Heidegger also saw the boundaries of language as a problem for the articulation of being
— Joshs

So he opted to express 'what it's like' from the first person view, right? — Tate

For Heidegger, ‘what it’s like’ means ‘how it changes’.

The very idea of a concept of everything as all the furniture of the universe is what the grammatical structure of language imposes on us.
— Joshs

From what vantage point are you making this observation? Where are you standing? How did you get there? — Tate

For a vantage with a particular history, which remakes itself in creating and recreating a stance. The ‘standing ‘ of the stance isn’t a fact but a performance.

For a vantage with a particular history, which remakes itself in creating and recreating a stance. The ‘standing ‘ of the stance isn’t a fact but a performance. — Joshs

Do you and your friends do this impromptu in the middle of the street sometimes?

Do you and your friends do this impromptu in the middle of the street sometimes? — Tate

I was in a philosophy meetup yesterday and the moderator insisted that I admit there are bald facts
about aspects of the world, and denying such concrete facts in the name of postmodernism or whatever is dangerous because it can lead to an ‘anything goes’ atmosphere that breeds fascism. He pointed to the embrace of relativism by some Trump supporters. I told him Trump supporters were the complete opposite of relativists.

. I told him Trump supporters were the complete opposite of relativists. — Joshs

True. They do have an amazing capacity to ignore things though.

I'm trying to think of a kind of explanation that's not about relationships to other things. — Tate

Well, any explanation relates something to something else - that's just how such discourse works. But "something else" doesn't always have to be something in the causal chain, or even something from the same category of things, such as explaining events in terms of other events or objects in terms of other objects. For example, a teleological explanation would relate events, actions, states of affairs to intents, goals, values.

Would breaking a thing down into parts and relating the parts to each other serve as an explanation? — Tate

Yes, that's a kind of explanation that we employ sometimes, isn't it?


Of course, any explanation could in turn be challenged, ad infinitum. But that's a rather obvious observation.

Yes, that's a kind of explanation that we employ sometimes, isn't it? — SophistiCat

Yes. Will the intellect be satisfied with that kind of explanation, though?

I guess I'm saying that the intellect will feel stymied by being unable to specify a cause for everything.

Maps of the territory (i.e. "intellect") cannot encompass the territory (i.e. "everything"), right? ... I can't think of any greater, more endemic, abuse of intelligence than using intelligence to deny its own limits – philosophy's bête noire.

Maps of the territory (i.e. "intellect") cannot encompass the territory (i.e. "everything"), right? — 180 Proof

I guess mapping could be a kind of explanation.

... I can't think of any greater, more endemic, abuse of intelligence than using intelligence to deny its own limits — 180 Proof

Your intellect is the only part of you that can ponder whether it has limits. It's the only part that can reason out why there might be limits.

And the intellect says it might be in the same category as Everything in being unexplainable. It's not sure.

In ideal conditions, the human intellect can explain anything, with one exception: it can't explain Everything. — Tate

Any explanation will be a part of "everything", and can thus only be an explanation of some other part. To explain everything it would have to be able to (per impossible) incorporate an explanation of itself. Since that is impossible another explanation would be required, and so on ad infinitum. It is not a coherent question.

I was in a philosophy meetup yesterday and the moderator insisted that I admit there are bald facts about aspects of the world, and denying such concrete facts in the name of postmodernism or whatever is dangerous because it can lead to an ‘anything goes’ atmosphere that breeds fascism. — Joshs

Was the moderator Jordan B Peterson?

Was the moderator Jordan B Peterson? — Tom Storm

:lol:

Hence, I believe, ancient Iranians, Zoroaster at the helm, had to posit two, Ahura Mazda & Angra Mainyu, instead of, as the Hebrews did, one (YHWH). The logic is rather simple - one hypothesis is hopelessly inadequate for the rich mix of patterns nature seems to possess. Either we propose multiple explanatory models à la scientists or go Zeno (of Elea) and declare that some of what we observe are illusions.

:up:

:smirk:

I guess I'm saying that the intellect will feel stymied by being unable to specify a cause for everything. — Tate

I agree. It's as if we are programmed to understand more more more. Enlarge the causal nexus, enlarge the domain of familiarity and mastery. Can't remember who (Sartre maybe?), but someone made the point that brute fact reveals our finitude as knowers, because it's something that happened to us, which makes no sense. Surely actual gods are spared that kind of embarrassment...

point that brute fact reveals our finitude as knowers, because it's something that happened to us, which makes no sense — Pie

Why doesn't it make sense?

it can't explain Everything — Tate

That which is by necessity causeless and eternal has no alternative but to be; no option; no opposite.

Wittgenstein claimed (there's an active thread on the topic, go look it up + there's a download link for the book Philosophical Investigations penned by Wittgenstein himself) that philosophy doesn't explain. I'm at a loss as to what he meant by it.

From a scientific perspective, explanations can never be true, they can only be unfalsified i.e. at best, scientific explanations (hypotheses/theories) are (only) assumed true until proven false. Since philosophy is abour truth, it looks like it has no links to science and explanations.

My two denarii.

Since philosophy is abour truth, it looks like it has no links to science and explanations. — Agent Smith

Who needs a proof when one has found a truth?

Not that science can't confirm to satisfy our curiosity for a proof.

Since philosophy is abour truth ... — Agent Smith

Is it? I thought philosophy's about folly (i.e. being unwise) – how to reduce foolery, how to unlearn foolish habits. :chin:

Why doesn't it make sense? — Tate

I just mean that a brute fact is true for no reason. We can't deduce it from and therefore explain it with a theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute_fact

Wittgenstein claimed (there's an active thread on the topic, go look it up + there's a download link for the book Philosophical Investigations penned by Wittgenstein himself) that philosophy doesn't explain. I'm at a loss as to what he meant by it. — Agent Smith

I take him to be talking about his vision of what philosophy ought be. One non-explaining activity of the philosopher is just that of calling attention to this or that aspect of world. It's way too easy for humans to talk nonsense, as long as they are all talking the same nonsense. For instance, there is a 'default' understanding of meaning that easily goes unquestioned, which is easily revealed to be silly if it's articulated (foregrounded, put under the lamp, pointed out.)

If the meaning of the sign (roughly, that which is of importance about the sign) is an image built up in our minds when we see or hear the sign, then first let us adopt the method we just described of replacing this mental image by some outward object seen, e.g. a painted or modeled image. Then why should the written sign plus this painted image be alive if the written sign alone was dead? -- In fact, as soon as you think of replacing the mental image by, say, a painted one, and as soon as the image thereby loses its occult character, it ceased to seem to impart any life to the sentence at all. — W's excellent little Blue Book

One non-explaining activity of the philosopher is just that of calling attention to this or that aspect of world. — Pie

:up:

Since philosophy is abour truth ...
— Agent Smith
Is it? I thought philosophy's about folly (i.e. being unwise) – how to reduce foolery, how to unlearn foolish habits. :chin: — 180 Proof

An aspect of foolery/folie is believing in falsehoods, oui?

:up:

Gracias for explaining Wittgenstein's views. Personally, I don't understand the hype around Wittgenstein. People have recommended countless number of times thst I read his work, but my gut instinct informs me that he's wrong about it all. If I am to be charitable as possible, I'd only concede that he's conflated meaning's, how shall I put it?, flexibility with absence of meaning in the conventional sense. In short, I don't feel the necessity to invent new concepts when old ones can be reworked to accommodate new discoveries perspectives. :snicker:

Who needs a proof when one has found a truth?

Not that science can't confirm to satisfy our curiosity for a proof. — PoeticUniverse

Proof, everyone needs it! At a bare minimum, evidence.

Personally, I don't understand the hype around Wittgenstein. — Agent Smith

I think he's great, but his later work is fuzzy. As I said in another thread, Ryle's The Concept of Mind is close in concept and insight while being the opposite of fuzzy.

The 'problem' is that many philosophical superstitions are mostly harmless. Our tacit skill in applying concepts in ordinary life is insulated against bad theories of meaning. How do our errors get corrected then? Only by talking to others in the minority of people who take a genuine interest in 'dry' issues like the foundation of meaning or the best way to define science, etc.

What about the intellect, the ego (the "I"), and the self. Do you think they're explainable?

What about the intellect, the ego (the "I"), and the self. Do you think they're explainable? — Tate

I think we can improve our grip on such concepts, and that one good approach to understanding the self or 'I' is to think of it as avatar on the 'stage' (sharing a public world) with other such avatars. For me, a key thing to note is that we are all keeping score. Those who 'cry wolf' become less trusted. We feel friendly toward and indebted to those who are kind to us. We don't pity as much the torturer on whom the tables have turned. This just scratches the surface. The point is that we are always tracking and scoring the avatars of one another. (I could more simply say that we are tracking one another, but the point is to shine a light on the self as a kind of central piece in a central human game.)

Without the Other, the "I" would... what? Disintegrate?