This is a two-paragraph text containing complex but direct critiques about the philosophical accomplishments of Heidegger.

Larry Carlson

Anyone who has read Heidegger in his books (or any one of his books) would not say all these. E.g.,

"Heidegger interprets the concept of 'truth' in terms of direct perception, (as opposed to representational truth), with reference to the nature of Being in the world (aka, consciousness)."

I cannot now start here to explain why this statement is nonsensical as Heidegger's. You will have to read his works. Even during his student days he would have opposed such a statement!

Both his earlier phase of thought and later phase have things which have nothing to do with such explanations.

Regarding his Nazism: Read Hermann Philipse, Heidegger's Philosophy of Being: A Critical Interpretation. Not merely for his Nazism, but also for his other ideas.

Also the review article by Jason M. Costanzo, "The Politics of War II: Heidegger's Philosophy of Being: A Critical Interpretationby Herman Philipse". This is in Theoria, 2006 August.

If you can read Heidegger's Beiträge zur Philosophie (Contributions to Philosophy) with the prior help of a general understanding at least of his Being and Time, you may change all that you wrote above.

Sorry for the apparent tone of my statements here. I am helpless to avoid the tone. Sorry, please. I did not want to .....

A correction: Herman Philipse. Not Hermann.

I should also add that Herman Philipse is not the best interpreter of Heidegger, especially so of the later phase of Heidegger. But his analysis of Heidegger and Nazism is superb. That is not the theme of this discussion, anyway. I made only a passing comment on it in the discussion text.

This is not my statement, but yours: "Heidegger interprets the concept of 'truth' in terms of direct perception, (as opposed to representational truth), with reference to the nature of Being in the world (aka, consciousness)."

Raphael: My comments about what you wrote in the other comment stand. What you wrote here above are your new additions, describing to me which all philosophers you have read.

But your interpretation of anything in Heidegger in the other comment is acceptable. That is all. Now you may bring up more stuff to read. My suggestion is, first read Beiträge zur Philosophie. Then we shall discuss. Otherwise, let it all stand as you said, and I do not want to pursue further.

Very good. Heidegger's self-grandeur was such that he would have used Nazism for his gain in order to be termed the Reichsphilosoph. He coveted it, showed false subtlety in writings, and the Contributions to Philosophy is a collection of such thoughts, spanning decades. He developed themes from this into books and lectures. Or, in other words, this work contains gists or prefigurations of many of his other works. Later, most probably, he left this work without publishing, but was published posthumously in 1989, I think. (I must verify this date.)

Which English translation of this book did you have a look at?

But one thing is good to mention here. As an undergraduate in the first and second years, I used to read Being and Time (English) and enjoy its language and subtlety. Especially when bored or in want of energy, I read it and felt enthused. Not its overly anthropomorphic parts. The Introductory parts and some other chapters are realllllll stuff.

Preprint FROM PHYSICAL ONTOLOGY TO LINGUISTICS AND INFORMATION

Raphael Neelamkavil , tread carefully, Heidegger takes about a year to get through his first two chapters in "Being and Time".

To understand Heidegger properly is to understand the time code he was using. This is explained here:

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Isn't the key to nothingness death felt as the situation without situation? The demonization of Heidegger has to stop.

Jeffrey White,

This is not demonization, and more than a critique. I try to construct something different and new too. Please read carefully. It is not without appreciation for Heidegger that I write.

To write merely in appreciation and adoration there are many. I have done enough homework in Heidegger. To begin with, decades of enjoyment of his works. Of course, not every day have I read Heidegger or works on him. But sufficient experience to evaluate.

Moreover, where did I demonize him? Please read it again.

@Raphael Neelamkavil

I was speaking to other comments, above, re demonization, not in regards to your text. Apologies for any confusion.

Thanks. I misunderstood!

Preprint UNIVERSAL CAUSALITY AND THE PHYSICAL-ONTOLOGICAL DEFECT OF N...

That's not a very coherent position that is taken here, with regard to Heidegger. 'Being' and 'Becoming' are central concepts of a 'Patristic' tradition as old as Augustine. For some reason known only to yourself you're not even aware that what you're engaged in here is a comparative history of world religions. (Or at least: from the point onwards where you get serious about what you're talking about, that's what you'd be engaged in.) I regard this as simply confused.

Frederik van Gelder

Frederik van Gelder: "For some reason known only to yourself you're not even aware that what you're engaged in here is a comparative history of world religions."

It is up to you to make such conclusions and impute it on me. But do you think that 'Being' and 'Becoming' are central concepts only the Patristic tradition? Or that such a discussion will be done only in the context of comparative history of world religions? And what do you know about my background or lack of background in comparative history of world religions? IF YOU STILL HOLD SO, I SUGGEST: kindly search the internet to find documents on 'Being' and 'Becoming'. Let us see how many documents would be found on the camparative religion context!!!

Frederik van Gelder: "I regard this as simply confused."

Raphael: Please feel free to make such remarks. These are the kind of remarks which I need not write a reply to!

Dear Professor, I did not want to insult you. But the sort of carelessness for the field with which you wrote this remark does not fit to your stature!

Raphael Neelamkavil - It's been a long time since I read Sein und Zeit. I have no objection to starting a close reading of the book. (The original quotes, please, from the German, and then your interpretation of these quotes.) Not just these entirely unsupported opinions. Try and avoid ad hominem arguments - they don't contribute to the case you are making. Which on the face of it is based in Analytic Philosophy's seriously skewed understanding of the entire course of German Idealism. I have no objection whatsoever to being proven wrong. (P.S. I advise against holding up the internet as the source of the literature that could act as the basis for your claims.)

Frederik van Gelder

You: "Try and avoid ad hominem arguments - they don't contribute to the case you are making." Did I give any ad hominem? Or you? Please read your statements in the first intervention once again.

My suggestion: "Sein und Zeit" ist nicht so wichtig wie "Beiträge zur Philosophie". Besser "Beiträge" lesen, obwohl schwierig!

Please do not feel bad about my words. I asked some questions because you made some remarks without knowing many things.

Raphael Neelamkavil - Bitte sehr. Beiträge zur Philosophie als Ausgangspunkt. Es ist nicht der Text, der normalerweise gewählt wird, aber es gibt eine Menge zur Auswahl. (Die Klostermann Pläne für Heideggers Gesammelte Werke haben über hundert Bände angekündigt, falls das Sie interessiert: https://www.klostermann.de/Buecher/Seite-/-Kategorie/Editionsplan ).

Sie gehen davon aus, dass ich das Band oben nicht gelesen habe, aber gut, nichts ad hominem. Bitte sagen Sie etwas Substanzielles über Heidegger und belegen Sie es mit Zitaten - ich bin wirklich interessiert. Über die Metaphysik, sagen wir, oder über Kant oder Hegel oder die Phänomenologie oder Husserl, was immer Sie wollen.

Aber ich bin sehr beschäftigt mit anderen Projekten. Jetzt kann ich nicht das tun, was Sie mir empfehlen zu schreiben. Alles Gute.

I had expected nothing less. Not after that nonsense with which you started this thread. I don't think you understand that Heidegger is unintelligible without the history of Christianity - as interpreted through the tradition of German Idealism. (For starters.) You must forgive my irritation, but in this case I think most professional philosophers will understand this sentiment.

Wonderful. I do not understand Heidegger. Ok? Thanks. Any other words of attack?

Nemo dat quod non habet. Please formulate arguments in an atmosphere of not attacking or bossing over. Education = learning + research + openness + intellectual honesty + permitting acceptable levels of creative equality to others. If haughtiness, boasting, and negativity are habitually mingled in research pronouncements, this cancer can beget cancer.

More ad hominems. My suggestion: start simply with that 'Being'/'Becoming'. Give us some passages in Heidegger where he discusses this, and then present your interpretation. In the history of Philosophy, it has been discussed in two main ways: recourse to Kant and Hegel, and then in the wake of Husserl's specific focus on Descartes. (Which was in very marked contrast to the so-called 'analytic' tradition, which is built up on the premiss that that res cogitans/res extensa distinction is the last and final word on logic and science. It's also been argued somewhere that Husserl is a specific expression of neo-Kantianism.) In a word: the point of departure for understanding Heidegger is Phenomenology, not the mainstream (Russell's or Popper's 'take' on) philosophy of science. On Cartesian principles, Heidegger does indeed make no sense. (One could also make a case that there's a relationship there with Hermeneutics, in the meaning of Gadamer.)

There's also this aspect: Heidegger was by no means the only one, in the social sciences and humanities, who refused to accept conventional Cartesianism (rigid distinction between subject and object) as the basis for a specific discipline. This refusal is there many of the social sciences: starting with economics, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, historiography. Each of these disciplines has evolved methods to distinguish between objective reality and subjective states of mind, and most especially the 'dialectic' between the two. (That's where the word itself - 'dialectic' - comes from.)

As far as the history of philosophy is concerned, the famous Heidegger/Cassirer controversy will be up for a centenary in a couple of years. One could start with Peter Gordon's Continental Divide. Not a lot of obscurantism there, which you keep insisting is the main characteristic of Heidegger. (This 'obscurantism' nonsense is a result of Russell and Popper. You should free yourself from their influence, at least as far as this topic is concerned.)

'Nothingness', or 'negativity,' in this context, is simply the philosophical term for death. You may not like reminders of our mortality, and you may not be the only one. But it's hardly obscurantist.

Preprint DIFFERENCES IN THE CONCEPTS OF CAUSALITY IN METAPHYSICS AND ...

Now we're getting somewhere. The tenor of that is very different to that of your introductory text here. The first point to be made is that there is no conception of causality in metaphysics. The monograph on this subject, which traces out the relationship between medieval scholasticism and our post-Cartesian conception of causality - which is historically recent - is this one, by Blumenberg: Beiträge zum Problem der Ursprünglichkeit der mittelalterlich-scholastischen Ontologie https://www.suhrkamp.de/buch/hans-blumenberg-beitraege-zum-problem-der-urspruenglichkeit-der-mittelalterlich-scholastischen-ontologie-t-9783518587454

There's also the little matter that the meaning of 'a priori', as in Kant, deals with this whole area of the 'conditions for the possibility of thinking in terms of causes'. One could also put it this way: epistemology since Kant has never stopped probing the subjective conditions for the possibility of 'thinking causally.'

Heidegger, according to you, "destroys his own thought's coherence and adequacy". Nietzsche's "Ewige Wiederkunft des Gleichen", according to you, suffers from a "physical-ontological defect". So, let's just say that, as far as these canonic authors are concerned, you're not shy in offering blanket denunciations. (I haven't read the papers of which these are the titles, I concede.) But this text that you do invite us to peruse - on a topic on which entire libraries have been filled, the relationship of science to metaphysics - a couple of formal characteristics stand out.

1) Complete disinterest in what great thinkers of the past have said about this - say, from Galileo to Descartes, or from Hume to Kant. You seem not the least bit interested in the history of philosophy, the history or religion, or the history of science.

2) A strange style which is dogmatic and obscure ('vacuous'?) all at once.

Personally, I've never had much of a problem in explaining what Russell means by 'denotation'. But on the most generous reading possible, taking into account that you are obviously not an English native speaker (nowadays, it's not that difficult to find someone to proof-read a text, surely), the best that could be said about the following is that it is somehow about the relationship between universals and particulars (i.e. something as old as Plato and Aristotle, if not the pre-Socratics):

QUOTE"Existence is the non-vacuity of To Be as the highest generality possible. To Be is not a vacuous or non-vacuous thing. It is the non-vacuity coextensive with Reality in the non-quantifiable sense. To Be is non-quantifiable, because it is the very vacuous (non-existent) factuality of the non-vacuous nature of the totality of existents. The ‘to be’ of a specific thing, likewise, is the same as above, but of the specific existent in its entirety. That is, existence (of both Reality-in-total and realities-in-particular) is the highest, limiting, transcendental, non-quantifiable factuality, and vacuously pertains to the non-vacuously extended totality and its parts."ENDQUOTE

Compared to this, Heidegger reads like a telephone directory - and so does Nietzsche. Perhaps you could simply explain what a "vacuous thing" is?

Larry Carlson

This is the reason why Husserl - Heidegger's teacher - is sometimes described as the philosopher in search of the 'a priori' of modern science. If one remembers that 'phenomenology' - as a description of the search for what the real foundations of all worldly experience are - goes back to Kant and Hegel, and that it's most prominent representative a century or so ago was Husserl, one can see why 'Being' is a notion that is open to both a theistic and an empirical interpretation. (With some very real-world political consequences: is Hegel's Herr/Knecht dialectic a metaphor for the relationship God/man, or master/slave?) Is the universal/particular distinction relevant only for mathematics (as in Russell), or to something you allude to, a neo-Platonism going back to the origins of both Christianity and Judaism? Is the Augustinian civitas dei / civitas terrana only a topic for the history of Christianity, or is there an echo in Kant's notion of the 'a priori'?

Raphael Neelamkavil here is so utterly wedded to Russell's Cartesianism that he simply takes for granted modern Positivism's answer to this, which is that the old 'adaequatio rei et intellectus' can simply be replaced by today's empiricism and rationalism, i.e. simply skipping a millenium or so of Aristotle. That's why Heidegger (and Nietzsche) turn into such a caricature in his hands. (That's already there in Popper - though not at all in Wittgenstein.) (If that sounds a tiny bit pedantic, forgive. There seem to be two kinds of philosophers around, those for whom all this is old hat, and those who will tell you, with the aid of a lot of epithets, that you're delusional.)

Not sure how to respond to a contribution as effusive as that one. Personally, in trying to make sense of complex philosophical positions, I've always found that long quotations from all kinds of people doesn't really swing it. (My hard disk, like that of most people, is brim-full with 'quotable quotes'.) One has to start with some general proposition, and then see where that leads. (Sure, Heidegger, in a well-known formulation of George Lichtheim - quoting from memory - "showed the clowen hoof too clearly after 1933". Nowadays there are rather different reasons why Weimar Germany is becoming eerily relevant. Let's leave that aside.)

1) If the general topic is 'history of religion' (or history of Christianity, if we're talking about the 'deeper logic' of 'a priori' thinking, as opposed to natural science types of thinking), then I agree entirely if that was the purpose of your Hegel quote: Hegel is a much better basis for all this - i.e. the history of Phenomenology (and Hermeneutics lets not forget that), and what this has to do with the origins of Christianity - than Heidegger.

I think you are rather nicely summarising a century or two of Western philosophy by 'bouncing off', against each other, the two antithetical notions of 'Phenomenology' that we find in Hegel, when you write:

"... we participate in the divine when, through religious and/or aesthetic sensibilities, we open up to, and identify with, the presence of the divine in the mundanity of natural and artificial objects. But we are, in effect, a means by which God (aka, the cosmos) becomes aware of itself (through the progressive dialectic of history). Perhaps psychologists do not take such an interpretation of phenomenology quite so literally as Hegel and others do; tending instead, as I said, to suggest that what meanings we perceive in various people and objects are largely a projection of our own personal experiences, temperament, attitudes, and the like.... and not necessarily the divine spirit living within them."

2) Is 'reflection upon the mundane', upon the 'hic et nunc', an opening up to the 'presence of the divine', or are these, in the modern psychological meaning collective projections of universal human needs, something anthropological? In two sentences you have encapsulated what, for about a century or more, have been hotly debated between Idealists and Materialists. (Going back as long ago as Left Hegelianism versus the Right Hegelianism, and culminating after WWII in heated controversies over the 'logic of the social sciences' in all kinds of individual disciplines.)

Which leaves us where? I'm not sure. I think we're in agreement that what these diverse schools have in common, across all of the controversies, over several centuries, is that a 'common or garden' notion of the natural sciences doesn't cut it. (Which was my original objection to this caricature of Heidegger, above.) That's Positivism, and in Philosophy, that's a kind of collective harakiri.

Larry: "Hence, Husserl was not able to actually flesh out what he had vaguely adumbrated as an alleged revolutionary phenomenological approach to a modern (or rather ultra-modern) way of 'doing' science.

That is, Husserl was not at all successful in what you refer to as his “search of the 'a priori' of modern science...”."

I do not agree at all. Husserl has had great success.

Larry: "Yes, some claim that "phenomenological research is a qualitative research approach that builds on the assumption that the universal essence of anything ultimately depends on how its audience experiences it."* But this universal essence is now generally regarded as referring to the way that a given group perceives the meaning of an object, as opposed to literally believing that some universal essence exists within the object itself."

In my opinion, these statements show a false idea of what 'qualitative' would mean in Husserl. Moreover, he was not speaking of what you call universal essence! Essences that could be taken as universals are not universal essence!

A reading of Husserl's Formale und transzendentale Logik would tell you this. Now, if you ask me to put in gist the essential aspects of Husserl's thought, I would suggest you to vide documents in RG or Academia.edu or simply in the multitude of documents in the internet.

Raphael Neelamkavil - please enlighten us, just what is an 'essence' in Husserl? (Try to avoid exclamation marks.)

Larry, now you changed your 'universal essences' into 'universal evidences'. My question was primarily on that. This is why I suggested that you read further. And you created a new proposal unknown to Husserl:

Larry: "Rather the issue is whether objects have a characteristic character or (a priori) essence that exists independently of our perception of them."

Raphael: Where does he claim so? Again, it is possible for you to change the word 'essences' into 'evidences'. If you meant only that, it is not clear so far in what you wrote.

As to the question of QM vindicating Husserl's positions, I have nothing to add here, because I have already published a book on causality and the so-called place of consciousness in quantum events. I have not discussed Husserl there, since he has not claimed that QM vindicates him.

What both of you are missing is what in Wittgenstein is called the 'linguistic turn'. From Husserl onwards (though it really starts with Hegel), we're talking about the 'deep structure' of everyday language. (As a way of 'getting beyond Cartesian dualism', i.e. trying to hold on to the notion of objective truth - res extensa - while at the same holding on to the universality of that 'Ich denke' which Kant introduces as the indispensable a priori of all thinking.) Which splits up into a study of individual language use (subjectivity), versus those aspects of language structure that have adapted across the millennia, and then some. It's possible to 'talk' to chimps using sign language. (This is just as much Chomsky territory.) This structural, long-term aspect of our language is called 'objective spirit' in Hegel, and 'transcendental phenomenology' in Kant and Husserl. (It as it were goes back to its Christian roots in Heidegger, where 'Being' has obvious connotations to transcendental agency.)

Re that tree which Larry talks about. There's no such thing as a tree 'an sich'. (Kant.) What in Husserl is called eidetic reduction ends up with - from the individual perspective - a set of associations to do with where I, as an individual, first heard the term and learnt to 'fixate' it to this particular 'sensory impression.' (Baum in German, boom in Dutch, and so on. How many languages are there?) Whereas, 'tree' in the objective sense ends us up with the Linnaean system of classification in Botany. That too is part of a symbol system, which, as we know, changed fundamentally once the evolutionary aspects come to be better understood.

You guys are assuming that the analytic/continental distinction has been overcome. It hasn't. Husserl, like all those coming from Kant, is interested in the moral/ethical/practical aspects of how we human beings are holding up in times of deep crisis. Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie has three words in the title: science, crisis, transcendental philosophy.

Biology too, just like physics, has been struggling to overcome that Cartesian dualism, on the way to handling concepts like 'information', 'communication', 'learning', 'symbol'. (Back to that 'tree'.) Which is why recent philosophy, since - say - WWII, has focussed, at least on the Continent, on 'empirical conditions for the establishment of consensus between two or more individuals.' (Apel, Habermas.) If you think 'tree' is difficult, try something from politics.

Larry Carlson

Larry: "So if you are disagreeing with me on this point, you are disagreeing with experts in the field."

Raphael: I do not disagree on this. I never said so!

Neubauer, Witkop, and Varpio -- three medical doctors -- have said in their article many things in order to relate phenomenology to the practice medical profession. When they say "Phenomenology is a form of qualitative research that focuses on the study of an individual’s lived experiences within the world", it would be good to contrast what for Husserl and for the statistical and other scientific research would be meant by "quality".

Larry: "As I said, the idea of a universal essence of possum-ness or tree-ness presupposes that such essential forms exist in a transcendental consciousness, as if mundane consciousness can intuit such transcendental forms in a sort of perceptual unity (if only it prunes away its superfluous and inessential aspects) is clearly a version of neo-Platonism."

Raphael: It is good to find out whether Husserl would term the ancient and medieval concepts of "possum-ness" and "tree-ness" as essences.

Larry: re: 'There's no such thing as a tree 'an sich'.

In my own tradition (that of the Frankfurt School), it is almost a commonplace to treat Kant as the beginning of a strand of thought which works on the premiss that the a priori aspects of thought (of thinking, of all types of thought, including science in the natural science sense), is more important than anything on the objective side of things. I have no difficulty in demonstrating that the procedure which only later would be called 'phenomenological reduction' (or 'reflection'), is already there in Kant, that it would be explicitly formulated in Hegel's notion of the 'dialectic' between the two (the res extensa versus the res cogitans), taken up once again by the neo-Kantians of the late 19th Century (leading to Einstein inter alia), and then culminating in Husserl. (And, on very similar premisses, Wittgenstein.) I claim that 'Kritik' in Kant, 'Phenomenologie' in Hegel, 'deixis' in Husserl, 'language game' in Wittgenstein, 'discourse' in Habermas, are all different terms for an entirely comparable enterprise, which is the focus on and the search for some kind of '(quasi-)transcendental' foundation for the natural sciences. (I'd extend that to the 'unconscious' in Freud.)

There's something comparable at the level of mathematics, without which the modern natural sciences are of course quite inconceivable. The main thrust of Hegel's Logik, and the basis for the introduction of the term 'dialektik' in his work, is the demonstration that there is something wrong, or incomplete, or missing in all formal mathematics and formal geometry. (This as a response to your example of the triangle. This after all is a symbol, not a thing, as is the case with that tree.) There's something wrong with all traditional logic, that of the tertium non datur. That's the origin of what since then has come to be called the logic of history (however that is to be conceptualised), of which the very first thing that needs to be said is obvious: it has nothing to do with formal logic, the one coming down to us from Aristotelian/Greek times.

Obviously, the Anglo world is a lot more beholden to Newton than to Kant, and ever since Russell have turned Cartesian dualism ('everything is a matter of mind or of matter') into a type of gospel. That's the basis for the inability of those coming from the Analytic side in all of this to understand (what only they call) the 'Continental' side of all this. (The 'Continentals' return the complement by calling all these admirers of Descartes 'Positivists'.) I've written about this over here:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328562384_Personal_identity_collective_identity_the_identity_of_science_-_continental_versus_analytic_perspectives

Sure: QUOTE Kasmier writes that, "For Husserl, the real unity of things is unaffected by the forming and manipulating of them in thought. For example. I can count things but their internal and external relations do not alter. I can judge about you, but you are not thereby affected. At best, all we might say is that you are being related by me to other things, but this is no feature to be found in you or between you and myself. Categorial formations do not remove or glue unites and parts in any real sense. The same is meant to apply to comparison and categorial identification. The objects compared are not affected in any real way by the acts of mind that compare, and subsume them." ENDQUOTE

The Cartesianism is contained in the "the real unity of things is unaffected by the forming and manipulating of them in thought." And it is exactly this that Husserl 'casts into doubt' (this new 'bracketing' method), in his Cartesian Meditations, returning to what since Kant had been called 'Transzendentalphilosophie'. Wittgenstein does something similar in the 'linguistic turn', which is to reject that 'the real unity of things ...' bit, regarding this as a bit of scholastic metaphysics that needs to be overcome ...

The term in Habermas (in Knowledge and Human Interests), for the same, is the 'objectifying stance'. (Grundeinstellung zur Welt.) The point about this is, historically, psychologically, anthropologically, there are others. (The practical stance, the intersubjective stance.) (The ones we're in when we're reflecting about these things.)

Preprint BEYOND CAUSAL ITERATION QUANTIFIABILITY IN LINGUISTIC SPACE-TIME

Raphael Neelamkavil - What you just don't get is this. (I'm sorry to be so blunt, but your dogmatism on all this is simply grating. This is 'scientism' of the worst sort, and it's a pity it gets taken seriously.) Re: time, space, causality. (TSC) This notion of "linguistic space-time" of yours conflates at least the following three issues, and until you come to grips with them, your thinking is going to get nowhere:

1) Our conception of TSC is not older than the late Middle Ages: you won't find it before Galileo. (Popper was wrong: that our conception of TSC goes back to the Greek classics is a bit of late 19th Century fiction. (Proof: Modern conception of TSC not compatible with Aristotelian teleology, and not compatible with the notion that mathematics 'mirrors' reality.)

2) Language itself is a deeply historical form of (exclusively human) communication. A 'structural analysis' of language is at the same time a bit of 'anthropology of the species Homo sapiens' - that's what's called 'discourse analysis' in Habermas and elsewhere. It starts out with the analysis of (proto-)communication in the higher primates. (Hence presupposes thorough knowledge of evolutionary theory and the so-called 'hominid progression'. Also, neurophysiology.)

3) Philosophers - those who know their stuff - have a shorthand for the above two points, and it summarises what Philosophy has been all about, at least in the West, for a couple of centuries: it's called 'the critique of Cartesian dualism'. It's what defines the entire canon, from Kant to Heidegger and beyond. (Why Russell did not understand this is a deep topic, worth pursuing. It lies at the heart of the so-called 'Analytic/Continental divide' - a misnomer, if ever there was one -, now as before.)

Beyond all your advices, this is my last reply to you: You did not get enough time to read what I wrote in 10 pages of the new document, which I uploaded just half an hour ago. Whether I am scientistic or not may be judged by you. But I suggest, do not make blanketing statements. If you have any psychological gratification by attacking by blanketing statements, have it. I have enough work to do. You attribute an analytic-continental divide to me! Where did I speak of this? And each time you start teaching me of Patristic thought, Galileo, Descartes, etc. Now you teach me that language is historical. If I had repeated that statement a few times in the paper, would you have been happy? Habermas, Adorno, Hermeneutics, etc. are not very much my centres of attention. I do not even read your replies nowadays. Now I know you will attack me again, because that is your character. I will not be offended. I have only pity for such behaviour.

Larry Carlson

Larry: "But again, I think a general principle in understanding relativity is to look at what occurs most locally and/or directly, regardless of the relevant extension in time/space "connecting" two events; be it a person slipping on water or two electrons showing entangled "spins"."

Raphael: The problem here is that space and time are not ontological, but measurementally and perceptually epistemic. Time is always taken as temporal duration criterioned by a measurement rod of some kind. The same is the case with space too. Moreover, we cannot overcome the monumental discovery by Kant that space and time are the criterial percepta of Sensibility. This means that space and time are not even a matter of interpretation by Understanding's 12 (or more, or less) Categories. In a way, we can agree that even the reception via the percepta of Sensibility is a sort of interpretation.

That is, the main problem is that space arnd time are not anything in which or in the state of which processual things exist. For this reason, I go back into the implications of 'existing'. If the physical existents exist, they are non-vacuous. That is, they have some Extension. They are not IN EXTENSION, as if Extension were a container. (For that matter, space too is not a container.) But Extension is one of the direct implications of existing, and as such, I call it a metaphysical (physical-ontological) Category. Similarly, every non-vacuous existent and any of its near-infinitesimal part has the natural tendency to impact-formation. This happens via motion. Motion alone may be taken as the second direct characteristic of existing. But at every near-infinitesimal detail of each existent and in its parts there happens Change. If we start measuring motion and call it time, then its various vectorial directions will have to be accounted for. But Change is Change, its measurement is time, time is not in the abstract, but always duration. The duration of Change is time. Thus, the other directly metaphysical (physical-ontological) implication (another Category) of existence is Change.

Extension-Change is ontological / metaphysical. Space-time is epistemic. Nothing exists or acts in space-time, but in Extension-Change. Now, interestingly, the very Extension-Change-wise existing is what we call causal existence. Hence the universality of the Category of Causality, which is a mixed-category. If something -- say, the Alice and Bob of the EPR entanglement experiment -- has to exist, it must primarily be causal. Hence, only in terms of causality can the so-called "simultaneous" changes in Alice and Bob be interpreted. And if the combined distance between Alice and Bob, at any measurementally criterion-based time duration, is more than what light can travel at the given duration, then the cause of the Change in one when the other is changed must be superluminal. Hence, the claim (say, by Anton Zeilinger, John Clauser, et al.) that the action is simulteneous -- in order then to claim that there is no superluminal action -- is unacceptable. Our apparatuses are insufficient to detect superluminal propagations.

When you make remarks about others' arguments, I have seen academic gentleness and culture. Congrats. Therefore, what I say now is for those who accuse me of making authoritative statements: Please add an "in my humble opinion" in every statement that I write.

Your last paragraph shows that it is necessary to speak of the existents as existing non-vacuously. There is no vacuous existence. This "speaking" of the existence of whatever exists is not an objective affair. In objectivity there is some subjectivity. Instead, it becomes absolutely necessary, as a priori to all talk and conceptualization, that we accept the existence of existents. This is objectual, not merely objective.

I do not try to write my answers to the previous paragraphs. That will then involve a long line of answers and answers from us both. What I tried to do is to draw the direct and necessary (hence, objectually based, a priori) implications of existence as Extension and Change.

From the fact that you likened Extension-Change to Kantian noumena, I decide to keep quiet about it. No more would I like to argue about it. Nothing more to say!

I said this: "From the fact that you likened Extension-Change to Kantian noumena, I decide to keep quiet about it. No more would I like to argue about it. Nothing more to say!"

And your answer was what you said above. Nothing of noumena as Extension and Change there!

Well, as I said, I cannot take as much time from my daily life as you can, just to go on clarifying in paragraphs after paragraphs. I just do not have the time. Well, please go on. I am not angry with you. Why do you feel so? But I cannot spend time like this, answering questions that do not stay on the point being discussed. Please take me as not getting angry. I express my disagreement on the way you explain things. You may please continue discussing. I said, I do not have so much time.

Preprint BEYOND THE CAUSAL ITERATION METHOD. Short Text (Beyond Judea Pearl)

Larry Carlson

Can you think of a better heading for these discussions than the present one? This Heidegger stuff is both a distraction and an irritation. (He can be discussed seriously, I have a whole bibliography on this.)

Some of the 'routes' into this topic, over the last century or so, have come from Wittgenstein, some from Husserl, some from those who returned to Kant and Hegel. (Those 'returns' can be motivated by all sorts of things: dissatisfaction with 'scientism', dissatisfaction with religion, dissatisfaction with the pervasive psychologism, with the political clichés that rule our daily lives.) I'd be interested in your suggestion for a better heading than the present one.

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