or for @Banno, just like the 'Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme' in Davidson is undermined by the adaptive/physically abiding properties ('anomalism') of radical interpretation's relationship with truth (this doesn't fit super well, considering conceptual regularities are of questionable status in Davidson's account of mental events, but I thought it might interest you to see him referenced outside of his milieux).

There is no nature outside of an interpreted world — Joshs

Dinosaurs called, they want their time back. — fdrake

"To describe the "world" phenomenologically means to show and determine the being of beings objectively present in the world conceptually and categorially. Beings within the world are things, natural things and "valuable" things. Their thingliness becomes a problem. And
since the thingliness of the latter is based upon natural thingliness, the being of natural things, nature as such, is the primary theme. The character of being of natural things, of substances, which is the basis of everything, is substantiality. What constitutes its ontological meaning? But are we asking ontologically about the "world"? The problematic characterized is undoubtedly ontological. But even if it succeeds in the purest explication of the being of nature, in comparison with the fundamental statements made by the mathematical natural sciences about this being, this ontology never gets at the phenomenon of the "world. " Nature is itself a being which is encountered within the world and is discoverable on various paths and stages. Neither the ontic description of innerworldly beings nor the ontological interpretation of the being of these beings gets as such at the phenomenon of "world. " In both kinds of access to "objective being, " "world" is already "presupposed" in various ways .

Terminologically "worldly" means a kind of being of Da-sein, never a kind of being of something objectively present "in" the world. We shall call the latter something belonging* to the world, or innerworldly. One look at traditional ontology shows us that one skips over the phenomenon of worldliness when one fails to see the constitution of Dasein of being-in-the-world. Instead, one tries to interpret the world in terns of the being of the being which is objectively present within the world but has not, however, even been initially discovered-in terms of nature. Ontologically and categorially understood, nature is a boundary case of the being of possible innerworldly beings. Da-sein can discover beings as nature only in a definite mode of its being-in-the-world. As the categorial content of structures of being of a definite being encountered in the world, "nature" can never render worldliness intelligible. But even the phenomenon "nature," for instance in the sense of the Romantic concept of nature, is ontologically comprehensible only in terms of the concept of world; that is, in terms of an analytic of Da-sein."

Heidegger, Being and Time

Thanks @Wayfarer. I will try to look into those links and see if I can make some sense out of it..

Socrates was a skeptic. Knowing that he and everyone else does not know the truth of such matters poses a threat. If the truth is not known then everything and nothing can fill the gap. So Plato provides a salutary teaching in place of the unknown and perhaps unknowable truth. But in order for this teaching to be accepted it must appear to be the truth itself.

In the dialogue Phaedo, which takes place when Socrates is about to die, the discussion turns to the fate of the soul. Although he is not afraid to die, some of his friends are fearful of death and so he attempts, as he says, to "charm away their childish fears". Someone objects that what he want is the truth. He offers various proofs and stories about the immortality of the soul, and while the careful reader is led to see that all of them fail, to this day some still believe that here we find the truth of the soul's immortality. But no one knows the truth of what happens to the soul at death or even what the soul is. This leads to what is called "misologic". Socrates says that there are some who fall in love with philosophy because they believe it will make them wise, but when it becomes clear to them that philosophy is unable to answer such questions they come to despise it for what they see as its failure. Socrates did not, so to speak, want philosophy to die with him. Those who are to philosophize must eschew childish stories but must not expect philosophy to do what it cannot do. — Fooloso4

Thanks @Fooloso4,

So the secret is that there is no secret? Regular people are just incapable of living with "I don't know"?

Seems reasonable, but I think this idea is more explicitly stated in eastern philosophies (even the horrifically indirect Tao te Ching seems to be more explicit, "the way that can be told is not the true way"). Why are there such high levels of respect for Plato's vague hints? Is it just because it had a big impact on western culture? Kind of like how Columbus was a jerk that did not discover anything, but he certainly triggered the exploration of, and spread to, the "New World"?

There is no nature outside of an interpreted world
— Joshs
Dinosaurs called, they want their time back.
— fdrake — Joshs

"To describe the "world" phenomenologically means to show and determine the being of beings objectively present in the world conceptually and categorially. — Joshs

Phenomena and a phenomenological description are not the same. A description of the shadows is a description of the phenomena on the wall. Plato points out there that there can be knowledge of such things in so far as repeated patterns, accompanying sounds, and so on, are identified. What is not known is that they are shadows.

We have phenomenal evidence of the existence of dinosaurs, but we would not have such evidence if dinosaurs never existed (in the ordinary sense of the term) - except perhaps if one thinks that this is the handwork of God or some evil genius or cave's puppet-masters.

So the secret is that there is no secret? Regular people are just incapable of living with "I don't know"? — ZhouBoTong

Something like that.

Seems reasonable, but I think this idea is more explicitly stated in eastern philosophies (even the horrifically indirect Tao te Ching seems to be more explicit, "the way that can be told is not the true way"). — ZhouBoTong

I think it is a bit more complicated. For a text that begins this way the Tao te Ching has a lot to say! The fact that there is even a text says a lot. I think that both Plato and the Tao te Ching are similar in that both deny that it is not a matter of what can be said. Despite everything Plato says about the Forms, they are presented as things that must be grasped by the mind's eye rather than via what one hears.

Why are there such high levels of respect for Plato's vague hints? — ZhouBoTong

There are many reasons for the respect that Plato receives, but none of them have to do with vague hints.

Is it just because it had a big impact on western culture? — ZhouBoTong

That is part of it. He continues to have a big impart. Every year there are hundreds of books and articles written about the dialogues.

For me a large part of the value is as a guide to the practice of self-knowledge through reflective inquiry. In addition, he is a truly masterful writer with few peers. Much of this is not apparent until one begins to see how things connect and how the questions we ask of the text are answered.

For some the "theory of Forms" can be an attraction or a repulsion. It should be noted, however, that in the Theaetetus, the dialogue that explicitly inquires about what knowledge is, there is no mention of Forms.

And the idea that the thingliness of things can only be given an adequate account in terms of the existential hermeneutics of a late arriving structure in the universe doesn't make you want to throw up from nauseating reductionism?