Goes to History of Western Philosophy… note there that the following is due to both Heidegger [trs] and the introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, Charles Guignon, ed., Cambridge University Press, 1993

From the Cambridge Companion

There are knots in the thinking that characterizes western philosophy due to substance ontology that arose at the dawn of western philosophy and dominates thought today. Due to the emphasis on enduring presence, this traditional ontology is also called the metaphysics of presence

Either / ors [dualisms] due to the substance ontology since Descartes:

There is mind or all is matter
Ideas represent objects or nothing exists outside mind
Something in an individual remains constant in change or there is no personality
Values have objective existence or everything is permitted

Heidegger’s program

Undercut substance ontology; mind and matter exist but are derivative, high level concepts and such concepts are fundamental only in certain regional inquiries or sciences, some of whose appeal includes that their projection to the whole would provide a unified account of being

The problem is due to the theoretical attitude prevalent since the dawn of western philosophy; Heidegger sets this aside and recovers an original sense of things by focusing on how they show up in the flux of pre-reflective activity

Begin with the question of traditional ontology, “What is the being of entities?” but quickly asks “What is the meaning of being?” or else ontology will remain naïve and opaque

Since the being of things is accessible only if intelligible to us, fundamental ontology will clarify the meaning i.e. conditions of intelligibility of things in general

Since our existence, Dasein i.e. being-there, is the original place of intelligibility, fundamental ontology must clarify the conditions of having any understanding which itself belongs to the entity called Dasein; and so the question of being becomes a question of the intelligibility of things – this is Kantian but Heidegger breaks from the Kantian assumption that consciousness is a self-evident point to start an account of reality. Heidegger begins from Dasein, us, in pre-reflective, pre-Cartesian every day activity i.e. from the existentiell. This inquiry, the analytic of Dasein, is the published portion of Being and Time

Everydayness is pre-reflective …human existence is a happening, a life unfolding in time between birth and death. Existence as a temporal life course arises naturally from consideration of human agency: action is nested meaningful world contexts of the past, directed to some future end

What is to be explained is not how Dasein and Dasein’s activities constitute a whole but why the tradition overlooked the unified phenomenon that is being-in-the-world and how the separation of being and world arose at all. It results from a breakdown in everyday connectedness in which objects are enduring but without value or meaning and the resulting substance ontology has both economic and a certain psychological appeal. Being is inseparable from understanding; there is no final ground to all knowledge. But we do have access to things in themselves since what things are is the way they show up: access to appearances is access to things. This undercuts representationalism and consequent traditional skepticism about the external world. All appearances are presentations and not merely re-presentations

From Heidegger

What is the being of entities?

We live in understanding of being, yet its meaning is cloaked in darkness… this requires us to face the question of [the meaning of being]

It is Dasein that can ask: “What is [the meaning of] being?”

This entity which each of us is and includes inquiring as a possibility of its being, denote by ‘Dasein’

The question’s occurrence implies at least vague understanding

Ontology must clarify the meaning of Being

Every ontology is blind to its own aim if it has not first clarified the meaning of being and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task

Dasein takes priorities over all other entities in several ways:

It’s being has the determinate character of existence – is ontical

Existence is determinative for it – the ontological character

As constitutive of understanding of existence, it has ability to understand the being of all entities – the ontico-ontological condition for the possibility of ontology

Wittgenstein’s Philosophy

Saturday 9.1.01

Goes to History of Western Philosophy

[ The quotes below are from David Pears’ False Prison or very close paraphrases ]

…is Kantian – critical – as Kant offered a critique of thought, Wittgenstein offered a critique of thought in language

As with Kant, Wittgenstein offers no dogmatic metaphysic but a metaphysic of experience. [ The nature of the world is simple objects in immediate combination with one another. ] The immediate paradox is that W. says this cannot be expressed in factual language – because it is deduced from the possibility of language. The argument proceeds from the requirement that sentences about complex objects have sense and the resolution is that the actual simple objects exist but are not revealed. This is the early Wittgenstein

“The traditional view of mental phenomena made the contents of each persons mind inaccessible to others and, in the case of the ego, inaccessible even to the person himself. Wittgenstein’s new view avoided these unavoidable consequences without toppling over into behaviorism, in something like the way his new view of language [in P.I.] avoided pure realism without toppling over into arbitrary conventionalism

Why is Wittgenstein’s philosophy important or useful to me? How important is it to me?

Saturday 9.29.01

In the first place his philosophy is fundamental as are all critiques of [ human ] knowledge; all critiques of the possibilities of being; and all imaginative constructs of the same. These are, of course, useful individually and in interaction. All these supplement my own thought [ which includes the interaction of imagination and criticism ] on the search for possibilities and construction of being. Suppose I feel through experience, study, imagination that “x” is possible. Then I may try some imaginative approach to “becoming” x. But, x may be dangerous or “costly”; therefore some assessment is useful – though not always necessary for, in the end, experiment with [ my own ] being may be the only way given that I am searching in a space where “reproducibility” of results [ the laboratory fallacy ] may impossible or undesirable… So here, assessment of the claim is good. Generally, search is guided and made more efficient by thought. Thus, the philosophy of Wittgenstein is important because he makes some creative claims about knowledge and meaning. First, he is saying that certain assumptions about the possibilities for knowledge and meaning do not exist – not just contingently but necessarily. But he is also saying that there are false assumptions about what is not possible in the realm of knowledge, communication and meaning. Similarly, Kant’s thought is critical and suggestive. Also, the great critic Hume. For, if I look at Hume’s criticism of, say, induction, cause, or his arguments for the entrapment of the mind in its solipsistic isolation, I can then see where the negative judgments of Hume come from; and the assessment of Hume will be freeing: if Hume is correct then I will not waste my time in beguiling but impossible search… but if he is mistaken and I see where his error lies then I understand better where and why to search – see Philosophy, Science and Life. Wittgenstein and Hume for some fresh views on Hume’s problems. The creative imagination of someone like Jorge Luis Borges would also be useful: Borges finds the route into the mystical from the ordinary

A specific point of interest is in Wittgenstein’s arguments against the existence of [consciousness as] a realm of private inner states – his reflections on “the inner and the outer”. This has implications for the nature of mind[s] and the nature and degree of separation / connection. It has implications for the nature of knowledge – is it detached, dimensionless, inert – are we in a “False Prison” of solipsistic disengagement… or is knowledge dynamically interweaving our being / with the being of the universe. This has implications for the nature of knowledge – and language: the [lack of] depth dimension, for what can be known; and for being

On Critical-Imaginative Sources

Good criticism is a source of good imagination; the objective of thought is to construct not to tear down. The objective of criticism is not one of tearing down; it is, first, the application of thought to thought itself so as to enhance the quality of the thought whether that quality is in the positive power of its imagination and construction or the elimination of incorrect thought. Therefore, good criticism is a source of good thought

Some sources

Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Locke, Berkley, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Popper, Wittgenstein, Whitehead, Russell, Heidegger. In Indian philosophy, Vedanta, Samkhya, Yoga Sutra, Bhagavad-Gita – Arjuna’s message. Sources for Buddhism and the Religions of the Desert: Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Jorge Luis Borges, Dante, Milton

Send these sources to Thinkers and Actors and link

Consider the Bible: a wealth of imagination? And the question of the meaning of its meaning. And given meanings of its meaning: is that good for action – the power of the resulting inner life, the action in the lives of those who implicitly or explicitly accept these? Or, the Koran – what are the meanings here?

Ultimately, though, I come back to my own imagination. Mental space is vast and multi-dimensional, yet individuals limit themselves

Entrapment and intimidation: how thought is blocked in tyrannies

Morality and moral anger: how virtuous I am; morality as control

Seduction: how imagination is trapped in “open” societies; accept the canons of this system and you too will…

The power of conventional thought – including science

Packaging

All contributions are equally valuable. Misunderstanding democracy. Two misunderstandings: first a confusion with equality of opportunity; second, the balance of perception and judgment, and of, labor and leisure

The delusion of rebellion

Becoming a packrat: collecting ideas; storing ideas in the attic of a mind

Depending on the temporal artifacts of a system of thought for foundation

Martyrdom: the universe is lonely, alien and boring but I can handle it. Science is cold and rational but, hey, I’m tough and can handle it. I will sacrifice my being through social norms for the good of others

I’m an adult and mature. Adults have arrived and don’t need to grow. I will sound wise and quote authority as though it were original

The specific importance of Wittgenstein

§ The criticism of dogmatic metaphysics and metaphysical concepts. Is this absolute? Can I answer the criticism? Do my ventures beyond… stand up?

§ Wittgenstein’s new concept of philosophy. Is this new and real… or a phase of thought? What are the necessities, we cannot argue that they are more than historical in nature for any necessities will necessarily be relative to a broad context of historical and cultural contingencies in which we are immersed – Wittgenstein’s critique, over the next phase of cultural history starting with the publication of Philosophical Investigations will necessarily be subject to its own criteria. What are the contents and ways [ methods ] of Wittgenstein’s concept of philosophy – note that the alleged “strangeness” of Wittgenstein’s new concept of philosophy are due to its being very different from the old philosophy allegedly modeled on science in method –? How is this useful to me?

§ Most importantly. The concept of knowledge and language as used in Wittgenstein. [1] As criticism of my ideas, [2] Used or adapted in its critical and imaginative aspects as part of my thought

Wittgenstein as a Critical Philosopher

Saturday 9.29.01

Normally perceived as limiting – arguing against empty claims to knowledge and meaning, e.g., philosophical problems that appear – all of dogmatic metaphysics – that appear when terms are taken out of the context of their use and which are [ or may then be ] assumed to have sense but are in fact void of sense

It is not quite as often noted that Wittgenstein was also critical and destructive of empty claims to ignorance, e.g., The False Prison [ title of David Pears’ work ]

Wittgenstein and privacy

Saturday 9.29.01

Wittgenstein was not arguing against the existence of individual experience but against its incommunicability… and when communicating required merely naming or pointing… and when and how description was possible and proper. Reference to mere naming is not meant to imply that that is all there is to meaning; it is agreed, with Wittgenstein, that it is use in context that maintains the stability of naming rather than any Platonic system of realism

For practical purposes, at least – in Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein explicitly allows our high level percepts to be elementary – unanalyzable – objects, for practical purposes… there are primary experiences “red” “if”, say, which are named. The naming is not fixed by reality but not by arbitrary convention either – i.e. naming is not merely about what sign to use; naming is determined [occurs] and is sustained [adaptively… there is adaptive innovation and there is drift] in a context of mutual use in a line of history… and the naming is also of a constitutional– psychological and biological – though not completely given, unique or indecomposable nature

For practical, scientific, purposes – like causes, like effects – the communication of “red” to within shades and excepting pathology – neurosis, psychosis, organic – is automatic and given in the context

Wittgenstein, of course, does not leave it at “automatic and given” but deflates incommunicability: deflates the possibility of private experience

When “another’s experience in relation to mine” is identified as metaphysical it should be recognized that the implicit use of “knowledge” in the identification is also metaphysical. It is a metaphysical use of “knowledge” that identifies knowledge of others’ experience as metaphysical. When eliminating metaphysical “baggage” all such baggage should be eliminated

Thus, in the example of the inverted spectrum, I do not know that my experience of red is like another’s only in some metaphysical –overblown– meaning of “know” or if I demand identity of experience. Thus, because of possibly faulty memory, I do not “know” that my experience of red is continuous in time. Regarding identity of experience, even an individual’s experience of an object is variable. Thus an individual’s experience of red may be different for left and right eyes. Therefore, shifts in spectrum will not count as inversion. In a not overly metaphysical use we can assert that excepting pathological and extremely altered states the experiences of different individuals for the same stimulus are reasonably similar. There remains a doubt whether “the same” experience has meaning; it seems that this doubt is based in dependence on an anchoring of experience when there should be no anchor. Suppose God tells me “Anil, you and your brother, Robin, have essentially the same experience of red, check it out logically.” There is no way to check it out. There would have to be a way to transmit the picture of red I have in my head and transmit it to my brother’s head. There is no way to do that. Well, actually there it is. I say “the rose is red” and my brother has the right experience. The idea that I have to transmit something from within my own head… that is the false prison to which David Pears refers

A curious point: why the inverted spectrum? Why not put all kinds of experience including language, perception, thought, emotion in a blender – like some kinds of dysfunction – and say that the blended result of my experiences is a possible primary experience “x” for some other purpose; when I see red it may be natural for some other normal person to experience listening to his lover in the throes of love whispering sweet infinities in Swahili as spoken by a Sanskrit scholar from Germany… like the taste of a banana, like nightfall, like being in a Cathedral, like middle C, like silence, like nothing, like no experience, like everything else, like being all of creation

… and then there are – again, for practical purposes – non-primary experiences which may be described as combinations of primary experiences

“A description is a representation of a distribution in a space [in that of time, for instance].” P.I.II.ix

Wittgenstein on philosophy

Saturday 9.29.01

A quote from the False Prison, David Pears, Volume II, part I, Chapter 1

“The philosophy of the past modeled itself on science and its theories became more and more remote from life as it is lived, an exile not to be repeated. The new philosophy comes back from the desert with a different message: describe the familiar the right way and you will understand it.”

[ Notice the strength of the Biblical allusions. The exile, the desert, “…and the truth will set you free.”]

This force of this quote shows that to go against Wittgenstein, i.e. not only a contrary model of thought but also a more inclusive one, will require argument and reason. Notice, I am being generous in not specifying that it be merely an alternative conception of philosophy

Wittgenstein’s Philosophy – some more and less connected accounts

Sunday 9.30.01

[ Perhaps to be edited, connected, organized. ]

“We live in a unique common world from which it is quite impossible for each of us to cut out a miniature world of ones own

This is the basis of his later philosophy of mind

This argues against solipsism and the interest in brains-in-vats

“The solipsist says something only if he could identify himself independently of the objects of his awareness. But if his [ the solipsist’s ] theory is true he cannot do that for the [ whole ] point of his theory is that he the subject of his awareness is not located in the common [ or any ] world, not connected with anything located in it. If his theory is true, the only criterion to identify himself is as “the subject who is aware of these objects.” It is not that ““ is the only criterion, it is the only criterion permitted by his theory – the condition of solipsism. At this point, he is likely to respond that he has no difficulty identifying himself but that is in real life, not in his theory. The solipsist’s mistake is a confusion between what he can easily do in his real life and what he can do in his theory

“This is a characteristic way of thinking in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind. As Wittgenstein later said of this solipsist, “He is like someone who has constructed a clock that will not tell the time because he has inadvertently connected the dial to the hour hand so that they both go round together.” This, as noted, is characteristic: two things that should be independent are artificially forced together. Another primary example is about word and meaning; in Platonism or Platonist realism words and meanings, knowledge and the world are bound rigidly together: we can know the world and the word independently of our contributions to our world. There may be a world independent of us; but the world we know is one that has one foot in reality and one foot in our way of knowing. Separating the two might be unmooring, placing us in the shadow – neither dark not light, may be dizzying at least at first… but is ultimately freeing. It is also one of my ideas: no final anchor, no exit from reality. And the converse, the bondage of our words and knowledge to a fixed world is slavery; there is no future; not no exit but no entry. This idea does not give us exit, it asserts that exit is logically impossible; and undesirable – for the negative reason that the impossible is undesirable and for the positive reason that the idea gives us entry and connection; but a “flowing elastic” connection not a fixed one; a connection that is in the shadow region where mind and world meet. I suppose that this could be construed as “no black or white” but only “shades of grey – that is the negative judgment; in the positive judgment “black and white are the borders of a region where the entire spectrum is present.”

But this leads to an interesting metaphysical consequence: a world independent of our knowing could [logically, if it is truly independent?] have no contact with us. It is only the mystification of knowledge that makes us think that there is a “universe” that we cannot know that can have an effect on us or contact with us. A world forever and necessarily independent of all sentience could not exist

Above, Wittgenstein was critiquing ego based solipsism but his argument applies equally to any solipsism. An aside on the interest of solipsism. Some minds are intrinsically curious about such matters. Perhaps that is slanting the truth; the reason for the interest is some point of connection with reality – and some minds see the connection through insight / experience / inclination; the solipsist has a point; and it is not an imaginary point; much common sense of the everyday is a kind of solipsist common sense: the ultimate privacy of the individual mind; the inverted spectrum; arbitrary conventionalism in definition – the model that anything can be defined as anything is anti-Platonist, since we are in our own solipsist bubble, Hey, define whatever as whatever; actual alienation and not mere existentialist alienation. The solipsist’s prison is the False Prison of modern conventionalist, realist, and critical thought; especially critical thought based in scientific realism. This is the underground interest. The explicit interest is that we learn from reflection on the issue of solipsism – there are other problems in philosophy where the interest is similar; Wittgenstein learned a lot. The two interests are of course joined in the sub-conscious; and while similar interest exists at numerous points in philosophy, Wittgenstein seems to be saying that that is the whole of metaphysics. Somewhere in the shadow region, Wittgenstein is affirming the mystical: Tractacus, 6.44 “Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.”

“Wittgenstein’s argument applies equally to any solipsism, not just the ego-based solipsism that the objects of the solipsist’s awareness are the only objects that exist” [ this is close to phenomenalism and idealism of the kind that only ideas exist; does this extend to the extended conception of “idea”… note again so much of day to day thinking though allegedly hard headed is actually idealistic – not a closet idealism but an invisible one, a kind of refuge from the onslaught of critical realism ]… “Wittgenstein’s argument applies to any solipsism in [ the theory of ] which there is the existence of a subject without a criterion of identity that is independent of its objects.”

An example is Hume’s solipsism or solipsistic idealism in which the subject is the sequence of its impression and ideas

“In the Tractacus the concern with solipsism is its truth but the real problem lies behind this, it is the ownership of the solipsist’s experiences. Is it possible to explain this ownership in a way which will do justice to the extraordinary closeness of subject and object without making them lose their independence from one another?

This is quite path breaking. So many paths converge here. This is the answer to the question of idealism of the type “my ideas are the only real.” What of the idealism of Being, Mind and the Absolute?

Though it is path-breaking, unifying, it is about Wittgenstein’s world-as-I-found-it. It is not as I argue elsewhere and as Wittgenstein wanted it to be, a ban on metaphysics. Actually Wittgenstein was ambivalent here as was Kant; it is partly a question of how to do metaphysics and how to do philosophy; partly to do with the universal human characteristic, exaggerated in the brilliant, of different criteria for self and other – Ambrose Bierce’s definition of an egotism “A person of low taste more interested in himself than me”; and partly is of “What can be shown but not said”; the combination of mysticism and realism in Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein: The Tractacus

Sunday 9.30.01

The main ideas [ Pears ]:

§ Logical atomism [1]

§ Basic realism and Picture Theory of Sentences [2] & [3]

§ The treatment of solipsism [4]

Logical Atomism

“Reality is thus: there is a limit to the analysis of factual languages at which all sentences will consist of words designating simple objects

“In Wittgenstein’s logical atomism, reality is a grid of simple objects in immediate combination. The meaning of “simple” is that the simple objects have no internal structure

“Any factual sentence can be completely analyzed into elementary sentences which are logically independent of one another because they name simple objects

“Elementary propositions cannot contradict one another.” Given up in Philosophical Investigations

“The question whether a proposition has sense can never depend on the truth of another proposition about a constituent of the first” [ separatism ]

This implies Wittgenstein’s logical atomism but where does it come from? If it were “the case we could not form any picture of the world [true or false]” i.e. if it were the case that the sense of one proposition could depend on the truth of one of its constituents – from another context in Wittgenstein

The Basic Realism and the Picture Theory of the Tractacus

The basic realism of the Tractacus is clear. The picture theory makes it a very stark realism:

“The principle of representation is the core of the picture theory. When sentences are analyzed into their atomic constituents each name designates something real – a simple object

“The picture theory has two striking features which are connected with one another, separatism and analytic depth

“[As a pointillist painting of which each point on the canvas is correlated with a minute fragment of the actual scene.]

Transition to Wittgenstein’s later account of language

“Ask how sentences keep their senses and the weight will immediately fall on use. Treat sentences as ordinary instruments with a place and function in our lives and immediately the lateral investigation of systems will take over from deep analysis

“Wittgenstein’s first move away from the system of the Tractacus was to abandon the requirement that objects should be devoid of internal structure. “This is red” and “this is green” are elementary propositions despite their logical incompatibility.”

Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations

Sunday 9.30.01

“One of the recurrent themes of P.I. is that a word or grammatical symbol is not given a meaning merely by giving it a one-off attachment to a thing or even a use. What is required is sustained mutual correction-in-use [ which includes, of course, use itself ]. Why? A rule cannot cover all cases encountered or unencountered; likewise, a picture, intuition, a finite sequence of exemplary applications – all such sequences must be finite but the potential is not given… This criterion applies to any theory that attempts to put meaning on static basis

This means that concepts are not definite

Argument against the possibility of a private language, independent of use: there would be no way to identify a sensation-type: you could imagine that but you would be bringing into memory a past use

The ego is not a separate theater where ““ is a rehearsal in private

You think your sensation of red is [ can be ] like my sensation of blue – because you think sensations are like objects; that blue could = red is not only false, it is logically impossible. The point: it is not wrong, it is meaningless to say your sensation of blue = mine because that takes sensing out of the world and sets it above the world. If God said, “your blue is like A’s, prove it” there would be only the following way, I would have to transmit the picture of blue in my head to A’s head – that would be impossible and unnecessary because A already has a picture of red, dare I say the picture?

False Prisons

Sunday 9.30.01

Notice the real freedom and real reality when the following are given up; this list is not restricted to the thoughts of Wittgenstein or his followers and interpreters:

§ The ego is a private theatre

§ Sensations are detachable from subjects or objects

§ Words have absolute moorings in reality: the “perfect dictionary” hypothesis. [ Wittgenstein had a complex relationship with the idea of metaphysics – the idea of metaphysics and how to “talk” about it. A freedom that comes from the unmooring is as follows. The idea of knowing reality has its origin in the fact that we can see behind appearance in various ways: we can look again, we can reflect on the nature of reality and combine reflection with looking. We get a new view, the view behind the appearance. Views behind appearances may seem more stable, may be sanctioned. Yet, they are “more sophisticated” appearances. The world is always the-world-as-I-know-it; or as we know it. Now we can build theories about this but it is the same. There are “mediate” realities but it is not clear, except in hypothesis, that there is a reality behind the world-as-it-is-presented. Thus, we are free to negotiate in this world; to know and to create. We are of reality; not merely resident in it; we participate in it. Wittgenstein believed that many metaphysical puzzles could be cleared up by an attention to language. It seems, however, that an attention to our mooring whether by words or ideas leads to the same result. Not all metaphysical issues are empty. However, a number of issues such as the mind-body problem have origin in taking as fixed our immediate constructs of our search “behind” the phenomena. ]

Regarding appearances, my philosophy of presence is showing that the phenomena are real – there is no need for a reality behind appearances. This is an approximate expression that is given precision in The Fundamental Problem of Metaphysics… Now, anyone may argue against this saying that it is pan-psychism, idealism but it is not so. First, it is not saying that the phenomena are the only real elements. Second, consider the following argument. Suppose I say that a table is real. That is not “table-ism,” it is not saying that the ultimate constituents of the universe are tables but vice-versa. Similarly, here, we say the ultimate constituents are “presence” and tables and appearances are “made up” of them

Beyond a point, dictionaries are aids – not definitive in their specifications despite attempts at definitiveness and the belief in that definitiveness. A dictionary reflects but does not establish practice. It may attempt to, and practically establish practice, but it cannot establish real meaning aside from practice. Similar comments can be made about all texts and their relation to knowledge. Modern education sets up the dictionary like an inverted pyramid _Ñ_ and, so, does – behind the obvious service – a great disservice. The establishment of contextual meaning as meaning is an impoverishment of possibility, an establishment of a sense of certainty, and a disconnection from reality

§ Words and meanings are detachable from users and uses

§ Everything needs proof; anything is capable of proof

§ We are ontologically alien to reality – an illusion produced by the idea of linguistic freedom [ arbitrary conventionalism ]… note that it is not that meanings are either fixed or free but meanings are adaptively determined in use; and evolve; there is an act of creation that is free but not free-wheeling and is subject, in use, to all kinds of test including, at bottom, selection of the entire system; and it is the system of meaning and grammar / logic that is determined – grammar is metaphysical

§ The immediate needs proof

§ The immediate defines the universal. [ The universal includes the immediate… causality, e.g., is not projected to the universal but is locally and practically given. ]

§ There is no causal order; there is universal causation. [ Causation is not the order not because of the Humean argument but because the world is not continuous. The Humean argument applies even if the world is continuous but is then a theoretical objection and not the denial of a practical metaphysic; causation is the local order as a practical metaphysic – the problem is to find the nature of that causation. ] [ The labor of humankind is a sort of unnecessary labor – the realization of being is accomplished but… humans must labor on. ]

§ The brain models the environment. [ In a sense, it is modeling the environment but it is not modeling in a representational sense even though I “see” a picture. And it is not modeling in a digital, computational sense… or even an analog sense. This is a common and to some extent useful model, but as a complete model of human knowledge it is an error. As far as modeling as in, say, mathematical-physical modeling it is not that the brain is a poor modeler – the idea of modeling is logically false in the context of the brain in the world. The brain is in the world and is not modeling the world. This is a source of error in the computational concept of the mind. ]

Wittgenstein and his followers

What is the significance of the corps of interpreters and followers? What kind of philosopher [man] would say… “you must follow my way”, “it is the only way”, “this way describes the essence of philosophy”, “philosophy and science are [completely] distinct” – what after all is science, “ to follow another way leads into complete darkness”?

Perhaps the introduction of a new point of view requires a messianic figure… a presentation of a viewpoint as a universe. But a viewpoint as a universe is [always] self-contradictory. The self-contradiction is removed when the viewpoint is recognized to be a sub-universe. Use is [close to] the nature of original animal communication. And meaning as reference is an evolution of the original function. Is it possible for the new meaning of meaning to diffuse and spread back into the genesis of meaning? That would require a revision of the meaning of “reference”, of “pointing”, of “object”… and that would still be in the original Wittgensteinian spirit

What is the psychology – the psychiatry – of a messianic figure such as Ludwig Wittgenstein?

On Meaning

Combine with the previous topic, Wittgenstein’s Philosophy

Make a précis of the content on meaning and add to the footnote in Journey on Being on meaning

Uses of language

Non-atomic uses of language; non-reference based uses: command, poetry, deception… and non-literal uses

In some ways, ‘non-original’’ or ‘derived’ is better than the usual connotation of ‘non-literal’

Sense and reference

Roughly, sense is meaning and reference is the object to which a word refers. Not all words have an object of reference, e.g. “ouch”; Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, 1953, has many examples

Roughly, sense is connotation; reference is denotation

Roughly, sense is intension; reference is extension

All words have meaning or sense; the sense may be precise or vague

Not all words have reference – certainly not to objects; and not necessarily in any generalized sense; thus not every word is a symbol – in the usual sense

The following possibilities exist:

One word, two meanings; the meanings could be distinct, or similar – have a “family resemblance”

Two words, one meaning or shades of meaning

Modes of family resemblance include: of kind, of accident, of metaphor

Analysis of meaning

Here, I am referring to linguistic meaning; not “meaning” in its occasional sense of causation or significance – or other senses

Wittgenstein’s lateral analysis; meaning is determined in use in a common context and that provides for stability and interpersonal coherence of meanings… is a useful concept. Use is a lateral “instrument” or concept: there is no foundation of use except in use – that is except for diachronic analysis which Wittgenstein eschewed. There is no need for perfect coherence in meaning; a perfect system of meaning would signal the end of evolution – incompletions in meaning, the vagaries of languages are not essential defects: they represent possibility and potential. No final foundation – no final anchor; a crisis that is freeing. There is a limit to talk; explanation must stop somewhere; the final foundation is not in more talk but in use or action – it is a flexible foundation, one that can accommodate intended and imposed change. The unmooring of Wittgenstein’s realization – after the vertigo, the freedom; there is no solipsist bubble in which we are trapped and out of which we cannot communicate our real experience

Yet, can we find generalized symbols based, in part, in generalized concepts of symbol? Regardless, Wittgenstein’s approach is not critically affected – but its utility may be reduced or eliminated

The idea of use is related to that of function or functioning. There is a relation to the pragmatism and instrumentalism of Pierce, James and Dewey and to the inseparability of knowing and acting of Evolution and Design and of Journey in Being. Use of signs – gestures, sounds, facial expressions, external signs – has origin early in evolution. Before the sign, and that is very early in evolution, there is only action; then the senses evolve to become cued to surface actions signs for complex internal states. After the simple sign, with development of imagery and the symbolic ability, the sign becomes freed for general use and can have “meaning.” In a positivistic view, all meaning would be reference. But, even in such a view, without the specification of a metaphysics, and that is anathema to the old positivists, there is no universalization of meaning. Meaning, always lies between these extremes and may fall multivalently on the continuum between them

Generally, origins, evolution, diffusion and clarification of meaning are ongoing, interactive processes

Analysis of meanings alone does not constitute philosophy; clarification of meaning… is nonetheless useful to reduce unnecessary confusion and futile debate; and to establish and clarify concepts – in themselves and as preliminary to knowledge and transformation

The meaning of “meaning” is doubly recursive in that the process of meaning applies also to “meaning”

There is a distinction: sentence vs. speaker / interpreter meaning. Speaker and interpreter meaning are wrought with all kinds of psychological issues including defenses and intentional mischief, manipulation and malice; these must be factored out before we can even begin to talk of contextual meaning

Meanings of words are dependent on the sentences and contexts in which they occur. There is an actual context – the general and specific physical, ethnic, social and cultural and, perhaps other aspects. And there is a semantic context – the environment of meaning that is continuous with the cultural environment; this environment of meaning is tantamount to an entire metaphysics. Elucidation of the metaphysics would, in general, be prerequisite to elucidation of meaning. Quine had something to say in this regard

Meaning and knowing: theories of declarative meaning

Declarative or assertive sentences are those that assert something; they take on truth values; they are propositional in nature; they depend for their meaning [heavily] on meaning as reference. Note that there is another usage of “declarative sentence” as in “I now declare you husband and wife.” For the variety of sentence kinds, i.e. kinds of speech act, see Kinds of Knowledge where I discuss the relations among meaning, logic and knowledge

Frege and Wittgenstein

Frege in Volume 1, Section 32 of the Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, says that there is both sense and reference for every sentence of his “concept-writing” – the Begriffsshrift. The reference of a sentence of Begriffsshrift is its truth value, and the sense of the sentence is the thought that the sentence expresses. For Frege, the notion of meaning of a declarative sentence is or correlates to the notion of understanding – and to understand a sentence is to have grasped its truth condition

Wittgenstein in Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus:

4.022 A sentence in use [Satz] shows how things stand if it is true. And it says that they do so stand

4.024 To understand a sentence in use means to know what is the case if it is true

4.061 A sentence in use is true if we use it to say that things stand in a certain way, and they do

An alternative

The alternative is not radical and it is included in the above but changes the emphasis. The meaning of a declarative sentence is the state of affairs that it represents

Notes

A phase of discovery and creation is and will be the clarification and specification of meaning; however, meaning and context / theory are not finally and absolutely distinct and the clarification of meaning in, say, science must always await the formulation of coherent theories

Thus the following historical confusions: heat and temperature; momentum and energy. The historical confusion was not a confusion of otherwise clear meanings in the minds of scientists; clear meanings had not been arrived at owing to the lack of relevant coherent and sufficiently complete theories. Once the relevant theories were written, meanings became clear although, perhaps, limited

There is currently a similar confusion about the meaning of “consciousness.” I am referring, here, to the primitive sense of awareness and not to such meanings as “higher consciousness.” Because consciousness does not appear as part of a coherent theory – there is no absolute reason to suppose that it will or should – there is doubt as to a proper definition of consciousness. Perhaps, as for force, the anthropic sense of consciousness will later be replaced by something more operational in nature – for the purposes of theory. There, currently, a number of alternatives; but, in the absence of a coherent framework, none of the alternatives stands out clearly. So, I currently find the anthropic sense to be most pertinent: consciousness is awareness, not mere operational or functional awareness, but subjective awareness. But, in the absence of a commonly accepted theory, all operational concept-definitions must be regarded as tentative, as not providing a well-founded meaning or concept. I have gone beyond this in the Metaphysics of Presence

There is discussion of concept and theory meaning in Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness

References

Ogden and Richards, Meaning of Meaning

Hume and science – or, Hume’s brilliant error

Goes to History of Western Philosophy

This is a good place to take up Hume’s arguments. Almost every major philosopher since Hume has had something to say about Hume. Popper is, perhaps, the main modern example and he is thought to have liberated science from “Hume’s curse” – as well as Bacon’s curse of linear induction – just as Kant so delivered philosophy. Yet I think I have something new to say

A fundamental criticism of reason typical of and due to Hume, one that is foundational, is the criticism of induction – the generalization from a set of data to a law. This includes but is more general than Baconian induction. Hume’s criticism amounts to the following. For, given a set of data and a law that fits or explains the data, there is always another law that also fits the data. So suppose we perform more experiments, gather more data. Either the old law fits the data or we need a new law. In either case, there is another law that will fit the data equally well. Any new law that agrees with the old law on the data points but is different elsewhere will do and is trivial to construct. This criticism applies to all physical laws, concepts, theories… and it applies specifically to the concepts of cause or causality and space-time. I’m not sure why Hume did not apply his idea to determinism – perhaps because it would have made his point moot

A simple answer to Hume is that his argument forgets that we are of this world. This is not a trivial answer because it includes the way when a theory is right it suddenly “clicks.” So, some irregular alternative, is not only artificial but, likely, excessively cumbersome. When a new law or theory becomes necessary by virtue of new data and inspiration – the law itself – the situation is different; thus Einstein’s theory of gravitation is not an artificial successor to Newton’s – and there is an history of inelegant and ad hoc alternatives to Newton’s theory that have been considered and abandoned. Hume’s argument ignores the place of intuition and aesthetics

But this argument does not remove the logical force of Hume’s point. One argument that does remove the logical force of Hume’s point is Popper’s. Popper’s argument is that theories, laws and so on are always tentative and always carry a hypothetical nature: they can be disproved but not proved. The actual situation is complex for one new data point that is unexplained by a hitherto successful law casts doubt not only on the law but on the data itself; and, perhaps, the resolution lies in some kind of adjustment rather than abandoning either the data or the law. It is only when the weight of exceptional “data” is excessive and an alternative theory is available that transitions to new theories occur. The word “data” is in quotes because it is intended in a generalized sense. For example, the conflicts regarding Newtonian Mechanics were not merely data points; the foundations of Newtonian Mechanics were inconsistent with Maxwell’s Equations of Electromagnetism and, as it turned out, it was Newtonian Mechanics that had to “give.” What is Popper doing? He is taking science of its high perch as certain and absolute knowledge and saying that, within its own domain, it is the best explanation of what is thus far known and the best predictor within a similar domain of what is unknown. Here, though being plain and direct, Popper is being Wittgensteinian… and, just as Kuhn is ‘obvious’ – see my essay Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions: A Critique – so is Popper

There is a way in which both Hume and Popper are right. Hume is right in insisting that science and its underlying metaphysics such as space, time and causation are not absolute. In fact this is one approach to a solution of some fundamental metaphysical problems – e.g. The Fundamental Problem Of Metaphysics; see also Metaphysics. At the same time Popper is right in accepting Hume’s point that science is not absolute and recognizing that this is the nature of science and, then, developing a philosophy about this point instead of wringing his hands like Hume [Popper had, of course, knowledge of two hundred additional years of history of science than did Hume] or trying to reclaim the absolute nature of science as did the Logical Positivists in the first half of the 20^th century

But there is a way in which Hume and, to some extent Popper, are wrong. The following is not fully contra-Popper but, also, complementary to Popper

Hume’s mistake was that he did not fully understand the nature of scientific theories. But he was quite right in making that mistake for it was the conventional understanding of scientists and philosophers to that point and even today – despite Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyeraband – the four irrationalist 20^th century philosophers of science. It is one thing to practice science and another to say what it is, what is its nature and what are its justifications – other than success of the enterprise. One of the, perhaps implicit, claims was that it was about certainty with regard to fact and concept – Kant invented a form of the transcendental analytic to allow this to remain true despite Hume – and that there was a logic of this truth: the logic of induction

Hence Hume’s valid criticism of Baconian induction. Note: despite the evident validity of Hume and the emptiness of induction [this is quite different than mathematical induction which is a separate and distinct concept] I believe that the jury has not yet returned the final verdict, see Kinds of Knowledge and Journey in Being

But Hume, Bacon, and the rest including the British Empiricists from Locke to Russell and, to some extent Popper, miss the following point to science and knowledge. Science is not merely about explanation, validity, certainty, absoluteness. Science is also about finding and seeing patterns; the universe is patterned and the concept of a pattern is, in some ways, more fundamental than explanation, certainty, prediction. It is true, though, that a valid pattern is aesthetic precisely because it is a pattern of the world – even if an approximation it is not a mere numerical approximation but it is an approximation to the mechanism of the world – and, additionally a valid pattern is often economic with regard to explanation, understanding and prediction. Surely Darwinian theory of evolution, Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory, Einstein’s theories of space-time-gravitation, Newton’s earlier theories, modern cosmology and the standard model of elementary particles reveal deep patterns of behavior and structure even if they are not universal. And once these structures are revealed, power – both intellectual and practical – is released. The practical or instrumental covers politics, economics, technology and art; the intellectual includes the raw intellectual aspect – the ideas in themselves – and, also, art and spirit and religion… Now, it is not neurotic t be concerned about the reliability of science but it is rather neurotic, rather like the story of the goose that laid golden eggs, to set up certainty and absoluteness as absolute values

To do that is to set the pyramid upon its apex Ñ – which makes it rather easy to topple over. But, since the scientific-philosophical-academic community identified with that Ñ, its toppling sent waves emanating from Hume, through history and to the 21^st century

Hume’s mistake is that it detracts from the real nature of knowledge and is a misunderstanding of our place in the world. Imagine being in the 31^st century and assume that time to have continuity with Western Civilization and the Modern World. From that perspective, the mistake is understandable. It a criticism of the exuberance of first discovery – the origin not of a scientific theory but of science itself; it is the confidence of first discovery. But the focus on pattern restores some confidence: even if we stumble, we are still of the universe and its patterns. We are of the universe even in that stumbling; for the path of history and evolution are not linear, progressive, inexorable or predetermined: those paths are halting and experimental – we could call them nature’s experiments in being. We learn from Hume’s “brilliant” error what is knowledge and what is our place in the tidal flow of being

Logic and Knowledge

Internal physical coherence = function

External physical coherence = adaptation

Adaptation as fact rather than the end result of a process

Internal symbolic coherence = reason, logic

External symbolic coherence = analytic knowledge

Personal

Often, I have noted the simple beauty of a green field and the blue sky and been reminded of the elegance of perception over thought. Sometimes I see the journey as a sacrifice – both wonderful and difficult. It is important to remember the beauty and the sacrifice

Principle of meaning

Principle of ontological psychology – now called the principle of meaning – regarding the highest and most heroic concern

All knowledge and being

Make explicit the claim that that the system has covered all knowledge and being

Organism vs. thought

It is mind and organism that reconstruct, and ground and carry being – not thought by itself especially labyrinthine thought that is detailed and clever and locally profound

Experiments

The Absolute, Universal Openness, Being, Beyond Death

Text

Open text; general concept of the text: open/dynamic; the significance of the open text idea is that texts, authors and readers are in mutual evolution; plan, vehicle and document; contains opposites; living, not just open; organic

The Absolute

The Absolute has meanings in logic, ethics and aesthetics… here I am concerned with the real or metaphysical meaning

Some meanings

That which does not express relationship e.g. “Plato” but not “teacher;” intrinsic, perfect vs. comparative; real vs. appearance; not subject to conditions or reservations

In philosophy and metaphysics: that which is independent of or unconditioned and unconstrained by anything else – self-sufficient, fundamental, ultimate; the autonomous; primordial, uncaused – at once cause and no cause; substance; necessary truth; that which permits meaning and its continuity

Substance whose necessary mechanisms and transformations produce the world – is there a role for combinatorial growth; substance is undifferentiated or minimally differentiated, enduring, not transmutable in its intrinsic nature but variable in its forms

Absolute being: has no being, no essence, and no quality but is the source of all being, essence and quality; for whom originating the world is not an effort or an action

The absolute has no being, no essence, no quality but is the source of all being, essence and quality. God as eternal, as cause, as creator is absolute…

Historical sources

The idea of the absolute is present in Plato and the idea and the term in Aquinas, Benedict Spinoza, Bruno… its vogue is due to the German Idealists – Fichte, Schelling, Hegel…

Patristic and scholastic Christianity: the creator God, the Ens Realissimum, Ens Perfectissimum, Sui Causa, and the god of mysticism generally – Erigena, Hugo of St. Victor, Cusa, Boehme, Bruno

Ens – being in its most general sense, with least possible qualification and determination

Sui Causa – self-creation, causing itself

Nicholas of Cusa: referred to God as “the absolute”

Spinoza described substance as absolutely infinite “self-existing, independent, unconditional ground of all that exists” in contrast with its ultimate attributes which are each infinite in their kind

Vaihinger – the ultimate fiction | Hamilton, Spencer – the unknown… the unconditioned, therefore unknowable real

Kant – unknowable… the Ideas of reason seek both the absolute totality of conditions and their absolutely unconditioned ground

Theists – God; pantheists – universe

Schelling – primordial World Ground, unity behind all logical and ontological oppositions, self-differentiating source of both Mind and Nature

Hegel – universal spirit, which by dialectic process takes on one predicate after another until it manifests itself as an objective world in perfect harmony with reason

India: Atman [Self] and Brahman [Real] … and many others which are identical to the western ideas

Primal being has existential answers… negated in the delusions of modernism which is the opposite of magic i.e. the absolute separation of word and object

Science: universe = nothing

Vivekananda – the eternal religion behind all religions, recognizes the Absolute as a state of pure consciousness identical with the true self without a second

Automation of documentation

To Design for a Journey in Being

The problem is of making the whole system of a number of modules, in processes that include creation and elimination, dynamically responsive to the individual aspects of the exploration and transformation; with each change to a given module, changes ripple through the system

A dynamic solution to this problem is in a number of parts

The solution meshes with other solutions e.g. the template system and minimizes duplication; solution systems may be series [nest] or parallel [independent]

An example: functions x topics matrix… the basic function x topic design and its automation is useful; macros are needed to make functions / topics representations and transform one to another

Anthropic Principle as a special case of the transcendental method

The anthropic principles are made trivial by the transcendental method applied to the void or nothingness… to something

Quoting from John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle

“The Weak Anthropic Principle: The observed values of all physical and cosmological qualities are not equally probable but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so”

In these quotations, Universe is used in the sense of phase-epoch

I.e. there are many phase-epochs in which the relative probability of supporting life of our kind would be very small

“The Strong Anthropic Principle: The Universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within it at some stage in its history”

The Universe does have those properties and, since there is only one universe, to say that it must allow life to develop has no meaning. However, it is false that every phase-epoch has those properties. And, by the logic developed earlier, there must be other phase-epochs where our kind of life develops. The foregoing statement is imprecise in that the universe is not in time; if we view the universe as a space-time manifold – it will not be connected and though phase-epochs may have a single dominant time, the universe itself will not – then we could say of that manifold that there are infinitely many phase-epochs that have, not only our kind of life, but also circumstances infinitesimally close to if not exactly the same as ours. What is the fraction of phase epochs that have life at some point in their history? The answer is not known – rather, I should say that I do not know and not because someone else does but because I do not know of anyone who is thinking along the lines of my thought. I would speculate that the fraction is small but all that I can currently say with any degree of confidence is that it is not 0 or 1

Evolution of my thought

The following quotes from the preface to Being, Mind and the Absolute shows the evolution of my thought – the distance that I have come and the seeds of the present

My thought on mind and consciousness and their place in the world is at three levels; the first level is scientific…

At the second level I see mind as having an existence that is independent of the [biophysical] natural world… the origin of this thought is in the deficiencies of the western scientific-materialist tradition that, despite its immense power and apparent subsumption of all categories, not at all succeeded in explaining mind in its own terms and therefore mind stands as a very real reminder of the possibility of ontological or metaphysical incompleteness of the tradition

The idea or possibility of an independent ontological status to mind [implied by the second level] is itself questionable in that mind itself or mind and matter together may be ontologically or explanatorily insufficient principles. Thus I entertain a third level of understanding, the level of Being, at which the nature of being is much an unknown as it is a given…

It is at this point that my recent thought, Journey in Being, takes on new shape – the nature of being need not be given because being itself is not given. At the same time the seeds of the theory underlying this idea – the theory of the void or of nothingness – are contained in the third level of understanding that contains known and unknown elements… Also note that develops a radical idealism that I now thoroughly repudiate and not because it is wrong so much as unnecessary and involves the introduction not of distinction for the mind – matter distinction has been shown to be moot but because it introduces definiteness in understanding where there is no final definiteness in the world… which is good in that the world is open and therefore lovely

It should be noted that the void or nothingness is not at all a simple object… mathematics is the science of form; abstract relations show all systems that have a common form

Charismatic Format

I speak to you – the individual

I show you life and light

Poetry and simplicity – speaking from and to the core

Not an avoidance of reason or action, a mere appeal to emotion but speaking to the being of the individual in a way that places him or her immediately, fully, essentially, starkly in the stream of the dynamics of all being

Journey in Being is dedicated to “To Anyone Who Asks…” What?

I.e. to whom am I appealing?

But should not the approach be to appeal, also, to those to whom I do not appeal?

Will not charismatic action be to put it out there?

Possible! And necessary!

Uses of language

Non-atomic uses of language; non-reference based uses: command, poetry, deception… and non-literal uses

In some ways, ‘non-original’’ or ‘derived’ is better than the usual connotation of ‘non-literal’

Is science eternal?

In a way, science is eternal… and in another way it is the instrument of a phase of history

A task of philosophy

A task of philosophy – place this point in History of Western Philosophy if anywhere

I.e. this is an agenda that is not always acknowledged or fully conscious

Rationalize into coordination our and other different modes of culture, knowledge, understanding

Minimalism vs. presentational form

Find a concept of knowledge that enables a full theory of being

The history of knowledge shows that what is agreed upon as firm, even scientific, reality by most people for long periods of time can be overturned and replaced by a new view of reality

Problems of Logic

~~The nature of truth; for truth to have significance there need to be states of affairs~~

~~Needs for logic: truth and falsity; and implication~~

~~Law of the excluded middle~~

~~Infinite sets and infinite chains of implication~~

See mathematics and its foundations for some comments on infinities in set-theoretic foundations of mathematics

Vision and Quality of Life

Regardless of material outcome and pain, the quality of life is related to the quality of its vision - eidetic, hallucinatory, conceptual, or otherwise - and to living the truth of the vision

Philosophy and Timeless Discourse

In The View From Nowhere [1986], Thomas Nagel criticizes evolutionary epistemology as follows. The concern of philosophy is with the ultimate, the eternal, the timeless… and therefore an epistemology based on the history of knowledge is an unsatisfactory epistemology

This seems to be a misreading of how evolution and history might inform or be part of the “timeless discourse”

Compare “timeless discourse” to the “absolute space and time” of Newton. Then the space-time of Einstein is analogous to the timeless discourse as informed by special disciplines: art, religion, science, evolution… and of course philosophy’s own self-criticism and progress. By embedding discourse in the real it becomes timeless

Resources for Design

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