Ideation – the formation of ideas and concepts – is an internal process of a thing. Those ideas and concepts stored in the thing will disappear with the end of the process of accumulation (remembrance or memory). This end is called death.
When ideation ends …
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Breaking from the bigs thots. Little thots is ok. Big thots being reserved for paper👽
Perhaps it is me who cannot see!🤖
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Well take it up again soon. For sure. I truly enjoy and appreciate people who actually want to challenge each other. 👽
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I got a couple papers to write. And I gotta focus my thinking about them for a bit. 👍🏾
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Do take a break. lol
I understand that position and I agree.
The problem is I don’t it being very useful by keeping the observation in that mode. To not do anything more than to make that observation of equality is suspension. Nothing moves forward from that point. Not practical, and not useful in my opinion.
Thanks for keeping the conversation going.
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Yes. In context. That is the difference between an ontology that is oriented upon objects, and ontology that is based upon the phenomenon.
I’m not sure how to describe it to you because it seems to me that whatever sense you’re making from what I’m saying is not what I am really intending.
It appears to me that you are not comprehending what I’m telling you.
All objects have equal existential value. They exist equally as universal objects. They function in themselves as things of the universe. Yet they relate to each other through sense. This is what Harmon calls vicarious causality.
There is no way to argue in a phenomenologically reductive manner to a sensibility of equal objects, because if someone is oriented in the phenomenology of mind or the phenomenology of spirit or whatever you want to call it — and this is why I say the issue concerns the orientation upon objects: The person simply will understand the terms, the discourse as inherently and ubiquitously and omnipresently involved in phenomenological reduction, and thereby will automatically see objects as inherently bestowed with subjective value. There is no arguing into the orientation upon objects that I’m talking about, because the argument apprehended or comprehended by the phenomenological thinker will automatically register to them as a part of the phenomenological field, so to speak, deriving from the central thinker.
If you try to argue with someone who is oriented upon the phenomenological object, they will reduce what you’re saying to phenomenological categories, such as mind, or thoughts or discourse or physicality or subject-object.
There is no argument that will bridge the two kinds of discourse. This is why Harmon speaks of “conversion” because it has to do with something that is inherently part of seeing or understanding the world.
Because, though, that I am not an object oriented ontologist but indeed understand both views, that I can indeed see through both ways of seeing, I call this this aspect that is inherently part of a subject “faith”. And I say “faith makes true”. Are use these terms because it is no different then when you talk to a Christian about whether or not God exists: there is no argument that one can make to a Christian to prove to that person that God does not exist. Nothing that you will say to a Christian will get them to understand that God does not exist; The only way to get them to understand that God does not exist is for them to have an experience that has nothing to do with any sort of discursive argumentative proof. And likewise it is the same as someone who is not Christian becoming Christian: One does not simply analytically make arguments about the nature of existence and then decide to be a Christian. Something Happens and then one is “born again”, and of this something has nothing to do or only slightly to do with the specifics of the argumentative structure.
But I can see both views. Not views as opinion but views as an actually seeing, actually having a way of looking at something, of comprehending something, of knowing something.
So the answer to your question is whether or not I see you is Harry Potter, is yes and no. It is not one or the other; it is both because they cannot argue across each other’s domain to bridge one into the other. It is a completely non-philosophical state of existence.
But we already know how this subject operates. We already know all about phenomenology and we know the reduction and we know mind and we know all the ways that phenomenological subject centered thinking centered mind oriented philosophy goes.
But it is obvious, or becomes obvious, that we do not know how object oriented thinking operates and where it might lead to.
All objects have equal existential value.
But also they have unequal and qualitative phenomenological value where of course you’re that person over there that I’m relating with through an iPhone and we each have our own ideas about things.
So the argument, as I keep saying, that I am making is that it is both. Which is quite similar to what Harmon argues in his books.
This is not an either or a comparison. It is an and. It is relational and not relative. It is sensual instead of intellectual.
But because of this appearance of duality, phenomenal logical thinkers will want to say oh it is just another form of idealism, or has another friend of mine said oh it’s just this philosopher and that philosopher and this philosopher have said all these things before over the thousands of years that philosophy is been around.
Yes and no.
Yes, we can make an argument about how it may or may not be the case why this particular philosophy might resemble other philosophies or how it might not resemble them.
No, because we are not saying anything about how philosophies might be like other philosophies.
So the short answer to your question about whether or not your relationship to me is like my relationship to Harry Potter, is yes. You exist within my phenomenological field, but to say “my” is a conventional misnomer for what I’m really saying. There is only the phenomenological field. The issue is how we view it. This is not a multiplicity of infinite amount of subjectivity is with their own opinions and worlds; rather, there are only two ways of looking at it, or more precisely looking from it.
Ok. I got to take a break.
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Haha.
It feels like that.
The point i am trying to make is: since we talked about Hemingway, can the real people, like you and me, be only known to phenomenologist as much as the characters of fiction like Harry Potter? Do you place my existence equal to that of Harry Potter?
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Well, I guess this is one case where we have to agree to disagree. And that’s why I say we are within the postmodern condition, because as soon as it seems like we are communicating then all of a sudden it appears like we’re not. Lol.
I would say that phenomenology is the greatest probability of the world, That nothing escapes from it, and that the idea of physicality is just, like I said, the self disassociating from itself to watch something on the screen and then identifying with the screen.
It appears to me at times that you understand that, but then also it appears to me that you say things that appear that you’re not comprehending what we just talked about. It is a strange thing; it’s as though’s an alcoholics says I can’t drink because it will kill me, and then the next thing you know, they’re drinking. And I don’t really mean this as an insult to you; it is more that this is what it appears like to me and so that really is the perplexing question involved.
So maybe we will re-join at another juncture. After this rolls around in our heads for a while. 🤘🏾👽
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I am happy with knowledge being only from the phenomenal. That is the only access we have to the world. No amount phenomenology can abduct that the greatest probably of a world, more so than a non-physical world.
I am not taking about “is-ought” but “likely”. That is more likely than a God-created world. That is is more likely than a mind-created world. To assume a physical world has been better than assuming a God or mind world. Sure there could be other possibilities but the current assumption is fine.
I don’t posit absolutes. I don’t posit suspension-of-disbelief. I don’t posit impasse.
I posit a physically-generated mind as well as a physically-generated no-mind. If that is uninteresting then so be it. I would have to question why one must “fear” the possibly of only a physical world. Is not that resistance as much as a fear of a world without God or mind?
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So; I think then also that to reduce discussion to an “unknown”. Which I have also put forth, does not appear to be good for the world. It appears to me that many problems of the world, the problems that are apparent, are not inseparable from the general “liberal” existential-phenomenal “knowledge” which places institutional religion in a larger category of “not being true”. And that it is not good for the world to have “nothing” as it’s “essential” root.
So, a world which exists beyond the “semantic centrality” which moves toward “nothing” appears “better”. It appears that an orientation toward “not mind” must be the answer: physical world.
But to continually reduce the physical world to “nothing” but a conceptual model is still upholding the phenomenal centrality, that is founded in nothing.
Physicality must thereby effectively occupy an essential ground, and not just as “mentally constructed” ground. Purpose, happiness, and general well being come out of knowing an actual truth. An actual truth of “semantics” is really still “nothing”. Hence, I submit an effort for honesty and responsibility toward world that has to do with his consciousness functions instead of what might be true of existence. Hence: reality is what concerns the world. And reality has to do with progress, Being, tradition, argument, identity, politics.
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I made no call to progress, or primacy to the human. Both notions only appear when we do start to be ridiculous.
This is why I am not happy with the term “term”. I suspect idealism and also dualism, that there is anything can even be called a mind. The accumulated knowledge is therefore an illusion of being.
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… and The notion that whether humans are here or not is still part of the Phenomenal world. It is an extension out of what cannot be extended; a founding term which is understood in context as exempt from the condition of the context. The basis of a real cosmology, intrinsic mythology.
And as To my comment, just before this one one: to say that there is a World that exists despite human beings is just basically saying the same thing is that there is no world beyond the human world. It’s just saying the same thing in different terms.
But presently it seems that the phenomenon is weighing more towards having a world that is “ancestral“ to the human being. It is not proper to say that this is what is actually occurring as though all of time or all of the development of the universe is occurring in a progressive linear state so that now we actually are beginning to know the truth of the universe and it is really that there is this physical universe that exists out there that human beings are just one creature in, and so we are actually realizing the essential an absolute truth of the universe and our place in it.
It is more proper to say that presently this is how it appears. Indeed all of history has culminated in this point and this point is appearing in this manner, and so to argue against the way that it is leaning, so to speak, is kind of ridiculous. Because as we know anything that appears as a phenomenon utterly hast to answer to everything we’ve already learned about what the phenomenon is for the past 200+ years.
Because every era, every culture, every search civilization that arises has in encompassing truth that makes sense reflexively. As though their particular moment is the culminating moment and the absolute truth of all existence and the universe.
To say that now we have actually come upon what is actually essentially true and that everything in the past isn’t been incorrect, that is merely a phenomenon of the centralized thinking subject: This subject being that totality of knowledge that has arisen to be the case.
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Currently. I would agree that reality arises in the context that the physical state is foundational , like a “big” founding term.
I can choose to deny the real physicality but currently it seems ridiculous and actually I’d say not very constructive.
There is truth in or of reality, but I reserve truth to develop a heuristic polemic. The truth of reality is not contained by reality. Just like the truth of myself is not contained by something else. Like Badiou argues a set that cannot be said to be contained by another set. And I feel like Harman puts forth a good notion of structure and relation.
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The world is reality. But whether humans are there or not makes no difference to the world. So truth is still a perceived position.
The only truth is the physical state. No?
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I am not sure what you are saying.
What is true is true. Just like if I walk into a walk. The wall is a true, in itself object that indeed is known by the sheer fact of itself.
I recently understood why Harman went to teach at an architecture school: Becuase he is talking about, not necessarily structure, but the relation between objects which determine reality.
I mean, look how difficult it is for you and I, between us, to get over what I call the phenomenal reducing of things. This “reducing of things” arises from a faith that is making a true world, and people in general do not wish to confront their faith, the truth of their world. So, most anything that is talked about, especially in philosophy, is taken, in the end, as offensive to “my world”. And I argue points often without taking the time to see what it is in the object (of discussion) that is offending my world. Instead I continually assert my world over what is true.
This world, that place, where people assert thier true faith is what I call “reality”.
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👽🤖
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Your “in-itself” must necessarily mean there is no truth since it is in essence outside of the judgement of value. So I cannot see where “true” and “untrue” can come from.
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Good. Cool. I had a hunch.
I think what you call language-things, I am calling “of reality” which is ideological. What you are calling “real things”. I am saying is “not real but true”.
I speak at times of “turning faith on its head”. And I say “faith makes true” in the sense of “real faith”, belief, Ideology, identity, politics, religion. And I speak of “True Things as being “of faith”.
It is a kind of manner of using or creating a polemic to thus speak about what is other wise circular, or dynamic. As I’ve said.
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Let me add, though, that I do not think “truth” is a good choice of word for this. I would rather use “state”. The state is of things is neutral. Truth has a positive, affirming meaning I do not think things would care to have.
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Here, I differ to you. Language sets up a different structure because the relations of real-things and the relation of language-things are different. Real-things are limited by the physical relations. Language-things are not limited by such relations. They are not limited by time or space.
This is where the battleground is, between the real-world and the language-world.
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We are essentially saying the same thing. Whew! lol
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I would say that the shared world in the discussion about the world. The chair is the discussion about the chair. The world is the discussion about….
What a physical is the discussion…
What is ideal….discussion..
What is empirical..
Anything and everything that is real is contextual. The idea that “everything” is contextual is also contextual. Hence: we are able to talk about something that is not contextual by the sheer weight of the meaning of context: because context is not an essential thing that is present at hand to supply a whole world. The object that is contextual withdraws from view.
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Fair enough.
I’ll give it a shot.
I am not sure OOO says anything about how we know things. OOO talks about relations of objects.
But concerning an orientation upon objects, I can offer this:
1) i know things Becuase it is the truth. How I know is the doing of what it is to know. It does knowing. The truth is how I know. This was not always the case, but the truth is that nothing does not change.
2) I cannot know. The truth is thus also that I cannot know. This then extends into every article of knowing: the foundation of objects: they withdraw from view. How I know things is the arising of things into frame (relation and sense). What occurs in that frame is the doing of knowing: the sense of the relations of things.
Any knowing occurs within the frame where what I might know, as well as what can be known, is conditioned by what is presented, such that what is presented corresponds with what exhibits as knowledge.
That is the truth. All objects occur in this manner: as true.
But when placed in context, such existence means ‘nothing’. That is, the meaning of the truth in context has no substance but the context. To refer context to context supplies only context: nothing, emptiness, identity, truism. This is the basis for understanding the duality of existence, ie subject and object. The context supplies the substance of what it could mean and if brought out of context, or to reflect only itself, which is, to pull the meaning out of itself to mean something more that itself, meaning fails.
This occurs whenever knowledge is placed in context. If left to itself, an object is itself in-itself, occurring truly as itself. It does not reflect itself into knowledge because objects withdraw from view.
What This means is that the truth is not real. In order to convey the truth in context now we must speak in a particular manner; which is, with reference to what is put forth in the context of what is real, it is thus ‘not’ real. It is not abstract or negation, but is merely conditioned by the context of what is true of reality, rather than what is contextual in reality or as reality.
Reality is the supplied context of anything, but not everything.
It means that I am able to communicate a truth which does not arise in the real context but none the less concerns reality. It speaks of reality without answering to real estimations. It can be an idea, but then we must look to context to see if what is said is about real semantic context, or about the object itself, the object that is the idea or the idea that is the object.
How I know this is that it is known. Anything more than this is no longer talking about how knowledge arises but is talking about the extension beyond itself which is not itself.
How’s that? 🙂
The mystery only occurs in context.
Context exhibits what is real, but not what is true. But what is real can be really true, while also not being true in-itself.
The concern about an Orientation upon objects concerns communication and belief. Not so much about ontological bases, because ontology is always occurring in context, thus not true but indeed real.
OOO for sure makes no comment about how knowledge occurs, except to comment on how knowledge does indeed occur: as sense and relation. Pretty sure.
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Own worlds, no. Own view of the world, yes. Sometimes it is more shared than others.
Great tennis players (Nadal and Federer, for example) are battling it out on the court with their own perspective of what tennis is. Nadal wins more times at Roland Garros (12 times to be exact) by a combination of understanding of the nature of the surface, his own physique and skill. Federer, though as great as he is ,can only manage one win (of 20 grand slam titles) of the French Open.
I do not think we are arguing about different worlds here, but the shared world is not dominated by a game of psychological battle but rather by a physical one.
I have played the psychological (idealist) game before and I find the physical (materialist) one far more satisfying, probable and logical.
That is where I am at with my philosophy. It could be wrong, it is the best one I have for now.
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“I feel like you are telling me what you know about how you know this, which I feel is not the same as telling me how you know it.”
There is a mystery perhaps to this, which is why I think it is fine to think of it as imperfect.
Analogy: You know how to drive a car; do you need to know exactly how a car works to drive a car?
Let me ask you, then, “how do you (from an ooo POV) know it”?
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I am a philosophical and psychological phenomenon but the thing that does the phenomening isn’t. The thing projects onto itself the quality of a self, just as this thing projects onto others things qualities that are not there, only procedurally there.
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Triangulation of data. And only triangulation of data.
I use triangulation of data to play tennis with you. I use triangulation of data to understand Derrida (or you, or anything else). I have no other alternative. And I am satisfied about not having an alternative. Because if I did then it would mean I would have to revise my understanding.
As long as I can get on with life then is that not satisfying enough? I tried the perfect approach. It didn’t work. So I tried the imperfect approach. Of the two, the latter is more satisfying and workable. I don’t often end up with impasse but can work with the reality better.
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…also; it appears you are saying that everyone gets to have their own subjective world, but there is an actual world in which people have thier own worlds.
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Are you a phenomenon?
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What perplexes me is how you know this.
I feel like you are telling me what you know about how you know this, which I feel is not the same as telling me how you know it.
From your other reply, I think you said perception, conceptualization and something else you did say. That is the short answer for how you know of these ideas.
Another question along these lines is how do you know that what Derrida says is true? Or. How would you characterize the relationship between his writings and your knowledge of it, so far as why you would use him as argumentative support?
I am not being leading. I am honestly attempting to “be in your shoes”. So to speak.
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“Can you give me an explanation of how you know that everything is occurring in the mind, or as experience? Or language?”
I am not going to pretend that we can ever get to absolute certainty, just as I cannot be certain that phenomenon are any more or less real. Much has to be reasoned (deducted, inducted and abducted). This I do no more and no less than any other being. Any philosophical project necessary works from the same reality. Your access to the reality is “typically” the same but it is not “token-ally” the same.
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Ill check those out.
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“Is phenomenology something that is describing something significant, or does it have no more significance than any other book I might read of any genre?”
Phenomenology is significant as long as it is reflexive to its process. Sure, the phenomena is important and separate to the things it phenomenalises about. But it needs to answer also what it is phenomenalising as well. This question seems to to be answered.
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“is everything discourse or language or is it not?”
Discourse and language is not everything. but discourse and language is part of the reality.
When Derrida said “there is no outside-text” he meant that everything needs to be included and analysed. Reality can be analysed like a text. [tbc]
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“how are you able to know what you know?”
Sensation, perception, then conceptualisation.
The world – the internal/external world – is known from sensation. Perception and conceptualisation follows. Perception and conceptualisation are similar but different processes. By process I mean it is a particular activity of this thing. Accumulation is part of this process or even a separate process.
Thinking (to use the layman’s term) is no different from falling, running, or revolving as a process.
Sensation, perception and conceptualisation are part of the process of knowing.
I have been posting on this in my blog since these conversations. Projectionism and the idea of “the coma”.
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Who said anything about perfect isolation?
But so I have to ask you then, is everything discourse or language or is it not?
Is phenomenology something that is describing something significant, or does it have no more significance than any other book I might read of any genre?
Is everything existing in the mind or is it not?
If it is existing in the mind then how do you know that?
Or let’s just stick to the last question:
Can you give me an explanation of how you know that everything is occurring in the mind, or as experience? Or lanaguge?
And I will try to ask questions so I am I fully understand you.
Can you start from the most simplest and try to slowly unpack where you’re coming from.
Since we just went through mine with your question asking.
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Narratives are not phenomenal world narratives, but real world narratives (relations) manifest in the way individuals, people, groups, society, cultures treat each other. Beyond the words are real world actions (relations if you will) that evidence themselves as the narratives.
Politics is one way and level of talking about it. interpersonal relationships is another. Essentially they are the same phenomenon (in the ordinary sense of the word).
Orientation is complex. I’d rather not talk about it here because it would need my entire thesis to explain this one.
The non-negotiated world […thinking…] could this be not a construct without reality? I will argue that the thought of a place where things are in perfect isolation is a constructed concept, not a real place as such.
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FYI “trying to convince you”: The discussion about the chair is the chair because what else would it be?
If I say that the actual chair falls outside of the discussion, or something more than the discussion, then I have just tried to tell you what the chair is: The chair is that which falls outside of the discussion. That’s what it is. If the chair is purple, then the chair is purple. If someone comes over and says, no that chair is green. Then the chair is the discussion about whether the chair is purple or green.
If I say the chair is I don’t really knowable in itself, and then someone comes over to me and says no only part of the chair is Noah ball and we can’t even know what part of the chair it is that we are knowing, then the chair is the discussion about the chair being entirely present yet only partially present.
The idea that there is something that is exceeding discourse, I say, is a part of faith. That excess is a part of a particular way of viewing the world that is not true, but it is indeed real. Or as I like to say, faith makes true.
But then also with the added caveat that I am not exempt from this situation. I am not saying this because I’m pointing at some incorrect way that someone else is viewing the situation, as though I am beyond or outside of this kind of faith this kind of manner of coming upon reality.
On the contrary, I am describing the situation. It isn’t wrong. How could I be describing something that is wrong? Well, the only way is to come upon somebody else that tells me it’s wrong. Two routes. Two ways of looking at things that did not reduce to a further unity. Except in as much as the unity is indeed one route of two routes. It is dynamic, it describes a situation that is fluid and in motion; it presents a calculus rather than a matheme (or whatever that word is).
So, by the way when I’m walking my dog that’s when I’m making these huge comments. 🤣
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…. I have heard of people accusing Harman and the other SR peeps. As, for a word, arrogant or not willing to get in discussions with people who are not SR.
I can understand that. Just from the example of our conversation here. I’m not saying I agree with that approach, but I can understand because it is apparent to me that many people that are rooted in the continental kind of phenomenological tradition simply appear to me as not being able to get out of that mode of phenomenological reductionism. Because some of the first rebuttals and continuingly rebuttals Of oOO is how he proposes to be talking about objects when everything is still staying within the phenomenological realm. Because it’s pretty clear that at least Harman does not see himself as having to answer to the phenomenological reduction. And I think that he is justified in not having to do that especially from that he’s already put forth his discussions like in his book tool being. To me, it kind of comes down to either you understand what he saying or you don’t, and if you don’t then it’s very difficult to try and get through to a person of what he’s really saying. And so I understand how the SR’s appear to not want to have to spend the time anymore trying to “convert“ someone. Indeed Harman has talked about in places of being “converted”.
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Ok. So I am not talking about an infinite amount of narratives. Yes: there is a phenomenal world where every gets their view.
And
I
Might be wrong. That’s why I am trying to see where I am incorrect btw—
I am literally talking about viewing, seeing, understanding, way of looking, a manner of being able to see something.
I am saying that, yes, it is fair and real that there is phenomenal subjectivity. Everyone gets to negotiate what the word is. Politics.
Then I am saying that such a world is true. It is a fact. It is not negotiated.
There is only two views. Two orientations upon objects.
One that sees subjects and objects that arise in thebthinijg subject that gets to have whatever opinion and worlds they want.
One that says that negotiated world is not negotiated : it is true. It thus shows an in-itself thing.
And from there we can find more in-itself things that are negotiated differently, that is , that do not fall back into infinite relativity.
🙂 whew. It takes a while to find a simple way to say things sometimes. Lol.
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I get that.
I think the difference that perhaps I am not conveying is that I am not reducing this to an either or state. It is both.
I make meaning. And something have nothing to do with semantics. There is no link between these; and there is a link. Both. There is no single thing that is making ideas; but there is. Both. Not one that is doing both. Becuase even the idea is subject to the notion that an idea, the notion itself of what an idea is, it is just arbitrary discourse. Both. Not just negation and invalidation through reduction. But also acceptance and validation through—- accumulation ?? 😉
Of course it appears as an idea. Yes I could be argued to be both idealistic and not: it could be argued to be anything, I’m sure, given constraints yes.
These are different ways of talking about a thing. It appears that as we discuss , you want to move us down a course of phenomenal meaning. Ok great. We know that. We (as a greater community) have been up and down that Avenue and we will continue to cruise that street. I’m am not suggesting that someone cruising that street is cruising the wrong street, or that cruising is doing something inherently false or anything. I am simply indicating the street and that people cruise it. And they do it all sorts of ways, and I do to.
But even though I may be using discourse, that discourse does not mean that only cruising is happening. Of course, for the cruisers, every word I say will show the street they are cruising on. And they are not wrong: cruising is valid and real and accomplishes work.
But discourse is also doing something. Else that the cruiser won’t recognize Becuase cruising is all they can reckon.
Like an analogy of a computer machine language coder: it doesn’t matter how much a coder tells me of coding I will never comprehend it. It doesn’t matter what meaning I want to put to it, I will make the sense of it that I am able, and the coding will make sense in a real valid manner. Yet the sense I make of it has nothing to do with the truth of machine coding. There is no common bridge that makes them meet somewhere. As an analogy.
This is why I say Discourse and not language. Nothing can exist outside of discourse does not mean that there is a one unitive thing that is the human being using discourse. I don’t think in language; discourse is all there is. There is no ‘meaning’ outside of discourse, the ‘meaning’ of ‘meaning’ is just more meaning. So how could I even know this? but likewise this does not mean that there is something which makes discourse “of something”: everything is discourse. Everything. Not against something else: something else is not discourse, it is something else. It could be something, but then it is not discourse. I can talk about something else without discourse, but as soon as I use discourse I am talking about nothing else.
There is no substrate. And yet there is. There is no linking those except that there is. Both. Not both within a one: both as both. Difference as difference.
And yet difference itself will be argued to be part of a one. So it is again: both. Nonphilosophy
Harman talks about how objects interact. I can’t go into all that.
More analogy:
This is a dynamic situation where things can be a wave and a particle at the same time, as an analogy, distinguished only at the moment of viewing. The cruisers, again as an example, see only particles. Everything that appears in discourse appears as a particle. If I start to speak of the wave, they will automatically see the discourse of the wave as talking about a particle Becuase they simply do not have a view upon the wave aspect of things.
That’s just an analogy.
1) reality and isolation: this is the common rebuttal of Harman: that he gives no manner of things interaction.
Reality is the place where things are negotiated.
*
All
I’m asking for Is for honesty. Don’t you know what reality is? Or are you being obstinate ? And why are you using the word if every day of your life when You don’t know what it is?
You know what it is. So do I. Truth. Can you deny it? Only by denying it. That’s the only way. If you accept it, then we have found a common thing. If you do not accept it, then you have denied reality. Can there be anything more plain? Lol.
Is it only meaning? What does that mean then? Is “meaning” itself thus false? Or is it true? Does it mean something else thatmeaning itself ? How would that be possible. 🤣. I’m being silly.
The reason why science is not considered metaphysics is Becuase it deals with the things themselves that are given to anaylsis. There is blood pouring down my nose and I’m
Missing a tooth. Sure there is indeed only discourse about that situation, but that does and does not mean that there is a “single truth” about it: indeed people will make all sorts of meaning from it. But likewise. When I say blood: there it is. I took a towel and wiped it up : this has absolutely nothing to do with discourse being everything there is. One is true. The other real. You know what I mean, and the only way you would not know is to deny the truth of the situation. How is that not making sense to You?
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Both. Not both which stems from a one: both. Suspension. Not reduction. We know reduction already. It is not bad or wrong, it just occurs the way we already know. We already know what reduction does and what it concerns.
But also that it is exceedingly difficult to get people to see or make sense differently.
It is exactly like an addiction. To the addict, no matter how many people tell them they are addicted and need help, the addict simply is unable to see what they mean.
One one sense they are in denial.
But I’m another sense they are behaving within their subjective reality.
That’s just an analogy also.
I am giving Another way to view; I am not arguing that some other way is false. But I am saying that this way of view is not being communicated in its truth Becuase the effective religion is incredulity toward meta narratives: one cannot simply choose to not believe Becuase the whole thing makes sense automatically. Exactly the same as, say, the fundamentalist Christian or Buddhist.
And I’m
Not saying it is incorrect or that there is a better way or that I am not involved in the same thing.
*
Ok.
I think you understand what I’m saying whether you agree or not at this point.
So let me turn and ask you: how are you able to know what you know?
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I agree. That not-torn-apart narrative is Lyotard’s “little narrative”. It embodies (excuse the metaphor) fairness through understanding of nature of the reality.
Again, you might argue what is “fair”? To allow other narratives to have their say is fair. To not use narratives which oppress other narratives is fair. To not abuse the equality that little narratives affords us is fair.
Under these conditions we do our best to be fair.
Maradona scoring the goal with his hand and feigning ignorance of his action had created a grandnarrative. (Only he was caught on film.)
Today, we use the phrase “this is part of the game” and allow it to happen. Again, this is a grandnarrative. Maradona choice to make the hand-punch goal shut up about it and make his countrymen feel proud for winning (for that moment).
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This sounds like a kind of metaphysics to me.
Which is why I ask
1) In what reality is an object isolated from all other objects?
2) In what reality is an object in stasis (out of time)?
Your frame of reference sounds like an “idea” and nothing more.
Granted that we both agree that the physical reality is never knowable directly it does not mean we do not have a shared indirect experience of it either. That we spend much of our time (if not all of our time) sharing this indirect experience allows us to interact within it with some meaning that we create together.
The fact that you appreciate this conversation is not a solipsistic monologue (or at least I hope you might not feel you are talking to a figment of your imagination) is sign you understand something of the nature of the world.
To question it continually is anxiety. You may feel that this what you need to do. Certainly, I did in the past and have even felt anxious recently. But that is not how I want to feel. I made a choice, a choice which it satisfactory to me, but it is not the perfect choice. I do not believe there are perfect choices, only better ones for the particular situation for the particular time.
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To kind of change the angle of this discussion:
One could argue that in order for there to be happiness, a sense of purpose, a common idea of family and community, there Hass to be a narrative that encompasses those aspects that is not torn apart.
Sure, we can deconstruct and tear apart all sorts of encoded words and messages and institutions and everything, which we have done since like the 1960s or something. But at some point, I think we have to ask if we’ve realized what the problem is. At some point we have to dismiss ourselves from what might be or what might seem like a legitimate exercise of mental acuity and ability, and ask ourselves if we are really just doing that because we can, and add that, in a vacuum and then just wishing that the world around us would be better.
I submit that people need a certain sense of ignorance in order to have happiness and purpose in an individual‘s life and as well as a community living together.
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What is “our true existence” then? Is not that just a grandnarrative?
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And that’s ok. That’s what I call ( as well D and G). A “founding term”: A term that functions within a clause to ground that clause in meaning. It is a term around which the rest of the terms are substantiated, but it’s self is vacant.
So in reality typically we commonly understand time and space as foundational terms, or founding terms. Because we resort to those quite often as a default ground for anything else. But within any Clausalstructure there is a founding term which gives the phrase substance. This is also Lyotard.
So, indeed that is real, and ok, and 100% valid in its estimations and ability to function.
But, on the other hand, I am not sure what an idea is or even if I have one. Let alone space and time.
As to the ontological quality of things, to me, they must all exist equally.
The quality of what might be more or less real is ultimately conditioned by the world that I am a part of and from which I am not separable.
Now, I’m not saying that I don’t think or that I don’t have ideas. I am saying that I’m talking in a different way about things. If everything is language or everything is discourse then there is nothing that binds us to any hierarchy of what is more true or more real than anything else. Any tradition, and lineage of ideas is utterly arbitrary, while at the same time determined. Any argument which says either is more true is but another argument, having both arbitrary and determined value, centered on a founding term.
Of course there is an appearance of order and hierarchy.
Nevertheless, I am pretty much unable to find something that links those two things (equality and hierarchy) those two ways, those two routes, as I put it.
Anything that I would say would be at once false and at the same time real, while at the same time expressing the absolute truth of the situation.
There is no part of me that can experience anything that is false. And at the same time I encounter things in reality that are conditioned by understanding things relatively as true or false and all the various conditions. I cann not be sure if there is some thing that connects those two things, those two ways of viewing, because anything that I would say as to what might be connecting those two things ultimately must fall into one of those two camps. Which then segregates me to be outside the fact that there is no getting outside of the phenomenon of existence.
I exist as I embody the contradiction which is me occurring in reality in the only way it is possible. This is not so mucha reductive “subjective core of Being”; it is; but also, it is the manner that I am ultimately an object. Of no different quality that anything else I might know of.
It is not a suggestion of unity as much as it is a suggestion of the in-itself of Object-ness.
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I think it is a suspension from reduction. Kierkegaard even poses the question: Is there a teleological suspension…?
Monism is an object that withdraws from view. Just like an idea. Just like various material. They are objects the cause of which we can only know of vicariously, which is another way to say, through something other than our true existence.
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It seems where we differ is on the point of idealism/materialism.
For “ideation” to work as a theory it must be a material philosophy. If not then ideas must be material. I am arguing that ideas are not material but based on material as a process. The process of ideas can do and do change, and do end but the material (the corpse) remains.
This is why I am not happy with describing space and time as things. There is no evidence for them to be things. We can only infer from the experience of things space and time. That, to me, is enough.
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grandnarrative “can be” or “is”? By definition a grandnarrative is deceptive. The better narratives are little narratives (ones where everyone get to say what they want without being bullied into submitting to someone else narrative.
The little narrative is basically a “we agree to differ” argument, without which we will have no recourse but to physical conflict. Little narratives mean we keep the peace by agreeing to let each other be.
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I am fine with his anti-dualism. But which monism is he arguing for – ideal or material monism?
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What you describe (the issue) is what deconstruction was/is trying to do – to hold a mirror up at itself (as philosophy) and (other) philosophies in order to be honest and clear about what it does.
This applies to science (and religion) as well. Kuhn’s idea of “scientific paradigms” is an example of how it repeats itself. That, to think we will ever come to an end is “fake news” to use the contemporary term.
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…and that which is offended to reckon itself as a determined universal object knowable in its totality, in-itself.
I feel like I was hearing some resonances of this in your work.
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The grand narrative can be a deception when it presents the subject as more than it is. This view That understands or sees subjectivity as involved with more than itself is indeed an orientation upon the grand narrative which understands it’s self through the context of separation . This is why the post modern is associated with incredulity toward metanarratives: because the subject that is founded in separation will not or has difficulty in understanding that the totality of the phenomenon is itself. It is incredulous toward meta narratives in the same way the one is in despair to will to be oneself (and all the other Kierkegaard formulations of sin). The denial of the totality which is the phenomenon of existence is the destitute spirit. That which has incredulity toward metanarratives, in despair to will to be oneself. That which rebel’s from the abyss of freedom.
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…In fact. Now that I think of it , your Accumulation idea is think sparked my curiosity Becuase to struck me as a kind a “semantic contents” of objects. 🤘🏾
So. Like I say. I feel like you and I are kind of into the same kinda thing. But I’m not totally sure in what way.
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… ah. but the one essay in Tool Being is that what occurs is Both. That the reduction here maintains the integrity of being in the object in-itself. Beyond semantic subjectivity. And then I take it and say that all semantics function in the similar manner to thus define such object in-itself.
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…and one of Harmans essays I like in Tool Being (actually most of those essays). He is describing – but making arguments in his book – how dualities do not settle back into a unitive semantic world.
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I am not being exclusive. I am not describing to imply that the object of the description is is incorrect, or that I am withholding something that I see as correct.
I am saying that Philosophy is both. And that we already know one of the Routes through and through :
the phenomenological route.
And that’s exactly the issue I have with Harman: his effort is toward another reductive ontology as though he is arguing something better. My effort concerns orientation. Looking equally at objects with no implied judgement as to what is more real or more true if reality.
hamran is both: it is ridiculous to argue that one is able to remove oneself from the phenomenon by a move of discourse. But as well, under certain conditions, and not ubiquitously, discourse is not involved as religious assertion. Indeed under certain conditions, one is able to not be involved in any phenomenology whatsoever.
Not everything must default into subjective meaning. Something remains in-itself that can likewise be known totally: lie the chair crashing down upon my head. Like that watch. Like myself. Like the number 2. Like when we are discussing setting the dinner table. Or when we order a beer. Or when we hear a lecture. Or even — and this is where we see the significance of the two routes— when we are talking about philosophy.
And.
Sure; there is plenty to talk about with everything. Yes. But the fact – the fact – that there is plenty to continue to talk about In-itself has nothing to do with the content of its dissection: both views occur at the same time, parallel, never encountering the other. When is significant then is what route one is proceeding upon: the route of phenomenological subjective meaning of assertion and power; or the route of talking about the object of the discussion.
This is dynamic, and nor reductive.
It is preliminary rather than conventional. Like the difference between waves and particles. How is one viewing and what is being spoken about?
And ..
Exactly: the one route is the real route.
The other route, is the true route. For a couple terms.
I am not saying that I do not live in reality. On the contrary. I am saying that I am describing real objects. One of these real objects is philosophy: that which functions to extend itself beyond itself despite the fact that it is only speaking of itself.
And.
What does it say if they indeed are constructs of the mind? How could we know that? What does it mean that even the idea that it is all a construct of the mind is just a construct of the mind? How could we even know that?
Yet science makes no excuses: it simply deals with what is there with no apology.
One is not “more true” or more real. Both are real. But one does not suppose to be extending itself over all the universe, but rather only deals with what is given, and describes and makes analyses and prognosis.
What we find is that if someone is sick, it doesn’t matter whether I think it is all talk or all in the mind; something else has to be actually done.
The issue I see is whether philosophy is able to view itself for what it is doing, rather than what it wants to make of itself. Of course: everyone gets to have whatever reality they want and argue and assert and discuss. But the truth is that some will be put in jail for thier behavior , and some will prosper, and some will be deemed insane. And some will be Christian or Muslim and kill you as a heretic.
There is a great gap in ability to reckon the distinction. Philosophy would want to say it all falls under phenomenal reasoning and though and meaning; I doubt that. Even as I know it’s true.
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I agree. ontotheology is the term I would use.
But what or who says OOO or SR are not ontotheological in their approach either?
The thing about the idea of grandnarratives is that it allows us then to put everything under scrutiny including itself.
On the contrary, I feel there is far more to talk about with pomo, deconstruction and poststructuralism than other narratives.
“So to get back to what an object is: and object is the content of the material of philosophy. […] This is not a metaphysical statement or a statement about what is occurring at all times through every moment.”
This statement seems to be contradict reality. I have these two questions:
1) In what reality is an object isolated from all other objects?
2) In what reality is an object in stasis (out of time)?
These seem to me constructs of the mind rather than constructs of reality.
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There is always the danger of a statement of being a grandnarrative, but this does not mean that all statements are grandnarratives.
Grandnarratives are about deception, whether done consciously or unconsciously. It is also about hidden values and value systems.
It really does not matter whether you agree with this term or not, but rather why you disagree with it and what you propose to be its alternative. I have not seen an alternative.
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Somehow I feel like I am not communicating my point.
Say I agree with you definitions.
So, why should they be the case?
And then what else have we to talk about: say I agree. Ok true. What else is there to say? If Derrida or anyone meant anything, then why are we discussing definitions? I agree. Stop. End.
I think this is exactly the point he is making, as well as Lyotard and D and G. (And many others)
The partiality comes in the refusal to admit that if I take that chair and smash it over your head that there is no amount of discourse which can negate that truth of the event (or the objects involved).
Yet indeed there will be talk about what it means. Otto, for one, calls this absence (never mind Derrida “erase”) the idea of the holy and around which religion grows in the attempt to find out what the event (or the objects involved) actually was.
Hence: politics.
But if I talk about setting a table for dinner, all that speculation falls silent. It means nothing without some sort of faith which thinks something else is going on beneath the setting of the table for dinner. This “something else” i see as metaphysics in one hand, and religious theology on the other, as many Speculative philosophers talk about.
The talk about objects have more to to with the discussion around the setting of the table than it does about what is “actually occurring”.
I say that the tradition of Western Philosophy is a kind of religious theology, a “belief” in phenomenal intention.
But, I am not saying this to disqualify it. I am saying it as a fact. A fact is that which is true. Like the chair smashing over one’s head. Likewise I am not excluding myself from the involvement with this real kind of theological or religious understanding.
I am saying that these two types of reckoning occur parallel to one another and do not reduce, meaning that when I’m having a discussion around setting the table for dinner, it does not “mean“ that there is a logo centrism going on or that there is a political power-play occurring or that there is a plane of eminence involved there, or that one or more of us has a body without organs, or there is only discourse occurring at that setting of the table for dinner. All of those things disappear and have no meaning whatsoever in the actuality of the objects involved with setting the dinner table. This is what I mean that philosophy, or what I call conventional philosophy, is really only dealing with it self but understand it self to be reflecting into the whole world.
But we already see what happens when we take that kind of coarse, that route upon understanding things in the world: If taken to us for this extension it leads to nothing it leads to self doubt, it leads to confusion, it leads to self righteousness and assertion of proper power and propriety over other people who are incorrect, it leads to an inherent an ongoing colonialism and abuse.
Now again, again, I am not claiming that I have a better way to go about living in the world. I’m not making any sort of ethical or moral judgment about whether someone could should kill someone or assert power over them. I might have ethics around these ideas, but philosophically I am merely describing the situation. I am not incorporating some essence of subjectivity that involves ethics or a power struggle. In this sense, if I say the discourse is all there is, I’m not making an argument. I am describing a fact. And if people agree with that then there’s no more discussion really to be hard about it except that it is factual. In the same way that if a schizophrenic is delusional and is seeing things and hearing things that aren’t there, and I take a certain chemical and I put it into that person within a week or two they begin to act normal. That is a fact. There is no subjectivity involved with it except to the extent and the way that I already described: I say, these two types of situations occur parallel to each other.
So to get back to what an object is: and object is the content of the material of philosophy.
This is not a metaphysical statement or a statement about what is occurring at all times through every moment.
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Wait for part 2. This other comment….
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“
Meta-narrative is another for grand-narrative in Lyotard’s terminology. Grand-narratives are discourses which claim to full validity and authority all the while shutting out other discourses. Thus it lays claim to truth.”
I understand that. That is not the issue that I am bringing up. The issue is what that even means.
Because I’m not sure how you might be able to say that statement and have it mean something that’s false or only partially true. And my other question is why would you put forth that statement if you didn’t feel it was entirely true? If you thought it might be one bit false then wouldn’t you have said something else?
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Defining the terms again.
Meta-narrative is another for grand-narrative in Lyotard’s terminology. Grand-narratives are discourses which claim to full validity and authority all the while shutting out other discourses. Thus it lays claim to truth.
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Let us start again with definitions.
Logocentrism is the assumption that words unproblematically communicate meaning from one person to the other, that words have internal stability. This had been the assumption in Western philosophy. So Derrida is critical of this. It is not a positive term in pomo.
Metaphysics of presence is the characteristic in western philosophy and discourse of the full presence of meaning in words, when words are in fact marked by absence.
A word like “good” can never be defined without reference to “bad”. It does not make sense without its “other”. A word only has meaning by its difference (contrast) to other words, never being independent from the system of language.
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… and I would say that incredulity towards metanarratives is itself a denial of self: hence the situation of world that we have before us. Becuase indeed it is a meta-narrative that is informing us who we are. The complete disassociation of terms with reference to some imperative that I’m supposed to doubt metanarratives only serves to establish an insecure individual in a crumbling world.
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… so. That is correct and incorrect: the idea that we can present something for which there is no explanation is the same as trying to talk about something outside of the Phenomenal correlation: it is philosophy extending beyond itself: maraphysics: pure subjectivity.
And yes. What is careful, I’d say, is to be vigilant about how what we might say is put to a specific use with out designating that use and putting it out there as though it speaks to everything ubiquitously.
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To say “metaphysic of presence” is at once an attempt to represent something g that is not representable. Deluese and guattari is The example of saying something that appears to be representing something, but when applied to what it supposed to be talking about, thier discourse turns into nothing. It is speaking as it is presenting something which contradicts what it is supposed to be indicating. That is what I’m the last instance means.
There is no presence to speak about except a presence that is not present. And yet people do it all the time as though they are understanding something that exists outside of time.
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Honesty, yes. Few people remember what pomo was trying to do. I am not surprised by status of pomo today. Neo-Modernists have found ways to bring it down. This history repeats itself in Vico-Kuhnian fashion.
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“Pm Philosophy was is the “last instance” in the assumption of metaphysical ubiquity […]”
This is not correct. “(metaphysic of) presence” is precisely against any kind of metaphysical explanation. That there is anything at all is what modernist projects do.
The “anything goes” ethos is a misreading. But precisely because nothing can take precedence we must be careful of how to proceed.
Same goes with Lyotard. The ideas of grand-narratives is that there is a suppression of other discourses by way of hidden strategies. This is a danger all too apparent in today’s conditions. Fake News is an example of this. Disinformation by more disinformation. It is thoroughly modern in its approach but for the 21st century.
I do not think it is the last stance. But equally, I think new ways have been found to circumvent pomo’s way of dismantling oppressive discourses.
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…ah yes! Use! That why I call for an honesty and clarification of what philosophy is doing. So we can then better identify what it (the object called philosophy) is good for. What uses it is best suited for.
Perhaps “process” finds a way there.
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It is absolutely helpful to me. 🤘🏾I totally appreciate your willing ness to explore and engage.
Yes. But my point is that meaning is not all there is; the default to subjective relative meaning is not the end-all. In fact when I say chair: there it is. The chair in itself. This is what Husserl showed us as well as Kant: it is only when I begin to ask questions along certain lines that everyone has thier own chair. Before that, it is the in itself object that is the chair.
Pm Philosophy was is the “last instance” in the assumption of metaphysical ubiquity Becuase D and G. (And others) tell us what the repercussions of weighting everything to the philosophical mind of meaning itself means : correlational redundancy. just as Jacobi back in Kant’s time (I think it was J) said of Kant: it would lead to nothing and nihilism, which it does.
So I say that indeed meaning is significant under certain conditions but does not account for all that there is. What I call “Two routes” that cannot be reconciled. Or are only reconciled by an assertion of power: this is Laruelles non-Phil. And. Badiou comes in here. As well as Zizek .
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But I do think when you say “chair” and I say “chair” we have different conceptions of what a chair is. Just as someone says the word “God”, their use of the word and my understanding (or opinion) of the word differs. To them, it may mean someone “complete” and absolute. To me it is a concept, just like any other concept.
We have different experiences from each other. For example, in Japan a chair is contrasted to sitting on the floor. So My conception and a Japanese person’s conception is again different. I have to work hard to see their experience, and they, mine. (Saussure, Levi-Strauss)
Language is not transparent by any means. We work with definitions which have to made clear. Furthermore, it can only be even more clear by usage, and by looking at usage (Wittgenstein).
Further still, grammars differ to push our thinking in directions. Depending on the language we use we may thinking singularity is important (English) while such a differentiation makes no difference in another language (Japanese).
Dialogue is useful to me, and I hope to you. This is in some ways what I what mean by ‘engaging with the world’.
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This is what I make of all that:
That type of interpretation of Derrida is based on a presumption that there is a thinker apart from the thought-about object. It appears to not recognize the separation that occurs: That interpretation of Derrida is based in a presumption that nothing is changing, that something is staying the same as something else looking at it is changing, as though D himself is addressing a static (true) situation his mind is able to come upon (through communion with other thing person object), as though he is describing a thing or situation that never changes through time (the human being thinker).
Indeed, we might see that he was only speaking of the human being in his moment when we allow for the meaning of what he is saying to actually occur in the phenomenal moment of the coming upon discourse, (like he talks about, as well as Barthes). then it becomes possible to understand that he is now incorrect as well as correct (both, and not reducible to one or the other) : Becuase the human being is not a static entity in-itself, that is to say, in-itself the human being is always changing its relationship to itself in the context of world: the stasis as Being is the change that is the same, so to speak, and nothing else.
The modern phenomenon, I would pose, does not present Derrida from the view that he was talking about a partial situation from the perspective of the Total situation and its involvement, but rather the modern view tends to impose itself into what Derrida was saying for the purpose of having the view of itself as an eternal and atemporal Being which is able to come upon something else.
See what Derrida comments about Heidegger and Spirit? He is talking about the nature of language in as much as it is Totally intact and inseparable from its object but that this is not typically understood as such, and hence is typically (by the modern thinker) Received as partial. The state of Being (Dasein) wherein discourse and language constitute a phenomenon of Being that is separated is the destitute spirit. The Postmodern condition is that state which avoids itself for the sake of Being something else (excess).
The modern phenomenon refuses to make sense of itself in this manner; it simply will not acknowledge its destitution and instead continues past the evidence to assert itself over what offends it (Kierkegaard: despair), and hence the Post-modern: Heidegger again: it mistakes the nature of technology as indeed not part of the phenomenon of Being. This is the basis of Harman’s whole thesis.
what we find is that even the Postmodern view was not communicated, or actually communicated only partially, which is really none. The truth is the intact communication was not communicated even in the very activity of the attempt to do so. We can see then in the philosophers such as Zizek , Badiou, Laruelle, and then the SRs the attempt to come to terms with how that is the case. And Miellassoux put his finger on it: it is simply Becuase most modern human beings are unable to see the truth of the discourse arising to themselves as themselves inseparable from the world itself: they habitually overmine and undermine the phenomenal subject. This too is part of the description of the destitute spirit: the view which understands itself as something separate from its actual existence.
.
So when I say philosophy only has to do with philosophy, One if the things I am saying is that if I say “chair” you do not mistake what I am talking about. In fact you know exactly what I’m talking about. The philosophy which says that we have different ideas of what “chair” means is not dealing squarely with what is actually occurring, but is instead presenting itself as more that itself, extending the centralized philosophical thought out upon a world which has very little to do with it.
I am not thus suggesting that the PMs were wrong; I am actually saying they were right and then adding a caveat “only if one is honest about what philosophy is able to do versus what it is doing”. Yet, if they are not honest, likewise, they are not “wrong” but are merely behaving in the manner that we already know occurs all the time everywhere.
The dialogue we are having I think is good Becuase we are actually honesty trying to understand each other, which, I submit, many philosophers do not do.
Again. Sorry so long.
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Derrida’s presence is about the relationship of language to the real and the signifier.
Nor is it fully fixed in meaning. Even within an individual the signifier and signified eventually changes. Nothing is fully complete and immutable.
Matters are made worse when we use language. For a sign will have different meaning for different people. Case in point is the dialogue we have been having. Forever slipping because we have different ideas of what different words mean, including this conversation about presence.
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….I disagree with Derrida: Logos always has full presence once the screen of the real is understood for what it is: disassociation from self.
But this awareness is not ideological. Not even ideal. Not even experience. It is, what sounds like you have come upon but use different terms to describe, btw, the truth. It’s meaning is ever from ‘absence’ due to the attempt to reduce everything to the ubiquitous political domain.
I would say that it is, on the contrary, “fullness of presence”.
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…I would say that Discourse is all there is. Language, I would say, is another issue. But I agree with Lyotards formulation: that the situation you describe does not ‘partially’ communicate; no communication is taking place if it is partial.
But this is a description rather than an argument of what needs to be corrected because indeed politics is real :
As I talk about in my book The Philosophical Hack, communication that takes place through this partiality is real but not true, it is of politics. What is true cannot be communicated politically: only in the assertion of power that politics inscribes and enforces is that real world of politics true.
But there is another mannner of communication that does not deal in partiality. But I hypothesZD there is some work to do first Becuase OF the nature of the phenomenon before truth can be communicated non-partially.
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This is Derrida’s point – that words (logos) never have full ‘presence’. And its meaning is only ever from the ‘absence’.
We must move into the realm of philosophy of language which is also a philosophy of mind. In order to get to anything we have to talk of the situation – the combination of referent/form/meaning (Ogden, Richards). In this sense language is the connection between the world and the mind.
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To go back to one of your earlier comments: now that you might see how i am situating things and my rationale; I say that the discussion of the chair is the chair, in the same way that the thoughts about my thinking is me. If disxourse never reaches the chair, then what are we about ? Ideas; the idea of the chair? What does that even mean? How am I able to talk about an idea? Does not the talk about the idea never reach the idea?
So if we are only speaking about the idea of the chair, then that means we are really only speaking about the idea of the idea of the idea…. and recede into nothingness.
So I say that this is a real truth of philosophy: (ala Hegel). It stops the infinite regression of ideal negativity at an arbitrary moment and calls that an act of Providence, as though the philosopher has an audience with A divinity which informs her of what is true. Inspiration, intuition.
But this is logically nonsensical and yet occurred all the time everywhere. Thus I say it is not incorrect, as though this manner of coming upon things is wrong, but is indeed a real and valid way that everyone functions in reality.
But Becuase that manner is indeed wrong, is indeed a logically incorrect manner to come to any truth, there must be a truth that is being denied in the former (phenomenonally arbitrary manner) way of having reality.
Hence: the true object as opposed to the phenomenally real object.
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Oh, I am sure that is true. From experience (pun intended) that has been the case.
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I think we may have had a similar experience but we speak about it differently.
I would (will) be interesting to see if a comparison of our ideas would be very similar while we are each using different terms.
It would be a confirmation of my theory that philosophy says the same thing over and over using different terms. That there is actually only a finite number ways to talk about organizations of things.
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I personally think people mis-take “meaningless” to mean worthless, nil, empty, when meaningless should mean without inherent meaning.
The values we have to make are in the system, and through the system. They are not innate, not a priori, and certainly not absolute.
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Memories are *rearrangement* of atoms, not *accumulation* of atoms. The quantity of atoms never change. At death (the switching off of power) those arrangements no longer hold the configuration that can be called a self (which is an arrangement of atom in the form of memory.
We have experiences. I have chosen to draw conclusions AND make decisions (that is, how to live in the situation before me) upon those conclusions. The experiences are imperfect (correlation or otherwise). My actions are imperfect as well.
I have chosen not to hold other people’s conclusions and actions to the (impossible, ideal) high standard of perfection either. But enjoy and make the best of the experiences.
At some point, I lost my fear of experiences. I also lost the (non-existent, illusionary) distance from the experiences and things. In other words, the engagement with the world has made me a happier person.
Of course, this may be an illusion as well, but of the happier or sadder I chose this path.
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Well; my point is that the result of nothingness means that the whole system of Reason was incorrect.
Philosophy is the only logical method that gets a wrong answer (everything is nothing) with a certain function and then Continues to use the same function. 😁
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I am not a Sartrist. Nor am I any of existentialist either. But I do like the idea that we need to stop withdrawing within ourselves (not used here in the ooo sense) in the psychological sense.
And nihilism and nothingness are concepts I do NOT follow either.
Nothingness is no better than somethingness.
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So are you saying “the process of accumulation” and not “what is accumulated” ? If that makes any sense. The process is not actually accumulating any ‘particulates’. But is actually ‘just accumulating’?
Maybe you could expound upon the evidence you found which brings you to this notion ?
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Yes. But I have my critiques of Sartre in that existential regard also. I would say that it is the whole category that is mistaken, the whole way the phenomenon is being understood.
As I have said elsewhere when I talk about nihilism and nothingness and things like that:
It appears to me like philosophy as a historical emotion, say, arrived at “nothing”. But instead of realizing or actualizing with this nothingness actually is, it instead reasserted the centrality of which agency and revolted from that abyss. And then it proposes to talk about what that address is though it never experienced it never embodied what the abyss was because it could not relinquish its central agency.
And so, some of what I discuss is how we need to be more honest about what philosophy is doing to thereby be able to be more per Syse and excepting to the answer is that philosophy gives us.
Otherwise we are just throwing ideas at one another, coming up with half explanations in order to get that fellowship or get that tenure. Trying to prove that I have the better mind than the other person. But then I say also that indeed that way of doing things has its place but it is not based in truth.
In fact I would say that it’s based in a concept of power struggle. 😉
Hey issue that I have then is with those say that everything all discussion all discourse is a manifestation of power and agency.
I disagree with that assertion of ubiquity.
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I think I will write a piece to explain this philosophy of language. I usually write about this on the other blog, Right now I am saving energy for my dissertation.
I appreciate this engagement. No offence or malice taken.
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I think I will write a piece to explain this philosophy of language. I usually write about this on the other blog, Right now I am saving energy for my dissertation.
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Memory can be selective. But isn’t that part of being. We cannot cope with every piece of information that comes in, so we become selective.
Again, it is a metaphor because no true accumulation occurs other than memory. It has no “weight”. Like a RAM (random access memory) when the power is switched off all memory is lost. The process and configuration of memory disappears.
It is all a question of what we see as existent and not. From the evidence, I have concluded thus.
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But that is precisely the point. If there is nothing outside the experience then where is that dog shit coming from?
In the end, the “outside world”, however imperfect that term is, is the only way we can deal with it.
These seem to be categorical mistakes – using Ryle here – which lead to actual mistakes. I am happy to deal with the world at large through the experience. It works so I do not bang my head against the wall – figuratively and literally – and get on with life, get on with engaging it in some meaningful way that I choose (Existential freedom) as best as I can (again, Existential authenticity).
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At. On. In. Sounds interesting. And hey; btw. I like the accumulation idea, I m just offering some constructive criticism there. Because. I. Am barely remember yesterday. Let alone a whole life time a accumulation. And I am not sure there is an “under the surface” philosophical accumulation. Even psychology theory can’t agree on that. 🤘🏾
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…part 2.
And so the significance of correlationalism is that we have a term that describes the situation of phenomenology. The only way to get out of the correlation of phenomena is to resort back to work Kierkegaard calls discursive gymnastics, to disassociate oneself from oneself, and through that disassociation thereby identify with that disassociation. This is where we get the idea of identity and by extension the idea of identity politics; Zizek refers to the situation of disassociating oneself from oneself as like watching a movie and thinking that oneself and the world are the play on the screen. Hence politics occurs through this identifying with what is on the screen, and then calling that “reality” as though indeed it is me and the world up there on the screen. I can thereby identify all that is me and what is other by what is on the screen and I could point to different aspects And things that are on the movie so to speak, and then I am fully comfortable at saying oh there is me, the phenomenon, that character there, and there is a fire hydrant there is an object — .by disassociating oneself from one’s actual experience of world, what Heidegger aptly elaborates on and calls it Dasein, one is thereby able to retain the essence of the central thinking subject without ever having to admit it. And another name for the discourse of central thinking subject is phenomenology.
So this is what I see as the problem inherent of correlation. That no matter how hard I try to use discursive sleight-of-hand, argument or to define things in different ways, I am still currently located in the phenomenology of the subject.
The issue then, as I understand it, is how do we get to something that is outside of this correlation. This is the issue that the authors of the speculative realist conference All try and deal with.
And I feel that Harman made the strongest move .
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I have not read too much of Husserl. I read I think maybe the first 80 or so pages of philosophical investigations two, and then I jumped around the rest of it.
What I understand as phenomenology is slightly different than it appears how you are putting it.
For example, what I see is the significance of Husserl, just as an example because I can apply the same kind of view on a couple other people as well —. But I like that Husserl put it so cleanly: to my mind he tells us how we get to the object in itself; he calls it an independent object. And then it seems to me that he proceeds to show the ramifications of dependent objects. Personally I don’t think he’s saying anything about what the hall of reality is as much as he is saying that if we look only at dependent objects then this must be the case.
I like that.
But the reason why I like that is because what are used to get from phenomenology is that there is nothing outside of the mind, nothing outside of experience. And I feel like many authors approached the situation as in deed even idea that there are objects out there is it self still an idea, still located in the central thinker. I feel that this is the problem that we face with correlation. Anything and everything that I might say no matter what term I use to describe it is utterly phenomenological. This is so much the case, and I see this in basically every single philosopher that has anything to do with phenomenology whether not they admit it or not, that the only way that we can get out of this phenomenology is to deny that it’s occurring. For example, the only way that philosophy is able to talk about object is to all the sudden deny that everything is phenomenological, or that everything exists as a phenomenon of the mind , All the sudden phenomenology becomes “definition x”. Buy this move of resorting to definition as though definitions are giving us what is really true, we are there by able to say that phenomenology, the thing that it might be talking about, the meaning that it is conveying to me, is Adderly bullshit, except to the extent that I now have distanced myself from the discourse that I am using, As though discourse is not something that is a really a rising of the mind in experience in the totalitaria as though discourse is not something that is a really arising of the mind in experience in the totality that is the phenomenon.
….OK that’s part one just give me one second I got to pick up my dogs shit and and then I will leave a part 2🙂
Just a minute….
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I have not talked much about my research here. Funnily enough it is about the language of orientation.
Specifically I research on the prepositions of AT, ON and IN.
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I agree. There are basic levels of understandings that need to be sorted so as to measure what kind of game of tennis one is playing.
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As for postmodernism, I am sympathetic to it. I think Pomo is misinterpreted to be a free-for-all critique of everything. That type of Pomo is abuse. And it is in reality Modernism in disguise.
Pomo is in my in my opinion a philosophy of language, and then a moral philosophy.
I am informed by Derrida, particularly his reading of Saussure.
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To me, phenomenology is about the experience of the phenomena and never about the object of the phenomena. Husserl, to me, engages in part of the experience and never the whole of the experience.
I remember my experience in the 1990s of the internet. I was absorbed in the idea of The Online, being a kind of virtual entity, losing all real (as in the physical) understanding of myself in the real world.
The disorientation I felt then is like what I think of phenomenology, idealist, and rationalist philosophies. Keeping everything in the mind I feel would be like calling my physical self a prison of my mind.
But neither do I think a purely physical approach is correct. The mind engages with the wider world. The internal/external binary is highly wrong, in my opinion.
At the moment I am reading Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. Apart from the chapter on “sexed being” I generally feel it is a work that is heading in the right direction. That chapter is making a leap too early. The logic order seems wrong. [tbc]
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I enjoy Harman’s work Becuase he made a sting move, in my view.
But I don’t subscribe to his position. My work is more about the issue of one’s orientation upon objects. The issue concerns the object of the subject. Orientation itself, and less about ontological postures. Though there is an ontological component.
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What is occurring between us i see as an example of how people assume each other are playing the same game but are actually not. The usually method is to argue into the air at each other. But never really getting to the basic difference or what is informing the difference. So I appreciate you engaging with me at this level.
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I think there are understandings we each have that are more basic to our disagreement.
How do you understand phenomenology ? For example.
And then in general the meaning of Postmondern findings. ?
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Then, what are you willing to grant?
What is “outside” of philosophy then philosophy does not deal with?
Is ooo a dualist stance?
I agree material means physical. However, I do not see mental, ideal and empirical as material, only as processes of the physical. This also means I do not see the relations of objects as material either, only as a process of the physical. “processes” do not mean choice, just physical change. Any change is considered a particular process only conceptually, never a thing in itself.
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“Does philosophy come before reality? And is the material in your opinion physical and/or ideal?”
[sorry I’m
So long winded]
I understand this sentence as giving a misrepresentation of what is before us. The way it is phrased assumes a lot that I am not ready to grant.
If I were to answer that question the way it is, I would already be moving down what I see as an incorrect manner of viewing the situation. Or, incorrect so far as that there is another way to view.
I feel that OOO comes right off of Laruelle non-philosophy and I see Harman as answering a question that Laruelle leaves hanging, as it appears L is not able to answer it satisfactorily.
Philosophy deals only with philosophy. delueze I think makes an argument along these lines, but I dont think he says it outright. ‘metaphysics’ is the extension of philosophy beyond itself, but in Deleuze case he says he is primarily a metaphysical Becuase he has elaborated the whole functional system of extension: a metadiscourse about metaphysics. Lol
After Deleuze I see a division established in how philosophy is able to be reckoned. Zizek spells this issue out, then, by his Parellax view. I see Such a view as involving an aspect that is specifically dual, as well as infinitely subjectively relative, but both mutually exclusive to each other in ability to reckon.
Philosophy, as it is, re-presents itself as a correlational phenomenon, limited to itself to be speaking only of itself.
Yet, indeed reality does involve philosophy in some way. From my view, this correlation which is able to at once reflect itself and get outside of itself evidences a type of thinking that is philosophical but, due to the issue that moves between Laruelle and Harman, must be distinguished if we are to be able to speak of an object that does not reduce back into a phenomenal subject. I designate this kind of philosophy I just mentioned that has to do with the Being of things ‘Conventional Philosophy’.
Conventional philosophy might phrase a question such as yours and expect an answer that indeed follows rules that are sufficient to grant a common arena of discussion.
So it is perhaps me who is playing by a different set of rules, and is why I need to clarify what set of rules are in operation for the discussion. I admit.
But also, I do not intend the designation “conventional” as an insult, but merely a descriptor of that method of viewing the universe, which I see as centered in the human phenomenal thinker. It is not an argument about how that might be wrong, but is indeed an acceptance of the thing (object) which is human in-itself. Conventional Philosophy is able address reality.
On the other hand, where philosophy is understood as only concerning itself, there Reality is more like a Zizek-Lacan Real, which is beyond the reach of what I call Conventional Philosophy, that method of view which sees itself as able to be involved with what is Real.
Likewise material can be reckoned along two views: types of material, or material itself.
I simply say that there is only material and philosophy deals with this material. This material is physical and mental, ideal and empirical. The material expresses everything that is real in one instance, but in another, say in the instance of conventional philosophy, is only sometimes real.
So I also say,
Real objects withdraw from view because we are always only
Dealing with relations of objects and not the objects themselves. But due to this fact, I go a step further and say there is no point in talking about reality as being something out of reach; rather it is entirely reachable at all times evident by the material before us in context. I ask: From where do we get the idea that human beings are separate from the universe so as to be able to get something incorrect about it? But indeed that does occur. And what does this mean?
*
Perhaps with that description you might be able to discern what is discrepant between our two preliminary “grounds”. (Yours and mine) And we might thereby be able to come to some consensus about where to start.
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I am all for establishing the rules. But I am also all for establishing the nature of game. Understanding the rules and playing the game makes me a tennis player. An amateur one at that but nonetheless a tennis player. Understanding the nature of the game makes me a better tennis player. “Armchair tennis” will get me only so far. Playing tennis will get me much further.
So let’s establish and agree upon the rules here.
The term “object” has not been agreed upon. I am wondering if we can even reconcile this point. As I have said, I feel the only the materialist position is tenable. Tennis is where we can see this. I perceive a tennis ball. And you perceive a tennis ball. Together we have established that we perceived the same tennis ball. We proceed to use this tennis ball for a game of tennis, knowing all the established rules. Perhaps you how to put top spin on the ball to put the ball into a position which is harder for me to return. But equally I may know that characteristic and know that you might you will try to use this against me to win the point. But because I had predicted this correctly I return the ball and win the point instead. This time I have bettered you. You may better me in the game and ultimately win.
The point is, we have mutually established that same ball as the focal point. Even if we have no access to it directly in any way (we both do not have access) we still have indirect access. This is where I feel ooo does not agree to the rules of the game.
I do not particularly want to be sitting next to you and think we are not looking at the same scene. That is just philosophical anxiety.
Which then brings me to your statement “objects constitute the material that is used in philosophy”.
Does philosophy come before reality? And is the material in your opinion physical and/or ideal?
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Ah. So read the other hugely long reply first. 🤣
Then this one:
I would say tentatively that objects constitute the material that is used in philosophy.
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I suppose I can play tennis. But first I like to establish the rules of the game. With PM often the rules are that one is allowed to change the rules at any point in the volley.
My play is that often I am trying to establish the rules between myself and the other player and they are involved in showing me how their rules make more sense than mine — when they haven’t even grasped what I’m saying Becuase we havnt established what game we are playing.
So I just say: ok. That game is valid. And people play this game of the rule is we each get to make up our own rules as we go.
But what I see in this is exactly the problem that Lyotard saw: no communication takes place.
And so by virtue of the fact that indeed communication is able to take place, when I see that the person that I am involved in a “game of debate“, let’s just call it that say, with Is playing a game of “when I think we are going to come to some agreement then I’m going to change the rules by which we are playing so then I can appear as having Trumped you or beaten you in the game of this debate” — I see this game as what Kierkegaard calls “discursive gymnastics”. And I see that it is just a game that some people like to play and that indeed it is a valid game. It is a game that most people play in the world, and I see this associated with what Zizek calls Capitalism. It is the game that I use whatever means necessary to show the other person how I am more intelligent or more skilled or whatever you want to call it, that I am better at this whatever game that we’re playing when you are.
Yet unlike people who play that game, by pointing out that game I am not there for saying that we should play some other game or that that game is invalid or doesn’t achieve anything. I say that that game is a real game and it achieves a lot; it is very useful, is how I put it.
But it is not really the game that I’m involved with. I don’t know if you were talking about me or if you were talking about other hypothetical people, but I have noticed that people will take my approach as if I’m not committing to an argument. But really what I’m committing to is trying to find some rules between us, some common rules between us that we can agree upon that we can there by begin to talk about the same things.
This is where I tend to disagree with postmodern method: because postmodern method is the game I just described. .It basically says that we don’t have to talk about the same things because I have a communion with some sort of eminence within myself that is my authentic being and I am allowed to use whatever resources I am able to get the upper hand in whatever discussion that we’re having.
And I will repeat just quickly: by pointing this out I am Not suggesting that it is invalid or that it is incorrect in any way.
But what I am indicating is that there is another conversation that is going on that is outside of that game.
The thing with the post modernist approach would say that there is no other game, that the rules that we understand encompasses every aspect that is going on so far as things might be involved with using discourse. And so wherever discourse is presented I am allowed to play by those postmodern rules and so de facto everything is fair and valid in the game of one upmanship.
I simply say ok to it. It is not that I’m not committing to it, but that I already committed fully to it and I came out the other side. It just is no longer interesting to me to get into bait with people that come up with their own terms for everything and then use those definitions as means to argue with other people over their definitions or what their terms might mean.
It’s interesting that people do that and I like to read other peoples ideas and it is interesting.
But, if you have looked in my blog at all I have a couple posts and I actually wrote a paper for a conference about it:
My question comes back always to what the hell are you talking about?
I want to know exactly what this other person is talking about.
I do not agree that I decide what exists. Or you do. I am able to agree that you indeed are able to understand things in an absolute content where choice is foundational, but I do not agree that I exist within that totalized paradigm. I am indeed able to act as though I have choices, and indeed I do have choices in that regard at times, but my choice is also determined by the condition in which the choice has meaning.
Ok. That’s long enough.
In short: I want to know the rules, and often I try to get people to tell me what rules they are playing by so I can play also. Then I try to use those rules to come to conclusions about what the rules lead to, together.
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Yes, I think we need to clarify what object means to you and me..
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Moot point, I agree. But whether I decide to think it exists is a choice. I choose to do so so that I can enjoy a game of tennis with others.
It seems there is a fear to engage or commit not only by existentialists and phenomenologists (by some at least) but also by object-oriented ontologists. It may not be a perfect understand of what is there. In fact it will never perfect by its own definition. But it is all that we have. And because it is all that we have I will make the best of it, rather than be anxious of it.
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I am not against PM. I cannot be against it.
It seems you and I could have a very long discussion of our differences.
In the mean time, I am still not sure what an object is? Perhaps this is what is throwing me off.
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I like postmodernism. I think they had a lot to say about things. If I sound like a postmodernist talking in different terms then perhaps you have not been wrong. Ironically it seems you have accessed something of me which you claim you have no access to.
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You will have to convince me that the discussion of the chair is the chair.
To me, the discussion is the discussion of the chair, and not the chair. The ontology and epistemology of the chair are separate issues. My discussion of the chair neither affects or changes the existence of the chair.
As to the phenomenology of the chair it is a process of something other than the chair (I am not the chair). By process I mean an action or activity of things. They do not exist in any way other than being the process of things, that is, it is not a physical thing.
Again, I do not see anything important to the phenomenology, any phenomenology.
In this sense, I do not prioritize the human (or anything for that matter). All things are equally without value.
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I agree that no amount of representation will ever get to the real object that is the chair. But what I am saying is that the discussion about the chair is the chair. Nothing is being represented that is separate from the chair itself but it indeed inhabits the very discussion and contemplation of the chair.
Whatever the actual object may be in itself out there in the world, is utterly a moot point to the extent that to even suggest that there is an object that is out there that we cannot know in itself argues that we are indeed knowing the object in itself; namely, that the object in itself cannot be represented. In essence, were saying that We are going to represent the object that cannot be known by putting forth a reset representation that negates itself.
I completely do away with that kind of phenomenological centeredness. I simply say that such phenomenological centered Ness in representation is indeed a fact of the subject. ,But in so much as we are talking about the being of objects, we have left that phenomenological realm to itself, in itself, such that there is no representation going on at all in the object itself, but indeed when we talk about objects the object is indeed existing in itself as the discussion.
There is no contradiction here when one understands the distinction: The only contradiction that exists or that is understood is when we are centered in the phenomenological reason The only contradiction that exists or that is understood is when we are centered in the phenomenological thought.
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It feels like you’re not saying very much more than what the postmoderns say but that you are using different terms to say it.
Because, I’m not talking about what the actual chair might be. I feel like what you’re saying is that we can’t know what that in it self chair is. That real objects withdrawl from view.
What I am saying is that because they withdraw from view nothing I say is suggesting anything about that withdraw.
So I’m really indicating the only way that objects are known. And I’m not reducing it back to some sort of subjective thinker because then we it seems to me that we are just saying the same thing that we’ve already discovered over at least 250 years of philosophy, but we’re just dressing it in different terms.
I’m not sure if I have to speak of any sort of representation of any object, because if I talk about representation of any object then I’ve just fallen back into saying that I have primacy as a as a thinker as a subject to which all objects must answer.
I’m not saying or suggesting anything of the sort.
I’m saying that as soon as there is a rock right there, The rock, as it being in itself is absolutely conveyed through the relation of other objects that are moving through the field of discussion. To even bring up the topic about what the object may be in itself is kind of a moot point because then it brings up the question of how you are able to know this, and then, it seems to me, that what ends up happening is people start using different terms to say what has already been said as if they are saying something new.
So I’m not sure what you mean when you say that objects accumulate ideas until they die. It seems to me that you’re just replacing the word “subject ” with “object” to say what has already been said; because it sounds to me that you were really just meaning the centralized thinking subject. And I think we’ve already said all those things about the subject already. ?
And then also I’m not sure how you are able to distinguish a process that is not part of a subject. How are you able to distinguish the process of objects that is not reducing back into her thinking reasoning subject to be able to discern that process as opposed to the object?
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The accumulated representation of the chair in my mind is not the same as the object chair. No amount of representation of the chair will change the object chair; no amount of non-presentation of the chair will change it either. So it is not, to me, dying or living. The representation of the chair disappears with the end of me. The object chair remains.
Accumulation (or representation) is a process. Processes are *not things*, but *processes of things*.
This is very much a materialist stance.
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As to accumulation as marker of death, I think your formulation indicates how death occurs at every moment.
Im pondering the thing, say, the existence of the chair, or the chair. As I enter into a discussion or contemplation of the chair, ideas about the chair indeed accumulate for the event of discussion/contemplation. And it proceeds to “live” until the discussion stops, for whatever reason; whether there is consensus, or agree to disagree, or even a lunch break; the accumulation ends and the chair “dies”. Then after lunch, or in another institution or living room or blog page, the discussion is taken up about the chair, and it is “reborn”.
The issue I think is significant is how the chair might exist between those moments of accumulation , ie. What is happening that it is understood as the same chair and it’s continuing life or existence. ?
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Accumulation is a process of this particular thing. Accumulation is conceptually metaphorical of the process which seemingly collects memories. But since memories are not physical objects as such they physical cannot be accumulated, only metaphorically so.
The battleground is therefore language. I contend that one must be careful of understanding language deceives us to believe in the physicality of such things are memories precisely because all abstract language must rely on descriptions of literal/physical relationships in order to be expressed.
Memories are accumulated metaphorically, not physically.
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For sure. There are many areas where we do not agree about what objects are. For example; is “accumulation” an object? In my view, there is only material, so “accumulation” is an object under certain conditions. The condition here I would have to ask is what ideation is accumulated by the object accumulation? Does this object ever die, or ever end in its process if accumulation?
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I understand the concern for the term “accumulation”. For me, there is no other alternative to describing it. One aspect of most philosophy is not to take language as the site for concern. It has been noted (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) that conceptual metaphors are the only recourse we have to talk about abstract concepts, where metaphors are alway based on the literal. So for me, “accumulation” is one way (there may be alternative ways) to talk about ideation. In the mind, at least, memories are “accumulated”, since death brings about its loss. Yet, nothing is really lost since memory does not have physical quantity.
Thinking is but one process. I do not see “thinking” different to “running”. It is the process of this particular thing. If a rock has such a process it is not discernible. Since it is not discernible it should not be a quality of the rock we should worry about. Its existence or non-existence does not affects the we interact with the rock. Such qualities are like ghosts or God to me – there is a lot of it but nothing about it affects the physical world other than the talk and thought of it as existing. Once we ideate its non-existence then it becomes nothing more than a concept.
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I can dig it. But I’m not sure ‘accumulation’ is the right fit for what you appear to be aiming at. Such a term appears to me to put thinking as the main discernment of being. Right? Humans may think and this is how they be, but a rock may have a similar process of being but doesn’t think.
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Whether what you had for breakfast three days ago is not as important as the process of accumulation. The “pruning” process is another kind of process of the mind.
What matters is that you accumulate and until you moment before your death there is a concept of you as the accumulation. Whether that is a correct concept of you as a thing is not relevant.
The idea of every moment is a kind of death and rebirth is also possible. That is a concept like any other one. My philosophy is flexible here in that it allows for all kinds of conceptions. What remains is the process of some kind of concept of oneself as a self-thing that continues that had a past and will or can have a future. Except for people with certain types of aphasia sense-things have a concept of continuity. The fact that the damage to the brain can cause such a change in you that, say, damage to an arm does not should inform us that there is something of the function in the material of the brain that is not found in arms.
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Unless. Not. And less.
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Yes I follow what you’re saying. I agree. I talk about things and objects.
But that’s why I was saying like and less death occurs all the time because sure I may accumulate the idea since I woke up this morning and ate breakfast etc. but three days from now those things, those ideas might no longer be part of the thing that I am understanding as having accumulated. So that’s why am saying is that I think I can agree with you if you are saying that death occurs in many ways at various juncture’s. I am not sure that there is an accumulation of things that constitute me and then death is the end of that accumulation that is me, and less you’re talking about a type of continual death and rebirth of that which is me or that which is that object, etc.
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Landzek, what did you have for breakfast this morning?
“Thing” is my term for object. And this particular object possesses the ability to accumulate concepts. When the ability to accumulate the memory of what you had for breakfast this morning then it commonly called ‘death’.
I am talking about a single being-thing here not you and I. My idea is not separate from your idea, even though we may want to call them the same idea (they are not). When I die my ideation ends. Yours continues.
I am not trying to be mysterious here, but only stating from an inductive reason the probable conclusion.
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Do ideas accumulate?
I like the other parts of this formulation, but I am not sure that ideas accumulate.
That is unless you were saying that death occurs all the time and various junctures.
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