Does it make sense to speculate about what's outside our perspective...

Does it make sense to speculate about what's outside our perspective? Wouldn't speculation of that sort be conditioned by our perspective? But doesn't the idea that we have a "perspective" just rest on our perspective?

you got it, my friend

welcome to modernity

user, I think you are asking important questions. Though I don't think it's really about what "makes sense", because even a bad method produces sense to us(in fact, that's how we delude ourselves). But you are right in asking the questions. I think the breaking point that can make you see the issue you are raising is in "speculation".

The verb "to speculate" is connected to seeing, to observing. When you speculate on something, you look from afar and take notes to yourself on what you are looking at is about. The word "perspective", interestingly enough also has the same -spec- inside of it, as in lens or mirror, also connected to seeing. All of this to say that to speculate is to stand by your perspective, you are still merely looking and thus you are limited to understanding things depending on how you position yourself towards the thing. Yes, speculation is conditioned by our perspective.

What I think is missing here is that the object is not necessarily unreachable just because you haven't reached it yet. Whereas we so often stand by the scientific and analytical position to stand back and look at what we are studying without interfering, there is another dimension of approach that is neglected in that. That is to talk to it and to hear from it, the dimension of hearing. I mean it in the sense that if there is this unknown dark place of what is outside your perspective, you can enter it, you can poke it, you can address it directly. That would alter it and you wouldn't know what was there before you poked it, but you will hear something, you'll hear a response from it (and even no response is a response). The price you must pay in other to do that, you must suspend speculation. That is, to stop projecting what you think there might be there and just go there.

I hope this is not too abstract for you to hear my point.

You have to be really disingenuous to claim you don't acknowledge that things exist absolutely outside of your mind

Why?

Yes it does, and you should just read western philosophy as they explore this in depth.

The laws of the universe will be constant regardless of how you view/your ignorance of it.

Usually the point goes not that they don't accept it but that they can't truly understand it.

>That is to talk to it and to hear from it, the dimension of hearing. I mean it in the sense that if there is this unknown dark place of what is outside your perspective, you can enter it, you can poke it, you can address it directly. That would alter it and you wouldn't know what was there before you poked it, but you will hear something, you'll hear a response from it (and even no response is a response). The price you must pay in other to do that, you must suspend speculation. That is, to stop projecting what you think there might be there and just go there.

What do you mean? Is this practical or a sort of metaphysical procedure?

Not metaphysical at all, it's very practical. A metaphysical position is speculative.

I'm coming from a very specific place here actually, which is the position of psychanalytic listening, which is, amongst other things, a response to the speculative approach that OP brings forward. When Freud developped his technique, to put it in a very crude way, he encountered the problem of hearing the patient without projecting his own ideas of what was going on. In fact, that's why the patient faces the other way, not only to hide the analyst but to hide the sight of the patient from the analyst so he can hear the patient better without "reading" expressions and things like that. Anyway, there is a lot of twists and turns to this, but it's not just a clinical technique.

It's not that some things you look at and some things you don't. The very idea that there is "something" which you are not looking at right now is imaginary. When a scientist approaches a subject, he projects the expectation of something being there. I'm not even talking about a hypothesis yet, but something like "there is a void in my knowledge here, let's find out what is here in this place". You use your tools and you find out (even if you find out there is nothing there). There is nothing wrong or opposite to psychanalysis here, mind you. What is key point is that the void gets bigger along with what you know, because you grow more space to speculate about, just like a bigger donut would have a bigger hole. Knowing things is not filling the donut, but making it bigger.

So the issue is then, what do we do with our void? The void is not what we don't know, but what we don't know and we feel we must know. That's what pushes us to speculate, not our non-knowledge, but the idea that this non-knowledge is a lack that must be filled and when we have no tools at hand, we imagine it.

When you go for something new(a person, a possible field of knowledge, etc) and you feel you must know it, you'll not hear it properly. There will be some prejudice, projections and so on, you speculate (this always happends though, there is no approach totally free of that). When a philosopher or a scientist wants to know it all, or to have all certainty and so on, that person is already accounting for the possibility of closing that inner void. That can appear as trying to solve a person's problems for life for example, or trying to get to the end of a debate, etc. The end always implies more, there is always something else to say, the inner void never goes away.

So instead, in practical terms, what is proposed it is to hear what you already have and if you are really bothered with what "could be there but you don't know", you must "ask it". Just like you would have to ask a girl out, even if you don't know what she would respond or if she's interested in you. You don't speculate or prepare yourself indefinitely, you ask her.

Kant's premise: one must be aware of oneself before one can be aware of anything else.
It's wrong.
One can form the concept 'self' only in relation to everything that is not oneself, therefore one must first be aware of something, and only then aware of one's own awareness. Therefore observation is above conceptualization, and conceptualization rests on observation - Kant was basically trying to imagine a line if one never drew the points A and B which it runs through.

nice post senpai

Why couldn't you just have an initial intuition of self, as a thing in isolation, and then encounter things other than it?

Isolation implies other - there is no isolation in a vacuum.

I think I want to mean something more primitive than a sophisticated notion like isolation. Maybe the intuition of the self is something more like the self as "what there is", and then other things are introduced into the picture.

Try to imagine what you're proposing here: that before experiencing anything one somehow has some idea of what one is, and that one is. Now this is impossible to represent with language, which is why Wittgenstein rose to fame, having basically as his premise 'dont bother using language, actually, dont bother talking at all, actually, all of philosophy is basically pointless because I can't prove this improvable maxim with logic and language.' Existence is only a definable word when there are such as nonexisting things - if one is aware that one's self exists before having anything else but one's self, it basically means that some kind of entity (and here I go wrong already, for entity implies other as well) which conceives existence exists, which is all that exists, which is equivalent to nothing existing...Trying to prove this wrong by showing that its proof is wrong is impossible, because it has no possible proof, so one must either take it as obvious, or discard it by proving its opposite, which I have done earlier.

What about Freud's Id; or his Unconcious? Both being not wholly in line with the Ego thereby not wholly apparent within egoic "perspective."

Have you ever changed your mind on something BOOM that's a change in perspective wow bet you never thought of that huh

Are you a dumbass?

On the contrary, you'd have to be extraordinarily disingenuous to claim that you firmly believe things exist absolutely outside of your mind. It's an unprecedented assumption with nothing to back it up.

hey dumbass here's a hand and here's another QED nerd

Five star post senpai.

yeah this change was not controlled

looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

nice foundationalism faggot

this is highly metaphysical. freud is highly metaphysical. there is nothing primordial or basic about anything freud says. it's a conceptual theory like any other. kant (what OP's post refers to) is still talking at a level before this stuff can begin. I would take a step back and become aware of your own projections

kek

What's wrong with foundationalism?

>freud is highly metaphysical

Isn't he just conceptual? He doesn't derive metaphysical proofs or anything.

1. yes
2. yes
3. no

to be more detailed. you can sort of see things that you haven't seen before it only requires creativity and being able to decipher the natural law from what you've seen. the latter generally requires you to be able to change your perspective. your last question is just meta-bullshit.

Start with the greeks

But he's assuming the whole Darwinian framework of his time basically using biology to justify most of what he says. Not wrong or anything, but not at the level of Kant