Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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Greta:
As a matter of interest, what aspect/s of "deep discussion" were you thinking about at the time?
That's a loaded question. Funny thing about taking thoughts down to the essences of things: They become as tool for interpretation. I suppose this is true for everything, really. Ask an engineer about anything and she will gravitate toward engineering. But philosophy is different. It is (should be) about what it means to have one of these theoretically bottomless lived experiences, such that that primordial sense of wonder rises up and looms large before your thoughts. Living at the bottom where things broaden, that's where your question becomes profound. A chess move can be almost profound, or, we can use language like this without objection. Here, though, the inquiring mind can encounter its throwness, its freedom from presuppositional encumbrances.

It's loaded because It took me a lot of reading and, well, caring (why?...no really: why are we born to suffer and die?) to understand something of what Oriental philosophers call moksa. There is a lot to an substantive answer. But all roads lead to an unburdening of the self to see its, if you will, glassy and transparent essence. By my lights, all else pales compared to this.
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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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Hereandnow wrote: December 17th, 2017, 10:45 am... why are we born to suffer and die?) to understand something of what Oriental philosophers call moksa. There is a lot to an substantive answer. But all roads lead to an unburdening of the self to see its, if you will, glassy and transparent essence. By my lights, all else pales compared to this.
Yes, we look for patterns, formulas that pertain to the essences from which things emerge rather than endlessly chasing around the chaotic ephemera on life's surface. Basically science. Yet, it seems to me that when I or others notice these "seeds" they seem rather abstract, alien and disconnected from the layers of relatively ungrounded meta-reality that we call human society. Always groping for the deeper or more fundamental answer, and it keeps on turning out to be akin to forty-two.

I expect it's this frustration that drives many philosophical thinkers to virtually ignore metaphysics, or take it for granted. Rather, in their determined anthropocentrism, they speak of reality as if it all started a few thousand years ago with humanity's rise, as if the human stage was the be-all-and-end-all, the only thing of meaning, as if enormous tracts of our behaviours couldn't readily be explained by the same principles that govern the societies of other species.

For me the other major, and related, question is - what actually is reality? All of it, not just the exploits and fates of Flatlanders, whose dramas almost entirely play out on the surface of the world's surface that is relatively smoother than a billiard ball travelling through endless thin fields at millions of kilometres per hour. It's as though life is a condensed and compressed version of nonliving stuff (compressed informationally), just as consciousness is basically distilled and concentrated life, or as matter is concentrated energy.

There we have multiple fractal patterns and dimension. Everywhere, relatively homogeneous, chaotic or static fields are forming condensates that emerge into ever more complex, sophisticated, (and now) sensate and sentient entities, just as humanity is distilling itself into AI as we write. I suspect it will all end up with something akin to the Omega Point, and everything and everyone is both a link in the chain leading up to that and a realisation of present potentials.

That's about where I am up to so far. It provides a basis for morality via shared identity and connection but it's still basically a forty-two-ish answer. Do you have any suggestions to add some flesh to the bones?
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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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Greta:
what actually is reality? All of it
You and I read very different things and it has been my experience that well read persons have already found their interpretative world. But I will just say this: Kant-Kierkegaard-Husserl-Heidegger-Levinas--British romanticism-American Renaissance-Wittgenstein-American Pragmatism-Buber-Nietzsche, and on and on.

I did say yours was a loaded question. I don't abide by the empirical sciences, not because they are wrong, but because they are the wrong set of disciplines for the task of addressing the matter of 'what is real.' What is Being? What is value? What is truth? What is knowledge? Science cannot address any of these at the level of basic assumptions.
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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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Hereandnow wrote: December 17th, 2017, 11:15 pm
Greta:
what actually is reality? All of it
You and I read very different things and it has been my experience that well read persons have already found their interpretative world. But I will just say this: Kant-Kierkegaard-Husserl-Heidegger-Levinas--British romanticism-American Renaissance-Wittgenstein-American Pragmatism-Buber-Nietzsche, and on and on.

I did say yours was a loaded question. I don't abide by the empirical sciences, not because they are wrong, but because they are the wrong set of disciplines for the task of addressing the matter of 'what is real.' What is Being? What is value? What is truth? What is knowledge? Science cannot address any of these at the level of basic assumptions.
In other words, never the twain shall meet. Maybe so. I see truth, knowledge and value to be about as shallow and unsatisfying as you see scientific ideas. Such diversity of priorities is to be expected, and is healthy, in a eusocial species. "What is being" is an interesting question, though. I suspect that learning more about our relationship with time is key.

Value, truth and knowledge simply concern the rules of engagement, as is necessary for eusocial apes to function cohesively as a society. Practical, but ultimately just surface froth. I want to delve deeper - to somewhat better comprehend the actual guts of reality - a reality that exists both within and independently of the social gaming of diligent post-apes.

The abstract human meta-reality is undoubtedly the most eloquent expression of the Earth (so far), but it is still only a rough outline of the dynamics that brought all of this into play. Humans have had to learn how to use a still-evolving consciousness that can traverse time, and without any precedents to draw upon. So the damage that humans have wrought is what any species would have done with our capabilities. More interestingly, humans appear to be agents of change in a metamorphosis of the biosphere, given that the order being destroyed by humanity is being replaced by a different kind of order rather than mere chaos.

Science. Philosophy. I prefer not to parse because reality doesn't.
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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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Greta:
alue, truth and knowledge simply concern the rules of engagement, as is necessary for eusocial apes to function cohesively as a society. Practical, but ultimately just surface froth. I want to delve deeper - to somewhat better comprehend the actual guts of reality - a reality that exists both within and independently of the social gaming of diligent post-apes.
The guts of reality? But how can you deal with this if you don't start at the beginning? What do you do with something like the following:

Science is a pragmatic abstraction. Why an abstraction? Because observational data are abstracted from an original, or "originary" stock of lived experiences of individual observers, who, at the time of gathering data, were interested, had background concerns about paying the rent, putting their children through college, anticipating a promotion and so on; were famished and the thought of lunch was endlessly vying for "proximity" to awareness. For every observer, there is a matrix of "real" stream of consciousness from which data is abstracted to construct confirmations and denials of some given scientific paradigm. The Real is Cartesian: it is what is there, in front of me, this cup, this thought forming process, the handling of the mouse, the keyboard and all the ideas attendant to ideational construction.

For me there is simply no way around this. A scientist's observation is, at the time any given observation is made, an experience; and experiences are the "stuff" out of which all of our concepts and their meaning issue. Certainly there is something "beyond" the community of inquirers' and observers' collective steam of consciousnesses, but to say what that is is to draw upon that fountain of spontaneous production of meaning, the self, and you are back to where you started. Einstein knew this. He had read Kant, and knew that when you take up physics to talk about the world, you are IN that interpretative region of theory. But step into philosophy, and it becomes clear that his space/time theory is not about the "way things really are" at all. Such a claim is pure metaphysics.

So, it looks like there is only one way to get to the guts of reality, and that is to start with the self, the inquirer. This is the starting point for any meaningful ontology. For how can we talk about humans, time, the biosphere, chaos, and other terms you use, unless we can validate the source, the "place" at which meaningful ideas arise in the first place?

I would say that we live in a 3 to 4 pound universe (our brains), but then, see how this would go: the objection would be that I have begged the question, "what is a brain?" For this concept 'brain' is just as problematic as any empirical concept. It's not that there is nothing going on with our observations about what is there after the skull cap is removed and how thought and speech, etc come "from" this. But rather, all that we can SAY about it returns us to the processes IT produces. It's like the eye that studies what vision is by looking. All you get is the looking.

Then I read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Husserl's Basic Problems in Phenomenology and everything changed drastically. I see Buddhism and Hinduism with clarity now. These are Cartesian systems. All meaning issues from the self. Reality's most vivid and concrete affirmation lies with the self.
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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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Re: science. Without using human bodies of knowledge as a backdrop, we will fall into error. Why ignore the insights of thousands of geniuses throughout history? Science is the baseline, and from there philosophy can extrapolate, but a scientific basis is necessary and reasonable scientific general knowledge are essential to conduct valid philosophy IMO. Neglect of this area leads to cul-de-sacs that appear to usually lead to overthinking and depression.

Further, you seem keen on Buddhist philosophy while pointing out the limitations of the scientific method, when applying the scientific method to investigations of the self and the nature of mind is precisely what the Buddhists did. Deduction from induction.

Re: the self. Again, HAN, I think the self is not the guts either, rather a single expression of reality's nature. When I observe my "self", what I observe is a unique arrangement of common elements. However, there are no significant feelings, thoughts or sensations that I have that are genuinely unique, truly my own. Rather, they are merely Frankenstein combinations of others' expressions before me (there is almost endless regress here that goes far beyond humanity, or even life). Somewhere, sometime, others are expressing those very same things that I express.

The human self is essentially a single expression of the Gestalt entities of human subculture and culture, humanity as a species, mammals, chordata, multicellularity, life, geology/chemistry etc. We express all these things but are incomplete within ourselves. It seems that this simple fact has confused observers for thousands of years because we seem to reflexively try to observe the self with the expectation of there being some complete thing rather than a piece of a larger entity. Our so-called "indivisible" consciousness isn't; it's part of larger consciousnesses and is made up of smaller slices of awareness, ie. that of cell and microbial colonies. Each of our organs is effectively a city of cells with its own character working in competition with other organs for the body's resources, but the body's overall system works as though they were harmonious and form self-sustaining feedback loops, like any other ecosystem.

Then, in confusion, people start making ungrounded claims that consciousness and existence are illusory, as opposed to simply being limited, while completely forgetting that we are a eusocial species and what that implies. This latter, along with odd solipsism, is one of the most common philosophical errors I see on forums.
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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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OK. So I can't entice you to read Husserl or Kant? Now, there is a reason why these were such seminal thinkers, and why much of what came after Kant in 20th century philosophy could be called a footnote to Kant. German idealism is profound, but not, granted, from the outside looking in.
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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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If you put it like that, it would be churlish of me to disagree :) Could you recommend me a book?

Also, is there to be quid pro quo? Perhaps EO Wilson's "The Meaning of Human Existence" (a short, entertaining read) and I take it you read Dawkins's The Selfish Gene back in the day?

I think that, without reference to our evolutionary background we can easily end up just splashing about in the shallows of human rules of engagement.

No doubt there's a sweet spot between our views.
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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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Greta wrote: December 18th, 2017, 8:04 pmNo doubt there's a sweet spot between our views.
NOW we get to the essence of the matter.
The "sweet spot" is called The Middle Way (tm), the 'chrono-synclastic infundibulum', equidistant from all Perspectives!
Problem is in that state of being, there is no 'I', to have a view. We become all and no Perspectives.
At which point, the Universe ends!
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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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Sure Greta, I'll read it. But for now, I wonder if you could answer a question or two. You have a perspective. Now how does your perspective handle this?: How is it that anything out there gets in here (pointing to my pen and my head respectively)? You know what I'm driving at with this, so if you would, try not to be dismissive, but rather take it as a serious question, which it is, notwithstanding its general neglect.
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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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Hereandnow wrote: December 18th, 2017, 9:15 pm Sure Greta, I'll read it. But for now, I wonder if you could answer a question or two. You have a perspective. Now how does your perspective handle this?: How is it that anything out there gets in here (pointing to my pen and my head respectively)? You know what I'm driving at with this, so if you would, try not to be dismissive, but rather take it as a serious question, which it is, notwithstanding its general neglect.
I hope you don't think me dismissive of you :) I have always enjoyed your ideas, even when I disagreed or had trouble getting a handle on them. I have a sense that, in terms of seeking the fundamental core, you seem to be on to something but I never got a handle on it.

As things stand - out-to-in and in-to-out is the very dynamic I have been obsessing about so I'm glad you raised it. I see inside-out looping dynamic as perhaps the most pivotal dynamic in nature, even more fundamental than the fundamental patterns of nature branching, spheres, rotation and orbits. Cycling inside out appears to be nothing less than what all of entirety does all of the time - in different ways at different rates.

The notion first occurred to me some years ago, reading "The Greatest Show on Earth", where Dawkins describes the process of gastrulation and how the blastula effectively turns inside out, which results in three layers forming: the inner layer, the endoderm later forming the internal organs; the middle layer, the mesoderm, forms the heart, bones and muscles, and the outler layer, the ectoderm, forms the skin, spine, nervous system and brain.

Note that the brain is the only internal organ that stems from the gastrula's outer later. In other words, the brain and nervous system is literally "the outside brought inside", and that is essentially what sensing is - bringing the outside inside. At the time I recalled that supernovas are, in fact, the star turning inside out and I wondered about other examples of things turning inside out.

After some readings I started on a piece that, typically for me, became yet another "half a page of scribbled lines". It's very dry so I'll understand if you don't want to read it, although you may be amused at its audacity :)
Another Possible Dimension
Summary
Dimension 1 – width – left/right
Dimension 2 – height – up/down
Dimension 3 – depth – forward/backward
Dimension 4 – eversion – in/out

Introduction
The current accepted models posit three spatial dimensions -height, width and breadth. The fourth dimension is posited as time, and any possible fourth spatial dimension is considered a mathematical construct.

I’d like to propose another spatial dimension, inspired in part by watching an animated tesseract moving through time. The object constantly turns inside-out and outside-in. In a sense, that is what everything in nature does, including life and consciousness.

For example, one life is one inversion or eversion, a single iteration of turning inside out. All organisms start out as a single celled zygote, effectively a “biological point”. The zygote grows by bringing what is outside of it - its environment – into itself. Everting by increments.
The growth process continues until adulthood. In maturity physical growth and activity slow. During this time, growth still occurs, but as informational development, reflected in broader awareness and more self-control. During this time the eversion is at its height.

So a zygote’s eversion would be almost zero and a healthy adult’s highest level of eversion could be thought of as as 100%, implying all that lies in between. As we age and decline the eversion score reduces as we start losing more of our mass to the environment than we gain; our memory, capacity to learn and speed of thinking also reduce. Eventually the body systems break down to the point where they cannot sustain life.

At this point the eversion measure drops markedly, but not zero. Once we die, the body lacks the systems and will needed to hold together and is then at the mercy of the elements. The eversion measure drops as the body is increasingly consumed. Theoretically, when there is only one unconsumed molecule remaining, the eversion is complete and there is a measure of zero.

Everything that exists is not only in a particular state of eversion at any one time, but has an eversion direction – growing or declining.

... If we plot an object in three dimensions, the next dimension is represented as its overall level of synthesis – its degree of integration or disaggregation, basically a measure of stability.

Height measures the position in the up/down direction. Width measures the position from side to side, left to right. Depth measures the position from the front to the back. Synthesis measures how securely or tenuously something is embedded in reality, and it would be represented by a degree of faintness or strength. Over time, the “solidity” of a point with x, y, z and Δ (for want of a better term) will change, along with movements on the other axis.

Examples
As a young person you have a high level of integration – your body is busy synthesising ever greater order, bringing ever more of the outside environment into your body, and thus you grow.

As an old person you have lower synthesis, the body’s systems are breaking down as your muscle mass reduces and your body becomes less able to withstand the environment’s constant assault, such as:
• microbes and bugs are constantly trying to eat you, only controlled by the immune system
• some animals will try to eat you
• the Sun, the air and rocks take water from your body
• water saturates you and weakens molecular bonds.

So one life is one iteration of emerging and then turning inside out. In summary: we aggregate (turning inside) and grow until we peak and then lose more cells than we grow, with our insides very gradually being released to the environment until death, when our bodies are entirely “turned out” to the environment.

This does not only apply to life but anything. A planet aggregates, develops and then gives its material back to space. Sedimentary rocks may aggregate and ten they very slowly break down again.

Extensions on the basic idea
1. At any given time an entity will be in a particular state of overall synthesis. This could be given a score, but only if the overall expected states of an entity are.
2. Complex systems such as life have numerous subsidiary cycles – respiratory, digestive, circulatory, senses, consciousness, and so forth.
// end of ideas :)
In a more philosophical vein, this thought bubble snippet:
Turning Inside Out
From the inside: being ejected
Eg. employee made redundant, rejected by friends or family, homelessness.

From the outside: ejection
Eg. Excretion, colonoscopy, sweat, slewing of dead skin cells.

As oneself: fundamental change
Eg. Death, relocation, ideology reversal, sexuality/gender change.
Your perspectives thus far as to "how things get in here"?

PS. Are there any particular works of Kant of Husserl that you think might resonate? Thanks.
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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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Greta:

As things stand - out-to-in and in-to-out is the very dynamic I have been obsessing about so I'm glad you raised it. I see inside-out looping dynamic as perhaps the most pivotal dynamic in nature, even more fundamental than the fundamental patterns of nature branching, spheres, rotation and orbits. Cycling inside out appears to be nothing less than what all of entirety does all of the time - in different ways at different rates.

The notion first occurred to me some years ago, reading "The Greatest Show on Earth", where Dawkins describes the process of gastrulation and how the blastula effectively turns inside out, which results in three layers forming: the inner layer, the endoderm later forming the internal organs; the middle layer, the mesoderm, forms the heart, bones and muscles, and the outler layer, the ectoderm, forms the skin, spine, nervous system and brain.

Note that the brain is the only internal organ that stems from the gastrula's outer later. In other words, the brain and nervous system is literally "the outside brought inside", and that is essentially what sensing is - bringing the outside inside. At the time I recalled that supernovas are, in fact, the star turning inside out and I wondered about other examples of things turning inside out.
Right. Let me take a closer look, and I hope I don't annoy if I try to reduce this to what I would call essential terms. The technical terms, and I did take the time to look them up, stand for physical processes in a physical organism (though I do take moment to point out that 'physical' has at best, "useful" meaning. Redundant here, but there is a point to this), and that would be a human being. But this is the process between me, this curious agency "looking out" at my pen, and my pen. So, putting aside other nonessential physical systems and focusing only on those in the perceptual act of acknowledging my pen, I guess the anatomical description you give applies. This looping, this blastula that "effectively turns inside out" and the brain and nervous system being "the inside brought out": these are directly to the point, which is, how is it that my experience is not "about" (double inverted commas are needed) these material processes, and perhaps most importantly, not about the chemistry, the organ tissue, the axonal connective fibers, the synaptic exchange. How are my thoughts circulating through complex material systems here about something out there such that it is the out-there thing I am experiencing and not the intervening processes? Surely when I touch my pen, at the very moment, the pen, or the whatever, is lost altogether, as the whole affair turns, literally, turns into something else altogether.
In short, this "outside brought inside" needs explaining in order to make sense of all of the scientific knowledge claims that are brought to bear on the question what is it to be a self? I mean, talk about evolution, genetics, biochemistry and so forth, simply assume that there is no problem whatever on the matter of how data is processed. If you can stand the analogy, it's like looking through a Kaleidoscope and taking it for telescope. Of course, there is something of the light source that makes its way even through the colored glass, something of the "aboutness" of what is on the other side. But what you see is glass. (One must be very careful with analogies. They are certainly NOT to be followed through on: they are metaphors, and only selected aspects are to be carried over in a characterization.
After some readings I started on a piece that, typically for me, became yet another "half a page of scribbled lines". It's very dry so I'll understand if you don't want to read it, although you may be amused at its audacity :)
Yes, I do find your audacity quite amusing. Thanks for that: Never thought I would have the chance to say that to someone in a real setting.
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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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Hereandnow wrote: December 19th, 2017, 12:58 pmYes, I do find your audacity quite amusing. Thanks for that: Never thought I would have the chance to say that to someone in a real setting.
You're welcome. It's not every day that a layperson presents you with a model for a new way of thinking about dimensions that is grounded, coherent and entirely logical, yet apparently not noticed by all the geniuses who have thought about such things :shock:
Hereandnow wrote: December 19th, 2017, 12:58 pmBut this is the process between me, this curious agency "looking out" at my pen, and my pen. So, putting aside other nonessential physical systems and focusing only on those in the perceptual act of acknowledging my pen, I guess the anatomical description you give applies. This looping, this blastula that "effectively turns inside out" and the brain and nervous system being "the inside brought out": these are directly to the point, which is, how is it that my experience is not "about" (double inverted commas are needed) these material processes, and perhaps most importantly, not about the chemistry, the organ tissue, the axonal connective fibers, the synaptic exchange.

How are my thoughts circulating through complex material systems here about something out there such that it is the out-there thing I am experiencing and not the intervening processes? Surely when I touch my pen, at the very moment, the pen, or the whatever, is lost altogether, as the whole affair turns, literally, turns into something else altogether.

In short, this "outside brought inside" needs explaining in order to make sense of all of the scientific knowledge claims that are brought to bear on the question what is it to be a self? I mean, talk about evolution, genetics, biochemistry and so forth, simply assume that there is no problem whatever on the matter of how data is processed. If you can stand the analogy, it's like looking through a Kaleidoscope and taking it for telescope.
Thanks, it's The Hard Problem of moving from dynamic patterning from 'the theatre in our heads', so it's good that you are pushing in that direction. Still, this is more a matter of dynamics than patterning in the sense of neuroscientists associating certain patterns of brain activity with certain thoughts and emotions.

There is some depth to it, though. Consider what this looping means; this is not just about observing patterns but considering the dynamics that bring the patterns about, I suppose a kind of fundamental pattern. What does it mean to bring something of the outside world inside of you? What does it mean to take something within you and give it over to the outside environment?

Some concepts come straight to mind: connectedness, interdependence, love. Another notion springs from this is the fuzziness of the boundary between self and environment. We are surrounded by a cloud of bacteria and dead skin cells, the air around us at all times betraying your subtly unique chemical signatures; there is a magnetic field and a field of heat, plus the mental field around us that we refer to as "personal space". These things are as much a part of us as our our other insensate aspects such as hair, fingernails, internal waste products, the brain, and so on.

That's about where I'm up to. Do you have suggestions?
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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

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Greta:

Thanks, it's The Hard Problem of moving from dynamic patterning from 'the theatre in our heads', so it's good that you are pushing in that direction. Still, this is more a matter of dynamics than patterning in the sense of neuroscientists associating certain patterns of brain activity with certain thoughts and emotions.

There is some depth to it, though. Consider what this looping means; this is not just about observing patterns but considering the dynamics that bring the patterns about, I suppose a kind of fundamental pattern. What does it mean to bring something of the outside world inside of you? What does it mean to take something within you and give it over to the outside environment?

Some concepts come straight to mind: connectedness, interdependence, love. Another notion springs from this is the fuzziness of the boundary between self and environment. We are surrounded by a cloud of bacteria and dead skin cells, the air around us at all times betraying your subtly unique chemical signatures; there is a magnetic field and a field of heat, plus the mental field around us that we refer to as "personal space". These things are as much a part of us as our our other insensate aspects such as hair, fingernails, internal waste products, the brain, and so on.

That's about where I'm up to. Do you have suggestions?


Well, I wouldn't call it a suggestion. I would call it two hundred years of philosophy. And once you cross over, there is no going back. But it does take, at first, a leap--not of faith so much, but wonder and inquiry. I think a person has to be dissatisfied with something to make changes. As Thomas Kuhn put it, changes in normal science require paradigm shifts that are not at first welcome at all. Most of the time it is just normal science. There has to be something, to proceed with Kuhn, some anomaly that stands in a researcher's midst that defy's accepted theory. Of course, here the anomaly is not one that empirical science can deal with. EO Wilson, Dawkins, and others do not give a fetid dingo's kidney about the matters presented by Kant, Husserl, Levinas, for there is nothing their years of training can say. Trouble is, it takes so much work, just as with any of the hard science disciplines, to truly assimilate what these people are talking about. Science produces, and it impacts culture clearly, dynamically; philosophy has never, say, ameliorated the human condition. This is not what it does. You simply have to insist on understanding right up until the threshold of knowing, where the words run out.

So, having said this, I'll be blunt: all of it, the magnetic field, cloud of bacteria, looping, the boundary between self and environment, and anything else you can thing of, literally, belong to, as you say, the theater in our heads. Only this is not quite right. For such theater implies an outside of the theater, and there is no outside of this theater. Hawkins' anecdote is about turtles, here it is theaters: theaters all the way down.

Why do people think like this? The answer is language and logic. When you behold a phenomenon and call it a magnetic field, you are first and foremost taking that thing AS something, and this is done in language. When scientists discuss stars and paramecia they are doing so inside, if you will, logic. And like counting elephants,the number you get is not an elephant, so when you measure, calculate, apply theory, classify, predict and so forth in science, you are not going to end up with that-out-there. You will get conformation of a thesis in language. You will get truth; the truth that, say, stars are made of gases that can be determined by spectral analysis is first, a function of the language that is applied to say anything at all. Truth is propositional and, as Rorty points out, there are no propositions "out there". He thinks that I no more can have knowledge of a star in the sense scientists take it, than a dented car fender can have knowledge of the offending guard rail. It is the myth of knowing that boils his noodle. What is knowledge for him? Have to go through other reading but the gist is knowldge is bound up in knowING, which occurs in time (Heidegger: we are not in time; we are time), and is dynamic in a very intuitive way: we solve problems when we learn, or learning is problem solving, so when you have that feeling that you've GOT IT, it is the culmination of got-its in your personal history. That is what knowing is ALL about for Rorty and his pragmatist forerunners.

In epistemological terms, foundationalism has bitten the dust, and the attempt to understand what is left, some kind of coherence of meaningful utterances rather than there being, well, a kind Moses tablet that binds ideas to the "outthereness" of things has led to the awfulness of postmodernism: the dismissal of all grand narratives, that is, narratives ABOUT absolutes; the insight that no term is stand alone and requires a language setting for meaning to make sense at all, leading to those annoying games in which language chases its own tail (my moniker is the snake that swallows its own tail. It was lifted from Hilary Putman's Many Faces of Realism and presents impossibility of language stepping out of itself in its propositional claims about the way the world is.)

But the issues are like this. I mean, how can you ever take empirical knowledge serious in a philosophically foundational way, if you can never get past the simple act of perception? And there is no outside of this theater, even in propositions like "I am" and "I have being". Being and Time?

Unless you go with Husserl, Kiekegaard, Levinas,and so on. That is when it gets interesting for me.

Hope this wasn't too bothersome.
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Re: Do you consider yourself a philosopher?

Post by Sy Borg »

Hereandnow wrote: December 20th, 2017, 11:54 am
Greta:

Thanks, it's The Hard Problem of moving from dynamic patterning from 'the theatre in our heads', so it's good that you are pushing in that direction. Still, this is more a matter of dynamics than patterning in the sense of neuroscientists associating certain patterns of brain activity with certain thoughts and emotions.

There is some depth to it, though. Consider what this looping means; this is not just about observing patterns but considering the dynamics that bring the patterns about, I suppose a kind of fundamental pattern. What does it mean to bring something of the outside world inside of you? What does it mean to take something within you and give it over to the outside environment?

Some concepts come straight to mind: connectedness, interdependence, love. Another notion springs from this is the fuzziness of the boundary between self and environment. We are surrounded by a cloud of bacteria and dead skin cells, the air around us at all times betraying your subtly unique chemical signatures; there is a magnetic field and a field of heat, plus the mental field around us that we refer to as "personal space". These things are as much a part of us as our our other insensate aspects such as hair, fingernails, internal waste products, the brain, and so on.

That's about where I'm up to. Do you have suggestions?
Well, I wouldn't call it a suggestion. I would call it two hundred years of philosophy. And once you cross over, there is no going back. But it does take, at first, a leap--not of faith so much, but wonder and inquiry. I think a person has to be dissatisfied with something to make changes. As Thomas Kuhn put it, changes in normal science require paradigm shifts that are not at first welcome at all. Most of the time it is just normal science. There has to be something, to proceed with Kuhn, some anomaly that stands in a researcher's midst that defy's accepted theory. Of course, here the anomaly is not one that empirical science can deal with. EO Wilson, Dawkins, and others do not give a fetid dingo's kidney about the matters presented by Kant, Husserl, Levinas, for there is nothing their years of training can say. Trouble is, it takes so much work, just as with any of the hard science disciplines, to truly assimilate what these people are talking about. Science produces, and it impacts culture clearly, dynamically; philosophy has never, say, ameliorated the human condition. This is not what it does. You simply have to insist on understanding right up until the threshold of knowing, where the words run out.

So, having said this, I'll be blunt: all of it, the magnetic field, cloud of bacteria, looping, the boundary between self and environment, and anything else you can thing of, literally, belong to, as you say, the theater in our heads. Only this is not quite right. For such theater implies an outside of the theater, and there is no outside of this theater. Hawkins' anecdote is about turtles, here it is theaters: theaters all the way down.

Why do people think like this? The answer is language and logic. When you behold a phenomenon and call it a magnetic field, you are first and foremost taking that thing AS something, and this is done in language. When scientists discuss stars and paramecia they are doing so inside, if you will, logic. And like counting elephants,the number you get is not an elephant, so when you measure, calculate, apply theory, classify, predict and so forth in science, you are not going to end up with that-out-there. You will get conformation of a thesis in language. You will get truth; the truth that, say, stars are made of gases that can be determined by spectral analysis is first, a function of the language that is applied to say anything at all. Truth is propositional and, as Rorty points out, there are no propositions "out there". He thinks that I no more can have knowledge of a star in the sense scientists take it, than a dented car fender can have knowledge of the offending guard rail. It is the myth of knowing that boils his noodle. What is knowledge for him? Have to go through other reading but the gist is knowldge is bound up in knowING, which occurs in time (Heidegger: we are not in time; we are time), and is dynamic in a very intuitive way: we solve problems when we learn, or learning is problem solving, so when you have that feeling that you've GOT IT, it is the culmination of got-its in your personal history. That is what knowing is ALL about for Rorty and his pragmatist forerunners.

In epistemological terms, foundationalism has bitten the dust, and the attempt to understand what is left, some kind of coherence of meaningful utterances rather than there being, well, a kind Moses tablet that binds ideas to the "outthereness" of things has led to the awfulness of postmodernism: the dismissal of all grand narratives, that is, narratives ABOUT absolutes; the insight that no term is stand alone and requires a language setting for meaning to make sense at all, leading to those annoying games in which language chases its own tail (my moniker is the snake that swallows its own tail. It was lifted from Hilary Putman's Many Faces of Realism and presents impossibility of language stepping out of itself in its propositional claims about the way the world is.)

But the issues are like this. I mean, how can you ever take empirical knowledge serious in a philosophically foundational way, if you can never get past the simple act of perception? And there is no outside of this theater, even in propositions like "I am" and "I have being". Being and Time?

Unless you go with Husserl, Kiekegaard, Levinas,and so on. That is when it gets interesting for me.

Hope this wasn't too bothersome.
You may have noticed that I am not bothered very easily these days. Age, experience, sloth, possibly all of the above. No, I'd rather just chat with people who think deeply and, if I encountered such a person who thought very similarly to me, that would be most unfamiliar terrain :)

I don't see the blunt and disorienting aspects of language as invalidating our expressed and tested perceptions contained in our body of knowledge. Think Einstein; everything is relative. This is THE key point in any conversation about what seems to be "most real". It doesn't much matter if the fabric of the universe is thought, energy or jello - the relativities are the same.

I, and I expect all logical thinkers, would agree with Kant about the impossibility of truly perceiving noumena without sensory bias. So when we describe a star, what we are referring to are moving zones of extreme concentration of the fabric of the universe within the arena we call "the known universe". They are much larger, hotter and more dense than most non-composite entities. Further, there is no firm boundary around a star; its influence extends for over a trillion kilometres, just as our own influences extend beyond our own bodies. These dynamics are not just playing out in our heads because we all see our star and feel its influence (yesterday it was 40C here). However, to know exactly what a star is, we would need to know what energy is - the actual nature of the fabric of reality beyond the usual prosaic definition of energy; "work". Since we are made of the same stuff, that's tricky, so we settle for relativities.

What is a star from the German existentialist perspective? Different to how I described it?
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