Ulrich De Balbian

In this volume,‭ ‬volume‭ ‬6,‭ ‬I will deal with insight and understanding,‭ ‬meaning and communication and intersubjectivity.‭ (‬In an appendix I will include a number of‭ –‬isms,‭ ‬cognitive biases and fallacies that might interfere in,‭ ‬with and distort these things.‭) The latter is pre-supposed by,‭ ‬present,‭ ‬necessary and operating in all four of these notions when they are employed as verbs.‭ ‬I hope and intend to employ these words and explore them without the need for ghost-in-the-machine like mysterious,‭ ‬mystical and mythical‭ ‘‬mental‭’ ‬processes and organs such as‭ ‘‬mind‭’ ‬and‭ ‘‬consciousness‭’ ‬but by means of different meanings,‭ ‬dimensions,‭ ‬levels of t notions of intersubjectivity.‭ ‬Intersubjectivity enfolds‭ (‬like a pregnant mother her foetus‭) ‬insight,‭ ‬understanding,‭ ‬meaning and communication.‭ ‬Intersubjectivity is the beginning,‭ ‬the ground and reason for and the end of all meanings or sense that human beings could have. The reason for these attitudes of mine towards mental things,‭ ‬processes,‭ ‬organs,‭ ‬etc is that I do not believe they exist,‭ ‬apart from being umbrella-notions that refer to a number of undefined and not yet conceptualized meanings.‭ ‬They have their origins in uneducated,‭ ‬uninformed redundant myths and folk psychology.‭ ‬Their usage date back to almost pre-historic times in the evolution of human thinking and psychology and are conceptual remainders and linguistic left overs‭ ‬of primitive flat earth socio-cultural attitudes and beliefs. I further need to make four points concerning my approach in this volume and my approach to or understanding of philosophy,‭ ‬they manner or style in which I write,‭ ‬especially in this volume and how I employ and interpret the nature and one function of intersubjectivity,‭ ‬both in this volume and in general.‭ ‬The latter I present as a kind of hypothesis and conclusion. 1‭)‬I realized many years,‭ ‬decades,‭ ‬ago‭ ‬that I approach philosophy,‭ ‬science,‭ ‬art and other socio-cultural practices that I am interested in and became involved with in a manner that is not the usual run-of-the-mill one or that of the typical scholar,‭ ‬but in an original and creative thinking way.‭ ‬I did not attempt to study in this manner,‭ ‬but it came to me naturally.‭ ‬I would study and grasp what some philosopher,‭ ‬scientist,‭ ‬sociologist,‭ ‬artist,‭ ‬thinker,‭ ‬etc attempted to express and communicate‭ – ‬as serious scholars would and some of them do in an excellent way,‭ ‬and most of them in a mediocre manner and others rather poorly.‭ ‬But,‭ ‬that was only the beginning of my contact with a subject and an author.‭ ‬I had to go further and question his work and the assumptions he made as merely the first preliminary step,‭ ‬as I had to re-think his approach and work by means of my own original insights,‭ ‬model or perspective.‭ ‬I thought this is merely the natural or usual way of reading and thinking about the ideas thinkers or authors present to us,‭ ‬until I discovered this,‭ ‬my natural attitude and way of dealing with texts,‭ ‬approaches and theories are unusual and that the conventional way of dealing with such things is that of the academic scholar‭ ‬-‭ ‬that what we read in articles,‭ ‬theses,‭ ‬books and research.‭ ‬It often consists of commentaries on the work and/‭ ‬or the commentaries of others‭ – ‬for example one paper in sociology presented us with commentary on Habermas’s commentary on Brandom.‭ ‬Of course that type of thing is fine for the category of scholarly work,‭ ‬but to me it appears almost pointless and irrelevant and does not develop the discipline or provide us with meaningful insights.‭ ‬So much for scholarly approaches,‭ ‬or the stuff that the majority of academic books,‭ ‬articles and theses are made of and the insights and ideas of the handful of original-‭ ‬and creative thinking individuals in disciplines,‭ ‬discourses or socio-cultural practices,‭ ‬for example Plato,‭ ‬Aristotle,‭ ‬Kant,‭ ‬Hegel,‭ ‬Wittgenstein,‭ ‬Leibniz,‭ ‬Spinoza,‭ ‬Marx,‭ ‬et al. One aspect of these two approaches is the question about the intention or motive of these different kinds of work.‭ ‬The original,‭ ‬creative-thinking one is obliged to work,‭ ‬think and write in that discipline or execute the socio-cultural practice,‭ ‬as if his life depends on it,‭ ‬he lives or exists for his passion,‭ ‬the other kind forms part of the professional,‭ ‬academic practice,‭ ‬the academic who must publish and therefore is obliged to find some topic or subject-matter,‭ ‬often contrived,‭ ‬as it forms part of his tenure and job-description,‭ ‬like the majority in any discipline who lives off that subject. 2‭) ‬The second point concerns certain aspects of the so-called Socratic Method/s.‭ ‬In an earlier book I roughly distinguished between different kinds of philosophy‭ ‬in terms of the ways it is being done‭ (‬speculative or revisionary metaphysics as Strawson labelled it,‭ ‬his own descriptive kind of metaphysics,‭ ‬and two kinds of explorative philosophy,‭ ‬namely the hard ones,‭ ‬that retains certain metaphysical ambitions and the soft explorative kind,‭ ‬that lost the need or desire for any form‭ ‬of metaphysics.‭ ‬The latter is represented by the Socratic methods and the former‭ ‬by the Philosophical Investigations.‭ ‬In that work I suggested that the explorative types of doing philosophy appear to be more meaningful for the philosophical enterprise as it discarded all or most metaphysical aspirations and motives and as they provide us with a faint glimmer of hope that there remains a future for the philosophical discourse‭ – ‬a socio-cultural practice that desperately seeks for subject-matter‭ (‬by innovations such as experimental philosophy,‭ ‬the creation‭ ‬of philosophies of every subject and everything possible and increasing attempts to become involved in interdisciplinary work‭) ‬and methods and that is increasingly predicted not to last beyond the end of this century,‭ ‬if that long.

Philosophizing is part of the Process/es of Theorizing An illustration (by means of a number of articles, books, opinions, statements, hypotheses, theories, arguments, reasoning and comments) of doing philosophy or philosophizing and its methods, as aspects of the contexts, stages, steps and features of the process/es of theorizing. A number of implicit assumptions and tacit pre-suppositions of this socio-cultural practice and discourse, for example as they resemble that of everyday and religious perception (MNC, ‭“‬maturationally natural‭” ‬perception,‭ ‬cognition,‭ ‬and action), are identified and revealed.

My new (Experimental) PHILOSOPHY (XPhi) book for FREE download https://www.academia.edu/31973890/_Meta-Philosophy_Theorizing_about_Philosophy_CMT_CB_and_CM_as_an_exercise_inXPhi (Meta-Philosophy) Theorizing about Philosophy (CMT, CB and CMA) as an exercise inXPhi The processes of theorizing are explored, Weick's Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Conceptual Blending Theory and Conceptual Metaphor tool are described. This Meta-Philosophy investigation of philosophy and philosophizing is an exercise in Experimental Philosophy. The Empirical Generalization or Hypothesis arrived at states that: Philosophy/izing is like or resembles the process/es of Theorizing.

Abstract The philosophical discourse has a number of in-built values,‭ ‬norms and attitudes that create for this discipline.‭ ‬Creative-thinking and Intuition are discussed.‭ ‬Then some of the limits of the discourse are identified,‭ ‬some of them concern the methods of philosophizing.‭ ‬The positive aspects of the so-called Socratic Method and those of the Philosophical Investigations as Explorative Methods‭ (‬and metaphysics‭?) ‬are compared with those identified by Strawson as Speculative and Descriptive Metaphysics. It is suggested that the future of Philosophy lies in Theorizing.‭ ‬It is essential to view in the Appendix the articles concerning the Socratic Methods and the nature and processes of‭ (‬Philosophy as‭) ‬Theorizing.‭ https://www.academia.edu/31692986/Intra-Philosophical_Norms_and_other_Limits

FREE download of book. Top 1% of downloads (Academia.Edu) I analyse philosophical reasoning and argumentation, Critical Thinking and Argument Maps and other techniques, argument mapping, mind maps, etc I show that 'good' philosophy is/was only seen as and restricted to the application of Informal Logic, its arguments and type of reasoning. I Analyse the philosophical tutorial method of OXFORD University - rated as the top university for now. I suggest that philosophical thinking and expression should be many-levelled and multi-dimensional. How can multi-dimensional and many-levelled phenomena such as the human person, the universe, mind, consciousness, etc be restricted to one-dimensional presentation (that is meaningless, illogical and unacceptable)? I place philosophy in the context of the 'universe/multiverse" discussions and facts. With a vast list of links to articles on Philosophical subjects.

https://www.academia.edu/32135680/There_is_no_such_things_as_Mind_or_Consciousness ABSTRACT The introduction presents merely roughly‭ (‬as they undergo change all the time‭) ‬the contemporary,‭ ‬insular,‭ ‬Anglo-Phone speculations‭ (‬supposedly by means of the discourse of philosophy and the socio-cultural practice of philosophizing‭) ‬about notions of consciousness and mind. These,‭ ‬almost epistemological solipsistic,‭ ‬self-centered and anthropo-centered,‭ ‬restricted speculations about the notions of mind and consciousness are made by means of cognitively biased metaphysical,‭ ‬ontological,‭ ‬epistemological and methodological assumptions and selective interpretations of the nature and the doing of philosophy.‭ ‬Individuals or groups of them uttering those speculations form part of the professional academe and subscribe to the principles,‭ ‬attitudes,‭ ‬values and norms of a particular school,‭ ‬movement and community of Western academic philosophers. The next sections situate the individuals who utter these pronouncements and/‭ ‬or argue for them by reasoning,‭ ‬logic and argumentation in the wider context of the multiverse,‭ ‬the universe,‭ ‬planet earth and our species as merely one type of contingent,‭ ‬living organism inhabiting and restricted to a certain eon,‭ ‬era,‭ ‬period,‭ ‬epoch,‭ ‬civilization,‭ ‬historical period and culture‭ (‬or time and place‭) ‬of this planet.‭ ‬In spite of this absolute restriction by place and time individuals try to depict from this restricted point of view an all-inclusive,‭ ‬god-like explanation of the nature,‭ ‬origin,‭ ‬meaning and functioning of every thing.‭ I suggest that because of conceptual misuse mental objects such as the mind and consciousness are imagined and thought to exist.‭ ‬Such misleading notions lead to the creation of unnecessary‭ ‘‬philosophical‭’ ‬problems such as the mind-body problem and notions about things such as‭ ‘‬qualia‭’‬.‭ ‬It is advisable to restrict any‭ ‬experiments to an investigation of particular senses and‭ ‘‬acts‭’ ‬of cognition and identify the areas in the body and brain that play a part in them‭ ‬-‭ ‬and to leave such research to experts of the specialized cognitive and‭ ‬neuroscientific fields and related disciplines,‭ ‬instead of trying to speculate about them or by the use of thought experiments,‭ ‬imaginary cases and simulations,‭ ‬fictional accounts and reasoning or arguments.

FREE to download my New Book . https://www.academia.edu/31495642/_Meta-Philosophy_Meta-Cognition_and_Critique_of_Doing_Philosophizing am in the top 0.5% of Academic Publications on Academia.Edu and belong to a group of Academic giving our work for FREE as Commercial Publishers change too much for books. My new book is HERE for download: https://www.academia.edu/31495642/_Meta-Philosophy_Meta-Cognition_and_Critique_of_Doing_Philosophizing Abstract So far in my books and articles I have dealt with the following‭ (‬I hope I do not commit self-plagiarism by referring to my previous work and ideas expressed therein‭! ‬Lol‭)‬: My own discussions or‭ ‘‬philosophizing‭’ ‬follow right at the end after the numerous and very lengthy quotes from philosophers.‭ ‬The nature of the subject-matter of philosophy,‭ ‬the methodology,‭ ‬methods,‭ ‬techniques and tools of doing philosophy or philosophizing,‭ ‬the nature of the different steps or stages of the process/es of theorizing,‭ ‬the fact that doing philosophy are some of the stages of theorizing,‭ ‬the fact that philosophers lack meta-cognition and/or meta-reflection of these things.‭ ‬If they had awareness of what and how they are doing philosophy they might not become involved in quibbling over concepts and the differentiations of these concepts.‭ ‬It is as if philosophers are blind to what they are doing and have been doing for thousands of years,‭ ‬with the result that they continue repeating the same thing‭ – ‬arguing with words over the use of words and in the process creating more and more‭ –‬isms.‭ ‬They are seemingly unable to escape from such‭ –‬isms and their implications.‭ ‬Instead of getting or going anywhere they way they conceive‭ (‬of‭) ‬problems and express their questions they end up with conceiving of notions that cannot be solved or dissolved.‭ ‬They enclose themselves in an insular world or bubble of their own making,‭ ‬compared to sciences investigating humans and the different features and systems of the human body who find irrelevant the problems that philosophers have with things such as the brain,‭ ‬cognition,‭ ‬mind,‭ ‬consciousness,‭ ‬perception,‭ ‬thinking,‭ ‬etc.‭ ‬Sciences deal with these things on many levels and multi-dimensional while philosophers try to restrict them to a single level in one dimension by their words and the way they use those words.‭ ‬Consequently they lose sight of their objects and are unable to question them or express questions about them in a meaningful manner. In my articles and books on the subject-matter I dealt with the traditional branches of philosophy and that with the differentiation of other disciplines and discourses the discourse of philosophy lost subject-matter.‭ ‬I mentioned newer areas of‭ ‘‬philosophy‭’‬,‭ ‬such as X-Phi,‭ ‬Philosophy’s interdisciplinary involvement in for example cognitive sciences,‭ ‬that there exists a philosophy of every discipline possible‭ (‬eg philosophy of science,‭ ‬art,‭ ‬music,‭ ‬sport,‭ ‬social sciences,‭ ‬etc‭)‬,‭ ‬that discourses such as Logic,‭ ‬Critical Thinking,‭ ‬Argumentation and argument maps,‭ ‬Reasoning,‭ ‬etc are relevant to and employed by many if not all disciplines and many discourses and are not uniquely subject-matter of the discourse of philosophy and does not have to form part of or be taught as subject-matter of philosophy. I identified and discussed the methodology,‭ ‬methods,‭ ‬techniques and tools of doing philosophy and some underlying or implicit transcendentals such as pre-suppositions,‭ ‬suppositions and assumptions.‭ ‬I explore the nature of the different features,‭ ‬aspects,‭ ‬characteristics,‭ ‬steps and stages of the processes of theorizing.‭ ‬I showed that doing philosophy or philosophizing employ and/or consist of some of these features,‭ ‬steps and stages of theorizing. As I involuntary have‭ (‬am‭)‬,‭ ‬seemingly endless‭ (‬a stream of consciousness like‭) ‬philosophically-‭ (‬question or problem and insight‭) ‬related‭ ‘‬intuitions‭’‬,‭ ‬it is difficult,‭ ‬painful and frustrating to me for that to be interrupted by social interaction,‭ ‬talking to people,‭ ‬phones,‭ ‬executing all sorts of‭ ‬mundane activities,‭ ‬etc.‭ ‬To understand or cope with this‭ ‘‬mental state‭’ ‬is one of the reasons why I need to explore meta-cognition or thinking about thinking,‭ ‬especially one’s own thinking and related‭ ‘‬activities‭’‬.

Why_read_Philosophy_of_original-_and_creative-thinking_rather_than_derivative_academic_professionals_ Meta-Philosophy and Philosophy’s rationale, aims, subject-matter and methods. What is philosophy for the creative-, original-thinking philosopher? Why is he doing philosophy? Where does his philosophical problems and insights come from? Comparing speculative/revisionary metaphysics, descriptive metaphysics and the explorative ‘metaphysics’ of the Socratic Method and the Philosophical Investigations. Comments on, or thinking through and with philosophical problems that cannot be dis/solved, Suber’s Meta-philosophy themes and questions, surveys of philosophers (and their believes) and Plant’s ‘On the Domain of Meta-philosophy’. Socio-cultural, psychological and other factors related to the doing of philosophy.

If you wish to think/write about many dimensional things like the‭ ‘‬world‭’‬,‭ ‬persons,‭ ‬consciousness,‭ ‬human thinking etc,‭ ‬you should at least think multi-dimensional and many levelled. Questioning the purpose,‭ ‬the subject-matter and the methodology,‭ ‬methods of the discipline. I have already dealt in detail about the disappearance of different subject from the philosophical discourse with the differentiation of other disciplines, as well as the involvement in philosophy in inter-disciplinary areas such as cognitive sciences, the creation of experimental philosophy and the philosophies of other discourses, eg art, religion, science, mathematics, sport and every subject possible. Philosophy has/is often interpreted as consisting of logic, which in has its own discourse, while other aspects or forms of logic really form part of mathematics. The doing of philosophy as the doing of (usually informal) logic is in some way related to this belief. As far as the method of philosophy goes, it is always seen as employing arguments, argumentation and reasoning. But all kinds of writing and talking employ arguments, argumentation, reasoning and informal logic – not just philosophy. I conclude with a discussion from theoretical physics (in the past associated with the philosophical discourse) that provides us with ontologies as philosophy used to do. Against that background I present articles on the multiverse, more conventional articles on our universe, our world, our physical reality and the origins of life. I think these are some of the many things that it is necessary that philosophy should take note of and consequently question itself, its aims, objectives, subject-matter and methodologies. We might then have something different than one-levelled and one-dimensional thinking and more many layered and levelled and multi-dimensional thinking. Is this not how our consciousness functions? On many levels, layers and dimensions simultaneously? So should this not be the manner in which we conceive of ‘it’, its nature and functioning? We, philosophy, should at least be thinking ( instead of individual concepts, or statements, linear thinking - we should simultaneously think on many layers, on many levels and in several dimensions) in terms of 3D, for example 3D scatter plots .By this I mean the many different aspects of the person (mentally and physically, socially, culturally, as well as our environment, planetary and universe context should be included in every concept we employ; each concept should therefore be at least like a 3D scatter plot image, including all these levels and information)

I intended to deal with the different sections or chapters in one volume,‭ ‬but as certain sections or chapters are very long,‭ ‬like chapter‭ ‬1,‭ ‬THEORIZING AND PHILOSOPHIZING‭ (‬VOLUME‭ ‬1‭)‬,‭ ‬I divided some of them into separate volumes,‭ ‬chapter‭ ‬2‭ ‬HEURISTICS AND PROBLEMSOLVING‭ (‬Volume‭ ‬2‭) ‬and‭ ‬chapter‭ ‬3‭ ‬IMAGINARY EXPERIMENTS AND METAPHORS‭ (‬Vol‭ ‬3‭)‬. In Volume‭ ‬1‭ ‬THEORIZING AND PHILOSOPHIZING‭ (‬VOLUME‭ ‬1‭) ‬I show that and how‭ (‬the different features,‭ ‬steps and stages of‭) ‬philosophizing resemble the processes of theorizing. I deal with a number of basic approaches that philosophers employ to do philosophy.‭ ‬These approaches form part of the traditional methodologies of all Philosophy. The processes and techniques of doing philosophy resemble the techniques and methods one finds in different steps,‭ ‬stages and features of the processes of theorizing,‭ ‬theory development and construction.‭ ‬As many philosophers lack meta-cognitive awareness of what they are doing‭ (‬namely theorizing‭) ‬and how they are doing it‭ (‬the techniques of the different steps and stages of theorizing‭) ‬they do not complete the entire process of theorizing and theory development,‭ ‬but instead concentrate on only certain features of it. The different features,‭ ‬steps and stages of theorizing are explained and the doing of philosophy is compared with them.