Joshs

Don’t confuse universal use of labels like rape, murder, theft and genocide with universal agreement on whose actions deserve these labels. Without su...

It sounds like we’re in agreement.

Yes, and each time, in each particular situation, how can you be sure that what makes that situation right or wrong draws from the same rules, criteri...

Determining right from wrong in a particular situation is easy. What is not so simple is recognizing the subtle way our criteria of ethical correctnes...

Let’s see if it helps Tom.

I’ll save you the trouble of reading the other two. It’s the usual reliance on some universalistic grounding of ethical normativity mixed with a sprin...

What kind of survival are we talking about? A rock survives as itself only to the extent that it remains more or less self identical over time. But a ...

Other than myself, you may be the only person I’ve encountered on this site over the past 6 years who is not a realist. It gets lonely here when you’r...

It is possible to make distinctions between different kinds of formative agencies without needing to derive formative agency from formless matter, or ...

And the concept of external cause is not itself a form (Wittgenstein would say form of life)? What is it we are doing when we split an observer off fr...

There are no non-configurative phenomena. All events take place within some larger pattern of relations. Agency here does not refer to an entity, but ...

It’s not just humans who bring form to bear on an environment. This is precisely what all living systems do. And we don’t have to stop there. The non-...

In The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger critiques the idea that form and content can be treated separately, as though form were something imposed ...

I agree that we only derive from a philosophy what already accords with our worldview to a large degree. But that philosophy can still have a legitima...

Indeed it is. What many don’t realize, though, is that he isn’t simply repeating Leibnitz’s question, he is deconstructing it. What he is really askin...

Are you saying Heidegger’s main question is ‘ why is there something rather than nothing’?

Have you read Derrida’s deconstruction of Husserl in Speech and Phenomena and his intro to Origin of Geometry?

There is one aspect of our norms of interpretation that matters a great deal, and that is our failure to distinguish disagreement over facts from diff...

It’s not language that behaves this way of its own accord. It is the ways we construct grammars out of it that lead to bewitchment. A prime illustrati...

Well, these are certainly negative comments on Heidegger, but they consist mainly of references to other authors’ opinions of him. There’s no actual s...

I would love to hear your summary of Heidegger’s philosophy, but that link isn’t it. It sounds like all you’ve done there is take the facts of Heidegg...

Whenever someone offers a sweeping dismissal of the ideas of a philosopher as notable as Heidegger, it is not just an individual writer being critique...

I’m curious. Who would you name as the 10 most important philosophers born after 1900?

We tend to find uninteresting that which we don’t understand. Do you think you understand Wittgenstein? This goes for also for and and anyone who clai...

This is going to be a very predictable thread. Those on this site whose only exposure to philosophy is through physics , mathematics or psychology wil...

To say that 12x12 =144 is a hinge proposition is to think of it as a rule for arriving at the product 144. The result of a calculation can be true or ...

I like what Rorty has to say about this:

Does this sound solipsistic to you?

Perception is fundamentally about interactions between us and the world, seeing as a form of doing, as phenomenologists such as Husserl and Merleau-Po...

We have to be careful to recognize distinctions in the sense of ‘existence’. For instance, if we ask ‘does this chair exist?’, we might mean , does it...

One doesn’t get a language game right or wrong, one gets issues defined within the parameters of a language game correct or incorrect . The game itsel...

Oooh, false claims. That sounds like a terrible thing. Imagine not accepting true claims like the idea that mental illness is the result of a chemical...

The same observations you’re making concerning psychiatry could be made with respect to philosophy. The only difference is that most philosophers don’...

Where do we get the idea that there can be a difference in degree that is not accompanied by a change in kind? Do we get this idea from nature or do w...

It’s not social practice all the way down, it’s normativity all the way down. That is, the contingent relationality of existence doesn’t ground itself...

Indeed. Imagine I am looking at a drawing of a duck , and you come along and say ‘I see the image of a rabbit there’. I say ‘where’? You respond ‘look...

It is assuming there is something ‘external’ to human social practices which leads to dualism, skepticism and arbitrariness. Our practices are not on ...

You’re making Wittgenstein’s point for him. He sees Moore’s raising of his hand as a performance which is grounded in a picture of the world which can...

When I say the word ‘bike’ you already have a system of practices in mind, involving use of pedals, steering, balance, etc. Of course, your idea of bi...

These situations show that one is performing a practice in a particular way, and one’s understanding is this particular way of ‘knowing how’. These pe...

It wouldn’t be an innate sense so much as one that arises through coordination among different sense modalities and their relation to our actions with...

The tough love school of enlightenment :clap:

For Witt they are not just cognitive but affective and valuative. Most importantly, for Kant innate categories make possible normative experiences but...

Practices aren’t what we do with factual objects which precede our actions on them. Practices precede and make intelligible the meaning of a those obj...

We don’t. We need to read On Certainty to reach conclusions that move beyond Kant’s thinking. Synthetic a priori truths begin by splitting off the wor...

Wittgenstein’s saying that there are kinds of facts which are fluid, which can change their truth value. A language game within which such facts makes...

Only the system of grounds provides the relative certainty that Wittgenstein is talking about throughout the book. You’re making the same error as Moo...

When I have exhausted my justifications, I come face to face with the limits that define the boundaries of a language game. This bedrock is fixed, but...

So what do you think it means to say that some proposition is part of our world picture? Is a world picture simply a set of facts that we believe are ...

I consider the notion of hinge proposition to be redundant; it’s just another way for Wittgenstein to talk about language game and forms of life, as a...