reading Husserl, Fink....

[odysseus]

The quick history of the Epoche. Let’s begin with Aristotle. He had what is called the hylomorphic view of things. Everything is a subject with properties. Those properties or Forms (morphe) inhere in the subject or hyle (matter). Moving along to Descartes, that subject became the Self. the I, and the properties became sense data. Then, because there are no external relations in any of that philosophizing, the Self, the mind, with the phenomenal sense data inhering in it lose all connection to the world “outside itself”. Berkeley finished off the very notion of matter tout suite.

With Husserl, in the Cartesian Meditations, we still have the Self and phenomenal properties inhering in it, but we, in the meantime have passed through Kant. So now even beyond the empirical Self there is another noumenal Self. The Noumena becomes the ultimate Subject. It has derived from and finally replaced Aristotle’s Hyle, Prime Matter. Dark and beyond knowing.

Prime Matter was also supposed to ground the Hic et Nunc, the tode ti. Eventually the Hic part dropped off and we are left with the Nunc, the Eternal Now. Time is the ground of the Self. Time is the ground of everything. As Hegel said, Das Sein des Geistes is die Zeit. We could also say that Time is the substance of the world. Phenomenology at last bows before, not the Self, but Time. And phenomenology is materialism. High Romanticism tending toward decadence.

There is a fascinating discussion of this very thing in John Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics. I cannot do it justice in a post, but it centers on the crisis of assuming,. on the one hand, that a phenomenological presence is predelineated (Husserl's term) eidetically as well as in the recalled adumbrations of actuality, and since it is by this that the, as Kant put it, intuitions are not blind, we are forced to acknowledge that presence as such is thereby lost altogether in time, and this is Heidegger's thesis. Heidegger thought Husserl was thinking magically to suppose that the transcendental ego could even be imagined as an absolute when all thought is relativized, contextualized in time: it is Heraclitus' world, not Parmenedes' and Being does not sit still for presence to be a meaningful term at all.
Capauto lays it out in tracing the history of this idea of presence, from Kierkegaard to Derrida. A very helpful read! It helped me understand the idea of presence much better. One has to keep in mind that if Heidegger was right, and were are delimited by the disclosing power of ideas, that is, language is the "house of Being" and it and sensory intuitions are joined at the hip, then he still has to face Levinas, for in the circularity of interpretation meanings, a circularity Heiedgger embraced, the is the other and the the Other. Metaphysics is built into the world, and the theory that draws the line where language ends is itself just a parcel of language. The epoche is not simply an historical residuum. It is a method for realizing what language hides, and the clue, I might add, lies in the absurdity of Heidegger's delimitations as well as in the intuitive presence of presence, which is what Husserl was really playing in to the equation. Finally, what Caputo and Derrida and Heidegger miss altogether is this striking piece of logic: value is the true validation Being, not ontology, or a post modern critique of ontology. This gets to the heart of our Being here, and philosophy meets its end here, its purpose run out, its arguments exhausted--it stares blankly at the world, finally ready to shut up and let the world speak.

[odysseus]

"I think the reduction leads to what the Hindus and Buddhists have been telling us for a very long time ..." I think you are referring to Western Secular ideas about Hinduism and Buddhism, which really has absolutely nothing at all to do with village religion here, which is what I study. You have a very high class understanding of those religions. Very intellectual. And your talk about Value is also high class. I recommend Baudelaire and the demi-monde. And William Burroughs with his magical universe and wild boys.

Language, at this juncture, is just a tool, no matter how overbearing.

[tapaticmadness]

The quick history of the Epoche. Let’s begin with Aristotle. He had what is called the hylomorphic view of things. Everything is a subject with properties. Those properties or Forms (morphe) inhere in the subject or hyle (matter). Moving along to Descartes, that subject became the Self. the I, and the properties became sense data. Then, because there are no external relations in any of that philosophizing, the Self, the mind, with the phenomenal sense data inhering in it lose all connection to the world “outside itself”. Berkeley finished off the very notion of matter tout suite.

With Husserl, in the Cartesian Meditations, we still have the Self and phenomenal properties inhering in it, but we, in the meantime have passed through Kant. So now even beyond the empirical Self there is another noumenal Self. The Noumena becomes the ultimate Subject. It has derived from and finally replaced Aristotle’s Hyle, Prime Matter. Dark and beyond knowing.

Prime Matter was also supposed to ground the Hic et Nunc, the tode ti. Eventually the Hic part dropped off and we are left with the Nunc, the Eternal Now. Time is the ground of the Self. Time is the ground of everything. As Hegel said, Das Sein des Geistes is die Zeit. We could also say that Time is the substance of the world. Phenomenology at last bows before, not the Self, but Time. And phenomenology is materialism. High Romanticism tending toward decadence.

There is a fascinating discussion of this very thing in John Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics. I cannot do it justice in a post, but it centers on the crisis of assuming,. on the one hand, that a phenomenological presence is predelineated (Husserl's term) eidetically as well as in the recalled adumbrations of actuality, and since it is by this that the, as Kant put it, intuitions are not blind, we are forced to acknowledge that presence as such is thereby lost altogether in time, and this is Heidegger's thesis. Heidegger thought Husserl was thinking magically to suppose that the transcendental ego could even be imagined as an absolute when all thought is relativized, contextualized in time: it is Heraclitus' world, not Parmenedes' and Being does not sit still for presence to be a meaningful term at all.
Capauto lays it out in tracing the history of this idea of presence, from Kierkegaard to Derrida. A very helpful read! It helped me understand the idea of presence much better. One has to keep in mind that if Heidegger was right, and were are delimited by the disclosing power of ideas, that is, language is the "house of Being" and it and sensory intuitions are joined at the hip, then he still has to face Levinas, for in the circularity of interpretation meanings, a circularity Heiedgger embraced, the is the other and the the Other. Metaphysics is built into the world, and the theory that draws the line where language ends is itself just a parcel of language. The epoche is not simply an historical residuum. It is a method for realizing what language hides, and the clue, I might add, lies in the absurdity of Heidegger's delimitations as well as in the intuitive presence of presence, which is what Husserl was really playing in to the equation. Finally, what Caputo and Derrida and Heidegger miss altogether is this striking piece of logic: value is the true validation Being, not ontology, or a post modern critique of ontology. This gets to the heart of our Being here, and philosophy meets its end here, its purpose run out, its arguments exhausted--it stares blankly at the world, finally ready to shut up and let the world speak.

When it comes to writing philosophy, our styles are certainly different. You are a scholar's scholar, constantly citing references. You are having a long conversation with other published philosophers. I, though, give short, quick explanations and leave it at that. If you look again at my writing, you will see that my paragraphs are all complete and they don't fit into a longer exposition. You can skip around in my writing and nothing is lost. Short and sweet. And broken up.

I'm sure you enjoy writing and thinking the way you do and I certainly have no objection to it. I, however, could never match such interlinking. Nor would I want to. So I will continue to do as I do and you will do as you do and the two will never really meet. Right now I am going to walk over to a Bon Buddhist monastery, to the canteen, and get some fried Buff and potatoes. Here people don't eat beef, but they do eat buffalo. It doesn't have much fat in it to give it flavor, but it's ok. https://sherabchammaling.com/about/trit ... monastery/

[odysseus]

You live in Nepal, and I find that fascinating. You know, I lived in your neighborhood, in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India (close to you geographically, well, south, not so close really) for 3 years. Rajasthan is not far from you. There is, near the Pakistani border outside of Jaisalmer (sp?), a place called the Thar Desert. a place of breathtaking quiet (Thar means Quiet) where the soul can revel. The Jaisalmer Fort is affordable, and exotic, but one can stay cheaper still, and take camel ride out into the middle of nowhere, where the night sky is clear and primordial; if you have the time and inclination, it is most worthy.
Traveling to places like this helps undo the knot of extraneous thought. What lies beneath is extraordinary, which is why I read phenomenology. The very idea of witnessing the "thing itself" is miraculous, literally.
Enjoy Nepal. I'd love to live there, myself.

[tapaticmadness]

You live in Nepal, and I find that fascinating. You know, I lived in your neighborhood, in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India (close to you geographically, well, south, not so close really) for 3 years. Rajasthan is not far from you. There is, near the Pakistani border outside of Jaisalmer (sp?), a place called the Thar Desert. a place of breathtaking quiet (Thar means Quiet) where the soul can revel. The Jaisalmer Fort is affordable, and exotic, but one can stay cheaper still, and take camel ride out into the middle of nowhere, where the night sky is clear and primordial; if you have the time and inclination, it is most worthy.
Traveling to places like this helps undo the knot of extraneous thought. What lies beneath is extraordinary, which is why I read phenomenology. The very idea of witnessing the "thing itself" is miraculous, literally.
Enjoy Nepal. I'd love to live there, myself.

Well, that was interesting. You should NOT come to Kathmandu. You would hate it. It is crowded, chaotic, noisy, a total head-banging disorientation. I love it. But then I grew up on the American prairie, where there is plenty of quiet and wide open spaces. i suppose we both crave the opposite of what we once knew. I looked up Kodaikanal on google and it looks like a very beautiful hill station. I'm wondering why you went there. I've been to Rajasthan and the Thar desert. It was ok. But for some God forsaken reason i crave the chaos of the city. Why is that? The Knot of Extraneous Thought is a marvel to behold. Topology and knot theory and all that fascinate me. I discovered in Egypt that the desert mainly means bugs, gnats and greasy sweat. Oh well, I don't really crave quiet. I had enough of that back home. I loved it when huge thunderstorms would travel overhead. I was actually in a house being hit by a tornado once. it was quite an experience. And I was in the earthquake here. Those are the things i crave. Strangely enough.

The so-called "music" in the monasteries here also draws me. It's really just noise. Most religious "music" is like that. It's awful. But I rather like it.

[odysseus]

Well, that was interesting. You should NOT come to Kathmandu. You would hate it. It is crowded, chaotic, noisy, a total head-banging disorientation. I love it. But then I grew up on the American prairie, where there is plenty of quiet and wide open spaces. i suppose we both crave the opposite of what we once knew. I looked up Kodaikanal on google and it looks like a very beautiful hill station. I'm wondering why you went there. I've been to Rajasthan and the Thar desert. It was ok. But for some God forsaken reason i crave the chaos of the city. Why is that? The Knot of Extraneous Thought is a marvel to behold. Topology and knot theory and all that fascinate me. I discovered in Egypt that the desert mainly means bugs, gnats and greasy sweat. Oh well, I don't really crave quiet. I had enough of that back home. I loved it when huge thunderstorms would travel overhead. I was actually in a house being hit by a tornado once. it was quite an experience. And I was in the earthquake here. Those are the things i crave. Strangely enough.

The so-called "music" in the monasteries here also draws me. It's really just noise. Most religious "music" is like that. It's awful. But I rather like it.

No, no. I like these places, crowded and insane. Nothing like the Delhi train station in the morning, not to mention the errrr...charming trains and their endless noise and commotion. I've been all around India on the cheap, which is the only way to go because it is genuine and you meet the best people, like the soldier who was just back from Kashmir happy to tell us about his life, and the old, old man in a stately turban looking almost regal, his ancient face glowing with with something very far away The toilets that empty directly on the tracks: charming. The ghats of Varanasi, and the sadhus (one named Ganesha, after the god, had a massive facial tumor) who took our daughter under their wing; the whole thing was a filthy, dangerous mess (I had typhoid for two months), and an absolute delight.
You're lucky to there, for I miss places like this, but perhaps for different reasons than I have. I look for God everywhere, and it is in what I like to call primordial environments, where society has not yet been transformed into what Baudrillard called the hyperreal, that I find something still present that is real, original, unsupoiled by modernity. This is a loaded idea, granted.
I taught high school in Kodaikanal.

[tapaticmadness]

I look for God everywhere,

I too look for God everywhere. Remember that I am a Platonist. To me that means that I believe in universal Forms separate from the individuals that exemplify them. For example, consider the Form of being a Human Being or a Rickshaw or or a traffic light or a dog or a computer or a broken hammer or a thumb drive or hair or a kiss or a philosophy book. Those forms are generic, not specific like their exemplars. Do generic things exist? A Platonist will have to say Yes. They are indeterminate and vague. They are dreamy and seductive. Contemplation of the Forms will put you in a trance. They are the gods. Consider the word "any" as in pick any color. Is there a thing that that word refers to. Yes. The same goes for "all", "some", "none", "a,an", "the", "every", and "universality" and "particularity" and "facticity" ... etc.. They are all real, eternal things. I see God everywhere. And I see the most vague thing of Divinity.

[Nick_A]

I look for God everywhere,

I too look for God everywhere. Remember that I am a Platonist. To me that means that I believe in universal Forms separate from the individuals that exemplify them. For example, consider the Form of being a Human Being or a Rickshaw or or a traffic light or a dog or a computer or a broken hammer or a thumb drive or hair or a kiss or a philosophy book. Those forms are generic, not specific like their exemplars. Do generic things exist? A Platonist will have to say Yes. They are indeterminate and vague. They are dreamy and seductive. Contemplation of the Forms will put you in a trance. They are the gods. Consider the word "any" as in pick any color. Is there a thing that that word refers to. Yes. The same goes for "all", "some", "none", "a,an", "the", "every", and "universality" and "particularity" and "facticity" ... etc.. They are all real, eternal things. I see God everywhere. And I see the most vague thing of Divinity.

Hi Tapa

Does this excerpt from Rodney Collins book Celestial influences resonate with you?

In our attempt to reconcile the inner and outer world, however, we do come up against a very real difficulty, which must be faced. This difficulty is connected with the problem of reconciling different 'methods of knowing'.

Man has two ways of studying the universe. The first is by induction: he examines phenomena, classifies them, and attempts to infer laws and principles from them. This is the method generally used by science. The second is by deduction: having perceived or had revealed or discovered certain general laws and principles, he attempts to deduce the application of these laws in various studies and in life. This is the method generally used by religions.. The first method begins with 'facts' and attempts to reach 'laws'. The second method begins with 'laws' and attempts to reach 'facts'.

These two methods belong to the working of different human functions. The first is the method of the ordinary logical mind, which is permanently available to us. the second derives from a potential function in man, which is ordinarily inactive for lack of nervous energy of sufficient intensity, and which we may call higher mental function This function on rare occasions of its operation, reveals to man laws in action, he sees the whole phenomenal world as the product of laws.

All true formulations of universal laws derive recently or remotely from the working of this higher function, somewhere and in some man. At the same time, for the application and understanding of the laws revealed in the long stretches of time and culture when such revelation is not available, man has to rely on the ordinary logical mind."

Every created thing in our universe is a union of three forces. Normally we are only aware of two: affirming and denying. Where affirming seeks to verify truth through top down deductive reason, denying begins with facts and tries to verify truth through analysis.

However the third force or the direction of value and reconciliation in relation to our source reflects a level of reality in which the denying and affirming force maintain its struggle. Our task seems to become able to experience the world from the perspective of the third force. How of course is big question since the world is against it and is only aware of two forces..

[odysseus]

Then you think like Kant does, or you should have an appreciation for his examination of human rationality. The part about the forms being separate from the humans that exemplify them is, I believe, problematic. Plato's are the theoretical basis for Kant's synthetic function of concepts, and his aesthetics are formal as well: beauty is a "formal" expression of the structure of reason.
I am not a rationalist, and the closest thing I find to Plato that is reasonable is Heidegger, who was no transcendentalist and was not a religious person. This is big argument I won't put out here. But I will say this:
First, Husserl and Fink do not think as you do about forms being separate from humans. This is the big point laid out by Kant in his Copernican Revolution, and it is basis for German idealism, and phenomenology is a kind of idealism. In the intentional act there is the "predicatively formed eidetic affair" which IS the object.
The real point is that even if one were to defend a traditional material model of "outthereness" it still could not be maintained that whatever is important out there issues from out there. I like the beauty of a walk down a country road, but the country road does not make things important, they merely inspire importance for the source of emotional meaning is me, the observer, and this applies across the board to all value-in-things. Facts sans value are about as meaningful one's and zero's in a system of data. So if we want to speak about crowded streets or country roads and the meaning they have, the philosophical question always hangs on value generating apperceptual systems, not those "outthere" things. I admire the old turbaned man, but it is in the admiration that meaning arises, not in the fact of the old man that sits there. We bring caring into the world.
Of course, with Fink, the phenomenologist, there is no out there to be discussed meaningfully, for the model falls apart quickly under analysis. It is out of us that all things come, especially value, and this puts the us front and center on all issues at the level of basic assumptions. See Heidegger Being and Time; not that he defends a transcendental ego, but his hermeneutic grounding of our Being here is very strong.
Who cares about all those people, or whatever excites or thrills if caring itself is absent? This is the Real philosophical question: what does it mean to care, and what is it for a think to have value, that is, value simpliciter?

[tapaticmadness]

Who cares about all those people, or whatever excites or thrills if caring itself is absent? This is the Real philosophical question: what does it mean to care, and what is it for a think to have value, that is, value simpliciter?

No, I do not think like Kant. Kant is a conceptualist (a nominalist) and I am a realist. Concepts are “in the mind”, while the Forms of a realist are external to the mind. Now to the importance of Value. Yes, Value is valuable. But, I maintain, that Value, also, is a real thing external to the mind. Value is not generated by an apperceptual system. Value is a thing out there. It is ungenerated. The same goes for Beauty. The Good. Care. Meaning. Pleasure. They are all outthere things. The mind only observes. Kant is the bête noire of my philosophy.

In my opinion nominalism and idealism came into being because certain philosophers came to see Platonic Realism as uncaring and devoid of feeling. They wanted human beings to be given respect and love for themselves and not because they exemplified some universal. Platonism was declared immoral. And decadent. Then eventually insane. Philosophy, in the hands of the nominalistic idealists, finally became today’s Feminism. Feminine caring, aka ethics, is for them the end of the road. I have no objection if that’s what they want. I have taken a different road.

[tapaticmadness]

I look for God everywhere,

I too look for God everywhere. Remember that I am a Platonist. To me that means that I believe in universal Forms separate from the individuals that exemplify them. For example, consider the Form of being a Human Being or a Rickshaw or or a traffic light or a dog or a computer or a broken hammer or a thumb drive or hair or a kiss or a philosophy book. Those forms are generic, not specific like their exemplars. Do generic things exist? A Platonist will have to say Yes. They are indeterminate and vague. They are dreamy and seductive. Contemplation of the Forms will put you in a trance. They are the gods. Consider the word "any" as in pick any color. Is there a thing that that word refers to. Yes. The same goes for "all", "some", "none", "a,an", "the", "every", and "universality" and "particularity" and "facticity" ... etc.. They are all real, eternal things. I see God everywhere. And I see the most vague thing of Divinity.

Hi Tapa

Does this excerpt from Rodney Collins book Celestial influences resonate with you?

In our attempt to reconcile the inner and outer world, however, we do come up against a very real difficulty, which must be faced. This difficulty is connected with the problem of reconciling different 'methods of knowing'.

Man has two ways of studying the universe. The first is by induction: he examines phenomena, classifies them, and attempts to infer laws and principles from them. This is the method generally used by science. The second is by deduction: having perceived or had revealed or discovered certain general laws and principles, he attempts to deduce the application of these laws in various studies and in life. This is the method generally used by religions.. The first method begins with 'facts' and attempts to reach 'laws'. The second method begins with 'laws' and attempts to reach 'facts'.

These two methods belong to the working of different human functions. The first is the method of the ordinary logical mind, which is permanently available to us. the second derives from a potential function in man, which is ordinarily inactive for lack of nervous energy of sufficient intensity, and which we may call higher mental function This function on rare occasions of its operation, reveals to man laws in action, he sees the whole phenomenal world as the product of laws.

All true formulations of universal laws derive recently or remotely from the working of this higher function, somewhere and in some man. At the same time, for the application and understanding of the laws revealed in the long stretches of time and culture when such revelation is not available, man has to rely on the ordinary logical mind."

Every created thing in our universe is a union of three forces. Normally we are only aware of two: affirming and denying. Where affirming seeks to verify truth through top down deductive reason, denying begins with facts and tries to verify truth through analysis.

However the third force or the direction of value and reconciliation in relation to our source reflects a level of reality in which the denying and affirming force maintain its struggle. Our task seems to become able to experience the world from the perspective of the third force. How of course is big question since the world is against it and is only aware of two forces..

Rodney Collins may very well have a good idea there, but I am not the one who can say. I never think about ethical laws and the laws of historical development. They are far from my mind. Politics and social order and culture and the coming and going of human beings are outside my vision. My mind is somewhere else. Sorry. I will check out Collins and see if there is something there that can resonate with me. I rather doubt it though. Thanks for asking.

[Nick_A]

I too look for God everywhere. Remember that I am a Platonist. To me that means that I believe in universal Forms separate from the individuals that exemplify them. For example, consider the Form of being a Human Being or a Rickshaw or or a traffic light or a dog or a computer or a broken hammer or a thumb drive or hair or a kiss or a philosophy book. Those forms are generic, not specific like their exemplars. Do generic things exist? A Platonist will have to say Yes. They are indeterminate and vague. They are dreamy and seductive. Contemplation of the Forms will put you in a trance. They are the gods. Consider the word "any" as in pick any color. Is there a thing that that word refers to. Yes. The same goes for "all", "some", "none", "a,an", "the", "every", and "universality" and "particularity" and "facticity" ... etc.. They are all real, eternal things. I see God everywhere. And I see the most vague thing of Divinity.

Hi Tapa

Does this excerpt from Rodney Collins book Celestial influences resonate with you?

In our attempt to reconcile the inner and outer world, however, we do come up against a very real difficulty, which must be faced. This difficulty is connected with the problem of reconciling different 'methods of knowing'.

Man has two ways of studying the universe. The first is by induction: he examines phenomena, classifies them, and attempts to infer laws and principles from them. This is the method generally used by science. The second is by deduction: having perceived or had revealed or discovered certain general laws and principles, he attempts to deduce the application of these laws in various studies and in life. This is the method generally used by religions.. The first method begins with 'facts' and attempts to reach 'laws'. The second method begins with 'laws' and attempts to reach 'facts'.

These two methods belong to the working of different human functions. The first is the method of the ordinary logical mind, which is permanently available to us. the second derives from a potential function in man, which is ordinarily inactive for lack of nervous energy of sufficient intensity, and which we may call higher mental function This function on rare occasions of its operation, reveals to man laws in action, he sees the whole phenomenal world as the product of laws.

All true formulations of universal laws derive recently or remotely from the working of this higher function, somewhere and in some man. At the same time, for the application and understanding of the laws revealed in the long stretches of time and culture when such revelation is not available, man has to rely on the ordinary logical mind."

Every created thing in our universe is a union of three forces. Normally we are only aware of two: affirming and denying. Where affirming seeks to verify truth through top down deductive reason, denying begins with facts and tries to verify truth through analysis.

However the third force or the direction of value and reconciliation in relation to our source reflects a level of reality in which the denying and affirming force maintain its struggle. Our task seems to become able to experience the world from the perspective of the third force. How of course is big question since the world is against it and is only aware of two forces..

Rodney Collins may very well have a good idea there, but I am not the one who can say. I never think about ethical laws and the laws of historical development. They are far from my mind. Politics and social order and culture and the coming and going of human beings are outside my vision. My mind is somewhere else. Sorry. I will check out Collins and see if there is something there that can resonate with me. I rather doubt it though. Thanks for asking.

Thanks for your sincere reply. I'll just suggest that it doesn't refer to ethics or man made interpretations we call morality but rather to universal objective conscience. Where the person of science desires to learn new things, The Platonist desires to remember what has been forgotten, Find me the person adept at both since I would love to talk to them.

[odysseus]

No, I do not think like Kant. Kant is a conceptualist (a nominalist) and I am a realist. Concepts are “in the mind”, while the Forms of a realist are external to the mind. Now to the importance of Value. Yes, Value is valuable. But, I maintain, that Value, also, is a real thing external to the mind. Value is not generated by an apperceptual system. Value is a thing out there. It is ungenerated. The same goes for Beauty. The Good. Care. Meaning. Pleasure. They are all outthere things. The mind only observes. Kant is the bête noire of my philosophy.

In my opinion nominalism and idealism came into being because certain philosophers came to see Platonic Realism as uncaring and devoid of feeling. They wanted human beings to be given respect and love for themselves and not because they exemplified some universal. Platonism was declared immoral. And decadent. Then eventually insane. Philosophy, in the hands of the nominalistic idealists, finally became today’s Feminism. Feminine caring, aka ethics, is for them the end of the road. I have no objection if that’s what they want. I have taken a different road.

But how does this work? Ideas are out there? I think your real issue is, and Rorty had this as well, is with epistemology, and Kant is the one who caused this problem because he defended rather definitively that knowing objects as independent of perceptual systems was impossible. Many analytic philosophers, like Searle, are staunch anti Kantians. They go with the "best guess" theory provided by empirical science. At any rate, I will never understand how thinking like this works and to me it is the epistemology that undoes this. Husserl and Fink are Kantians, as is Heidegger and even Derrida derives from Kant. And when I say Kantian, I don't mean they but all of his rationalism, but they are all logocentric in their focus on language as the key to understanding the understanding (not far from Fink's phenomenology of phenomenology, really).

But again, I just don't see how this works. Perhaps you have some specific construal of "out there" I need to have in mind.

[tapaticmadness]

But again, I just don't see how this works. Perhaps you have some specific construal of "out there" I need to have in mind.

Good questions. I obviously don’t mean they are in absolute space and time. There are spatial and temporal relations, but no absolute Space and Time. So the phrase “in space and time” makes no sense, except to mean that a thing is joined to another thing by a spatial or temporal relation. And remember that, following Russell, relations exist external to their relata. That should take care of a wrong interpretation of “out there”.

Consider the universal Form of Cat. There are obviously individual cats all over the place. And they all exemplify Catness, the Form of Cat. What is the relation between individual cats and the Form Cat? Plato said it was participation. Husserl sometimes says the individual “falls under” such and such an essence. I use the word “exemplify” as in some bare particulars exemplify the Universal Form of Cat. Again remembering that relations and connectors or Nexus exist external to what they connect.

So if am think of a Form, say Catness. What is the connection between my thinking and the Form. An Idealist might say that the Form inheres in the mind. It is somehow internal to thought. A realist will have to find a different connector. The philosophers I know use the Nexus of Intentionality. Again that connector exists external to that it connects.

I think you can see that Russell’s idea of External Relations is very important. Now consider analysis. Take that ordinary, natural cat. I analyze it into different ontological things. A bare particular, various universal Forms, including color and smell and feel etc., and also some nexus to make it all hang together. (the plural of nexus is nexus). What is the relation between ontological things and an ordinary, natural cat? There is no relation. One makes a Kierkegaardian Jump from one to the other. (Now don’t give me a lesson of Keirkegaard.) Ontological Things are outside, external to, natural, ordinary things. One simply has to jump from the natural view of things to the supernatural. And when I say that I am a phenomenological realist, I mean that the ontological things I see are real things external to my mind. I really do see them . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_ ... _relations

I don’t at all see why seeing objects independent of the perceptual system is impossible. In fact, seeing independent objects is just what the mind does. I think Kant had a faulty understanding of what perception and mind are. I directly perceive the desk and computer in front of me. Directly. And they are independent of my seeing them. I think it all goes back to a proper understanding of relations and their being external to what they relate.

[tapaticmadness]

No, I do not think like Kant. Kant is a conceptualist (a nominalist) and I am a realist. Concepts are “in the mind”, while the Forms of a realist are external to the mind. Now to the importance of Value. Yes, Value is valuable. But, I maintain, that Value, also, is a real thing external to the mind. Value is not generated by an apperceptual system. Value is a thing out there. It is ungenerated. The same goes for Beauty. The Good. Care. Meaning. Pleasure. They are all outthere things. The mind only observes. Kant is the bête noire of my philosophy.

In my opinion nominalism and idealism came into being because certain philosophers came to see Platonic Realism as uncaring and devoid of feeling. They wanted human beings to be given respect and love for themselves and not because they exemplified some universal. Platonism was declared immoral. And decadent. Then eventually insane. Philosophy, in the hands of the nominalistic idealists, finally became today’s Feminism. Feminine caring, aka ethics, is for them the end of the road. I have no objection if that’s what they want. I have taken a different road.

But how does this work? Ideas are out there? I think your real issue is, and Rorty had this as well, is with epistemology, and Kant is the one who caused this problem because he defended rather definitively that knowing objects as independent of perceptual systems was impossible. Many analytic philosophers, like Searle, are staunch anti Kantians. They go with the "best guess" theory provided by empirical science. At any rate, I will never understand how thinking like this works and to me it is the epistemology that undoes this. Husserl and Fink are Kantians, as is Heidegger and even Derrida derives from Kant. And when I say Kantian, I don't mean they but all of his rationalism, but they are all logocentric in their focus on language as the key to understanding the understanding (not far from Fink's phenomenology of phenomenology, really).

But again, I just don't see how this works. Perhaps you have some specific construal of "out there" I need to have in mind.

I went to Rorty to try and figure out why he believed that knowing objects as independent perceptual systems was impossible. As far as I can tell it is because we constantly make mistakes in our judgments of what is and isn't the case. If that's his argument then he has once again taken up the same age old argument that has always been presented against realism. This is the same as the Hindu example of someone seeing a snake in the grass and then discovering it was a rope. A realist has to account for how we make mistakes in our perception. Only one answer has been given by realists and it's the answer I adhere to. One must give ontological status to that illusion of a snake. i am here with Alexis Meinong. "Non-existent things" exist. We experience them so they are there. i imagined that this soup I just made was going to be good. It isn't. That imagined object exists as the object of my imagining, but not as something actual in my world. Now, the objects of our imagination are not IN the imagination. They are not IN the mind. They exist external to thought, just as much as this chair I am sitting on and that rope. And once again you are going to wonder where this "external" world of imagined, merely potential, not actual, objects is. Well, they are not in space. I have already spoken about that. And the nexus that connects them to thought isn't either. Rorty made the mistake of thinking that "non-existent" things have to be in the mind and dependent on it. Also go back at look at T. P. Nunn that I sent you early on. Secondary sense data aren't in the mind either. Once again I lean on the Doctrine of External Relations.