I really appreciate you putting in the time and effort for this response!! Thorough, despite some of my views below. Good stuff Constance
:)
Hmm, It feels like you have explained this as if you're talking to a fellow-Continental who already takes most of these premises (and the pedastal-ing of language above reality). If that is not the case, I apologise as some of this will seem dismissive (but that would make sense if the above is true!)
In that case, I would hazard a suggestion that it's possible your grasp on these things is less clear than you feel it is - being unable to clarify it for another. Please also note that the types of responses I am likely to pen here are not new. These ideas have been around a lot time, and people much, much smarter, better read, and better-spoken that I have made similar points. Rejecting these kinds of approaches is not new, and I am not in bad company doing so. I would appreciate some charity here. I will try my best to reply as I go through with reference, as best as I can keep it, to your actual writing here.
1. Make a qualified Cartesian move. One is not affirming the cogito as the ground for all possible affirmations. In fact, Descartes made a fundamentally bad move: there is no thinking unless there is thinking about something. So the indubitability of the cogito extends to the world of objects. — Constance
This doesn't bode well. You've opened what should be a fairly clear unpacking of a single phrase with a lot of theorizing (much of which appears to be linguistically muddled?) As an example, I asked you to explain an esoteric and
apparently nonsensical line. You have returned the underlined. Which requires the same treatment i've asked for. I have bolded words you can swap out for something simpler, assuming you understand the concepts well enough to do so. As a result of however you've decided to answer this, it is completely opaque as to what I've asked you explain. Onward..
Think of the world as an event. Is perception a mirror of the world?(assume the rest of the point is included.. just don't want to clutter the reply) — Constance
I am sorry to say, but this entire paragraph comes through illogical, baseless and essentially just an assertion using words wrong (i will quote one passage at the end of this chunk to treat). "the basic science of what this is about" is a total misnomer, and leapfrogs several un-settled philosophical problems by hand-waving away the idea that the mind cannot apprehend objects in the world. This is
clearly a jump-to-conclusion, because your preferred position requires it. I think you would need to be committed to a form of absolute idealism for that particular problem to obtain and be an obstacle in the science of perception.
it is not even remotely possible that this in my head (and this is a physicalist's science, the kind of thing we are educated to understand) reaches out to apprehend that tree out there. — Constance
This, ironically, embodies precisely the language games that result in intractable problems in philosophy. No, it is not "not even remotely possible" that "this in my head"(what are you even referring to here? Are you going homonculus? That'll need explaining) reaches out to apprehend X object. That is the
nature of consciousness whether or not we understand
how, that clearly is what is happening (unless you're Dennett and deny qualia). Even if we're in a simulation, that is what the consciousness code is doing - picking out items rom the environment for internal reflection, whether accurate or not (though, if we get into Noumena, we're fucked lmao).
that observation is part of the constitution of what is witnessed. This is a very old ide — Constance
Yes, this is empirically true. Not a philosophical point.
I simply cannot even imagine anything more opaque than a brai — Constance
Thats a ridiculous position that seems designed to make people laugh at you. I am sorry for that, but that's how it comes across. It's click-bait for philosophers.
an honest account of what stands before me reveals the ordinary perceptual conditions of things being outside of myself, apart from me, at a distance over there, is not something that can be dismissed — Constance
What? You seem to be using
less clear and far more complex ideas to try to explain what was relatively simply, but unclear idea. I'm lost on how you're thinking here has worked...
Because the whole point is to understand the world, and the the world is simply given to us with these divisions and differences. — Constance
The 'whole' point of what? If that is the 'whole point' of something, I have to say you're making it extremely difficult to even begin to get onto a reasonable train of thought about it. It seems like your premise is just "this shit is hard, to lets throw some big words into vaguely coherent sentences lifted from thinkers I admire aesthetically". Again, I apologise - that's what comes across. Not "How i read you". I really am trying to glean things from your writing - I appreciate the time an effort. I guess one problem is nothing you've said is new to me. It's slightly more 'garbled' versions of the writers you're aping - Witty, Heidegger, Schop etc..
So all this critical thought — Constance
I would disagree that's what it is (though, i realise it is intended, and acts, as a critique).
the relation between ourselves and the world to understand the "what it is" that is there — Constance
Again, you would need to explain this to me like i'm five, with no words above a .20c benchmark, tbh. As it's written, this is a non sequitur that I have to ignore to get through the para.
This is the phenomenological approach. E.g, you see a brain and witness a patient undergoing a fully conscious surgical procedure so the scalpel does not remove important tissue. — Constance
I realise you didn't finish this though, so charitably, this is three things that don't cohere into a point, though I can see a few ways they
could.
things turn up that were entirely unseen — Constance
This is the case on the physicalist's understanding of perception also. Several obvious examples like shadow perception (real shadows, not internal ones).
If my faculties, call them, actually constitute the relation of a knowledge event, then what is the most visible feature if this? — Constance
As best I can tell, this is not a grammatically coherent question. Your 'faculties' are repped by what? "the relation of a knowledge event"... What? "a knowledge event" is? "relation of" that is??
You need to boil these things down about eight levels lower than you're currently talking about them to explain them to a five year old. I would reiterate not using constant expensive words, and using plain language instead. It
feels like you're lifting half-understood phrases from those writers and then attempting to elaborate, and so losing whatever meager point was there to begin with as it is.
I look at my cat, and all sorts of knowledge claims are implicit, "claims" not explicit in the looking, but are there, stabilizing the event, creating a general familiarity, and this stabilizing feature is time, and time's phenomenological analysis reveals issues about the present in the past-future dynamic of theevent of perceiving. — Constance
This is the
exact kind of meaningless word salad that I've been dismissive of. This does not explain
anything at all other than to illustrate that perhaps you have trouble assimilating your thoughts when looking at your cat. There are claims on claims on claims on claims on claims that you seem to think are clear to others. They are not. I have asked for hte simplest possible version of these points (apologies if the "like i'm five" meme didn't land that way for you - that was what I wanted).
Long story short, the present SHOULD NOT exist, is one way to put this. — Constance
Seems a rather extreme non sequitur - might be the result of you barely touching what needed to be explained to me.
Every time I look up and take on the world in this way or that, I am informed by "the potentiality of possiblities" that my enculturated self carries with it into various environments, as when I walk into someone's kitchen and already know everything about knives, sinks, cabinets, etc. THIS is what constitutes the knowing of the world, this potentiality of possibilities that spontaneously rises to identify the world! — Constance
Wheres the heads, where's the tails? It's just circular word games. I can even understand exactly what's being gotten at here, and still note that its circular, only carries weight
in and of itself, linguistically. It does nothing in terms of clarifying any
other claims. Again, this may be a failure of simplicity on your part, making it very hard to connect this to earlier points.
This presence of the world is the foundation of our existence and that of all things, and yet the perceiving of this presence is impossible. — Constance
This is utter garbage, sorry. There is literally nothing that be done with this line that isn't pulling it apart.
Yet there it is, in full color and intensity, and this goes to ethics and value. See Wittgenstein's Tractatus for the inspired insight that ethics and aesthetics is transcendental. — Constance
Non sequitur. Reference to book that is horribly written, and worse-conceived (on my view) - and is in my bag right now. Just to be clear, I know where these things come from. The original was bad - I was hoping a clarification would ensure, but it seems you're just using reference to explain your references. Odd.
Because they reveal something in the events of the events of our lives that is outside of the knowledge grid of our existence. — Constance
Once again, not sufficiently clear or simple. I also thing they don't do a thing close to what Witty suggests. But that's another disagreement..
This is the foundational indeterminacy of our existence. — Constance
Suffice to say I am
less clear now as to what you're referring to.
(the world is mystical, says Witt — Constance
And this is exactly why his writings are confused, psychobabble. He doesn't understand much, and proceeds from there. "mystical" is a placeholder for "I don't get it". Hegel has this same problem.