Josef Mitterer's Beyond Philosophy Serialised

(Radical) Constructivism and (Critical) Realism occupy different positions in the realm of epistemology. The differences are considered so grave, that extensive discussions hardly ever take place. Criticism is mostly limited to standard phrases or simple devaluations stemming from ignorance. Everybody claims that their own opinions are misrepresented or even that they never held the opinions imputed to them, such as denying reality here or naive realist views there. Josef Mitterer concludes The Flight From Contingency

Separate language and reality, description and object, statements and what they are about. Place them opposite each other. Make these dichotomic distinctions in advance of your discourses, so they can serve as presuppositions or even preconditions. Josef Mitterer continues The Flight From Contingency

If all participants of a discourse master and apply the dualist argumentation technique, this leads to a stalemate between the contrary views. However, the truth-oriented thinker must not be satisfied with such a stalemate-situation: By presupposing his own beyond of discourse to all participants, the dualist thereby also demands that these truth-claims are honoured/redeemed by them. Josef Mitterer continues The Flight From Contingency

The dualist thinker procures access to a truth-instance through a dualization of the knowledge situation. The knowledge-situation is dualized. How can such a dualization be understood? A distinction is introduced (the dualist would rather say: presupposed) between the object of discourse and the discourse about the object (in the example we want to discuss: a distinction between the table that stands here and our discourse about it); a distinction between the opinions, descriptions, theses, statements and what they are about. Josef Mitterer continues The Flight From Contingency

Human discourse often but not always runs free of conflict. Opinions complement each other or are exchanged, and the communication in such non-controversial discourses resembles a “monologue with distributed roles”. Josef Mitterer continues The Flight From Contingency

How many sciences are there? Those being taught at universities, -- and what about models of thought that claim scientific status, but did not make it into the canon of academic disciplines? Josef Mitterer continues The Flight From Contingency

The argumentative equipment the members of our society acquire in the course of their education, of their formative years, includes the use of many expressions that play an outstanding role in philosophy, expressions such as: “truth”, “falsehood”, “error”, “reality”, “fact”, “consensus”, “dissent”, “correspondence”, “correlation”, “agreement”, “proof”, “verification”, “falsification” and more. Josef Mitterer continues The Flight From Contingency

Even the most radical relativism/constructivism refrains from an extreme approach/procedure of the kind that our talking constantly generates “parallel” to it objects or even worlds. Josef Mitterer continues The Flight From Contingency

The competence for judging discourse contributions for truth or falsehood in school is on the part of the teacher. Even when students are asked to evaluate the performance of their teachers, they are expected to judge the didactic skills of the teachers, but certainly not, whether the views presented are true or false. Josef Mitterer continues The Flight From Contingency

Not only true descriptions refer to the object of the descriptions, also false descriptions are directed to the object of the descriptions.Insofar descriptions fail to correspond to the object they describe and hence are false, they stand in a relation of a non-conformity between object and description. Josef Mitterer continues The Flight From Contingency

When we talk we don’t simply talk up and down, criss and cross: we talk about houses or trees, neutrons or the universe, about feelings, ourselves or other people or about what others talk or have talked about. Josef Mitterer continues The Flight From Contingency

The various proposed solutions for the philosophical problems claim to be not only one answer to the question of the relationship between the sides of the dichotomies and their elements the answer. However, the idea that there is such a thing the answer presupposes that the How of the relationship between the sides of the dichotomies was already predetermined in advance of the proposed solutions. Hence the epistemic acts can only establish what was already determined in any case without them. Josef Mitterer continues The Flight From Contingency

A first commonality is constituted by dichotomous differentiations–between language and reality, statement and object, between knowledge and its object, between what we say and what we refer to, between mind and world, appearance and reality, consciousness and being, between a Within and a Beyond of discourse. Josef Mitterer continues The Flight From Contingency

That there is no one proposition that is not debated and controverted amongst us, or that may not be, makes it very manifest that our natural judgment does not very clearly discern what it embraces; for my judgment cannot make my companions approve of what it approves; which is a sign that I seized it by some other means than by a natural power that is in me and in all other men. Josef Mitterer introduces The Flight From Contingency

Dualist philosophers operate with two different levels: with an under-lying text level and an interpretation level lying above. These levels must not be mixed up, so that referring can succeed and validation claims can be redeemed. But a continuous distinction between these two levels is not easy because the occupancy of these levels is often changing: Interpretations that are judged/interpreted can mutate/turn into texts and change from the interpretation level to the text level. Josef Mitterer completes on interpretation

Interpretations of philosophical texts can differ so widely that the discussants claim that their opponents have not even read the texts they are talking about, let alone that they have understood them. Josef Mitterer on interpretation

What follows from this? Simply that the object can only be considered to serve as a basis of reference for the descriptions-in-question, if the object has been denoted with the help of exactly these descriptions. Josef Mitterer continues The Beyond of Philosophy

In the Dualizing Mode of Speech the ‘language-distinct’ object of discourse is introduced into the discourse with the help of a rudimentary description. The denotation of the discourse-object itself is however ‘language-distinct’. The descriptions-in-question can only be made after the denotation of the object. Josef Mitterer continues The Beyond of Philosophy

The distinction between a ‘language-distinct’ world (and its objects) and a linguistic description of the world allows to claim for one’s own descriptions that they accord with the whole/general/actual world, and hence with the world of all participants in the discourse.Yet an exponent of the Dualizing Mode of Speech* can not grant this accordance for all those descriptions which contradict his own descriptions. Josef Mitterer continues The Beyond of Philosophy

New, additional descriptions cannot be tested against the descriptions so far. They form together with the descriptions so far, together with the object they describe, a new object of a new description. After the description of the table standing in the corner by A: “The table standing in the corner is round.” the object of a new, further description is the table standing in the corner that is round. After the description of B: “The table standing in the corner is square” the object of a new further description is the table standing in the corner that is square. Josef Mitterer continues The Beyond of Philosophy

If the object of the description is nothing more than a description, then the apple that is lying on the table and supposed to be described is a description. But this is nonsense. What is lying on the table is not a description of an apple but the apple. Josef Mitterer continues The Beyond of Philosophy

Describing the table in the corner means continuing the description /the table in the corner/; starting from the already present description /the table in the corner/ and proceeding further. In order to be able to describe the table in the corner, the description /the table in the corner/ must already be present.When the teacher calls on the pupil to describe the picture hanging on the wall, then the object of the description to be performed is the picture hanging on the wall. The pupil now describes the picture hanging on the wall like that: “The picture hanging on the wall is a still life with flowers.” Josef Mitterer continues The Beyond of Philosophy

In Dualizing Speech, philosophical reflection is conducted on the basis of the language-world distinction. Its theme is the relation between language and world. It attempts to show and to explain in what relation language and the world stand to each other. Josef Mitterer continues The Beyond of Philosophy

According to Quine, “we talk so inveterately of objects that to say we do so seems almost to say nothing at all … It is hard to say how else there is to talk … because we are bound to adapt any alien pattern to our own in the very process of understanding or translating the alien sentences.” Josef Mitterer continues The Beyond of Philosophy

The philosophical literature presents widely different opinions about whether language describes, reflects, depicts, determines, forms, or even constitutes and constructs the world (reality, objects, states of affairs, the facts). Underlying these opinions is another, common opinion that provides an important foundation for contemporary philosophical discourse. It consists in the tacit acceptance of the view that there is a difference between the world and our knowledge of the world, a difference between objects and what we say and affirm about them; and hence also a difference between signs and the objects they refer to, between what we speak and the language in which we speak about it. Josef Mitterer introduces The Beyond of Philosophy

The canon of philosophical problems, especially in epistemology, has changed little since Plato. The problems have outlived the attempts to solve them. At the beginning of philosophy are not problems but non-problematized presuppositions. These presuppositions are dichotomous distinctions such as the dichotomies language-world, description-object, statement-object, being-consciousness, and subject-object. Josef Mitterer's preface to The Beyond of Philosophy

When Richard Marshall offered me to serialize my philosophy, I was in disbelief and rather sceptical whether I should follow his idea. But then I remembered the comic mags of my childhood, Schundhefte in German, with heroes like Prince Valiant or Tarzan. They started out with “What happened so far” and ended with “to be continued” and a cliffhanger ... It didn’t take long and I could not resist the temptation. Austrian philosopher Josef Mitterer introduces a new weekly series serialising his Non-Dualising philosophy.