The Human Question

I haven't the time to write this down right now, but hopefully I'll remember what the insight was when I read the heading. It has to do w what STAq said (in commentary on De sensu) re mere sensation as judgment (think Husserlian synthesis here).  This is the condition for the possibility of perception at the highest level (thinking of vis cogitativa/estimativa here)... and it has to do with the fact that perception is never of just this or that form of this or that thing, but of the whole concrete environment in relation to the perceiver (to misquote Phillipians: "...as something to be grasped at.")  In other words, it has to do with holism vs. particularism, being strongly in in support of a view of perception as holistic... and it has to do with Aristotle's mention somewhere in De anima that the unity of perceptual powers in the same subject makes possible our perception of the unity of perceptual objects in the same object thing...but it extends this poin...

These days I've been listening to lectures from the Teaching Company on Wittgenstein, Quine, Habermas, etc. I have gathered the following: that our starting point for understanding the nature of language should be the starting point for how to "do" language: which is commands, requests, rather than pointing and naming. Language is most primitively about how to act...together. It presupposes a common activity toward a common goal. But what about the command of the superior to the inferior (as in parent/child and master/slave)? Well, I don't know about the latter, but the former requires empathy and a common goal. That common goal is not the private having of a thing by each of the communicators: it is a living and acting together. It might itself be communicative in nature. So in that case, there would be a kind of circularity in what I am saying. Language is a giving directions about how to act together (somewhat instrumentally or quasi-instrumentally) in or...