I'm glad you enjoy my efforts. I find mutual enjoyment is by far the best basis for an interesting discussion.
However, I would have to take issue with the title of the post of yours that you cited. But I'll read it nonetheless. I'm not sure I can contribute much to the discussion there, but we'll see.

I have read that Kant was infuriated by those critics of his first edition who accused him of basically re-cycling Berkeley's idealism, — Wayfarer

Perhaps I wrote that sentence a bit carelessly. I would have to read up to respond to your point properly. Thanks for the reference.
Quite what Berkeley did deny is a bit moot, but a common way of putting it is that he denied the existence of any mind-independent things, that is, of anything that is not perceived or perceiving. Kant did not deny that, except that if he did deny that the noumena are perceivable or (knowable?), then he is very close to Berkeley.

Yeah, and when philosophers disengage from ordinary human life, that's when their own lives become a real mess and muddle. — Metaphysician Undercover

Perhaps mess and muddle is an inescapable part of human life? And then, the attempt to escape also becomes an inescapable part of human life. Perhaps the best thing to do is to embrace mess and muddle - but then, what would become of philosophy?

I believe that Berkeley did not claim that sense observation doesn't imply the existence of matter, he showed that the concept of "matter" is not required to understand the reality of independent things. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, the first half of that is a bit unorthodox. But the second half is at least defensible. It's just that his understanding of the reality of independent things doesn't involve the concept of matter. Right?

Therefore we can infer that matter is a feature the human system which makes sense observations, just like Kant says space and time are. — Metaphysician Undercover

Perhaps so. However, I've always thought that Kant essentially accepts Berkeley, especially his argument that the distinction between primary and secondary qualities doesn't hold up, so that time and space are mind-dependent, as well as colour, etc. Including matter in that argument makes sense. Once you have accepted the distinction between reality and appearance, ideas and things, phenomena and noumena, that conclusion is more or less inevitable. The only way out is to reject, or at least recast, the distinction.

It depends on what you mean by 'substantial'; if you mean something like "tangible' then sure. Is mass fundamental in physics, specifically in QM? — Janus

I avoid commenting on QM. I'm not qualified to do so.
In some contexts, substantial does mean something like tangible or solid. In others, not so much.

If what is is fundamentally energetic, then that is what I would mean by "physical". Is there an alternative view to this? — Janus

I take it that you mean by "energetic" the concept of energy that is defined by physics? Which, by definition, studies what is physical?
Perhaps St. Augustine's remark about time applies to matter, as well.

My concern is that it advocates for a one size fits all standard - a mature person will marry. There are various reasons why someone does not marry, most of them having little or nothing to do with philosophy. — Fooloso4

In the end, this takes us back to the issue about what it means for a human being to flourish and the desire to let a thousand flowers bloom. The issue is, which of them, if any, count as weeds? It would be easy to talk about balance and proportionality, but we all make choices (subject to certain basic needs, such as food and shelter) and so we all specialize, so that doesn't help very much.
Returning to the specific issue, about the model of the solitary thinker as the paradigm of philosophy, I would want to say:-
1) that there is room for more than one model - and Socrates provides a different one.
2) A philosophical life that doesn't include both risks losing touch with philosophy or losing the focus and intensity that it requires - and Midgley does recognize this. The point that Descartes was not in fact a solitary thinker, but was deeply rooted in the philosophical and ordinary life of his time has already been made in this thread.
3) On this specific issue, it is important not to over-generalize; Wittgenstein certainly prioritized solitary thinking in his practice and even, I gather, went to some trouble to give the impression that he didn't read the work of other philosophers.
Isn't there a letter written when he was living on his own in order to focus on philosophy, in which he rails against the distractions of doing his own house-keeping? (But, one notices, he is doing his own house-keeping.) Yet he managed to understand the need to ground philosophy in human life.

I think you are making out more than there truly is in this article. It is a silly, poorly-written article. It is not a treatise, nevermind philosophy, the editor is correct. It does not offer in any way an alternative to Descartes' six Meditations, or to his Principles, or to his Discource. It is not rigorous. — Lionino

I may be making too much of it. However, I'm sure that Midgley did not think that this piece was in any way a replacement for Descartes' writings.

Even after Descartes' extensive writings on his method and replies to objections, people still try to find fault within him. It would be fine if they happened to find actual faults. Let's apply that amount of scrutinity to Mary's article then. — Lionino

Well, people try to find fault with everybody else. Why would Descartes be an exception?

Afaik, existentialists are not arguing against Descartes, Descartes not against what would be the existentialists. — Lionino

That's probably right. Perhaps it would be better to say that they were changing the subject. Though I suspect that Sartre was unduly influenced by him.

Not to speak of that horrible last paragraph in the article. Whatever college it was she lectured at, I will be far away from it and its professors. — Lionino

Expect no logic from a pregnant woman.

is certainly horrible. But Midgley is quoting someone else and expects us to find it horrible. She worked at Reading University 1949 - 1962 and then Newcastle University 1962 - 1980 but I would think that there has been considerable staff turnover since then.

My concern is that it advocates for a one size fits all standard - a mature person will marry. There are various reasons why someone does not marry, most of them having little or nothing to do with philosophy. — Fooloso4

Yes. That's valid. Her idea of adolescence is not much to write home about, either.

I find the discussion on celibacy to be similar to old school thoughts on celibacy in male athletes. It was commonly thought that male athletes ought to practise celibacy to improve performance. That sort of nonsense has been thoroughly debunked and we could call it a "trivial, irrelevant intrusion of domestic matters into [athletic] life". — Metaphysician Undercover

You are right about celibacy in athletics, and I wouldn't think that it was particularly important in philosophy either. For me, Midgley's argument is reminiscent of the argument that priests need to practice celibacy. What she may be trying to express, though rather badly, is that philosophers, however transcendent their thought, ought not to disengage from the mess and muddle of ordinary human life. I think that's true and important.
There is something very odd about the thought that organizing appropriate meals and providing and washing the kit are trivial irrelevant intrusions into athletic life, rather than the bedrock of athletic life. It suggests the speaker has the privilege of being able to get other people to do those things for him (or her).

However, there is a fundamental problem, science understands through sense observation, and sense observation instills "matter" into the phenomena. This produces what Wayfarer likes to call the blind spot of science. — Metaphysician Undercover

So Berkeley was wrong to think that sense observation doesn't imply the existence of matter?

But I'm not sure whether that's enough to refute the argument.
— Ludwig V

Banno himself said Midgely is using Descartes as a rhetorical device. If that is the case, there isn't really an argument. — Lionino

H'm. It depends on what you count as an argument. I probably have a more relaxed view of what constitutes an argument than you.

But there is a tricky issue here. Descartes invites us to approach his problem (winnowing out what he does really know from what he just thinks he knows) in a certain way. Midgley is suggesting a different way. Descartes offers us the model of a solitary thinker, withdrawn from the world and at peace. Midgely recognizes some good reasons for choosing Descartes' model, but thinks that a different model will avoid some big issues with Descartes' solution of the problem he sets himself. It's not really a simple question of fact. Proof and refutation are probably not available here. But that doesn't mean that the choice doesn't matter or that there cannot be good and bad grounds for making it. (Compare the existentialists' shift to focus on the human condition - the world as we are thrown into it - as opposed to Descartes' search for a clean sheet and an indubitable foundation - probably modelled on Euclid.)

I'm afraid I didn't take that comment - or the poll - at all seriously.

The idea that it is a "dialect" is not quite accurate, but I am not going to be uncharitable. — Lionino

You don't need to be charitable. I knew it was not quite right when I wrote it. But I couldn't think of anything better. Still can't, for that matter. "Dialect" and "language" are very slippery, unless one relies on a gun-boat.

If there had been faith in the king... — Lionino

Clearly, I put my faith in the wrong king. Thanks for the corrections. All very interesting.

I imagine you are referring to essentia. That is also one of the translations of usia. It is in fact the literal translation of usia to Latin, coined by Cicero. Substantia is in fact a post-classical translation of hypostasis, but later it came to be often used to translate usia. This comment might be of interest: — Lionino

It certainly is of interest. One might as well try to organize a herd of ferrets.

I find it curious that folk are so defensive of Descartes. Granny Midgley is obviously using him as a rhetorical device. — Banno

It isn't so curious. Philosophers are great parricides, and often resurrect their grandfathers - or great-grandfathers, if they want to be especially rebellious. It's because philosophy thrives on disagreement and is most at home in chaos.
Yes. Everything, especially in philosophy, including the arguments, is about persuasion. Logic is simply the most effective rhetorical device. She pulls much the same trick in her discussion of pregnancy.

If so, you must be making the same point as Midgely about motherhood. Are you pregnant? — Lionino

This move is really very problematic. With one breath I am reminded of an experience that is not available to me; with the next breath, I am faced with a universal conclusion. The only solution must be that the presentation of the experience is in fact supposed to convey what it is like. Midgley's discussion works well to establish her conclusion, but whether her description is "correct" or not is another question. It would be easy to suggest that perhaps not all mothers experience their pregnancy in the same way. But I'm not sure whether that's enough to refute the argument.

Based on the link to Midgley's Rings and Books, this does not appear to be advice she follows. — Fooloso4

So?

One has to be very careful here. "Granny Midgley" does capture something about her approach. But it risks being ageist and sexist at the same time. But then, one's reaction may be affected by whether one is a grand-child or a grandparent and by the character of the individuals in one's family. (Grannies can be wise and helpful in ways that are very difficult for parents - or so I'm told.)

There are two rather different approaches exemplified in this piece. One is the impact of the author's actual life as a context in which to read it. Midgley introduces actual life via the question of marriage and celibacy; for us, these are two different questions, but it was conventional at the time to treat them as linked.

You can see the other approach in her critique of Descartes. This is based on the model or image of philosophical practice that Descartes presents in his text. I don't think anyone is much bothered by whether Descartes actually ever settled down beside his oven in order to cook up his exercise; it is a presentation - a literary or rhetorical device to introduce us to his thought experiment - and whether it is fictional or not does not matter. What does matter is the model of philosophy that is presented.

Midgley does acknowledge the benefits of solitary thinking but too quickly turns this into a requirement for celibacy/being unmarried. Whether she is deadly serious about this (which would be a problem - Wittgenstein was never married, but yet manages to acknowledge that we are embedded in our human life) or just using the facts as a lever for introducing the philosophical point is hard to discern. What matters most is the philosophical point.

For the record, my view is that each of us needs both solitary thinking and dialogue and disagreement in our practice. There's no one right balance; it's a question of what is helpful and productive for each of us. Boring, but true.

That's just an example of my approach. I hope it is helpful.

Although it may be somewhat unfair to compare his work to a radio talk. — Fooloso4

Yes, an interesting reference. Though I find the title more than a little off-putting. It manages to be both portentous and trivializing in two words. But I'm sure that not everyone would be affected in the same way. When I read it, I will try to take it seriously (which includes criticizing it) but sympathetically, which means looking for the good bits.

If the physical is naturally understood to have substantial or substantive existence, and it is upon that idea of substance that the notion of reality is founded, and the idea of a mental substance is untenable, then what justification would we have for saying that anything non-physical is real? — Janus

Something needs to give. For my money, it is the neglect of the elementary point that both "substantial" and "real" do not have a determinate sense outside the context of their use. The philosophical search for them does not define a context in which it could ever be successful.
A good example here would be the well-known fact that that physics reveals a physical world that is almost completely insubstantial. "Substantial" and "real" have a meaning in the context of physics, but not one that meets the demands of this philosophical wild-goose chase. Berkeley was wrong about many things, but about this, he was right.

The alternative to eliminative physicalism would be to say that mental phenomena are real functions of some physical existents, and that the only sense in which they are not physical is that they do not (obviously) appear as objects of the senses. — Janus

This is an alternative to eliminative physicalism, but not to physicalism. We need something more inclusive. Ryle's categories seem to me to offer a way of articulating what needs to be accepted here, without prioritizing the physical.

My personal heuristic is that classical metaphysics allows for a distinction between what exists and what is real which are generally assumed to be coterminous. I've had many lengthy and often vexed debates about this topic here over the years, centered around my claim that the term 'ontology' is concerned with 'the meaning of being', and not with 'the nature of what exists', which is the proper concern of the natural sciences. — Wayfarer

There are many words of which it is futile to ask what their meaning is. These terms are among them, in my view. (I don't even really understand what the meaning of being is supposed to be.)

Lionino is right, however that it arrived in English from Old French.
— Ludwig V

Descartes' Principia Philosophiae was published in Latin, in which I presume the word 'substantia' would have been used (although I'm open to correction). — Wayfarer

This isn't affected by the history of the word in English, of course. But it is a nice example of how the arrival of a term in a text can have more than one origin.

In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist.

Isn't there a view somewhere in Aristotle that things that best "realize" their form (essence) - i.e. realize their potential - are the best because most real. Something like that.

Descartes has come under a great deal of criticism for the mind/body problem but it is his view of the body as mechanistic that led to advances in medicine. — Fooloso4

You are right that we should not divide philosophers into good eggs and bad eggs, though that can make for a more exciting read. There can be both useful ideas and useless ideas in the work of any philosopher, and a balanced assessment needs to take both into account. I don't think anyone would fail to acknowledge the important intellectual developments in Descartes' work. But that doesn't mean we should forget about the mistakes that he made.

by not leading what she regards as a "normal domestic life" their development was arrested. — Fooloso4

Rather than a deliberate and immature choice to not develop attachments, his attachments were severed from him. — Fooloso4

as if if he only he had married there would not have been the turn to subjectivism. — Fooloso4

You are also right that we need to be cautious in tying specific ideas in the work of a philosopher to details of their biography. Philosophers, as Midgley herself observes, are human beings and consequently often flawed. We should not rush to judgement. Most people will probably turn out to have been a mixed bag.
Aristotle may have loved his wife and treated her, and his slaves, well by the standards of his time and thought the master/slave relationship was fundamental to a household. Plato may have been profoundly authoritarian and contemptuous of democracy and regarded love and friendship as fundamental to human life. Aquinas may have been quite humane and tolerant by the standards of his time and regarded one of the benefits of being in heaven as being able to enjoy the spectacle of the torments of hell. One could go on to look critically at Berkeley, Locke and Rousseau as well as Hegel and Heidegger. We can't ignore the bad bits, but forgetting the good bits is as bad as celebrating the good bits and forgetting the bad bits.

Long story short - if philosophy is to be a practice based on human life, if it is to recommend or be a way of life, then the hinterland and the sub-texts of philosophical texts are part of the story, which we should pay attention to even if we do not like what we see. But in exploring those aspects, we should extend to our predecessors the sympathy and charity that we must all hope our successors will extend to us when their turn comes to assess what we have done or not done.

What I've said is partial and incomplete and undoubtedly muddled. But I hope I may have persuaded you to at least read and consider the whole of Midgley's text, rather than just extracts from it. I don't think it is perfect, but I don't think it is as bad as you suggest.

Thanks for the overview of Aristotle. It does make sense overall, doesn't it?

Your version makes him seem much closer to Plato than some others that I have seen.

Nevertheless the depiction of the 'thinking thing' is very much the residue of his philosophy in popular culture. — Wayfarer

Yes, indeed. If that passage had been taken more seriously, the history of philosophy might have been very different. Yet, he is so insistent on his substances that one has to admit that the "popular" presentation isn't wholly wrong.

The philosophical term ‘substance’ corresponds to the Greek ousia, which means ‘being’, transmitted via the Latin substantia, which means ‘something that stands under or grounds things’.

SEP on substance.
Lionino is right, however that it arrived in English from Old French.

c. 1300, substaunce, "divine part or essence" common to the persons of the Trinity;" mid-14c. in philosophy and theology, "that which exists by itself; essential nature; type or kind of thing; real or essential part;" from Old French sustance, substance "goods, possessions; nature, composition" (12c.), "

This difference made a big difference when it came to the empiricists' (especially Berkeley's) philosophy.

What's going on here is even weirder than that. Latin has a perfectly good equivalent for ousia, "being" in "esse". But somehow that got used for the Aristotle's phrase "en tôi ti esti" - literally "what it is to be". (Obviously, he can't find an actual Greek word for what he has in mind. His Metaphysics is riddled with his coinages.)
Then there's "exist". Wikipedia tells us that "The word "existence" entered the English language in the late 14th century from old French and has its roots in the medieval Latin term ex(s)istere, which means to stand forth, to appear, and to arise." (Note that our use of the word has absolutely no basis in ancient Rome.)
While we're at it, what about "real"? I don't know how reliable "etymonline.com" is, but it reports of "real" "early 14c., "actually existing, having physical existence (not imaginary);" mid-15c., "relating to things" (especially property), from Old French reel "real, actual," from Late Latin realis "actual," in Medieval Latin "belonging to the thing itself," from Latin res "property, goods, matter, thing, affair," which de Vaan traces to a PIE *Hreh-i- "wealth, goods," source also of Sanskrit rayim, rayah "property, goods," Avestan raii-i- "wealth". The meaning "genuine" is recorded from 1550s;"
All of which reinforces the point that medieval Latin is a dialect of Latin and very different from the language of ancient Rome.

I don't pretend that any of this has any particular philosophical significance. But I do think it is great fun.

*As noted previously, I think 'immaterial subject' conveys the gist better than 'immaterial substance' or 'immaterial thing' which I feel is oxymoronic. — Wayfarer

I'm inclined to agree with you. But, on the face of it, that wouldn't be the gist of Descartes' argument. He is quite explicit:-

As to those other things, of which the Idea of a body is made up, as extension, figure, place and motion, they are not formally in me, seeing I am only a thinking thing; yet seeing they are only certain modes of substance, and I my self also am a substance, they may seem to be in me eminently.

But then, there is the passage that is sometimes adduced in this context: -

Now there is nothing that this my Nature teaches me more expresly then that I have a Body, Which is not Well when I feel Pain, that this Body wants Meat or Drink When I am Hungry or Dry, &c. And therefore I ought not to Doubt but that these things are True. And by this sense of Pain, Hunger, Thirst, &c. My Nature tells[98] me that I am not in my Body, as a Mariner is in his Ship, but that I am most nighly conjoyn’d thereto, and as it were Blended therewith; so that I with It make up one thing;

Descartes Meditation VI

So his position is a bit more complicated than the simplified version that is usually considered in the literature. (And I do not know how to represent it more accurately.)

Descartes wrote of, to and for a community of people past present and future — Fooloso4

Descartes Meditation III
Yes, that's part of Midgley's point, which bears on the question what we are to make of his method of doubt, or methodical doubt, and the model of philosophical method that he portrays in the Meditations. If we pay attention to the real life hinterland of the text, we find that the presentation is much more complex than it seems to be.
He seems to invite us to join him in a real life journey. But he doesn't really think that such scepticism is true. It is something like a thought experiment, an academic exercise. But it also has the deadly serious aim of a religious retreat; it is a fantasy of hell, from which he will, ultimately, rescue us. (Just as the priest terrifies us with the image of hell and then presents Jesus as our heroic rescuer) It certainly isn't a sober presentation of reality. Our problem is that we aren't rescued by his rescue. so we really need to understand the significance of the Pyrrhonian scepticism that he takes us into.
(It is instructive here to remember Hume's discussion of Pyrrhonian scepticism and his recommendation of a month in the country as a cure for it. Like Descartes, he was labelled a sceptic, but, on closer inspection, was nothing of the kind.)

That the specific group in that specific situation were all women while there being plenty of men around seem to suggest that the specific situation is caused by a difference between men and women, otherwise, shouldn't we expect at least one man in the group too? — Lionino

You are right. In the first place, the colleges which were and are the primary scene of social interaction among students in that university were segregated by sex/gender - either all the students (and academic staff) were male or all were female. In the second place, both men and women regarded each other as significantly different and relations between men and women were socially regulated and controlled in ways that relations between men and men and between women and women were not. Thirdly, women students were a minority whose right to be there was still tolerated rather than accepted, which makes mutual solidarity more likely. Finally, much of their time there was during WW2, so many of the men who might have been there were otherwise engaged.

I wouldn't take it that way, but I would take it as undermining any attempt to claim that the male of the species is more rational than the female, and any position that relies on that thesis. — unenlightened

Well, yes. Of course.

fundamental to liberal individualism. — Wayfarer

Yes, quite so. But, without wanting to write the book, I would want to high-light Martin Luther as a critical figure in that change, and add that quantification is, perhaps not coincidentally, also a foundation of capitalism. (Money, rather than humans, as the measure of all things.)
And then there's the dubious relationship between individualism and authoritarianism.

it undermines the rationalist position from start to finish. — unenlightened

Yes. At least, it undermines that rationalist position. I would hate to think that it undermines all attempts to articulate ideas rationally - though I agree that many people have taken it that way.

It was clear that we [the women students] were all more interested in understanding this deeply puzzling world than in putting each other down.
— Midgley
But I thought that there was nothing fundamentally different between men and women? Strange — Lionino

I read this as about a specific group of women students in a specific situation. In that situation, I can well imagine that mutual support was more important for them than any internal struggle for power. But I can see that one could read it as a generalization. In which case, it would be odd.

The kind of self-awareness where one admits the mistake but does not seem to care about committing the mistake always stroke me as, also, strange. — Lionino

It depends how important you think the mistake is.

Mary Midgely's comment about the way women don't put each other down
— Jack Cummins
Is laughably wrong. — AmadeusD

Quite so. Women are human beings as well and the temptation to put (some) other people down is, it seems, part of the human condition.

I think this is a mistake. I think it is a mistake that leaves us, necessarily, in a hopeless loop of arguing with anyone who disagrees with one end of the spectrum (biology v culture) because there is no possibility of extricating them. I think we can. The charge that any observations are culturally-bound seems wrong to me on many levels. — AmadeusD

You are right. I agree that there is a spectrum involved, and in many cases there may well be agreement about how to apply the distinction. I wouldn't say that either biology or culture necessarily limit us - after all, they are both capable of change and development as life goes on. But I do think that they are where we start from.

I'm unmarried and so don't have a real insight into what she's saying.
— Moliere
No objection from me. We all have mothers after all. — unenlightened

One could dismiss all such arguments as simply ad hominem. But that seems unfair.
There's an interesting - even important - difficulty here. We are all familiar with the empiricist appeal to experience and accept the idea that at least some experience is universal and therefore a sound basis for philosophy. But Midgley plausibly cites a experience that is not universal (but is, as she says, typical) as having universal significance. So she must believe that people who have not had that experience can understand it sufficiently for her to make her point. That's the point of her description it. I don't think she is wrong about that.
It's just as well that she expands the scope of her appeal to something (parenting, marriage) that can be seen as common to both men and women, though still not universal.
The difficulty here is that, by parity of argument, one cannot invalidate the experiences of those who live solitary lives or practice solitary reflection. So we end up with having to see both solitary and communal thinkers as possible models and perhaps a pragmatic view of them.

It's a puzzle. That's all I'm saying.

I get along with the conclusion, though. And with the opening -- I don't think philosophy is an exercise in proving myself correct or the other person wrong or some such. — Moliere

Yes. Philosophy is much more interesting if one avoid getting trapped into those exercises. But it can be difficult to prevent it happening.

Misogyny will carry a thread only so far, but perhaps too far to drag it back to something more interesting. — Banno

I didn't mean to provoke a discussion of misogyny as such. I am interested in the questions of philosophical method that her argument about Descartes raises.

I think the issue all revolves around objectification. — Wayfarer

Yes. But I get worried that perhaps talk of the flow or experience suggests an objectification of experience, which leads to another set of problems. It is extremely difficult to distinguish the grammatical (in the traditional sense) and logical senses of "object" from a philosophical sense - "medium sized dry goods".

PS. By a logical sense of object, I mean "to be is to be the value of a variable".

The issue arose with lawyers, which was once a male dominated profession. If you look today, you have as many or more females in law school, who perform at the top of the class, and who get the prestigious jobs. But, as time goes on, you see fewer and fewer as partners and at the highest levels of firms. The reason, which is interesting, based upon the women are saying, is because women don't want those jobs. They are gruelling, stressful, and, other than money, are not terribly rewarding. — Hanover

Yes, things have changed and are changing in the professions. You may be right about the glass ceiling. But I'm sure are also aware that there are people who are not content to adopt your explanation, and my impression is that they are making headway. I think that change is coming.

They are gruelling, stressful, and, other than money, are not terribly rewarding. — Hanover

Who told you that? If it is true, why do so many men want them?

The same holds true to the trades. Women don't want to work on cars, pipes, and air conditioning units. Those jobs are physically demanding and not terribly rewarding. — Hanover

That certainly applies to serving in the army or the police. Yet, some women do want to do that, including, now, serving in the front line. And there are women working in the trades. Though it is true that I've never heard much agitation to change the gender balance amongst dust-men.

When coming up with policy decisions, what do you do? We've made entry open to whoever wants it, but do we then change the industry to make it so different people want it? ... Or do you say that men have figured out the biology of women (yeah, right) and have created systems that make them not want to compete? That would be the patriarchal argument, but it would also accept that biology controls to some point. — Hanover

Most people absorb ideas about what is appropriate for them and most people most of the time do not challenge those stereotypes. If you just pin up a notice "All welcome" and sit back, nothing much will change.
But I do worry about the expectation that gender balance in every trade and profession will conform pretty closely to the balance in general population. It could be used as a quota, which would be completely inappropriate. (The same applies to the general expectation that all the diversity balances in every group will conform to the balance in the general population.)
We ought not, ever, to talk about discrimination without qualification. Some discrimination is good, and necessary. What is wrong is discrimination on irrelevant grounds. What the relevant grounds are will depend on the context and may often be contested.

Wouldn't the acceptance that women don't want X but men do, be a nod towards biology? — Hanover

Not necessarily. It depends on why they don't want it.

Part of what I was saying is that biology and culture are not neatly separated or separable. On the contrary, they interact. We cannot generalize, but need to pay attention to each issue as it comes up. Solutions will usually be messy and not please everyone. But allowing people to complain and listening to what they have to say and taking them seriously matters.

There is the question of the innate differences of biology, which may involve thinking, as noted by Hanover, and the role of cultural assumptions and the dynamics of power relationships. It may be complicated. — Jack Cummins

"Complicated", it seems to me, understates the difficulty. We look to biology to provide an objective basis for cultural stereotypes. But our cultural stereotypes condition what we think of as biology. In other words, the two interact and are consequently inextricably intertwined. Both are deeply involved in the power relationships in play in our social interactions.
In the end, it seems to me, we would do better to manage without pursuing this fruitless attempt and deal with the problems we are facing, whatever their origin.

What I am arguing is that gender relationships are not simply about misogyny but about stereotypes. — Jack Cummins

That's true. Looking back, one can get depressed by the fact that eradicating hatred and stereotyping is much more difficult than it was thought to be at the time. Is it possible that those tendencies are both ineradicably part of the human condition?

As an example, consider the following from Midgley's article: -

Now I rather think that nobody who was playing a normal active part among other human beings could regard them like this. But what I am quite sure of is that for anybody living intimately with them as a genuine member of a family, Cogito would be Cogitamus; their consciousness would be every bit as certain as his own. And if this is not so for men, it certainly is for women. And women are not a separate species. And an account of human knowledge which women’s whole experience falsifies is inadequate and partial and capricious.

I agree whole-heartedly with the point that she is making. I'm sure that what she says here would have been wholly unexceptional when she was writing. But reading it now, I can't help worrying about the category of "women's experience" and especially "women's whole experience", particularly as she focuses on the experience of pregnancy and suckling, which, after all, was a lynch-pin in the justification of the traditional definition of women's role in life. She does then generalize through child-rearing and marriage back to "typical human experience" - but notice that she does not generalize to "our" experience or "universal" human experience.

In the twentieth first century the situation may have changed to the point where there is more bias against males in some contexts. For example, what I have found when looking for accommodation is that so many adverts say, 'females only', which may mean some difficulty for males in finding 'a room of one's own'. — Jack Cummins

I sympathize. It is a nasty shock to find oneself on the wrong side of a prejudice. But perhaps it is salutary. It's not new. I had a very similar experience (and I was far from alone, and probably lucky) well before this century began. Still, it comes to all of us as we advance into old age.

I don't quite follow you. As I read them, Kierkegaard and Sartre are existentialists (i.e. commitments which manifest an 'essence') and Camus is an absurdist (i.e. striving against both 'having an essence' (idealism) and 'not having an essence' (nihilism)) – none, however, are nihilists (i.e. 'not having an essence', (therefore) 'no commitments' (i.e. arbitrarily riot for the sake of rioting, obey for the sake of obeying, f*ck for the sake of f*cking, belief for the sake of believing, kill for the sake of killing, etc)). — 180 Proof

That helps a lot. The point about commitment is that it is authentic and so part of my essence. (Am I free to abandon my commitments? If so, how are they authentic and essential? If not, how am I free?
I'm not even clear what is wrong with being inauthentic, if that's what I choose to be sometimes. The idea of bad faith suggests a reason, but a moral one, which means it can be a choice. On the other hand, it seems that what is authentic is to be discovered, so not chosen, so a restriction on freedom.
I'm sure I'm just muddled and would appreciate being set straight.

There's a lot here I can agree with. But pursuing all that would result in scattering of time and attention. So I've tried to identify what is at the heart of what you say.
But I can't resist answering your question:-

And this (fool) very educated man deigns to suggest that it's enacting is easy? — Chet Hawkins

No, he certainly did not. He found it all very difficult indeed, and didn't make things particularly easy for his readers. His early work certainly emphasized analysis, logic and structure. But he changed his mind! (Shock! Horror!) His later work moved away from all of that.

Three quotations seem to set out your map:-

Fear is all order, all thought, all analysis, all logic, all structure. I am not saying it represents those things. It literally IS those things. Likewise, desire is all freedom, chaos, becoming, etc. — Chet Hawkins

The axis of good and evil is unlike the other one. With order and chaos, balance is the right way. That is ... understanding, wisdom. But there is no BALANCE in the axis of GOOD and evil. It is actually only rising amounts of GOOD, so evil is nothing special, only less GOOD. — Chet Hawkins

Anger demands you stand to the mystery. Desire pulls you towards perfection and only a living universe can respond, so it is alive, and it does. Evolution towards greater moral agency is a law of the universe. — Chet Hawkins

All very neat and tidy. But it looks to me like a large-scale sketch - too large scale and too sketchy to be much help. Possibly you have more to say, but you seem to be in a great hurry to get everything settled.
I'm saying that concepts here are much more complicated and ambivalent than you recognize.

Fear can underlie the search for order and certainty. But it can also produce panic and chaos. What it means to say that "anger demands you stand to the mystery" is not clear to me. Desire certainly can pull you towards perfection, but it can also pull you in the opposite direction - even against your better judgement. Order can be oppression and restriction, but it can also be opportunity and freedom. I can understand evil as the absence or opposite of good, but what is good or evil depends on the context; the same is true of perfection. (And perfection can oppress and imprison just as surely as it can liberate). From where I sit, the universe is completely indifferent (not hostile, I grant you) to my desires and emotions. I'm not at all sure that wisdom, understanding and intelligence, though admittedly related, are clearly enough defined to be of use in whatever you are trying to say about them.

You remind me of Plato's journey of the soul. But he gave huge importance to love, which seems to be missing from your sketch. I miss it.

.. and H. acknowledges only three modes of being, one of which is true of everything that is. (Is that the right word to use here?
That's makes it all clear enough. Take it or leave it. — Ludwig V

I am not really certain of what you mean by that. — Arne

My summary was badly expressed, so my meaning was entirely obscured. There are the modes of being, so we need to understand, not only the three modes, but what they are modes of. We have existence, ready-to-hand, present-at-hand and being. The last of these is common to the other three, perhaps in the way that colour applies to all the colours, and yet every colour is a specific colour, or perhaps in the way that wood is common to everything that is made of wood, and yet every wooden object is a specific object or something else?

Existence is constitutive of Dasein much as roundness is constitutive of a circle. You cannot add existence to Dasein any more than you can add roundness to a circle. Existence belongs to Dasein much as roundness belongs to a circle. Dasein is a unitary phenomenon rather than a collection of parts. — Arne

"Constitutive" is an interesting idea here. Aristotle draws a distinction (I don't have a reference ready to hand) between components of something that have an independent existence and can actually be separated out - laid on a bench beside each other, for example - and components that cannot be separated out, except "in thought". So, we can think of a single shape as both convex or concave, and we cannot think of a concave shape, without also thinking of a convex shape. I can see the relationship between existence and Dasein in the latter way rather than the former. Does that capture what you are saying?

For example, it you examine his description of Dasein and recognize yourself in it, then why in the world would you not keep going? — Arne

Because Dasein seems more like a point of view than a subjective view. A point of view is impersonal and objective. Yet it can be occupied or adopted by an individual, but in now way recognizes individuals as such. Recognizing myself just means recognizing the possibility of adopting that point of view. I can, as it happens, recognize Dasein as a possible point of view, but not myself in it.
What I find much more helpful is his conceptions of Ready-to-hand and Present-at-hand and some of his remarks about rivers, bridges, temples in a landscape. Yet even there, I have difficulty. I don't quite see why everything that exists must be one or the other.

But Heidegger did choose the phenomenological method because it is descriptive. You can decide whether you agree with Heidegger by looking at the description he gives to the phenomena he describes. — Arne

Many philosophers would complain that because he does not indulge in argument as such, he is dictatorial, or rather oracular (echoes of Popper's Open Society. But I don't dismiss him on those grounds. Wittgenstein is not dissimilar, in that he presents examples and comments, leaving it up to his reader to think through what they mean. (It is an idea that is found in a few other philosophers at the time, such as Anscombe)
Nonetheless, if you describe what Heidegger presents as a description, you allow the question of truth or falsity to arise. I suggest it would be more helpful to describe him as presenting an interpretation, which avoids the question of truth, since variant interpretations may be valid or appropriate at the same time. Of course, it demands a wider tolerance of variant views than philosophers are comfortable with. But it may be more realistic for our actual situation.

Nobody has to choose between philosophers. And being internally consistent does not make a philosopher any more or less correct than any other philosopher. But it does make it easier to understand what they are saying. — Arne

In one way, you are right. But in another way, we all make choices in everything we do. No-one can read everything, and so we must decide what we pay attention to. That decision is much more difficult than it seems, because it must be made without knowing what we will find when we pay attention to something. Our choices are dictated by the environment we find ourselves in and how we respond to that we find there.

And besides, it is more important to understand what Heidegger has to say than it is to agree or disagree with him. And as difficult as it may be, it is worth understanding what Heidegger has to say. — Arne

I agree with that. Not that there is ever a point at which I can sit back and say that I have now understood Heidegger or Wittgenstein or .... Perhaps it is enough, given that we cannot find the end of philosophy, to understand the answers that have been found worth taking seriously.

What I mean is that the difference between "arbitrary" (as you put it) and "subjective", IMO, is the difference between nihilism and existentialism, respectively. — 180 Proof

I can see that.
It seems to me that the difference between nihilism is that the nihilist is committed to not being committed and the existentialist is not yet committed, but will be. Would that be right?
There seems to be a difference between Kierkegaard and Sartre/Camus. Kierkegaard bewails his inability to make the leap of faith, which suggests that when the leap is made, it is a voluntary action. But whether one can make that leap does not solely depend on whether one wants to or not. Sartre and Camus don't seem to recognize that ambivalence - their heroes don't bewail their uncommitted status, and Mathieu's final commitment seems to happen to him without his co-operation or resistance. Would that be correct?

Applying any predicate to any entity not having the characteristics of Dasein will not cause that entity to "exist." — Arne

I think I understand the rest of what you say. But this suggests to me that applying any entity having the characteristics of Dasein will cause that entity to exist. ???

Existence is Dasein's and only Dasein's mode of being. — Arne

.. and H. acknowledges only three modes of being, one of which is true of everything that is. (Is that the right word to use here?
That's makes it all clear enough. Take it or leave it.

Assuming we allow every other philosopher the same license, it seems that each philosophy exists in its own silo. How does an outsider choose between them? On grounds of internal consistency? Is that enough?

Imagine a mind that could look up at the sun and believe it to be a God, unfettered by a massive cultural embeddedness and a high school and college education. — Astrophel

I grant you that the ancient people who thought that the sun was a god were unfettered by our culture and upbringing. It would seem that we have developed a culture that can free us from their cultural limitations. Consequently we can, to some extent, imagine ourselves in their place. But that does not mean that we are not ourselves limited in other ways. But they were surely fettered by their culture and upbringing. Unless culture and upbringing are not simply fetters but are the conditions of the possibility of thinking at all.

I think the hard part of philosophy is determining if it is at all possible to say that there is something that is not language, not a construct, with neither a long historical lineage, nor a brief personal one. — Astrophel

If it is not possible to say that already, it never will be.
Philosophers can say "let's free ourselves from all assumptions" and think that the thing is done in the saying of it. As if you could draw a picture without drawing a first line or, better, play/sing a tune without defining the notes. The preliminaries do not restrict us, but enable these things to be done.

What is a world without all the thinking? — Astrophel

Whatever it is, it is not the world that we know. Once you have developed the skill of making pictures or making music, you cannot go back and unmake it. One of the distinctive features of the sub-atomic world is that we have to acknowledge that the act of observation disrupts the objects we observe. We cannot go back and unmake our existence and intervention in the world.

Science's Jupiter is first a phenomenological construct, and science sits like a superstructure on top of this essential phenomenological structure. — Astrophel

One does this by making the phenomenological move: what is there after we eject all of the superfluous thinking? Science does this with its regions of inquiry, the same rigor here. — Astrophel

Here's what really bothers me about this. We talk of "phenomena" as if they existed independently of reality. But an appearance is always an appearance of something. When the sun appears from behind a cloud or the moon or rises, as we say, above the horizon, there are not two things, the sun and its appearance, but one thing, the sun appearing. When we are confused by the bent stick in water, there are not two things, the stick and its appearance, but one thing, the stick appearing to be bent. So the entire project of phenomenology rests on a specific ontology, which is taken for granted; this way of thinking about things is part of the preparation for the project, so cannot be lightly abandoned. But other ways of thinking are available.

I'm not saying that phenomenology is wrong, just that it is not the only game in town. We remain free to choose which game to play and when. Language, knowing and thinking are not complete and consistent wholes and so they afford us opportunities as well as imposing restrictions.

In some sense and for existentialists, existence is the predicate. — Arne

I'm clutching at straws here. At first sight, you may be saying that existence is the "is" in any predicate.
Do you mean something like "existence is the possibility of attaching any predicate to something" or maybe something along the lines that if you apply any predicate to something, that something exists.

In turn, existence is that mode of being that belongs to Dasein and only to Dasein — Arne

Does that mean that Dasein is the only thing that exists? I suppose if Da sein means something like "there is", that would make some sense. "exists" is a bastard concoction, and I wish it could be abolished in favour of "there is". But it would make it a lot harder to formulate a lot of philosophy. Perhaps that's a good thing.

How do we relate meaning to the physical world? It does seem clear in the interactions, but not the ... essence ... of the physical world. — Chet Hawkins

Perhaps it is enough to understand the interactions.

You are ONLY saying for us (or Wittgenstein and you, less me as a dread assertion) these training wheels of 'safe frictioned ground' are still needed. — Chet Hawkins

Not quite the intended meaning. Wittgenstein was saying that the ideal world seems more comprehensible, but that is largely illusion. In order to make progress, we need resistance, and that requires the rough ground. For him, it is the ideal that has the training wheels, and the rough ground is where the work gets done.

The seeds of moral agency are not amenable to the arbitrary science that in its failing cannot explain why the universe is alive. I mean science admits that SOME parts are alive. But in understanding unity and belonging, the real understanding is that anything IS anything else in the final sense. — Chet Hawkins

I can sort of follow the first two sentences here - except that the reason science cannot explain why the universe is alive is that not all of the universe is alive. But the fact that science cannot explain something doesn't tell us very much at all. The last sentence here is beyond my understanding, as is the rest of the paragraph. I can see that you are arguing that wisdom is more than intelligence. I wouldn't disagree with that. But I don't see where it gets us.

How about 'subjective commitment' instead? — 180 Proof

I'm not sure what you're getting at. But it's not about the commitment, thought there's plenty to say about that. It's about which of three/four possible commitments to make and what would be good reasons to prefer one over another.

No, indeed, I am never so prosaic as that. — Chet Hawkins

I can see what you mean in what you write.
"Prosaic" is a complex idea, and quite annoying for those in a poetic or transcendental state of mind. Those are much more exciting.
Nonetheless, what is ordinary, everyday, and commonplace is what we start from and will return to. More than that, what is extraordinary and exciting, if prolonged, will become prosaic. We cannot do without poetry and we cannot do without prose.
I would rather say that I find it necessary to keep my feet (or at least one foot or toe) on the ground. You say: -

So defining that non-physical realm of Plato's forms is much more important and essential, than our keen grasp of the obvious insistence on practical physical matters in the world today all about us would easily show. — Chet Hawkins

But Wittgenstein finds that the ideal, logical forms are indeed perfection and consequently are like a smooth, frictionless surface. He observes:-

"We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!" (Philosophical Investigations Section 107).

The ONLY thing in all of existence, including physical matter, is the state of free will, inflicting every particle in the universe with the burden of choice. — Chet Hawkins

If you had said that every particle in the universe was free, I could have more or less followed you. What it means to say that every particle in the universal is burdened with choice escapes me entirely.
Communication requires a shared context. Given this starting-point, I'm afraid that we have a serious communication problem.

Profuse apologies.

I'm afraid I haven't understood properly how the software the works when one quotes a quotation.

In any case, "being-in-the-world", "freedom" and "will-to-power" do not seem to me, according to primary sources, either synonymous with each other or equivalent to "existence". — 180 Proof

Of course you are right. But that leaves me with three possibilities and no way of choosing between them or assessing which of them is correct. Actually, I expect that all of them are correct on their own terms. But that doesn't help very much. I'm just trying to work out how to deal with that. An existential (arbitrary) commitment doesn't seem very satisfactory.

That's why I said that they are inter-related. What I meant is something like this. Freedom is nothing without the power to do what you want. The power to do what you want is what makes freedom real. Both pre-suppose a world as the possibilities and hindrances that you choose from and act within.

The notion of essence as qualities grafted on to existence is a rationalizing of moral agency in a light we consider most favorable. — Arne

There is a great deal packed into this sentence.
It does seem to me that the Humean separation of fact and value should really be considered more carefully. It seems inescapable that fact and value, although distinct, are interwoven in language in order to serve human interests and capacities. What would be the point of language if that were not so? It does seem that it would be more helpful to articulate the ways in which they interact rather than simply trying to separate them into separate discourses.
The notion of essence as qualities grafted on to existence is a metaphor that applies a model that may work quite well up to a point, but can seriously mislead us. We need to resist the tendency to apply the same model to all concepts and to be much more alive to the differences between them. for example, I've always wondered whether the Kantian claim that existence is not a predicate is consistent with the way that we talk about essence and existence in the context of existentialism. I can't believe that either Heidegger or Sartre were unaware of Kant. Are they contradicting him?

Heidegger says our existence is our essence and Sartre misinterprets Heidegger as saying existence precedes essence and now we all proceed as if if "existence precedes essence" is an existential given. — Arne

That's quite true. Though perhaps it is more true in Anglophone philosophy than elsewhere. I've encountered the claim before, but somehow I've missed the argument that shows that it is true. I feel I'm left with a blind choice, so I'm not happy. Thinking about it, I'm inclined to understand Sartre's "precedes" as a metaphor; but he doesn't seem to give us much to interpret it. Since the concept of bare existence seems incomprehensible, Heidegger's formulation seems more plausible, so I'm inclined to go with that. But I don't believe that I really understand either concept.

Heidegger, Sartre, and Nietzsche are saying that existence is our essence, i.e., being-in-the-world is our essence, freedom is our essence, will to power is our essence. — 180 Proof

Intuitively, I feel that there;s a good point here. These do seem to be inter-related concepts, But we need to think of essence as dynamic, constantly changing. The difficulty here is that if we regard essence as what endures through change, which, if I've understood correctly, was what Aristotle was after - in oder to reconcile Heraclitus with Parmenides. But it seems entirely appropriate, not only to the Heraclitean river, but also to human life.

Free will and choice are the only essence in existence. — Chet Hawkins

I assume you mean "in the existence of humans as people".

Thank you for this. I need to think about how to reply.

Then you also do not understand what causal link is -- and this is what the BIV theory is pointing out. — L'éléphant

I wouldn't claim to understand what a causal link is. Tracking back our exchanges here, I realize that we have both been indulging a favourite trope in philosophy - accusing the other of not understanding what something is because the other has a different philosophical idea of what it is. It isn't at all constructive.
My current favourite examples is Searle:-

I think we all really have conscious states. To remind everyone of this fact I asked my readers to perform the small experiment of pinching the left forearm with the right hand to produce a small pain.

New York Review - Searle vs Dennett
Which begs to the question.

But we're also trying to respect the topic of the thread, so we're a bit trapped.

On the BiV, I had the impression that the Putnam's intention was to point out that Descartes' nightmare is an empirical possibility and that the causal theory of reference was presupposed. But I wouldn't want to be dogmatic about that.
The basis of my scepticism about what the BiV establishes is the private language argument (Stanford Encyclopedia)

I agree that reference is established by some sort of baptism ceremony (ostensive definition), though what that might consist of in practice is very flexible. We can think of two ceremonies. One establishes the public use of the term (think of the public naming of a ship); the other establishes the use for a specific speaker. In either case, there needs to be some sort of historical story that connects the ceremony with each occasion of use. Whether that amounts to a causal link depends heavily on one's definition of causality.
In addition, what one says about the BiV depends on whether what is referred to by a given term depends on the intention of the speaker or on the publicly established use of the term. Both theories are viable, in the sense that there are some philosophers who accept each of them. I think each has its place.

Right sentiment, wrong example. — L'éléphant

I wasn't happy with the example when I wrote it down. I was writing in haste and couldn't think of anything better.
But there is a problem. I am reminded of the paradox in the Meno about how one can recognize new knowledge when one is looking for it. Here, the paradox is that I must know something about the item I am referring to if I am to refer to it. So in one sense, I must know what a mule is when I refer to it. At the same time, it seems just obvious that I can refer to my mule (who is called "Freddy") without knowing that it is, by definition, an animal whose mother is a horse and whose father is a donkey. Perhaps you can think of a better example? (Though there may be more than one way.)

our "difference" is not challenged, but the way this difference is expressed in language remains contextually bound. — Astrophel

Yes, that's the possibility I was getting at. In addition, I was hinting at the possibility that the "truth" or maybe just something deeper (whatever that means) might lie in the totality or intersection of the different ideas that have been presented (assuming that each of them works in its own context). That's not really a particularly exotic idea.
So how might we proceed? Let's start by identifying where we agree.

it is impossible to affirm an ontology without affirming an epistemology simply because it is, after all, an affirmation, and this is an epistemic idea. — Astrophel

Yes. I want to add that language is an essential part of knowledge, at least in philosophical discourse, so we need to bear that in mind. Also, what an affirmation is may turn out to be complicated. Not all affirmations are the same. For example, affirmation of God's existence is not simply an empirical scientific hypothesis - or so I believe.

Any attempt to talk about 'material substance," say, as foundational ontology apart from epistemology has no basis in observation and is just bad metaphysics. Observation here is meant in the most general sense: something must conform to the principles of phenomenology, which is to say, it must "appear". Appearing is the basis for being. — Astrophel

Yes, Berkeley had to amend his slogan to "esse" is "percipi aut percipere", thus allowing that inference from an appearance to an unseen reality was not always illegitimate. That enables him to allow not only that he, as perceiver, but also other people (minds) and God exist. (He classified these additional entities as "notions" rather than "ideas", so that his principle was, he thought, preserved.) This seems to me to undermine his argument somewhat. But you only assert that appearance is the basis of being. So I think you could accept adding "capable of being perceived" to the slogan. (My Latin lets me down here.) I can accept that, though I might be more generous than you in what I consider what might appear to us or what might count as the appearing of something to us.

what is there in experience makes religion what it is, grounded in the world rather than in the extraordinary imaginations religious people. — Astrophel

I agree that the conventional dismissal of the existence of God is not the end of the discussion and that an understanding (explanation) of the phenomenon (if you'll allow that word to apply in this context) is desirable and should be available. But whether that is possible without taking sides in the argument is not at all clear to me.

Other words can also express this theme that distinguishes phenomenology from all other sciences: demonstration [monstration], disclosure, pure manifestation, pure revelation, or even the truth, if taken in its absolutely original sense. It is interesting to note that these keywords of phenomenology are also for many the keywords of religion and theology. — Astrophel

I'm puzzled about the "epoche" which I would have thought was meant to distinguish phenomenology not only from all other sciences, but also from religion and theology. Also, I would have thought that "demonstration [monstration], disclosure, pure manifestation, pure revelation, or even the truth," were also keywords for science. I must have misunderstood something. Perhaps I haven't understood "monstration" which I think quite specifically means the display of the host to the congregation. I don't see how that can be clearly distinguished from the display of an experiment to its audience.

Exactly. :smile:

Why does it strike you as narrow minded? — frank

Because it doesn't recognize the complexity and variety of the things that we do.

Compare the Watsonian behaviourists who analyzed everything that we do into stimulus and response. It has a sort of rough and ready plausibility, but it doesn't get near to analyzing what people do. Skinner improved things because he added the idea that conditioning starts with spontaneous actions. Still it doesn't get near to understanding because we do some things for a purpose.

The utilitarians are so called because the first formulations of the theory proposed the we should maximize utility. Now, they talk about benefit because they had to recognize that not everything that we value is "useful". That is better, but still not comprehensive enough.

Aristotle was the first to recognize the hierarchy of action and purpose. I put down my book in order to get up from the chair in order to walk to the kitchen in order to open the fridge door, in order to get out a beer, in order to open it in order to drink it. At the end of the chain, there must be, Aristotle says, something that is done "for its own sake" and not "for the sake of something else". It's far from perfect, but something like it is clearly correct.

Sometimes people go for a walk for pleasure and specifically not for any purpose (useful). Hedonists and Epicureans say that we do everything for pleasure. The pleasure is not necessarily anything we do in addition to the walking as when we walk and talk; but often the pleasure is the walking. Is pleasure useful? What for? But pleasure is too narrow to capture all the things we do "for their own sake" unless you stretch it to include all the really important things in life, which are done for their own sake.

That Wikipedia article has a nice example of the confusions here:-

Mead theorized that human beings begin their understanding of the social world through "play" and "game". Play comes first in the child's development. The child takes different roles that he/she observes in "adult" society, and plays them out to gain an understanding of the different social roles. For instance, a child may first play the role of police officer and then the role of thief while playing "Cops and Robbers", and play the roles of doctor and patient when playing "Doctor". As a result of such play, the child learns to become both subject and object and begins to become able to build a self. However, it is a limited self, because the child can only take the role of distinct and separate others; they still lack a more general and organized sense of themselves.

There is no distinction drawn here between the child's motivation and the result of the child's behaviour. No child ever plays in order to "learn to become both subject and object" even though that's the result of the play and evolution no doubt exploits that result. Some people seem completely unable to recognize that anything can be without purpose, so we get long explanations about art and morality (and even science) that seek to reduce them to something "useful".

I hope that helps.

I wouldn't know about that. The Wikipedia article doesn't mention Heidegger.

But he does seem to have had some views that are vaguely reminiscent of him - and that are interesting for this thread (first tenet):-

Pragmatism is a wide-ranging philosophical position from which several aspects of Mead's influences can be identified into four main tenets:
1 True reality does not exist "out there" in the real world, it "is actively created as we act in and toward the world".
2 People remember and base their knowledge of the world on what has been useful to them and are likely to alter what no longer "works".
3 People define the social and physical "objects" they encounter in the world according to their use for them.
4 If we want to understand actors, we must base that understanding on what people actually do.

I wish pragmatists would find something less narrow-minded than "useful". This is also of interest:-

Three of these ideas are critical to symbolic interactionism:
1 the focus on the interaction between the actor and the world;
2 a view of both the actor and the world as dynamic processes and not static structures; and
3 the actor's ability to interpret the social world.

It's very odd. There seems to be a lot of activity around this topic now.

You may be right that it was just something that was in the air at the time.

I tracked the idea of role theory in sociology back to George Herbert Mead - Wikipedia. Nothing earlier.

Brilliant! But has there not been anything vouchsafed for the fly, that is, embedded IN the delimited world of fly existence. Not the sky that summons like an impossible "over there," as the fly conceives the over there from the "in here" that establishes the distance to be spanned. It depends on the details of the carry over of meaning from the metaphor to the relevance at hand, which is our metaphysical quandary. A Buddhist would say the distance between fly and exit is no distance at all. We are always already the Buddha! Wittgenstein would agree, but in his own way. We should be silent about that which cannot be spoken, but only to leave the latter unconditioned by interpretative imposition, that maligns and distorts. For Witt, he says briefly, the good is the divine. Language has no place here. — Astrophel

Thanks. But your subsequent comments opened up lines of thought that I have not explored before. Thank you also for that. I settled for the opening up of language beyond truth, falsity and description, the recognition of human knowledge as not necessarily entirely a matter of propositions and human life as more than knowledge as penetrating the Tractatus silence. But this (and this thread) is something else.

As to "But has there not been anything vouchsafed for the fly, that is, embedded IN the delimited world of fly existence. Not the sky..." I can't really grasp the viewpoint of the fly, but watching the behaviour of the insects caught in this trap does give some basis for some sort of empathy. Their behaviour is uncomprehending, furious, frustration and incredulity, expressed in repeating the same futile attempt to batter through the obstacle. (I did once walk straight into a glass wall that I had not noticed, and it was indeed completely bewildering, so I deeply sympathize with them.) Their eventual escape seems to be the result of a strategy - to back off and try again, - but each new attempt is random and eventual escape is the result of pure luck. They do give the impression of being delighted by their success and it is easy to empathize with that. Since one doesn't know why they are trying to get out through the window, it's hard to guess how they conceive what lies beyond it. As you say, it isn't the sky. Perhaps freedom is enough.

But the point, and the delight, of the metaphor lies in the difference between their understanding and the more comprehensive human view. So one point of it lies in the limitations of a specific point of view and the better understanding that can be gained from a different one - changing the game, so to speak. Pedestrian as it is, that certainly seems to apply to the problem of this thread.

In connection with that, the futility of the insect battering itself against the glass reminds me of the futility of our battering ourselves against the circle that language points beyond itself and yet there can be nothing beyond itself. I'm not convinced by any of the candidates for breaking this down. They are all suggestive in some way, but all seem to involve yet more words. Perhaps we need a change of viewpoint.

I don't say that Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and the Buddhists are all just plain wrong. Perhaps they are right, or partly right. Perhaps.

But, just for fun, here is another possibility. We approach this question by distinguishing language and world, epistemology and ontology, and then trying to work out how to get beyond the first to reach the second. But language also has its place in ontology (language exists). So if language is part of the world, perhaps we needs to understand it, and knowledge, by starting with the world and working out the place(s) and ways that they exist in it, taking their origin from it.

He stepped beyond the very line he drew explaining the way out. Russell called him a mystic. Wittgenstein then walked away, for he knew they, the positivists, had missed the point: it wasn't about the lack of meaning in the world. It was about language's inability make statements about logic wouldn't allow (in the Tractatus). This frees meaning rather than inhibits it. — Astrophel

I see two different representations of the issues at play in this. They are often confused. The context in which Witt. talked about silence in the Tractatus, was a very narrow, restrictive notion of language. He (and Russell) approached everything in the context of logic - i.e. truth and falsity, the use of language to describe, the project of theory. So, in the Tractatus, what you and I would say were other, non-descriptive uses of language were not saying anything - silent - and were therefore meaningless. So when Russell called Witt. a mystic, he was not wrong, because Witt. did use the word "ineffable", but was not using it in quite the traditional sense of the word. But this generalizes the narrow, technical disagreement between them so that other issues appear to be included in its scope and, because Witt. is so hermetic in the Tractatus, it is very hard to be sure what scope he thought his ideas actually had/have.
Having said that, whatever exactly is going on here, he was indeed at least pointing to, or showing, something beyond the limits of what he thought language is and that does, in a way, free meaning, as you say. This leads us to meaning beyond language, language pointing beyond itself. Which is where we came in.
How far this issue is still in play in his later work is very hard to discern, except that he certainly doesn't work through arguments with premises and conclusions. He is much more interested in presenting examples and cases and letting us work things out for ourselves. How far he was imitated is another question.

Indeed, I came upon it a bit later, in the late 1950s, and it became popular among young, adventurous men - particularly from California - looking for a path forward that was new and exciting. — jgill

Yes, a new and exciting path forward was very much the theme at the time. I was aware of it in the late fifties and early sixties. Without realizing it at the time, my existential choice was made in the late sixties when I abandoned a conventional career I had started in favour of philosophy. It was a quite revolutionary step in my life, but was not consciously based on existentialism. I jjust hated the social environment I was working in. I didn't look seriously at existentialism until some ten years later when I found myself teaching Being and Nothingness to undergraduates. That was quite an eye-opener for me, and it has remained influential even though I never signed up, as it were. The intellectual influences in the late sixties were indeed different; that's a complicated question.