Language of philosophy. The problem of understanding being

"Is" lends stability to being...............................The verb "to be" in Russian behaves differently than in Western European languages.................the emphasis is on change, becoming.

Language shapes philosophy.

Moreover, the very linguistic distinction between the words "exist" and "to be" (in the sense of "?????????????"), "existence" and "being" points to a deeper conceptual cleavage. These words are not synonymous: language captures a distinction that remains, for now, unobvious. In further sections, we will endeavor to philosophically clarify whether this distinction is truly rooted in ontology or if it is merely a grammatical intuition.

The verb "to be" in Russian behaves differently than in Western European languages. In the future tense, we say: "?? ????? ??????" (He will treat) or "?? ????? ????????" (He will be a doctor)—the emphasis is on change, becoming. In the past: "?? ?????" (He treated, where "to be" is replaced by a suffix) or "?? ??? ????????" (He was a doctor, indicating something no longer current). Similar features are noticeable in Ukrainian and Belarusian. However, in West Slavic languages like Polish (Jan jest lekarzem) or Bulgarian (??? ? ?????), the obligatory copula "jest" or "e" returns, approaching the Western European model. Why this occurs is a question for separate research, but it hints at cultural and linguistic differences that generally influence one's worldview. The verb "to be" in Russian is not a frozen snapshot of a state, but a process, movement, becoming.

Western philosophy, from Parmenides to Heidegger, sought the essence of being—eternity, phenomenon, givenness—relying on the formula "Being — is," rooted in a language where "is" fixes being. Even the understanding of God—from Kant's highest being to Heidegger's mystery of being—followed this logic

We will strive to move beyond focusing on "presence" and instead consider reality as a network of processes. Being, in our view, becomes through the establishment of boundaries, through the interaction of presence and change. The question "Being — is. How?" is replaced by another: "Being — becomes. How does it become?"

“one in which the connectivity and interrelatedness of the components give rise to global processes that subsume the components so that they are no longer clearly separable. In such a system, the distinction between preexisting parts and supervening whole becomes problematic. Not only does the whole emerge from the components, but also the components emerge from the whole.” “ Dynamic co-emergence means that part and whole co-emerge and mutually specify each other.”

The point is, as with Saint Augustine's "inner word," participation in Logos. Yet I'd hesitate to call this static. In a way it has to be most alive, lacking nothing. For Augustine and later thinkers in his tradition, it couldn't be a being, or even, univocally, "being," but was "beyond being" (or being/becoming). Dionysius says something on this to the effect of "It is false to say that God exists, but also false to say that God does not exist. But of the two, it is more false to say that God does not exist."

Can there be certainty without stasis?

Can there be change without stasis? Aren't they two sides of the same coin?

?Joshs
Einstein said all motion is relative to a chosen frame of reference. You declare a point to be unchanging at the same time you perceive change.

It's not that everything is changing before you declare a frame of reference. There simply is no change without stasis.

hat is a good summary of what we get from Einstein. Do you want to treat physics as the ground floor of your understanding of the world,

like me, see Einstein’s thinking as the expression of an era of philosophy which has since been surpassed

More precisely, there can be difference without a prior identity. So how does that work?

How could there be difference unless some difference is identified? Identity and difference co-arise?you can't have one without the other.

?Joshs How can you say there is difference if it is not identified? How is it possible to think difference without thinking (identifying) the things which differ?

Philosophy deals not with an object, but with its concept. And since philosophy speaks about the world ..

The logic of thinking difference involves things which are identified as being different. I don't see how you can escape that.

a static being is like the Buddha in stillness.

although the Buddha said there is nothing not subject to change

No aspect of the assemblage remains unchanged by the changes that occur in any part of it. There can be consistencies and patterns, but these are not static in the sense of being able to locate some static center around which the pattern is organized and which give it its sense.

Can there be change without stasis? Aren't they two sides of the same coin?

How could there be difference unless some difference is identified? Identity and difference co-arise?you can't have one without the other.

Thinking isn’t in the business of thinking ‘things’ (identities) that differ, but of producing differences that relate to other differences.

Don’t you mean perceived, rather than identified.
To be perceived, something merely needs to be witnessed, this does not require identification.

We are fellow travellers, rather than fellow fixed states.

That seems about right to me. But I would have to add that change and stasis are relative. Heraclitus' river has constantly changing water relative to the bed and banks. But the water itself, not to mention other factors, cause the bed and banks to change constantly relative to the landscape it flows through.

By the same token, it is not true that the whole universe is in motion, waiting for us to pick a frame of reference.

There's no truth of the matter about which one is in motion. It's a matter of choice.

For a universe that consists of a single body, there is no way to differentiate rest and motion. (There's nowhere for an observer to observe from.)

Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271:The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers.

Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe.

So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'.

But once the choice is made, there is a truth. That's the point of the choice.

Philosophy deals not with an object, but with its concept.

Being does not demand confirmation; it simply is present.

"Mountain exists." "???" (bar) is not "is" in the sense of being; "???" is "that which exists"—a fact proven by presence. "??? ???" means "The mountain is present."

In Russian, being is present without fixation; in Kazakh, it becomes through a process ("????"); and in Chinese, it manifests as a temporary presence (?) or the potential of emptiness (?), integrated into the flow of Dao

If Western languages prompt us to ask what a table is, Chinese emphasizes its use (?, yòng)—its role in a specific situation.

The Western tradition, relying on the copula "is," built an ontology of presence, in which the question of being became a question of its essence.

Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271:The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth.

there is no way to differentiate rest and motion. (There's nowhere for an observer to observe from.)

Isn't it making the same point? Anyway, it's a digression, let's leave it.

Western philosophy, from Parmenides to Heidegger, sought the essence of being—eternity, phenomenon, givenness—relying on the formula "Being — is," rooted in a language where "is" fixes being. Even the understanding of God—from Kant's highest being to Heidegger's mystery of being—followed this logic.

Aristotle sometimes gets lumped in as a key purveyor of "static being" or "substance metaphysics," but, were I forced to lump him into either category, I'd probably place him on the "process metaphysics" side. Hegel would be another example.

The absence of the copula "is" makes the question "What is being?" alien.

The Russian language disrupts this logic. In the present tense, the copula "????" (is) is not obligatory: "?????? ???????" (Socrates philosopher), "?? ??????" (He doctor), "? ???????" (I student). Being does not demand confirmation; it simply is present.

which points to the world as a flow where everything is born and transforms.

In further sections, we will endeavor to philosophically clarify whether this distinction is truly rooted in ontology or if it is merely a grammatical intuition.

stemming from the Problem of the One and the Many.

Being, in our view, becomes through the establishment of boundaries, through the interaction of presence and change. The question "Being — is. How?" is replaced by another: "Being — becomes. How does it become?"

Can there be certainty without stasis?

Kant realized that Hume’s world of pure, unique impressions couldn’t exist. This is because the minimal requirement for experiencing anything is not to be so absorbed in the present that one is lost in it. What Hume had claimed— that when exploring his feeling of selfhood, he always landed “on some particular perception or other” but could never catch himself “at any time without a percepton, and never can observe anything but the perception”— was simply not true.33 Because for Hume to even report this feeling he had to perceive something in addition to the immediate perceptions, namely, the very flow of time that allowed them to be distinct in the first place. And to recognize time passing is necessarily to recognize that you are embedded in the perception.

Hence what Kant wrote in his answer to Hamann, ten years in the making. To recollect perfectly eradicates the recollection, just as to perceive perfectly eradicates the perception. For the one who recalls or perceives must recognize him or herself along with the memory or perception for the memory or impression to exist at all. If everything we learn about the world flows directly into us from utterly distinct bits of code, as the rationalists thought, or if everything we learn remains nothing but subjective, unconnected impressions, as Hume believed— it comes down to exactly the same thing. With no self to distinguish itself, no self to bridge two disparate moments in space-time, there is simply no one there to feel irritated at the inadequacy of “dog.” No experience whatsoever is possible.

Here is how Kant put it in his Critique of Pure Reason. Whatever we think or perceive can register as a thought or perception only if it causes a change in us, a “modification of the mind.” But these changes would not register at all if we did not connect them across time, “for as contained in one moment no representation can ever be anything other than absolute unity.”34 As contained in one moment. Think of experiencing a flow of events as a bit like watching a film. For something to be happening at all, the viewer makes a connection between each frame of the film, spanning the small differences so as to create the experience of movement. But if there is a completely new viewer for every frame, with no relation at all to the prior or subsequent frame, then all that remains is an absolute unity. But such a unity, which is exactly what Funes and Shereshevsky and Hume claimed they could experience, utterly negates perceiving anything at all, since all perception requires bridging impressions over time. In other words, it requires exactly what a truly perfect memory, a truly perfect perception, or a truly perfect observation absolutely denies: overlooking minor differences enough to be a self, a unity spanning distinct moments in time.

"The Rigor of Angels: Kant, Heisenberg, Borges, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality."

Think of experiencing a flow of events as a bit like watching a film. For something to be happening at all, the viewer makes a connection between each frame of the film, spanning the small differences so as to create the experience of movement. But if there is a completely new viewer for every frame, with no relation at all to the prior or subsequent frame, then all that remains is an absolute unity.

But information theory deals with "what something is," and not "that it is," essence but not existence. It skips the former. We can see this in the fact that a perfect set of instructions to duplicate any physical system would not, in fact, be that system. A perfect duplicator, call it Leplace's Printer, needs both instructions and prior existent materials

If stasis precludes life?

Here is how Kant put it in his Critique of Pure Reason. Whatever we think or perceive can register as a thought or perception only if it causes a change in us, a “modification of the mind.” But these changes would not register at all if we did not connect them across time, “for as contained in one moment no representation can ever be anything other than absolute unity.”34

Sheer change and difference wouldn't really be "change." If one thing is completely discrete from another, if there is no linkage or similarity and relation, then, rather than becoming, you just have sui generis, unrelated things (perhaps popping in and out of existence?). This isn't becoming, but rather a strobe light of unrelated beings. So, leaving aside the difficulty that the past seems to dictate the future, that things seem to have causes, or the difficulties with contingent being "just happening, for no reason at all," it seems hard for me to see how there could be any sort of "sheer becoming."

It's a good question. Freedom and power were traditionally understood in terms of actuality, potency itself being nothing, and so inherently most static in that it is wholly incapable of moving itself. There is often a reversal here though. Potency becomes least static, freedom becomes the potential to do or be anything. Yet this only makes sense if potency is in some way actual, if it can spontaneously actualize itself, e.g., explanations of our contingent reality as simply 'brute face,' or of reality as primarily, of fundamentally will, a sort of sheer willing.

If you don't identify the object you perceive, how do you know what you have witnessed?

Don’t you mean perceived, rather than identified.
To be perceived, something merely needs to be witnessed, this does not require identification.
— Punshhh
If you don't identify the object you perceive, how do you know what you have witnessed?

So something is witnessed before the mind then processes the sensory information.

We “identify” based on the criteria (even habitual, unaware) of a specific shared practice (the kind of object), which is different than vision, the biological mechanism. Identification also having to do with which aspect, what you are looking at (on the object) as evidence, and the other criteria for identification (perhaps particular to this kind/type of object), not to mention how “seeing/perceiving” itself works (not immediately, wholey), instead involving focus (where we are looking), that we are usually telling someone else what we see, etc.

object? “To be perceived, something merely needs to be witnessed.”

For Deleuze it is in the nature of differences that they always produce themselves within and as assemblages, collectives. The relative stability of these multiplicities does not oppose itself to change but evinces continual change within itself that remakes the whole in such a way that the whole remains consistent without ever being self-identical.

Don’t you mean perceived, rather than identified.
To be perceived, something merely needs to be witnessed, this does not require identification.

That also seems about right to me. The thing is, though, that identifying a difference is a rather different exercise from identifying an object.

I can see how one might want to say that. But "different" is a relation, so it requires two objects to be compared. Of course, from another perspective, those objects might be dissolved into a bundle of differences, which then require a range of other objects to establish themselves.

I think there is some ambiguity around the word perceived. (Which I realised after posting) I was thinking of it meaning something is noticed, but not identified.

I think there is some ambiguity around the word perceived.

I was thinking of it meaning something is noticed,

In the example I gave the person witnessing the inconceivable is taken out of themselves,

To be perceived is to stand out as a gestalt. To stand out as a gestalt is to be identified, although not necessarily in a linguistically self-reflective sense, since non-linguistically enabled animals are obviously capable of identifying the things that matter to them in their environments.

But if there is nothing fixed, how do we know that we are travelling? Or rather, how do we tell the difference between our travelling and the rest of the world travelling?

We “identify” based on the criteria (even habitual, unaware) of a specific shared practice (the kind of object), which is different than vision, the biological mechanism.

But isn’t the whole idea of witnessing that it is without an object? “To be perceived, something merely needs to be witnessed.” Punshhh But we are not witnessing “something” (even less, some “thing”), and thus not even proceeding to “perceiving”, in terms of “seeing”, and so, far from identifying, ....

Acts 9:3–9:As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"
"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked.
"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."
The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Paul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

The existence of such distinctions in the Italian language suggests that it is natural for humans to feel both a certain sense of the processuality of being and its static nature.

"Is" lends stability to being: Socrates is not merely a philosopher; he is a philosopher, as if fixed in reality.

What this means is that "is a philosopher" has changed from being an essence of Parmenides to being a description.

Being born in Elea, Magna Graecia is not a necessary truth of Parmenides but a contingent truth. Parmenides could have been born in Constantinople, he may not have written the poem dactylic hexameter and he may have been a statesman rather than a philosopher

In the expression, "Parmenides is a philosopher", the copula "is" is not establishing "philosopher" as a fixed and static essence of Parmenides, but rather describing a contingent rather than necessary truth.

Philosopher isn't metaphysically necessary to Parmenides

So I can turn philosopher into an essential feature by way of my intention.

If I refer to Parmenides, the philosopher, then my reference will only pick out people who are philosophers. Parmenides, the philosopher is a philosopher in all possible worlds in which that object exists.

I agree that Parmenides, the philosopher is a philosopher in all possible worlds where Parmenides is a philosopher.

I think you have to pay attention to context to discern what properties are essential.

But sometimes we [identify things], as one might say, unconsciously or unaware of the process. In these cases, it is a bit of a moot point whether we should really say "we" identify the specimen. It certainly isn't under our control, in the way that it is when we consciously identify something.

You seem to be thinking of witnessing as a preliminary step to the processes involved in perception

Having said all that, there is a paradox inherent in the idea that perceiving something as the result of a process. How do we conceive of the first step in the process?

The Italians and Spanish in their use of "being" are able to distinguish between, as you say, a fundamental characteristic of a person's identity (Latin esse) and a person's temporary, transient mood (Latin stare).

And even when Joshs spoke about Heidegger, who, as he correctly noted, grounded "is" in the event of "unfolding," this was, in essence, an effort to find that very first principle, that "root" of our being.

When Joshs and frank debated whether change is possible without rest, I saw a fascinating, yet ultimately still an attempt to reduce the dynamic of "becoming" to two fundamental, "substantial" categories—rest and change. This is the search for the basic elements that constitute being

“In accordance with metaphysics, all beings, changeable and moved, mobile and mobilized, are represented from the perspective of a "being that is at rest," and this even where, as in Hegel and Nietzsche, "being" (the actuality of the actual) is thought as pure becoming and absolute movement.” (Heidegger 1998c)

“In asking after what happens, we have in mind a being, even when we name it a “becoming” and attend only to its arising, approaching and decaying.” “This passing away is conceived more precisely as the successive flowing away of the "now" out of the "not yet now" into the "no longer now."… Time persists, consists in passing. It is, in that it constantly is not. This is the representational idea of time that characterizes the concept of time which is standard throughout the metaphysics of the West...”(Heidegger 1968)

And even when Joshs spoke about Heidegger, who, as he correctly noted, grounded "is" in the event of "unfolding," this was, in essence, an effort to find that very first principle, that "root" of our being.

if we consider what is happening in modern ontology (Object-Oriented Ontology or correlationism) and science (the constant refinement of AI, which is increasingly used as a weapon rather than a friend and assistant, and which is developing at an incredible speed), a doubt arises: is this train heading in the right direction, or is it a direction where there will be no room for the subject?

I don’t know of any philosopher who advocates becoming as ‘sheer’ change devoid of relationality. For Deleuze it is in the nature of differences that they always produce themselves within and as assemblages, collectives. The relative stability of these multiplicities does not oppose itself to change but evinces continual change within itself that remakes the whole in such a way that the whole remains consistent without ever being self-identical.

Exactly, which requires sameness and identity. Hence, the principles being equal (or even co-constituting, at least in the order of conception), or even three: actuality, potency, and privation.

"imperceptible difference. This exit from the identical into the same remains very slight, weighs nothing itself...(Derrida 1978)". “It is not necessary to imagine the death of the sender or of the receiver, to put the shopping list in one's pocket, or even to raise the pen above the paper in order to interrupt oneself for a moment. The break intervenes from the moment that there is a mark, at once. It is iterability itself, ..passing between the re- of the repeated and the re- of the repeating, traversing and transforming repetition.” (Derrida 1988). “Pure repetition, were it to change neither thing nor sign, carries with it an unlimited power of perversion and subversion.” (Derrida 1978)

“The same never coincides with the equal, not even in the empty indifferent oneness of what is merely identical...The same…is the belonging together of what differs, through a gathering by way of the difference. We can only say "the same" if we think difference.”

Let’s talk about identity. What is the role of time for you in the determination of identity? In my way of thinking, identity requires temporal repetition. The first time, the emergence into unconcealment of something, is a difference. To emerge is to address a past within the moment of appearance. Think of a line or hinge. It subsists in a contrast, a before and after, an outside and inside, a then and a now. This is one moment of time. Wouldn’t there have to be a second moment in which that which emerges as a divide or hinge reproduces itself as itself? A=A implies temporal repetition,.

I spoke about as a general property of philosophical discourse, where even attempts to talk about becoming remain within the framework of the substantialist habit.

I wonder if this is similar to Wittgenstein’s seeing someone as something, seeing them as an “aspect”.

Western philosophy, from Parmenides to Heidegger, sought the essence of being—eternity, phenomenon, givenness—relying on the formula "Being — is," rooted in a language where "is" fixes being

Wittgenstein emphasized the ambiguity of the verb “to be”. He denied there was such a thing as identity, reasoning that i) to say two things are identical is nonsense and ii) to say one thing is identical with itself is to say nothing.

Frege distinguished different meanings of “is”.
1) Identity – Bachelors are unmarried – have the same meaning
2) Copula – Plato was Greek – one characteristic of the subject
3) Existence - There are cats – some things exist
4) Generic class - A horse is a four-legged animal – several characteristics of the subject

I think you're saying phenomenology is a kind of fraud. I think it is in some cases, but ontology is an empty building in my mind. Nobody lives there, and it's fairly important to me that it stay that way.

It may be argued that the words used in language are more metaphorical than they are literal, if you get my drift, and it is the nature of the metaphor that there is no essence, statis or fixity of meaning.

I understand your idea, but I am talking about the need for fixation in being in Western languages, which, as I assume, is reflected in the very feeling of the world: Something is possible only when it is fixed.

For many of us, life seems to progress smoothly and predictably for much of the time. Indeed, it seems one of our biggest concerns appears to be getting stuck in a rut. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, our world is turned upside down. A global pandemic strikes us down, killing millions of people and forcing entire countries into lockdown. Then inflation takes off and economic downturn threatens our livelihoods. And (not unrelated) one country invades another and the resulting war affects us all. Whoa! Where on Earth did all that come from?

Silent comrade of the distances,
Know that space dilates with your own breath;
ring out, as a bell into the Earth
from the dark rafters of its own high place –

then watch what feeds on you grow strong again.
Learn the transformations through and through:
what in your life has most tormented you?
If the water’s sour, turn it into wine.

Our senses cannot fathom this night, so
be the meaning of their strange encounter;
at their crossing, be the radiant centre.

And should the world itself forget your name
say this to the still earth: I flow.
Say this to the quick stream: I am.

Let’s talk about identity. What is the role of time for you in the determination of identity? In my way of thinking, identity requires temporal repetition.

I don't think it makes sense to talk about time in the first place unless something is already the same across the sequence. If there isn't already sameness, you just have wholly discrete being(s). The very ability to notice difference, for it to be conceptually present, requires that there also be sameness.

If we stop fixating on essence and separate the concepts of sushchee (existent) and bytie (being), we can arrive at some interesting conclusions. The very notions of bytie and sushchee in Russian are something different. To exist (sushchestvovat’) simply means to be in a state where your attributes do not change by your own will (a stone lying on the ground, a tree growing according to its program, or an AI operating by an algorithm). To be (byt’) is something more than mere existence. It's roughly what happens when something can change its attributes at its own discretion (a prime example is a human, but not necessarily only them).

Western philosophy after Hegel shifted its attention away from unchanging foundations and towards a discourse of evolution, revolution and becoming in which foundations become relative, contingent and impermanent

?Joshs Brook Ziporyn. And it's not just nostalgia. Indra's Net is hardly a primitive ontology.

Hegel's roots were Neoplatonic, which is the philosophy Christianity is built on. Maybe he was instrumental in bringing it back to the academic scene, but it had been around for centuries.

I may be mistaken, but I dont think Christian neoplatonists were big on revolution.

Hegel radically historicized the platonic absolute.

One has to examine
what this means in practice in the way a culture conducts itself, treats expressions of otherness i. one’s family and community, avoids war and other violent acts which define the boundaries of ‘interconnectedness’.

I know of two cultures which have been claimed as thinking radically differently about being, presence and purpose in comparison with Western approaches. Heidegger singled out pre-Socratic thinkers like Heraclitus and Parmenides as understanding becoming in a fundamental way that was derailed when Socrates, Plato and Aristotle shifted the focus on beings and truth as correctness, and Western thinking has followed suite ever since. It didnt matter to Heidegger whether a language like Russian was missing the present tense copula or not. What mattered was what kind of philosophical and religious literature was produced within those languages without the copula. If the simple absence of the copula in a language predisposes their culture toward modes of thought which avoid the trap of fixing becoming into being, where is the evidence of this in their philosophical writings?

Russian philosophy, developing from the 18th century, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, differs from Western philosophy in its emphasis on spirituality, existential questions, and a holistic perception of being.

Their approach to philosophy is more reflexive as they try to understand human behaviour by using social science. They do not believe that scientific models that dissect, analyse, and explain ideas provide a comprehensive answer. Instead, they look at things from a humanistic perspective, thus investigating the context and history of a subject matter to draw a conclusion.

As the article Analytic and Continental Philosophy: 4 Key Differences writes

I agree "is" does not seem to distract from the "what", which is more pure. Whatness. Without distraction. Simply present. Letting the being continue breathing and not packing into a stagnant what through sentence structure.

Again, very interesting, congratulations. Of course this is to just tease the meat of the findings, but I find the research/evidence does allow for an astounding perspective, particularly how the classic philosophical framework is seemingly baked into the language.

From the Eastern perspective, continental philosophy looks quite analytical. If you cover the entire Eurasian continent and pave the way from India to Great Britain, you get a spectrum from hot and sensual to cold and analytical.

When you talked about shifting foundations, I thought you were talking about dialectics. Becoming analyses out to Being and Non-Being, and that brings us to Heidegger's What is Metaphysics, one of my favorites. :grin:

Do you think we can discover something new by changing the perspective in this way?

From the Eastern perspective, continental philosophy looks quite analytical.

But there is no normal way to talk about “being” qua being. When we talk normally, and make our topic “being”, we impose things in the topic that obfuscate and cover up what we are trying to say.

My hypothesis focuses on the ontological perception shaped by language and not on the epistemological perception of reality.

Direct realism (tables exist independently) and indirect realism (tables in consciousness) concern epistemology - how we know the world

and not the ontology of processuality (being as flow) or substantialism (being as essence).

That is, saying that considering the expression "Socrates is a philosopher" implies not only a concrete existence ("from Athens"), but also an abstract process ("seeks wisdom"), you remain within substantialism.

How can you arrive at an ontological belief without first going through an epistemological process?

No, I was specifically responding to Punshhh’s bringing up the sense of mystical witnessing; I believe you’re thinking of the other use, like being a witness to a murder. There is the religious sense also of “bearing witness”, which, even if you couldn’t testify like at trial about the murder, Job and Arjuna could, as it is in this sense, be the testimony of having “felt” or “witnessed” “the power of” God.

I am thinking of perceiving in its sense of regarding something in a way (like a person as pitiable), or becoming aware of a new aspect of it,

I recognize that "seeing as aspect" is inherent in perception. What's bothering me is that as aspect is always an aspect of something. Wittgenstein's presentation of this seems to me to obscure that point. The duck-rabbit can be seen in two ways. But there is a third way, which is neutral between those intepretations and allows us to say that those two interpretations are interpretations of the same picture. I mean the description of the picture as a collection of marks on paper

Heidegger would reject the framing of the question, because it presupposes a priority of epistemology over ontology.

I exist within my own reality, whatever that reality is. It is logically impossible to discover what exists outside my own reality using knowledge that is part of my own reality.

Perhaps this is "Dasein".

This means that I am limited to thinking about the ontology of my own reality, and the process of thinking about my own reality is epistemological.

I am indeed thinking about standard or normal use. It's use in the context of divine revelations may be different,

Ezekiel 10; Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. 11 Such were their faces. They each had two wings spreading out upward, each wing touching that of the creature on either side; and each had two other wings covering its body. 12 Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. 13 The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. 14 The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning.

15 As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. 16 This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like topaz, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. 17 As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not change direction as the creatures went. 18 Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.

For Heidegger the ontological is something like a condition of possibility, but it is not transcendental in Kant’s sense. Think of it as a stance or perspective, the Being of a being in terms of its way of being, not what a being ‘is’ but how it is. These stances do not precede the existence of the world, they are what it means to exist. To exist is to open up a stance.

I exist within my own reality, whatever that reality is. It is logically impossible to discover what exists outside my own reality using knowledge that is part of my own reality.

Then, in this case, when I am thinking about my own reality, which comes first, epistemology or ontology.

It is logically impossible to discover what exists outside my own reality using knowledge that is part of my own reality

If I see the colour red, is it possible for me to directly see the cause of my seeing the colour red.

If I don't know something, is it possible for me to decide to search for it.

If there is another reality outside my own reality, can I ever discover it.

I exist within my own reality, whatever that reality is. It is logically impossible to discover what exists outside my own reality using knowledge that is part of my own reality.

to think of an object not as a completed entity, but as a process.

It is dynamic and eventful.

seeing as aspect" is inherent in perception. …The duck-rabbit can be seen in two ways. But there is a third way, which is neutral between those intepretations and allows us to say that those two interpretations are interpretations of the same picture. I mean the description of the picture as a collection of marks on paper.

Incidentally I might mention that 'substance' in philosophy is more properly 'substantia', 'the bearer of predicates', than 'substance' 'a material with uniform properties'. The philosophical term 'substance' is actually a different word than the English 'substance'. Of course this is common knowledge to students of philosophy but it doesn't hurt to repeat it from time to time.

Your "own reality" is not reality itself, but your idea of it...We invent tools to expand the boundaries of the senses

?Astorre The Latin 'substantia' was used as the translation for the Greek 'ouisia'. But 'ouisia' is a form of the Greek verb 'to be', which has very different implications than what 'substance' conveys. See this heading. It is directly connected to the OP in my opinion.

Mary knows that in the future she will know new things, even though she doesn't know what these new things will be.

In fact, no one can know if there is reality itself of which one's own reality is just a part.

. According to the main idea of my work, language itself - through grammatical structure and, in particular, the copula - inclines us to such fixation.

Let's take phenomenology, returning to the things themselves as they are given. The method is good, but it essentially records the world in new frames.. Phenomenology allows us to clear our judgments from previous experience. Cleared. And again took a picture.

Certainly the world that is in being for me, the world about which I have always had ideas and spoken about meaningfully, has meaning and is accepted as valid by me because of my own apperceptive performances because of these experiences that run their course and are combined precisely in those performances—as well as other functions of consciousness, such as thinking. But is it not a piece of foolishness to suppose that world has being because of some performance of mine? Clearly, I must make my formulation more precise. In my Ego there is formed, from out of the proper sources of transcendental passivity and activity, my “representation of the world, ” my “picture of the world, ” whereas outside of me, naturally enough, there is the world itself. But is this really a good way of putting it? Does this talk about outer and inner, if it makes any sense at all, receive its meaning from anywhere else than from my formation and my preservation of meaning? Should I forget that the totality of everything that I can ever think of as in being resides within the universal realm of consciousness, within my realm, that of the Ego, and indeed within what is for me real or possible?” (Husserl, Phenomenology and Anthropology

In fact, no one can know if there is reality itself of which one's own reality is just a part.

The world is not a picture, ok. But how then to know it? What do you think about this?

Also some can seek guidance, some can develop wisdom, some can learn to interpret ancient teachings and mythologies and gain insight.

We understand ‘same picture’ by seeing it as ‘same picture’. Or as you put it, by seeing something as ‘marks on paper’. The notion of marks on paper is no less in need of interpretation than seeing something as a duck or a rabbit. There is pre-interpretive, pre-conceptual perception.

The reason I mention this is that in mysticism there is the idea that there are experiences in which the mind, or normal mental processing involved in the experience, is superseded by the body, or something approximating the soul. Indeed there are whole areas of practice seeking to do this.

I’m not sure we would say that seeing the picture as marks on a page is an aspect of it (as it is so generally an aspect of any drawing), or maybe it is, as our becoming aware of the truth of it, the trick of it, both together as you say. Also, I would think that sometimes a rose is just a rose. In other words, I’m not sure seeing a chair, even recognizing or identifying a chair, would count as perceiving an aspect of it; as if each time we regard it as a chair.

I’m not sure whether Astorre’s pointing out that some countries are just recognizing a thing’s presence is just as mundane as this, but, in contrast to equating a thing with something specific (with “is”), the difference in perspective at least highlights the occurrence of something surprising us (perhaps our letting a thing surprise us).

Going one stage further, the person viewing the picture is also a standing wave, so something in the movement of the observer and the movement of what they are seeing provides enough stability, is still enough for the experience to seem to be substantial and static in some ways.

There is pre-interpretive, pre-conceptual perception.
— Joshs
I agree entirely, apart from the last sentence.

Damn it. I meant to write ‘ there is NO pre-interpretive, pre-conceptual perception’.

Someone told me Russian speech pervasively pictures properties as external things, impinging on the subject, where in German, the speaker owns the properties, so instead of the cold is upon me, it's I have cold. Do you think that influences the respective philosophies? Germanic languages conjure a huge inner landscape.

Your chair, of course, is not a picture. One might point out that it is difficult to interpret it as anything else, so that case is different. As against that, who knows what puzzle pictures of a chair might be created? There is a not dissimilar issue, however, and that is the description under which we recognize it. It is a chair, but it is also furniture, carpentry, wood, a luxury and so forth.

Mir ist kalt," which translates to "Me is cold," where "me" is the dativ case, as in "Give ME the book." This is far closer to "cold is upon me" than "I have cold."

My understanding is that in English this dativ form only remains to point out (identify) the (indirect) object, such as “I gave them flowers”, but nowadays in English we would normally say “I gave flowers to them”.

At this moment in time I only know the reality that I exist within at this moment in time. I cannot know anything outside this reality because I cannot know what I don't know.

Do you think we can discover something new by changing the perspective in this way?

The reason I mention this is that in mysticism there is the idea that there are experiences in which the mind, or normal mental processing involved in the experience, is superseded by the body, or something approximating the soul. Indeed there are whole areas of practice seeking to do this.”
— Punshhh
There certainly are. What's more there are many reports of such events taking place. But are they veridical? By which I mean, not merely are they in fact accurate reports? Are they, perhaps retrospective, even filtered through the expectations of those practicing the practice? Many times, even if you take the reports at face value, they don't look as if they are necessarily veridical, but have quite different aims.

I really like your examples. I shall add them to my collection of stereotype or generalization busters. But extending that model to people, IMO, doesn't help much. I can take on board that people are not just fixed objects, like rocks, but are also a collection of processes, in constant change. So are many of the things that we see. But the phenomenon of a standing wave is very different from the brain waves that you may be thinking of. For one thing, they don't create the same kind of illusions.

Incidentally I might mention that 'substance' in philosophy is more properly 'substantia', 'the bearer of predicates', than 'substance' 'a material with uniform properties'. The philosophical term 'substance' is actually a different word than the everyday English word 'substance'. Of course this is common knowledge to students of philosophy but it doesn't hurt to repeat it from time to time.

That for example, if an alien were to arrive and tell us how things are, to give us the full explanation of existence in a manual.

[Parmenides] initial thesis, that the path of truth, conviction, and knowledge is the path of "what is" or "that it is" (hos esti) can then be understood as a claim that knowledge, true belief, and true statements, are all inseperably linked to "what is so" - - not merely to what exists, but what is the case (emphasis in original).

Finally, this conceptual divergence was definitively cemented in early Christian theology

Then there's the added confusion around the word 'substance'. As you might know, 'substance' in philosophy means something quite different from 'substance' in everyday use. The philosophical term originated with the Latin translation of Aristotle's 'ouisia', which is much nearer in meaning to 'being' than to our word 'substance'. Essentially, for Aristotle, substance is the underlying reality that persists through change. A substance is a combination of matter (the potential to be something) and form (the actual, defining essence of that thing).The translation was actually 'substantia', meaning, that of which attributes can be predicated.

So the upshot of all of this, was that Western culture adopted this rather oxymoronic conception of 'spiritual substance' or 'thinking substance'. Whereas, the ability to manipulate analyse and exploit material substance, the main occupation of science and engineering, proceeded brilliantly. So when modern people talk about 'dualism', it is usually something like Cartesian dualism that they have in mind, even if they don't know any details of how that originated or really what it means, And besides, they will say, the idea of 'thinking substance', which they will equate with 'soul', is an outmoded concept. Everyone knows, they will say, that mind is what the brain does, the credo of scientific materialism.

In my view, this conceptual shift had profound consequences for the entirety of Western philosophy. Instead of exploring being itself as an event or process, metaphysics became preoccupied with the search for a static, indivisible “substance”—an unchanging foundation of reality.

If you reconsider the foundation on which everything is built, won't it change the superstructure?

Before talking about the dynamics of concepts, I’d like to clarify: what exactly do you mean by “being”? Do you equate it with the linguistic meaning of the word, or with a concept?

I am interested in the other question: whether there is something that is regardless of whether we speak of it, think of it, or conceptualise it. This is the difference between epistemology and ontology.

In no way — it’s all speculation, in the sense that any scientific postulate is, at its inception, a conceptual construct accepted without direct proof, but rather on the basis of its explanatory and predictive power

How can you speculate about the ontology of being without using language or thought?

It seems to me you are confining “being” to the realm of linguistic tokens and mental concepts, and therefore discussing only our representation of being, not being itself.

But philosophy has long asked whether there is an ontological reality- “what is”- that exists independently of language, mind, or concepts

Accordingly, I argued that ontology was, properly speaking, concerned with the nature of being (literally, 'I am-ness') rather than of 'what exists'. This distinction I held to be an example of what I considered fundamental to the proper distinction of 'being' from 'existence', which is hardly recognised by modern philosophers. I was told that my definition was 'eccentric' and completely mistaken. Finally, I was sent a link to a paper I mentioned to you before, 'The Greek Verb 'To Be' and the Problem of Being' , Charles Kahn, whom I was told was an authority on the subject. But I learned that rather than challenging my claim, this paper actually supported it, through passages such as:

[Parmenides] initial thesis, that the path of truth, conviction, and knowledge is the path of "what is" or "that it is" (hos esti) can then be understood as a claim that knowledge, true belief, and true statements, are all inseperably linked to "what is so" - - not merely to what exists, but what is the case (emphasis in original).

[The] intrinsically stable and lasting character of Being in Greek - - which makes it so appropriate as an object of knowing and the correlative of truth - - distinguishes it in a radical way from our modern notion of existence.
— Charles H. Kahn
--

Finally, this conceptual divergence was definitively cemented in early Christian theology
— Astorre

hence Heidegger's critique of 'onto-theology', the 'objectification' of the being. While the basic fact of the matter is that Being is an act, not a thing. (Something that is hardly news to Buddhists.)

While the basic fact of the matter is that Being is an act, not a thing. (Something that is hardly news to Buddhists.)

That change you’re referring to is ‘metanoia’, a transformation of perspective.

An alien may as be different to us as we are to a cat.

Would a cat understand if we explained Sartre's theory of existentialism to it?

Would we understand if an alien explained what they know to us?

if such an alien were to arrive and tell us, we would likely have no difficulty in understanding it.
The secrets of existence may be very simple, like a biology lesson. We are just in the unfortunate position of being blind to this truth.
There may be sufficient information, or clues in the world we find ourselves in to work it out. That it just requires some clever, or intuitive thinking to work it out.

We are confronted by aliens all the time: alien cultures, politics, ethics and philosophy. We have enormous difficulty in understanding these aliens, and they are right in our midst. They are our neighbors. Thomas Kuhn said that new scientific paradigms become accepted not because everyone is made to understand the new science, but because the old generation dies off.

The ‘I am’ , the self, does not pre-exist its relation to the world, but only exists in coming back to itself from the world.

Why does this remind me of the Libet experiments? :chin:

?Joshs It just occurred to me spontaneously - don't want to make too much of it.

For Heidegger, Dasein’s Being is its existence, but existence understood as the transcendence of a self, an exiting from itself in being ahead of itself in already being in the world. The ‘I am’ , the self, does not pre-exist its relation to the world, but only exists in coming back to itself from the world. The direction of this ‘act’, occurrence, happening, is from future to present, from world to self, rather than the other way around. In the happening of Being, what is the case is secondary to how it is the case, which is in turn secondary to why it is the case. The happening of Being always begins again and again from this wonder.

But rather, if such an alien were to arrive and tell us, we would likely have no difficulty in understanding it.

To me this suggests that the human being ‘I am’ identifies themself as a being in the world, ‘I am that’. This informs the personality which reflects on what it is (It is that which it is). Which results in when that personality is acting in the world, it acts as a thing (that thing it realises it is)*. But this personality is its own interpretation of itself, so is never actually being itself. It is always its own idea of what itself is. It is always acting out (as if on stage), what it thinks it is, or would be. This means that what is experienced as the self is all the baggage from the past, being projected into the future. A future which is anticipated to be a continuation of what happened in the past.

As I could never run a 4 minute mile because I am limited by the physicality of my body, all brains are limited by their physicality. Brains are physical things.

That the reason we haven’t worked it out might be for another reason. We are blinkered, or blind to it.

The truth may be staring us in the face, but we may well see different truths.

We largely speak a common truth. To claim solipsism with regard to other people is quite extreme.

But on the other hand, when we both look at this "red postbox", how do we know our subjective experiences of the colour "red" are the same?

It would be surprising if we saw different things, when looking at the same object.

Even more impressive, the geneticists concluded that all human beings on Earth right now can trace their lineage back to the Eve gene, a single common female ancestor whom scientists called the Mitochondrial Eve. She lived around 200,000 years ago.
science.howstuffworks.com

Is it possible to identify a process? Rather than identify, it is more accurate to compare. Compare, but not with a thing, but with a process.

Asking about "how I being?" we must have something as an example, an image, a template. In this way, one of the key signs of being (which I will propose later) is realized - involvement. That is, something can be itself only on the condition that there is something else or different, from which I deduce that any existence is impossible in a single instance, but is something exclusively in relation to another (Being together).

I had to make some simplifications to explain things to Russell.

I am interested in the other question: whether there is something that is regardless of whether we speak of it, think of it, or conceptualise it. This is the difference between epistemology and ontology.

I was just wondering how we can approach the ontology of being, something that is external to our language and thoughts, without using language or thoughts.

The question of how to approach the ontology of being that which exists beyond language and thought—is a central one in philosophy, since language and thought inevitably shape our perception of reality.

I believe that a discussion of this issue of language and paradox might provide a fruitful point of comparative philosophical dialogue between Zen Buddhism and phenomenological philosophy.

Ontological idealism of being is the view that being is fundamentally of the mind, where reality does not consist of mind-independent particles or forces, but is grounded in consciousness and reason.
Husserl's phenomenology is certainly that of ontological idealism, where any belief in the world's independent existence is put aside to focus on human experiences.

Heidegger's Dasein is also about ontological Idealism. It is about "being-in-the-world", in that we are not detached observers of the world but embedded in our experiences

There are two distinct lines of enquiry, the ontology of being within a Realist framework and the ontology of being within an Idealist framework.

Dasein is more radically in the world than any notion of a conscious subjectivity perceiving objects can convey.

Provide a link to the person who made this classification and where you can read more about it

Right, but these are peculiar forms of Idealism.

According to philosopher Rudolf Carnap, for example, ontological statements are relative to language and depend on the ontological framework of the speaker. This means that there are no framework-independent ontological facts since different frameworks provide different views while there is no objectively right or wrong framework

Husserl's phenomenology is certainly that of ontological idealism, where any belief in the world's independent existence is put aside to focus on human experiences.

Heidegger's Dasein is also about ontological Idealism. It is about "being-in-the-world", in that we are not detached observers of the world but embedded in our experiences.

Heidegger’s Idealism puts into question the priority of mind, reason and consciousness, associating all of these with the Cartesian subject, which is still operative in Kant and Hegel. Dasein is more radically in the world than any notion of a conscious subjectivity perceiving objects can convey.

In my opinion, we have gone too far, wandering in all sorts of classifications or approaches.

Does this world exist within the mind or external to the mind? Is our world the construction of our mind. As Schopenhauer wrote "The world is my representation". As Abai Qunanbaiuly wrote “A person’s mind is the mirror of the world. If the mirror is clouded, the world appears distorted.” Wittgenstein avoided such a problem by never giving his opinion where his "world" exists. A strategic decision that does not seem to have affected his reputation

” “[t]he world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject who is nothing but a project of the world; and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world that it itself projects.” (Phenomenology of Perception)

Even if we agreed that "Dasein is more radically in the world" we may not agree as to where this world is. Does this world exist within the mind or external to the mind? Is our world the construction of our mind.

Is it that he never gave his opinion, or that his answer is implicit in his later work, but has been missed by many because they are still looking for answers within the old binary: either mind or world, either inside or outside?

I cannot accept that there are no binaries, and everything is a formless soup of amorphousness.

I cannot accept that Tyrannosaurus rex did not have an existence outside the human mind, a real, living and breathing existence outside of our concept of it.

I cannot accept that there is no binary between the mind and a mind-independent world, even if I accept that discovering it is philosophically difficult.

I would give up both realism and anti-realism, then, in favour of what could be called a pluralist pragmatism. What the pluralist insists on is that there is no foundational version, one which anchors all the rest or to which all others can be reduced. The pragmatist insists that the world is both found and made: it is made in the finding and found in the making. To erase the boundary between knowing a language and knowing our way in the world gives us a fresh appreciation of the world. That world, however, is not given, waiting to be represented. We find the world, but only in the many incommensurable cognitive domains we devise in our attempt to know our way around. The task of the philosopher is not to extract a common conceptual scheme from these myriad domains and to determine its faithfulness to some uncorrupted reality; it is, rather, to learn to navigate among the domains, and so to clarify their concerns in relation to each other.

The issue isn’t whether the dinosaur existed before humans. It’s that the meaning of ‘T. rex’, it’s place in our world, is a product of our engagement now. That’s the intertwining I’m pointing to. Empirical knowledge is not a passive representing of what’s out there.

I cannot accept that Tyrannosaurus rex did not have an existence outside the human mind, a real, living and breathing existence outside of our concept of it.

So everything in our world except for rock, water and gas, was created by our cousins and ancestors. Their minds literally created/caused these things.

The first living organisms on Earth were one-celled organisms known as prokaryotes, which emerged between 3.5 and 4.1 billion years ago.
https://www.naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/life-science/early-life-earth-animal-origins

The first living organisms on Earth were bacteria, which had no minds, so It cannot be that life was created by the mind.

An intelligent and strategic response to the environment of these single cell organisms, which led to the T Rex and Sartre.

There's no need to posit any minds - unless you want to include them for other reasons than explaining the phenomena.

Not minds in the usual sense of the word. But an agency,

Both the organisms and the world as they found it were necessary for this lineage to happen.

Although, when it comes to the devastation of the planet, that turn of events happened when we had used intellect to subvert natural selection.

Evan Thompson:The task of the philosopher is not to extract a common conceptual scheme from these myriad domains and to determine its faithfulness to some uncorrupted reality; it is, rather, to learn to navigate among the domains, and so to clarify their concerns in relation to each other.

It seems to be true. Though one could also argue that the ability to do that was conferred by evolution and it looks as if the planet is taking action to restore balance.

We can illustrate the problem of “mistranslation” with the example of Parmenides’ statement: “Being is, non-being is not.” In a language with an obligatory copula, this phrase sounds like a final statement fixing being. In contrast, the translation of the same phrase into Kazakh and Chinese, suggested at the beginning of our discussion, completely changes its meaning: “Becoming is, non-becoming is not” (Bolý bar, bolmaý joq) or “The Way exists, the non-Way does not” (dào y?u, f?i dào w?). These translations turn a statement about a static entity into a dynamic statement about a process and a relationship. This is a clear example of “mistranslation” as a conceptual act, not a grammatical error.

Sort of like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for philosophy? It's an interesting though. However, it seems to me like Sapir-Whorf has fallen into ill repute in its stronger forms and the empirical support mustered for its weaker forms is, from what I can tell, is quite modest. Certainly, a lot of people have wanted it to be true, and I can see why, as it would suggest that merely speaking differently would open up all sorts of new horizons, but I am a bit skeptical.

This is very important. This is exactly what I am talking about at the start: Not "what I am," but "how I being." It is in this act that our above-mentioned reflections are realized: Substantia is not a noun. Being is not a noun. (which, in my opinion, is a given for languages that do not require a copula)

Is it possible to identify a process? Rather than identify, it is more accurate to compare. Compare, but not with a thing, but with a process.