Re: [Fis] Consilience and Structure

Malcolm

thanks for your open and 'consilient' answer concerning the gap between
continental and analytical philosophy. In fact if you make this gap, then
the gap is there! Why don't you just try to think about what I was referring
to (and forget the philosophers I mentioned) when I wrote the following
argument:
We can make a conceptual difference (I mean an 'analytical' difference)
between the concepts of relation and reference. Relation is then used for
all kinds of connections between things, while reference should be reserved
for practical relations. This could be paralleled to Koichiro's external and
internal stances. If you accept this difference, I mean if we take this
difference as: 'Given that...' or 'suppose that...' (in old good analytical
jargon), then we can proceed by making an explanation that the experiment
with the retina could be analyzed (and 'explained' or 'interpreted') by
saying that we expected (from a universal point of view) that the retina
behaves as something universal or objective, but, indeed, this is not the
case. The retina is 'falsifying' our theoretical (objective) framework. The
retina works, we would then say, with 'references' not with neutral or
objective 'relations', just because (and as far as) the retina is a living
organism. This does not mean, that objective or universal relations are not
valid, they are just not the way the retina works. We would have then 'saved
the phenomena' (Greek: 'sozein ta phainomena') which is the main task of
philosophy (and science...) since Socrates.

To argue: this is Heidegger and Husserl, and I am/was trained in another
school, is, I think, not a very good (analytical) argument. I was also
trained in continental philosophy and had to do my job reading the
analytical guys. By the way, I think we live in the meantime in the
post-analytical era (since some 10 years or so...)

kind regards

Rafael

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Received on Sat Nov 13 19:58:16 2004