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reality
Nominalist, I and a few others have been rehearsing arguments about the mind's ability to understand or construct reality in the post that started with Heidegger below. The discussion had dwindled down, but this morning I saw this review of The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe by Michael Frayne. Colin McGinn is the reviewer. Introducing the book, he writes:
[Frayn's] question, central to philosophy, is to what degree, and in what ways, is the world dependent on the mind? Do we construct the world, or is it thrust upon us? He contends that reality has neither substance nor form without the constructive activities of the knowing subject, that space, time, causality and matter are all mental products, the results of our "traffic" with the world, not antecedent realities. He admits that the universe must exist independently of us in some way, but only as a kind of "undifferentiated mass." This is, he thinks, the basic paradox of philosophy: that we both create and are created by the world.
McGinn sides unequivocally with an anti-constructivist view.
although measurement can change the state of what is measured, it simply does not follow that the state has no reality independent of the act of measuring.
I am struck by -- the age of the questions being addresssed and the arguments employed to address them. For McGinn, a professor of philosophy at the University of Miami, neither Hume nor Kant ever happened.
Frayn also claims that the selectivity of attention shows that what we perceive depends on us, as when you focus on a bird in flight and ignore the sky behind it. But this rests on confusing the world as it appears to us with the world as it is in itself, a confusion that runs through the entire book. It is quite true that we contribute to the way things appear to us, but it doesn't follow that we construct the world that thus appears.
But this is not just a confusion that "runs through the entire book," but rather one that runs through a very long argument in philosophy. He's a professor of philosophy, so McGinn must know about this, but his review does a good job of pretending he knows nothing of it. How does McGinn suggest we handle the problem of "confusing the world as it appears to us with the world as it is in itself"? How else are we supposed to know about the world other than as it appears to us, and what, please, are we supposed to be able to know about the world as it is in itself, if it never makes an appearance?
Also, how is the last line from the quotation above supposed to work? On the one hand "it is quite true that we contribute to the way things appear to us," but on the other hand "it doesn't follow that we construct the world that thus appears." If there is reality, and if reality "in itself" has things in it, and if these things and, with them, reality, are shaped by our perception of them, then how have we not contributed to their construction? Or is McGinn expecting us to conclude that there is a reality in itself, only one that we can never reach? Again, an old question thatt McGinn dismisses with long-dismissed arguments.
It is also a mistake to suppose that because we must always be aware of the world through the medium of our own consciousness, we cannot think of the world except as represented by our consciousness. I cannot refer to things without using words to do so, obviously, but it is wrong to conclude that objects cannot exist without words. Frayn is here committing the same fallacy as the idealist philosopher Bishop George Berkeley, who reasoned that objects had to be ideas, since no one can conceive of an object without having an idea of it.
No doubt, McGinn grants just above, "we must always be aware of the world through the medium of our own consciousness." But that doesn't mean "we cannot think of the world except as represented by our consciousness." So: there is some other way to "think of the world" besides . . . thinking about it.
True, McGinn continues, "I cannot refer to things without using words to do so." But from this "it is wrong to conclude that objects cannot exist without words."
There is a confusing ambiguity here, however. It appears to me to be nonsense to say "objects can exist without words," because not only do we mark objects with words, but even the word 'objects' is a word, and so to say that 'objects' can exist without 'words' just kind of gives me a headache. Objects can exist without words? But object itself is a word. Can McGinn point us to these wordless objects (without pointing, which is a sign and too language-like)? How does the author know about these wordless objects? And how can he communicate to me his knowledge? Because we're not to think that just because the word 'object' has been used that we have escaped language and the representations it produces in our minds, as if there were some big difference between saying 'bird' and 'object.'
By Swifty | March 27, 2007 in Reviews | Permalink
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Comments
That is, we were, sir. I admit my dilettante status in regards to german idealism. But apparently my contra-Heidegger (and contra-stalinist) perspective seems to have offended the LS politburo. Anyways, Herr Swifty, for cutting-edge Jargonosophy, call one Doc Holblo. Not only will you get the right terms attached to the right men, but some cool links to your favorite Batman episodes.
(delete after opening)
Posted by: Nominalist | Mar 27, 2007 9:06:48 AM
""""Bishop George Berkeley, who reasoned that objects had to be ideas, since no one can conceive of an object without having an idea of it.""""
Ultimately, this is actually a rather defensible position--certainly as defensible as Cartesian/catholic dualism---that is, after stripping away the theological gloss. Some parts of physical reality are capable of forming ideas, or thoughts, using language--i.e. your brain. So some parts of bio-chemical reality do apparently "think" and use language--. Call that material idealism or empirical idealism or whatever, but it's not as absurd as positing a cartesian ego-ghost.
Posted by: Nominalist | Mar 27, 2007 9:35:47 AM
"Objects can exist without words? But object itself is a word."
I think the distinction between use and mention sorts this one out. ('Object' is a word; an object is not a word, it's an object.)
"It is also a mistake to suppose that because we must always be aware of the world through the medium of our own consciousness, we cannot think of the world except as represented by our consciousness."
Part of the difficulty here, I think, is the role of imagination, which the analytic tradition has consistently downplayed in theory but heavily relied upon in practice, in the form of 'intuition', which in practice - and for all the advances of that tradition in terms of externalist semantics and so on - is very often the final court of appeal.
Thinking about the existence of the world independent of an observing consciousness involves imagining what it would be like without such a consciousness; but in imagining it, we place ourselves in the relation of an observing consciousness to it. So to assume that we have a grasp on what 'the world' would be like independent of 'thought' - on the meaning of 'world' purified of 'thought' - is at least problematic.
That said, I think the issue of realism vs. constructivism is somewhat at a tangent here, since it seems to presuppose that we know what 'world' and 'thought' are and how the concepts are logically distinguished; the question is just to establish the correct relation between them.
Posted by: tl | Mar 27, 2007 11:03:28 AM
""""('Object' is a word; an object is not a word, it's an object.)""""
IS the perception the object itself? No: it's a mentally constructed representation or picture of the object. (eyelesss humans might eventually have developed geometry, but rather unlikely). The real issue is whether one can be sure that the object has some necessary relationship to the perception, and to subsequent thoughts or concepts. The cartesian/skeptic school wants to deny that relationship; empiricists generally claim the inference is warranted. The marxist tradition (stemming more from Hobbes than most continentalists will grant) itself holds that the world can be known, thus denying the endless cartesian doubt. It's really a silly quibble (tho' theists are fond of it): of course objects can be known. You have a stomach, or rather "Stomach" names something in objective reality: it could be called a "Hcamots." Humans are embedded in nature, even granting intentionality or the uniqueness of "consciousness" (it's not so unique to say people living in the slums of Ciudad de Mexico, and I doubt they generally pause to reflect on whether the raw sewage in the streets could possibly be part of a dream)............
Posted by: Nominalist | Mar 27, 2007 11:27:57 AM
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Posted by: prasad | Mar 27, 2007 12:51:57 PM
Yes choose prosperity, sahib: tell that to the idealists, postmods, and cartesians. Looks like an inference based on existing material conditions. The Heideggerian left doesn't need properity tho': they have some Dasein tucked away in their cottages in the Black forest, next to their Sturm und Drang collection.............
Posted by: Nominalist | Mar 27, 2007 12:58:24 PM
Nominalist - forgive me for being obtuse, but i'm not sure i see how the use/mention distinction has anything to do with perceptions. I'm also not clear when epistemic warrant became "the real issue" - i thought we were talking about the relation between thought / consciousness / subjectivity and objects / the world, which is surely distinct from the epistemological question of the justifiability of propositions which are based on this relation.
Posted by: tl | Mar 27, 2007 2:07:45 PM
I listened to the NPR's On Point interview with Frayn a few weeks ago. One of the callers (a philosophy professor I believe) mentioned Kant, and Frayn scoffed at Kant's elucidation of the "Ding an sich" (thing in itself). It was even more surprising when Frayn (who was rocketed to stardom with his play Copenhagen, which portrayed an imagined meeting between Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg) used Quantum Mechanics to support his theory but didn't mention that many of the people involved in the Copenhagen interpretation of QM relied heavily upon German Idealism.
I found much of the interview pedestrian, but telling of the difficulty of moving past this discussion--even, or perhaps especially, after Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida. Perhaps there is something historical or cultural about this impasse?
Posted by: Roger Whitson | Mar 27, 2007 2:24:44 PM
I would say the language/semantic issues follow the ontology: which is to say, philosophy ends (and politics and economics begin in some sense) when Descartes' unfounded skepticism towards the existence of the objective, physical world is rejected: external realism {and empiricism} being more warranted than well, metaphysical realism (and anti-empiricism, what have you); or rather, one simply rejects metaphysical propositions which do not refer to perceivable objects (or at least definable ala numbers, equations, logical form, etc.) ala Carnap & Co, and then dispenses with the jargon wanking. Kant himself upholds analytical and synthetic truths---those are most likely a posteriori, but even granting a prioricity, the language refers either to perceivable objects, or knowledge proceeds axiomatically. With an empirical, physicalist, a posteriori perspective, language and philosophy is also freed of all the platonic baggage: tho' that doesn't mean upholding some strict determinism (yet that is certainly a consideration, as it was even for Einstein).
(btw, Heisenberg routinely denounces Kant and the entire metaphysical tradition; Einstein praised Newton quite consistently.)
Posted by: Nominalist | Mar 27, 2007 2:37:39 PM
And if you think is vulgar, reductionist, naive, etc., read a few scrawlings of KM's The German Ideology and you get much the same perspective, with any remaining traces of Hegelianism more or less de-ghosted--tho' that doesn't mean KM does the right thang with the Hegelian traces, or with his economic critique--but ontologically, Marx sides with those vull-garians Hobbes and Locke, if not Malthus and Darwin, and dialectical mat. seems closer to even the positivists such as Carnap (tho' the positivists deny dialectic, of course) than to the anti-rationalists or neo-hegelians, existentialists, yada yada yada. Metaphysics only became an issue again because of massive windbags such as Heidegger and Sartre, and perhaps a few Hegelian-intoxicated marxist ideologues: and in some sense, even Nietzsche has quite an empiricist or at least physicalist perspective, and realizes, indeed shudders at, the swindles of platonism and idealism....
Posted by: Nominalist | Mar 27, 2007 3:23:29 PM
Thanks, that helps - but i'd say the epistemology also follows the ontology. So the question of whether scepticism re the external world is warranted needs a clarification of what the external world is. Doubtless you'll dismiss this question as meaningless - but then we seem to have no common ground on what the purpose of this discussion might be.
As the post pointed out, the persistence of a debate which Kant already claimed to have gone beyond is slightly troubling. Science fortunately doesn't wait around for philosophers to get their act together, but there does seem to be a remarkable continuity between the Cartesian / Lockean problematic and the predominant perspectives taken on these issues outside philosophy depts to the present day ...
Posted by: tl | Mar 27, 2007 3:29:20 PM
Marx addresses the key points in our discussion directly in his Theses on Feuerbach. Here's the first one:
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.
Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. Hence, in The Essence of Christianity, he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance of “revolutionary”, of “practical-critical”, activity.
[end quotation]
Yes: "the active side was developed abstractly by idealism." As a rule, revolutionaries and reformers lean in the direction of idealism because there's more elbow room there, intellectually, where the "world as it is" does not hold such immediate sway. Also, if you want to change things, you want a theory -- or if not that, a 'mood' -- that does not emphasize the dominance of things. That's because today's dominant things didn't enjoy that role 'yesterday,' and probably won't 'tomorrow,' and yet they sure do talk as if they're going to last forever. The realist will always say "that's the way things are; that's reality," which has to be read as "let's leave things the way they are because I like it this way."
My view is that the Hegelian inheritance of spirit is by no means burned away in Marx. Here's what he wrote in 1873 in his Afterword to the Second German edition of Capital:
The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of “Das Kapital,” it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre Epigonoi [Büchner, Dühring and others] who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing’s time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a “dead dog.” I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.
In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.
The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German empire.
[end marx excerpt]
Let me emphasize the following: The value of the dialectic, first described by Hegel, is that it "regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence." For obvious reasons, that kind of perspective is very valuable and attractive to someone interested in reform or revolution
Posted by: Swifty | Mar 27, 2007 4:14:05 PM
""the Cartesian / Lockean problematic""
OK, but I do not think the issues are as vague as you suggest (tho' postmodernists and Heideggerians, along with traditional metaphysicians, might prefer issues to remain vague, suggestive, sublime, etc.). One key issue which Locke was correct in raising was the status of "nativism": (tho' other physiologists of the day had suggested that as well). Locke's denial of innate mental qualities was quite obviously a denial of a priori-city--tho' some academic hacks (funny, many of them seem to be xtians) refuse to grant this. Many interesting perspectives---and really, Locke was an epistemologist of sorts -follow from that view of knowledge as a posteriori, most of which are not too appealing to metaphysicians who want to retain some idea of substance, or teleology, "necessity," classical arguments for Gott, etc.
One can understand why that view of knowledge as a posteriori was so troubling to the Germans (who even in the case of say a Leibniz were aligned with the leading clerics and theologians of the day). Subjectivism! Humanism! Relativism! Quatsch. Empiricism calls into question all the concepts needed to
justify the church, and really to justify ""Gott". And Locke's own feeble sort of design argument (which one suspects he may have been required to retain--it is like a few paragraphs in the ECHU) cannot really be defended: one cannot infer the existence of a God merely by observation (a point which Hobbes states boldly, and was promptly excommunicated, at least by the English fruitcakes). Locke probably realized (as Kant does a few years later) that there were no convincing theological arguments, and that he more or less undermines the Church (prot or cat.) with about each of the chapters in the ECHU, but he refuses to engage in the sort of odd quasi-arguments and speculations of the continentalists, used to prop up various theological concepts.
Posted by: Nominalist | Mar 27, 2007 4:32:08 PM
The charge of vagueness is perfectly reasonable - i was just trying to gesture at the lack of impact 200+ years of philosophical speculation have had on the way these debates play out outside of technical philosophical contexts: as a zero-sum confrontation between 'mind' and 'world'. It's not a new or subtle point, but it seemed worth dwelling on briefly.
The Marx is useful here because, inter alia, it points to the sense in which the pre-dialectical materialism-idealism debate takes place within the framework of the assumption that it is the job of thought to decide the nature of concrete reality and not vice versa. I'm not convinced that Nominalist's "empiricism" gets us beyond this point: the issue for us (if not, as you point out, for Locke) is not whether to posit God/thought/whatever as ultimate reality, but what is at stake in this act of positing.
Posted by: tl | Mar 27, 2007 4:54:58 PM
""""The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.
A claim about intention, creativity, freedom--tho' whether his grand conceptions are, uh, "true" is another matter; like many Hegelians, he is rather fond of making great abstractions about thinking, creativity, consciousness, ideas which may be stirring or somewhat plausible, but not exactly precise or even sound, inductively speaking. As with current leftist Hegelians, Marx's writing (translation always an issue) also tends to sound a bit more like say Ezekiel than , well, inductive or deductive reasoning. Which is to say, one is not obligated to side with the proles in the great historical world cup: by invoking Marx one sort of moves into a type of dogmatic position, and be assured Heidegger was not sympatico with that dogmatism, nor was the neo-Aristotelian Nietzsche (who will often have to suffice when engaging in continental swordfights, since few postmods take Locke much less a Carnap seriously: Nietzsche spews a lot of belle-lettrist quatsch, but he remains a physiologist underneath the belle-lettres, tho' not exactly Darwinist). And Nietzschean misanthropy is always a nice antidote to any world-redemption chat, whether xtian or kommie.
Posted by: Nominalist | Mar 27, 2007 7:06:15 PM
swifty, I've already noted this once, but I'll note again: your argument - to the extent that it is discernable from what you have written in these posts - is simply a bald assertion of Berkeley's most famous proposition. That is, your position is not really Kantian, but a form of (pre-Kantian) empirical idealism. Do you disagree? If so, why?
Posted by: jholbo | Mar 27, 2007 7:45:37 PM
jholbo, it's more that I'm discussing these thinkers. I think Kant is a shame-faced idealist, so the comparison to Berkeley doesn't put me off. If I am a Berkeleyan then I am glad to know it. Discussions that treat philosophers like so many trading cards to be brandished often go nowhere.
Posted by: Swifty | Mar 27, 2007 8:38:27 PM
But it's useful to get clear about which philosophy you are talking about - e.g. whether it is a post- or pre-Kantian sort of thought (not because Kant, the man, is so important, but because the features of post and pre-Kantian philosophy are significantly different.) I think you are mistaken in thinking your philosophy is Kantian, and that is why you are confused by contemporary thinkers like McGinn. In a nutshell, I think McGinn is a post-Kantian philosopher. That is, he has taken on board a raft of arguments and ideas that have come into currency since Kant (and Hume.) You, I think, are actually offering pre-Kantian (and pre-Humean) arguments. But you are quoting post-Kantian thinkers like Schelling and Marx. Precisely because the latter are post-Kantian thinkers, I don't think that their positions are clearly relevant to the sorts of positions that would be supported by the arguments you are inclined to offer.
The way to start a discussion on the subject (if you wish to carry it past the trading card stage) would be for you to explain how you think it is possible for there to be dreams, by way of explaining how you think non-veridical experience and thought is possible. Since you deny the intelligibility of thought-independent objects (on Berkeleyan grounds) yet the notion of non-veridical thought seems to depend on the possibility that thought could fail to correspond to the way 'things are anyway', you seem to face a serious difficulty providing an account of the very possibility of error. (Likewise, you can't very well go describing our thought as 'biased', or 'slanted' or 'partial' if you do not admit some distinction between the way things seem and the way things are. Or so it would seem.) In short, if we construct the world with our thought, why aren't we omniscient? I'm not saying you can't give an answer. But what answer you can give is not obvious from what you have said. It's a serious problem. In your previous post you wrote 'obviously there are dreams'. Actually, given your philosophy, it isn't obvious. Why don't our dreams construct the reality they seem to be about, at which point they would hardly qualify as dreams any more. Rather, they would be perfectly veridical beliefs about the world. Berkeley tied himself in knots over this one (whereas Kant, not being a Berkeleyan, didn't really face this problem - his whole philosophy neatly routs around it, because he saw that Berkeley was in trouble.) I'm curious which knots you will select.
Posted by: jholbo | Mar 27, 2007 9:31:53 PM
HINT: one obvious pressure point is the word 'correspond', but don't make the mistake of assuming that it is sufficient merely to deny the so-called correspondence theory of truth. Because - since I am asking you for your account of how non-veridical experience and belief is possible - I am only using 'correspond' in a sort of place-holding sense: place YOUR account of the difference between truth and falsehood/correctness and incorrectness/error and accuracy HERE. Clear?
Posted by: jholbo | Mar 27, 2007 9:42:56 PM
Hi jholbo, thank you for your very interesting post and questions. I have to go on a little trip but will have a response by the weekend, if not sooner.
Posted by: Swifty | Mar 28, 2007 8:13:33 AM
tl writes:
That said, I think the issue of realism vs. constructivism is somewhat at a tangent here, since it seems to presuppose that we know what 'world' and 'thought' are and how the concepts are logically distinguished; the question is just to establish the correct relation between them. [end tl excerpt]
Yes, I agree completely. The original reason for my post was Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) anniversary, and there he proposes a new understanding of the word 'world.' But from the point of view of a history of philosophy, I suggest that the move to this 'wrong' question about "how in the heck does a subject over here get into contact with and gain knowledge about things over there" represents a profound advance in intellectual human freedom. It's a question that is free of a lot of older prejudices about how thought should work and whom it should serve. Thus, I'm a bit put off when Heidegger does say that the whole Western philosophic tradition has gotten the whole philosophic effort wrong because it asks the wrong kinds of questions. There is no 'developmental' or 'historical' element in Heidegger's treatment. This ahistorical approach to philosophy allows him to treat a certain kind of everydayness as 'everydayness' itself.
Posted by: swifty | Mar 28, 2007 5:12:12 PM
re swifty's last comment: i see what you're saying, and it's easy to take this intellectual freedom for granted. However i suspect that the charge of ahistoricality can be turned back on you here, particularly the dismissal of pre-modern thought as serving particular (political?) interests, as against the modern discovery of an autonomous individual.
Heidegger's inclined to these big historical statements (like the post-Kehre view of the whole history of the tradition between Socrates and, er, himself as some sort of interregnum of Being), and it's hard to know how seriously to take them. The readings of particular figures (the lectures on Aristotle, the Kant book etc.) fill in some of the gaps - whether a coherent history of philosophy can be reconstructed in this way i couldn't say.
I was approaching this from a standard historical periodisation which sees Descartes standing at the beginning of one era (i assume you're broadly going with this also) and Kant standing at the beginning of another. With the Kantian 'Copernican turn' philosophy is recentred around metaphilosophy. (This is what i was thinking in saying that, these days, deciding on the ultimate nature of reality is less pressing than understanding what the question means.) From there on the tradition (or traditions, analytic & continental) evolves away from the 'how does the subject get in touch with the world' question towards a greater attention to the processes from which subject & world emerge together. But the 2nd moment - of which, for me, Heidegger is still a part - very much builds on the 1st.
Got to go away for a couple of days - it's been fun.
Posted by: tl | Mar 28, 2007 6:13:50 PM
I remember a few years back I read a review by McGinn in the New York Review of Books where he stated that the fundamental philosophical problem is how two such heterogeneous things as mind and world come to be in contact. This way of putting the problem is clearly a few hundred years behind. I don't even know where to start, but if, as John Holbo says, McGinn is somehow post-Kantian (I'm willing to consider the proposition that you can come out of Kant and still put the problem that way, since the problems German Idealists saw with Kant are similar, substituting knowledge and its object for mind and world) he is clearly pre-Hegelian (read the intro to the Phenomenology, and, whether or not you dig Hegel's solution, you can see the problem being fundamentally reformulated so that at the very least the problem can no longer be a relation between 2 stable terms) and very much pre-Heideggerian.
I don't think it's true that SZ is ahistorical, although a lot is left out about history that has to be filled in later and that does problematize the account there. In other words, SZ is in a sense transcendental philosophy, but what you are missing is the hermeneutic aspect of the inquiry, the ontic roots of ontological inquiry, what Heidegger calls the "factical ideal," and the account of destiny in part V.
Posted by: CBR | Mar 28, 2007 8:58:21 PM
I think the way you come through Kant and say such a thing is by concluding, rightly or wrongly, that Kant is wrong. Likewise, Hegel.
Posted by: jholbo | Mar 29, 2007 10:15:41 AM
x doesn't conclude Kant is wrong in toto: x points out that arguments for the synthetic a priori (and similarly for all rationalists who uphold a priori "truths") are speculative and inferential, and themselves not necessary (indeed they were probably pragmatic in a sense--intended to buttress Lootheranism)--especially that great guffaw (Hume busted his gut somewhere) that classical physics (i.e. causality) is itself known a priori. So whose inferences in regards to first philosophy are more sound? (hint: Constructivism. Einstein is closer to Hobbes than to Kant. A really smart primate--one who spins integrals---yet still a primate).
Posted by: Deke | Mar 29, 2007 12:01:44 PM
As I said, though, you don't have to say Hegel's project is wrong. What you have to say is wrong is Hegel's insistence in the introduction to the PdG that two if knowledge is heterogeneous to what it knows--say, a function of one type of substance, "mind," that has nothing in common qua substance with extended substance--it isn't coherent to say we know anything at all, except our own knowledge. Hegel's solution is that knowledge and known are not distinct. McGinn wants to assume from the outset that thay are, and then wring his hands about how we can get them together. But any post-Hegelian philosopher worth her salt will say, either that mind and thing are not really distinct, or that they both arise out of something together, or, in the case of Heidegger, they arise out of two ways of being that implicate one another and cannot be understood apart from this mutual implication. Because if they are distinct, as in absolutely heterogeneous substances, there CANNOT be knowledge.
Posted by: CBR | Mar 29, 2007 12:22:16 PM
Hegel was no materialist; from my readings (and his interesting if verbose and obscure comments on Kant), he follows Kant, mainly, and indeed seems to even amplify the transcendental nature of the understanding (knowledge in regards to the infinite, absolute, etc.). In other words, Herr Hegel's even more f-ed up (and more prone to spewing uncomfirmable propositions about non-observable mental events) than his Vati IK.
HOWEVER, there is one issue which the German idealists rightly raise against the empiricists: teleology. Unfortunately they retain the aristotelian and theological (and anti-humanist) notion of a final cause (still somewhat interesting in light of entropy, etc.). One could ala Feyerabend ask about teleos in the sense of the ends of knowledge, science, scholarship, and the politics of science. But Heidegger (going from his stuff on Technik) does not bother himself with that sort of practical discussion of the ends of science and the academy as say a Feyerabend does (tho' Feyerabend, while somewhat "left" has plenty of nearly crackpot ideas): Dasein is not your pal, it unfolds, does what it wants, sorta JHVH like (why it should be rejected).
Posted by: Deke | Mar 29, 2007 12:40:34 PM
>Dasein is not your pal, it unfolds, does >what it wants, sorta JHVH like (why it >should be rejected).
What the hell does that mean? Are you the same person as Unconditioned and Nominalist, or are there three crackpot trolls here?
Posted by: CBR | Mar 29, 2007 1:34:20 PM
May I just say, sorry for the interference by a certain notorious one, CBR. I for one am thankful his routine has not put you off (as it undoubtedly has others). I have found your comments very considered and helpful.
Some authors prefer not to moderate their own threads overmuch, as is their right. Still, when it becomes mantra hour and switching pseudonyms merely to create the impression that one is a crowd, imho should really not be tolerated.
Posted by: Matt | Mar 29, 2007 7:16:19 PM
"McGinn wants to assume from the outset that thay are [distinct], and then wring his hands about how we can get them together."
McGinn doesn't assume the distinction. He argues for it. You can argue that his arguments are bad, of course. Most analytic philosophers are a bit annoyed by McGinn's so-called 'mysterianism'. But, so long as you don't even think he has any, you aren't really in a position to judge. (You are wrong to infer from that quote that he is a substance dualist, by the by. He isn't one.)
Posted by: jholbo | Mar 30, 2007 8:27:06 PM
JHolbo,
You're right, I was saying too much about McGinn, not knowing his real position. From what I have read by him (just a book review or maybe two) however, he seems oblivious to a lot of philosophical water under the bridge. Maybe he has an account of why he thinks it's all crap. Or maybe, like many analytic philosophers, he just ignores arguments stemming from the OTHER crowd. (I realize this attitude goes both ways also).
Posted by: CBR | Mar 31, 2007 1:02:02 AM
8.
"""It is necessary to say just whom we regard as our antagonists: theologians and all who have any theological blood in their veins–this is our whole philosophy. . . . One must have faced that menace at close hand, better still, one must have had experience of it directly and almost succumbed to it, to realize that it is not to be taken lightly (–the alleged free-thinking of our naturalists and physiologists seems to me to be a joke–they have no passion about such things; they have not suffered–). This poisoning goes a great deal further than most people think: I find the arrogant habit of the theologian among all who regard themselves as "idealists"–among all who, by virtue of a higher point of departure, claim a right to rise above reality, and to look upon it with suspicion. . . The idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries all sorts of lofty concepts in his hand (–and not only in his hand!); he launches them with benevolent contempt against "understanding," "the senses," "honor," "good living," "science"; he sees such things as beneath him, as pernicious and seductive forces, on which "the soul" soars as a pure thing-in-itself–as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word, holiness, had not already done much more damage to life than all imaginable horrors and vices. . . The pure soul is a pure lie. . . So long as the priest, that professional denier, calumniator and poisoner of life, is accepted as a higher variety of man, there can be no answer to the question, What is truth? Truth has already been stood on its head when the obvious attorney of mere emptiness is mistaken for its representative.""
Das stimmt!
from Nietzsche's "The AntiChrist."
(when ya hear Herr Doktor Hei., reach for yr luger---as FN agrees)
Posted by: Enemy of LS | Apr 1, 2007 2:48:45 PM
Enemy of LS writes, quoting Nietzsche:
I find the arrogant habit of the theologian among all who regard themselves as "idealists"–among all who, by virtue of a higher point of departure, claim a right to rise above reality, and to look upon it with suspicion [end Enemy of LS quotation from Nietzsche]
I don't share Nietzsche's contempt for "idealists" expressed here. Crucial to any kind of critical thought -- from Kant to Marx and beyond, all the way back to Plato -- is not only the claim but the capacity to rise above reality, and to look upon it with suspicion. Take, for instance, Gandhi's well-known adage: "You must be the change you want to see in the world." That can't happen if we are persuaded to take the world as it is, to be more realistic, to allow the world to promote unopposed its own ideological claim to permanency and naturalness.
Posted by: Swifty | Apr 1, 2007 5:27:58 PM
Swifty, I have grown tired of all the endless ideological and philosophical chitchat--and there are more subtle or at least patient rhetoricians around than moi--,but I can't help but note that you seem to be conflating political correctness with, well, ontological claims. Lumping Marxist dialectical materialism together with Platonism and Kantian idealism is highly suspect, for one. Marx's point on materialism/idealism was not a claim of immateriality or transcendence (or, ye gods, platonism), but about recognizing a certain degree of creativity, and perhaps conceptualism. The earlier mechanical materialism often led to a sort of nihilistic determinism which I believe Marx objected to, tho' at other times he seems to suggest a type of deterministic view of economics and history (and the Big D of determinism (connected to the Big C of causality) is generally the real metaphysical issue--tho metaphysicians are generally unable to say anything intelligent about it).
I am not a marxist scholar (nor a marxist, tho' orthodox marxism should be reckoned with), but marx doesn't seem entirely consistent on the freedom/determinism issue; moreover, any such freedom of the subject is conditioned by the object-world, a posteriori, and material, indeed bio-physiological (and Marx himself praised the empiricism of Hobbes and even Locke, while perhaps objecting to some of the Brit's willingness to retain some theological concepts (tho' Hobbes did that merely for sake of appearance, methinx)). Not sure of the exact text, but I believe Marx (and Engels) said something like Mind is matter which thinks, and held to a constructivist view of knowledge, more or less--denying any Cartesian or Kantian transcendental subject, as y'all say.
The older materialism is no longer completely viable post-Einstein (well, humans still have stomachs, and, er, other important parts do they not), but Marx was certainly NOT a platonic Realist or Kantian idealist.
Anyway, Kant is not easily retrofitted as psychologist, unless one wants to claim that the synthetic a priori is cognitive, or that he means something different than "transcendental": however I think a secular and even leftist reading of Kant is plausible (didn't Comrade Gramsci think that? see that crazy broad Chabert for details)--not that I agree to that program---and Kant does often seems closer to empiricism and science--or perhaps to empirical phenomenalism--(see analytic of of principles) than to a full-blown idealism ala Berkeley or Hegel or the rest of the german witchdoctors (Kant never goes into rhapsodies over Der Geist realizing itself in time, etc.). Kant also had some awareness of "modality" and probability to some degree, and that is typically an inductive type of concern--.
Obviously Nietzsche did not believe that a psychological/empirical reading of Kant was feasible, and in the Antichrist FN says all sorts of nasty things about him, doesn't he----. Yet Nietzsche also objects to the billiard-ball causality of British Empiricism, I think (tho perhaps other more skilled Nietzscheans might disagree): but ontologically, FN's naturalism (yet premised on intentionality of some sort--the will to power) is not so far from the dia. materialism of Marx, tho' politically of course they izz opposed (and I think Nietzsche correctly understood the real dangers of praising the proletariat--in a sense the nature part of the freedom/nature dialectic (which Hegel develops (or skews) from the 3rd Antinomy of Kant, which is rather sublime but more a matter of poetics than logic)) .......................
Posted by: EnemyofLS | Apr 1, 2007 6:02:51 PM
Enemy of LS writes:
I have grown tired of all the endless ideological and philosophical chitchat--and there are more subtle or at least patient rhetoricians around than moi--,but I can't help but note that you seem to be conflating political correctness with, well, ontological claims. [end Enemy of LS]
But "thou shalt not grow tired of all the endless . . . philosophical chitchat." This commandment is provided by St. Adorno:
[begin Adorno]
[W]hen I say that [in this course of lectures] there will be a link to you and your vital interests, I would like to indicate what it will *not* consist in. For however justifiable your interest in gaining useful knowledge from a course of lectures on moral philosophy, there is nowadays a great danger of what might be termed an illicit shortcut to practical action. And we must make clear from the outset that moral philosophy has a necessary connection with practical action. In the various divisions of philosophy moral philosophy is customarily defined as practical philosophy, and Kant's chief work, one that is devoted to moral philosophy, bears the title of a *Critique of Practical Reason*. I must mention here *en passant* that the concept of 'the practical' should not be confused with the degenerate concept that has become current nowadays and can be seen in the way people refer to a practical person as someone who knows how to tackle problems and cope with the problems of life in a clever way. 'Practicality' here goes back to its philosophical origins in [Greek verbs having to do with doing and acting]. In the same way, the themes of Kant's practical philosophy -- in the second part of the *Critique of Pure Reason*, the section dealing with the 'Transcendental Doctrine of Method' -- are formulated in the celebrated question that is undoubtedly familiar to you all: 'What shall we do?' According to Kant, who is, God knows, not the worst guide to the conceptualization of such problems, this question 'What shall we do?' is the crucial question of moral philosophy. And I would like to add that it is the critical question of philosophy in general. For in Kant practical reason takes an unambiguous priority over theoretical reason, and in this respect Fichte was less of an innovator when compared to Kant than he imagined. Today, this question has undergone a strange modification. I have found again and again that when carrying out theoretical analyses -- and theoretical analyses are essentially critical in nature -- that I have been met by the question: 'Yes, but what shall we do?', and this question has been conveyed with a certain undertone of impatience, an undertone that proclaims: 'All right, what is the point of all this theory? It goes on far too long, we do not know how we should behave in the real world, and the fact is that we have to act right away!' I am not blind to the motives behind this protest, particularly in light of the atrocities perpetrated under the Nazis, and also of the difficulties of direct and effective political action in our own day, difficulties that lead people obsessively to put such questions as: 'Very well, if there are barriers everywhere and every attempt to create a better world is blocked off, what exactly are we supposed to do?' But the reality is that the more uncertain practical action has become, the less we actually know what we should do, and the less we find the good life guaranteed to us -- if indeed it was ever guaranteed to anyone -- then the greater our haste in snatching at it. This impatience can very easily become linked with a certain resentment towards thinking in general, with a tendency to denounce theory as such. And from there it is not very long before people start to denounce intellectuals . . . . This reproach about the uselessness of theory, this impatient need to hurl oneself into action without delay spells the end of any kind of theoretical work and contains within itself, teleologically, as if it had been assumed from the outset, a relationshiup to a false, in other words, an oppressive, blind and violent form of practice.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I urge you therefore to exercise a certain patience with respect to the relations between theory and practice. Such a request may be justified because in a situation like the present . . . whether it will be possible ever again to achieve a valid form of practice may well depend on not demanding that every idea should immediatley produce its own legitimating document explaining its own practical use. The situation may well demand that we resist the call of practicality with all our might in order ruthlessly to follow through an idea and its logical implications so as to see where it may lead. I would even say that this ruthlessness, the power of resistance that is inherent in the idea itself and that prevents it from letting itself be directly manipulated for any instrumental purposes whatsoever, this theoretical ruthlessness contains . . . a practical element within itself. Today practice . . . has made great inroads into theory, in other words, into the realm of new thought in which right behavior can be reformulated. This idea is not as paradoxical and irritating as it may sound, for in the final analysis thinking is itself a form of behavior. In its origins thinking is no more than the form in which we have attempted to master our environment and come to terms with it -- testing reality is the name given by analytical psychology to this function of the ego and of thought -- and it is perfectly possible that in certain situations practice will be referred back to theory far more frequently than at other times and in other situations.
Theodor Adorno, *Problems of Moral Philosophy*, Stanford, 2001, 3-4
Posted by: Swifty | Apr 1, 2007 7:44:34 PM
That's cool: I am just waiting for someone--postmod, marxist-adornian, priest, even Doc Holblo--to provide a necessary argument for the synthetic a priori, or indeed for any a priori claims, or an immaterial subject for that matter (and au courant witchdoctor Chalmers doesn't even come close). Absent any such arguments, constructivism appears to be the default epistemological position (with a scientific naturalism as ontology). What's more constructivists can actually discuss objects--like, er, stomachs (and grant that the noun "stomach" merely denotes an existing bio-chemical object).
Posted by: EnemyofLS | Apr 1, 2007 8:34:56 PM
That's a bit reductionist-- es tut mir leid. Perhap some limited form of design argument--say a secular updating-- might be viable (and didn't Kant sort of grant that?)--how to justify the apparent uniqueness of consciousness. I disagree with the xtian and rightist versions of the IDT, but Berlinski has offered some interesting critiques of pure Darwinian natural selection. I doubt that marxists or postmods would approve, but his arguments (from complexity, but without any hardcore theology) are rather interesting: when do a room of monkeys on typewriters start producing MacBeth? But any such traditional design argument runs into the Candide meme (too obvious to restate really). SO I, for one, might agree to the uniqueness of consciousness view, but still retain some constructivism. Or so it seems.
Posted by: EnemyofLS | Apr 1, 2007 10:20:14 PM
Posted by: | Apr 1, 2007 10:27:02 PM
:) ah yeah: a reference to Berlinski and Design argument will give a scare to a marxist, or lit. liar--even one who fancies hisself an "evolutionary psychologist"--- as well as master of punctuation---, when the lit.hack doesn't know Dennett from Diane Feinstone. Dat's for sure. All he/she/it can do it open its hound hole and yawp: Troll!
Posted by: EnemyofLS | Apr 1, 2007 11:08:52 PM
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