The question-begging (Platonic / Cartesian / transcendent) assumption in (Kantian, Husserlian) transcendental arguments is that "in there" (mind) is somehow separable from – outside of – "out there" (non-mind (e.g. world)). That's how it's always seemed to me which is why I prefer Spinoza's philosophical naturalism to the much less radical (i.e. more anthropocentric) 'transcendental idealism' of Kant et al. — 180 Proof

Fair enough. Don't some expression of phenomenology try to break down the mind/body problem with embodied cognition? I have a superficial understanding (which is all I have time for) of this, but I am wondering why I should care. It's just that we always seem to come back to quesions about what is true and how do we know it. Then, invariably, we end up with responses of religion/idealism/postmodernism/dogmatism. Or something like that.

Fair enough. Don't some expression of phenomenology try to break down the mind/body problem with embodied cognition? — Tom Storm

Yes, but those "expressions" come well after Husserl and his immediate followers.

It's just that we always seem to come back to quesions about what is true and how do we know it.

And, more philosophically, whether or not X is undecidable (if so, then epochē), Y is less unreasonable, or fallacious, than Z and how to determine (and interpret) such distinctions. :chin:

I am wondering why I should care. It's just that we always seem to come back to quesions about what is true and how do we know it. — Tom Storm

You often ask 'why should I bother with this?' But something keeps drawing you back into these discussions.

I think It’s essential that you learn to feel what you cannot know. Coming to think of it, this is a large part of what 'mindfulness meditation' comprises - learning that the verbal or discursive element of your being is only one facet of a much greater whole. That also comes out in artistic performance and art generally. But being aware of it is important - a kind of somatic or bodily awareness, not just on the conceptual level. That's what comes from 'zazen'. Also, for anyone that has done awareness training of the kind done at EST and the like, you're taught that ego resists this awareness, as ego's role is to incorporate everything under its gaze. That is what 'letting go' means in relation to contemplative awareness. (And I *think* this is related to the OP.)

It's also related to the phenomenological epochē, the 'letting experience be' and seeing it as it is, rather than trying to interpret it. (There's an historical link between the Buddhist 'nirodha' (cessation) and the epochē of the early sceptics.)

In a different register - much of the hostility that is directed towards religion and/or mysticism on this forum is an unconscious response to the dogmatic authority that presided over it in earlier centuries. I recall reading an excerpt from the founding charter of The Royal Society, which stated in no uncertain terms that 'metaphysik', being the province of 'churchmen', in no way must be considered in the reckonings of the Society. And when you consider the bloody history of that time, the slaughter of the 'religious wars', that was an extremely prudent consideration. Venture a wrong opinion about matters of dogma, and goodness knows what might happen to you.

Indeterminacy and thrownness, what do these mean? Indeterminateness refers to the lack of settled position — Constance

It’s where things resist even identity, ever undetermined, questioning “thing” itself. I get indeterminacy, and agree, it can be called “lack of settled position” or just the flux and frictions of being, in our case, human (whatever “human” means…. Always an important recognition of the predicament that is being human.

Already we have left the comfort zone of ready to hand assumptions, for how many of us entertain such ideas? This can be argued: is a concept a principle of synthetic inclusiveness? Is it a pragmatic way to achieve an end? Perhaps a concept is the very way finitude is defined and delimited. But is it historically structured? Is it possible for thought and its concepts to understand the world as the world? Or, my favorite: how can a concept be understood given that the understanding itself is inherently conceptual? The worst kind of question begging. — Constance

I know what you are saying, but it feels too metaphysical too fast, or epistemological, asking “Is it possible for thought and its concepts to understand the world as the world?”. We no longer need the content, such as the “the essence of religion”, to continue the conversation this inquiry might become.

All the color is set aside to behold the coloring itself.

As where you first said this inquiry suspends all concepts of “faith, atheism, theodicy, God, first cause, teleology, and so on;”

But it feels like we could easily head into a digression away from statements like “the world IS religious.”. Perfectly good questions but, we now need never talk about religion.

But then again, I think there is a reason a discussion of the indeterminacy of existence for us, bumps into epistemological as well as ethical, radical indeterminacy.

To me, as metaphor, we looked through a window you called “the essence of religion” for something prior that is “real” and “in the world”. What did we find? You said “radical ethical indeterminacy that is our existence.”

If it was ever possible that “we have left the comfort zone of ready to hand assumptions” to see the prior, perhaps we can keep what you found here, and keep looking.

The same indeterminacy of our existence could also be said to have given birth to science. (I see this is why Nietzsche could say academic science could lie as much as religion could).

Science and religion are equally concept making, indeterminacy regulators. It’s why they always wrestle for the same space with the “why” the how, the what, the whether.

It’s just indeterminate. Our existence.

We fill this indeteminacy with laws.l. They could be rational, scientific laws. Be it ethical or not, or only ethical, or scientific or not, or only scientific, it’s all still mixed with the indeterminate.

I can’t argue what I see in where this is going, but I can describe it.

What I see is that, somehow (and I leave that to epistemology to figure out), and for some reason (and I’ll leave that to the poets and prophets), what I see is, like you said “existence IS us.” We are each, the world. But this also means something. What it means, adds to this world, moves it”self” (the existence IS me), ahead of the world, in to the world, like being thrown. We throw our”selves” into this world.

We participate in our own thrownness. We interrupt ourselves into “our” existence.

I don’t know how, mind you. (I just said “mind you” twice to serve two difference functions, having two different meanings in the sentences - so indeterminate of me.)

But only then, after by some means being thrown to throw our selves back might we start to look for what this becomes, such as a vision of indeterminacy, be it radical ethical, or rational, or ethical first, or rational with ethical color first…etc.

So I’ve lost your point again about religion qua religion. Something making use of the word “essence” about “religion.”

Or does the overlap between scientific objectification (the rational, yielding speech itself). like ethical objectification (yielding religion) show I’m at least standing in the same vicinity as you?

Don't some expression of phenomenology try to break down the mind/body problem with embodied cognition?

Yup. Robert Sokolowski's "The Phenomenology of the Human Person," is one of my favorites and it "builds a bridge," with Husserl and Aristotle. Nathan Lyon's "Signs in the Dust," is another good one, but it's less phenomenological and works more with semiotics, particularly John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas), Cusa, and Aquinas—making it also an interesting blend of modern philosophy and some "deep(er) cuts" from a fairly neglected era. Edith Stein would seem to be another, I'm less familiar with her though.

Surely that depends on what one chooses to define ethics as. In a simple definition of what is largely perceived to be right or wrong by a given social majority based on absolute factors such as human suffering, malaise, and distress compared to comfort, pleasure, and contentedness, again, more so or "as the majority of normal functioning humans respond and demonstrate", it most certainly has some form of measurement or quantification. How could it not? — Outlander

Anything can have some form of quantification. But consider: in defining the nature of ethics, we have to deal with value, and this looks to the infamous "good and "bad" which can certainly quantified, as in, how bad is that sprained ankle? But the nature of the experience of pain itself, this is simply "there" in the "fabric of things." In the pure givenness of the world. What makes this so important is that givenness at this primordial level stands apart from explanatory possiblities, as all qualia do, as a pure phenomenon. If it were a matter of, say, the color red and one were being "appeared to redly" (as they say) then no big deal: being red carries no significance at all outside of contexts where color is given meaning. But the sprained ankle is altogether different: pain is inherently ethical, that is, has a normative ethical stature: It should not exist! And this is not a contextual "should not" as when we say one shouldn't forget one's umbrella on a rainy day, BECAUSE.... You see, the normativity of this "should" is contingent. It requires a context to complete the meaning. But pain, this is stand alone "shouldn't", or, it stands as its own presupposition, its own foundation, for its own prohibition.

The point of this is to show something by my thinking to be nothing short of mystical (agreeing with Wittgenstein): ethics IS its own presupposition, its own metaethical grounding. Ethics is always already metaphysical.

What I want to say is, to even reach the precondition of being able to talk definitively about something, be it a physical thing or a conceptual idea, one must in fact, have a solid understanding of the thing in question, or in simpler terms "know what one is talking about". So, while it may not necessarily be :reducible" to the given quantification or standards of a given science, it surely has to be well-defined by concrete definitions and boundaries that enable it to be discussed and declared as "this or that" as opposed to something else. In short, it has to be, perhaps "reducible" is not the ideal term but rather "indisputably definable" in some way that effectively does enable it to be discussed and declared as having quality X or not having quality Y, etc. — Outlander

I think simple direct reference to a thing satisfies what you are looking for. There it is, a pain in my ankle. I can quantify this, certainly. But its presence is antecedent to the quantification. I mean, it is first "there" and witnessed. One can say that it is this primordial givenness that precedes anything one can say about anything.

I think this is an interesting claim for reasons I will attempt to explain. You mention just as logic itself requires a brain but discussing logic itself does not require discussion of the brain itself. Imagine, if you will, a world devoid of all sentient life. Where would ethics fit in? Where would value fit in if there is no one to value or be valued or be ethically treated or mistreated? Some might argue WE as sentient beings, rather consciousness, is the source of all value. Sure we live in a physical world and as such we value physical things required for survival, but does your above statement not have some correlation to your previous example of how discussing logic, which requires a brain, does not require discussing the brain itself? — Outlander

This takes the issue perhaps too far for comfort. A world without our sentience, our consciousness, our existence, cannot be imagined, as the very possibility requires that we leave experience to conceive such a thing. It is not as if there are no other things out there, not me or other than me. That would be absurd because, well, there they are. But these are observed in the apperceptual conditions of one's existence. Outside experience, objects are entirely transcendental. In fact, one can argue that to speak of such a thing is entirely impossible because sense can only be made of experiential possibilities.

If there is no one to be valued? It is an interesting thought. Take falling in love. The significant other, what does s/he give or take in the relation? Certainly, the other is a catalyst, to be sure, to what is latent in the beloved, for nothing really passes between the two. The other does not literally "give" anything, suggesting that one might be able to "walk on air" unaided. Like a Buddhist monk?

Perhaps, linking the two examples, fear is a physiological response to one or more stimuli, either active (say, a loud noise or the sudden, unexpected presence of a possible danger) or passive (a thought or possibility on one's mind that has the potential to become disastrous), that causes a distinct feeling of unease due to the possibility of loss of control or well-being? — Outlander

Perhaps you can see that I am pursuing a rather odd take of this kind of thing. Fear of death is not primordial because it begs the question: what is wrong with fear? referring to the experience itself. Fear, dread, anxiety, terror, and the rest have a great number of explanatory contexts, as you suggest. But what about nature of the experience itself? Very unpleasant. What is pleasure? This kind of question exposes The nature of religion.

I think there is probably a lot to this. But of you are correct, doesn't this mean that everyone is religious in some way, even the atheist, who also has to grapple with these issues, and in some way yield to the moral insistence you describe? Do you want to modify your concept to exclude atheists and those who identify as irreligious? Or do you want to say that everyone is religious in the sense you mean it, whether they like it or not?

Atheists tend to base their irreligiosity on the grounds that an essential element of religion is a set of beliefs about the world that there is not reason to believe. But you've explicitly said that's not the feature of religion you are talking about. — bert1

I think this is an insightful statement. Yes, we are always already IN a religious world, whether we are explicitly religious or not. Of course, religion is a term that has a history, a tradition, and considerable connotative baggage, so clearly I am not talking about A religion. I am saying that religion is a lot like art: there was a time when art was everywhere in a society's lived experiences. Art, says Dewey, has its essence IN experience itself. Then came the modern practice of sequestering art, and the museum was born, and art is now a professional's business, and very few of us are ":artists". Something similar has happened with religion, hasn't it? The churches, the clergy, the rituals, the scriptures; I mean, this kind of thing has been going on a long time, of course, but the practice has formalized and specialized and made into an institution something which has its foundation in the structure of consciousness itself.

Atheism is just an opinion about theism, and theism is just bad metaphysics.

I think It’s essential that you learn to feel what you cannot know. Coming to think of it, this is a large part of what 'mindfulness meditation' comprises - learning that the verbal or discursive element of your being is only one facet of a much greater whole. — Wayfarer

And yet when I tell you I think it all comes down to faith and feeling and that nothing discursive can be known via meditation, intuition or enlightenment you disagree and label me a positivist. Now it looks like a double standard or perhaps merely peevishness, I don't know which.

And yet when I tell you I think it all comes down to faith and feeling and that nothing discursive can be known via meditation, intuition or enlightenment you disagree and label me a positivist — Janus

Learning to feel what can't be known is actually a very difficult skill, I believe, and I don't make any claim to have mastered it, but at least I'm aware of it, as something that matters, and something that I know that I don't know. Having an insight into the limitations of discursive knowledge is an insight - I referenced the 'analogy of the divided line' in that respect, as it appears Plato recognises different levels or kinds of knowledge, discursive, and types that are higher than that. What he regarded as higher knowledge, noesis, or insight into the ideas, was very much also a matter of aesthetics, and therefore of feeling (or 'qualia' in that horrible philosophical jargon). But you have told me on multiple occasions that there can be no such thing as higher knowledge, nor a vertical or qualitative dimension of existence, and that anything that is said along those lines must be considered 'matter of faith'. It never seems to occur to you that maybe there is such a thing, and you don't understand it.

There is an historical dimension to all these matters. I think classical metaphysics was grounded in a kind of vision, 'the unitive vision', also dismissed by you as 'faith'. There is something in it that can be known, but it has generally been rejected or occluded or dismissed by the modern conception of knowledge, as I try to explain to Banno, who likewise says it's simply 'hand-waving' (and also that it is something that ought not to be said). I try to support this contention with reference to citations, which you then also tell me 'have it all wrong'.

From my perspective, I've made many sincere efforts to explain my arguments to you, over about ten years, which is often met with a mixture of incomprehension and indignation, along with frequent acusations that I've 'dodged the question' or 'changed the subject'. Last time I took a month out from posting, I seriously considered whether I should respond to your criticisms. I'm still considering it, but if I no longer respond, it's not out of defensiveness, it's out of a feeling you have no idea what I'm trying to convey.

The one thing that comes out of it is that having to explain it over and over again does at least crystallize it for me, even if I feel I'm singing to the deaf.

The point is that if you had listened to me you would have realized that I agree with you that we can feel what can't be known. Calling that feeling "knowledge" is using 'knowledge' as in the biblical "a man shall know his wife".

That is also how we know (feel) our non-dual being and life, and how we know poetry and the arts. All I've ever said about this, over and over, is that in that "knowing" (feeling) nothing determinate or discursive or propositional is known.

And the irony is that all that time you have been claiming that I don't understand your position, whereas now it turns out we've been saying what amounts to the same thing and actually agreeing all along, and it has been you that didn't understand my position.

If I didn't understand what you were saying, it was because it seemed like you were asserting that something discursive or propositional is known in that "feeling" you are speaking about. and because you took umbrage at what I said when I denied that and accused me of being a logical positivist or empiricist.

And now here you are saying the same thing, and still refusing to admit that I understand what you are saying. I must say it's kind of weird! The other irony is that even a good staunch logical positivist or empiricist could agree with this kind of feeling/ knowing, and I believe that is pretty much Wittgenstein's position as well.

I'm still considering it, but if I no longer respond, it's not out of defensiveness, it's out of a feeling you have no idea what I'm trying to convey. — Wayfarer

This just confirms my opinion that you won't give up the idea that you can say what cannot be said, but can only be felt or lived, and thus shown. You often cherry-pick from Wittgenstein: I think it would do you some good, clear up these apparent confusions of yours, to actually read him closely.

You often ask 'why should I bother with this?' But something keeps drawing you back into these discussions. — Wayfarer

For me this quesion goes to the heart of philosophy - what ought we do? I personally see no connection between asking this and any desire to depart from discussions. I ask this question about most things I do as a regular practice. What difference does X make to me or others?

I think It’s essential that you learn to feel what you cannot know. Coming to think of it, this is a large part of what 'mindfulness meditation' comprises - learning that the verbal or discursive element of your being is only one facet of a much greater whole. That also comes out in artistic performance and art generally. But being aware of it is important - a kind of somatic or bodily awareness, not just on the conceptual level. That's what comes from 'zazen'. Also, for anyone that has done awareness training of the kind done at EST and the like, you're taught that ego resists this awareness, as ego's role is to incorporate everything under its gaze. That is what 'letting go' means in relation to contemplative awareness. (And I *think* this is related to the OP.) — Wayfarer

I'm not unsympathetic to the thrust of this but how reliable is such felt knowledge? People often imagine they have access to truth when it is feelings they have access to and those feelings are as likely to be bigoted or intolerant as they are to encapsulate Buddhahood. Probably more so the former. Again, I'm not saying this to dismiss the point; it's more about testing its reliability. And by the way, I'd say my atheism is significantly informed by felt knowledge. Reality, whatever it may be, feels sans-deity to me.

I realise my reference to ‘feeling what you cannot know’ is open to a variety of interpretations (to say the least). But what I was trying to drive at, was becoming internally aware of the limitation or shortcomings of what can be put in a propositional form. The language-processing faculty of the mind is obviously a central aspect of knowledge, but there’s another, intuitive faculty which is broader, deeper and more ancient. And there’s a kind of boundary between them that you can become aware of, and I feel it’s something I have become at least somewhat aware of. I suppose I might be referring to the unconscious, and that this is something like what Jung said about the role of symbols in mediating the unconscious. As to how ‘reliable’ it is, obviously anyone is liable to self-delusion, but nevertheless grappling with that existence is an essential part of the philosophical quest.

On Wittgenstein again: an article by Ray Monk, his biographer, said:

His work is opposed, as he once put it, to "the spirit which informs the vast stream of European and American civilisation in which all of us stand." Nearly 50 years after his death, we can see, more clearly than ever, that the feeling that he was swimming against the tide was justified. If we wanted a label to describe this tide, we might call it "scientism," the view that every intelligible question has either a scientific solution or no solution at all. It is against this view that Wittgenstein set his face. …

There are many questions to which we do not have scientific answers, not because they are deep, impenetrable mysteries, but simply because they are not scientific questions. These include questions about love, art, history, culture, music-all questions, in fact, that relate to the attempt to understand ourselves better. There is a widespread feeling today that the great scandal of our times is that we lack a scientific theory of consciousness. And so there is a great interdisciplinary effort, involving physicists, computer scientists, cognitive psychologists and philosophers, to come up with tenable scientific answers to the questions: what is consciousness? What is the self? One of the leading competitors in this crowded field is the theory advanced by the mathematician Roger Penrose, that a stream of consciousness is an orchestrated sequence of quantum physical events taking place in the brain. Penrose's theory is that a moment of consciousness is produced by a sub-protein in the brain called a tubulin. The theory is, on Penrose's own admission, speculative, and it strikes many as being bizarrely implausible. But suppose we discovered that Penrose's theory was correct, would we, as a result, understand ourselves any better? Is a scientific theory the only kind of understanding?

Well, you might ask, what other kind is there? Wittgenstein's answer to that, I think, is his greatest, and most neglected, achievement. Although Wittgenstein's thought underwent changes between his early and his later work, his opposition to scientism was constant. Philosophy, he writes, "is not a theory but an activity." It strives, not after scientific truth, but after conceptual clarity.

When I read that, I feel perfectly in alignment with it. But it seems very different from the way Wittgenstein is often interpreted, including on this forum.

As to how ‘reliable’ it is, obviously anyone is liable to self-delusion, but nevertheless grappling with that existence is an essential part of the philosophical quest. — Wayfarer

Fair enough. I like asking questions, they are not necessarily an indication of what I am thinking, or what I might know - more a desire to cover off on a range of domains and understand better what others think.

Robert Sokolowski's "The Phenomenology of the Human Person, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Cool, thanks for the references. I was wondering what Sokolowski's status might be. I've dipped my toe into some Evan Thompson and Francisco Varela.

With apologists it always comes down to "you must not understand" if you disagree with them and/or present arguments they can't cope with. Also, they argue from the mindset of wanting something to be true and ignoring anything that doesn't confirm their wishes, rather than seeking to discover the truth with an unbiased disposition. — Janus

Could you teach me how to read minds?

When we say "transcendence", don't we usually mean something metaphysical like 'X transcends, or is beyond, Y' (e.g. ineffable, inexplicable, unconditional, immaterial, disembodied, etc)? This differs from "transcendental" which denotes 'anterior conditions which make X epistemically possible' (Kant, Husserl). I usually can't tell from their posts what most members like Wayfarer or @Constance intelligibly mean by either of these terms. — 180 Proof

I tend to avoid the term as it can very quickly tend to irresolvable dualisms or obscurantism as you suggest. It might be salvaged as a concept by identifying the transcendant with the subject and the worldly with its actions, in the sense that the sea transcends its waves, or I transcend my walking. The world is the actions of spirit.

@Tom Storm

No. I can perhaps teach you how to interpret behavior, though.

Sure, let's do that on the psychology forum.

I see how you are framing this. Interesting. But I'm not sure what the significance of this is, or where it gets us. No doubt it all depends upon how one views the notion of reality and the possibility of knowledge. — Tom Storm

Because you and I have spent our lives in a world that ignores metaphysics. Such a thing is both the furthest away from "common sense" yet the closest to our existence. When I see my cat on the sofa, I am instantly attuned to the same cat, the same thing daily talked about in all the usual contexts, and in this perspective has nothing new at the basic level because the basic level is never challenged, is it, for the thought of it is nonsense. But the difference lies in the interpretative act of receiving the world. Receiving is not done as if perception is a mirror of nature (to borrow a term). How could anyone think that when the cat is processed in a brain, the outcome is the crystal clear cat itself?

There is the famous analogy in Hinduism (I think it was Adi Shankarya) of the snake and the rope that says when I see the cat in the normal way, it is essentially just an error, as if I mistook a piece of rope for a snake walking down the street. It is the same world, but all along there has been this fundamental mistake at the perceptual level. The snake was in the interpretative event, and the fear followed, and one can imagine summoning the townspeople in search of the deadly thing, and so on. Such is what is called culture, the massive sublimation of original energy. For Freud (and Vera Mont may go after me on this. But I speak loosely here) culture is a grand sublimation of original energy, a kind of fetish --parasitical on the unseen original, this language and the institutions so familiar. I ask this question: does General Motors "exist"? This is meant to be taken seriously. Do marriages and funerals or Yale and Dartmouth "exist"? Or, are they "real"?

Such an odd question, but see how things like this get tossed about so readily in conversations, problem solving, actualities in the world. But really, isn't it just as Shankarya put it, an error? Constructed pragmatically to deal with issues more fundamental like people being bound in love, respected when dead, solving technical problems that invented out of the very language and culture that multiplied things in own grand sublimation of the world?

How about my cat: does she exist? How is the word 'cat' such that when I use it, I am dealing with the real? Or is the term just like General Motors?

Death is feared because it represents the radically unknown, the radically unknowable, and this is naturally profoundly unsettling, as the very idea of non-existence may also be.

Add to this that death is associated with the humiliating loss of physical and cognitive powers, as well as being possibly associated with terrible pain. Add to this the loss of loved ones and everything familiar. It is not surprising that people should wish for immortality and an afterlife which is perfect, unlike the present life. — Janus

True. But ask a more fundamental question: why do we "care"? Yes, it is traumatic, as are many things. But to be traumatized, so strongly affected has a dimension to it that is glossed over in the descriptive accounts of the things that actually do this, and this passes by a very important primordiality of our existence which is at the root of ethics and religion: caring. Of course, caring itself can glossed over, and rightly so as we are busy trying to understand other things, but implcit in these is the interest, elation, joy of wonder, concern, and so on, and this is IN the essence of ethics and therefore religion. You know, no caring, no religion. Caring's existential counterpart, the experience itself of the elation, the sad disappointment, the humiliation you mention above, it is this Wittgenstein could not find "in the world".

Such a strange thing it is, no? the scalding of my finger the other day hurt terribly, and the philosophical question hovered over the event: certainly there are the facts before me on the "grid" of "states of affairs," but this "badness" is altogether elusive to understanding. This is because, the "qualia" of pain is not at all like "being appeared to redly," say. It informs thought about something else, and it is not the vacuity of being a color. It is momentous, and this momentousness issues from "the world" (which is a confusing term given the way Wittgenstein uses it vis a vis others others) and not in a fetishized (as I call it) factuality. I mean, horrible pain is momentous existentially! It is not contingently momentous, as say a stock market crash and all inversted funds perished. Which is what I call a fetish of value: stock markets are entirely contrived institutions, on the grid of sense making, but only because we put them there. The scalding of the finger, not THIS is the impossible world "speaking" our ethics and religion PRIOR to our institutions.

It is the same world, but all along there has been this fundamental mistake at the perceptual level. — Constance

An error in consciousness, it has been said.

Because you and I have spent our lives in a world that ignores metaphysics. — Constance

But is that really the case? I spent much of my young life associated with the New Age movement as it was called back in the 1980's. Most of my friends were idealsits and Theosophists and Buddhists and Hindus and Jungians and Gnostics and Sufi mystics, etc. Quantum physics was seen as proof of idealism, etc. So metaphysics was very much the flavour of the day. I also grew up with Jung, the archetypes and collective unconscious, so I was not exactly immured in 20th century scientism or common sense.

How about my cat: does she exist? How is the word 'cat' such that when I use it, I am dealing with the real? Or is the term just like General Motors? — Constance

But aren't these questions a bit naff? I don't know about yours, but my cat exists. I know this because if I don't feed him he give me hell. I subscribe somewhat to Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of language as being an arbitrary set of signs and signifiers. General Motors is the collective noun for a company.

Any subject or object can be deconstructed into meaninglessness or incoherence, but so what? Not all questions and investigations are useful. I'm fine with reality (whatever that may be) being a pragmatic or tentative construct that helps us to manage our lives. The problem isn't so much in pointing out putative flaws in our construction of the world. The problem is no one has any useful alternatives.

the sea transcends its waves — bert1

(or) immanent to – encompassed by – the seas are its waves

A pointless comment.

Any subject or object can be deconstructed into meaninglessness or incoherence, but so what?

I'm fine with reality (whatever that may be) being a pragmatic or tentative construct that helps us to manage our lives. The problem isn't so much in pointing out putative flaws in our construction of the world. The problem is no one has any useful alternatives. — Tom Storm

:fire: :up: The next round (or three) is on me, mate.

:pray:

But ask a more fundamental question: why do we "care"? — Constance

I'd say we care because (or if) it is our nature to care. There is not some anterior reason that leads us to think we should care. We are instinctively attached to our lives and want to preserve them, just as animals are.

this passes by a very important primordiality of our existence which is at the root of ethics and religion: caring. — Constance

I'm not sure what your "this" refers to here. Care is central to everything we do, even for those who don't seem to care about anything much.

Caring's existential counterpart, the experience itself of the elation, the sad disappointment, the humiliation you mention above, it is this Wittgenstein could not find "in the world". — Constance

Caring is not an intrinsic part of the world (although Heidegger would say it is, but he uses "world" to refer to the specific human world of dasein); the point is the world does not care about humanity, no matter how much humanity might care about the world (not much it seems given the state of the environment). Of course, caring, in one form or another, is intrinsic to animal life.

I mean, horrible pain is momentous existentially! — Constance

I agree, horrible pain is like a prison, and the thought that it might never end makes it all the worse. Some people live with constant pain, though; perhaps we can learn, through necessity, to deal with anything, but it would seem to take practice, and I wouldn't wish that necessity of practice on anyone.

:up: I'll second that...Tom has hit the nail right square!

But ask a more fundamental question: why do we "care"?
— Constance

I'd say we care because (or if) it is our nature to care. There is not some anterior reason that leads us to think we should care. We are instinctively attached to our lives and want to preserve them, just as animals are. — Janus

:100: :fire:

Given his "fundamental question", maybe @Constance has not considered (e.g.) Spinoza's conatus.