I'm still trying to understand what you mean by both of the terms you use: 'a syntactic argument' and 'a non-syntactic problem space'. Since 'argument', in philosophy and in any other research discipline, can take place/be formalized only in written texts, arguments always involve syntax and also, obviously, semantics. If philosophical and other disciplinary arguments require expression in language, how can they address 'a non-syntactic problem space'? What, precisely, is the 'non-syntactic problem space' you are referring to in what I have written in this thread? If you can clarify this for me, we might be able to make progress in the discussion of consciousness as both prereflective [pre-thetic] and reflective {the thetic evolving out of, developing from the pre-thetic ground of experience}.
Correct. I think your lack of understanding of what you refer to as "the position I think Constance is taking" {which is, rather, the position and approach I am following and attempting to describe, which has been developed and deepened over more than a century of phenomenological philosophy} is the result of your total unfamiliarity with phenomenology, which, indeed, most people have not read. Both you and Randall ask me to encapsulate this century of philosophical development in a few sentences. Unfortunately that can't be done, which is why I've referred both of you to the texts written by the major phenomenological philosophers. And neither of you is willing to engage the texts in which the complexities of phenomenology are taken up and clarified. So it seems obvious that there's no point in my even mentioning phenomenology in this company.
To help you out a bit concerning the terms 'thetic' and 'pre-thetic' employed in phenomenology, here are a few clues:
"thetics
the setting forth of propositions or principles. — thetic, thetical, adj"
thetics
"Thetics: (from Gr. Thetikos) According to Kant the sum total of all affirmations." -- K.F.L.
Dictionary of Philosophy
The point I have been attempting to make in using those terms is that, long before our species began to posit propositions/hypotheses concerning the nature of 'what-is', they [like the children we bear], accrued experience in and of nature and intuited its structure, sensing the nature of the world's being and their own being as interdependent. Pre-thetic experience producing the sense of 'being-in-the-world' is the ground out of which reflective consciousness and thought develop. This is not simply an epistemological claim; its significance constitutes an existential ontology.
If either of you is seriously interested in understanding phenomenology you will take the logical next step and explore its expression and development in at least some of the major texts.
I have to come back to [USER=989]@marduk[/USER]'s last sentence in the first quoted segment of his post: ". . . Meaning it's attempting to resolve a problem by moving words and concepts of words around in a convenient manner to come up with a conclusion." It would be interesting for me to find out what particular words and concepts you have in mind here. I hope you'll try to be specific. I ask this not in the interest of continuing this discussion but in the interest of understanding your thinking.
