in a perverse and intimidating exercise, i'm working this summer on entanglements: a system of philosophy. i guess you could say i finally feel mature as a philosopher, feel that i have a perspective on the whole landscape. at any rate, here's a preliminary sketch of the basic orientation:
(1) Non-dogmatic physicalism: the world is a system of physical things/events.
(2) The world is not a product of the human mind; the human mind is a product of the world.
(3) Direct realism: perception is not representation; it is a process in which human bodies are penetrated by the world.
(4) But there are representations, such as pictures, some sentences, or maps. With regard to such systems ('science' for example), it does not make sense to say that there is a single privileged or 'objective' representational system. The question of the relation of representation to reality is not the only question.
(5) Truth = the world. "True" and "real" are, more or less, synonymous. True propositions emerge from a reality-preserving relationship between world and consciousness, mediated by public language.
(6) Individuals are constituted by their relations to other persons/things, in an accumulation over time. But each such set of accumulated relations (each individual) is massively unique.
(7) Content-externalism: the mind actually encompasses external situations. The content of human mental states is not merely in the head.
(8) Communication is a process by which human bodies intermingle with one another.
(9) Beauty is neither in the eye of the beholder nor (merely) a feature in the things beheld, but is a feature of the situation in which object is juxtaposed with perceiver, in which the integrity of each is cherished and compromised.
(10) Ethics concerns relations between persons, animals, things that compromise their distinctness from one another, or is a form of perception/communication understood as mutual permeation. This is captured in basic experiences/principles such as empathy, golden rule: extensions of the self into the other, and of the other into the self.
(11) Politics concerns the juxtapositions of individuals that constitute interpersonal and environmental situations/arrangements; a decent politics starts from a situation of individuals in relationship/juxtaposition, distinctness/merging.
