There Is a Base Reality But No One Will Ever Know it
When I say "Base Reality" I do not purpose that there is a definite physical reality in which I exist, I am, instead, pointing more to a thought or an argument. I am incapable of witnessing any sort of base reality but I am not incapable of inferring its existence.
Although I may only work within the confines of my own subjective reality, this does not disprove a base reality that exists outside of my own perceptions. I would say that there must be a base reality for my consciousness to exist within, due to me having not been conscious at one point (unborn) and therefore incapable of creating any reality for myself, and then my becoming conscious and capable of creating my own subjective reality. This process of change took place within some form of reality, whether I am capable of seeing that reality or not. If there were no base reality in which my consciousness could move from non-existence to existence then could it have happened at all?
Even if my consciousness did exist before it was aware of its consciousness, then in what reality did that unconscious mind exist?
Thoughts?
Although I may only work within the confines of my own subjective reality, this does not disprove a base reality that exists outside of my own perceptions. I would say that there must be a base reality for my consciousness to exist within, due to me having not been conscious at one point (unborn) and therefore incapable of creating any reality for myself, and then my becoming conscious and capable of creating my own subjective reality. This process of change took place within some form of reality, whether I am capable of seeing that reality or not. If there were no base reality in which my consciousness could move from non-existence to existence then could it have happened at all?
Even if my consciousness did exist before it was aware of its consciousness, then in what reality did that unconscious mind exist?
Thoughts?
Comments (89)
What do you think? :)
After Wittgenstein, the standard response is that there is nothing you can say about this "base reality". The corollary, that it therefore drops out of any discussion; it is irrelevant.
So back to plain ordinary reality, socks and hands and cups and kettles.
Perhaps it could be argued that the process of change that brought about your subjective reality occurred in another's subjective reality.
This, however, might imply the existence of multiple versions of you seeing as your inception was witness-able subjectively by multiple parties.
This reminds me of Theseus paradox, more specifically, an example given by the philosopher Daniel Gilbert (I think).
If Dan shows Jenny his blue Mazda, and then Jenny is asked if she knows what car Dan owns, and she says "Yes, I know, a blue Mazda". That's one thing.
But consider that 2 weeks goes by, Dan get's in an accident and total's his Mazda.
He then goes out and buys another blue Mazda.
Jenny knows nothing of this, but later, she is asked if she knows what car Dan owns. She says "Yes, I know, he owns a blue Mazda".
The statement "He owns a blue Mazda" is true, but is the statement "Yes, I know" true?
How can Jenny or anyone else know Jenny's psychological state of mind? Why can't knowledge be scientific knowledge learned from a book?
Knowledge can be learned from a book, and with topics that are verifiable, then you can say "I know this" having read it in a book, and it can also be verified that what you know is correct. And in this situation we don't have to deal with any ambiguity in knowledges relationship to truth.
That's different though, to learning about "base reality" in a book (Or at all). As this might be unverifiable as @vanzhandz suggests. So you can still call it knowledge - provided you're comfortable with knowledge being simply "information you are aware of" rather than "information you are aware of that is true".
My comment was made without quote, so for reference, it was in regard to @RogueAI's comment:
Suppose reality is as materialists claim it is. Wouldn't they then have knowledge of "base reality"?
I disagree that its irrelevant. Maybe the overall question ends up to be irrelevant but the line of reasoning can be used to further many arguments. I havent even attempted to use it in that way, yet you assumed that it has no use. I guess because your reading of Wittgenstein told you to? I was looking for feed back on my logic, not the parroting of other peoples ideas.
Thanks for your response Dale.
I would say that even if my own subjective reality is the result of anothers subjective reality, the question still can be asked: In what reality does this other exist, to enable them to them to create my subjective reality?
Ultimately I believe this to be an unanswerable question. There is no limit to this idea of one subjective reality creating another subjective reality. We can go on saying that this subjective reality could be the result of the next subjective reality and that reality the result of the one before that and so on forever. This is is an infinite process.
With that being the case, in what reality does this infinite process of subjective realities creating subjective realities take place? And if the process of infinite creation is what makes up reality as a whole, then cant that infinite process be called the base reality.
Base reality Babyyy.
You know what Banno, I was mean there, sorry. I stand by my previous comment but I get what your saying.
I disagree. In the first instance Jenny was told by Dan that he owned the blue Mazda he showed her. She believed what he told her (likely for good reason), and as luck would have it, her belief happened to be true. But she didn't have enough information to know that he owned the car.
In the second scenario, she continued to believe Dan owned the blue Mazda that he showed her. Now her belief happens (through no fault of her own) to be in error. However through blind luck (and her casual syntax) he happens to own a different blue Mazda, thus her statement is true. Similarly, she still doesn't have enough information to know that he owns the car she was shown, let alone the new car, about which she knows nothing.
I wanna step away from the subjective reality creating subjective reality thing, I think it's a distraction from your topic.
But let's take the idea of infinite regression in a different way.
Consider that we might live in a simulation. The reality that created the simulation could itself be a simulation of a 3rd reality, and so on and so forth. They're all still objective realities (in which we all have our own subjective experiences), but they're still infinite as you describe above.
Now, as you described above, if it is in fact infinite, "can't that infinite process be called the "base reality?"... I think it could, but I think "base reality" is now taking on a slightly skewed meaning to what you described in your original post.
"Infinite regression" is not a dimension, or plane, or space, or artifact (or reality), it is a concept or process. While I [s]don't (typo)[/s] do understand calling it the "Base Reality" if it were the case, I think it's being casual with language. What if I said "We're born, we live, we die, and we never know any more than that... that's the base reality"
To me they are both concepts that (for the purpose of this argument) are true and I can casually use the term base reality and everyone will know what I mean.
But my feeling is that if it were an infinite regression in terms of realities, it would be more linguistically honest to say "There is no base reality".
I feel like you'd probably agree with that aspect, as it's not what you originally intended.
Thoughts?
I think you actually agree with the point of the example.
For this example we merely take the first situation as definitive knowledge for convenience, not because it is, but because it's merely a setup to demonstrate the point with the second situation. (If it helps, you can assume she was there when he purchased it and also there when the salesman was hired and given the license to sell it, and so one and so forth).
By contrast, then, the second situation demonstrates that Jenny doesn't have enough information to know it was still a Blue Mazda, even though she is correct.
That's the starting point, but by extension, as you pointed out, the overall point is that we cannot know anything definitively ever. Thus she doesn't know he owns the car in the first place, even though she thinks she does and she is correct.
It just starts with a flagpole for demonstration purposes.
Given all of that, it's then relevant to ask what we mean by "true" when we say that "Jenny knows something" is true. Or if we can say it at all.
"Philosophy's job is to teach the fly the way out of the fly bottle."
Consider though that, if you could teach a fly that it is a fly, that it is in a fly bottle, and what a fly bottle is, you might be able to help the fly stop flying back into the same fly bottle over and over.
In any event, it seems to me like Wittgenstein's influence on metaphysics has really waned. Scientific realism seems more the default position than his anti-metaphysical stance.
Well, within the context of a philosophical discussion, the meaning of "know" has nothing to do with truth, it refers to understanding and memorizing the content of one's perceptions. Truth, OTOH deals with the relative comparison to a Gold Standard. The selection of the particular Gold Standard is subjective, thus introducing an amount (ranging from large to quantum level) amount of subjectivity to "truth".
In what sense does it differ from Wittgenstein's stance? Does it dispute the "plain ordinary reality" of socks and hands and cups and kettles, as Banno put it, or posit a "base reality" we can't know?
I agree that the term "base reality" is somewhat vague and doesn't really lend itself to the argument I'm making. Overall, I'm looking for a line of reasoning that describes a base or foundation of experience that can then be used moving forward. To me, this argument is not meant to reach a definite conclusion on whether or not there is some sort of foundational reality in which all other realities exist, that question is unanswerable. Thus @Banno pointing out the "irrelevant" nature of the argument because the ultimate goal of this argument is to move past it entirely. Although, I do think that knowing what can and can not be proven is very important when it comes to Ethical arguments, which is where I do most of my work.
Quoting Dale de Silva
This just seems to be another way of expressing the sentiment you were trying to get away from, it doesn't seem any different than the infinite regression of "subjective realities," all that's been changed is the setting. We agree that language is a key part of these arguments, so calling something "objective reality," although it IS a reality that objectively exists in some way, doesn't really change anything about the argument. They would all still be simulated in some sense. But that is nitpick and I don't disagree with what you're saying here.
Quoting Dale de Silva
Yes, if that were the case, I would agree. "Base reality" is just bad terminology on my part. I guess another goal of mine here is to use this argument of a foundational idea of reality to then justify our notions of cause and effect. This is an entirely different argument from the original post, however.
You mean....the socks I put on my feet are real? But the feet aren't, right?
No. But I always took Wittgenstein to be saying that philosophers (and scientists doing philosophy) shouldn't be getting into "what really exists," and what doesn't, in metaphysical terms. This is something you see a lot of today though. Scientific realism seems able to say things like: "fundamental particles don't really exist, they are just mathematical descriptions of standing waves, and it's the mathematical structure that is most real," as that becomes a popular view. I took PI to be sort of warning against this sort of theorizing.
For example, the dam has really seemed to break re people exploring the implications of "parallel universes."
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But that wouldnt stop the fly from remaining trapped in the grammatical fly-bottle of propositional truth statements (this IS a fly, this IS a bottle , the fly is IN the bottle).
Didnt scientific realism precede Wittgenstein? Id like to think that New Materialism and Enactivism are beginning to catch on , at least in the social sciences, and certainly in science studies.( its always a slower process for the natural sciences). Wittgenstein is enormously important to their thinking.
I see. I'm uncertain what his view was of scientific investigation and its results, but think he felt philosophers were misguided in pursuing theories of metaphysics, and therefore reality, and his criticisms related to their method of doing so. In other words, I don't think he believed we can't know whether, e.g., socks are real or that there's something real we can't know, but rather that our use of language can "trick" us into striving to know what's "really real."
He believed language can even trick us into striving to know whats only provisionally real. The point isnt whether we can know whats real. Whenever we use the word real we know what it pertains to. But like all words, there are infinitely many usages, and therefore senses of meaning, of real. So the fundamental truth of the real for Wittgenstein has to do with what we are trying to do with other people when we use the word in any given context.
What you said looks like a complex, hidden, tricky way, of just reviving Descartes I think, therefore I am. If not, what is the difference between what you said and Descartes?
I don't believe that is the consensus among physicists. Such particles exist but a predictive mathematical description of their behavior overrides any sort of ontological speculation. Virtual particles are another issue.
:smile: I think the point is not about liking Descartes or not. The point is that Descartes carried on in this human desire of finding something strong, definitive, finding power. We know that this point of Descartes, like any philosophical point aimed at gaining power, grasping existence, is exposed to criticism. Still, it seems that after centuries this human desire is irresistible to our psichology and our mind carries on devising stratagems to comfort ourselves and think that there is still hope to get some kind of ultimate power, ultimate control, able to finally withstand every possible present and future criticism.
:chin: What exactly are you referring to here?
Angelo where do you think the world came from? Does it exist in your mind?
So you would build another, somewhat larger bottle. As said, before unfortunately getting lost in the infinite and supposing "the fundamental truth of the real for Wittgenstein".
Quoting CiceronianusMore perplexing is whether the sock puppets are real sock puppets.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus If so, then there are standing waves.
Quoting vanzhandz
Then I'd suggest that you reconsider your "I may only work within the confines of my own subjective reality". You are a member of a community, and you learned to divide the world up thus-and-so as a member of that community, and overwhelmingly, you are in agreement with that community. The very fact that you are reading this shows that there is more going on than just your "perceptions".
And if you think not, then solipsism has you and there's no point in your conversing here.
I didn't mean to suggest it is majority opinion. I meant to suggest it is a not unpopular opinion in the scientific community and in philosophy, and that such claims are the type of metaphysics the Investigations seems to advocate against.
Right, but I think Wittgenstein (both versions) has a fundamentally flawed conception of language. Ordinary language is clearly flawed, whereas the later Wittgenstein makes too much of the distinction between language and other elements of experience. We understand language through experience, and have the innate ability to develop linguistic skills due to the same selection effects that shape the rest of our biology. Language isn't unique, nor is there a discrete "language system," as such in the brain. Even specialized areas like Borca and Wernicke's areas work through anatomy that is common to non-hominids.
So, IDK, I'm no Wittenstein specialist, and his style leads to multiple readings anyhow, but it seems to me like he, and those who followed him in the "linguistic turn," make the mistake of making language too distinct, too cut off from the rest of experience. This is roughly analogous to the way in which Kant cuts experience off from reality. Both views hazard against metaphysics because we either aren't in a place to use language to describe it, or we lack experience of what metaphysics takes to be the object of its study.
To my mind, these critiques have two problems:
1. It's actually impossible to avoid doing metaphysics in many areas of inquiry, so such a move is simply impractical.
2. Both moves, which are themselves critical, seem based on assertions that are not taken up critically. For Kant, the offending presupposition is that thought must necessarily be a relation between the mind and external objects, but this can't be assumed. For Wittgenstein's successors*, it is that, because meaning [I]can[/I] be understood in terms of use, language [i]is[/I] use. But this appears to be an artificial truncation of what language does. Language serves uses, but sometimes our meaning is obviously a reference to the external world we share (whatever the nature of this world).
My take would be, why posit the existence of things we are separated from in the first place? We are in the world and of the world. We don't need a bridge to get to the "things in themselves," or a proper language to speak of them, we need to give up the idea entirely. Likewise, for language, there can be things that are "indescribable," but this in no way entails that all phenomena are as such.
*Wittgenstein doesn't go as far with this idea as many who have followed him. He is equivocal in PI when he introduces "meaning as use (43).
But I'm largely split on the later Wittenstein. I think his warning against undue theorizing is a good one. Philosophy of language is a great example of an area where inquiry has been muddled by attempts to reduce language to "just this one thing," for the sake of theorizing. But I also see the value in theorizing in, and in systematicity, if one avoids missing the forest for the trees.
I think Wittgenstein is right that "philosophy can be therapy," but I don't agree that "good philosophy must only try to be therapy." Plus, metaphysics can be its own sort of therapy in that, at the very least, it shows the myriad ways in which thought can comprehend the world, which itself is therapeutic treatment against dogmatism. Moreover, good metaphysics gets at that sense of "wonder" at being that Aristotle describes so well. This is itself, good therapy.
Or there is just the mathematical description of them. There is this amusing passage in "Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized," for example:
The book is interesting to me in that it seems to be an extreme case of trying to exorcise thought and any knower from knowledge, a project I don't think can ever be successful, not least because no one can actually think of natural phenomena in purely mathematical terms.
Sure, why not? And when that gets too small, you build another, larger bottle, or break down the walls between two other bottles. What else are we to do if we don't agree with the conclusion that calling the walls of the bottle a "pseudo problem," will somehow teleport us outside the bottle? If it seems more like refusing to fly and then claiming the problem is solved because we've stopped hitting walls? And if it's bottles all the way down, why posit anything outside of the bottles to begin with?
Wittgenstein's critique of how philosophy errs by trying to mimic the sciences does have merit. However, what is a scientific paradigm if not another metaphysical bottle? They certainly result in pseudo problems that can only be seen as such when another paradigm comes along. And yet, it seems we need paradigms to do science. And yet, we still make progress towards understanding the world, which suggests that the pseudo-problem problem may itself be another pseudo problem (the "pseudo-problem pseudo problem" if you will)
In the same way, my biggest problem with Wittgenstein's critique is that it seems to over generalize about the ways in which philosophy itself over generalizes.
I agree with Lynch. Indeed, philosophy plays a normative role in science itself, e.g. the problem of defining science itself.
https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/of-flies-and-philosophers-wittgenstein-and-philosophy/
That's one opinion of many, and the differing opinions are the point of the example and question posed from it.
The example I described is the Gettier Problem which attempts to point out truths dicey relationship with the definition of knowledge.
The more traditional view (Called the Tripartite theory I believe), is actually that truth is one of the three things necessary for knowledge.
The view you've described (after a quick google), seems to be something closer to Reliabilism, which doesn't tie truth to knowledge, and is more about the processes by which one comes to their belief. But there are others too, or it might be something different.
But all are debatable, which is the point of the Gettier Problem example.
That being said, my comment and example was only in reference to something @RogueAI said, which was a bit of a digression from @vanzhandz initial post regarding utilising inference to consider high level realities.
In particular, Wittgenstein went to some length to point out that language is embedded in our activities, and certainly not "too distinct, too cut off from the rest of experience". And he might well have agreed with you that it is impossible to avoid metaphysics, being what is shown rather than just said. The sense of wonder is at the core of Wittgenstein's thinking.
You might consider that there is more to his ideas.
It doesn't seem to follow logically, deductively. So, what could an argument purporting to show that there can be nothing real that cannot, even in principle, be determined by humans, look like?
You know things that are not true? I don't think so.
What you can be said to know is true. Otherwise, you don't know it. Been that way since at least Theaetetus.
Sure, and that's the part of PI I like best, but this is decidedly not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the way this interpretation of language is then used to criticize metaphysics as an endevour and make large scale metaphilosophical claims.
Example:
PI 114
PI 126
PI 116
Or, to answer Wittgenstein's rhetorical question: "When philosophers use a word"knowledge", "being","object", "I", "proposition", "name"and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home? - Yes, all the time. People talk metaphysics and philosophy all the time, even if they never read any philosophy. Esoterica and ontological musings are about as old as the oldest bits of writing we have, they're in no way extra-ordinary.
I'm not sure I get your meaning here. I have always taken lines like "what we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use," as describing what the enlightened philosopher in agreement with Wittgenstein does to undo the harm wrought by the metaphysicians, doing bad philosophy.
As highly as I think of Wittgenstein, he was just wrong about what can be said about the metaphysical. Language is embedded in reality, and reality is much more expansive, in terms of what we can say, than Wittgenstein realized. Although, as you say, Wittgenstein believed that the mystical was important.
Which bit?
Yep. The things shown, not said.
So you are saying he was wrong here? That there are facts that language cannot latch on to?
But then what grounds could we have for calling such things "facts"?
And here we would be putting a limit on what might be said, but not on what might be shown, or understood.
So I'm not following you here, either.
I would say that the usefulness of a particular statement is not limited by someone else having already made one similar to it. Ultimately I believe there is more value to be found in one's own reasoning towards truth than simply reading the works of someone else and taking their thoughts for granted.
Quoting Angelo Cannata
This is also a very bold assumption. In no way is the idea behind "I think, therefore I am," limited to representing the human pursuit of what you call "power" or some form of excuse to rise above criticism. I would view it more as a stepping stone, a truth that stands alone, that can then be built upon in any which way you desire. Even so, it still would not justify any sort of belief in invalid truths.
I think the main issue with only referencing previous thinkers when responding to an argument is you ultimately limit your understanding of the argument before you. There is an inherent assumption in saying that Descartes' and my argument are the same, an assumption that applies your interpretation of Descartes' words to my words when Descartes's reasoning has absolutely nothing to do with my reasoning. If you truly sought to understand my argument then you wouldn't simply compare it to someone elses. I understand the value of studying past thinkers but when it comes to understanding any one particular argument we should first judge the merit of the argument ourselves before comparing it to the work of others.
You're taking my words out of context to make an assumption about how I interact with the truth of other people. I've literally been trying to find an argument that discounts the relevance of that statement this entire time and I'm pretty sure I didn't even say anything near what you claimed I said.
Quoting Banno
Also, these are some pretty big assumptions you're making about what I believe. You know nothing other than I've made arguments in one specific area of thought and now apparently I'm on the brink of being "trapped" in solipsism.
Your comments are accurate if (and only if) you define truth as one's own personal truth, not a generally accepted truth (which most define it as).
Anyone who has ever made a mistake "knows" they put their car keys in the drawer, only to (in truth) find them in their pants pocket. According to you, the "knowledge" that my keys are in the drawer is true only because it is my personal "truth" (meaning closer to belief or opinion). Most folks feel that knowing the location of my keys is closer to belief and the true location of them is unrelated to what I believe or "know".
You thought you knew, but you were wrong.
This is basic stuff.
Might leave this conversation there. I'm not seeing much benefit in chatting with someone who "knows" things that are not true.
We can't assume that the world exists, because we have no idea of what "exist" means.
What I said is not about any problem because of repeating Descartes. The problem is in being exposed to the same criticism which Descartes was exposed to.
You seem to have forgotten about forgetting. What if your consciousness has existed forever as base reality, yet simply forgotten most of its existence?
I'm confused, how is:
Not related to the idea of an inaccessible base reality? My points were:
A. This response isn't really "standard." Plenty of people though Wittgenstein was simply wrong about his critique of metaphysics and it has continued trucking along since.
B. I am sympathetic to part of what is going on in PI, but not Wittgenstein's arguments against metaphysics, the area of philosophy that deals with critiques of a "inaccessible base reality."
In any event, if you have some radically different view on what Wittgenstein is saying about metaphysics it wouldn't shock me because views of PI have differed quite a bit. It is not a work that is exactly clearly written.
But to give a concrete example of what I'm talking about:
IMO, this PI has a bad habit of throwing out gibberish that it hurts to read and then deciding that, because the gibberish is gibberish, the topic at hand must be. IMO, why sensation is private has a perfectly good if incomplete answer that is fairly mainstream. If we accept that the nervous system is deeply involved in the production of sensation, then the fact that our nervous systems are causally separated from each other in a way that makes them fairly discrete, i.e. human individuals as a sort of "natural kind," explains this fine. No need to claim an area of inquiry stretching back thousands of years has all been gibberish.
And, we can talk about the twins born merged at the head, how the one able to speak claimed he could "feel the thoughts of his brother," disorders such as multiple personality disorder, or the ways in which more social, hive animals interact, suggest that observer's ability to simulate or sense another's sensations exists on a gradient as well. In any event, new information from the empirical sciences offers clarification.
Language is natural; it's like socks and hands and kettles and cups in this respect. It has a causal history like all other natural entities, and it can be empirically studied.In this respect, the "paradox" laid out in PI 201 doesn't seem like a paradox. It seems like looking for underlying general principal of meaning in the wrong place, while also making language out to be suis generis. But you could just as well widen PIs argument to all communications and to animals, and I think doing so shows the cracks in the formalist-type approach to understanding meaning.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think you have it backwards. We dont understand language through experience de, we understand experience through language.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think youre right that some who claim to follow Wittgenstein are carrying forward Kants split between conceptualization and the non-human world. Rorty made this point about the linguistic turn. But Rorty and others would argue that this is not what Witt was doing. Thinkers in physics (Karen Barad), biology(Stuart Kauffman, Lynn Margolis), the social sciences and philosophy extend Witts work on human discourse to the non-human world in order to show that reciprocal interaction within a field or configuration applies not just to human discourse but to the biological and physical worlds in themselves.
Fair enough; I won't deny it seems to go both ways. But it seems like experience is historically prior. Animals had experiences before hominids were around to produce language as such. Babies presumably experience things before they grasp language. A stroke can wipe out our ability to fathom language, but we don't think that by doing so it has caused experience to cease to exist. And so, there should be a logic as to why the things that come before have resulted in what comes after, even if only contingently.
This is perhaps contra Wittgenstein's one mention of animal communications in PI 25.
There is a sense in which this is quite right, language is central to the human experience, and also a way in which it seems off, in that language doesn't seem like it should have sprung fully formed like Athena from Zeus's head. In that way, it is not "as much a part of our natural history as eating or drinking," for in both the lifespan of the individual and the genus eating and drinking come first. They are prerequisites in both the long and short term. A man who stops drinking will soon cease to speak, "dead men tell no tales."
Right, and I think this extension makes sense, regardless of the original intent. Forget the linguistic turn, go all in on a "interactive," "informational," or "relational" turn! It's actually the lack of extension where I think things get dicey. To quote Tim Williamson re whether we should focus on thought like Kant wanted, or focus on language as Wittgenstein seemed to think: "perhaps one cannot reflect on thought or talk about reality without reflecting on reality itself...What there is determines what there is for us to mean." That is, "use" doesn't develop ex nihilo, so there is a wider net to cast. Language and thought can't be absolute barriers to meaningfully discussing being if their form is dependent on the logic of being itself.
Or, to sum up: I find Wittgenstein spot on in arguing against trying to find "an external perspective," through which to view language. I find the "therapeutic Wittgensteinians," go to far is asserting something like "any view about the relation between language and non-language is bound to be nonsense." I can't really decide what the man himself actually thought.
I appreciate where you're coming from. Although, I think there's more value in actually expressing that criticism than just making references to it.
Didn't really sound like you were trying to please me. It was more like you wanted to get a witty little burn to make yourself feel good.
Angelo but isn't our conversation right now proof that the world exists?
Although I'm sure I have forgotten many things when it comes to this argument, I think I've covered that one. I'll quote myself here because I believe it applies to what you're talking about.
Quoting vanzhandz
Quoting chiknsld
One essential criticism about Descartes I think, therefore I am is that we have no idea about what to be or to exist means. The same applies to our conversation as a proof that the world exists, which is almost the same argumentation adopted by Descartes: it cannot be a proof of the existence on the world, because we have no idea of what existence means.
Right, this is where Hegel starts in the Logic. We are to drop all presuppositions and start with what thought minimally is, sheer immediacy, indeterminate being, and see what pops up, if anything, from there.
It's a fascinating project. But holy shit is it hard to get through it.It manages to be denser than the Phenomenology while also being like 1,000 pages long.
You can't argue for [ anything implying ] the impossibility of communication.
Perhaps we should say that certain concepts could use some clarification.
OK, but being is everywhere in our talk. Heidegger, etc.
:up:
You are just repeating my point.
Angelo, it is quite easy to rationalize that we know what is going on, hence our convo. :smile:
So am I. The Wittgenstein you critique is very far from the Wittgenstein with whom I am familiar.
The argument that seems salient to 's OP is that if one can say nothing about the mooted "base reality", then it is irrelevant to our conversations.
Alternately, if we do talk about this "base reality", then it's not the case that we can say nothing about it.
Seems to me that we are left with the socks and books and cups and so on, that participate in our everyday conversations. The mooted noumenon either drops out of consideration or can be replaced by the stuff around us.
Everyone "knows" they have made a mistake AFTER it has been discovered. But ten minutes BEFORE their mistake has been pointed out could be exactly the situation you are referring to. How can you tell the difference?
You aren't ruling it out, you're just saying you don't want to talk about it.
Meanwhile you are talking about it.
If I can jump in, to me the big Hegelian insight against postulating a hidden Base Reality is that anything that's meaningful for us is caught up in our inferences --- the game of justifying our claims and explaining our deeds. If the Base Reality is given no inferentially significant relationship whatsoever to other entities, it's also given no meaning. If, on the other hand, it is caught up in such reason-giving, it's on 'this' side of 'appearance.' [ So we get a continuous immanent flat ontology with no disconnected quasi-mystical disconnected points.]
I think the big Hegelian insight for postulating a hidden bass reality (I just prefer bass to base) is that the world we know is a dismantled cuckoo clock. That's all the intellect can deal with: partial truths.
That being too a partial truth?
Don't get me wrong. I appreciate having a sense of humor about these things. But chess is more fun when one is trying to win, so ontology/metaphysics might be silly in a larger context, but let's play if we're going to play, right ?
I get the feeling you don't know Hegel as well as you think you do. :wink:
Damn. Who peed in your cornflakes?
Once the solid common sense of direct realism is paradoxically violated and we are cast headlong into a world of representation, we end up being forced to admit that more and more of everyday reality, including the scientific image and even time and space itself (!?!), must be 'just representation,' till the represented shrinks to a point without extension, a sign without meaning.
Then, hopefully, we see that representation has vanished with the represented.
Yrs, in much the same way as Antigonish is about a little man who wasn't there.
Quoting plaque flag
, like most folk, agrees with you, but only when someone else is doing the cheap ad homs.
Quoting frank
Something felt more than heard? An interesting metaphor?
Quoting vanzhandz
Like the sustained double low C of Sunrise in Also Sprach Zarathustra, a barely audible 65.4 Hz.
But that is both played and felt, spoken of and created. Again, The mooted noumenon either drops out of consideration or can be replaced by the stuff of the every day.
Well, on the one hand, you thought you knew where your keys were but you were mistaken.
You can only properly be said to "know" something if it is true. Otherwise you allow folk to know things that are false, and our use of "know" becomes inconsistent. Of course, we can muse about such inconsistencies, but only by keeping at hand the clear and consistent use with which they contrast.
It's a bit of basic philosophical grammar. A convention, if you like.
But you didn't rule out the unknown or unknowable reality. You just said that talking about it is useless. Wasn't Wittgenstein saying that even addressing whether there is an unknown reality is language on holiday? Isn't that what getting to the top of the ladder means? Realizing that?
Quoting Banno
I don't how this happened, but everybody on this forum has decided to treat me like shit. What the hell?
Yes. Though that still leaves some wiggle room.
There are things we don't know, yes.
(Odd, this, the entry of realism. Realism is the view that there are true statements that are unknown. Antirealism says that unknowns are neither true nor false. But I'll choose to say that it is either truth that the socks with the guitars printed on them are in the draw, or they are not, and I don't know which, and to reject the antirealist view that the it is neither true nor false)
That's not language on holiday. Antigonish is, though.
Not much more might be involved than a choice of ways of speaking about the unknown.
I'm sure you've addressed the issue of unstated statements and such. I don't remember how you did it though.
Perhaps.
Exactly. You agree that "know" and "true" can only be linked retrospectively (after truth has been verified) or in other words they aren't linked prospectively (my original point).
Thus in Real Life (which is experienced prospectively) , better to decouple any connection between the two concepts.
If you cannot define what "base reality" is, how can you witness it? :smile:
It's like saying "I cannot know or feel how it is being in love, whatever that is". See what I mean?
Right, but that's the very point of disagreement re the noumena generally.
Kant obviously doesn't say "nothing," about the world of bare noumena, he has a very elaborate explanation of it. It's not incoherent. Arguably though, it has become "useless," over time. It ends up not doing any lifting in explaining the world, doesn't appear to be falsifiable, appears to be based on dogma, etc., all the critiques that have been around since he published the First Critique, but which have been more fully explored over time.
I tend to agree with Rorty's critique that "meaningless," and "nonsense," were never good terms for the attack on pre and post Kantian metaphysics vis-á-vis late Wittgenstein's conception of meaning. "Useless," might be appropriate, although even though Rorty recommends this substitute he clearly doesn't think such metaphysics were totally "useless" either, rather, they outgrew their usefulness for philosophy as a whole.
I'd say consciousness depends on being aware of itself and that the idea of consciousness existing but not being aware of itself is oxymoronic.
You might like to consider that for the Perennial philosophy consciousness and reality are (is) the same phenomenon and mind would be emergent. The 'I Am' of consciousness would be fundamental, but this would not be 'your' consciousness or mine but the global phenomenon in which we all share. This is the consciousness that is referred to when it is said that if we can transcend our egoic 'me' and 'my world' consciousness then we may 'partake of the perpetual'. These ideas complicate the issues or simplify them, depending on one's pov. . . . .