People and animals like to be happy. If beings that make decisions (as opposed to those chained in someones basement) can discover what makes decision makers the most happy we can probably come almost to an optimal solution to any problem. The problem is like the Aztecs discovered, sometimes you can't account for all the decision makers that might be involved in the future.

:cheer:

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? — fdrake

We can always pretend that we have access to , or can make coherent, an account that bypasses "late arriving structures". The problem with that notion of time consciousness is that the past as we experience it is always already changed by our present. The earliest and most remote past is already an reinterpretation of 'what was' for present purposes. We dont want to and don't need to know how things 'really were' before we existed. That is a nonsensical notion. When we theorize about the past, whether cosmological, biological or cultural, what we want to know is what we can do with this understanding right now in relation to our current goals. Because our past is always ahead of us, our changing accounts of the oldest and most ancient is an expression of the cutting edge of our thinking(the latest arriving structures of thought). The universe isnt an independent outside for us to represent and mirror, it is a development whose transformation we advance by asking questions of it. When we attempt to 'go back' and revael things that were before , we are transforming the world anew.

We dont want to and don't need to know how things 'really were' before we existed. That is a nonsensical notion. When we theorize about the past, whether cosmological, biological or cultural, what we want to know is what we can do with this understanding right now in relation to our current goals. — Joshs

How empirically realist, it isn't how the universe existed before humans which poses a problem here, it's that it existed at all. It existed non-relationally to humans for longer than there are humans, and it still exists non-relationally to humans. We might not be indifferent to nature, our understandings have a-prior structures, but those a-priori structures are still events in a timeline. We know they are not always operative, we know they are not always relevant.

Nature doesn't turn on human understanding, surely you can understand that. This fact alone, and our capacity to understand it, should perturb us away from any attempt to derive the ontology of this indifferent, inhuman nature, from the a prior structures of our experiences.

We dont want to and don't need to know how things 'really were' before we existed. That is a nonsensical notion. When we theorize about the past, whether cosmological, biological or cultural, what we want to know is what we can do with this understanding right now in relation to our current goals. — Joshs

The only thing that is nonsense is this claim. The desire to know for the sake of knowing without regard to utility has motivated man for as long as man has been capable of inquiry. Plato acknowledged and addressed the well known claim that philosophy is useless. To this day there are those who claim that one or another mode of inquiry is useless.

You may not want or need to know how things 'really were' before we existed but there are many scientists who devote their lives to such questions. How those questions are answered changes over time but changes in our understanding of the past does not change the past.

Nature doesn't turn on human understanding, surely you can understand that. This fact alone, and our capacity to understand it, should perturb us away from any attempt to derive the ontology of this indifferent, inhuman nature, from the a prior structures of our experiences. — fdrake

The conceit of this attitude is that we are able to be sufficiently detached from our own human nature to declare that our science reveals something completely independently of our mode of knowing. Our conception of nature is constantly changing, constantly evolving (which is why it's conveyed through falsifiable hypotheses that are subject to continual revision.)

Scientific realism understands the chronology of the Universe and evolution of life, but again, the account is also a theory which implies the existence of an observing mind which provides a sense of scale and perspective. Science 'brackets out' the observer so as to arrive at the putative 'view from nowhere', but it can't bracket out the requirement for perspective and scale, which only a mind can provide.

This is something that has actually been made explicit by science itself:

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'.

Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271.

Or, put more simply:

A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself. — Niels Bohr

. The desire to know for the sake of knowing — Fooloso4

is inherently a pragmatic quest in that knowing is transformative interaction. The desire to know is the desire to adaptively reshape.

it isn't how the universe existed before humans which poses a problem here, it's that it existed at all. It existed non-relationally to humans for longer than there are humans, and it still exists non-relationally to humans. — fdrake

Keep in mind that Heidegger's Dasein is not a human being, He was adamant that it is not an anthropomorphisim. Husserl made the same argument about transcendental intentionality, and Derrida was just as clear that differance is not an anthropomorphism.
These are not structures that require human psyches or souls, rather they precede all thinking of humans as subjects or biological objects even as they make possible such conceptions. They are a starting point for the positing of any kind of existing entity. Their a priori status with respect to humans and all other objects and subjects might tempt one to think of them in terms of a pan-pychism, but this would confuse more that it clarifies, given the link between pan-pychism and subjectivism.

Of the many possible ways to approach your question, I'd like to point out that lies (shadows) can't add up to the truth (form).

Another thing is Plato isn't denying your thesis as such. Isn't that why he even proposed the analogy. I've heard many people talk of the ideal circle (the form) represented in actual drawn circles (the shadows).

. The desire to know for the sake of knowing
— Fooloso4
is inherently a pragmatic quest in that knowing is transformative interaction. The desire to know is the desire to adaptively reshape. — Joshs

When my son was very young he was fascinated with dinosaurs. There was nothing pragmatic in his desire to hear about dinosaurs, to see pictures of them, to learn their names, and size, and the period in which they lived. Some people never loose that fascination. There are some who desire to know in the same way that others desire to create music or art or poetry. There is for them nothing pragmatic about it. It is, rather, aesthetic or spiritual, a sense of wonder.

That it is not a productive science is clear from a consideration of the first philosophers.It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize; wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too, e.g. about the changes of the moon and of the sun, about the stars and about the origin of the universe.Now he who wonders and is perplexed feels that he is ignorant (thus the myth-lover is in a sense a philosopher, since myths are composed of wonders); [20] therefore if it was to escape ignorance that men studied philosophy, it is obvious that they pursued science for the sake of knowledge, and not for any practical utility.The actual course of events bears witness to this; for speculation of this kind began with a view to recreation and pastime, at a time when practically all the necessities of life were already supplied. Clearly then it is for no extrinsic advantage that we seek this knowledge; for just as we call a man independent who exists for himself and not for another, so we call this the only independent science, since it alone exists for itself. — Aristotle, Metaphysics 982b

These are not structures that require human psyches or souls, rather they precede all thinking of humans as subjects or biological objects even as they make possible such conceptions. They are a starting point for the positing of any kind of existing entity. Their a priori status with respect to humans and all other objects and subjects might tempt one to think of them in terms of a pan-pychism, but this would confuse more that it clarifies, given the link between pan-pychism and subjectivism. — Joshs

You make it sound like if there were no humans there still would be Dasein in the human sense. This is terribly wrong. Nature existed without humans. We know this. Furthermore, far from being senseless, the indifference of nature to our concerns which it reveals is something utterly banal. Update your ontology with its effects.

Nature existed without humans. We know this. Furthermore, far from being senseless, the indifference of nature to our concerns which it reveals is something utterly banal. Update your ontology with its effects. — fdrake

I want to make sure I understand you. What is the relation between what you are arguing and, say, Thomas Kuhn or Paul Feyerabend's thinking about the connection between nature and our paradigmatic constructions of it? Or other social constructionist, sociological and cultural studies-based approaches to science ( Joseph Rouse, Foucault, Rorty, Latour, )? I get the sense its more that Heiddger's Dasein you're objecting to here. It seems to me you are opposing your realist stance to a large community of anti-realist philosophies of science( who apparently are not grasping what is 'utterly banal' to you). Would I be correct in surmising that?

Why do I have to explain myself in terms of Kuhn and Feyerabend and Rouse and Foucault and Rorty and Latour and Heidegger?

I get the sense its more that Heiddger's Dasein you're objecting to here. It seems to me you are opposing your realist stance to a large community of anti-realist philosophies of science( who apparently are not grasping what is 'utterly banal' to you). Would I be correct in surmising that? — Joshs

Look, Heidegger made a big deal about distinguishing his project from merely anthropological reasoning. Still, you're claiming that there's never been an uninterpreted world, maybe that such an idea is senseless, and when I have the temerity to say "Dinosaurs existed before us", and that we can understand that, you with-hold understanding of the issue artificially as if I'm making something other than a completely boring observation. One that primary school kids are fine with, but apparently philosophy graduates are not! This is anthropologism of the highest order, centring our accounts on the human beings which make them. AFAIK this is something @Wayfarer acknowledges explicitly (even though I don't have much interest going through the 'observer effect' conversation with Wayfarer again).

The significance of the boring observation is that it reveals not only can we establish stuff about a nature indifferent to us, we have to be able to do ontology in a way which allows us to make sense of this fact. The a-priori structure of experience passes from non-being into being, and this is an observation which can be understood within the a-priori structure of experience, rather than some grand violence against experiential temporality, we already know this shit. We understand it, it has been demonstrated already. It is not a conceptual issue, it's a fact. Take off the Heidigoggles and go visit Jurassic Park.

not only can we establish stuff about a nature indifferent to us, we have to be able to do ontology in a way which allows us to make sense of this fact. The a-priori structure of experience passes from non-being into being, and this is an observation which can be understood within the a-priori structure of experience, rather than some grand violence against experiential temporality, we already know this shit. We understand it, it has been demonstrated already. It is not a conceptual issue, it's a fact. Take off the Heidigoggles and go visit Jurassic Park. — fdrake

Sorry for the late response. I noticed in a recent post you made reference to Badiou. If his approach to history is one you are comfortable with, then perhaps we are discussing a distinction between a structural marxist dialectical teleological understanding of history and what has been referred to as a radical geneological or historicist one. Clearly, a dialectical history would be incoherent without the ability to, as you say, make sense of a history indifferent to us. We have to be believe in empirical facts as based in the a priori structure of experience. You claim this is not a conceptual issue, but it is obviously a metaphysical issue , or there wouldn't be a dispute about it. Radical historicism does away with appeals to principles that lend necessity and unity to history. The result is a powerful emphasis on: nominalism, contingency, and contestability. Radical historicists reject the teleological narratives of developmental historicism, including those that are widely associated with Marxism and critical theory.
Radical historicists thus portray history as discontinuous and contingent. History is a series of contingent, even accidental appropriations, modifications, and transformations from the old to the new. As Nietzsche wrote, "there is no more important proposition for historians than: that the origin of the emergence of a thing and its ultimate usefulness, its practical application and incorporation into a system of ends, are toto coelo separate; that anything in existence, having somehow come about, is continually interpreted anew, transformed and redirected to a new purpose by a power superior to it; that everything that occurs in the organic world consists of overpowering, dominating, and in their turn, overpowering and dominating consist of re-interpretation, adjustment, in the process of which their former meaning and purpose must necessarily be obscured or completely obliterated." (Geneology of Morality).
"This emphasis on contingency may appear to suggest that change is inexplicable. Yet, radical historicists often describe and explain change; they just do so without appealing to overarching principles. Change occurs contingently as, for example, people reinterpret, modify, or transform an inherited tradition in response to novel circumstances or other dilemmas." (Mark Bevir, What is Geneology)

Sorry for the late response. I noticed in a recent post you made reference to Badiou. If his approach to history is one you are comfortable with, then perhaps we are discussing a distinction between a structural marxist dialectical teleological understanding of history and what has been referred to as a radical geneological or historicist one. — Joshs

These methodologies and their respective ontological commitments concern human history, no? Giving a central role to class struggle in natural history really only makes sense if the destiny of nature is just to produce communism, which honestly I don't want to argue about.

Your Nietzsche quote nicely describes a lot of things humans do, too.

"This emphasis on contingency may appear to suggest that change is inexplicable. Yet, radical historicists often describe and explain change; they just do so without appealing to overarching principles. Change occurs contingently as, for example, people reinterpret, modify, or transform an inherited tradition in response to novel circumstances or other dilemmas." (Mark Bevir, What is Geneology) — Joshs

And geneological methods trace the evolution of concepts.

You may make the argument that the history of concepts of nature is the history of nature, but I still have to wonder about that time when there was no thought. You're making the same methodological slip as before, the concept of the thing is not the thing, only now you're talking about it as if human history contains natural history, rather than as if human experiential temporality acted before the evolution of humans.

You're making the same methodological slip as before, the concept of the thing is not the thing, only now you're talking about it as if human history contains natural history, rather than as if human experiential temporality acted before the evolution of humans. — fdrake

I never said that human experiential temporality acted before the evolution of humans. I said that temporality acted before the evolution of humans. If one can imagine an object, like a dinosaur, existing before humans, this presupposes a structure of temporality(as opposed to time in the classical sense) in that object implies change, change implies differential relationality and reference, which gives us the irreducible retentional, presencing and protentional elements making possible objectification.
That is to say , if we take the point of view of the object, the above features are implied in what it is in itself, apart from any talk of experiencing psychological subjects. Its not simply that human history contains natural history, its that contingent history contains natural history. Human memory and cognition can be taken out of the equation and one is still left with the necessity to found objectivity on relational structures of transformation (temporalization) that precede and are implied by them.
You liked my Nietzsche quote because you read it as making a distinction between human and natural history. I would agree that Nietzsche was not simply a social constructivist, reducing nature to language and culture. Like Deleuze after him, he considered the biological realm on its own terms as already
a kind of social construction. If the natural realm is already a contingently self-transforming process not amenable to a logic of cause-effect, then we dont need to reduce nature to human constructions in order to conclude that its history is discontinuous and contingent. All that is left to us is perspectival interpretation not due solely to language, but to the nature of nature itself as contingent self-transformation.
"As Nietzsche repeatedly argued, including in his most positivistic period, there is no independent nature in itself that could free it or us from our in­terpretations, interests, and evaluations of value. Our "nature" is to artfully pick and choose, value and devalue, and rank and transformatively order and reorder, even as "nature" is in itself neither good nor evil for Nietzsche. Nevertheless, this valuing does not occur out of free will or in the transpa­rency of consciousness that Nietzsche deconstructed as fictional entities. Interpretation is neither arbitrary nor infinite; it is shadowed by an ape, and physiologically and social-historically circumscribed and conditioned."(Eric S Nelson)

psychological subjects — Joshs

I think this misinterprets my point. I'm trying to lead you to the conclusion that even transcendental subjects must emerge from an indifferent nature. An invitation to think of nature as anterior to the a priori structure of experience. Then there's the next point, which is that we're riddled through with nature, then there's the final point; that we can still use the a priori structure of experience to know stuff about nature as it is, not a purely symbolic nature which is simply our concept of it. We know molecular interactions happened before humans, we unfolded out of something. Now we have to have an approach which can grapple with these kinds of questions on their own terms.

One of the most frustrating things about the 'link it to the a priori structure of experience' machine is that you only end up ever talking about the a priori structure of experience, rather than the thing you're talking about. As I put it in another thread, we can actually weaponise the a priori structure of experience to 'carve nature at its joints.

Do you think human history contains 'contingent history'?

even transcendental subjects must emerge from an indifferent nature — fdrake

There are no transcendental subjects. What there is is a transcendental in-between, between the subjective and the objective. This is the space, the only space of experience and nature.This is not a transcendental in the Kantian sense of a beyond nature, but of nature as itself beyond itself in transforming itself valuatively moment to moment.
There is no indifferent nature. Apart from the necessity of a human to interpretively construct a valuative understanding of nature, The world in itself is contingent not in an empirical sense of a causal chain of history. That is a false contingency in that it already presupposes a world of objects in interaction. That is a metaphysical presupposition, Without realizing it, by carving nature at its joints via beginning from objective causality, you only end up ever talking about the a priori structure of experience. That is to say, nature ends up always being this indifferent history of casual relations between objects. Such an appraoch never escapes its grounding. Modern scientific empricism, far from being a free openness toward a contingent world, shuts itself off from the world's true conteingency.

The nature that is anterior to the a priori structure of the joints of objective causality is one that is always valuative in that it consists of patterns of relations in which its entities are not only defined only by their referential relation to other entities within the pattern, but that environment of relations is always in process of transforming itself valuatively(value here means a qualitative way of being) This cannot be reduced to a causal chain without wiping out this essential qualitatively valuative, perpsectival facet of nature. Nature is anticipatory, it always has its purposes, and these purposes are always in process of being reconfigured,Thus, values, change. This is what the arrow of time signifies. Its not simply a question of the difficulty of ascertaining initial conditions, because that still remains within an objective thinking of causality.
Every philosophical approach implies its own account of both human understanding and nature, since the two cannot be disentangled fro one another. Hegelian-marxist accounts have led to a rethinking of nature as self-organizing system organized according to a vector of increasing complexity .

Even physics will join this trajectory if physicists like Lee Smolen have their way. According to him, temporality must be brought back into physics and take on a central role. That way, cosmological and biological evolutionary processes can be seen as connected. This forms a nice dialacticalization of nature, in line with a dialectical thinking concerning cultural change. It is no accident that biologists like Lewontin and Rose who endorse self-organizing systems ideas in biology are also sympathetic to Marxism.
But just as a dialectical thinking implies a certain way of thinking about natural as well as cultural history, one has to understand how a radical geneological-historicist approach rethinks further the nature of nature as well as culture. You suggest that Nietzsche had in mind only a radically contingent thinking of culture while leaving nature to empiricism. That doesnt jibe. The two realms imply each other. If you believe that its possible to approach human history in a radically genealogical way, while leaving intact the modern objective realist approach to nature, then I dont think youre fully appraeciating the argument that is being made by post structuralists concerning the social construction of culture.

The bottom line here is that the things of nature only appear once in time.. Even if empirical representation were a mirror of nature rather than a perspectical interpretation, we could never recover what was for the reason that what was only existed for the fleeing moment of its instantiation. To argue that that doesnt matter for science since one can abstract common features still doesnt get the point that modeling particulars within a common category fails at the point where the category itself becomes valuatively transformed. Understanding natural history geneologically rather than empirically means that its developments cannot be reduced to law-bound causal explanation, only description. Likewise , the is no dialectical progression to human culture, only geneological unfolding, with no telos, no progression, no objectively causal basis.

There are no transcendental subjects. What there is is a transcendental in-between, between the subjective and the objective. This is the space, the only space of experience and nature.This is not a transcendental in the Kantian sense of a beyond nature, but of nature as itself beyond itself in transforming itself valuatively moment to moment. — Joshs

Ok. I don't really care what you call it. There is a 'transcendental in-between', has it always been there? Or is it a uniquely human feature? If it's a uniquely human feature, it must not have always been there. Then something must be anterior to it... So nature is anterior to it. And this is easy to understand; dinosaurs, carbon dating, evolution... etc. The 'shadow of the ape' is also a call to think of humans as organically coming out of nature.

If you want a jargony gloss on this, the transcendental subject (in-between, Dasein, whatever) is a contingent event, and we gotta think this contingency without framing it in terms of the transcendental subject - since it wasn't there at the time, after all.

There is no indifferent nature. Apart from the necessity of a human to interpretively construct a valuative understanding of nature, The world in itself is contingent not in an empirical sense of a causal chain of history — Joshs

Without realizing it, by carving nature at its joints via beginning from objective causality, you only end up ever talking about the a priori structure of experience — Joshs

Can there be nature without humans? When someone says "the universe has existed for about 14 billion years", is what they say literally true?

So nature is anterior to it — fdrake

Anterior means 'in front of'. I think you mean posterior 'behind'.

Anterior means 'in front of'. I think you mean posterior 'behind'. — frank

I'm using anterior to be consistent with the vocabulary in Meillassoux' argument on the topic in After Finitude:

Empirical science is today capable of producing statements about events anterior to the advent of life as well as consciousness...

How are we to grasp the meaning of scientific statements bearing explicitly upon a manifestation of the world that is posited as anterior to the emergence of thought and even of life – posited, that is, as anterior to every form of human relation to the world? Or, to put it more precisely: how are we to think the meaning of a discourse which construes the relation to the world – that of thinking and/or living – as a fact inscribed in a temporality within which this relation is just one event among others, inscribed in an order of succession in which it is merely a stage, rather than an origin? How is science able to think such statements, and in what sense can we eventually ascribe truth to them? — After Finitude

I think anterior works, because nature emerges first. "Events posterior to the emergence of humans" would be "events after the emergence of humans", "events anterior to the emergence of humans" would be "events before the emergence of humans".

But I don't think you're being consistent with him. He's using "anterior" to mean after. You're using to mean before. Correct?

↪fdrake But I don't think you're being consistent with him. He's using "anterior" to mean after. You're using to mean before. Correct? — frank

No. He's explicitly talking about dinosaurs and stuff.

No. He's explicitly talking about dinosaurs and stuff. — fdrake

Oh, you're right. He's using "anterior" to mean temporally behind or before. That's screwed up.

Oh, you're right. He's using "anterior" to mean temporally behind or before. That's screwed up. — frank

Guy's French. I imagine the translator used anterior to reference the tense thing. Passe antérieur is sort of like a "before before" conjugation, like "as soon as he finished (past), he left (past, but before the thing which was already declared as before)". It really fits the 'before history' theme he is playing with.

So saying "anterior" emphasizes that a world without consciousness isn't continuous with our world? But saying "before consciousness" implies continuity, doesn't it?

So saying "anterior" emphasizes that a world without consciousness isn't continuous with our world? But saying "before consciousness" implies continuity, doesn't it? — frank

In the guy's argument, the nature of the change between one and the other plays less of a role than noticing that at some point, there was no consciousness, then at a later point, there is.

Edit: personally I think the 'continuum' or studying how one changed into the other is actually the more interesting question. But we still have a lot of ground clearing to do so that people can even think philosophically in these terms about these issues!

Meillassoux' ... After Finitude: — fdrake

I was just reading a bit about this. Sounds interesting. From the little I read about the book, and not the book itself, would it be correct to say that he denies Parmenides' claim that thinking and being are the same? Does finitude have to do with the limits of knowledge?

I was just reading a bit about this. Sounds interesting. From the little I read about the book, and not the book itself, would it be correct to say that he denies Parmenides' claim that thinking and being are the same? Does finitude have to do with the limits of knowledge? — Fooloso4

The thinking and being are the same thing is kinda undermined by it. The thrust of the arche-fossil argument (in the first section of the book) strongly undermines this claim, at least in how I use it and remember it. I've been through it with @Wayfarer a couple of times and wrote non-technical summaries of it in places - which you can find in my post history if you can be bothered looking. Most recent time was in a quantum mechanics thread.

Though, I think I've seen people who side with Meillassoux for the arche-fossil argument and emphasise the 'negative' character of nature (or the Real) rather than its constituting role in our emergence; though I don't know any of the details of any approach like this. There's probably also a way of maintaining a sophisticated equation of the two without being a correlationist - maybe there's a Spinozist argument that could be made, since the attributes of thought and extension don't causally interact but mirror each other.

I've been through it with Wayfarer a couple of times — fdrake

Yes, you and I have been on the same side of that argument.