there are cases where emotional impairment is reliably coupled with a catastrophic failure of practical reasoning. — Joshs

No doubt. See it in the ‘papers all the time, in one form or another. At the community level, guy beats the crap out of his wife because he thought she was being a naughty girl. At the individual level, seller raises the price of something, not because its value increased, but merely because the buyer looks rich.
————

This mattering and relevance is the affective or ‘feeling’ aspect of thought. — Joshs

Yes, these have been called aesthetic judgements. But in such case, the judgement presupposes the thought, hence is not as much an aspect of it as a consequence. Otherwise, judgements with respect to conceptual relevance, are either called discursive.

Looking out the window, you see a car go by.....the car, in its passing alone, incites no emotion in you. Seen one car go by, seen ‘em all. No big deal. Only when some particular cognition about some particular car, or in some extraordinary happenstance involving that particular range of perceptions in general, does emotion arise. Can’t get all excited about a Ferrari Testorosa, without there first being one, right? Even the emotion of hoping to see one presupposes you’ve already cognized which object to hope for.

Every word you wrote above was chosen for a purpose , for its relevance in the context of the argument you are trying to advance. So each word is two things at once. It conveys a conceptual content , a ‘what’, and it conveys a relevance, a significance , the ‘how’ of the way it matters to you in the context of the larger argument. — Joshs

Two things at once, I think not. Any word conveys a conceptual content, insofar as words are nothing but representations of concepts, to begin with. It follows that my understanding of the context of the argument should determine the words I chose in response to it, such that the one maintains consistency with the other. So yes, I choose words for a purpose.....dialectical consistency given from understanding.....but the “how” of the way it matters, is already explicit in the choice. Without the consistencies, there are logical fallacies, which are exceptions to the rule and not the rule itself.

The argument herein, concerns itself with the separability of, not the integral compatibility between, feelings and thoughts.
————

I’m familiar with Damasio, but he’s not dead, so I haven’t studied him. He is certainly highly credentialed, gotta credit him for that, but he’s also a psychologist, so....take points away for that. And.......“Neural Correlates in Gratitude”? Really? When was the last time you consulted your neurons? For anything?
————-

I think any major philosophical model implies a psychology. — Joshs

Late-modern models, perhaps. Some early-modern philosophical models disregard psychology as a discipline, and deny it altogether as a science**. It’s easy to look back and say a philosopher had psychological underpinnings even if he didn’t know it. But that’s like saying Newton might have developed Special Relativity if only he had access to faster transportation than the horse.

** “....There does not then exist any rational psychology as a doctrine furnishing any addition to our knowledge of ourselves. (...) From all this it is evident that rational psychology has its origin in a mere misunderstanding....”
(CPR B421, 422)

Anyway....couple cents for the collection plate.

passing alone, incites no emotion in you. Seen one car go by, seen ‘em all. No big deal. Only when some particular cognition about some particular car, or in some extraordinary happenstance involving that particular range of perceptions in general, does emotion arise. Can’t get all excited about a Ferrari Testorosa, without there first being one, right? Even the emotion of hoping to see one presupposes you’ve already cognized which object to hope for. — Mww

At even the simplest level of perceptual recognition , affectivity plays a central role. What allows us to notice, to pay attention to a stimulus in the first place is the way that it stands out for us against a background of other events or activities we are involved in. We notice what draws our interest, which is an affective phenomenon, and is dependent on my expectations and goals based on my prior experiences. If I am completely engaged in a conversation I may be looking right at the car and not even ‘notice’ it.
Something about it must draw me away from what I am involved in. When I do look at the car , my eyes will
be drawn to what is most interesting to me about the image I am seeing, such as the color or style. My eyes roam over the object already searching for aspects that matter to me. The very fact that I see a concatenation of disparate bits of stimulation as a single
object like a ‘car’ is due to my having constructed the object as a singularity, my intending the unity, and this intending is an interest in having my expectations of unity confirmed.I am motivated to construe a multiplicity of changing perceptions as a single ‘thing’ . This fundamental motivating principle is the desire for predictive validation. We are patten seekers, motivated by sense making.

Every object I see either fulfills or fails to confirm my prior expectations in some measure. This validation or invalidation is felt, and the feeling doesn’t follow the perception , it is simultaneous with it. Interacting with our world isnt simply a subject staring at objects. It is a constructive activity in which we anticipate forward into the world and objects reveal themselves
to us as responses to the way we reach out to them via our expectations. This is as true of experiences of things we have never seen before as it is of familiar things. We consider our everyday engagement with objects to be devoid of affect in themselves because the sorts of fulfillments and lack of fulfillment of expectations that
moment to moment recognition of objects involved
is so subtle as to go unnoticed as anything we could
calll affective. We must seem to encounter affectively neutral things , and from time to time an emotion. comes welling up after the fact as a judgement about our attitude toward things or people or situations. But the affects are the mortar that builds the very things we take as affect-less.

. Any word conveys a conceptual content, insofar as words are nothing but representations of concepts, to begin with. It follows that my understanding of the context of the argument should determine the words I chose in response to it, such that the one maintains consistency with the other. So yes, I choose words for a purpose.....dialectical consistency given from understanding.....but the “how” of the way it matters, is already explicit in the choice. Without the consistencies, there are logical fallacies, which are exceptions to the rule and not the rule itself — Mww

Words don’t just represent content , they enact it. What you are missing here is that words dont just throw out what we have already learned. The are a bridge between our past usage of the word and the current context. When we use a word we reinvent its sense in some small
measure. But this si t something we control , any
ore than we control how our expectations and something we perceive , like a car, combine or price a fulfillment of that expectation or a surprise or something in between.

We dont simply choose what we think or say. What occurs to us to say is already shaped and conditioned by the context. It is ‘affected’
by the always fresh way in which it is used. We are always slightly surprised by what we thought we had simply ‘chosen’ to say.

Every object I see either fulfills or fails to confirm my prior expectations in some measure. This validation or invalidation is felt, and the feeling doesn’t follow the perception , it is simultaneous with it. — Joshs

This is a fair sample of your approach, I think.

The question is whether "fulfills" is fully describable in conceptual terms such as @Mww would use, sans affect.

You expect something, for reasons describable in affective terms -- even for Hume -- something about goals and preferences maybe, what *matters* to you. Then action and new data.

That the feeling of success or failure is "simultaneous", that's a tough sell, but suppose it's true: does that mean you have a double response to new input? One conceptual and one affective? Or is it two aspects of a single response?

It still looks like @Mww can grant whatever you want on the affective side, since goals and preferences get updated too, but he can also stick with the conceptual side and it alone being cognitive.

So long as affect is just something that accompanies or directs cognition, even if it always does so, @Mww can ignore it for his analysis of cognition. You have to destroy the presumed conceptual apparatus, or make affect constitutive of it, to make what you're saying more than psychological obiter dicta.

You have to destroy the presumed conceptual apparatus, or make affect constitutive of it, to make what you're saying more than psychological obiter dicta. — Srap Tasmaner

There are two ways of doing this. We can take the phenomenological route , and make affect and cognition two aspects of a single act. Heidegger and a few other do this , by making the content of a perceived or cognized meaning secondary to the organizational dynamics relating it to the cognizing subject. The meaningfulness of objects of experience is much more a function of how intricately it is assimilated to our pre-existing ways of anticipating events than its ‘intrinsic’ content.

Or we can make them entangled so tightly in a reciprocally causal manner that neither can be observed to act alone. Embodied cognitive approaches do the latter

“...emotions play a role in constraining and structuring the realm of explicit deliberation, restricting deliberation to a small number of options and structuring patterns of reasoning, so that we remain focused and relevant in our activities, able to act towards goals without becoming distracted by trivia. Thus emotions and feelings serve to constrain and focus our attention, so that we only consider from a pre-structured set of options. Damasio's (1995, 1996) more specific hypothesis is that emotions are cognitively mediated body states. He christens this theory the “somatic marker hypothesis”. The idea is that somatic (body) signals are associated with perceptual stimuli, either as a result of innate or learned neural connections, and thus “mark” those stimuli. Different perceptions can be associated with various kinds of body states, which may serve as alarm signals or, alternatively, as enticing invitations. According to Damasio, a complex of such signals focuses and structures our cognitive interactions with the world. Once we incorporate complex learned associations between perceptions and body states, a vast web of somatic markers can develop. These signals serve to eliminate certain possibilities, which feel bad, from a choice set and focus deliberation upon other feel good signals. Thus cognition is constrained, enabled and structured by a background of emotion-perception correlations, that manifest themselves as a changing background of implicit representations of body states.”(Ratcliffe 2002)

causal — Joshs

But Kant, for instance, isn't telling a causal story about cognition.

hypothesis — Joshs

And that story isn't open to experimental disconfirmation. If Damasio's theory doesn't hold up in the lab, you have to change your tune, but Kant can ignore the whole process.

But Kant, for instance, isn't telling a causal story about cognition.

hypothesis
— Joshs

And that story isn't open to experimental disconfirmation. If Damasio's theory doesn't hold up in the lab, you have to change your tune, but Kant can ignore the whole process. — Srap Tasmaner

Kant’s metaphysics is telling a causal
story. It s simply grounding that causality in a certain idealistic structure. I would say that the embodied account of affect also relies on a set of deep conceptual assumptions that ground its version of reciprocal
causality. You could say it’s Kant infused with Husserl.

Kant’s metaphysics is telling a causal story. — Joshs

Huh.

From here it looks like there is, for you, no real distinction between philosophy and psychology, or you take philosophy to be a sort of ‘theoretical psychology’, as we talk about ‘theoretical physics’, meaning ‘not quite ready for the lab’.

Odd place for this thread to end up...

Every object I see either fulfills or fails to confirm my prior expectations in some measure. — Joshs

Every object I perceive, not just see. Prior expectation is a euphemism for intuition. Fulfills exceptions implies understanding, in which case intuition conforms to the object; fails to fulfill expectations implies either a misunderstanding, in which case the intuition does not conform to the object, or no understanding at all, in which case there wasn’t any intuition to which the object could conform.

This validation or invalidation is felt, and the feeling doesn’t follow the perception , it is simultaneous with it. — Joshs

This validation is understood, and it is not simultaneous. It takes time for information to get rom sensory apparatus to dedicated areas of the brain responsible or interpreting it. It seems simultaneous to the conscious system, merely because the transit time is not part of that human consciousness/cognitive system, just as neural connections are not.

Interacting with our world isnt simply a subject staring at objects. It is a constructive activity in which we anticipate forward into the world and objects reveal themselves
to us as responses to the way we reach out to them via our expectations. — Joshs

Yes, and from one perspective, bears the post-Enlightenment name, the “Copernicus Revolution”, given from an Enlightenment philosophy that never used the name. Although, not by extending our expectations, but enforcing our constructive activity as a system, onto those objects in the world we perceive empirically, or possibly perceive a priori.

This is as true of experiences of things we have never seen before as it is of familiar things. — Joshs

Absolutely. The system works the same with either the familiar for the unfamiliar.

But the affects are the mortar that builds the very things we take as affect-less. — Joshs

Agreed, but there is no irreducible reason why we should implicate emotion as that affect. If affect is the purely physical impression on physical sensory apparatus, there are no affect-less things, but there are things to which we pay little conscious attention. If the same system is in play for the familiar as the unfamiliar, wouldn’t the more pertinent question be....how is it that we are permitted to not pay attention to the familiar, then how it is that we are affected by them both? The value in that question, is that it eliminates the affect itself, because it is always given empirically (there are no affect-less things), in favor of a more descriptive theory on the method by which we pay attention.
————-

. Any word conveys a conceptual content, insofar as words are nothing but representations of concepts, to begin with.....
— Mww

Words don’t just represent content , they enact it. — Joshs

Ok fine. A word represents a conceptual content, and strings of words logically assembled also represents the relation of conceptual contents to each other. “Tree” is a word for a conceptual content relating to a manifold of objects of a certain kind; “A tree with broad leaves and funny lookin’ seeds” as a string of logically assembled representations, relates particular conceptions to each other in order, first, to conceive a particular object of that kind (an unfamiliar experience), or second, to judge a extant conception as non-contradictory (a familiar experience). The first manifests as, “Ahhh, so that’s an oak tree, huh?”. The second manifests as, “That tree is an oak, not an elm”.
————

We dont simply choose what we think or say. What occurs to us to say is already shaped and conditioned by the context. — Joshs

Shaped and conditioned by experience empirically, or by logic a priori.
(To-may-toe/to-mah-toe; speculative metaphysics/ordinary language)

It is ‘affected’ by the always fresh way in which it is used. — Joshs

Which presupposes there is always a fresh way to use a word. But some words, the representation of some conceptions, have a single use, re: any number, or the representation of any mathematical operator. The categories. I grant there is a shaped context for “twelve”, but I reject the premise that we don’t simply choose “twelve”, when in fact we must, “twelve” being the only conception we could choose, that doesn’t lead to contradictions for any of its contexts.

We are always slightly surprised by what we thought we had simply ‘chosen’ to say. — Joshs

Simply chosen to say. You mean, simply chosen without a reason? Dunno how we can choose anything without a reason. If we have to have a reason for choosing, we don’t simply choose. Yeah, I suppose we would be surprised to find we didn’t simply choose after all.

I don’t object to your thesis in general. It is a well-thought modernization, predicated on scientific stuff subject to empirical verification.

Thus emotions and feelings serve to constrain and focus our attention, so that we only consider from a pre-structured set of options. — Joshs

If the human cognitive system is inherently logical, then it follows that the pre-structured set of options abide by logical predicates, our attention being necessarily constrained by them. While emotions do indeed serve a purpose, it isn’t in service to our conscious attention. Emotions serve our aesthetic judgements, having to do only with the condition of the thinking subject, whether a thing feels right/wrong or feels good/bad, whether or not it is right or good or not, but not that to which the subject attends, the thing that must be either right/wrong or good/bad.

Feelings/cognitions are nothing but another inescapable duality intrinsic to the human condition. Even if humans operate under the influence of both, that is not to say they are inseparable from each other.

“Neural Correlates in Gratitude”? Really? When was the last time you consulted your neurons? For anything? — Mww

:lol:

Damn man, you're firing on all cylinders today. Reread Allais' interpretation of Kant - the best one there is currently. It's very interesting.

As for 'being', either we're employing a very general word with rather vague conceptions, or we use it in a technical sense meaning something particular. To say that everything has being is a bit like saying everything is. OK.

I now suspect an ontology only arises within the context of one's studies and can't be generalized to everything, without losing consistency in some other sub-system.

Anyway, interesting exchange with Joshs.

It still looks like Mww can grant whatever you want on the affective side, since goals and preferences get updated too, but he can also stick with the conceptual side and it alone being cognitive. — Srap Tasmaner

Bullseye!!!

Feelings about an object are possible without the affect on the senses of it; cognition of an object is possible without the affect on the senses of it. Experience of an object is possible without the affect of it on emotions, but is impossible without its affect on the senses.

Feelings and cognitions are irrefutably separable, not because of affects they have, but that upon which the affects are directed.

Feelings and cognitions are irrefutably separable, not because of affects they have, but that upon which the affects are directed. — Mww

I’m honestly thinking of changing teams though. The preferences & expectations (our old friends, passions and reason) model has run its course for me. Anyway, I’m in the mood to try something else.

I also think that to think the something else is a kind of psychology misses the point entirely!

I don’t have a position to defend, though, so I can learn more by listening.

To say that everything has being is a bit like saying everything is. OK. — Manuel

“...a miserable tautology...”; “....a lame appeal to logical argument....”; “.....recourse to pitiful sophisms....”.

Back in the day, intellectuals chastised each other for reaching too far, as exemplified by the quotes above, and the common folk didn’t even know about it. These days, scientists glorify themselves in reaching as far as they can, but this time, the common folk don’t care. Either way, it boils down to the common man, which is fitting in that there are a hellava lot more of us then them, so it just seems the greater theoretical speculations ought to center on us than anything else.

A cruel circumstance indeed, methinks, that the very thing which ought to be the center of investigation, is the very thing Nature has made virtually impossible for science to arrive at empirical proofs for them.

So we end up in a situation where science is stymied empirically, which leaves us asking stupid questions of each other, like.....is Mt. Mordor a thing that is? Does Popeye exist? Where does “red” come from? Answered by.....yep, you guessed it.....miserable tautology, lame appeals, and pitiful sophisms, aaannnnndddddd.....we’re right back where we started.

(Dismounts transcendental soapbox, exists stage right)

I also think that to think the something else is a kind of psychology misses the point entirely! — Srap Tasmaner

Philosopher: I’ll tell you how I think, do with it as you will.
Psychologist: I’ll tell you how you think, do with it as you should.

Stereotypical opinionated mischaracterization, perhaps, but exemplifies the point I think is missed.

Frank Ramsey’s version (I think he was talking about aesthetics, but it’s tempting to apply it, shall we say, more broadly):

Philosopher A: I went to Grantchester yesterday.
Philosopher B: No I didn’t.

But there’s a serious question here: what does it mean for a philosophical point to depend on a matter of fact?

One answer, and I have some sympathy with this answer, as I think we all should, is that you must be doing science not philosophy because philosophy is a priori. Some of us may not really want to say the last part out loud, but it’s there nonetheless. That way of putting it distinguishes philosophy positively, but in our time I think it is mainly understood negatively: whatever the methodology of philosophy is or could be, it’s clearly not the same as whatever scientists do — whether we’re happy to call that particular ‘not the same’ a priori or not.

Another answer is that we don’t have the option of starting from nothing. Something is given to us as we begin doing philosophy, whether that’s a conceptual scheme, or a language, or something else. We can think of ourselves as studying that, or we can think of it as where the hermeneutic process just happens to begin. Austin, for example, is explicit about this, when he says that ordinary language may not be the last word but it must be the first. Philosophy has to begin not at the beginning but in the middle.

But there’s one more answer, and that’s to note that we already know what’s in the second answer. We know that we will begin from something given to us, whatever that is, and we can spend a little time thinking not just about that — not focused only on our categories, our concepts, or our language, say — but also about this given-ness, and this process by which we take an initial understanding and transform it into another, something we are evidently unable to avoid. If you notice that this very process is itself given, then you close the loop and have found something really worth thinking about. Above all what’s given, as we begin doing philosophy, is that we will start somewhere and go on from there.

That has something of the flavor of an a priori investigation about it; it doesn’t sound like empirical science. But on the other hand, everything I’ve said points at what we could reasonably think of as facts: that something is given, that we start somewhere, that we know we do, and so on. That’s a curious thing, then, that in one sense this approach is as dependent as could be on fact but not dependent in the way empirical science is.

That’s my pitch for what I understand to be Heidegger’s pitch for phenomenological ontology. Sounds to me like it’s worth a shot.

Yeah. Even in questions which we could make some progress or elucidate the topics, it will only appeal to very few people. I have in mind something like Schopenhauer's will or Descartes dualism. One can give arguments for or against these things, but not many people care.

I suppose some do like the basics of physics, atoms, black holes and the like. But much else is just not very relevant to the common man.

No matter how you slice it, this here is a minority game. Yep, nature loves to be a big tease. I don't know why, not like she cares.

No matter how you slice it, this here is a minority game. Yep, nature loves to be a big tease. I don't know why, not like she cares. — Manuel

But we do, and not just philosophers. People do care about and want to understand their own lives and their world. Philosophy can be understood not as an obscure academic enterprise, but as one way of doing that. Art is another. Trying to be a good person or a good neighbor or a good citizen, those are others.

Not for nothing, but Heidegger specifically notes that understanding is something we chase, that nature seems to be teasing us, that it’s as if ‘the answer’ is hiding from us, and he makes that a central component of the analysis.

Ramsey again:

Where I seem to differ from some of my friends is in attaching little importance to physical size. I don't feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large, but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does. I take no credit for weighing nearly seventeen stone.

My picture of the world is drawn in perspective, and not like a model to scale. The foreground is occupied by human beings and the stars are all as small as threepenny bits. I don't really believe in astronomy, except as a complicated description of part of the course of human and possibly animal sensation.

Philosophy must be drawn in perspective. Kant and Heidegger each in their own way are exploring that this is so and why and what it means for the doing of philosophy as a way of caring about and trying to understand yourself and your world.

I had in mind ontology and metaphysics, not so much general worldly affairs. In that respect, who we are, what's going to happen, what should I do and so on, well yes, a lot of people are interested in that.

When we speak about the foundations of knowledge or of objects, then the topic becomes one of reduced interest: "pointless questions", "naval gazing", etc.

People do have a general curiosity yes, but I think that, given the capacities we have to understand the universe to some extent, it is not appreciated nearly enough. Then again, we are all different and I get that.

But there’s a serious question here: what does it mean for a philosophical point to depend on a matter of fact? One answer (...) is that you must be doing science not philosophy because philosophy is a priori. — Srap Tasmaner

I agree with the answer, with the caveat that even the a priori has no business conflicting with, or leading to conflicts with, Mother Nature Herself. It is the case that the scientific method, and most decent philosophical theories, are all grounded in observations of the world, which guides us in determining how She wishes to be known.

With respect to the question, simply put, philosophical points depend on matters of fact for their empirical proofs, but not in the least does philosophy depend on facts for its constructions. Such constructed points depend on logic grounded in rules, not facts, those coming into play in the proofs themselves, re: whether or not the constructions contradict observation.
————-

a priori. Some of us may not really want to say the last part out loud, but it’s there nonetheless. — Srap Tasmaner

I think it’s there, too, despite the attempts to prove there’s no such thing.

Philosophy has to begin not at the beginning but in the middle. — Srap Tasmaner

Absolutely. Philosophy seeks the unconditioned, the irreducible, the beginning, so it cannot start there.

We know that we will begin from something given to us, whatever that is — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, empirically, we are given objects in the world. Rationally, we are given the capacity to think....

Above all what’s given, as we begin doing philosophy, is that we will start somewhere and go on from there. — Srap Tasmaner

....just like that.

That’s my pitch for what I understand to be Heidegger’s pitch for phenomenological ontology. — Srap Tasmaner

Hmmm....is it correct to say, then, that Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology is a priori?

Good stuff, overall.

No matter how you slice it, this here is a minority game. — Manuel

What to you say about the adage that not everybody does philosophy, but everybody has one?

We have two meanings of the word "philosophy", perhaps unfortunately. There's the traditional meaning going back to the Greeks, which many people here are concerned about.

Then there's this whole "philosophy" meaning "what you think about the world" as when a person asks another "what's your philosophy on this situation? or "At Johnnie Walker our philosophy is that..."

Everyone has the latter one, much fewer the traditional meaning. So the adage is true, with the said qualification.

Suits me.

Emotions serve our aesthetic judgements, having to do only with the condition of the thinking subject, whether a thing feels right/wrong or feels good/bad, whether or not it is right or good or not, but not that to which the subject attends, the thing that must be either right/wrong or good/bad.

Feelings/cognitions are nothing but another inescapable duality intrinsic to the human condition. Even if humans operate under the influence of both, that is not to say they are inseparable from each other. — Mww

Does this separation between emotion and cognition mean that one can imagine a person in whom emotions are absent, who is still able to function cognitively, still able to reason? Would this person be like Mr Spock or Data? Would they make rational , non-emotional judgements? Would they be motivated purely by reason?

You say that to which the subject attends is separate from emotion. Let’s remove emotion from the equation for a moment , since it’s connotation as florid and intense response is not what I want to focus on. Rather , I want to focus on feeling as not just simple sensation but as intrinsic to the aesthetic judgments you described above. So you are arguing that we can extract the meaning of a word concept that is independent of all feelings that may accompany our experience of that word.
Wittgenstein says that we only ever actually experience a word in its contextual use. That means it is always a different sense of the meaning of that word which we experience in any given situation. What this means is that the use of the word isnt something additional to its
own intrinsic meaning.He means ther is no intrinsic meaning to a word apart from its sense ( usage). So how and why it matters to us is the very essence of its meaning. If you are claiming that this pragmatic mattering and relevance is the province of feeling, and feeling can be separated from cognition, then you would seem to be disagreed with Wittgenstein about the relation between mattering-use and the intrinsic meaning of word concepts.

Sure. I can imagine a person void of emotion but still able to reason, make rational judgements. I wouldn’t expect a hearty “Howdy, neighbor!” from him, though.

But being void of emotion has no bearing on having both emotion and reason, yet limiting each to a particular use.

Yes, he would be motivated by reason generally, but being void of emotion, he would have no use for pure practical reason. In effect, it could be said he was void of pure practical reason and that’s why he had no emotions. There was nothing to inform him of what his emotions should be. Or it could just as well be that he had no emotion so there was nothing on which practical reason could exert itself. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Further indication of the separability of reason, or more properly, rationality, and emotion, in that they are governed by different kinds of reason.

Hellava rabbit hole we got goin’ here. Ain’t it fun??? Interesting?

This edit may not have come through before you wrote your last reply.

↪Mww
Emotions serve our aesthetic judgements, having to do only with the condition of the thinking subject, whether a thing feels right/wrong or feels good/bad, whether or not it is right or good or not, but not that to which the subject attends, the thing that must be either right/wrong or good/bad.

Feelings/cognitions are nothing but another inescapable duality intrinsic to the human condition. Even if humans operate under the influence of both, that is not to say they are inseparable from each other.
— Mww


You say that to which the subject attends is separate from emotion. Let’s remove emotion from the equation for a moment , since it’s connotation as florid and intense response is not what I want to focus on. Rather , I want to focus on feeling as not just simple sensation but as intrinsic to the aesthetic judgments you described above. So you are arguing that we can extract the meaning of a word concept that is independent of all feelings that may accompany our experience of that word.
Wittgenstein says that we only ever actually experience a word in its contextual use. That means it is always a different sense of the meaning of that word which we experience in any given situation. What this further implies is that the use of the word isnt something additional to its pre-assigned intrinsic meaning. For Wittgenstein there is no intrinsic meaning to a word apart from its sense ( usage). So how and why it matters to us is the very essence of its meaning. If you are claiming that this pragmatic mattering and relevance is the province of feeling, and feeling can be separated from cognition, then you would seem to be disagreeing with Wittgenstein about the separability of mattering-use from the intrinsic meaning of word concepts — Joshs

he would be motivated by reason generally, but being void of emotion, he would have no use for pure practical reason. In effect, it could be said he was void of pure practical reason and that’s why he had no emotions. There was nothing to inform him of what his emotions should be. Or it could just as well be that he had no emotion so there was nothing on which practical reason could exert itself. — Mww

Keeping my additional comments from the edit in mind , let’s analyze this hypothetical ‘person without feelings’.
How does a reason motivate if that reason is not a value, and how can it be a value if it is not based on an affectively felt sense? What motivates an ought, a desire, a goal of reason? What makes reason reasonable? What makes one care about being reasonable? I saw affectivity and feeling in every moment of Mr Spock’s behavior, his intricate adjustment of orientation to constantly changing contexts of meaning indicating not a single pre-programmed frame of logical norms but an ever shifting basis for logical rules. This is the affective dimension, the unpre-determined re-framing of logical frames as a function of contextual change.

Hmmm....is it correct to say, then, that Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology is a priori? — Mww

It’s at least partly correct:

The question of Being aims therefore at ascertaining the a priori conditions not only for the possibility of the sciences which examine entities as entities of such and such a type, and in so doing, already operate with an understanding of Being, but also for the possibility of those ontologies themselves ((here he probably means Kant)) which are prior to the ontical sciences and provide their foundation. — B&T, H 11

But what do we mean by ‘a priori’? What did Kant mean? What does Heidegger mean here?

The way we got into this was the question of the relationship between philosophy and psychology. It’s a question I have been puzzled about for a very long time. Part of what Heidegger means here is that philosophy is not a kind of anthropology or psychology. What does that mean?

Science, as I understand it, sees the world as a result. An explanation of why people behave as they do, or why trees grow and die as they do, or why there are galaxies with stars and planets, provides a framework that, given some input (cosmology is a bit different), predicts that we will observe what we observe. That’s one sort of understanding, what we might call ‘genetic’, how the world comes to be as it is. Insofar as you do this sort of thing in philosophy, you are doing proto-science.

The other possibility could be summed up by a phrase from Wittgenstein’s great burst of a priori thinking: “The world as I found it.” Eventually he will say, in so many words, that philosophy must strive for pure description and nothing theoretical. Phenomenology pursued a sort of pure description. In working through his troubled relationship with Kant, Strawson hit upon the phrase “descriptive metaphysics” to summarize his own project of keeping the ‘good bits’ of Kant. What all such descriptive projects have in common is the idea that we may theorize the world as a result, as science does, but we do not find the world as a result.

It’s mildly paradoxical that pure description lands in the not-empirical-science bucket where we find a priori theorizing, since description must be description, you know, of something, and that means of something already encountered or experienced or cognized. But insofar as you describe not this or that encounter of something in the world, but the nature of all such encounters, then I guess that’s what we take ourselves to mean by ‘a priori’. And that’s very much what Heidegger is up to: before you can do the sort of ontology he attributes to Kant, as a way of grounding the natural sciences, you need to write “The world I find myself in”.

So you are arguing that we can extract the meaning of a word concept that is independent of all feelings that may accompany our experience of that word. — Joshs

Technically, I’m arguing from a point where words are irrelevant. To feel and to think is not to speak. To speak is to convey, or report, feeling and thinking. That said, I can dissect your comment this way:

1.).....I experience a word you say when I hear it: cyclotron;
.........Assuming no distinguishing mannerisms, no uncharacteristic inflection or intentional mispronunciation, I immediately assign no feeling to that word, and I immediately have no understanding of any feeling you may or may not have, not conjoined with the saying of the word;
.........I immediately intuit an object. I intuit a certain object if I already know what the word I heard represents, or I do not intuit a certain object, but merely a something of which I have no experience;
.........I have now extracted the meaning of the word iff I already know the object to which it relates, or, I have not extracted the meaning of the word if I don’t. All and either without the invocation of any feeling whatsoever.


2.) .....I experience a word you say when I hear it: HALLELOO-YAHHH!!!!!
..........Given a distinguishing mannerism, I immediately understand you have invoked a feeling antecedent to the saying of it, but I have no understanding of what that feeling is from the mere experience of the word;
..........I do not intuit an object for this word, insofar as there are no objects known to me that I represent to myself with that word;
..........I do not extract any meaning of the word, because it doesn’t relate to the intuition of an object, but I do understand it represents some feeling in general of yours not given in me by the word itself.

All rather moot, in that I seldom experience a single word, but if I do, that’s how it works in me.

3.)....I experience words you say when I hear it contained in a sentence: Cyclotrons are found in the root wad of aspen trees;
........I immediately intuit a plurality of objects all in relation to each other, either I know one, another, several, all or none;
........If I know all the objects, I immediately intuit a necessary contradiction, insofar as my knowledge of these objects never has conjoined them to each other; if I only know any single one of the objects I immediately intuit a possible contradiction. If I know none of the objects I intuit nothing but a manifold of objects with no cognizable relation to each other at all, even with a full experience of the sentence I heard you say;
.........I now may or may not have extracted a meaning for the words representing my intuition of a group of objects represented by the words I heard in the sentence, but only to the degree by which they conform to my knowledge of each of them AND my understanding of the possible relations between them.

If I ever invoke a feeling of any kind with respect to these examples, it is only and always a non-fallacious post hoc ergo proper hoc sequential possibility. There is no innate necessity for invoking feelings onto that which I may or may not understand or of which I may or may not have knowledge.

So.....the argument follows that because it is sometimes evident that people do assign feelings to words, even if under some specific technicality they can’t, then people usually assign feelings to words and are merely not aware they are doing it. Of course, this major premise only holds water if there is a specific technical authority that affirms it with stronger conclusions then the negation.
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If you are claiming that this pragmatic mattering and relevance is the province of feeling, and feeling can be separated from cognition, then you would seem to be disagreeing with Wittgenstein about the separability of mattering-use from the intrinsic meaning of word concepts — Joshs

It should be clear I do not claim the mattering and relevance of words is the province of feeling. It is the province of rationality, cognition, understanding, under the umbrella of reason.

Wittgenstein says that we only ever actually experience a word in its contextual use. — Joshs

I don’t think so. To “only ever actually experience a word” is to treat it as a mere object, by which we first perceive it, then subject the word to the cognitive process, resulting in the experience of it. Shown above are two examples of the experience of a word that doesn’t even have a contextual use. Better to say understanding of a word is in its contextual use, at least in juxtaposition to experience of it, insofar as experience of a word as mere object doesn’t necessarily tell us anything. Hence.....dictionaries.

99% of the time people understand each other simply because they use words the same way, which makes explicit they have assigned words common to them, to conceptions common to them, which presupposes understandings common to them. From then on, it is experience alone, the end game of reason itself, that tells one guy, when he hears another guy say, “I saw a boat”, that he probably, but not necessarily, means he perceived one and not that he might take a tool to it in order to cut it up. Experience tells the same guy when he hears another guy say, “I saw a log” that he either perceived a log, or, he is actually going to cut it up. In each of these cases, the experience of the word “saw” in its respective statement is exactly the same, which makes explicit use and/or context in conjunction with experience is insufficient for non-contradictory mutual understanding. It cannot be otherwise, for the context from which the word is spoken is not included in the word is it is received by the listener.

At the end of the day, is correct, in that few people care about this stuff. Language has become so prevalent in this smaller-world, technologically advanced human community, in its structure, meaning and use, that the source of it has become neglected.

I intuit a certain object if I already know what the word I heard represents, or I do not intuit a certain object, — Mww

.........I have now extracted the meaning of the word iff I already know the object to which it relates. — Mww

Your view of feeling and cognition as separable entities
rests on your model of thinking in general in classically cognitivist representationalist terms, inspired by the workings of a computer. On this model, what we already know is a stored representation that sits there as what it is , waiting to be accessed for a particular purpose. The semantic content therefore is protected from contextual change implied by situational use.

In enactivist models, by contrast, there are no inner representations of an outer world , but a constantly changing integrated mesh of brain, body and environmental interactions. From their vantage words do not represent meanings which can be extracted from storage intact. What was remembered whenever we use a word has already been altered by the context of its use. So we are not simply playing around with and rearranging the order and relationships between pre-existing semantic items when we think or communicate with others. We are instead altering the mesh. Use is not the applying of an extant meaning, it is a change in the prior sense of meaning of a concept. This is the essence of affectivity.

Wittgenstein says that we only ever actually experience a word in its contextual use.
— Joshs

I don’t think so. To experience a word is to treat it as a mere object, by which we first perceive it, then subject the word to the cognitive process, resulting in the experience of it. Better to say we only ever understand a word in its contextual use. — Mww

For Wittgenstein it doesn’t make sense to say that a semantic meaning of a word is stored and then used. This is the picture theory of language that he critiques. We can’t say that a word first exists and then we understand it. Words do not name things or correspond to objects. Words are not relational at all, whether as names to the named, words to objects, or ‘words' belonging to a ‘type of use.'

“There is no such thing as a word outside of some particular use; but that is a different claim from saying that words belong to a type of use. For a word to be is for a word to be used. Language does not exist external to its use by us in the world.”( Phil Hutchinson)

Your view of feeling and cognition as separable entities
rests on your model of thinking in general in classically cognitivist representationalist terms, inspired by the workings of a computer. — Joshs

Yes, but pre-dating computers by a couple centuries. Such system may not hold as much sway as it did, but it is still around, and in its strictest sense, is impossible to refute.

We can’t say that world first exists and then we understand it. — Joshs

Hmmm. So can we say we first understand the world and then it exists? That seems patently absurd, so what can we say, respecting such if/then propositions?

Language does not exist external to its use by us in the world. — Joshs

Yep. If language doesn’t exist externally unless used by us, then it is constructed internally by us. In order to use a word, such that it exists in the world, it must first be invented. After that, it is merely recorded. Inventions are not accidents, they are purposive. Therefore words are purposive. What purpose can there be, for an internal invention, and, if internally invented there must be an internal inventor, so what is the internal inventor?

Words are not relational at all, — Joshs

Green relates to color. Grass relates to a plant. Green grass relates color to a plant.

In enactivist models, by contrast, there are no inner representations of an outer world..... — Joshs

That’s fine, as long as it covers all the bases the representational system covers, and more besides, otherwise it’s just another theory that might add to our knowledge, but isn’t sufficient falsification of its predecessor.

And that’s very much what Heidegger is up to: before you can do the sort of ontology he attributes to Kant, as a way of grounding the natural sciences, you need to write “The world I find myself in”. — Srap Tasmaner

This is exactly right. The world I find myself in is the world as it is, preemptive of my considerations of it. This is also why Kant doesn’t bother with ontology as a discipline, the simple reason being we don’t care that we find ourselves in a world.....I mean, where else would we be found.....when we really want to know what constitutes the world that we’re in. Besides, if we are found in the world, then everything else we can know about must be found in the same world. But even if we knew everything there was to know about things in the world, we still wouldn’t know the world as it is.
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But what do we mean by ‘a priori’? What did Kant mean? — Srap Tasmaner

“.....But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion), an addition which we cannot distinguish from the original element given by sense, till long practice has made us attentive to, and skilful in separating it. It is, therefore, a question which requires close investigation, and not to be answered at first sight, whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sensuous impressions? Knowledge of this kind is called a priori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge, which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience. But the expression, "a priori," is not as yet definite enough adequately to indicate the whole meaning of the question above started. For, in speaking of knowledge which has its sources in experience, we are wont to say, that this or may be known a priori, because we do not derive this knowledge immediately from experience, but from a general rule, which, however, we have itself borrowed from experience. Thus, if a man undermined his house, we say, "he might know a priori that it would have fallen;" that is, he needed not to have waited for the experience that it did actually fall. But still, a priori, he could not know even this much. For, that bodies are heavy, and, consequently, that they fall when their supports are taken away, must have been known to him previously, by means of experience. By the term "knowledge a priori," therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience. Opposed to this is empirical knowledge, or that which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience. Knowledge a priori is either pure or impure. Pure knowledge a priori is that with which no empirical element is mixed up. For example, the proposition, "Every change has a cause," is a proposition a priori, but impure, because change is a conception which can only be derived from experience....”

Nutshell.