/lit/ - Literature

among other things
to slaughter-dick fans: you can't help but change--your perspective!

>>16019393
What are the most important pre reqs for process philosophy and whitehead? Leibniz and some Bergson, anything else?

What do I need to read to understand it

>>16019424
Just read his other stuff it is pretty accessible. Science and the Modern World, Modes of Thought, Adventures of Ideas
>>16019414
I would say William James, Deleuze, Bateson, Merleau-Ponty.

I will never read this

>>16019534
why not?

>>16019393
then i must avoid it and arrive at similar conclusions by my own later in life.

>>16019617
Not him, but it's really fucking long, and nigh indecipherable.

>>16020019
It's 350 pages it's not that long

Bump

not going to read him until i get done with the greeks, neoplatonists, kant, and hegel. see you in 10 years

>>16019393
Dear OP, you should immediately seek a remedy for the philosophical position of not hanging yourself.

Can somebody tell me what the overarching argument is?

>>16019393
Solipsism is an interesting thing; a minimalism that explains everything without reducing anything. It simply makes an error in regards to the unknown.
So it must proceed with the knowledge that one knows what one doesn't know.

>>16019393
>anthropocentrism
This is incapable and there's literally nothing wrong with it.

>>16020019
>>16020081
Kek 350 pages is thought to be long by some on this board

>>16022388
What's incapable? And we aren't the center of the universe so any metaphysics/cosmology that takes root from that is false. Anthropocentrism is the root of all problems within the ecosphere. It is bad. Stop being a contrarian.

>>16020081
>>16022415
350 pages of philosophy that's as dense as lead is long, yes. The length of a book should be judged by the density of its ideas, not the actual amount of paper in between the covers.

>>16022467
inescapable*
Anthropocentrism is inescapable insofar as the world is contained inside the virtual community created by linguistic representation -- a uniquely human phenomenon. Once again, this is not a bad thing. This minimal yet foundational and absolutely inescapable anthropocentrism is the condition of possibility for any sort of of anti-anthropocentrism -- man is unique as the only animal capable of hating himself. However, once we understand this self-hatred as conditioned by a self-love, it's intended effect is necessarily altered.

>>16022552
>the world is contained inside the virtual community created by linguistic representation
No it isn't. This is basically solipsistic thinking. It is an exaggeration to say that everything is language. There are other forms of life that aren't linguistic (bodies, emotions, architectures and other organizations of space, images, sounds, etc). And there is no representationalism.
Perception operates in the relation part-to-whole rather than representation-to-object.

>>16022710
>It is an exaggeration to say that everything is language.
You say, using language.
>There are other forms of life that aren't linguistic
You say, using language.
>And there is no representationalism.
You say, using language (representation).
All these things you claim to not have a representational substrate must be represented as being so. This process is coincidental with anthropomorphisation of the object.
And no; this is not solipsistic thinking. Language is an historical and communal phenomenon. Any given word or unit of language is not contained solely within an individual's head, but rather the aforementioned virtual community -- the transcendental realm of signs that exists *in* history and *between* individuals.

>>16022823
feeling or, for sufficiently complex organisms, sensation, is prior to its representation. ideally, language strives for the adequate representation of this more basic component of experience.

>>16022823
You conveniently skipped over the part where I stated there are other forms of life that aren't linguistic (which also precede the linguistic). Also what you said also doesn't negate perception of part-to-whole and that not everything is language which makes me reject the hogwash of muh overarching symbolic order. Are you a Lacanian by any chance?

>>16022859
Once implicated in language, always implicated in language. Perhaps there was a time when this wasn't this case, but feeling, sensation and experience itself is inexorably tangled-up with and by mediated by linguistic representation. You once again demonstrate this yourself, by representing them to me, and before that, yourself.

>>16022932
nonsense. i pinch your cheek. it stings. did you represent the sting to yourself in language before you felt it?
obviously expression of complex thoughts between persons must be mediated by language. but you shouldn't mistake the expression for the thought itself, less for what is indicated by the thought.

>>16019393
Is Whitehead final boss philosophy?

>>16022911
I didn't skip over anything, it falls prey to the same critique. "Life", as a representational construct, is always-already subsumed by its representational substrate.
>Also what you said also doesn't negate perception of part-to-whole
Perception is linguistically mediated. To believe otherwise is to believe the human community as "horizontal" with the objects it intends; in which case there is no "perception" as we know it at all.

>>16022970
No, Whitehead and 'process philosophy were forever destroyed by Rene Guenon

>The same trend is noticeable in the scientific realm: research here is for its own sake far more than for the partial and fragmentary results it achieves; here we see an ever more rapid succession of unfounded theories and hypotheses, no sooner set up than crumbling to give way to others that will have an even shorter life— a veritable chaos amid which one would search in vain for anything definitive, unless it be a monstrous accumulation of facts and details incapable of proving or signifying anything. We refer here of course to speculative science, insofar as this still exists; in applied science there are on the contrary undeniable results, and this is easily understandable since these results bear directly on the domain of matter, the only domain in which modern man can boast any real superiority. It is therefore to be expected that discoveries, or rather mechanical and industrial inventions, will go on developing and multiplying more and more rapidly until the end of the present age; and who knows if, given the dangers of destruction they bear in themselves, they will not be one of the chief agents in the ultimate catastrophe, if things reach a point at which this cannot be averted?

>Be that as it may, one has the general impression that, in the present state of things, there is no longer any stability; but while there are some who sense the danger and try to react to it, most of our contemporaries are quite at ease amid this confusion, in which they see a kind of exteriorized image of their own mentality. Indeed there is an exact correspondence between a world where everything seems to be in a state of mere ‘becoming’, leaving no place for the changeless and the permanent, and the state of mind of men who find all reality in this ‘becoming’, thus implicitly denying true knowledge as well as the object of that knowledge, namely transcendent and universal principles. One can go even further and say that it amounts to the negation of all real knowledge whatsoever, even of a relative order, since, as we have shown above, the relative is unintelligible and impossible without the absolute, the contingent without the necessary, change without the unchanging, and multiplicity without unity; ‘relativism’ is self-contradictory, for, in seeking to reduce everything to change, one logically arrives at a denial of the very existence of change; this was fundamentally the meaning of the famous arguments of Zeno of Elea.

>>16022955
A parochial view of language is restricting your thinking here. Yes, I represent the act of you pinching my cheek, insofar as I am always-already and continually representing the intentions bound-up with that act. The representation "He just pinched me" comes later.

>>16022998
>However, we have no wish to exaggerate and must add that theories such as these are not exclusively encountered in modern times; examples are to be found in Greek philosophy also, the ‘universal flux’ of Heraclitus being the best known; indeed, it was this that led the school of Elea to combat his conceptions, as well as those of the atomists, by a sort of reductio ad absurdum. Even in India, something comparable can be found, though, of course, considered from a different point of view from that of philosophy, for Buddhism also developed a similar character, one of its essential theses being the ‘dissolubility of all things ’. These theories, however, were then no more than exceptions, and such revolts against the traditional outlook, which may well have occurred from time to time throughout the whole of the Kali-Yuga, were, when all is said and done, without wider influence; what is new is the general acceptance of such conceptions that we see in the West today.

>It should be noted too that under the influence of the very recent idea of ‘progress’, ‘philosophies of becoming’ have, in modern times, taken on a special form that theories of the same type never had among the ancients: this form, although it may have multiple varieties, can be covered in general by the name ‘evolutionism’. We need not repeat here what we have already said elsewhere on this subject; we will merely recall the point that any conception allowing for nothing other than ‘becoming’ is thereby necessarily a ‘naturalistic’ conception, and, as such, implies a formal denial of whatever lies beyond nature, in other words the realm of metaphysics— which is the realm of immutable and eternal principles. We may point out also, in speaking of these anti-metaphysical theories, that the Bergonian idea of pure duration’ corresponds exactly with that dispersion in instantaneity to which we alluded above; a pretended intuition modeled on the ceaseless flux of the things of the senses, far from being able to serve as an instrument for obtaining true knowledge, represents in reality the dissolution of all possible knowledge.

>>16023004
>This leads us to repeat an essential point on which not the slightist ambiguity must be allowed to persist: intellectual intuition, by which alone metaphysical knowledge is to be obtained, has absolutely nothing in common with this other ‘intuition’ of which certain contemporary philosophers speak: the latter pertains to the sensible realm and in fact is sub-rational, whereas the former, which is pure intelligence, is on the contrary supra-rational. But the moderns, knowing nothing higher than reason in the order of intelligence, do not even conceive of the possibility of intellectual intuition, whereas the doctrines of the ancient world and of the Middle Ages, even when they were no more than philosophical in character, and therefore incapable of effectively calling this intuition into play, nevertheless explicitly recognized its existence and its supremacy over all the other faculties. This is why there was no rationalism before Descartes, for rationalism is a specifically modern phenomenon, one that is closely connected with individualism, being nothing other than the negation of any faculty of a supra- individual order. As long as Westerners persist in ignoring or denying intellectual intuition, they can have no tradition in the true sense of the word, nor can they reach any understanding with the authentic representatives of the Eastern civilizations, in which everything, so to speak, derives from this intuition, which is immutable and infallible in itself, and the only starting-point for any development in conformity with traditional norms

>>16022977
You are part to whole. The world around you shapes you as you also in turn influence it (to an extent). There is no representation.

>>16021184
Same bruh, we will be making threads on Whitehead on 15 years. Feels good.

>>16023000
you could say language itself is a parochial element of the universe, in that it seems limited to creatures such as ourselves.
but anyway, you're getting ahead of the event itself. say you don't see my hand coming. how could you 'always-already' be representing the intention of an act you cannot perceive? but even this is beyond the event. i asked if you represent *the pain* to yourself before you experience the pain, not whether you represent the act of pinching. so, do you? or does the pain not precede any thought about it?

>>16023008
>You are part to whole
I don't really have a problem with this, as it would seem that my position is its condition of possibility (besides for the obvious reason that it is itself a representation). The part/whole distinction necessitates a separation between the world of signs in which we inhabit and the world of objects which transcendentally guarantees and overflows the former. For a non-human animals, this separation does not exist. Once again, they are horizontal with the world of objects.

>>16019393
Can a Whitehead fan explain to me what it is they find interesting and useful about his work? What I'm seeing in this thread seems a little esoteric.

>>16023023
>you could say language itself is a parochial element of the universe
Unlikely, seeing as it's the condition of possibility for this thing we call the "universe".
>how could you 'always-already' be representing the intention of an act you cannot perceive?
If it is not perceived (representationally), then it does not exist. At the moment of contact, it becomes always-already bound-up with our representational faculties.
>i asked if you represent *the pain* to yourself before you experience the pain
It's the same thing. To intend on that pain; to attend to that pain; to be conscious of that pain, is to represent it.

>>16019393
AN Whitehead> korbsinsky's general semantics>cybernetics>talcott parsons and modernization theory >harvard psychology department> (wait is this a program for a general AI continguos with the world system?) >mkultra>the unabomber

>>16019492
Antonin Artaud's the theater and its double, first ever use of the term virtual reality(in 1932!) Guenon gets a shoutout as well. Possible overlap between guenon and deleuze due to shared background in the french occvlt scene. deleuzes vocabulary is heavily artaudian and batesonian. What is it with Bali? A process oriented civilization based on superior childrearing practices ie. Mothers masturbating their infant children into plateaus of continuous excitement beyond western faustian striving for climax ? (Yes that is seriously the example they use)

>>16023080
okay, so you're defending a confused form of phenomenalism, which takes all phenomena to really just be sentences. absurd, but fine.
let's take this expression of yours, 'moment of contact'. what could this mean, to a being who can only experience in sentences? contact with--what? and what is becoming, to be bound up in representation? a sentence?
if reality is really just representation, then--what is being re-presented? would it not be more accurate to just describe experience as--presentation? what requires mediation here?

>>16023049
i would describe it as akin to kant encountering hume, or schopenhauer encountering kant, or anyone encountering anyone else that shakes their preconception of reality until it collapses.
very briefly, what is interesting in whitehead is his way of conceiving reality, including phyics, in fundamentally biological/ecological terms; that is, as an ongoing evolution of possibilities rather than a system of mechanics and the action of simple objects.

>>16023167
>okay, so you're defending a confused form of phenomenalism, which takes all phenomena to really just be sentences.
No, I'm not. Get this idea that language and representation are just "words and sentences" out your head. To put things as simply as possible: to have conscious experience of pain is to represent that pain, insofar as intending on and attending to that pain, are representational activities.
>if reality is really just representation
Never claimed this. The object transcendentally guarantees the sign, but the sign represents the object as always-already represented by the sign.

>>16019393
Retroactively refuted by Guenon

>>16023248
intending on and attending to pain supervene on the experience of the pain. you have the pain first, then you can do with it what you will. the pain itself is your 'moment of contact'. it comes all at once, but is also the result of a complex process of electrical charges moving through nerves and so on. did you represent these processes to yourself as well as you did the hand moving toward your cheek? the arrangement of the molecules your skin and muscle tissue, and so on?
>the object transcendentally guarantees the sign
that's just a representation, my man. show me an object. better, show me a transcendental object, without representing it to me. only then can i have a guarantee of such a 'thing'.

>>16023294
>intending on and attending to pain supervene on the experience of the pain.
No; they're the same thing. A néant must be placed between the intender and intended, experiencer and object of experience, lest the subject be one and the same as his object -- that is, not a conscious, experiencing subject at all. This néant is the sign, the representation. (And no, I'm not a Sartrean).
>that's just a representation, my man.
Cute, but you ignored the second part of my comment:
>but the sign represents the object as always-already represented by the sign.
Try again.

>>16023362
if the representation of the pain is the same thing as the pain itself, then what is the pain? does it hurt? are representations identical with sensations? the question becomes, again--what is being represented?
further, if we're collapsing the object with the representation, what does it mean to speak of a world of objects in any event, as if they existed independently of you? how could you represent their existence without confronting yet another representation and so on?

>>16023403
>what is being represented?
>if we're collapsing the object with the representation
You're not paying attention. I'm not doing what you think I'm doing. Once again:
>The object transcendentally guarantees the sign, but the sign represents the object as always-already represented by the sign.

>>16023362
>A néant must be placed between the intender and intended, experiencer and object of experience, lest the subject be one and the same as his object
also, just--lol. gobbledygook.
>if i wasn't wearing these glasses, man, my eyeballs would just straight *fuse* with that bitch's tits. i'm talking a straight identity, my dude. one-to-one, nipple-to-pupil.

>>16022552
>the world is contained inside the virtual community created by linguistic representation
we have all sorts of pre-linguistic cognition

>>16023455
Are you saying you have direct access objects?
>>16023463
Like what?

>>16023443
>>16023362
>the neant is the sign, the representation
sign and representation are one.
>a neant must be placed between intender and intended, experiencer and object of experience
the experience is an experience of a neant, a representation. the experience is an experience of a representation, and not an object
>the sign represents the object
the sign, the representation, represents--
>as always-already represented
ah, yes. the sign, the the representation, represents what is always-already represented
where is the object, again?

>>16023455
>>if i wasn't wearing these glasses, man, my eyeballs would just straight *fuse* with that bitch's tits. i'm talking a straight identity, my dude. one-to-one, nipple-to-pupil.
Cringe.

>>16023479
>Are you saying you have direct access objects?
i'm saying we have experience of a felt environment

>>16023479
seeing, hearing, fear, hunger, etc. animals without language can represent abstract concepts too, use tools and problem solve, imagine the future
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbSu2PXOTOc

>>16023491
doesn't seem to be a refutation of my reductio ad asininum

>>16023486
>where is the object, again?
Transcendentally guaranteeing the sign, but always-already represented by the sign, but transcendentally guaranteeing the sign, but always-already represented by the sign...
You act as if pointing-out the paradoxical underpinnings of representation somehow defeats it, not realising that this paradoxicality is the condition of possibility of representing it as such.

>>16023498
Disagree. Those, as we know them, are all linguistically mediated. Animals are incapable of symbolic representation and third-order attention.

>>16023526
>linguistically mediated
That doesn't mean they are created by language, it means we use language to arrange those cognitions. And watch the video of the crow figuring out what to do

>>16023493
>i'm saying we have experience of a felt environment
How?

>>16023511
It was so cringe that it refuted itself.

>>16023515
except the 'paradox' is avoided by simply admitting the obvious, which is the experience prior to representation--or, maybe less slippery a term, 'symbolic reference'.
but by all means, my man, feel free to follow that chain of signifiers directly back up your own asshole.

>>16023544
well, now, turns out that is a complicated question. to get a sense of it, though, i can suggest going to your local bar, getting near-but-not-quite-blackout drunk, and trying to walk home. see how you do, and pay attention to how it feels.

>>16023577
>except the 'paradox' is avoided by simply admitting the obvious, which is the experience prior to representation
Go ahead and show me this "experience" outside of representation then. Show me anything outside of it. Or will you try sweeping this paradox under the rug again?
>but by all means, my man, feel free to follow that chain of signifiers directly back up your own asshole.
Why do you feel the need to be rude? I've been nothing but cordial with you.

>>16023596
>show me
If you mean 'communicate to you' then you are being ridiculous since language is how we communicate, especially over the internet where we don't even have body language and facial expressions. Communication is not synonymous with our mental world. And the basic fact of experience cannot be shown to anybody else, hence the mystery about consciousness.

not the guy you are responding to

>>16023612
>And the basic fact of experience cannot be shown to anybody else, hence the mystery about consciousness.
Yes, and perhaps are inability to do so outside of representation would seem to indicate that the two processes are intimately associated.

>>16023007
>intellectual intuition, by which alone metaphysical knowledge is to be obtained, has absolutely nothing in common with this other ‘intuition’ of which certain contemporary philosophers speak: the latter pertains to the sensible realm and in fact is sub-rational, whereas the former, which is pure intelligence, is on the contrary supra-rational
Blatant dualism. What a retard. Can you stop posting muh retroactive copypasta in every Whitehead thread? All Guenon is complaining about here is how soft-science theory in traditionally hard science is just, like, becoming reductionist relativismness and that's bullshit. The traditionalists couldn't stop arguing with each other over this kind of being as nothingness crap which is why they were negated to obscurity back when they (Boyle/Descartes/Kepler/Bacon) decided to cancel Aristotle and party on the party rockers with the Mechanists and Mathematicians from Pythagoras and Leucippus. Get off your nostalgic high horse and help science explode the human moral condition or go meditate somewhere alone faggot.

>>16023007
>Antimetaphysical theories
>Bergson
>As long as Westerners persist in ignoring or denying intellectual intuition,
What a retard

>>16023140
> What is it with Bali? A process oriented civilization based on superior childrearing practices ie. Mothers masturbating their infant children into plateaus of continuous excitement beyond western faustian striving for climax ? (Yes that is seriously the example they use)
What the fuck

>>16023596
you really haven't, you've been a superior little dweeb, but do you.
it's not for me to show. ultimately, i can only appeal to your sense of duty to the truth over your need to be 'right', which actually requires very little of you: simply examine your feelings

>>16023493
So there IS a separation between between the experiencer and what you call the "felt environment"?

>>16023628
maybe, but being intimately associated is not being the same thing, and how are we supposed to know? And I'm not sure why representation=language for you. Representation is just a sort of similarity of pattern isn't it? You make a pattern in your mind that resembles a pattern elsewhere. this seems more basic and primitive than language. The 'test' that the pattern is in fact similar is if you can use your mind pattern to successfully navigate the outside world. It seems most animals do this, that's what senses are really.

This all seems prior to the complex system that language uses to make its representations, categories, constructs, etc.

>>16019393
>private property
I had not heard of him politically, what are his thought there?

>>16023515
transcendental guarantee is not the same as transcendent target of an infinite regress. we have to know what we are representing, know imperfectly in order to know any better. representation is not just any difference, and if it is moved somehow to surpass itself it is because of unrepresented but precisely 'transcendental' difference. how do you know at all the object transcendentally guarantees the sign/representation? unless you want to lay claim to being hegel ii.

>>16023661
no. feelings are immediate but non-identical with their data.

>>16023652
>simply examine your feelings
I do this, and all I see are within my experience are re-presentations. To say otherwise would be like saying that I somehow see rocks and plants and animals and fellow people independent of my experience of them--nonsense.

>>16023699
you continue to identify experience with representation, which has precedent in the tradition but is fatal to a proper conception of things. representation is itself an experiential process, but it is not identical with experience. you move from your sensations (an experience) to determinate perceptions (another experience) to concepts ordered representationally (yet another experience). this is grossly simplifying the reality of experience, but we can make distinctions between these levels of experience because they are manifest.

>>16023697
The sign represents the object as always-already represented, but the object overflows the sign. This the realm of the "sacred" -- what in the object exceeds the sign; the excess of what the sign designates over what it represents.

>>16023688
>It seems most animals do this
No non-human animal has been observed using symbolic language.

>>16023479
>Like what?
Pictures.

>>16023762
untrue. lower apes including gorillas and chimpanzees have been taught sign language and, depending on the species, can communicate at about the level of a young child. and not just with handlers, but with others that have acquired the system.

>>16023758
ah. yes. of course. so the object actually is not always-already represented, as it 'overflows' its representation, 'exceeds' its sign.

>>16023727
We've gone over this. The representational conditions of experience:
>A néant must be placed between the intender and intended, experiencer and object of experience, lest the subject be one and the same as his object -- that is, not a conscious, experiencing subject at all. This néant is the sign, the representation.

>>16023762
That's not what I said, I said they have representations of the world in their minds, otherwise they couldn't navigate it.

>>16023783
>been taught
Exactly. Indexical signs, not symbolic signs. They are unable to teach other, and have not been observed using them in the wild. No "community" of apes with access to a transcendental and historical realm of signs exists.

>>16023791
>so the object actually is not always-already represented
Yes, this is one half of the equation. Then, as you have done just now, it is represented. Then once again overflowed. See: >>16023515

>>16023776
Which are symbolic signs.

>>16023801
no, symbolic sign. they have signs for feelings, like 'sadness'.
>>16023792
yeah, we have been over this >>16023455
there aren't any representational conditions for experience. this doesn't even make sense when you identify the experience with the representation, as you've made the ground identical with the consequent. you confused little faggot. fuck off.

>>16023798
Of course, but that's not what differentiates man from animal. Man has unique access to purely symbolic forms of representation that do not exist in the mind, rather in a historic, virtual community.

>>16023822
And? How about you complete your thought, bucko?

>>16023814
it is then it is not but then it is and then it is not.
it's all just a paradox man lol don't you get it

>>16023838
I don't disagree, I just don't see why you think that's our 'entire world' rather than an added component that has a large effect. Also how exactly do these forms not exist in the mind, aren't the inanimate representations just triggers for creating mental states?

>>16023838
does an animal have experiences or does it not?
remember that you've identified experience with representation.

>>16023801
>transcendental and historical realm of signs exists.
idealist gobbledygook

>>16023822
>Which are symbolic signs.
Pictures are iconic signs, you fucking dolt.

>>16023814
so the two 'halves' are not simply simultaneous but there is an actual process. i agree. otherwise the object is a figment.

>>16023835
>they have signs for feelings, like 'sadness'.
Taught indexically, lmao
>as you've made the ground identical with the consequent.
I'm only differentiating the two terms for your sake. I'm actually trying to help you understand my position.

>>16023873
lol fuck off, no you're not. you don't even understand what your position is. either experience and representation i.e. ground and consequent in your formulation are identical, which is nonsense; or, there's a difference, which means the ground of the representation is other than itself i.e. is experience.

>>16023851
Because our entire world is contained within it, even if it can't be reduced to it.
>Also how exactly do these forms not exist in the mind
They exist in this virtual community/history, and are then retrieved by the mind.

>>16023863
Only if you're a Peircean.

>>16023873
and once acquired are used symbolically. what's the problem here?

>>16023902
>Because our entire world is contained within it, even if it can't be reduced to it.
just seems outright wrong to me. Language is one component of our awareness, and it struggles to communicate many of the other parts of our awareness, having to make crude metaphors to try to get a sense across. If everything mental were part of this symbolic logic of language, then why would language be so imprecise and inadequate in representing our internal states?

>>16023899
>either experience and representation i.e. ground and consequent in your formulation are identical, which is nonsense
It's only nonsense if you think one is ground and the other is consequent; which I don't, lmao.

infinite semiosis guys it's infinite lol

>>16023915
you have described it as such even if you don't realize it, you fucking dunce. keep wriggling, though.

>>16023909
Symbolic signs are Peircean too, retard. Go suck-start a shotgun.

>>16023911
>and once acquired are used symbolically
Lmao no. Completely different intentional structures.

>>16023921
>you have described it as such
See >>16023873
>I'm only differentiating the two terms for your sake.

>>16023929
prove it.

>>16023923
I said if YOU were a Peircean, you braindead cunt

>>16023933
>The sign represents the object as always-already represented
this is a ground-consequent relationship you fucking moron. the representation is the ground of the object is the ground of the representation is the ground and so on.

>>16023936
Never seen an ape or any other animal use a symbolic sign in the wild.

>>16023949
how would you know?

>>16023947
Yes, and it has nothing to do with what you said here >>16023899

>>16023943
Has someone besides Peirce used the term "iconic sign" before? If so, feel free to enlighten me.

>>16023972
Because linguists have been trying to find an example for a hundred years and haven't.

>>16023981
Index/icon/symbol is long divorced from its Peircean origins.

>>16024006
>[citation needed]

>>16023977
per your usage, sign and representation are identical. likewise experience and representation are are identical. likewise object and sign are identical, though allowing the object may 'overflow' itself.
so object=sign=representation or ground=consequent=ground.
>>16023990
who's to say they would recognize it if they did find it

>>16023947
he's trying not to say the ground is 'experience', but seems to be describing this relation as temporal and not ground-consequential, so...our 'experience' of the object is regulating its representation then.

>>16019393
>private property
Stopped reading.

>>16023916
>then why would language be so imprecise and inadequate in representing our internal states?
Because our internal states are actually the product of external states--the ever-shifting virtual realm of signs.

>>16024014
Modern linguistics and semiotics.

>>16024017
i know what he's doing, but temporal relations also have a ground-consequent relation, as in the energy from the sun is the ground of the feeling of heat on my face

>>16024020
>virtual
lol yet another term beyond your ken

>>16024028
How about you give me a specific example of the modern use differing from the original use?

>>16024020
Doesn't answer why, if our internal states are wholly within symbolic language, that language is insufficient to express its own set of states. What I see is that our internal states are varied, and language is one type that interacts with others, and it cannot completely accurately represent them, the symbolic logic translates the other mental states imperfectly, so as to perform various operations on them, structuring, ordering, synthesis(which processes all exist in the pre-linguistic mental states too, just not to the same degree of universality and sophistication), and of course communication.

>>16024019
private property is bad

>>16024016
A sign is a representation (noun).
Experience is representation (verb).
Object and sign ARE NOT identical--they exist in the aforementioned paradoxical relationship.
Make sense?
>who's to say they would recognize it if they did find it
For the same reason we've been able to recognize any other language user.

let's get it to top 20 this year lads

>>16024067
if they aren't identical then there is no paradox. that was the point.
you also, in a previous post, collapsed the act of representing with the representation itself. this entire conversation has been you equivocating on the meaning of representation, to give yourself just enough wiggle room to both say and not say the same thing two ways. you also know that this is what you've been doing, but you won't admit to it. who cares? being right is more important than understanding. right?

>>16022552
This conversation is pretty long but are you saying language is exclusive to humans? Because it isn't. Humanity is an archetype anon, don't identify in archetypes. Homo Sapiens as a species is neither set in stone as something essential, and I don't see any argument for why it should remain as close as possible something unchanging

>>16024051
Psychoanalytic use differs from the Peircean use.

>>16024067
answer this btw >>16023852
directly, no waffling

>>16024097
I asked for a specific example.

>>16024088
Yes, there is a paradox: >>16023515
The above and >>16024067 are consistent.
>>16024098
>>16023852
No; animals do not have experiences in the way humans do.

>>16024114
so there is some difference between experience as representing and experience as--something else?
everything else is just you going 'yeah huh'. i'm over it.

>animals do not have experiences in the way humans do
>So they sorta kinda maybe have experiences
He waffled bros.

>>16024124
>>16024136
Everything we give to the word "experience" cannot be given to whatever it is that non-human animals do. Better answer?

>>16024153
better for you, in that it's yet another way for you to squirm out of admitting directly that not all experience is representing.

>>16024157
All experience is representing.

>>16024164
Prove it.

>>16024164
how does an animal represent its experience, if an animal does not have language?
again, you have previously identified representation with language.

>>16024167
This thread.

>>16024174
lol

>>16024174
Not an answer, try again.

>>16024172
>how does an animal represent its experience
It doesn't. Representation is a uniquely human phenomenon, and thus so is experience, and everything we give to that term--consciousness, intention, etc. Maybe animals have their own version of """experience"""? We wouldn't be able to call it that though (hence the quotes), because again: all experience is representing. It's a mystery.

>>16024196
lol okay dude. glad we got that cleared up.

>>16024196
>Representation is a uniquely human phenomenon, and thus so is experience,
how could you possibly know this? And why do you think bare sensory information like vision simply doesn't exist outside of language?

>we know the object by representing the object-as-represented-as-'transcendentally'-guaranteed-as-represented-as-'transcendentally'-guaranteed-as-represented...by the way I also know the object exceeds the sign but no I don't

>>16024208
because he's made certain overly sophisticated metaphysical commitments that he is refusing to abandon in light of 'common sense'
but also because he is a troll

>>16024211
It's explained above.
>>16024211
>paradoxes are paradoxical
Yeah.

>representationalism
>anthropocentrism
retroactively refuted by the Speculative Realists

>>16024225
>if I use the word paradoxical it's not just doxical

>>16024231
>Speculative Realism
Nice representation you have there.

>>16024164
That's an indication of inflated illness of the ego. Freud already proved the existence of the unconscious, it made everything much different.
>>16024153
>experience as we know it isn't experience as animals know it
Vague/inconsequential answer, it's clear you don't know what you're talking about anymore

>>16022498
>length should be judged by density
hwat.

>>16024246
>Vague/inconsequential answer
See >>16024196

>>16024247
400 pages of harry potter is a quicker, easier read than 200 pages of Nietzsche or Kant. Length should be judged by how long is expected of the reader to engage with and process the work before truly understanding it.

>>16024256
>Idle talk is not objectively present for itself within the world, as a product detached form being-with-one-another. Nor can it be volatized to mean something "universal" which, since it essentially belongs to no one,"really" is nothing and "actually" only occurs in individual Da-sein that speaks.

>In the question which we are to work out, what is asked about is Being – that which determines entities as entities, that on the basis of which entities are already understood, however we may discuss them.

>>>>that on the basis of which entities are already understood<<<<<

You should read Heidegger, no flex

Also

>The two kinds of being of authenticity and inauthenticity--these expressions are terminologically chosen in the strictest sense of the word--are based on the fact that Da-sein is in general determined by always being-mind. But the inauthenticity of Da-sein does not signify a "lesser" being or a "lower" degree of being. Rather, inauthenticiy can determine Da-sein even in its fullest concretion, when it is busy, excited, interested, and capable of pleasure.

There is no ethical obligation for authenticity over inauthenticity according to Heidegger, no matter what Sartre thinks (Sartre's a faggot).

>>16024349
>determined by always being-mine*

>>16024361
>by always being-mine*
how sweet of you

>>16024281
Not really interested in him, desu. He misidentifies the bottom, and sets-off from somewhere else. I'm far more interested in Derrida.

>>16024392
lol

>>16024281
>>16024349
pseud play to namedrop and quote without even addressing his comment

>>16022467
if you are anti-anthropocentric you are nihilistic. call it consciousness-centrism. consciousness is at the center of the universe, and we are conscious.

>>16024422
He talks about banality in representation and points to this thread and I'm pointing out his error of not seeing deeper into the phenomenological structure of existence
>>16024392
>the bottom
How do you mean, like "ontic being"? How so?

>>16024422
He seems to really love semantics so Heidegger would be great for shaking up his abstract conception of existentiality--Heidegger shakes up what this anon is also calling existence just "representation," it's idealism and it sucks ass.

>>16024392
He rolls up Aristotle's Metaphysics and succeeds in my opinion in constructing the proper on which to lay future metaphysics, I don't know Derrida but he sounds like postmodernism and nihilism. CHOOSE TELEOLOGY AND VORHANDENHEIT (PRESENCE-AT-HAND), DO NOT FALL FOR LEFTIST SLANDER OF THE EXISTENTIELL, EXISTENCE WHICH ONE MERELY COMES TO TERMS WITH ALWAYS ONLY THROUGH EXISTENCE ITSELF

THE FUNDAMENTAL ONTOLOGY MUST BE SOUGHT IN THE EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS OF DA-SEIN, WHICH HEIDEGGER FAILS TO COMPLETE BUT FOR LAYING IT'S GROUNDWORK

>>16024437
>consciousness is at the center of the universe, and we are conscious
hogwash

>>16024458
>it's idealism and it sucks ass.
It would be it didn't have an intentionally paradoxical grounding
>THE FUNDAMENTAL ONTOLOGY MUST BE SOUGHT IN THE EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS OF DA-SEIN,
All contained within representation. Whoops.

>>16024437
Based.

>>16024565
Is our unconscious something our conscious mind represents, and only exists whenever it is a representation? My god you can literally just cite transcendental idealism for this, objective presence as an ontic-ontological characterization, you're going to run into relativism really fast if everything is just what you alone represent. Consciousness is at the center of YOUR universe, which isn't known to you in the slightest, but looks very similar to how other humans tuned to the time-space-causality schema our existence filters existence to be. Our minds are just void filters. The void isn't non-existent when we aren't representing it somehow. You don't understand nothingness and accuse the universe of begging the question simply because you don't know some things.

>>16024586
The unconscious isn't real.
Representation (via symbolic langauge) is a collective phenomenon.

>>16024599
Oh noooooooooooo
It only isn't real to your ego. We infer it's existence based on the science done in that field as well as through symbolical patterns found perennially throughout history.

>Representation (via symbolic langauge) is a collective phenomenon.
Sure, except Schopenhauer's conclusion with that is the total ascetic negation of the ‘will to life.’ Sounds about right when you're stubbornly opposed to the universe and overly caught up with your temporal state.

>>16024586
>The void isn't non-existent when we aren't representing it somehow.
It is but it isn't; hence the parodox. You understand this yourself--you can't experience it or show me it without representing it, but you know it's there, but...

>>16024637
>We infer it's existence based on the science
Via representation.
Schopenhauer: irrelevant here.

>>16024640
Yes EXACTLY you know it's there, but NOTHING, it appears to you as nothing, nothingness as a formal indicator for celestial realities and thing in itself.

>life's just what you make of it dude
Is all you keep saying and it SUCKS man EMBRACE LIFE THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING

this is now a schizoposting thread

>>16025036
Cringe. Heidegger is lame.

>>16024196
Humans are animals so no, lol

>>16025263
Animals don't talk bruh lmaooo

>>16023049
it's the conception of the the universe as a living mass of possibility rather than a series of rules

>mfw like Isabelle Stengers
>mfw Elizabeth Kraus' The metaphysics of experience, companion to Whitehead's Process and Reality is a clearer exposé of Whitehead's thought for a brainlet like me
>mfw no face

>>16019408
What society was this again?

>>16019393
>hardcore panpsychist metaphysics
>'remedy for anthropocentrism'
this is the definition of anthropocentrism

>>16026617
Not panpsychist and no it isn't

>>16023690
He was a deeply closeted Marxist who was trying to sell dumb Anglos dialectical materialism disguised as process philos

>>16026617
>this is the definition of anthropocentrism
If you're mindlessly and blindly presupposing the very dualism that he has gone to extensive lengths to refute, sure, it's anthropocentric.

Many of the great thinkers of Western modernity define their goal as a therapeutic one. Spinoza, Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein all present themselves as diagnosticians and clinicians. They examine symptoms, discern the conditions of our metaphysical malaise, and propose remedies to free us from our enslavement to “passive emotions” (Spinoza), to ressentiment (Nietzsche), to traumatic recollections (Freud), or to the “bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language” (Wittgenstein). Therapy in this sense is the modern, secularized and demystified, form of ethics. One of the striking things about Whitehead is that he does not make any such therapeutic or ethical claims. He does not say that his metaphysics will cure me, or that it will make me a better person. At best, philosophy and art may awaken me from my torpor, and allow me to subsume the painful experience of a “clash in affective tones” within a wider sense of purpose. Such broadening “increases the dimensions of the experient subject, adds to its ambit.”. But this is still a rather modest and limited result. At best, philosophy and poetry “seek to express that ultimate good sense which we term civilization". Granted, Whitehead displays none of Nietzsche’s or Freud’s justified suspicion regarding the value of “good sense,” or of what we call “civilization.” But even from the perspective of Whitehead’s entirely laudatory use of these terms, he is still only making a deliberately muted and minor claim. We are far from any “exaggerated” promises of a Great Health, of self-transcendence, or of cathartic transformation.

Even in his hyperbolic evocation of “God and the World,” in the fifth and final Part of Process and Reality, Whitehead does not offer us any prospect to match the “intellectual love of God” exalted by Spinoza in the fifth and final part of the Ethics. Whitehead’s God, in sharp contrast with Spinoza’s, does not know the world sub specie aeternitatis. Rather, Whitehead’s God is “the poet of the world.” This means that he knows the world, not in terms of its first causes, but only through its effects, and only in retrospect. God “saves” the world precisely to the extent, but only to the extent, that he aestheticizes and memorializes it. He remembers the world in each and every detail, incorporating all these memories into an overarching “conceptual harmonization”. But if God remembers every experience of every last entity, he does not produce and provide these experiences and memories themselves. That is something that is left for us to do, contingently and unpredictably. Where Spinoza’s book ends with the “spiritual contentment” that arises from the comprehension of “eternal necessity,” Whitehead’s book rather ends by justifying, and throwing us back upon, our “insistent craving” for novelty and adventure. That is what it means to write an aesthetics, rather than an ethics.

bump

>>16026980
No "mindlessly and blindly presupposing" in my part, I have reasons for my positions, unlike Whitehead's make believe metaphysics

>>16027524
>od “saves” the world precisely to the extent, but only to the extent, that he aestheticizes and memorializes it. He remembers the world in each and every detail, incorporating all these memories into an overarching “conceptual harmonization”
Do the missing limbs of World War I veterans, the rape of colonized peoples, the violence against the Irish, feature in this Whiteheadian scheme?

>>16027524
>They examine symptoms, discern the conditions of our metaphysical malaise, and propose remedies to free us from our enslavement
This was present in the Greeks as well was it not?

>>16029604
Yes

>>16019408
https://youtu.be/F1srPZUUQNs

>>16019393
"Private" property, aka property, is the first assumption you make when you take control of your body, when you trade or enter a discussion, like this one. Without it, there is no rational action nor identity.

>becomes scientifically outdated 20 seconds after he dies, rendering his philosophical efforts worthless
Truly the greatest philosopher
>>16023727
>Imagine falling for the trappings of language this hard

>>16023783
You are lying
They have been taught signs
They have only used grammar accidentally

>>16030164
not true

>>16024515
>He rolls up Aristotle's metaphysics
No he doesn't

>>16030205
Now try an actual refutation

>>16030301
you haven't even said anything

>>16030398
Whitehead's Philosophy goes against everything we understand about evolution and physics today

>>16030455
No it doesn't.

>>16019393
>remedy for anthropocentrism
>produced by a human mind
Nigga what?

>>16030512
The universe is a set of rules upon sets of rules no matter how often you say no
Modern Quantum mechanics and the red Queen theory of evolution crush the dull, narrow processolatry of Whitehead and the goons that follow him like a religious prophet

>>16030554
Whitehead and QM are compatible.
Whiteheadians come from many different practices.
Stop talking out of your ass.
>>16030551
I'm not sure what the issue is here. A philosophy can acknowledge that the universe isn't human centric or doesn't attribute human conciousness to everything.

>>16030653
>Whitehead and QM are compatible
If it helps you sleep at night
>Whiteheadians come from many different practices
So do creationists
Speaking of which, I think I'll let the evolutionary aspect slide, judging by the rest of the thread, your understanding of evolution comes from magazine headlines so we'd be wasting our time
I'm very curious to see Whitehead reconciled with modern quantum mechanics

>>16030653
>A philosophy can acknowledge that the universe isn't human centric
This is an anthropocentric perspective though. Animals don't sit around all day thinking about how they're not the center of the world lol.

>>16030748
It is by definition not. Do you not know what words mean?

>>16031041
Lmao. Dictionary definitions. So this is the power of process philosophy?
Anti-human thought is a human invention, and something only humans do. In other words, it's an anthropocentric perspective. Animals don't think about how they're at the center of the world, but they don't think about how they're not at the center of the world either.

>>16031148
Sure and just because it is a human invention or comes from a human perspective doesn't make it anthropocentric. A silly misunderstanding you have. It acknowledges that there are experiences that are not human. Look up words before you respond.

>>16031195
>MUH PROCESS
>Not in language though, use dictionary definitions
Also
>Just because something is derived from humans, it isn't anthropocentric
Imagine being this retarded and selfrefuting
Science-denial and hypocrisy, where will the virtues of the whiteheadian end
Btw, I'm still waiting on a reconciliation of Whitehead's gibberish with modern qm

>>16031309
I'm not sure what you have an issue with what I said was perfectly reasonable. I will stop replying since you won't apply yourself.

>>16031195
I do not give a fuck about dictionary definitions, I care about actions in the world. Just because you claim to have escaped from anthropocentric thinking, does not mean you have done so. Again, this desire to escape is itself an exclusively human activity. Animals do not think about being animals, and do not desire to escape from their animal ways of being; they just are. The most anti-anthropocentric we could ever hope to be is to acknowledge that we are humans, and that will never not be humans, and that we will never not think in human ways, and simply leave the inner-life of non-human animals as an absolute mystery--including the question of if they even have an inner-life at all.
In summary: Anti-anthropocentrism is an EXCLUSIVELY human activity. Animals DO NOT do this shit. Process philosophy is fucking anthropocentric.

>>16031442
It's not about measly definitions you just don't fundamentally understand the concept which is why I suggest you read up on it.
For example there is nothing about escaping. Human bodies have human perspectives I never claimed otherwise. It's about denying that other beings' modes of experience. Unless you are a cartesian dualist or some sort of solipsist you should have no issue with what I am saying. As for what is it other beings in general feel that can't be pinpointed exactly but it is speculatable and we can identify some sort of experience and modes of which it takes place. I have a dog. I love my dog. I come home and it is excited to see me. I have built an affectionate bond with it. Let's say it has a splinter in its foot. It will probably howl or something and feel a tinge of pain. Does it feel excitement or pain in the way I do? I don't know but it is something that can be speculated. And it definitely does have modes of experinces we have identified that already. Let's not be stuck in the 16th century cartesian dualism is in the dustbin. These words that I attribute are made up to grasp at concepts/"feelings" that are experienced.
Whitehead's philosophy is a philosophy of speculation and adventure and to me it is refreshing as the whole approach of the linguistic turn is a dead end (and I am glad people have been turning away from it)
From page 1 of P and R:
>“Philosophers can never hope finally to formulate these metaphysical first principles. Weakness of insight and deficiencies of language stand in the way inexorably. Words and phrases must be stretched towards a generality foreign to their ordinary usage; and however such elements of language be stabilized as technicalities, they remain metaphors mutely appealing for an imaginative leap.”

>>16022911
Cool. Can you access them to demonstrate that and how they exist?

>>16031730
You are asking how bodies, emotions, architectures and other organizations of space, images, sounds exist?

>>16031753
Yes. Unless you are saying that the word "architecture" is the same sort of thing as the Arc de Triomphe

how to keep whitehead threads from devolving into shit-flinging ego contests?

>>16031706
>but it is speculatable
Yes, and this speculative process is necessarily an anthropomorphic one. Whitehead's philosophy of speculation is itself necessarily anthropocentric. This isn't a bad thing thing though. Recognizing it as such allows us to retain the absolute mystery of the internal world of the non-human other (including the possibility of its non-existence), and in doing so do as little damage to it as possible. Whitehead's process philosophy, for not recognizing this minimally necessary anthropocentrism, is just as much as a dead-end as those approaches that emerged from the linguistic turn.

>>16033286
>Yes, and this speculative process is necessarily an anthropomorphic one.
Anthropomorphism helps us to avoid the far worse problems of anthropocentrism. Too often the philosophical rejection of anthropomorphism is bound up with a hubristic demand that only humans and God can bear any traces of creative agency.
But I don't think Whitehead is being anthropomorphic. He is inverting the direction of anthropomorphic projections. For Whitehead, human feelings are in fact the exemplification, within our own experience, of a broader kind of process that is far more widely distributed among entities in the world. I cannot remember who first said this, but Whitehead’s actual procedure is – far from attributing human qualities to other organisms –to try to find more general processes, of which the human version that we are familiar with is just one, not necessarily privileged, example.

And I just explained to you how it isn't anthropocentric. He doesn't place the human at the center and there is a recognition of experience in other beings, thus it is not anthropocentric. At this point i can't tell if you are trolling or that you are just too dense.
>including the possibility of its non-existence
that has been falsified. we know they have modes of experience.
>is just as much as a dead-end as those approaches that emerged from the linguistic turn
ok now i know you are trolling. the openness and speculation and adventure in his philosophy makes it by definition not dead end. please don't talk to me anymore,

>>16033402
>And I just explained to you how it isn't anthropocentric. He doesn't place the human at the center and there is a recognition of experience in other beings, thus it is not anthropocentric. At this point i can't tell if you are trolling or that you are just too dense.
Anon, seriously man. I understand this. I'm not trolling or being dense. It's you who is doesn't understand me. It's you who is being dense; but I do not fault you. I understand that his philosophy falls under a category of thought that can be described "anti-anthropocentric". It is THIS *activity*, however--this activity of anti-anthropocentrism--that is EXCLUSIVELY a human, and thus anthropocentric, activity. The content of his thought is irrelevant as to its purported anti-anthropocentric nature, as its container is A HUMAN one.
>that has been falsified. we know they have modes of experience.
Well then you dispel their mystery, and anthropomorphize more than you should--that is, more than minimally--and in doing so you do them great damage. A shame.
>please don't talk to me anymore
LMAO. So much for "openness and speculation and adventure".

>>16033522
and just because thought comes from a human doesn't make it automatically make it anthropocentric as i have told you before, that's not how it works.
>you dispel their mystery
there are things that are observable and measurable that we get from the scientific realm

>>16033189
Prevent "Whiteheadians" from posting in them.

>>16033189
read the book

>>16033550
Yes. But a species of thought that comes EXCLUSIVELY from humans (e.g. anti-anthropocentrism), using EXCLUSIVELY human means, is necessarily anthropocentric.
>there are things that are observable and measurable
Cool bro. This is an anthropomorphic process though. I'd rather not act under the illusion that we can dispel this mystery and just let animals be animals.

>>16033573
answered
>>16033402

and it isn't necessarily anthropocentric as it doesn't necessarily have to regard humans as the most important in the universe. it being human means is irrelevant. you have no argument.

>>16033573
answered
>>16033402

and it isn't necessarily anthropocentric as it doesn't necessarily have to center the human in the universe. it being human means is irrelevant. you have no argument

>>16033589
Answered
>>16033522
And it IS necessarily anthropocentric. Implicit in it is the centering of the human perspective, insofar as this perspective ("humans are not the most important in the universe") is an EXCLUSIVELY human perspective. You have no argument.

>>16033618
for >>16033612
(you deleted you comment it seems)

>>16033618
that is not an answer to my post
>insofar as this perspective ("humans are not the most important in the universe") is an EXCLUSIVELY human perspective
but it isn't

>>16033641
It is an answer. Take the L and move on.
>but it isn't
Lol. Ok then. Show me an animal expressing the sentiment "humans are not the most important being in the universe" without yourself anthropomorphising them (i.e. engaging in anthropocentrism) and thus refuting yourself.

>>16033693
but you literally did not reply to that first paragraph of my post?
they already live that sentiment.

>>16033701
My reply addresses it.
>they already live that sentiment.
Inferring the intentions, motivations and internal states of non-human animals--that's an anthropomorphism. Assuming they even have any of these things--that's an anthropomorphism. Doing all of this in human systems of representation--oh you better believe that's an anthropomorphism.

Amazing thread.

>>16019393
Has anyone here actually read this book?
Twice now I've made it through the first chapter on Speculative philosophy all excited to continue only to be btfo by the second chapter on the categorical scheme,which introduces "the categories of explanation."
I honestly can't tell if it's over my head or if the emperor has no clothes and the book is indecipherable analytic wankery.

>That no two actual entities originate from an identical universe; though the difference between the two universes only consists in some actual entities, included in one and no in the other, and in the subordinate entities which each actual entity introduces into the world. The eternal objects are the same for all actual entities. The nexus of actual entities is the universe correlate to a concrescence is termed 'the actual world' correlate to that concrescence.

Maybe a private language is possible after all.

>>16019393
>anthropocentrism
return to monke

>>16034181
>if it's over my head
It's over your head. This isn't a meme, or to dunk on you, it's a legitimately dense text full of bigbrain stuff made by a guy who saw nothing wrong with just making up his own gibberish definitions and uses of terms, and filling a fucking page with them. And then he does just that for a few dozen chapters. Look up anything about the man and you'll just find pages of quotes by people with PhDs saying
>yeah, he was pretty smart, it took me like a year to get through Process and Reality, and I have a PhD in [bigbrain thing]

>>16035301
Fair enough. But then again I have to wonder who is his target audience? Is not the point of a book to communicate an idea? And shouldn't a big brain be bigbrained enough to ease his reader into his ideas, translating them to varying degrees of resolution? Compare to John von Neumann who is one of the most bigbrains who ever lived. Why is Neumann so much more readable?
Judging from my perspective - as someone who has taken university-level math and philosophy courses and read most of the western canon - if I cannot understand it then who is it for?
On second thought... I did find Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy quite unreadable as well. Maybe the bigbrains really are just too far above us.

>>16023085
>korbsinsky
wtf you mean korzybski or what? is his thought system in any way related to whitehead though?

>>16033754
I'm not even inferring their intentions or internal states in that post. The universe can go on without humans. In fact, there already was a time when there weren't humans (yet). And there will be a time when we are all gone.

>>16033565
i have, man. i've read everything by him but concept of nature.

this whole argument over anthropocentrism, it's not going to go anywhere without one side conceding premises unacceptable to the other. or, at least, one side needs to clarify the premises they're arguing from.

>>16033754
only if you take human beimgs and human behavior to be somehow distinct from or transcendent to the world. the argument is that they are not, and that something like concscious intentionality is only a more complex form of a global mode of engagement with reality.

>>16033189
Post them on a different website.

plump

>>16026358
pretty sure that's his rugby team at sherborne, where he went to school.

>>16035373
I think part of the problem is that Whitehead was an Anglo, and mathematician.

The former means he's really good at gathering and understanding information, but shit at conveying it and putting it into a narration. Conversely, Von Neumann was an Ashkenazim, who are fantastic at taking information and conveying it into a larger whole. Perhaps this is just my own HBD autism coming through, but Anglo Whitehead being inscrutable and Ashkenazi Von Neumann being totally understandable makes perfect sense to me.

Secondly, Whitehead's mathematical background sort of predisoposes him to the idea that the people who will understand it will come. If you don't know topology, you can't read papers on topology. So, there's no reason to "dumb something down", because why would you, the only people who will care will find it and understand it. Unfortunately, that's not how disciplines other than mathematics work.

>>16036705
>Unfortunately, that's not how disciplines other than mathematics work.
Perhaps they should.

bumping