Philosophy Discussion Forums

Sorry about that Gertie. Sent you what was intended for Value.

Sculptor1 wrote
I assume by the term "energy" you do not mean the empirically understood, and scientifically based understanding of energy that normal and sensible people mean by the term?

What you mean is the hippie-dippie; muesli-trouser wearing; crystal gazing; dream web catching; Tarot card wielding spooky "energeeee"?
Is that correct?

I see, Sculpture 1, but can you sustain this careless bit of criticism? Can you follow through? Keep in mind that Schopenhauer was no "hippie-dippie; muesli-trouser wearing; crystal gazing; dream web catching; Tarot card wielding" fool. But there are ways to enter into this that do not require reading The World as Will and Representation.

The "sensible" common sense you rely on is self annihilating. And it happens in nearly an instant of reflective thought.

Value wrote
I've noticed your arguments with regard suffering and its foundation for ethical absolutism. Can you please explain how you would relate to the views of Schopenhauer.

His descriptions scare the hell out of me, and this should be the same for everyone. But then, it is not ME who is the victim, for the most part, because I live in a fairly comfortable world. I have health insurance, ibuprofen, entertaining distractions (which is what Levinas was on about in his critique or Art--art is an absorbing distraction, and when we are absorbed like this, we slip into "fallenness" a concept of Heidegger's: people live their daily lives in a mostly routine and familiar state of existence, an "inauthentic" state. Authenticity is about realizing your freedom and constructing your life in full awareness. Art, Levinas says, is a turning away from this freedom. I agree and I don't agree. It is complicated), etc., so why should I FEEL anything about the misery of others? Well, for the most part I don't. Like everyone else, in order to live with any contentment at all, I have ignore Schopenhauer! Only in times of radical awareness do I summon the horrors of the world to mind, and when I do, it is not simply terrifying. It is beyond this, for it is terror without an object. A "nothing". Take a look at Michel Henry's thinking in "The power of revelation of affectivity
according to Heidegger". You might find this illuminating:

As with Scheler, so also the thought of Heidegger is characterized, in
counter-distinction to classical philosophy, by the importance which it
accords to the phenomenon of affectivity ontologically grasped and interpreted
as a power of revelation, as well as by the fundamental meaning
which Heidegger's thought recognizes in it. This meaning is immediately
apparent and shows itself in the fact that affectivity is not merely taken
as a power of revelation in the ordinary sense of the word, a power of
revealing something, this or that thing, but precisely the power of revealing to
us that which reveals all things, namely, the world itself as such,
as identical to Nothingness. The fact that the fundamental ontological
and peculiarly decisive meaning of the power of revelation peculiar to
affectivity most often remains unnoticed and does not call it in question
merely shows that this power is in principle indifferent to the manner in
which thought understands and habitually interprets it, to the manner in
which the subject understands himself, the subject who experiences a
feeling and then interprets it in order to hide its true meaning and what
is in each instance agonizing in this meaning

Such a powerful statement. We live our lives, even when we think about the world of suffering explicitly, as if all of the horror were in place and understood, duly categorized. We may be emotionally jolted by the idea or sight of someone being eaten alive by a tiger, but this is then pushed aside and reduced to a category of understanding which "normalizes" this kind of thing, as well as the world in general. Henry says, "the fundamental ontological and peculiarly decisive meaning of the power of revelation peculiar to affectivity most often remains unnoticed," and then, "the subject who experiences a feeling and then interprets it in order to hide its true meaning and what is in each instance agonizing in this meaning."

What is this "hiding" about? Authenticity. Inauthenticity (which Heidegger holds to be simply basic to our existence) does not step back into a Schopenhauerian pov. In this, interpretation confines and localizes. Henry continues:

Nevertheless, in anxiety this meaning appears: 'Anxiety is the fundamental
feeling which places us before Nothingness', thus opening to us
the Being of everything which is, for 'the Being of a being is
comprehensible . . . only if Dasein, by its very nature, maintains itself
in Nothingness'. That anxiety places us face to face with Nothingness
and thus opens Being itself to us

This "opening" is all Heidegger: The meaning of language is OPEN. Meanings are all open interpretatively. Think of the familiar term qualia, which analytic philosophers use to refer to the pure phenomenon, a "being appeared to" kind of thing. Most think qualia is a vacuous notion because there are no true propositions that can be said about it. The moment you speak it, it slips away from purity into a context. But these philosophers aren't willing to see that when it comes to affectivity (and to the broad range of Value experiences) there is more than vacuous qualia here. Henry is saying this: when suffering and affectivity and this entire dimension of our lives is categorized and understood (interpreted) in normal ways, as when a National Geographics commentator calmly relates how the wildebeest tries to elude the lion as its flesh is being torn apart, we are in an inauthentic mode of existence (which is common and necessary). In an authentic mode, we face the "nothingness," which amounts to understanding that these horrors issue from BEING, and this is PRIOR to any interpretative context at all! "The world" "does" this; and this "world" is close to Wittgenstein's Tractatus:

It is not how things are in the world
that is mystical, but that it exists….
Feeling the world as a limited whole—
it is this that is mystical

And in the world (in this account in the Tractatus),

It is clear that ethics cannot be put
into words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)

(He could have used the terms 'metaethics' and 'metaaesthetics'.) This term "mystical" is aligned with Heidegger's "nothing". Stare up at a starry night, and intruding thoughts at bay, and inevitably one will feel a certain unease, the notorious existential "anxiety" or "dread" that has no object!, for normal categories of interpretation lose their efficacy to interpret. Allow this to continue, and read Kierkegaard and Heidegger, then this reveals a dimension of our existence unseen.

So this is where Henry makes his point. Take the fear of the being attacked by a hungry lion, which is in pursuit of you:

The discovery of fear is inauthentic, it takes place
according to the mode of Verfalien (inauthenticity). By this we must understand that
fear guards against a being which it fears and not against its origin,
namely, against the world as such; in fact, it hides from this, from the
origin of all fears behind a being which it attends to. Attention to a
being presupposes the discovery of the world and moves about in it. The
inauthenticity of fear is a mode of this discovery, a mode of anxiety and
its disguise.

Disguise?! Disguised is this "origin" or Being-as-such. The lion, and us, and everything, is dealt with in the everydayness sense as familiar and explicable. But authentically speaking, and not Verfalien---our everydayness so automatic and oblivious, but authentically, when we lift our heads to the clarity that comes when we stand apart from familiarity, here, we understand Schopenhauer.

But the other shoe has to drop, and Schopenhauer does not make this move (as I have read). Observe the ethical world around us. Qualitatively, what is pain (you know, discomfort, misery, inconvenience, annoyance, and all that falls under this idea), and here the question is asked IN the INauthentic mode, the usual, the ordinary. It wears its nature on its sleeve, plain to see. This is bad, we call it; ethically (or aesthetically, per Wittgenstein) bad. This qualitative ontology witnessed by us in the usual way is REALLY (see Henry above), in the authentic mode, unchanged in its nature, but only interpretatively changed. We now see it belongs to transcendence, and the ethicality that is constituted by this qualitativeness of experienced good and bad retains its commanding force! In other words, Our ethics is God's ethics (if you will)! To be stuck in a moral dilemma whether or not one should steal or cheat of help or defend, and so on is grounded in eternity, so to speak.

And this puts us squarely in religion. And Levinas is here.

thrasymachus wrote: ↑June 13th, 2023, 10:49 amBut suffering is not language, it is IN the world's essential giveness AND it does "speak". Put a lit match to your finger and you are not going to have a language experience. And what is the world saying in this pain? Why, it's bad, of course. (And 'bad' belongs to language, one can see. One has to look into the "space" between the pain and the term. This matter goes to talk about qualia, the "pure" phenomenological pain itself; it goes to Moore's Principia Ethica where he speakls of a "non natural quality", and so on)

For me, this argument is profound, for it demonstrates something most believe impossible outside of religious faith, ethical absolutism.

You seem to see pain and suffering as evidence for absolute existence that can be referenced (in language) 'as such'. In my opinion pain and suffering merely concern a fundamental aspiration in the face of authenticity that provides the basis for aspired good-relative concepts such as health and correlated corruption.

In my view there is no ethical bad. There is just good and corruption of that good. Evil isn't of substance and evidence for that assertion is that there is no place for Evil within the context of reason.

Why did philosophers like William James attempt to create a theory to prevent war? Because there is no place for war within the scope of the potential of reason that their theory attempted to unlock. They saw an opportunity and invested to fulfil that opportunity for the higher purpose of humanity. They reflected on cruelty in nature but their theory would not allow for what they had reflected on. Their theory in a sense found an obligation in a Levinas style eschatological vision.

Levinas his work Totality and Infinity also starts with the assertion that peace and the prevention of war is only possible through eschatological vision. To create a moral theory and to act on behalf of reason is to fulfil something of which it can be said that it is a moral obligation or a responsibility, in the face of an aspect that isn't contained within the world.

By recognizing the questionable nature of any product of reason - to move beyond the pursuit of authenticity based ethical fixture (the idea of Absolute good/bad) - lays the ground for a reasonable world. A glimpse of how such a world might look like when it concerns human interaction can perhaps be found on philosophy forums such as this one where users are almost always just interested in what reason might reveal and almost never attempt to attack another for an opinion of how the world actually is or should be. Whatever argument may have been produced can be questioned and one is always welcome to do so, so that there is no potential for contention. When reason becomes fundamentally leading, by recognizing that is fundamentally questionable of nature, the potential for Evil disappears and even a blade of grass can find its potential for happiness in the smile of a considerate human.

The source of the suggested aspired good isn't found within the world and isn't Given. It isn't subjectively contained either. The aspired good originates from a context Other than what existed, which is Levinas Other and which is the source of morality, but which fundamentally isn't Absolute because it is beyond what existed (fundamentally preceding existence) and therefore it cannot be be contained within a term relative to existence such as Absolute, and no qualitative claims can be made about it other than those of questionable (philosophical) nature.

The real issue might be how modern humanity is unaware of the fundamental value of 'question-ability of assertions', and are dogmatically searching and even assuming certainty while that is only ethical to do so in the face of the utilitarian quest for authenticity in their 'anthropocentric world', perhaps partly culture-historically driven or justified due to fears about superstition or religious abuses.

When it concerns philosophy, my opinion is that anything that it produces is fundamentally questionable of nature, and that it includes the facts of science. Overcoming the certainty dogma doesn't need to result in a relapse into superstition and religions but could also enable humanity to make a step forward and advance intellectually.

I once wrote the following about authenticity:

Many people in the modern world see 'having fun' as the highest goal or purpose of life. When one uses value in the world as "meaning of life", what will happen when that value is lost? For example, when life may appear unbearable, how will one possibly find motivation to overcome the problems?

Some people cannot accept the idea that 'having fun' is the meaning of life. Some people question deeper and upon the consideration that there must be "a meaning of life" to be able to consider an aim in life to be meaningful, they potentially discover a deep abyss with no ground in sight and may find great difficulty to establish a convincing (authentic) mindset that provides purpose - a driving force or motivation - for their individual life.

Authenticity would be the key. When one grasps for a ground, one can find that it is not so easy to accept the value in the world (e.g. having a good time) as the meaning of life.

Why does value exist? Why should one create value? Why anything at all?

One then derives at the question "What is the meaning of life?" which isn't about having a good time. It is about something deeper, about the origin of emotions, about the origin of a feeling of purpose and fulfillment, about the origin of anything at all.

People who question so deeply may be motivated by authenticity. Without authenticity on a deeper level, one would lose one's identity and mind. The question can make one aware that his/her mental foundation isn't as secure as one may expect to be normal, which may result in anxiety and ideas leading to suicide.

Authenticity and finding meaning in life may be a key for talent, art and human performance. Many talented and top performing people have struggled with the question and balanced on the edge of suicide and high performance, which shows that the origin of the question might be something fundamental and that despite having success, thousands of friends and a rich social life, the question (or inability to answer it) is just as critical.

Some examples are Robbie Williams (2014) and in the Netherlands Antonie Kamerling (2010), one of the most famous actors who was very popular with women, who named one of his daughters Butterfly and who committed suicide after struggling with depression. How can it be that some people performed at the highest levels and were loved for it by millions of people, meanwhile struggled with what appears to be the most severe depression? It might be that the potential for depression has been the source of their performance, resulting in an escalating problem in face of an increasing pressure to perform when considering that their performance was directly dependent on 'authenticity'.

The quest for authenticity and a performance like that of Jim Carrey isn't as easy as it looks like once 'Given' on a screen. When one mentally starts a pursuit of the ground of the required authenticity, one will face the above described infinite depth of Nothingness, and one doesn't have the time to sit back and let it be for what it is because one is pressured to find the required ground to perform. The result: grave anxiety and potentially escalating attempts to inflict self-harm through suicidal thoughts or otherwise, in pursuit of a ground for authenticity.

My argument is that it is relevant to consider whether a purpose of life is applicable to be considered as precursor to any value in the world, which would be a quest for authenticity (aspired good) when translated to the scope of human existence.

thrasymachus wrote: ↑June 27th, 2023, 11:59 am

Sculptor1 wrote
I assume by the term "energy" you do not mean the empirically understood, and scientifically based understanding of energy that normal and sensible people mean by the term?

What you mean is the hippie-dippie; muesli-trouser wearing; crystal gazing; dream web catching; Tarot card wielding spooky "energeeee"?
Is that correct?

I see, Sculpture 1, but can you sustain this careless bit of criticism? Can you follow through? Keep in mind that Schopenhauer was no "hippie-dippie; muesli-trouser wearing; crystal gazing; dream web catching; Tarot card wielding" fool. But there are ways to enter into this that do not require reading The World as Will and Representation.

The "sensible" common sense you rely on is self annihilating. And it happens in nearly an instant of reflective thought.

Perhaps it is interesting to know whether Sculptor1 has read Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation and what his opinion is.

value wrote:"If life were to be good as it was (pre-judged), there would be no reason to exist."

What one perceives as value in the world, is fundamentally an aspired world which fundamental source is pure meaning, which is boundless and beginning-less of nature.

Would you disagree with this?

thrasymachus wrote: ↑June 27th, 2023, 11:41 amDon't think about intentionality yet. First get the epoche and the direction it takes one. Husserl's is a method, not an abstract argument. Take this cup before me which I recognize in all the usual ways. What is it that makes it so familiar? It is the "predelineation" of the affair. In Heidegger's terms, roughly speaking, seeing the cup is an historical event, always already cups and their places, uses, features and so on "ready to hand" as Heidegger put it, an established affair. And this cup here is an instantiation. (This kind of thinking is sort of derivative of Kant/Hegel, in part: When we observe an object, it is the universal that is deployed in understanding what lies before me that gives us the knowledge claim about the object. Hence the "rational realism" of this kind of thinking.) The presence apart from this is impossible, for the understanding is not intuitive but historical. So the cup is already understood Prior to the actual encounter because memory pre-cognizes, you might say, in an automatic processes of our existence, you know, waiting for a bus or planning dinner. You look at your watch already aware of what watches do, how they look, and the rest. This is a key part of what phenomenologists are telling us, that a descriptive account of what lies before you at the basic level of inquiry finds TIME to be most fundamental, and time has a structure that goes back to Augustine (see his Confessions, bk 11): past present and future. this is internal or subjective time, not everyday time and not Einstein's time, but the more elementary presupposed time that is about the structure of consciousness that receives the world in the first place, before Einstein could even begin. I observe the world in a past/present/future continuum; I AM a past/present/future continuum. Objects are events-in-time and outside of this is nonsense because knowledge claims at all are inherently time claims. Again, very important to see this on this point, because the epoche is telling us to reduce this temporal setting only to the most bare essentials such that when I see a fence post I suspend everything I know about fence posts, and leave the bare presence of what-is-no-longer-a-fence post to reveal itself.

This suspension or "bracketing" has been called the German gelassenheit, a term used by Amish and others. It is a yielding, if not to God, then to the world to see as clearly as possible, free of the presumptions of interpretation. And this is at the heart of givenness discussed here. Just the opposite, really, of what you call prejudgment. Much closer to the Buddhist's world in which judgment is altogether suspended. The simple "thereness" of the world is allowed to come forth.

Of course, this is much debated, and sad to say this kind of thing is why philosophy has such trouble. We are simply put together differently. A dyed in the wool analytic Anglo American philosopher will not touch such thinking for givenness is just impossible to conceive (Wittgenstein's influence and the positivism he encouraged). On the other hand. Is this right? Yes and no. One cannot deny that without language all one can do is stare mindlessly, like an infant child, for it is in this symbolic existence of ours that the edifice of knowledge is built.

But does this invalidate intuitive knowledge? Yes, for the most part. Knowledge is propositional, and as Rorty put it, there are no propositions "out there." Propositions don't reach out to other things. They don't have this "reaching out" epistemic. But what of Value? As an example, it is not like the color yellow: reduce yellow to the mere qualia of being appeared to in a yellow way, and frankly you run directly into Heidegger's (and Kierkegaard's) famous "nothing". See Heidegger's What Is Metaphysics? You can argue the yellow qua yellow remains "other than" the knowledge claim about yellow, but when you try to give this analysis, it falls flat, and one finds oneself in Heidegger's world of hermeneutics. there is this great passage from Heidegger's Origin of the Work of Art that makes this world pretty clear:

What art is should be inferable from the work. What the work of art is we can come
to know only from the nature of art. Anyone can easily see that we are moving in a
circle. Ordinary understanding demands that this circle be avoided because it violates
logic. What art is can be gathered from a comparative examination of actual art works.
But how are we to be certain that we are indeed basing such an examination on art
works if we do not know beforehand what art is? And the nature of art can no more be
arrived at by a derivation from higher concepts than by a collection of characteristics
of actual art works. For such a derivation, too, already has in view the characteristics

that must suffice to establish that what we take in advance to be an art work is one in
fact. But selecting works from among given objects, and deriving concepts from principles,
are equally impossible here, and where these procedures are practiced they are a
self-deception.
Thus we are compelled to follow the circle. This is neither a makeshift nor a defect.
To enter upon this path is the strength of thought, to continue on it is the feast of
thought, assuming that thinking is a craft. Not only is the main step from work to art a
circle like the step from art to work, but every separate step that we attempt circles in
this circle.


My underscores. You see how Heidegger's mind works? Forget about there being some world "out there". There is only this world, our dasein, which is our existence, and IN this dasein, others and Others, things and people that are NOT me, make an appearance. This is not idealism.

To understand what my favorite French post Husserlians are saying, one has to step back from this strong hermeneutics, and encounter the world anew. It is in ethics and aesthetics that the world speaks! Now, you take issue with this:

On the one hand philosophers like Wittgenstein and Heidegger have argued about an aspect of which one should not speak, since it cannot be captured within the context of language, while on the other hand there is the term Absolute that is to provide a qualitative basis for concepts such as ethical absolutism.

As substantiation for the idea you gave an example about suffering.

This "aspect" you speak of is traditional metaphysics, which presumes to speak of absolute foundations of being. As with Leibniz's monadology or Spinoza's Substance or Platonic forms and so on. The idea I defend takes a rather delicate look at this. Husserl thought there was something undeniable in just being in the midst of the world, and this was the intuitive grasp of the bare presence of things. Not a tree, but a structured presence of time, object relations, static and genetic phenomenology, and on and on. This guy is meticulous! His reasoning is that pure phenomena discovered in the epoche are intuitive absolutes---can you really deny something is occurring now? You can play Descartes with many things that are said about what is happening, but you cannot deny there is a presence before you. And, since epistemology and ontology are simply two sides to the same coin, this indubitability translates as an ontological absolute, a claim about What Is, about Being. So how is it that one can possibly apprehend an absolute? Only through an identifiable form of discovery, and this would be phenomenology. The "eidetic" essence of an object must include an epistemic dimension, a way to know it, simply because we do in fact know it. This makes knowledge at this level absolute, if still a work in progress.
Heidegger thinks Husserl is trying to walk on water. Derrida thinks Heidegger is trying to walk on water (see John Caputo's account of this in his Radical Hermeneutics). In steps Levinas, the post-contra-Heideggerian" Heidegger is right accept he leaves out the most important part, ethics and the absolute of ethics! I won't go into this because it gets too entangled in the details and frankly I am still working on this. But consider, Levinas's face of suffering in the Other presupposes (begs the questions about) an analysis of metaethics (and metaaesthetics, says Wittgenstein), that is, the question about the nature of the ethical "good" and "bad". I think the argument I laid out shows how this analysis has to go.

The idea that the world might be saying something (speaking) in the case of suffering seems to be invalid in my opinion.

Proof is in the pudding: stick your hand in a pot of boiling water. Is there any ambiguity in this? There IS ambiguity in more entangled affairs, for example, if sticking your hand is boiling water will deliver others from some other suffering, then one has to weigh the matter, working through a culture's established thinking and sentiment, perhaps; but such entanglements (and most ethical problems are embedded in this, and are thereby made ambiguous) are factual in nature, and facts are contingent (you would have to work this one out: facts contingent? The moon being closer to the earth than the sun, contingent?? Yes, because facts are language constructs, and language is "made" not discovered. I don't know how your thinking goes here, but for me, it is a foregone conclusion. You can argue about this. It is a worthy discussion). When I say the world speaks, it goes no further than the pure phenomenon one encounters in the scalding of the flesh. This is not a language event, and all we can and should do is describe it. That is phenomenology (it is also the way natural sciences work, of course). Of course, we take up the pain IN language as I am now writing about it, but there is something going on here that is not like the usual qualia, not like being-redly-appeared-to, as they say. that powerful sensation of boiling water on living flesh is an affair of radical Value. It tells us this is bad. But this term 'bad' belongs to language and propositional expressions, and, as Rorty put it, propositions are not "out there" just as truth is not out there. They are only in a language "game", and this obviously goes to Wittgenstein's insistence that value cannot be spoken: language games are contextualizations, and this grounds truth in contingency(Rorty has a serious problem defending his ethics, given his denial that there is a metaphysics of ethics, as there is no such thing as metaphysics at all! See Simon Critchley's critical paper, which I can't find now or I'd name it).

As you've noticed about phenomenology, "out there" and "in here" are not to be conceived as localized and separate. This is a very hard part of the equation. The stone I see is not, nor can it ever be conceived as apart from the Being that encompasses us both. It is not that its Being IS an idea in my head. Rather, it is that AS OTHER than my self, something "over there" and "not me", it is transcendence. That stone in its phenomenological over thereness (meaning, look; it's over there, and it's not me. this is what the descriptive account tells us) transcends my Being. Husserl held that because of the nexus of intentionality, we are thereby epistemically connected to the stone in the requisite way to validate a knowledge claim at the intuitive level (and the "naturalistic" level). Levinas, I believe thus far in reading him, holds this as well, but in his thinking, there is a metaphysics of alterity in the Other person that imposes an ethical imposition on our existence. As above, I see, and I refer to my claim in this, the deeper presupposition in this thinking: what IS the pure phenomenon of, call it positive and negative value? For this descriptive account, one needs to go to the determinative source, which is in the concrete actuality, the "presence" or the "givenness" of the reduced phenomenon itself. See Michel Henry and the way he underscores the clarity of the feels and smells and sights that one takes in once the presumptive interpretative field has been cleared. This is a Husserlian move to release the stone from, to put it simply, memory. This should sound a bit familiar. It is aligned with the Zen koan and the meditative approach to enlightenment. Husserl, of course, was no Buddhist. He was, as Derrida calls him, a Greek!--for he favored a systematic and "scientific" thesis for philosophical enlightenment. But what really happens when one starts "reducing" the world to its essential givenness? Practicing this daily? For me what happens is something quite impossible, by contemporary standards.

It was argued that intentionality, the ability to have sensual attention for the world at all by which one could manifest suffering, must directly originate from the pure source of quality. Therefore, the world originates from ones ability to sense, which would include that suffering.

In the case of suffering one is dealing with a fundamental aspiration, the essence of value.

That aspiration concerns qualitative authenticity that in the face of the Other (which includes 'the world') fulfils the fundamental moral question "What is good?".

To return to the Absolute and ethical absolutism.

As mentioned in my previous reasoning I believe that one can at most claim that the world is an aspired world, and within that aspiration there is a place for moral good and wrong but the difference would be that it wouldn't be a pre-Given good or wrong and there is a responsibility within the context of the aspiration that originates from the pure source of quality to make the world good.

More simply said, I believe that morality is about the question "What is good?" rather than the determination of what is supposedly actually good.

When morality is fundamentally dependent on the question 'What is good?' that might give rise to the idea that morality is subjective but that isn't the case when one factors in the fundamental requirement of respect of the Other.

From this perspective, it is respect that fundamentally underlays the world and intelligence.

I would have to get back to you this. I don't off hand recall his The Set of Problems Pertaining to Noetic-Noematic Structures in chapter four of part three of IDEAS I, and this is where Husserl's discussion lies. As I see it, and partially recall, Value as such is discovered in the "hyletic data" which will be later taken up as "givenness" (see Being Given by Jean luc Marion). I don't recall how Husserl dealt with it, exactly, but I am sure he systematized it and, contra Levinas who is explicitly a religious thinker, failed to see the profound nature of this. Very strong systematic thinkers are almost always dismissive of Value simply because they do not experience the world with any affective priority. Husserl talks a lot about intuition, but he is no "intuitionist" and certainly not a mystic. Quite the opposite.

But then, I am a "threshold" existentialist, a mystic in the Eckhartian sense. I defend a thesis of radical indeterminacy that assaults one's sensibilities at the "end" of the Husserlian reduction. This reduction has a radical Eastern counterpart, which is "neti neti" or, as we call it, apophatic theology: approaching God through negation of established interpositioned knowledge claims.

I will start reading Husserl's Ideas soon. I will return to your post later once I've completed reading about his ideas about intentionality.

value wrote
I will start reading Husserl's Ideas soon. I will return to your post later once I've completed reading about his ideas about intentionality.

Keep in mind it is a technical work, and long and tedious. Some parts brilliant, others take a kind of mathematical patience for abstraction (analysis). Just one thing: when I perceive an object, there IS epistemic connectivity built into the object. The bare "otherness" of that before me, this is transcendental. Impossible to know. This is where others, later, will begin. That transcendental "other" and "Other" is somehow "seen as other". The ideatum that exceeds the idea; the desideratum that exceeds the desire (Levinas). The world possesses a "calling" from "outside" the Totality of familiarity. This is ethics.

value wrote
Perhaps it is interesting to know whether Sculptor1 has read Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation and what his opinion is.

He doesn't read continental philosophy. Those who do don't talk like that. It's another world, difficult to access.

value wrote:Perhaps it is interesting to learn whether Sculptor1 has read Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation and what his opinion is.

thrasymachus wrote: ↑June 29th, 2023, 8:35 pmHe doesn't read continental philosophy. Those who do don't talk like that. It's another world, difficult to access.

From what I've noticed it seems that Sculptor1 actually does read works such as that of Schopenhauer so his critical opinion could be of value, since the background might be unexpected. It was Sculptor1 who recently attended me on the ancient sub-/superlunary theory of Plato and Aristotle.

His decision to repeatedly respond in this topic is indicative that he doesn't neglect the topic (he even argued on behalf of Schopenhauer to defend his choice for the term 'Will').

His first reply:

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑June 14th, 2023, 11:59 am No, of course not.
There are good reasons why he would want to make a distinction between "The Will", and the light from his lamp.

It might be of interest to learn how it is possible to defend determinism in light of the theory of Schopenhauer.

A determinist willing to face diverse types of reason on a forum might be the ultimate opportunity to examine a theory for validity and to discover more about it.

When I started with a vision about the fundamental 'certainty dogma' problem of science, I firstly sought to reference it as the dogmatic idea that the facts of science are valid outside the scope of a perspective. Upon many in-depth discussions with 'atheist' and 'materialist' Terrapin Station I would later change that to the idea that the facts of science are valid 'without philosophy'.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑March 28th, 2020, 2:50 pmFacts obtain whether people exist or not. Truth propositions do NOT obtain whether people exist or not.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑March 28th, 2020, 2:50 pm Facts in no way depend on any declarations or naming.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑March 19th, 2020, 9:37 amI'm an atheist.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑March 5th, 2020, 4:30 pmI'm a realist and a physicalist (aka "materialist").

value wrote:Materialists (physicalists) believe that scientific facts are of a special nature in comparison with common truth propositions. It is based on a dogmatic belief in uniformitarianism and the idea that facts obtain independent from a perspective (i.e. 'without philosophy').

What could make a fact otherwise than truth if it is not a belief? It is merely the scientific method (a philosophy) that provides a qualitative differentiator, which is recognizable, but which remains questionable.

A philosophical method is a perspective based on truth conditions. Truth conditions of a perspective on reality are questionable just like the truth conditions of a proposition.

In the case of scientific facts, a truth condition is that facts are synthetic propositions predicated by existence in 'the real world'. Before one could consider this condition one will need to accept a certain truth about "reality" which is questionable.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 4th, 2021, 6:16 pm First, why would "what causes reality to exist" be necessary for knowing whether there is reality? (Keeping in mind that by "reality" here we're referring to the objective world.)

value wrote:Because without such knowledge, one can pose anything, from 'random chance' to 'illusion' to 'magic' to a simulation by aliens to the infinite monkey theorem. Such a situation does not allow one to make a claim that poses that reality is 'real'.

I've learned a lot from discussions with Sculptor1 and Terrapin Station.

value wrote
I've learned a lot from discussions with Sculptor1 and Terrapin Station.

Okay.

thrasymachus wrote: ↑June 28th, 2023, 11:45 am

Value wrote
I've noticed your arguments with regard suffering and its foundation for ethical absolutism. Can you please explain how you would relate to the views of Schopenhauer.

His descriptions scare the hell out of me, and this should be the same for everyone. But then, it is not ME who is the victim, for the most part, because I live in a fairly comfortable world. I have health insurance, ibuprofen, entertaining distractions (which is what Levinas was on about in his critique or Art--art is an absorbing distraction, and when we are absorbed like this, we slip into "fallenness" a concept of Heidegger's: people live their daily lives in a mostly routine and familiar state of existence, an "inauthentic" state. Authenticity is about realizing your freedom and constructing your life in full awareness. Art, Levinas says, is a turning away from this freedom. I agree and I don't agree. It is complicated), etc., so why should I FEEL anything about the misery of others? Well, for the most part I don't. Like everyone else, in order to live with any contentment at all, I have ignore Schopenhauer! Only in times of radical awareness do I summon the horrors of the world to mind, and when I do, it is not simply terrifying. It is beyond this, for it is terror without an object. A "nothing". Take a look at Michel Henry's thinking in "The power of revelation of affectivity
according to Heidegger". You might find this illuminating:

As with Scheler, so also the thought of Heidegger is characterized, in
counter-distinction to classical philosophy, by the importance which it
accords to the phenomenon of affectivity ontologically grasped and interpreted
as a power of revelation, as well as by the fundamental meaning
which Heidegger's thought recognizes in it. This meaning is immediately
apparent and shows itself in the fact that affectivity is not merely taken
as a power of revelation in the ordinary sense of the word, a power of
revealing something, this or that thing, but precisely the power of revealing to
us that which reveals all things, namely, the world itself as such,
as identical to Nothingness. The fact that the fundamental ontological
and peculiarly decisive meaning of the power of revelation peculiar to
affectivity most often remains unnoticed and does not call it in question
merely shows that this power is in principle indifferent to the manner in
which thought understands and habitually interprets it, to the manner in
which the subject understands himself, the subject who experiences a
feeling and then interprets it in order to hide its true meaning and what
is in each instance agonizing in this meaning

Such a powerful statement. We live our lives, even when we think about the world of suffering explicitly, as if all of the horror were in place and understood, duly categorized. We may be emotionally jolted by the idea or sight of someone being eaten alive by a tiger, but this is then pushed aside and reduced to a category of understanding which "normalizes" this kind of thing, as well as the world in general. Henry says, "the fundamental ontological and peculiarly decisive meaning of the power of revelation peculiar to affectivity most often remains unnoticed," and then, "the subject who experiences a feeling and then interprets it in order to hide its true meaning and what is in each instance agonizing in this meaning."

What is this "hiding" about? Authenticity. Inauthenticity (which Heidegger holds to be simply basic to our existence) does not step back into a Schopenhauerian pov. In this, interpretation confines and localizes. Henry continues:

Nevertheless, in anxiety this meaning appears: 'Anxiety is the fundamental
feeling which places us before Nothingness', thus opening to us
the Being of everything which is, for 'the Being of a being is
comprehensible . . . only if Dasein, by its very nature, maintains itself
in Nothingness'. That anxiety places us face to face with Nothingness
and thus opens Being itself to us

This "opening" is all Heidegger: The meaning of language is OPEN. Meanings are all open interpretatively. Think of the familiar term qualia, which analytic philosophers use to refer to the pure phenomenon, a "being appeared to" kind of thing. Most think qualia is a vacuous notion because there are no true propositions that can be said about it. The moment you speak it, it slips away from purity into a context. But these philosophers aren't willing to see that when it comes to affectivity (and to the broad range of Value experiences) there is more than vacuous qualia here. Henry is saying this: when suffering and affectivity and this entire dimension of our lives is categorized and understood (interpreted) in normal ways, as when a National Geographics commentator calmly relates how the wildebeest tries to elude the lion as its flesh is being torn apart, we are in an inauthentic mode of existence (which is common and necessary). In an authentic mode, we face the "nothingness," which amounts to understanding that these horrors issue from BEING, and this is PRIOR to any interpretative context at all! "The world" "does" this; and this "world" is close to Wittgenstein's Tractatus:

It is not how things are in the world
that is mystical, but that it exists….
Feeling the world as a limited whole—
it is this that is mystical

And in the world (in this account in the Tractatus),

It is clear that ethics cannot be put
into words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)

(He could have used the terms 'metaethics' and 'metaaesthetics'.) This term "mystical" is aligned with Heidegger's "nothing". Stare up at a starry night, and intruding thoughts at bay, and inevitably one will feel a certain unease, the notorious existential "anxiety" or "dread" that has no object!, for normal categories of interpretation lose their efficacy to interpret. Allow this to continue, and read Kierkegaard and Heidegger, then this reveals a dimension of our existence unseen.

So this is where Henry makes his point. Take the fear of the being attacked by a hungry lion, which is in pursuit of you:

The discovery of fear is inauthentic, it takes place
according to the mode of Verfalien (inauthenticity). By this we must understand that
fear guards against a being which it fears and not against its origin,
namely, against the world as such; in fact, it hides from this, from the
origin of all fears behind a being which it attends to. Attention to a
being presupposes the discovery of the world and moves about in it. The
inauthenticity of fear is a mode of this discovery, a mode of anxiety and
its disguise.

Disguise?! Disguised is this "origin" or Being-as-such. The lion, and us, and everything, is dealt with in the everydayness sense as familiar and explicable. But authentically speaking, and not Verfalien---our everydayness so automatic and oblivious, but authentically, when we lift our heads to the clarity that comes when we stand apart from familiarity, here, we understand Schopenhauer.

But the other shoe has to drop, and Schopenhauer does not make this move (as I have read). Observe the ethical world around us. Qualitatively, what is pain (you know, discomfort, misery, inconvenience, annoyance, and all that falls under this idea), and here the question is asked IN the INauthentic mode, the usual, the ordinary. It wears its nature on its sleeve, plain to see. This is bad, we call it; ethically (or aesthetically, per Wittgenstein) bad. This qualitative ontology witnessed by us in the usual way is REALLY (see Henry above), in the authentic mode, unchanged in its nature, but only interpretatively changed. We now see it belongs to transcendence, and the ethicality that is constituted by this qualitativeness of experienced good and bad retains its commanding force! In other words, Our ethics is God's ethics (if you will)! To be stuck in a moral dilemma whether or not one should steal or cheat of help or defend, and so on is grounded in eternity, so to speak.

And this puts us squarely in religion. And Levinas is here.

Thank you for the valuable insights! It isn't to be found in any book

With regard your arguments.

There is a wisdom that says that one should not be guided by fear.

I find the idea that anxiety is a fundamental feeling that places one before Nothingness and opens one fundamentally to Being as a transcendental source of ethics in the world, dangerous. It could translate into the idea that one should live with a gun under the nose, which seems to have been the ethical mindset of the Nazi's.

An often cited quote from Nazi Hermann Göring:

“When I hear the word culture, I unlock my gun!”

I've given it some thought of course. Could they actually be right?

I cited the positive deviance theory of professor Kim Cameron (Ross School of Business). The theory describes that organisms naturally move in the direction of the positive similar to how plants move in the direction of the light and he proposes the concept positive deviance.

With positive deviance one will need to address concepts such as "Beyond Health" which requires concepts such as Virtue and Compassion. It is very interesting to see in his work how humanity is almost always looking at the world from the negative side of the spectrum while his theory attempts to make a case for the potential of the opposite side.

While it may seem a dusty business related theory that may have some ground in philosophical ideas, there may be more to it when it concerns the idea that life is fundamentally about anxiety, fear, pain and suffering. His theory might attempt to prove (using a lot of interesting and related studies) that the opposite is (or can be) the case.

Dr. Kim Cameron's research focuses on virtuousness in and of organizations, such as forgiveness, gratitude, kindness, and compassion, and their relationship to performance. Dr. Cameron is William Russell Kelly Professor of Management and Organizations in the Ross School of Business.

Then there is evidence:

Learning one’s genetic risk changes physiology independent of actual genetic risk
In an interesting twist to the enduring nature vs. nurture debate, a new study from Stanford University finds that just thinking you’re prone to a given outcome may trump both nature and nurture. In fact, simply believing a physical reality about yourself can actually nudge the body in that direction—sometimes even more than actually being prone to the reality.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562- ... -behaviour

And an insight by Sculptor1:

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑June 26th, 2023, 1:10 pm I assume by the term "energy"... crystal gazing; dream web catching; ... spooky "energeeee"?
Is that correct?

It might be of interest to look at it from the perspective of human performance since it attempts to reach a 'human beyond'. Is anxiety beneficial in such a situation?

In my opinion, to perform as an actor such as Jim Carrey doesn't require anxiety or fear since that might result in attempts to inflict self-harm to find a ground for authenticity in the face of the mentioned Nothingness.

Jim Carrey once said “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.”

Why would he say such a thing? What 'answer' is he talking about? Would a dose of anxiety and fear in the face of Nothingness be an answer for him? Should he try to live with a gun under his nose like the Nazi's did?

I believe that reason can overcome darkness before it was ever present. There is simply no place for Evil in the context of reason and thus is there no place for anxiety and fear. Reflecting on cruelty (anxiety, suffering, pain, fear etc) in nature fuels cruelty while reflecting on reason enables one to become reasonable.

As Spinoza once said "an attempt to escape evil with good results in evil". According to Spinoza, good only follows from reason.

Spinoza wrote:He who is led by fear, and does good in order to escape evil, is not led by reason.
...
Corollary.--Under desire which springs from reason, we seek good directly, and shun evil indirectly. (professor Kim Cameron's positive deviance?)

My argument has been that in order to advance into a reasonable and ethical world one will need to become aware of the fundamental questionable nature and Ungivenness of the world. A world thus without an Absolute. A world in which comedy is possible because the world never was!

value wrote
When I started with a vision about the fundamental 'certainty dogma' problem of science, I firstly sought to reference it as the dogmatic idea that the facts of science are valid outside the scope of a perspective. Upon many in-depth discussions with 'atheist' and 'materialist' Terrapin Station I would later change that to the idea that the facts of science are valid 'without philosophy'.
Terrapin Station wrote: ↑March 28th, 2020, 1:50 pm
Facts obtain whether people exist or not. Truth propositions do NOT obtain whether people exist or not.

This possesses a serious error. "acts obtain whether people exist or not" fails to question what a fact IS. Taken as "states of affairs" facts are bound together by logic and language. To say the sun shines today is an assertion, has an implicit negative structure, is logically characterized as n existential quantifier (as I recall), and so on; the point is that one has to get past basic Kant: when we make a proposition, the sense of it has a structure, and this structure is not to be separated from the proposition that conceptualizes it. This is Wittgenstein: things exist in a logical grid, a superstructure that divides and "totalizes" the world.
Of course, you can dismiss this kind of thing, as Terrapin station does, and just deal with things in ordinary language terms. There is a fence post, entirely independent and stand alone and measurable and quantifiable. But this would be only "proximally and for the post part" true, that is, just a general way of talking about things. But philosophy proper (and not the philosophy of knitting or home management) takes inquiry to where common truths end, and into more basic thinking, like, as here, how is it possible to separate ontology from epistemology? How can you "talk" about the ontological independence of a tree WITHOUT a rigorous examination of the the knowledge claim qua knowledge claim? After all, the observation is MADE in the knowledge claim. It is not some impossible receptivity.
By Terrapin's thinking, both epistemology and ontology are simply impossible.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑March 28th, 2020, 1:50 pm
Facts in no way depend on any declarations or naming.

Of course, one is free to make this claim. But does this sustain? Of course not. It falls apart instantly when you ask the question, how is it that one knows the facts of the world?

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑March 19th, 2020, 8:37 am
I'm an atheist.

So Terrapin is telling you the proposition affirming God is wrong. What is God such that disaffirmations of God's existence make sense? Here you find a complete lack of serious thought. Atheists tend to make theism about an old man in a cloud, and this is a strawman argument, casting the opposition in easily assailable terms, then producing a refutation built out of just these assumptions.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑March 5th, 2020, 3:30 pm
I'm a realist and a physicalist (aka "materialist").

So am I, as long as you don't take these familiar terms and try to make a metaphysical thesis out of them. But physicalism belongs to empirical science as a handy reference (like energy) to something that entirely exceeds scientific paradigms. But in this belonging, it reduces foundational discussions to what science can claim. Foundational philosophy now becomes whatever science can say! This is one of the great failings of philosophical physicalism: it simply isn't foundational. Philosophy is.

value wrote:
Materialists (physicalists) believe that scientific facts are of a special nature in comparison with common truth propositions. It is based on a dogmatic belief in uniformitarianism and the idea that facts obtain independent from a perspective (i.e. 'without philosophy').

Knitting exists without philosophy. So does dry cleaning, and no one denies these in their general engagement. But philosophy does not exist without philosophy. Philosophy is taking ordinary affairs down the rabbit hole of inquiry. Denying that there is a rabbit hole at all is only an option is you are simply NOT interested in philosophy.

What could make a fact otherwise than truth if it is not a belief? It is merely the scientific method (a philosophy) that provides a qualitative differentiator, which is recognizable, but which remains questionable.

And then, what is it to believe? It is to be justified in believing (putting aside groundless belief). So where does justification lie? This is an epistemological question. How does epistemology connect with ontology?--how does my knowledge claim that there is a tree in the back yard finds its justification for making claims about things "out there"? This is the issue completely dismissed by Terrapin.

A philosophical method is a perspective based on truth conditions. Truth conditions of a perspective on reality are questionable just like the truth conditions of a proposition.

Truth conditions of a proposition ARE truth conditions of a perspective on reality.

In the case of scientific facts, a truth condition is that facts are synthetic propositions predicated by existence in 'the real world'. Before one could consider this condition one will need to accept a certain truth about "reality" which is questionable.

You will find these conditions are all question begging. Right, science needs a basis in the world, and it has one. But science does not have a philosophical basis because it does ask philosophical questions.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 4th, 2021, 5:16 pm
First, why would "what causes reality to exist" be necessary for knowing whether there is reality? (Keeping in mind that by "reality" here we're referring to the objective world.)
value wrote:
Because without such knowledge, one can pose anything, from 'random chance' to 'illusion' to 'magic' to a simulation by aliens to the infinite monkey theorem. Such a situation does not allow one to make a claim that poses that reality is 'real'.

And talk about a causality that is "behind" what exists is impossible talk: Causality is an apriori FORM of existence itself, intuitively true in the way that "all bodies have extension" is true. This kind of talk is replaced by hermeneutics, which abandons fixity of assumptions with contextuality. One has to look away from science to do this, and look to the implicit structure of knowledge claims which is always already IN the object one observes. This started with Kant.

value worte
There is a wisdom that says that one should not be guided by fear.

I find the idea that anxiety is a fundamental feeling that places one before Nothingness and opens one fundamentally to Being as a transcendental source of ethics in the world, dangerous. It could translate into the idea that one should live with a gun under the nose, which seems to have been the ethical mindset of the Nazi's.

An often cited quote from Nazi Hermann Göring:

“When I hear the word culture, I unlock my gun!”

I've given it some thought of course. Could they actually be right?

Not to be guided by fear, but to realize the fear has no object, so it is not really fear, but a structural feature of our existence, this void we face when we confront Being qua Being. It is revealed in the absurdities that are in plain sight, but have to seen AS absurd. Take thought back to the Big Bang, and ask a question like this: Being was thrust into existence so to speak; then fourteen years or so later, started torturing itself through the agency of humans and animals, and for no reason or purpose at all. A stalwart analytic philosopher will say, yes, this is just as it is. But I see this as just as impossible as a self caused movement. Just absurd. Apriori impossible, just by the nature of torture itself.

And as to Nazis, just a note: they rose out of a culture of Kant and Beethoven and Hesse. They are here, in various forms, in the US, and their rise to prominence is not to be ignored. Goring is only an historical figure of recognition because of Goebbels, and we have lots of this type today filling the air with hatred. Hold on tight because things could get very "Schopenhauarian".

value wrote: ↑June 30th, 2023, 7:50 am

value wrote:Perhaps it is interesting to learn whether Sculptor1 has read Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation and what his opinion is.

thrasymachus wrote: ↑June 29th, 2023, 8:35 pmHe doesn't read continental philosophy. Those who do don't talk like that. It's another world, difficult to access.

From what I've noticed it seems that Sculptor1 actually does read works such as that of Schopenhauer so his critical opinion could be of value, since the background might be unexpected. It was Sculptor1 who recently attended me on the ancient sub-/superlunary theory of Plato and Aristotle.

His decision to repeatedly respond in this topic is indicative that he doesn't neglect the topic (he even argued on behalf of Schopenhauer to defend his choice for the term 'Will').

His first reply:

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑June 14th, 2023, 11:59 am No, of course not.
There are good reasons why he would want to make a distinction between "The Will", and the light from his lamp.

It might be of interest to learn how it is possible to defend determinism in light of the theory of Schopenhauer.

A determinist willing to face diverse types of reason on a forum might be the ultimate opportunity to examine a theory for validity and to discover more about it.

When I started with a vision about the fundamental 'certainty dogma' problem of science, I firstly sought to reference it as the dogmatic idea that the facts of science are valid outside the scope of a perspective. Upon many in-depth discussions with 'atheist' and 'materialist' Terrapin Station I would later change that to the idea that the facts of science are valid 'without philosophy'.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑March 28th, 2020, 2:50 pmFacts obtain whether people exist or not. Truth propositions do NOT obtain whether people exist or not.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑March 28th, 2020, 2:50 pm Facts in no way depend on any declarations or naming.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑March 19th, 2020, 9:37 amI'm an atheist.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑March 5th, 2020, 4:30 pmI'm a realist and a physicalist (aka "materialist").

value wrote:Materialists (physicalists) believe that scientific facts are of a special nature in comparison with common truth propositions. It is based on a dogmatic belief in uniformitarianism and the idea that facts obtain independent from a perspective (i.e. 'without philosophy').

What could make a fact otherwise than truth if it is not a belief? It is merely the scientific method (a philosophy) that provides a qualitative differentiator, which is recognizable, but which remains questionable.

A philosophical method is a perspective based on truth conditions. Truth conditions of a perspective on reality are questionable just like the truth conditions of a proposition.

In the case of scientific facts, a truth condition is that facts are synthetic propositions predicated by existence in 'the real world'. Before one could consider this condition one will need to accept a certain truth about "reality" which is questionable.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 4th, 2021, 6:16 pm First, why would "what causes reality to exist" be necessary for knowing whether there is reality? (Keeping in mind that by "reality" here we're referring to the objective world.)

value wrote:Because without such knowledge, one can pose anything, from 'random chance' to 'illusion' to 'magic' to a simulation by aliens to the infinite monkey theorem. Such a situation does not allow one to make a claim that poses that reality is 'real'.

I've learned a lot from discussions with Sculptor1 and Terrapin Station.

Why quote mention me, and then quote me? Yet talk about something unrelated to what I was saying?

Value wrote:

It might be of interest to learn how it is possible to defend determinism in light of the theory of Schopenhauer.

I think we must behave as if we create reality. This is because we have insufficient access to accurate prediction, which results in our predictions being conpounded of chance and choice.The world therefore is idea and is also, for experiencing beings such as ourselves, a launching of ourselves into the future i.e. will.

Belief in absolute determinism is a form of faith which could be proved to be true only if we were omniscient.