phaedrus

This old article by Madison could offer some food for thought to the topic under discussion......hermeneutics anyone?

Coping with Nietzsche's legacy: Rorty, Derrida, Gadamer

Edited to add some thoughts on this question in the OP

Does continental philosophy/postmodernism encourage global skepticism and, if so, have they gone too far? How and why should we set limits on our skepticism/methodologies?

ubi dubium ibi libertas What pomo has done is to give a nice little whack at the foundations of those ivory towers in which academic philosophers were sitting in..(generalization i know). Have they gone too far? To answer that question we need to see if they have come far enough, as indicated in the madison article, its not enough to "deconstruct", reconstruction is a must for any proposal to have a "practical" value. It is the same with biological evolution which is what theories go through....its the balance between the static and dynamic forces. Both are essential for a species to adapt and for a theory to be "relevant". What pomo has done is to "disrupt" the complacent nature and bring the "?" back to the fore. Questioning the very foundations on which philosophy or other metanarratives were built on and to make it an open-end discussion. There can never be a "theory of everything", there can be only be theories of things which is a result of communication and shared knowledge. The internet does assist/provide for such a model...

Why should we set limits on the question? Life is absurd (may camus RIP), the point is to realise this and get along with life. By only questioning ....

John Page

Very snowy here in Washington DC and being trapped in I'm in need of an argument. Such is the necessity of reality.

Metaphysics is the study of the abstract which I believe arises from the physical (when a part of physcial reality becomes a representational form of another part of reality). Our brain/minds, therefore, contain the abstract.

As to the web of contingencies and the infinite chain of sign to signifier let me pervert the well known proposition that if you had enough monkeys, typewriters and time that you could recretae the works of Shakespeare. Let me turn this round and propose that if we had enough time, copies of Eco's works and monkeys to read them we could recreate the intention of the author in the minds of the monkeys. It should be fairly obvious why the first proposition is nonesensical (how would the monkeys know when to stop, and how do we know they wouldn't enter a behavioral loop that prevented them from completing the task) and the second presumes that the minds of monkeys are capable of reconstructing Eco's thoughts (Bell curve, anyone?).

Thus I argue that both human and monkey minds are finite, limited by the number of physical states they can occupy and thus the number of abstract concepts they can contain and manipulate.

While it may be naively true that sign and signifier are infinite (in that we cannot enumerate the set of all meanings in the same way that we cannot fully enumerate the recursion n=n+1), the fact is that the author's meaning was specific. Ambiguity can occur in the language/communication process that facilititates intersubjectivity. In short, certain of the conjectures of Saussure, Derrida et al are confabulations.

Finally, I'd just like to throw in that given an infinite number of philosophers and an infinite amount of time they would never find "the truth". Truth is manufactured by the mind that thinks it and, while it can be formulaically represented, truth is merely an assumption that one thing is the same as another - and this is patently absurd.

At times we must wander into the mystical to then return and contemplate upon the experience. Once we have a satisfactory explanation as to how the mystical arises, we must find new dreams to explore. Thus it goes with one philosophy vs. another.

Cheers, John

P.S. The "ideal reader" is a fiction of the author.

Amos

That may be true John, but you would only need one Continental Philosopher to do the same. The reason why "Continental Philosophy" (not just philosophers from the continent) is different from Brittish Analytic Philosphy is that they are opposite in this respect.

Beyond the mystical lies noetic vision and that is where we enter the realm of Continental Philosophy. Poetry is lyric vision, is it not?

John Page

LOL. Shakespeare, of course, was from the British Isles, a small land mass off the northwest coast of the European continent.

I don't agree that noesis is the other side of mysticism and as for poetry, here is a Glimpse of Truth .

Cheers, John

Amos

Good point and I was not the one who placed the word "Continental" before Philopshy after the rise of Brittish Analytic. In fact, some continental philosophers were/are very analytic.

Noetic vision is beyond lyric and opposite to obscured or hyletic vision. I did lots of Shakespeare and I am convinced that wrote from noetic vision.

August Spies

Stuck in snowy D.C. as well, trying to write a paper for class... on Barthes and foucault actually, ill try to respond afterwords.

Luiseach

Spies, good luck with your paper. Speaking for myself, I would be interested in hearing about it, especially if you think it would add yet another interesting slant to the discussion.

Hugo, I'm still replying to the questions you posted. I think I might be able to post my reply by tomorrow.

Luiseach

Hugo Holbling

Seconded. Would you mind posting your paper here, August, or at least an abridged version thereof?

Roger that. I'm looking forward to it.

thefugitivesaint

I have not had access to the internet and i have not had any real time to formulate my post as of yet. I am sorry for this because i am very much into having a dicsussion about the questions you posted Hugo. I hope i don't disappoint with my post when i actually make it. Thanx for the patience.
-theSaint

Hugo Holbling

No problem, saint. I hope i don't disappoint with my response. I'll probably ask your indulgence later in any case.