Rings & Books
Rings & Books
My attention was drawn to this small joy. I thought I should share it with you.
Quoting The Raven
The aggravating grandmother does not restrict herself to any one topic. Here is a critique of Descartes' Cogito, amongst other things. A piece of middle feminist epistemology. It is about growing up, and being human, and the inherent limits of great men.
My attention was drawn to this small joy. I thought I should share it with you.
Quoting The Raven
The British philosopher Mary Midgley (née Scrutton 1919-2018) prepared this script for a talk on the BBC radio in the 1950s. The editor rejected it as a trivial, irrelevant intrusion of domestic matters into intellectual life. The text is published here for the first time.
The aggravating grandmother does not restrict herself to any one topic. Here is a critique of Descartes' Cogito, amongst other things. A piece of middle feminist epistemology. It is about growing up, and being human, and the inherent limits of great men.
Comments (313)
I have looked at your link and it may reveal aspects of human understanding and the complexities of gender in this. Adolescence is a particularly difficult time for many, as it involves the complexity of conflicts about sexuality. In relation to Descartes' cognito, it may involve the reflective aspects of human identity and consciousness. It also goes back to Sartre's understanding of self-consciousness, which involves reflective understanding, including the experience of 'body'.
Feminism has been an important foundation for thinking, as well as postmodernism. Domestics may involve so much, especially chores and the how gender is manifest. It may involve the basic questions of gender, essentialism and science and how these come into play in philosophical assumptions. I wonder to what extent the thread is about core issues of values, especially in relation to gender in relationships and social discourse. To what extent is a matter of philosophy or involve wider social aspects of politics, especially in regard to the basis of the idea of gender?
It could also be asked to what extent is feminism an entire critique of philosophy?
Loved this. It's been hard for me to take seriously, the people on this forum who think the existence of other minds is such a problem.
Reading on...
Good call from the editor. I don't know raven magazine. Maybe this is satire and it is off my radar, I hope so.
The zeitgeist. The emergence of 'the individual' as the arbiter of truth and the mathematical sciences as the royal road to certainty.
A Credit raised to a Distinction. A bit low - I'd have given the HD for the spark of originality.
She is not an astute reader of Plato. One of the main reasons he wrote dialogues was to point to the importance of temperament. Women are to play an equal role as guardians in the Republic. They were to do gymnastics (naked exercise) right alongside of the men.
Midgley misses Descartes' rhetorical strategy. How could he call the authority of the Catholic Church into question without suffering the consequences? He does it by calling everything into question, except God, and takes on the appearance of a champion of the Church and its teachings. He did not infer the existence of other people. He did not write and publish as the result of inferring their existence.
For the BBC in the fifties, it did.
'Entire"?
The perspective offered here is perhaps more obvious to someone who has carried another person inside their body. At the least it is a reminder of the privilege of masculinity. Descartes had the luxury of a warm chair and a stove. He did not have to collect the kids from school, wash the floor and cook dinner. But what was missed because of that privilege?
The podcast that drew my attention to Rings and Books is Mary Midgley, public philosophy and plumbing
Ellie Robson's essay is Mary Midgley on Water and Thought: Is Public Philosophy Like Plumbing?
(Women) In Parenthesis is worth keeping an eye on.
Who is we? Who sees it like this? And how does the relation of Knower and Known figure in the account?
Those who pay for a BBC licence? Those who listened to Descartes, but then managed to move on?
Then let's put an end to this silly analytic thing we call philosophy and instead enjoy the sunrise, feel the brook stream through our toes, and smell the honeysuckle in the breeze. That is the life passing before us, not the underlying structure, not the pieces and parts of meaning and language. It is the day we must celebrate.
You decide if I'm mocking or serious.
The last stanza brings it home.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed-and gazed-but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Good plan.
The idea of carrying ' another person in the body' relates to the philosophy of transgenerism, and gender dysphoria, although this may be a little different from the ideas expressed by Mary Midgely as such. The idea of masculinity as privilege may relate to gender dynamics of power, as identified in feminism. The crossover between feminism and the postmodern critique of gender may be important .
Privilege itself may involve material or psychological aspects. Material satisfaction may be a comfort, just as masculinity may be privilege. The material and social aspects of comfort and priviledge may have some parallel in the dynamics of power.
(I suspect the bachelors will not vote.)
With Descartes?
It may be about 'containment' of the body and the environment. My own understanding with my room, and the nature of 'clutter' may be as important as the sense of 'body' and its boundaries. The physiological aspects of body may be the starting point for the wider sphere of containment, ownership and influence.
There is an odd anti-feminist feel to this view of personal isolation. The space does not include much room for academicians like Nussbaum or Arendt, to mention two at the top of my head.
Yes, that seems to be one of the points being made...
Quoting Midgley
Is that to say that women who partake in that 'over-abstractness' are 'men' by that measure?
The article speaks of husbands and bachelors but no bachelorettes. Nor of thoughtful philosophical wives.
I don't know what that emoticon means as a proposition. Or the absence of one.
For the most part I would respond the way Churchill is said to have responded after reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, "I have always believed this." Anscombe would no doubt resonate with the essay.
On the other hand this debate has always been at play in Christianity, with the Hellenization thesis, anthropological and eschatological debates concerning the sexes, celibate vs. married life, eremitical vs. cenobitical life, etc. Further, an androgynous ideal tends to emerge from Greek culture, but is this true of philosophy elsewhere? In places like China or India? Somewhat, but probably less so.
Quoting Banno
It seems to me that it is about the inherent limits of unmarried men.
Quoting Midgley
I would see this therapeutic/plumbing approach as useful and yet extremely limited. It is also remarkably recent in the history of philosophy, and I think it is basically a consequence of our pragmatism and naturalism.
Stoicism is not therapeutic?
I'm much the same with regard to your post.
The addition of the poll about shifts the focus of the thread, to the issues of relationships between women and men. Also, I only just saw the link to a reference to the Virginia Wolf's 'A Room of One's Own' because the blue of the link words didn't show on my 'night time' mode on my phone.
I have read the book by Woolf and her writing and her writing was extremely influential in giving women a separate identity and voice in philosophy. At one point, in some Christian understanding, when there was a belief in the 'soul', there was speculation that women did not have souls, although I don't know how widespread that was. But public thought and philosophy was the domain of male power.
So much has shifted since Midgely, in the twentieth first century, and women are not dependent on men and in the public sphere with strong voices. When I mentioned to a female friend that there are so many males and not many females writing on the philosophy site she replied, 'They have better things to do than write on philosophy forums'. This conveyed an image of men alone in their rooms reading and writing philosophy, with women being out in the public sphere of interaction. Philosophy itself may have become marginalised, as seen as too abstract and removed from public life.
And that explains entirely its unpopularity both here/now, and at the time. From the isolated SUM comes not so much science, which is irrevocably polyphonic and communal, as capitalism, and fascism.
But of course I would say that!
I've had two in fact, so I win.
The correlation between the philosopher and the lack of romance is as much a product of opportunity as choice. That is to say, I suspect many in their closed off rooms with their books and thoughts long for a deeper connection, but for the introversion often inherent in the philosophical condition, they don't know where to turn.
This isn't why. It's because analytical philosophy falls into the same category as STEM subject matter, which is also male dominated. Progress by females in those areas is owed to social efforts to increase it, which means it would be more disproportionate if not being actively pushed in the other direction, but it still stands 2:1
malehttps://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/the-stem-workforce#:~:text=The%20share%20of%20women%20and,(figure%202%2D3).
That is to say, unless we buy into the idea wholesale that men and women are in different fields based upon patriarchal social controls, we must admit men and women are simply different creatures.
If you wish to see greater male/female disparity, look to the trades, where plumbers, mechanics, are overwhelmingly male. Plumbers are over 98% male.
https://datausa.io/profile/soc/plumbers-pipefitters-and-steamfitters#:~:text=Employed%20people-,The%20workforce%20of%20Plumbers%2C%20pipefitters%2C%20and%20steamfitters%20in%202021%20was,29%20years%20(65%2C963%20people).
On the other hand, 83% of romance authors are women, so they too are alone in their rooms typing away in solitude, just typing about different things. https://wordsrated.com/author-demographics-statistics/#:~:text=Female%2Ddominated%20genres&text=Female%20authors%20have%20increased%2045,books%20were%20written%20by%20women.
The focus here on the cogito: at issue seems to be what someone accepts of the world. As a starting point.
Accepting the bare solipsistic minimum seems to be ok with logic abstractions, but nobody takes those seriously (cant ever recall someone committing suicide (for instance) because of a fault of reasoning and logic in the cogito).
Accepting the world - from Heidegger to Schopenhauer (just cause they rhyme, so please choose a different range, although phenomenology to nascent determinism seems ok ) entails accepting reality in some fashion. Big shock here (sarcasm) that people with different experiences accept different things. Acceptance comes after experience. Post-hoc. Nobody starts life with the cogito.
What are the principles that underlie the acceptance? That is always the interesting thing from my point of view, and information - or opinions on this - seem very sparse.
Hunters vs gatherers? I would suggest that those of us who believe that everything (or to be fair, the thing in this particular case) can be reduced to such a simple thing should also consider that it probably doesnt tell us very much.
Of more interest is the fact that of course the author is correct. And also incorrect. What is missing is the other side of the argument. And then the normalization of both sides (only 2? Lets just stick to 2 for now) into a shared lowest common denominator (haha) from which the principles of acceptance come. That there are different flavours should be embraced, so that we have something interesting to talk about.
So is every epistemological problem really a moral problem? As that is where is seems to lead. Not sure . would have to give that some more thought. Or research cause its already out there somewhere.
What?
I'm not seeing how that makes sense.
Assuming you have alternate valid things you can accept, that are both logically sound . Then your decision is a moral decision. Assuming you like that word for non logical decisions.
And if you accept that basic acceptance of the world amounts to a tautology (Im not going that far) then the conclusion would be that all epistemology involves moral decisions.
We are coming from substantially different perspectives, and I can see that you make assuptions that I consider unjustified.
I consider it implausible that you have "alternate valid things you can accept, that are both logically sound". But then I'm an antifoundationalist.
We all have epistemic blind spots, where our thinking is not well informed. We are prone to believing we know things that we don't actually know:
I give it a B, in light of its timing. It would be pithy old news these days.
Thank you.
A discouraging word in the hand is better than two birds in the bush.
Great video thanks for posting it!
Anyways ya. Maybe i am wrong. Ok by me, but am trying to figure out where.
. To reply: Interesting. So you dont believe that there is more than one valid belief on any one subject or topic? You believe in absolute truth but we may never know it and that is ok? Is that the gist?
That may be the case, but in the mean time we go along making beliefs anyways. And it seems to me there is almost always more than one valid answer to anything not trivial or simple.
For instance helping the poor / marginalized in society: some people believe that helping others is best achieved by providing them direct financial help, and others believe that helping them compete fairly is the best long term approach. It is hard to say that either has no merit, depending on the circumstance. But it would be folly to believe that only one way of doing things is always correct.
Or thinking the world from a womans view is going to have different and valid conclusions than looking at it from a mans? At least sometimes?
If 2 people have a different set of facts available to them, then we could say they are both uneducated in reality. However their conclusions about the sets of facts may be understandable and valid logically. And arent we all uneducated in reality to some degree?
Which seems to go along with the quote and video you posted .
Nice.
I had close ties with a group of Nepalese folk in the Eighties, with whom I would discuss many cultural differences. I recall being perplexed when they discreetly ask where our meti were. Times change.
Yes, but in its defence misogyny and sexism do tend to increase the length of a thread.
The podcast linked above, which sparked my interest in the titular article, is about public philosophy. Consider:
Not that any of us would ever do such a thing on this forum. Nice of Hanover to point out yet another similarity between plumbing and philosophy - the gender disparity.
Some see the question as unfair. But perhaps it is its framing within the Second Meditation that is unfair. Descartes had a room of his own, complete with an "oven".
I would like for this to be a bit of comedic self-awareness *crosses fingers*.
There is the question of the innate differences of biology, which may involve thinking, as noted by @Hanover, and the role of cultural assumptions and the dynamics of power relationships. It may be complicated.
Mary Midgely's comment about the way women don't put each other down, may be about female psychology. Or, it may be about the situation of females in philosophy and their precarious situation in a male dominated profession in the institution of philosophy at the time, as if being there itself was a 'privilege' and a shared respect for one another as it may be problematic to argue that females never put other females down, such as in situations where they are competing against one another.
The dynamics of institutions involves power relationships and ideas about gender. Even recently, I read of a situation in the news in which a woman applied for a high position in an organisation and was rejected. When she sought feedback, she was told that the reason why she had not been given the job she was told that it was because she had not 'put enough effort into her appearance'. The woman claimed that what this amounted to was she had not worn make up. It reminded me of how the most successful woman I knew in philosophy, a professor and well known figure in medical ethics, who was a tutor, was adored by male students for her sexual attractiveness. I won't name her, just in case she were to read this online forum, but I wonder if she would have risen to fame if she had not been so attractive.
What I am arguing is that gender relationships are not simply about misogyny but about stereotypes. In the twentieth first century the situation may have changed to the point where there is more bias against males in some contexts. For example, what I have found when looking for accommodation is that so many adverts say, 'females only', which may mean some difficulty for males in finding 'a room of one's own'.
"Complicated", it seems to me, understates the difficulty. We look to biology to provide an objective basis for cultural stereotypes. But our cultural stereotypes condition what we think of as biology. In other words, the two interact and are consequently inextricably intertwined. Both are deeply involved in the power relationships in play in our social interactions.
In the end, it seems to me, we would do better to manage without pursuing this fruitless attempt and deal with the problems we are facing, whatever their origin.
Quoting Jack Cummins
That's true. Looking back, one can get depressed by the fact that eradicating hatred and stereotyping is much more difficult than it was thought to be at the time. Is it possible that those tendencies are both ineradicably part of the human condition?
As an example, consider the following from Midgley's article: -
I agree whole-heartedly with the point that she is making. I'm sure that what she says here would have been wholly unexceptional when she was writing. But reading it now, I can't help worrying about the category of "women's experience" and especially "women's whole experience", particularly as she focuses on the experience of pregnancy and suckling, which, after all, was a lynch-pin in the justification of the traditional definition of women's role in life. She does then generalize through child-rearing and marriage back to "typical human experience" - but notice that she does not generalize to "our" experience or "universal" human experience.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I sympathize. It is a nasty shock to find oneself on the wrong side of a prejudice. But perhaps it is salutary. It's not new. I had a very similar experience (and I was far from alone, and probably lucky) well before this century began. Still, it comes to all of us as we advance into old age.
The issue arose with lawyers, which was once a male dominated profession. If you look today, you have as many or more females in law school, who perform at the top of the class, and who get the presitgious jobs. But, as time goes on, you see fewer and fewer as partners and at the highest levels of firms. The reason, which is interesting, based upon the women are saying, is because women don't want those jobs. They are grueling, stressful, and, other than money, are not terribly rewarding. The same holds true to the trades. Women don't want to work on cars, pipes, and air conditioning units. Those jobs are physically demanding and not terribly rewarding.
When coming up with policy decisions, what do you do? We've made entry open to whoever wants it, but do we then change the industry to make it so different people want it? Wouldn't the acceptance that women don't want X but men do, be a nod towards biology? Or do you say that men have figured out the biology of women (yeah, right) and have created systems that make them not want to compete? That would be the patriarchal argument, but it would also accept that biology controls to some point.
Yes, things have changed and are changing in the professions. You may be right about the glass ceiling. But I'm sure are also aware that there are people who are not content to adopt your explanation, and my impression is that they are making headway. I think that change is coming.
Quoting Hanover
Who told you that? If it is true, why do so many men want them?
Quoting Hanover
That certainly applies to serving in the army or the police. Yet, some women do want to do that, including, now, serving in the front line. And there are women working in the trades. Though it is true that I've never heard much agitation to change the gender balance amongst dust-men.
Quoting Hanover
Most people absorb ideas about what is appropriate for them and most people most of the time do not challenge those stereotypes. If you just pin up a notice "All welcome" and sit back, nothing much will change.
But I do worry about the expectation that gender balance in every trade and profession will conform pretty closely to the balance in general population. It could be used as a quota, which would be completely inappropriate. (The same applies to the general expectation that all the diversity balances in every group will conform to the balance in the general population.)
We ought not, ever, to talk about discrimination without qualification. Some discrimination is good, and necessary. What is wrong is discrimination on irrelevant grounds. What the relevant grounds are will depend on the context and may often be contested.
Quoting Hanover
Not necessarily. It depends on why they don't want it.
Part of what I was saying is that biology and culture are not neatly separated or separable. On the contrary, they interact. We cannot generalize, but need to pay attention to each issue as it comes up. Solutions will usually be messy and not please everyone. But allowing people to complain and listening to what they have to say and taking them seriously matters.
I'm a Bachelor in the sense that all Bachelor's are unmarried men.
I voted yes all the same. Partially due to @Fooloso4 -- sex and family are not the same now, and I have kiddos in my life, and I have no doubts about others' existence or interiority.
So I thought "Yes" still qualified in the sense that she's designating, but then there may be an objection on the basis that I'm unmarried and so don't have a real insight into what she's saying.
I get along with the conclusion, though. And with the opening -- I don't think philosophy is an exercise in proving myself correct or the other person wrong or some such.
Dilato ergo summus.
Quoting Moliere
No objection from me. We all have mothers after all.
Is laughably wrong.
Quoting Ludwig V
I think this is a mistake. I think it is a mistake that leaves us, necessarily, in a hopeless loop of arguing with anyone who disagrees with one end of the spectrum (biology v culture) because there is no possibility of extricating them. I think we can. The charge that any observations are culturally-bound seems wrong to me on many levels.
But I thought that there was nothing fundamentally different between men and women? Strange.
Quoting AmadeusD
The kind of self-awareness where one admits the mistake but does not seem to care about committing the mistake always stroke me as, also, strange.
Quoting Ellie Robson
One way to think about the Cogito is suggested by the word "ergo", "therefore", that we are to infer our existence from the very act of doubting. On the face of it, this inference is invalid. Elsewhere there was a recent extended discussion of the value of p?q, which we might try not to repeat here. The most we seem to be able to conclude from more sophisticated parsings of "I doubt" is that "something doubts", and not what that something is.
Hence a second way to think about the Cogito, that it is a definition of "I"; that the thing doing the thinking is the self of the philosopher. This has the uncomfortable result that one ceases to exist when not doing philosophy, or at least when one is asleep.
Broader considerations lead one to see doubt as only one aspect of our lives, one game we occasionally play. Descartes had a preference for solitaire, but he could only play that game using the words he had learned as part of a community. He brought that community with him into his room. His private reflections are ultimately public, and not just in being published.
This is Parfit's conclusion - he insinuates that there is no personal identity, and so the Cogito could not be a basis for a discreet doubter.
"Descartes, famously, made such a claim. When he asked if there was anything that he could not
doubt, his answer was that he could not doubt his own existence. This was revealed in the very act of doubting. And, besides assuming that every thought must have a thinker, Descartes assumed that a thinker must be a Pure Ego, or spiritual substance. A Cartesian Pure Ego is the clearest case of a separately existing entity, distinct from the brain and body.(19)
Lichtenberg claimed that, in what he thought to be most certain, Descartes went astray. He should not have claimed that a thinker must be a separately existing entity. His famous Cogito did not justify this belief. He should not have claimed, I think, therefore I am. Though this is true, it is misleading. Descartes could have claimed instead, It is thought: thinking is going on. Or he could have claimed, This is a thought, therefore at least one thought is being thought.20
Because we ascribe thoughts to thinkers, we can truly claim that thinkers exist. But we cannot deduce, from the content of our experiences, that a thinker is a separately existing entity. And, as Lichtenberg suggests, because we are not separately existing entities, we could fully describe our thoughts without claiming that they have thinkers. We could fully describe our experiences, and the connections between them, without claiming that they are had by a subject of experiences. We could give what I call an impersonal description."
I can send you a pdf if you;d like? :nerd:
From the Second Meditation:
It is not that thinking or doing philosophy is a necessary condition for existing, it is that existing is a necessary condition for thinking is this broad sense of the term.
Cogito ergo sum, more correctly translated as "I am thinking, therefore I exist" is from the Discourse, not the Meditations.
This conclusion follows from:
(Part 4)
Doubting is for Descartes a deliberate methodological exercise.
(Part 4)
Obviously, to doubt is very different from pretending to doubt.
In the Meditations he deliberately secludes himself in order to find some reason to doubt whatever can be doubted. The picture of Descartes as a solitary figure does not tell the whole story. He traveled extensively.
More important, as with all of us, his temperament and character was not simply a matter of choice. There are many factoring influencing who we are and what we desire. He took his motto from Ovid:
He had good reason to hide. By calling everything into doubt he called the authority of the Church into doubt, and gives that authority to the thinking person.
But I wonder if Descartes is the target? Not really, I don't think. More people inspired by Descartes in a certain way?
Maybe not tho. What you think about that?
Are you engaged in exegesis, or advocacy? Sure, Descartes' ideas made sense for Descartes. but do you agree with them?
Quoting Moliere
Isn't the target here more the method to be adopted in doing philosophy?
Roughly, is philosophy to be public or private?
[quote=Augustine, On the Trinity 10.10.14 quoted in Richard Sorabji Self, 2006, p.219]But who will doubt that he lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges? For even if he doubts, he lives. If he doubts where his doubs come from, he remembers. If he doubts, he understands that he doubts. If he doubts, he wants to be certain. If he doubts, he thinks. If he doubts, he knows that he does not know. If he doubts, he judges that he ougth not rashly to give assent. So whoever acquires a doubt from any source ought not to doubt any of these things whose non-existence would mean that he could not entertain doubt about anything.[/quote]
I think the commonly-held view, that this entails solipsism, is unnecessary: I don't think that by it, either Augustine or Descartes believed that only one's own existence is apodictic, although that is the way it often seems to have been taken, including by Midgley. The point was, by doubting everything that he had hitherto taken for granted (the suspension of judgement, epoch?) to arrive at an indubitable fact - which is that he must exist, in order to doubt (or affirm) anything (as Augustine also says). There is thought, therefore a thinking subject.
I see the major flaw with Descartes' reasoning as positing 'a thinking thing' (res cogitans) thereby objectifying or reifying the thinker or subject (to reify is exactly 'to make a thing of'). Husserl says in Crisis of the European Sciences that
[quote=Crisis of the European Sciences, p82]Descartes does not make clear to himself that the ego, his ego deprived of its worldly characteristics through the epoch?, in whose functioning cogitationes the world has all the ontic meaning it can ever have for him, cannot possibly turn up as a subject matter in the world, since everything that is of the world derives its meanings precisely from these functions - including, then, ...the ego in the usual sense.[/quote]
This is what I believe leads to the 'ghost in the machine' criticism of Ryle and others - the 'thinking thing' conceived literally as a kind of ectoplasmic substance. This is the problem of 'objectification' which becomes a major theme in modern philosophy and the criticism of it by phenomenologists such as Husserl.
Quoting Parfit, Reasons and Persons Sec. III
I agree with that.
Interesting that the text she wrote was forced private until now... tho unfortunate.
I believe philosophy ought be public. However we get that to be the case.
I think my reaction is mostly based from an "OK I agree but I'm an anarchist and you don't seem to understand I'm saying", but also...it was 70-ish years ago, I can't blame her.
She's a philosopher everyone ought to read.
Wouldn't that be 'a view from nowhere'? An idealised objectivity?
It seems that what Parfit is trying to do is simply point out that there are thoughts, without ascribing them to any one thinker. There obvious is a thinker, but this confirmation of thought doesn't also confirm identity for 'the thinker'. I did only read this in the last two days, so I might be way off. It accepts the subjective, while only confirming the objective (that there is a thought - to whom it belongs, or from whom it comes is only a necessary implication).
Ironically, perhaps, I'm aware of a book on the interface between Buddhism and psychoanalysis called 'Thoughts without a Thinker', Mark Epstein (though haven't read it). Buddhist philosophy is known for its 'no-self' doctrine, i.e. there is no permanent or separate self which exists apart from the flow of experiences. That seems congruent with this claim:
Quoting Parfit, Reasons and Persons Sec. III
(However, the denial that there is an agent or subject is also rejected by Buddhism, see this reference.)
I think the issue all revolves around objectification. To say what something is, is to identify it, which requires that it exists as an object to a subject. (It's an apple! a tree! a chair!) But the subject who thinks is never an object as such. Which is why I say that Descartes' error is not in the basic intuition of being, but in the 'objectification' of the thinking subject as 'res cogitans', a thinking thing. (I think this kind of analysis is made much more explicit in Buddhism. As it happens, I did an MA thesis on the subject in Buddhist Studies. )
INterestingly, Parfit was well aware of Buddhist thinking on this. Appendix J of this book, Reasons & Persons, is called 'Buddah's View'. I'm not there yet, though, so i have nothing to offer i'm sorry.
Quoting Wayfarer
Right, that makes sense. Perhaps this folk were on to something in the end.
Quoting Wayfarer
This strikes me as insightful. Explains probably why I, currently, am a basically a hard reductionist about personal identity. I believe this is where Parfit is taking me, also. Identity is not what matters, it is the relation between
Quoting Wayfarer
in each instance, constituting what Parfit calls Relation R that matters in life. Seems reasonable.
I read this as about a specific group of women students in a specific situation. In that situation, I can well imagine that mutual support was more important for them than any internal struggle for power. But I can see that one could read it as a generalization. In which case, it would be odd.
Quoting Lionino
It depends how important you think the mistake is.
Quoting AmadeusD
Quite so. Women are human beings as well and the temptation to put (some) other people down is, it seems, part of the human condition.
Quoting AmadeusD
You are right. I agree that there is a spectrum involved, and in many cases there may well be agreement about how to apply the distinction. I wouldn't say that either biology or culture necessarily limit us - after all, they are both capable of change and development as life goes on. But I do think that they are where we start from.
Quoting unenlightened
One could dismiss all such arguments as simply ad hominem. But that seems unfair.
There's an interesting - even important - difficulty here. We are all familiar with the empiricist appeal to experience and accept the idea that at least some experience is universal and therefore a sound basis for philosophy. But Midgley plausibly cites a experience that is not universal (but is, as she says, typical) as having universal significance. So she must believe that people who have not had that experience can understand it sufficiently for her to make her point. That's the point of her description it. I don't think she is wrong about that.
It's just as well that she expands the scope of her appeal to something (parenting, marriage) that can be seen as common to both men and women, though still not universal.
The difficulty here is that, by parity of argument, one cannot invalidate the experiences of those who live solitary lives or practice solitary reflection. So we end up with having to see both solitary and communal thinkers as possible models and perhaps a pragmatic view of them.
It's a puzzle. That's all I'm saying.
Quoting Moliere
Yes. Philosophy is much more interesting if one avoid getting trapped into those exercises. But it can be difficult to prevent it happening.
Quoting Banno
I didn't mean to provoke a discussion of misogyny as such. I am interested in the questions of philosophical method that her argument about Descartes raises.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. But I get worried that perhaps talk of the flow or experience suggests an objectification of experience, which leads to another set of problems. It is extremely difficult to distinguish the grammatical (in the traditional sense) and logical senses of "object" from a philosophical sense - "medium sized dry goods".
PS. By a logical sense of object, I mean "to be is to be the value of a variable".
It is a puzzle because for a few centuries one experience has been taught as if it were the only experience that had meaning. to hear that there is another experience seems shocking, and to notice that it has been the experience of half of humanity all this time and has been studiously ignored and denigrated as 'illogical', is such wilful blindness and illogicality that it undermines the rationalist position from start to finish.
That's how I put the pieces together, anyway.
Yes, quite so. But, without wanting to write the book, I would want to high-light Martin Luther as a critical figure in that change, and add that quantification is, perhaps not coincidentally, also a foundation of capitalism. (Money, rather than humans, as the measure of all things.)
And then there's the dubious relationship between individualism and authoritarianism.
Quoting unenlightened
Yes. At least, it undermines that rationalist position. I would hate to think that it undermines all attempts to articulate ideas rationally - though I agree that many people have taken it that way.
That the specific group in that specific situation were all women while there being plenty of men around seem to suggest that the specific situation is caused by a difference between men and women, otherwise, shouldn't we expect at least one man in the group too?
I wouldn't take it that way, but I would take it as undermining any attempt to claim that the male of the species is more rational than the female, and any position that relies on that thesis.
You are right. In the first place, the colleges which were and are the primary scene of social interaction among students in that university were segregated by sex/gender - either all the students (and academic staff) were male or all were female. In the second place, both men and women regarded each other as significantly different and relations between men and women were socially regulated and controlled in ways that relations between men and men and between women and women were not. Thirdly, women students were a minority whose right to be there was still tolerated rather than accepted, which makes mutual solidarity more likely. Finally, much of their time there was during WW2, so many of the men who might have been there were otherwise engaged.
Quoting unenlightened
Well, yes. Of course.
Descartes wrote under conditions of persecution that constrained him in ways that do not apply to contemporary thinkers in places where free speech is the norm. We should not overlook the role Descartes played in freeing the mind, and not just his mind, from the tyranny of the Church and Scholasticism.
Quoting Banno
Philosophy was for Descartes public, and not limited to the society of his time.
(Discourse, Part One)
His method, as the title of the work states, is the method of correctly conducting one's reason and seeking truth in the sciences. More specifically, it is a method of experiments and observations.
From the thread Descartes Reading Group:
Low and behold, my first two assignments are partially based around it. A few sections are readings for the paper hehe. And on that note, I found out I got an A for my first writing assignment last night. Nice.
Descartes talks about that in a letter to Colvius:
From were we are now, it was not public enough. Wittgenstein and others have shown us how the enterprise of doing philosophy emanates from our place in a human community. It is a game played by people, plural.
A look around the forums shows folk looking for first principles in ethics, ontology, epistemology; firm ground on which to stand, Aristotle's stoa. But of course that very search already has a beginning; it takes place in the stoa of our discussions, our language games and our way of living.
Midgley is recognising this, explicating it in the particularly obvious case of Descartes, and asking for a broader recognition of the place of philosophy in our day to day encounters.
*As noted previously, I think 'immaterial subject' conveys the gist better than 'immaterial substance' or 'immaterial thing' which I feel is oxymoronic. This anomaly comes from the translation of the Greek 'ouisia' into the Latin 'substantia' and then the English 'substance'.
Many years ago I read the Teachings of Ramana Maharishi, who was an Advaita sage (died 1960). Throughout his teachings, he makes a connection between the Self (?tman) of Vedanta and the 'I AM THAT I AM' of the Bible. According to Vedanta, this 'I AM' is the 'cosmic self', from which individual beings become alienated through attachment to the physical senses and body. (His website is here.)
Descartes wrote of, to and for a community of people past present and future. A community of philosophers and thinkers . But also for humans of lesser talents. His provisional morality, from the Discourse, is about living in the world with people.His idea of the perfection of the will is not simply about one's own advantage but for the good of others, the good of the human community.
Descartes, whose work extents to physics, medicine, and optics did far more for the welfare of man than Midgley. Where the ancients had no choice but to accept may things that were beyond their power to change, the modern philosophers were on the forefront of the mastery of nature. Philosophy was no longer about the problem of how to live but to solve problems by changing the conditions of life.
No philosophy, Descartes included, is without problems, but Midgley is wrong when he says that other people's existence had to be inferred. If blame is to be assigned much if it falls on Midgley and others who have misunderstood and misrepresent Descartes.
Perhaps "this body doubts"?
I'm inclined to agree with you. But, on the face of it, that wouldn't be the gist of Descartes' argument. He is quite explicit:-
But then, there is the passage that is sometimes adduced in this context: -
Descartes Meditation VI
So his position is a bit more complicated than the simplified version that is usually considered in the literature. (And I do not know how to represent it more accurately.)
Quoting Fooloso4 Descartes Meditation III
Yes, that's part of Midgley's point, which bears on the question what we are to make of his method of doubt, or methodical doubt, and the model of philosophical method that he portrays in the Meditations. If we pay attention to the real life hinterland of the text, we find that the presentation is much more complex than it seems to be.
He seems to invite us to join him in a real life journey. But he doesn't really think that such scepticism is true. It is something like a thought experiment, an academic exercise. But it also has the deadly serious aim of a religious retreat; it is a fantasy of hell, from which he will, ultimately, rescue us. (Just as the priest terrifies us with the image of hell and then presents Jesus as our heroic rescuer) It certainly isn't a sober presentation of reality. Our problem is that we aren't rescued by his rescue. so we really need to understand the significance of the Pyrrhonian scepticism that he takes us into.
(It is instructive here to remember Hume's discussion of Pyrrhonian scepticism and his recommendation of a month in the country as a cure for it. Like Descartes, he was labelled a sceptic, but, on closer inspection, was nothing of the kind.)
Your insistence on claiming this with the same misspellings over and over is quite something.
Point taken, and an important distinction. Nevertheless the depiction of the 'thinking thing' is very much the residue of his philosophy in popular culture. And it should be added, the fact that he found it necessary to try and account for the interaction between mind and body through the pineal gland, is also indicative of the sense in which he treats the mind as something objectively existent.
Here is my reference for this derivation. If you have an alternative derivation, do tell.
One of the consequences of the approach Descartes takes is substance dualism. It's not, for him, the body that does the doubting.
We have gone over this, some five times now. Including this "source" that does not back your statement.
The word is not "ouisia". It does not come to English from Latin, there is nothing Latin in English, it comes from French, as you would expect, as English is half French, especially the sophisticated vocabulary. And it simply means in scholastics "something that exists by itself", there is no problem conceiving something immaterial that exists by itself unless you are a close-minded physicalist.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, indeed. If that passage had been taken more seriously, the history of philosophy might have been very different. Yet, he is so insistent on his substances that one has to admit that the "popular" presentation isn't wholly wrong.
SEP on substance.
Lionino is right, however that it arrived in English from Old French.
This difference made a big difference when it came to the empiricists' (especially Berkeley's) philosophy.
What's going on here is even weirder than that. Latin has a perfectly good equivalent for ousia, "being" in "esse". But somehow that got used for the Aristotle's phrase "en tôi ti esti" - literally "what it is to be". (Obviously, he can't find an actual Greek word for what he has in mind. His Metaphysics is riddled with his coinages.)
Then there's "exist". Wikipedia tells us that "The word "existence" entered the English language in the late 14th century from old French and has its roots in the medieval Latin term ex(s)istere, which means to stand forth, to appear, and to arise." (Note that our use of the word has absolutely no basis in ancient Rome.)
While we're at it, what about "real"? I don't know how reliable "etymonline.com" is, but it reports of "real" "early 14c., "actually existing, having physical existence (not imaginary);" mid-15c., "relating to things" (especially property), from Old French reel "real, actual," from Late Latin realis "actual," in Medieval Latin "belonging to the thing itself," from Latin res "property, goods, matter, thing, affair," which de Vaan traces to a PIE *Hreh-i- "wealth, goods," source also of Sanskrit rayim, rayah "property, goods," Avestan raii-i- "wealth". The meaning "genuine" is recorded from 1550s;"
All of which reinforces the point that medieval Latin is a dialect of Latin and very different from the language of ancient Rome.
I don't pretend that any of this has any particular philosophical significance. But I do think it is great fun.
From Aristotle, "something that exists by itself", is commonly translated as "subsists", and this is understood as "having subsistence", therefore "exists by itself" is a predicate.
Quoting Ludwig V
"What it is to be", is the essence, or form of a thing. There's a very complex and difficult section of Aristotle's Metaphysics in which he explains how forms, or essences, must subsist. He does this through reference to "the good". It is impossible that the good itself is other than the form, or essence, of the good. And yet it is necessary that there is such a thing as the good. Therefore the good, must subsist, as a form or essence.
Further, he argues that all things, particulars, or individuals, must subsist, and each one's subsistence must be identical to its form or essence. For anyone who does not understand the concept of "matter" in Aristotle, this appears to leave no place for matter, because a thing itself is nothing other than its form, as indicated by the law of identity. However, matter as the potential for change. is understood as a general principle, and is therefore not properly a part of the thing itself.
Thanks for the overview of Aristotle. It does make sense overall, doesn't it?
Your version makes him seem much closer to Plato than some others that I have seen.
Grandma Mary believes that those who are not married lack maturity, that they, like Plato, are adolescents. That by not leading what she regards as a "normal domestic life" their development was arrested.
But it is Descartes who is the focus of her criticism, as if if he only he had married there would not have been the turn to subjectivism.
What Midgley does not mention is that Descartes' mother died a year after his birth, that he was sent away at about age ten to the Jesuit college of La Flèche, or that he had a daughter, Francis, who died at the age of five. Rather than a deliberate and immature choice to not develop attachments, his attachments were severed from him.
Descartes has come under a great deal of criticism for the mind/body problem but it is his view of the body as mechanistic that led to advances in medicine.
Quoting Banno
Midgley claimed that for Descartes other people's existence had to be inferred. I said she was wrong about this. Do you think she would agree that she was wrong?
It'll depend on how much of Midgley's point depends upon misconstruing Descartes. The article springboards against Descartes' alleged solipsistic starting point and methodology, even if he's not an outright solipsist. @Fooloso4 is substantively disagreeing with the article's construal of Descartes. Specifically how it construes his method as solitary and solipsistic.
So even if you end up agreeing with Midgley's conclusion, you can criticise how she gets there by (perhaps uncharitably) criticising Descartes.The dude was a mathematician and a natural scientist surrounded by all kinds of scholasticism and dogma, his methodological withdrawal thus could be construed as inspired by his mathematical inclination - as a means of cutting through what he couldn't outright say was ill thought out bullshit.
I also disagree with her emphasis on marriage. Although some are well suited to marriage and children, others are not. Her associating bachelorhood with immaturity raises the question of the extent of her interactions with a variety of different people
She refers to Aristotle but neglects to address the natural household relation that Aristotle discusses first, namely, master and slave. Nor does she address the numerous problems he discusses regarding marriage including war, destruction of cities, and revolution. Much of what he says regarding marriage centers around the division or labor and property. (Politics, Book 1)
As to Plato we know nothing of his private life or intimate relations. What we do know, however, is that several of his dialogues deal with love and friendship. The Republic raises serious concerns about marriage and its private, anti-communal effects.
Ok?
Quoting fdrake
Not only that, but he was afraid of the Church punishing him for his ideas, as he implies a few times in his books.
He was ultimately accused of atheism anyway in the Netherlands I believe. He eventually went to Sweden somewhat against his will to teach the genius queen of Sweden Kristina under her invitation, whose tomb in the Vatican I had the pleasure of visiting these days.
Is that what you were saying? It all got a bit muddled. Do you have an account to offer? How does Descartes conclude that others exist, without making an inference? Will you be defending substance dualism? Rationalism in the face of empiricism? What did Descartes get wrong, and what right?
The pop story of Descartes, which may well be wrong, is that he doubted as much as he could, until he arrived at what he considered a certainty. He then used this certainty to conclude that there was a god who was not deceiving him, and so "derived" the world as we see it. And it is this story that the aggravating Grandmother is using, questioning the method in use here for taking an extreme and contrived view of our place in the world.
Rings and Books reads now as a precursor to more recent streams in philosophical thinking such as enactivism and embodied cognition. On such views the self is constructed as much by others as it is by oneself. This is at odds with the views offered by Descartes, along with very many of those who preceded and followed him.
There's a neat, short account at Descartes was wrong: a person is a person through other persons
At the very least, it is worth recognising the challenges to our casual conceptualisations offered here: Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu.
A person is a person through other persons.
There's an article on the IEP, 17th Century Theories of Substance, which says:
I think the background to this 'degrees of reality' was the 'scala naturae', the great chain of being, which provided a vertical dimension, with matter at the lowest level and the Divine Intellect at the top (and transcendant to existence). It is virtually extinct in subsequent Western thought, although I believe references to it are still found in some of the modern Thomists, for example in Jacques Maritain's rather daunting book The Degrees of Knowledge.
Quoting Ludwig V
Descartes' Principia Philosophia was published in Latin, in which I presume the word 'substantia' would have been used (although I'm open to correction).
As for the meaning of ousia in Greek, there's an entry in IEP on its use in Plato and Aristotle here. Joe Sachs makes the observation:
(My personal heuristic is that classical metaphysics allows for a distinction between what exists and what is real which are generally assumed to be coterminous. I've had many lengthy and often vexed debates about this topic here over the years, centered around my claim that the term 'ontology' is concerned with 'the meaning of being', and not with 'the nature of what exists', which is the proper concern of the natural sciences. During the course of this debate, I was sent a reference to an apparently classic paper on this subject, The Greek Verb "To Be" and the Problem of Being, by Charles Kahn, which I feel actually rather supported my argument.)
Quoting Banno
I think Midgley makes a good point, and I generally enjoy reading her work, but I'm always interested in discussions of Descartes.
You are right that we should not divide philosophers into good eggs and bad eggs, though that can make for a more exciting read. There can be both useful ideas and useless ideas in the work of any philosopher, and a balanced assessment needs to take both into account. I don't think anyone would fail to acknowledge the important intellectual developments in Descartes' work. But that doesn't mean we should forget about the mistakes that he made.
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Fooloso4
You are also right that we need to be cautious in tying specific ideas in the work of a philosopher to details of their biography. Philosophers, as Midgley herself observes, are human beings and consequently often flawed. We should not rush to judgement. Most people will probably turn out to have been a mixed bag.
Aristotle may have loved his wife and treated her, and his slaves, well by the standards of his time and thought the master/slave relationship was fundamental to a household. Plato may have been profoundly authoritarian and contemptuous of democracy and regarded love and friendship as fundamental to human life. Aquinas may have been quite humane and tolerant by the standards of his time and regarded one of the benefits of being in heaven as being able to enjoy the spectacle of the torments of hell. One could go on to look critically at Berkeley, Locke and Rousseau as well as Hegel and Heidegger. We can't ignore the bad bits, but forgetting the good bits is as bad as celebrating the good bits and forgetting the bad bits.
Long story short - if philosophy is to be a practice based on human life, if it is to recommend or be a way of life, then the hinterland and the sub-texts of philosophical texts are part of the story, which we should pay attention to even if we do not like what we see. But in exploring those aspects, we should extend to our predecessors the sympathy and charity that we must all hope our successors will extend to us when their turn comes to assess what we have done or not done.
What I've said is partial and incomplete and undoubtedly muddled. But I hope I may have persuaded you to at least read and consider the whole of Midgley's text, rather than just extracts from it. I don't think it is perfect, but I don't think it is as bad as you suggest.
There are many words of which it is futile to ask what their meaning is. These terms are among them, in my view. (I don't even really understand what the meaning of being is supposed to be.)
Quoting Wayfarer
This isn't affected by the history of the word in English, of course. But it is a nice example of how the arrival of a term in a text can have more than one origin.
Isn't there a view somewhere in Aristotle that things that best "realize" their form (essence) - i.e. realize their potential - are the best because most real. Something like that.
Well, I gather you more or less agree with substance dualism, a notion that I cannot see as coherent. I decide to move my hand, the damn thing moves; I take the drugs, the pain goes away. I can't see how such facts can be made to fit Descartes without folly.
But you are aware of my problems.
Hey Jeep.
I thought that the causal closure of the material world and the immaterial world drove the need to explain how it was that minds could effect/interact with bodies and vice versa.
If the mind was completely independent from the body and vice versa, then it would not be possible to think that one was hungry, or in pain, or any number of other reductios.
The issues discussed in The Meditations are different from the Discourse on Method. Our world to explore if we are up to it.
Consider this passage from Thomas Nagel "Mind and Cosmos":
[quote=Pp35-36]The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop.[/quote]
Notice the implicit division between the objective and measurable, and the subjective and internal. There's the origin of the problem, in the Cartesian 'bifurcation of nature'. There are ways of mending the split, but I feel you won't find them in your usual sources of Quine, Austin, Davidson, and so on, as they still operate within those basic parameters and assumptions (Although it might be noted that Nagel is also an analytic philosopher, although dissident from the mainstream.)
Explaining how the ghost interacts with the machine is your problem.
Descartes' dualism is the origin of Ryle's 'ghost in the machine', surely. 'Analytic philosophy' is not a school of thought, but the English-language philosophers that I mentioned are operating within the overall paradigm which Nagel spells out.
[quote=Gilbert Ryle]There is a doctrine about the nature and place of the mind which is prevalent among theorists, to which most philosophers, psychologists and religious teachers subscribe with minor reservations. Although they admit certain theoretical difficulties in it, they tend to assume that these can be overcome without serious modifications being made to the architecture of the theory.... [The doctrine states that] with the doubtful exceptions of the mentally-incompetent and infants-in-arms, every human being has both a body and a mind.... The body and the mind are ordinarily harnessed together, but after the death of the body the mind may continue to exist and function.[/quote]
That's true. I wasn't suggesting Descartes would think that, as I seem to remember (it's a long time since reading Descartes) that he thinks that the reality of the experience of embodiment could be doubted, that it could be an illusion or delusion. Of course I don't hold with that, I think such doubts (like 'brain in a vat') stupid, phony, pointless and toothless.
I was thinking more along the line of what we might be able to infer from the active awareness of doubt.
You do understand that in your quote, Ryle is setting out his target, not defending a doctrine.
You left out "vapid". :wink:
His target is, explicitly, Cartesian dualism of mind and body. That's the starting point of his book Concept of Mind. Ryle's solution to it is basically beaviourism - that categorisation of mind and body as two separate entities is a category mistake (which is the origination of that term), but then, the philosophy of mind that comes from that is essentially behaviourist.
Again - my claim is that due to the form that Cartesian dualism assumed, that there is a kind of widespread, implicit dualism of mind and body or spirit and matter that is endemic in culture. And that the untenability of the idea of a 'thinking substance' or 'thinking thing' has had huge influence of philosophy of mind ever since, it is one of the principal causes of the dominance of physicalism in mainstream philosohpy (remember your surveys in which only 1% of respondents hold to alternatives to physicalism?) Which is implicit in the question you asked.
Beaver-ism?
I should be the last person to draw attention to typos.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well, no. See the entry in the SEP, and allow him some subtlety.
If the physical is naturally understood to have substantial or substantive existence, and it is upon that idea of substance that the notion of reality is founded, and the idea of a mental substance is untenable, then what justification would we have for saying that anything non-physical is real?
The alternative to eliminative physicalism would be to say that mental phenomena are real functions of some physical existents, and that the only sense in which they are not physical is that they do not (obviously) appear as objects of the senses.
It is what I said, explicitly and clearly:
Quoting Fooloso4
If in your reading it got muddled that your difficulty.
Quoting Banno
It is no more necessary for him to conclude that others exist than it is for a child to exist others do.
Quoting Banno
I won't, but pointing out what Midgley gets wrong does not require defending everything Descartes said.
Quoting Banno
See this thread.
Quoting Banno
Or, you could read and quote Descartes.
Quoting Banno
In that case, she too should have read Descartes rather than rely on what others get wrong.
The truth is, this is a serious and persistent problem in certain areas of academic philosophy.
Quoting Banno
She is a bit late to the party. See, for example, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty.
Quoting Banno
Husserl would not agree. See his Cartesian Meditations.
Based on the link to Midgley's Rings and Books, this does not appear to be advice she follows.
Quoting Ludwig V
I recommend Pierre Hadot's "Philosophy as a Way of Life". It is a far more scholarly, insightful, and influential work. Although it may be somewhat unfair to compare his work to a radio talk.
What kind of 'something'? That's the rub. I'm sure the majority view is expressed by Janus here:
Quoting Janus
The notion is - mind is the product of the brain, which in turn is the product of evolutionary biology over many aeons of time. Rational sentient beings such as ourselves are therefore a very late arrival in the grand scheme, which is otherwise mindless. Isn't that what practically any sound person believes?
From which:
[quote=Pierre Hadot, PWL, pa 273] Philosophy in antiquity was an exercise practiced in each instant. It invites us to concentrate on each instant of life, to become aware of the infinite value of each present moment, once we have replaced it with the perspective of the cosmos. The exercise of wisdom entails a cosmic dimension. Whereas the average person has lost touched with the world, and does not see the world qua world, but rather treats the world as a means of satisfying his desires, the sage never ceases to have the whole constantly present to mind. He thinks and acts within a cosmic perspective. He has the feeling of belonging to a whole which goes beyond the limits of his individuality. In antiquity, this cosmic consciousness was situated in a different perspective from that of scientific knowledge of the universe... . Scientific knowledge was objective and mathematical, whereas cosmic consciousness was the result of spiritual exercise.[/quote]
(Incidentally just prior to this passage, Hadot says Descartes and Spinoza remained faithful to philosophy as 'the practice of wisdom'. Spinoza, in particular, despite being claimed as the harbinger of secular naturalism, was still within the current of Judaic mysticism, and his 'intellectual love of God' very much in keeping with Hadot's depiction of cosmic consciousness.)
Compare also Thomas Nagel:
[quote=Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament;https://drive.google.com/file/d/1thzd94UNHRPMeA3nvbZD4Lw57UI7hilV/view]Plato was clearly concerned not only with the state of his soul, but also with his relation to the universe at the deepest level. Platos metaphysics was not intended to produce merely a detached understanding of reality. His motivation in philosophy was in part to achieve a kind of understanding that would connect him (and therefore every human being) to the whole of reality intelligibly and if possible satisfyingly.[/quote]
Something needs to give. For my money, it is the neglect of the elementary point that both "substantial" and "real" do not have a determinate sense outside the context of their use. The philosophical search for them does not define a context in which it could ever be successful.
A good example here would be the well-known fact that that physics reveals a physical world that is almost completely insubstantial. "Substantial" and "real" have a meaning in the context of physics, but not one that meets the demands of this philosophical wild-goose chase. Berkeley was wrong about many things, but about this, he was right.
Quoting Janus
This is an alternative to eliminative physicalism, but not to physicalism. We need something more inclusive. Ryle's categories seem to me to offer a way of articulating what needs to be accepted here, without prioritizing the physical.
So?
One has to be very careful here. "Granny Midgley" does capture something about her approach. But it risks being ageist and sexist at the same time. But then, one's reaction may be affected by whether one is a grand-child or a grandparent and by the character of the individuals in one's family. (Grannies can be wise and helpful in ways that are very difficult for parents - or so I'm told.)
There are two rather different approaches exemplified in this piece. One is the impact of the author's actual life as a context in which to read it. Midgley introduces actual life via the question of marriage and celibacy; for us, these are two different questions, but it was conventional at the time to treat them as linked.
You can see the other approach in her critique of Descartes. This is based on the model or image of philosophical practice that Descartes presents in his text. I don't think anyone is much bothered by whether Descartes actually ever settled down beside his oven in order to cook up his exercise; it is a presentation - a literary or rhetorical device to introduce us to his thought experiment - and whether it is fictional or not does not matter. What does matter is the model of philosophy that is presented.
Midgley does acknowledge the benefits of solitary thinking but too quickly turns this into a requirement for celibacy/being unmarried. Whether she is deadly serious about this (which would be a problem - Wittgenstein was never married, but yet manages to acknowledge that we are embedded in our human life) or just using the facts as a lever for introducing the philosophical point is hard to discern. What matters most is the philosophical point.
For the record, my view is that each of us needs both solitary thinking and dialogue and disagreement in our practice. There's no one right balance; it's a question of what is helpful and productive for each of us. Boring, but true.
That's just an example of my approach. I hope it is helpful.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, an interesting reference. Though I find the title more than a little off-putting. It manages to be both portentous and trivializing in two words. But I'm sure that not everyone would be affected in the same way. When I read it, I will try to take it seriously (which includes criticizing it) but sympathetically, which means looking for the good bits.
I had to read that twice, eventually deciding that "he" must be Descartes - Midgley is, infamously, of the female persuasion.
Quoting Fooloso4
Mmm. Perhaps not as clear as was thought. :wink:
, I find it curious that folk are so defensive of Descartes. Granny Midgley is obviously using him as a rhetorical device.
I mentioned Descartes was wrong: a person is a person through other persons before. Have a quick look and tell me what you think. It's an argument that seems to me to have some merit.
I imagine you are referring to essentia. That is also one of the translations of usia. It is in fact the literal translation of usia to Latin, coined by Cicero. Substantia is in fact a post-classical translation of hypostasis, but later it came to be often used to translate usia. This comment might be of interest:
Quoting https://lyfaber.blogspot.com/2010/01/substance-and-hypostasis-in-trinity.html
Quoting Ludwig V
That does not seem to be the case. Exsisto with the meaning of being is registered since republican times, before Christ:
«As in body the differences are great, even greater differences exist when it comes to character»
«If there had been faith in the king...»
Quoting Ludwig V
The idea that it is a "dialect" is not quite accurate, but I am not going to be uncharitable. In any case, I recommend the Master thesis dissertation "One, two, many Latins" by Kevin R Roth. The content of the thesis holds some (non-central) controversial statements because it bases itself considerably on the research of a scholar with some controversial claims, besides not telling the whole picture of some historical events eg giving more credit to some figures than it is due and none to some that deserve it, but besides it is a good and informative read.
But yes, Medieval Church Latin is quite different from Classical Latin. I can read many Classical texts with little help, but I have visited tens of churches in Rome, and I very often find myself cracking my head to figure out what some inscriptions say, especially when they put several nouns or adjectives one after the other with the same endings, not to speak of the numerous abbreviations.
The same people might be curious as to why it is Descartes that is put under unreasonable scrutinity so often around here, but not Plato or Hegel.
Quoting Banno
She could have made the same point without dedicating more than a whole paragraph pretending to put on an obviously failed counterargument to Descartes.
Quoting Wayfarer
Many sound people believe and believed in an immaterial soul. You seem to be objecting that there is "something" immaterial, something beyond just matter, but I know that is not your persuasion, you are not an emergentist.
That much.
Her point is ultimately about empathy and motherhood. You say in the OP "Here is a critique of Descartes' Cogito, amongst other things". Is this a rhetorical device too?
If so, you must be making the same point as Midgely about motherhood. Are you pregnant?
This OP is another episode of you trolling.
You don't need to be charitable. I knew it was not quite right when I wrote it. But I couldn't think of anything better. Still can't, for that matter. "Dialect" and "language" are very slippery, unless one relies on a gun-boat.
Quoting Lionino
Clearly, I put my faith in the wrong king. Thanks for the corrections. All very interesting.
Quoting Lionino
It certainly is of interest. One might as well try to organize a herd of ferrets.
Quoting Banno
It isn't so curious. Philosophers are great parricides, and often resurrect their grandfathers - or great-grandfathers, if they want to be especially rebellious. It's because philosophy thrives on disagreement and is most at home in chaos.
Yes. Everything, especially in philosophy, including the arguments, is about persuasion. Logic is simply the most effective rhetorical device. She pulls much the same trick in her discussion of pregnancy.
Quoting Lionino
This move is really very problematic. With one breath I am reminded of an experience that is not available to me; with the next breath, I am faced with a universal conclusion. The only solution must be that the presentation of the experience is in fact supposed to convey what it is like. Midgley's discussion works well to establish her conclusion, but whether her description is "correct" or not is another question. It would be easy to suggest that perhaps not all mothers experience their pregnancy in the same way. But I'm not sure whether that's enough to refute the argument.
Banno himself said Midgely is using Descartes as a rhetorical device. If that is the case, there isn't really an argument.
This thread would not have come to be had the lenghty discussion about Descartes in the "100% centainty" thread not taken place that thread motivated at least two other threads in the last two weeks in fact. I can only imagine by what mechanism one thread motivated the other, but the connection is evident. It is a sarcastic OP, as we can see from the poll that was added at the end and this comment.
Well, thank you for your continuing contribution.
H'm. It depends on what you count as an argument. I probably have a more relaxed view of what constitutes an argument than you.
But there is a tricky issue here. Descartes invites us to approach his problem (winnowing out what he does really know from what he just thinks he knows) in a certain way. Midgley is suggesting a different way. Descartes offers us the model of a solitary thinker, withdrawn from the world and at peace. Midgely recognizes some good reasons for choosing Descartes' model, but thinks that a different model will avoid some big issues with Descartes' solution of the problem he sets himself. It's not really a simple question of fact. Proof and refutation are probably not available here. But that doesn't mean that the choice doesn't matter or that there cannot be good and bad grounds for making it. (Compare the existentialists' shift to focus on the human condition - the world as we are thrown into it - as opposed to Descartes' search for a clean sheet and an indubitable foundation - probably modelled on Euclid.)
I'm afraid I didn't take that comment - or the poll - at all seriously.
:up:
I think you are making out more than there truly is in this article. It is a silly, poorly-written article. It is not a treatise, nevermind philosophy, the editor is correct. It does not offer in any way an alternative to Descartes' six Meditations, or to his Principles, or to his Discource. It is not rigorous.
Even after Descartes' extensive writings on his method and replies to objections, people still try to find fault within him. It would be fine if they happened to find actual faults. Let's apply that amount of scrutinity to Mary's article then.
Quoting Ludwig V
Those are naturally different topics. Afaik, existentialists are not arguing against Descartes, Descartes not against what would be the existentialists.
Quoting Ludwig V
They are not supposed to be.
Not to speak of that horrible last paragraph in the article. Whatever college it was she lectured at, I will be far away from it and its professors.
My concern is that it advocates for a one size fits all standard - a mature person will marry. There are various reasons why someone does not marry, most of them having little or nothing to do with philosophy.
In case you wonder way I stray from the op, it's because, based on what I've read here, I totally agree that this is trivial, irrelevant intrusion of domestic matters into intellectual life". Therefore nothing more needs to be said.
I find the discussion on celibacy to be similar to old school thoughts on celibacy in male athletes. It was commonly thought that male athletes ought to practise celibacy to improve performance. That sort of nonsense has been thoroughly debunked and we could call it a "trivial, irrelevant intrusion of domestic matters into [athletic] life".
Quoting Ludwig V
What I find is that Plato provided a very thorough analysis of Pythagorean idealism. In doing this, he exposed its faults. Aristotle paid close attention to this, and took Plato as rejecting this form of idealism. The Neo-Platonists on the other hand seem to represent Plato as accepting Pythagorean idealism. That forms the principal difference between Aristotle's school and the Neo-Platonist school.
In numerous places, Aristotle criticized those who would represent Forms which were supposed to be incorporeal, with images that could not be conceived of, as other than corporeal. Aristotle insisted that the first principle, which is necessarily immaterial, must be truly immaterial. There's a section in Metaphysics for example, where he criticizes Pythagorean/Neo-Platonist ideas through an analysis of the different senses of "one", or "unity", showing how this conception cannot be derived from anything other than material principles, therefore cannot form a proper immaterial conception.
Quoting Lionino
The point now, is that for Aristotle, "to subsist", therefore to be substance, is to have form. And, form does not require matter, so this validates the substantial existence of immaterial forms, i.e. the subsistence of immaterial forms. However, the separate, independent, subsistent forms reveal themselves to us, or are evident to us, through sensation, as material things, particulars, or individuals, and so there is the appearance that their substance is material.
But critical analysis of the intellectual experience shows that "matter" is something added by the sensing subject, a condition of the subject, not proper to the thing itself, in a similar way to how Kant describes space and time as added by the sensing subject. This necessitates dualism, because independent forms are real and subsistent, yet matter is also real as inherent within the intellectual, sentient being. This perspective just inverts the common notion of dualism which puts the immaterial as internal and the material as external. It puts the material as internal and the immaterial as external.
Quoting Ludwig V
Consider what I wrote in reply to Lionino above. Physics, as science in general, can only know the forms of the world. And, as Berkeley demonstrated, there is no need to assume that there is any material aspect to the supposed independent world. This, it appears, ought to make physics capable of apprehending and comprehending the entirety of the independent world. However, there is a fundamental problem, science understands through sense observation, and sense observation instills "matter" into the phenomena. This produces what @Wayfarer likes to call the blind spot of science.
She. My proof-reader took the day off.
Quoting Banno
I should fire my proof-reader. It is no more necessary for him to conclude that others exist than it is for a child to conclude that others exist. The question of the existence of others does not arise for Descartes unless one takes his rhetorical device literally.
I may be making too much of it. However, I'm sure that Midgley did not think that this piece was in any way a replacement for Descartes' writings.
Quoting Lionino
Well, people try to find fault with everybody else. Why would Descartes be an exception?
Quoting Lionino
That's probably right. Perhaps it would be better to say that they were changing the subject. Though I suspect that Sartre was unduly influenced by him.
Quoting Lionino
is certainly horrible. But Midgley is quoting someone else and expects us to find it horrible. She worked at Reading University 1949 - 1962 and then Newcastle University 1962 - 1980 but I would think that there has been considerable staff turnover since then.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes. That's valid. Her idea of adolescence is not much to write home about, either.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are right about celibacy in athletics, and I wouldn't think that it was particularly important in philosophy either. For me, Midgley's argument is reminiscent of the argument that priests need to practice celibacy. What she may be trying to express, though rather badly, is that philosophers, however transcendent their thought, ought not to disengage from the mess and muddle of ordinary human life. I think that's true and important.
There is something very odd about the thought that organizing appropriate meals and providing and washing the kit are trivial irrelevant intrusions into athletic life, rather than the bedrock of athletic life. It suggests the speaker has the privilege of being able to get other people to do those things for him (or her).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So Berkeley was wrong to think that sense observation doesn't imply the existence of matter?
Yeah, and when philosophers disengage from ordinary human life, that's when their own lives become a real mess and muddle.
Quoting Ludwig V
That's not what I' saying. There is a very fine line to understand here. I believe that Berkeley did not claim that sense observation doesn't imply the existence of matter, he showed that the concept of "matter" is not required to understand the reality of independent things. This puts "matter" in a peculiar position. It is required to understand sense observations, but not required to understand the reality of independent existence. Therefore we can infer that matter is a feature the human system which makes sense observations, just like Kant says space and time are.
...happens to the beast of us.
It depends on what you mean by 'substantial'; if you mean something like "tangible' then sure. Is mass fundamental in physics, specifically in QM?
If what is is fundamentally energetic, then that is what I would mean by "physical". Is there an alternative view to this?
Perhaps mess and muddle is an inescapable part of human life? And then, the attempt to escape also becomes an inescapable part of human life. Perhaps the best thing to do is to embrace mess and muddle - but then, what would become of philosophy?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, the first half of that is a bit unorthodox. But the second half is at least defensible. It's just that his understanding of the reality of independent things doesn't involve the concept of matter. Right?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Perhaps so. However, I've always thought that Kant essentially accepts Berkeley, especially his argument that the distinction between primary and secondary qualities doesn't hold up, so that time and space are mind-dependent, as well as colour, etc. Including matter in that argument makes sense. Once you have accepted the distinction between reality and appearance, ideas and things, phenomena and noumena, that conclusion is more or less inevitable. The only way out is to reject, or at least recast, the distinction.
Quoting Janus
I avoid commenting on QM. I'm not qualified to do so.
In some contexts, substantial does mean something like tangible or solid. In others, not so much.
Quoting Janus
I take it that you mean by "energetic" the concept of energy that is defined by physics? Which, by definition, studies what is physical?
Perhaps St. Augustine's remark about time applies to matter, as well.
Quoting Fooloso4
In the end, this takes us back to the issue about what it means for a human being to flourish and the desire to let a thousand flowers bloom. The issue is, which of them, if any, count as weeds? It would be easy to talk about balance and proportionality, but we all make choices (subject to certain basic needs, such as food and shelter) and so we all specialize, so that doesn't help very much.
Returning to the specific issue, about the model of the solitary thinker as the paradigm of philosophy, I would want to say:-
1) that there is room for more than one model - and Socrates provides a different one.
2) A philosophical life that doesn't include both risks losing touch with philosophy or losing the focus and intensity that it requires - and Midgley does recognize this. The point that Descartes was not in fact a solitary thinker, but was deeply rooted in the philosophical and ordinary life of his time has already been made in this thread.
3) On this specific issue, it is important not to over-generalize; Wittgenstein certainly prioritized solitary thinking in his practice and even, I gather, went to some trouble to give the impression that he didn't read the work of other philosophers.
Isn't there a letter written when he was living on his own in order to focus on philosophy, in which he rails against the distractions of doing his own house-keeping? (But, one notices, he is doing his own house-keeping.) Yet he managed to understand the need to ground philosophy in human life.
I have read that Kant was infuriated by those critics of his first edition who accused him of basically re-cycling Berkeley's idealism, to which end he included a lengthy section in the second edition, 'A Refutation of Idealism' (see e.g. this reference.)
Perhaps I wrote that sentence a bit carelessly. I would have to read up to respond to your point properly. Thanks for the reference.
Quite what Berkeley did deny is a bit moot, but a common way of putting it is that he denied the existence of any mind-independent things, that is, of anything that is not perceived or perceiving. Kant did not deny that, except that if he did deny that the noumena are perceivable or (knowable?), then he is very close to Berkeley.
I think philosophy is the embracing of mess and muddle.
Quoting Ludwig V
Notice, that for Berkeley "matter" is presented as a concept which would commonly be used to account for the supposed independent existence of the things (noumena). However, he shows that "matter" is really an unnecessary supposition, it is not actually required to be assumed as part of the independent thing to understand its independent existence. This implies that "matter" is actually a concept use to account for the sense appearance of things (phenomena).
Look at it like this. He shows that if we take "matter" out of the thing, we lose nothing from our conceptions of independent things. That is because our conceptions are formal (in the Aristotelian sense of form). Nevertheless, regardless of what Berkeley shows, we find that "matter" is indispensable to the understanding of our sensations of things. This is because we sense things as active, changing, and Aristotle introduced "matter" as the means for understanding the potential for change.
Incidentally, Hume seems to reverse this perspective in his critique of skepticism. He represents sense perception as consisting of instances of changeless states of being, with activity or change being inferred as what occurs between these describable instances or states of sensation. If this is reality, then the forms of things are what we perceive through sensation, and "matter" is added by the mind to account for what happens to the independent things between these instances of sensation.
In each case, "matter" maintains its Aristotelian base as the potential for change, and the unintelligible aspect of reality. Berkeley, like Kant (with space and time) positions matter as something a priori, created within the human body or mind, as a necessary condition for sense perception, but not necessary for the independent existence of things. Hume turns this around and leaves matter as an a posteriori concept created by the mind in order to understand the independent existence of things which are sensed, rather than as necessary for the sense appearance of things. This he does in his effort to quell skepticism. But Hume misrepresents sensation as consisting of instances, or states of being, rather than consisting of continuous activity. So Hume's attack on skepticism is supported by falsity.
Quoting Ludwig V
Why reject it though, when it seems to be completely consistent with how I experience things? Time and space are not the properties of any things, nor are they in any way a part of the form of a thing, they are the basis for the conceptual tools by which we understand the activities of things. And what we sense is these activities, while the mind distinguishes things, as aspects of the sensations which appear to maintain sameness. Whether this sameness, continuity, which appears within our sensations of activity, and is constitutive of being and existence, is real or not is the object of skepticism.
I'm glad you enjoy my efforts. I find mutual enjoyment is by far the best basis for an interesting discussion.
However, I would have to take issue with the title of the post of yours that you cited. But I'll read it nonetheless. I'm not sure I can contribute much to the discussion there, but we'll see.
That's the death knell of Cartesian doubt.
I'm afraid I'm not quite on board with this. It makes sense on its own terms. I thought matter was posited to account for things persisting through change, and that in any case, for Aristotle, if not others, the object of perception of things is their form (or maybe perceptible form?). But I don't recognize Berkeley here.
For Berkeley, the mind-independent existence of anything is ruled out by "esse" is "percipi". That principle is why he rules out matter as not merely unnecessary but impossible.
He is embarrassed by two problems. First, he realizes that I never perceive myself and second he recognizes that some of our ideas have a cause that is not me. So he introduces a concept of a "notion" which is just like an idea, but applies to ideas of things that we don't perceive. So he provides for my existence and then introduces the idea - sorry, notion - of God, which provides a cause of ideas that is not me. (He also slips in the existence of other minds, which creates even more confusion.) This manoeuvre also allows him to deny that he is denying the existence of anything; he makes much more of this in the Dialogues, which, of course, he wrote later and so, one suspects, he takes into account public reaction to the Treatise. I'm confused about whether the ideas produced by God exist in His Mind, my mind or both but they certainly depend on a mind. So it is clear that nothing exists that is not mind-dependent, even though some things exist independently of my mind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not sure who "he" is here. But Berkeley certainly dispenses with matter altogether. It has no place in his world. God supplies all that is needed to explain our sensations of things, and explains change. I'm not sure whether his concept of ideas matches the idea of forms, but it certainly seems possible.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I suppose he would have to accept that the idea of matter can exist in a mind. But I don't think Berkeley's idea of ideas includes the potential for change. They are posited as inert and inactive, which Berkeley things rules out any causal relations between them - causal changes as we experience them are created and maintained by God. So far as I can see, he recognizes only one possibility for change - minds.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm not sure about this at all. I agree that, for Hume, relations between ideas are created (by association) in our minds. I found him curiously silent on Berkeley's issue. I have the impression that the existence of external, mind-independent objects is not explicitly ruled out. My speculation is the Hume did not want to get caught up in Berkeley.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, "reject" is perhaps too strong and too simple. How could I not recognize the difference between appearance and reality? Whether it is consistent with how I experience things is one issue.
But our senses tell us about the world we live in, so long as we are suitably critical of what they seem to be telling us. Somehow they have become a VR headset which is an obstacle to our knowing that the world is "really" like and probably feeding us nothing but lies. It's a fantasy and the granddaddy of conspiracy theories. (OK, that's a caricature. It's only meant to show the direction of travel.)
It looks to me as if you (or is it Kant?) are trying to read Berkeley without God. Berkeley's work is as much theology as philosophy, so it is rather awkward for philosophers to deal with.
If it is not too much trouble could you expand upon this? I'm wondering how Berkeley might distinguish between an idea having a cause "that is not me" and an idea having a cause that is me, but of a sort of causality that Berkley doesn't understand.
Certainly.
You may think me lazy, but here are some extracts from the Treatise that should (I hope) explain what you're asking about.
On the cause(s) of ideas:-
It would not be unfair to say that Berkeley is not very articulate about his notion of causality. He maintains that something that is "inert" cannot cause (or be affected by) anything. The only agent of change he recognizes is a mind. The passage in bold in section 28 above is more or less all he has to say about this. This section explains why (sort of):-
The passage in bold in section 28 above is more or less all he has to say about how a mind does what it does.
We experience our own efforts all the time. We know energy from the inside, so to speak, and the idea of an interaction that does not involve energy, energy exchange, is inconceivable. So, I start from there, physics is merely an elaboration and formalization of that understanding. Speaking of basics, have you never heard of the four fundamental forces?
Quoting Ludwig V
I passed this over before, and I should have made the point that this is a truism that applies to all terms whatsoever. There are no terms that have determinate senses outside the contexts of their use, which makes your point seem somewhat moot.
I find this to be a bit scrambled but I'll see what I can do to sort it out with my understanding of Berkeley. First, I do not think that Berkeley could, even if he tried, prove that matter is impossible. The materialist, he explains, assumes" matter" to account for the continued existence of bodies when not being perceived. This is 'the need' for "matter". Berkely avoids this need with the assumption of God. Instead of being material, bodies can exist independently of human minds, as ideas, by being in the mind of God.
I believe that the notion of mind-independence is a bit misleading when interpreting Berkeley. Things not apprehended by my mind, may still exist independently of my mind, if they are apprehended by your mind or someone else's, as you acknowledge. So things not apprehended by any human mind might still be apprehended by God's mind. All things are mind dependent as things, and this makes "matter" in the sense described, completely unnecessary. It doesn't prove that "matter" is impossible, and I can show you how matter must be allowed, in through the back door.
Berkeley allows that separate people have separate minds, and God's mind is separate from human minds. But I do not think that he adequately addresses the issue of what provides for the separation between one mind and another. So we need a concept like "matter" to provide for the separation between minds.
As for Aristotle's concept of matter, it is primarily defined in his physics, as you say, as what persists through change. However, since the form of the thing is what actually changes, then the matter is said to provide the potential for change. That's how matter escapes the law of excluded middle, as potential, what neither is nor is not. And this is why it is the aspect of the world which is unintelligible to us. So the supposed underlying aspect of a thing which persists through change, matter, is completely unintelligible to us.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes, I agree Berkeley dispenses with matter, as unnecessary, but not as disproven. And, as I explained above, his way of dispensing of it leaves a hole in our understanding of reality, what separates one mind from another mind, and human minds from God's mind. So he leaves the back door open, for matter to take on a new position in his form of idealism. Therefore dualism is not avoided.
Quoting Ludwig V
I believe the principal difference between Hume and Berkeley is that Hume didn't believe in God. This is why he turned things around, as I described. He had to put sensations, sense impressions, as prior to ideas, because the independent things could not be conceived of as existing as ideas. Ideas are derived from sense impressions, so that there is a sort of separation between these two, whereas Berkeley saw no need to make such a distinction.
Quoting Ludwig V
This is where we completely differ. How can you possibly distinguish between appearance and reality? Once you accept that there is such a distinction to be made, you plunge yourself into a quagmire because you need to provide principles by which you would distinguish between the two. But anything produced would be a principle, and not something sensed. So being "suitably critical" of what our senses tell us really means nothing more than being skeptical. And I guess you might describe the skeptical position as "the senses are feeding us nothing but lies", but really it's just that they don't show us the way reality truly is. And I believe science has already proven this, so where's the big problem with skepticism?
Quoting wonderer1
This is the issue I refer to above, the separation between one mind and another mind, between human minds and God's mind. Berkeley provides no good principles to account for this separation, and that allows us to bring "matter" in through the back door, as that which separates individual minds, and keeps a distinction between God's mind and human minds.
I think Midgley makes a profound point. Below, from that "article" you referenced, I pasted a snippet. She may have been compelled by her locus in History, to cloak it in a domestic gown, but she was presenting a meaningful hypothesis.
"I am quite sure of is that for anybody living intimately with them as a genuine member of a family...their consciousness would be every bit as certain as his own...Philosophers have generally talked for instance as though it were obvious that one consciousness went to one body, as though each person were a closed system...I wonder whether they would have said the same if they had been frequently pregnant and suckling... if in a word they had got used to the idea that their bodies were by no means exclusively their own?" --M. Midgley
Her point, I take it, to be that we do not [contra Descartes] have to infer the existence of the same consciousness in others. She was beyond Descartes, the subject, "I", and phenomenal perception. She locates her proof in the organic being, human being, the animal; in its organic bonding with kin. There you don't have to meditate, reflect, analyze to know other is real, you are the other. And the "problem" with post Cartesian explorations of what can we know, is it limited itself to what can we know via an exercise of Language? As if that had a monopoly on truth. Why not bonding as a source for the truth that we are not utterly isolated in our consciousness? Or is philosophy not about truth, but about it within a restricted framework?
I agree with you. However, @Fooloso4's points about the way she makes her point are also important. The issue crops up all the time in reading texts from the past - and the present. Her ideas about marriage, family, maturity were pretty much conventional, though not uncontested, at the time and still exist. We need to be able to acknowledge both sides of this, though I haven't worked out how to do so properly.
Quoting ENOAH
Yes, quite so.
Quoting ENOAH
Why not indeed? But let us not be hypnotized by a one bonding, but recognize the many different bonds there are in human lives - and how they arise in ways that we interact with, as opposed to merely observe, each other - and how we distinguish between people and non-people at the same time.
Quoting ENOAH
.. so truth within a restricted framework is not really truth?
Briefly -
For my money, "the sky is blue" is true because of the system of colours, not in spite of it. The objectivity of truths shows up in the way that a truth formulated in one system will show up in other systems. The easy example is the way that arithmetical truths show up in any number system.
In Wittgenstein's thought, this point is closely linked to colour exclusion problem (SEP). He says On Certainty 225.
I was expounding, not evaluating, so I'm able to agree with your critique in many ways, though I'm not particularly wedded to Aristotelianism.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes. But, for me, the unintelligibility of matter is not a conclusion, but a problem. If you were to present this conclusion to Berkeley, he would conclude that matter didn't exist, and I would not be able to explain why he is wrong.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree. I don't think there is a coherent idea of immaterial minds.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm sure you know about the controversy about Hume's atheism. I don't think there is a determinate answer about what he "really" believed. But the Enquiry is perfectly clear. He rejects rational arguments for God's existence and Christianity, but believes in them on faith, which he acknowledges is a miracle.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I didn't express myself clearly. There are ordinary uses of "appear" and "real" that are perfectly in order. The stick in water appears to be bent, but isn't "really". The sun disappears behind the moon, but still exists. But when we posit a world of "appearances" (or "experiences") that exist independently of the entities that they are appearances of, we are seriously mistaken.
Yes, I know that understanding of causation exists - I've seen it one of Hacker's books - I forget which. I am increasingly sympathetic, but have not read enough about it to be sure what I think of it. Your conclusion from that experience that an interaction that does not involve energy is inconceivable seems a bit quick to me. I have heard of the four fundamental forces, but I've forgotten what they are, I'm afraid.
Quoting Janus
I'm glad we are in agreement about this. But philosophers seem to have a hard time with it, as, for example, in the argument about first causes vs infinite causes. Rorty described it as Truth vs truth.
Well said...within this framework.
Are you suggesting another framework?
There's an interesting discussion to be had about translation between languages/cultures of colour-words, including which words are colour-words and which are not. The classic locus in philosophy for this is the translation of "snow" into the language(s) of people who live north of the Arctic Circle. But they are extremely limited. Few philosophers are polyglot enough to enjoy that kind of thing. Which is a great pity. (I have some access to four, but almost certainly not the depth and fluency that one would need to do it well.)
Understood. I thought you were disagreeing. Thanks.
I wasn't. I was recognizing that we are within a framework, within a framework.
However your discussion above is also interesting.
If, on the other hand, I were suggesting another framework, I would respectfully say your discussion above is not what I would consider another framework. Rather, it too, is within this framework. Or, from your position, probably a framework within.
Anyway, the other framework I'm suggesting, is, in a manner of speaking, a framework without. That is, not in the way so called truth "works" itself out in language, which, afterall is a construction, perhaps the meta framework, but still, not the framework "without." The latter being before/beyond/outside of Language, which I would now identify as the constructed world, the world within a framework of becoming, to a world of organic presence, a world of (human) being. That's why the bonding Midgley referenced is uniquely significant--family, mates, offspring--that's where you find consciousness, and you find that we are one. Thats where Descartes neglected to look.
Quoting ENOAH
"Framework", just like "language-game" and even "Language" and "language" and "dialect" are most at home in an approach that looks for structures. And then we rightly want to expand our view and so we want to develop an overall structure (or Structure). But all these concepts are what I think of as jelly-fish concepts - almost infinitely plastic. So I'm quite content to set up a structure in a particular context for a particular purpose, without aspiring to any totalizing Structure. That annoys almost everyone, but it works for me.
Quoting ENOAH
OK. So now we can add "world" to the list of jelly-fish concepts. To adopt your spatial metaphor, our problem is that Language endlessly points beyond itself, while at the same time preventing us from ever quite getting there. Perhaps then I should have said "seems to point beyond itself". My preferred tactic is to turn the problem upside-down, by reflecting that language was developed from whatever existed before it and is a product of whatever existed before it. It must therefore be useful within those worlds. It is language that needs to take its place in the world, not the other way about. What may be even more important is that we are all born without language and need to develop a great deal of understanding of the world in order to be able to learn it. (I began to work this out in another thread - "on the matter of epistemology and ontology" - I don't know if you were involved in that.)
Quoting ENOAH
Yes and no. For the ancient Romans "familiaris" meant "of a house, of a household, belonging to a family, household, domestic, private". On a generous interpretation of "family", I'll buy this. One reason for doing so is that, whatever our domestic arrangements, we are all born and brought up and, for me, the people involved in that are my family, and so everyone has a family of some sort. It does imply that the consciousness of creatures that don't grow up in that way becomes moot - even if they are sentient. In ethics, that might become problematic.
Thanks! Such a citation is just what I was hoping for.
I find it interesting to find out about the insights of philosophers with regard to thinking, when those philosophers didn't have the advantage of modern neuroscience in making sense of what is going on.
Of course I think Berkeley went off the rails with idealism, but I can appreciate the attempt at making sense of things.
I can tell you why matter doesn't exist, in a very simple and straight forward way. "Matter" is an Aristotelian concept, and the conceptual structure is arranged so that the form of a thing is what has existence. Matter, as the potential of a thing, simply does not exist, and that's why it's so easy for Berkeley to argue this, and why it seems to make logical sense, what he argues, even though intuitively we would expect otherwise. So it's really not a matter of "why he is wrong", he's not wrong. The real question is why do our intuitions lead us toward believing that he must be wrong. And the answer to this, is that we've grown up being exposed to a common usage of "matter", which propagates a faulty intuition. The faulty intuition is that matter inheres within the independent thing, supporting its unperceived (independent) existence. The intuition if faulty because "matter" is really just a concept, used to account for the apparent persistence or continuity of the object, while the true nature of the supposed persistence and continuity of the object is really an unknown. So "matter" is not something inhering within the object, as our basic education leads us to believe, it is just a concept used to stand in for this unknown aspect of the object.
From this perspective, the unintelligibility of matter is not a problem but rather a solution to a problem. The problem is that the human intellect is not omniscient, it is deficient and lacking in the capacity to understand the complete reality, especially what is commonly represented as the continuous existence of the separate, or independent object. That there is an unintelligible aspect of reality, in itself, is only a problem to the philosophically minded, who have a desire to know the complete reality. But this mindset, this desire to know, pervades through all the sciences as they work to probe the unknown, and attempt to expand the overall body of knowledge. To be integrated into the body of knowledge, the new knowledge must be made consistent with the existing body. The unintelligible lurks as that which cannot be made consistent.
There are two distinct approaches to the unintelligible. The simple approach is to hide the unintelligible within the knowledge, as vagueness, ambiguity, rendering a knowledge which has a level of certainty that is compromised overall. This is the approach of "formalism". It dismisses the importance of content (subject matter, which is the unintelligible), but in doing this it allows the unintelligible content to inhere within the form. This compromises the resulting knowledge because the unintelligible permeates the entirety and there are no principles to distinguish the intelligible aspects from the unintelligible, allowing fallibility into the whole body of knowledge. The solution to this problem is to provide a clear separation of the form (as intelligible) from the content (as unintelligible matter), right from the outset. This leaves an outlined realm of "the unintelligible" as distinct and separate from the body of "the intelligible", as knowledge, allowing for the process of skepticism to analyze "the intelligible", the existing body of knowledge, in a way which would determine why this existing body of knowledge renders specific aspects of reality as incompatible, unintelligible. That is why designating matter as "the unintelligible" is really not a problem but a solution to the problem.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes, this is the point. Hume does not allow "God" as a principle or premise for any logical proceedings, he would dismiss this as unsound. Therefore he would not be able to accept Berkeley's use of God to support the continued existence of objects when not being perceived by a human being. So, he turns things around (whether intentionally or not is irrelevant), as I tried to explain. The continuous existence of objects is not taken for granted by Hume as it is by Berkeley.
Berkeley portrays perception as the sensation of continuously existing objects, and God supports that continuity when humans aren't looking. So continuity is inherent within perception. But for Hume, perception consists of instances, distinct impressions, which he makes compatible with distinct ideas. This puts continuity as something which happens between distinct perceptual impressions. So continuity becomes a big problem for Hume. How does a perceptual impression at one moment link up, or connect to an impression at another moment? It is not reason which does this associating, because the rational mind works with distinct ideas, and the relating of them, one to another. The relating of sense impressions is a sort of natural, intuitive process which is not an act of reason. This is why he classes all the aspects of temporal continuity, induction and causation, as something other than reason.
What I said earlier though, is that Hume has this wrong, because sense perception really consists of the perception of activity, which in itself is a representation of temporal continuity. So really Berkeley's representation of sensation as continuously existing objects, therefore active and changing objects is a more true representation. Then the real problem, or breakdown, is between the reasoning mind which deals with distinct ideas, and sense perception which gives us continuity. Hume's representation, which makes sensation consist of distinct perceptions, in order to establish consistency between the mind's distinct ideas, and sense perception, is a false premise, designed to bridge this problem, this breakdown between the mind and the senses.
Quoting Ludwig V
This is exactly the point. That the stick really isn't bent needs to be supported with principles. Now we are into logic, premises like refraction, etc., and sense perception is relegated to being unreliable. So we have no grounds to accept that what sense perception gives us is in any way "real", it is unreliable. And the skeptic is completely justified.
Quoting Ludwig V
Why would you say this? The "appearances" are what sense perception provides to the mind. The mind determines that these appearances are often faulty and misleading, like the bent stick example. If the mind can prove that the appearances are sometimes faulty and misleading, then why not accept the possibility that the appearances are always faulty and misleading? The appearances are a creation of the human body, it creates them with its nervous system, and they are a form of representation. Consider other forms of representation now, like language, signs and symbols. The signs and symbols are created in a completely different context from when they are later applied. So there is no reason not to think that the appearances (like signs and symbols) exist within a realm (the mind) which is independent from the things which it applies them to. Consider dreaming for example, the mind has a whole arsenal of images (appearances) which are independent, and which it can apply.
It seems to me that neuroscience (and psychology) have changed the game. It has been pretty obvious for a long time (over a century, I would say) that this would happen. But now we are facing the opening up of the reality and peering anxiously into the dark. I say that because there is a widespread tendency to speak as if we know it all already or to speculate wildly on what might be revealed. Both very human traits, but still not helpful.
:up:
You meant to say "doesnt". Of course, it doesn't. I don't think anyone intended bonding was the source of consciousness, only that it was a place Descartes overlooked when he was formulating his isolated "I am."
I do remember you from Epistemology and Ontology. I'm pretty sure I found both language and "Language," to cause barriers there too.
Doesn't it always? Unlike, say, organic bonding.
In a forum like this, pages of space and hours of time might be required for us to truly have mutual understanding--I might post "language is a barrier"; you might return with, oh really? Doesn't it bring us together? And so on and so on and so on.
What I say, you could endlessly critique; then, in turn what you say, if not I, I am certain someone. And so on and so on.
That was Descarte's "problem." (And Aquinas and Augustine and Aurelius and Aristotle all the way back with the exception of a certain Socrates we might be able to extract out of Plato). And we have inherited that problem. That is, that you cannot arrive at certainty with language processing in our minds. You cannot weave straw into gold.
But you can with bonding, for example, and so, ...here we go again
Yes. Language works best when there is a personal relationship as a context for it.
Yes, I did mean "doesn't".
Nice.
I feel the same.
Including how to work out these points properly. The "meat" of the sandwich-article, to interpret the speech that way, was what I mostly skipped over and @Fooloso4 has criticized well.
Cutting out the dithering and getting on with it has much to be said for it. I'm quite good and patience and circumspection, I suppose, but I'm absolutely lousy at getting on with it.
Many people, including some eminent professorial philosophers, say they can conceive of things that are, to me, plainly inconceivable. One more bedrock of philosophy crumbles into dust.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, that's exactly how Berkeley presents his argument - officially - and why he thinks he can maintain that he doesn't deny the existence of anything that exists. (Notice how ambiguous that is - he doesn't deny the existence of anything that exists, but then he doesn't think that matter exists.)
His book was met with widespread ridicule, as the anecdote about Dr. Johnson illustrates. Another illustration of that ridicule is the name given to his doctrine ("immaterialism"). In case you hadn't noticed, it is a pun. His text is full of references to philosophical ideas being laughed at.
I don't know whether he didn't really know what he thought or he was upset by all the ridicule, he equivocates, oscillating between presenting his immaterialism as common sense (especially in the Dialogues and as a technical dispute within philosophy and between presenting his doctrine as a revolution in thought and as requiring no significant changes at all.
Quoting wonderer1
I remember when philosophers managed quite well without neuroscience, even though it was clearly beginning. It wasn't really taken on board until this century, I would say.
Dont you think that is just a tad scientistic?
Have you ever read anything about the well-known book The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Bennett and Hacker?
Cheers. The ideas she expresses were also found in others of that period. There was a general realisation that doubt cannot be the whole of philosophical method.
It's a fact about me that I am interested in that sort of thing. You'd need to explain what you mean by "scientistic" for me to know how to reply to that.
Quoting Wayfarer
I've read some Amazon reviews of it.
What Berkeley did was ridicule the common notion of "matter", and this invited a reciprocation of the ridicule. The difference is that Bishop Berkeley's ridicule of the common notion of "matter" was well formulated and based in solid principles, whereas the reciprocated ridicule was more like a knee-jerk reaction.
Notice, that "matter" represents the temporal continuity of existence (as you say, what persists through change) and this is presented to us through sense perception. Isaac Newton had represented matter as having the property of inertia, and his first law takes inertia for granted. But Newton had said that this law is really dependent on the Will of God. Bishop Berkeley merely emphasizes this point.
Now, when Hume removes God, and portrays temporal continuity as something produced within human intuition, by representing sense perceptions as distinct instances, discrete impressions, instead of portraying the sense organs as providing us with continuous activity, he makes a false description. So Bishop Berkeley is ridiculed for his appeal to God to support the temporal continuity of existence, but this appeal is derived from sound principles, whereas Hume is able to remove God, but he does so by using false premises.
Quoting Banno
Does Midgley address the philosopher's appeal to God?
Quoting ENOAH
Through the mystical method, philosophers often claim to have union with a divine source. Unlike Moses and "the burning bush" portrayal, the mystic's communion with the divinity is internal. Consider Socrates and his "daimon" for example. The common form is "prayer".
:clap:
If that was intended to address Midgley's notion that consciousness is not isolated to each individual, I think you are highlighting her point in your reference to mysticism. The possibility of communion suggests to me, that notwithstanding the "internal" source of the mystical exercise, it's end result is that consciousness can "break free" from isolation and commune with "other" consciousness(es).
The point was the reality of our communion with the divine. It shows that Midgley's representation ("Philosophers have generally talked for instance as though it were obvious that one consciousness went to one body, as though each person were a closed system") is a strawman. Philosophers, in general, do not represent an individual's consciousness as a closed system.
But the true way to understand that the individual consciousness is not a closed system, is through one's internal communion with the divine (like Socrates' daimon), not to apprehend the connection as an external relationship with other consciousnesses. The external relations, with the misgivings of lies, deception, disappointments, and the general failures of communication with others, only reinforces the feeling of isolation. Yet the internal relation with the divine remains the most true and honest, allowing for one to really "break free" from isolation.
Fair point. But I'm not comfortable with it, whoever is doing it. It is purely rhetorical and has no proper role in a supposedly rational discourse. Mind you, there's much ridicule in mid-century philosophy, which hides itself under the (not unreasonable) doctrine that analytic statements are trivial.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't know about Newton's God. But there is the difference between Malebranche's occasionalism and Berkeley's, and one notices that Malebranche did not attract the same ridicule as Berkeley, so that difference must have seemed important at the time.
I had the impression that Berkeley's understanding of inertia was very different from the standard version. I think many of his arguments don't stand up if one allows that inert objects can interact, as when one billiard ball hits another.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree with you that he thinks of impressions as atoms, and I agree that is a misleading account. The whole issue of individuating ideas, impressions, sense-data has been woefully neglected.
One of Berkeley's principles is "esse" is "percipi aut percipere", which, on the face of it and in fact, is false. He seems to treat this as a axiom, so I don't know why he believed it.
I don't understand why you would say this. How can you conclude that the principle is false? To be, or as you state it, "esse", is to be something, and that means to have been judged as having a whatness, or "what it is". This, "what it is", is a judgement based on perception. You cannot dissociate the whatness from the judgement, to give a thing an independent whatness, or "esse", because the whatness. "what it is", is a product of the judgement.
I think some here are too preoccupied with defending Descartes to see Descartes' point. If someone wishes to engage in Descartes gnosticism, that is fine (e.g. revamping everything he wrote in terms of historical circumstances or imputed intentions). Some of that may even be true, but to excoriate Midgley for taking Descartes at his word is, well, dumb. Only in an age as silly as ours could one be taken to task for interpreting a philosopher in light of what he actually wrote. I think there are many philosophers who are rolling in their graves because people are paying more attention to the "subtext" than their texts.
As far as I am concerned Descartes is not in need of any defense from me. He has done quite well on his own. I am not interested in defending him but in understanding him.
Quoting Leontiskos
I think you have this backwards. In our age of free speech we fail to take into consideration what philosophers of the past had to contend with.See the appendix to Arthur M Melzer's "Philosophy Between the Lines" which contains numerous first hand accounts by philosophers.
A few of the many from Descartes:
Upon hearing of Galileos arrest for his pro-Copernican theories, Descartes suppressed the
publication of his just-completed exposition of his own mechanistic and pro-Copernican physics,
The World. Instead, eight years later, he published his Meditations, a work ostensibly confined
entirely to metaphysics and theology. But in a letter to Mersenne, he reveals:
René Descartes to Mersenne, January 28, 1641, uvres de Descartes,
3:29798, quoted and translated by Hiram Caton in The Origin of
Subjectivity, 17
René Descartes, Cogitationes Privatae, in uvres de Descartes, 10:213
From Montaigne's Complete Essays:
Ibid., 86 (1.23)
Ibid., 769 (3.10)
Ibid., 408 (2.12)
And from Bacon:
Francis Bacon, The Refutation of Philosophies, 108
What he actually wrote is, as quoted earlier:
(Discourse Part 4)
I should have explained myself. To exist is one thing, and Berkeley gives me no reason for supposing that existence of anything depends on being perceived or judged to exist. I can make some sense of the idea that anything that exists is capable of being perceived - especially if indirect perception is allowed.
Berkeley is no doubt relying on his argument against abstract objects. It supplies a way of accommodating abstract objects in his system, but is not obviously effective in the absence of his axiom. But his introduction of the notion of "notions" undermines his slogan, since he accepts the existence of my own mind and other minds, and God, even though they are not (directly) perceived. It is clear that he accepts that they are not (directly) perceived, because he introduces notions to get around the problem that my ideas do not themselves include the idea of myself. It's the same objection that was raised against the cogito.
I prefer "to be is to be the value of a variable".
To "exist" is not well defined, and we tend to use it in whatever way we find suitable for the occasion.
Quoting Ludwig V
I agree, it is likely that a thorough analysis would reveal that minds don't actually "exist" if we adhere to Berkeley's principles. That is the problem I referred to earlier, which inclines me to think that we need to bring matter in, through the back door. He provides no principles to provide a separation between one mind and another, or a human mind from God's mind. If we want to conceive of separate minds we need something (like matter) to separate them. Having distinct and separate ideas, in itself, does not suffice because something needs to separate the ideas, one from another.
Folk engaged so closely with Cartesian views may have difficulty with externalism about the mind. The discussion here remains in the quiet solitude of Descartes' warm room, not in the noisy, busy Kitchen. So it remains both privileged and irrelevant, and produces no sustenance.
Quoting Leontiskos
I shouldn't complain, I supose, that a thread about Granny has achieved seven pages of historical exegesis. But I would have liked to read more about plumbing.
Not particularly. I am fond of interpreting texts. He plays an important role in the history of philosophy and is worthy of careful reading. Like others, he is subject to re-evaluation from time to time.
Quoting Leontiskos
She brought him up. She gives a standard textbook reading of him which in my opinion does not hold up under scrutiny.
Quoting Leontiskos
I agree.
Quoting Leontiskos
True. But non-controversial does not mean correct. There is always room for differences in interpretation but there are others that I find hew closer to the text and are more interesting.
Quoting Leontiskos
First of all I am not upset. I find the assumption odd. Second if you look through my posts on this thread you will see that I have made several points where I disagree with her.
Even if Midgley has misconstrued Descartes, her misconstrual is shared by others. So I'll go back to a point I made earlier, that even if she is wrong about what Descartes said, she may not be wrong about how the hegemony of the solitary white male has mislead philosophy.
That is, what you have said here in your many posts is irrelevant to the argument Midgley presents.
It is shared by others, it is the fruit of a plain reading of his texts, and it is this received interpretation that has had its effect on the history of philosophy. If such is a misreading, then this misreading is in large part Descartes own fault. Philosophers should have foresight about how their texts will be interpreted and how their method will influence their message.
Right. And she perpetuates it.
Quoting Banno
Descartes was following a common meditative and contemplative practice in both the East and West. In both the same questions arise regarding whether this practice should be solitary and removed from the concerns and activities of public life.
As Midgley attests there have always been solitary thinkers. This is not because of Descartes and will not be changed by some yenta advocating marriage.
She says:
I agree that this has led to confusion and that Descartes is as the center of the subjective turn. I also agree that it is a commonplace today. But philosophy has moved past this. Apparently no one told her. This movement began before her and has continued after her.
And yet when I question the received interpretation you assume this is because I am fond of Descartes and upset, as it all of this is personal. Part of the movement of the history of philosophy has been the reevaluation of major figures.
Quoting Leontiskos
No one has the ability to anticipate all the different ways in which they will be interpreted. This too is part of the history of philosophy. There has never been an important and influential philosopher who has not been interpreted in various incompatible ways.
At the least, there might be some philosophical merit in considering the place of those who are not reclusive white bachelors.
Or will you deny this, too?
I take it that no one wants to address the issue of the philosopher's (whether the philosopher is a solitary white man or not) relationship with the divine. It appears to me like the issue is not the hegemony of any particular human being, but that of the divinity which some appear to establish a relationship with.
She probably is, though, given this is 2024 and not 1954.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Absolutely. Almost all non-white-male philosophy prior to 1900 was in the exact same mode as best I can tell, just different values.. All heading towards relationship with the divine.
Indeed, things have been so much better since the patriarchy was dismantled.
We're still waiting for you to give an argument that bears on Midgley's thesis.
Quoting Fooloso4
Sure, but what is at stake is not some bizarre or implausible interpretation.
Quoting Fooloso4
It's as if you first concede that Midgley is right and then, unaccountably, assert that she is confused, again without a supporting argument. Your rebuttal? "Philosophy has moved past this. Nothing to see here, folks!"
"To date, Ive not encountered any direct racism or sexism in academia..."
Nice.
Not selective at all.
Yes, quite so. What makes a particular use suitable for the occasion? Berkeley is quite open about why he thinks his criterion for existence or not. It's in the title. "Matter", he thinks, gives sceptics and atheists a foundation for their pernicious ideas. We delude ourselves if we try to pretend that metaphysics is ethically neutral (in spite of Hume). Perhaps it could be, but people looking for a foundation for ethics will look for something helpful in metaphysics - and the natural sciences, which also claim to be ethically neutral.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm sorry, but I think the problem lies in the question. It is a classic example of what Hume calls "augmentation" - the tendency of philosophers to extend the application of certain ideas beyond their contextualized scope.
Thank you for this. There is a book that investigates whether the God-elements in Descartes' meditations are fully sincere. I have forgotten the name of the book.
It does seem that Midgely has a track record of purposefully(?) misunderstanding, she has done so before with Dawkins:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/article/in-defence-of-selfish-genes/81402A555B9BBDC8988B3DDE881E3A58
It is funny how so many people here have taken to defend that the half-satirical take of a largely irrelevant "scholar" actually stands up against the father of modern philosophy in a way that 300 hundred years of philosophy does not.
Scholar, though apparently she never even earned a doctorate.
Quoting Banno
Any hegemony in a field like philosophy is due to simply better ideas. All you are saying is that non-whites and women are incompetent at philosophy. But it is not like the historical track does anything to disprove that.
Quoting Banno
Did you dye your hair blue this past week or is this your new style of trolling? Being racist against the most successful groups is very 2017.
:rofl:
Its just free market principles at play. :wink:
This really is quite strange. I am not defending or backing away from defending Descartes. I am defending an interpretation that is at odds with the standard textbook interpretation Midgley perpetuates.
Quoting Banno
Why a philosopher or anyone else is a recluse may have little or nothing to do with philosophy.
This is Midgley's analysis:
I do not think this story tracks the lives of "the philosophical adolescent", but I have not done an empirical investigation. Did she? Rather than withdraw in order to develop ideas in harmony with their own personality, it may be a trait of their personality and/or neurology that leads them to withdraw. Rather than their thoughts having power enough to keep them gazing into the pool of solitude, it may have more to do with neurodivergence.
I will leave it to you and others to sort philosophers along the lines of their marital status. I prefer to pay attention to what they say.
And yet there is in the history of philosophy many examples. The most infamous in Western Philosophy is Christianity's appropriation of Plato, but I suspect that you might not see it as either bizarre or implausible.
Quoting Leontiskos
I did not say that Midgley is confused.
Quoting Leontiskos
The story of the subjective turn is well known, but our discussion is not a talk on the BBC. We should be able and willing to look back at what Descartes said and not simply accept the story as if that is the end of the matter.
There are several books and articles that address this. Years ago I read Hiram Caton's "The Origin of Subjectivity", which led me to look past the standard story to read him again more carefully.
In the thread "Descartes Reading Group" I argued that he was not sincere. We went through the Meditations one by one, starting with the Dedication, Preface, and Synopsis. To sum it up in a sentence, he displaces God with the "I'.
:up:
That is true. I think the book specifically I was thinking of was by Walter Soffer.
Quoting Fooloso4
About that, this section of the SEP is very important https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/#DoesCogiCounAtheAvaiPerfKnow
Something interesting is seen in the Third Meditation:
He argues that the idea of God he has is not materially false (does not represent something real) because its objective reality is greater than any other (represents an infinite substance). I think we see the issue with this argument by just thinking of Anselm. But then he says:
The rest of the paragraph is even more iffy, appealing to the idea of God being "clear and distinct" and whatnot.
I think bringing Spinoza into this is the right move.
He says in the Principles 1.54:
It seems that church dogma could be framed as fiction of our understanding it is possible that Descartes actual understanding of God is more along Spinoza's line. He talks a lot about god, but little of Jesus. He said in a letter to a protestant priest: "My faith is my king's faith". His loyalty to Catholicism seems significantly cultural, instead of truly theological.
In any case in the Second Meditation we have:
And also at the end of the Fourth:
All in all, Descartes is constrained by his times. What we can do read him critically and learn all we can, and carry on without the constraints.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/81402A555B9BBDC8988B3DDE881E3A58/S0031819100050580a.pdf/in-defence-of-selfish-genes.pdf
The first four pages of this article are enough, but what follows is also good Mary Midgely is quite the Mental Midget.
She doesn't only misunderstand Descartes, but a field that she claims to be a scholar of ethology. Again, her education stopped short of a PhD, though her intelligence much shorter than that. She is not a specialist in anything. In fact, she became a professor at the same university as where her husband had been lecturing for 13 years then. Nepotism?
Quoting Banno
I guess Wittgenstein would be counterevidence to that. But then again, he is not that popular outside of his own school.
I would say, it's not the power of one's own thoughts which is the subject here, but the power of the divinity which the contemplative mind comes into contact with. Since the divinity is a real "other" for that mind, to portray this as solitude is a false representation.
A quick look at his list of publications led me to suspect that he knows Caton. Looking a little further I found on the publisher's blurb for "From Science to Subjectivity" that he agrees with Caton "the most outspoken proponent of the minority stance".
A brief overview of what she attempted would have gleaned this apparent fact. Her protestations just make her points all the more poor, given that they are actually points which can be well-argued in the right places.
Her conceptualisation of Philosophy in general as 'the plumbing beneath ideas' is hilariously applicable to most of her views. They are bad, and when you pull up the floorboards, they aren't even sensible.
Well, part of it; right after she mentions how the great philosophers were kind to their cats. Perhaps her facetiousness jokes were missed.
Quoting Lionino
Not so small as some denizens of this forum, as is evident. Not new. There's a thread about Midgley and Dawkins somewhere hereabouts:
Isn't it wonderful that a dead, diminutive elderly woman can cause so much angst! I thought this thread would be lucky to reach a page!
:up: . Neoliberalism explains everything... for mental midgets.
What is outstanding, and ongoing, is that over eight pages these three men have managed to say so little about what Midgley actually wrote.
The (women) are presently receiving quite a bit of attention:
...a worthy antithesis to the crap that occupies some folk on this forum.
Havent read it. Maybe theyre thinking of the freon guy.
Are you implying that one has to "pull up the floorboards" to access the plumbing? Can't we just go into the basement?
But bro... what if you know we are like literally the universe like experiencing itself. You feel me?
Quoting Banno
It is more that your trolling is seen as tiresome. When someone says something is garbage, nobody is getting angry, they are just saying is garbage because quite possibly it is. Your "u mad bro" is boyish.
As a point of attention, Midgley's argument is about lonesome, unmarried men, not about white males. You are trying to ragebait by LARPing as a SJW.
Riddle me this, you claim to be enlightened, and that a particular group dominates philosophy (cuz oppression), and yet all you ever quote, all you ever bring up, and it seems that all you ever read are philosophers with English names. I don't see you quoting Italian names, or Polish names. Don't you think the hegemony of Anglos in your life has misled your philosophy?
In another post, you even went as far as claiming some irrelevant British academic from 60 years ago, called Ryle, had solved the problem of mind-body dualism.
Quoting Banno
Agreed. Philosophers are often the butt of jokes, "those who have spent years trying to decide whether their dining room table exists." I think there is a place in philosophy for flighty ruminations, but the current state of affairs has gotten out of hand.
Midgley's piece has faults and it isn't an an immortal contribution to philosophy. It seems to aim at contributing to the project of the Quartet, as Bakhurst outlines it above . But it fails to do so, or misinterprets what the project might be about. Understanding those mistakes would be worth something and these exchanges just get in the way of that.
Could we get back to reading the text carefully and analyzing thoroughly? It may be less exciting, but it would surely be more illuminating.
Quoting Leontiskos
There's a practicality to Midgley's writing that is endearing. Her rejection of scientism is especially needed at a time when engineers and physicist take to doing philosophy, often very poorly.
It's a brief piece; a pot-boiler. There is more, most of it produced much later in her life. Her work is somewhat aggravating, determinedly, wilfully not dispassionate. Worth some attention. This thread has attracted trivial critique, but there is some value in her writing.
Quoting Lionino
Of course, you do not have to be here. At over 200 posts, I'm not at all displeased with this thread. So thanks for your contribution.
One thing I appreciated was what I interpreted as Midgely pointing towards the importance of diversity in life experience to having well informed intuitions. (Regardless of whether Midgely might agree with that way of saying it. And regardless of how myopic and unfair she may have been in doing so.)
What do you find here that cannot be found in Aristotle?
It seems she agrees with you.
A well-known truth is not worse for wear. There are many in these parts who fall short for being enamored of novelty.
Quoting Fooloso4
Midgley seems to be leveraging one part of the story for her argument, and I don't think there's anything wrong with this. Perhaps if her piece was entirely about Descartes then she should have offered a fuller analysis of his philosophy, but Descartes was just one of the dots she was connecting, if a notable one.
Midgley does try to give a balanced view. The difficulty is that it is quite hard to see her diagnosis as less than sweeping.
What isn't recognized here is that specialization can always be seen as a distortion, and implying that the distortion is any kind of immaturity, rather than just part of the all sorts that it takes to make a world, sets us off down the wrong track. I would have thought that solitary thought and dialogue and a domestic life, (which, surely, everyone has, in one form or another) are all appropriate parts of life as a philosopher. I think that other people have made the point that Descartes certainly lived in the community of his time, and must have had some kind of domestic life. The problem is his choice to present solitary meditation as the whole, or at least the heart, of philosophic life.
I suppose this means that the Problem of Knowledge is a magnificent failure. I do believe that it is well worth while to be wrong in interesting ways, but this doesn't help me to see what Midgley thinks is interesting about the failure. On the contrary, I get the impression that, for her, it is just a failure.
I find it very hard to understand what this diagnosis means. On the face of it, philosophers really believed that "the human soul was not mixed up in the world of objects". One can say that they were wrong without questioning their "good faith".
Quoting Banno
Yes, I have even read some of the more, but long, long ago. As a result of this thread, I'm inclined to look at it again.
She certainly succeeded in annoying Dawkins. But then, he is annoying as well.
But sometimes I think that it is the annoying texts that make me work hardest. I admit that it can be quite difficult not to indulge the feelings.
A well-known opinion, although not as well-known as you might expect, is certainly a
useful measure against the prevailing academic opinions of her time.
Quoting Leontiskos
It was the novelty and promise of 20th century analytic philosophy to which many at Oxford and elsewhere were enamored. A disregard for the history of philosophy at its root. A return to Aristotle was a response to this novelty.
Quoting Leontiskos
My criticism is not about her misrepresentation of Descartes, it is about her misrepresentation of the history of philosophy.
As Aristotle reminds his readers, Heraclitus said to some visitors who were surprised to see him by the oven warming himself:
Cicero said:
(Tusculan Disputations V 1011).
Xenophon wrote the Oeconomicus, a Socratic dialogue about household management.
The Stoics and Epicureans did not disregard daily life or human attachments either.
Descartes' "provisional morality" was about how to live a good life with others, not apart from them.
The examined life is not the married life. They are not mutually exclusive but one does not entail the other.
Of course you are not displeased that your trolling has garnered traffick.
Quoting Ludwig V
Making a clown of herself in a field she claims to be a scholar of is far from "succeeding".
You are wasting your time. Some person's motivation to defend Midgley's confused nonsense is very apparent, as to the others', I can't imagine why they insist on defending such contrived rubbish.
I don't think so. I like to think that there are others reading but not commenting. I think of the written exchange as only part of it. I do occasionally get a PM from someone appreciating something I said.
And if someone does not agree with something I said I am okay with that. I will defend my position, but if someone does not agree I don't take it personally. That is the nature of philosophical discussion.
:up:
I always appreciate hearing your perspective.
Thanks for clearing that up for me.
Quoting Ludwig V
To her credit. That line I quoted earlier so succinctly shows the flaw in his approach.
I've italicised that last to emphasis it. Seems poignant.
Quoting Fooloso4
Mary read Honour Moderations and Literae Humaniore, along with Iris Murdoch, at Somerville. No, she does not disregard the history of philosophy. Indeed, one of the claims of Metaphysical Animals is that the (women) were to a large degree responsible for the rejection of Ayer's positivism and a returned emphasis on the classics. Certainly one would not sensibly claim Anscombe or Foot ignore Aristotle.
So I don't think you are on the right track here.
, Quoting Fooloso4
Interesting - as do I, and more. The triviality that so often infests the open threads pushes many a discussion into the Inbox. The three more interesting discussions in which I am presently involved are found there, not in the forums. It avoids feeding the "trolls".
As agreed, the check is in the mail.
:ok:
True. But perhaps their attachment to ataraxia or apatheia shows their attitude to it.
Quoting Banno
Yes. But I think that putting her point in this rather abbreviated way is a hostage to fortune, given that not all her readers will be sympathetic
Quoting Fooloso4
They thought they were revolutionizing philosophy - making a new start. So they were aware they had a history. As Russell shows, they read their history entirely in their own terms, which is a sure way to misunderstand it. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that they misinterpreted it, rather than disregarded it?
You have not understood what I said.
Quoting Banno
That is my point. Leontiskos said in response to me pointing to Aristotle:
Quoting Leontiskos
As I said to him:
Quoting Fooloso4
Midgley's "return" was a response to something that was not at issue in Continental philosophy.
In 1924 Heidegger gave an important and influential lecture course: "Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy". The first generation works of his students, including Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacob Klein, Hans Jonas, Leo Strauss, and Karl Löwith, have slowly but surely replaced the interpretations found in Angelo schools.
The philosophy of history is the counterpart to the history of philosophy. It is not simply that we should attend to human life, but address the fact that human life is historically and culturally situated. Our interpretation of texts must be informed by this.
I'm relieved.
I agree, [
quote="Ludwig V;897839"]They thought they were revolutionizing philosophy - making a new start. So they were aware they had a history.[/quote]
Yes, a new start. A break with the past. Bringing clarity to what was confusion. There was a thread last year that addressed this:Here
Er, except Cicero, Socrates, Xenophon, and Aurelius were all married men. I'm not sure about Heraclitus. The Epicureans were somewhat averse to marriage, so one part of your point does connect with the topic of the OP. Again, none of the arguments you are giving really end up connecting with the conclusion you champion. This seems to be a general problem with your posts. You say something contrarian and then you make "arguments" that have nothing to do with the contrarian outburst. Hopefully you figure this out, because you do seem to have actual knowledge rattling around that head.
I'm sorry I missed that. The idea that the panic about Communism that prevailed in the USA after WW2 affected philosophy is attractive. But it doesn't explain anything that Russell, for example, said before WW2 and the atmosphere was not at all the same in Europe.
They would have done better to reflect on all the new starts in the history of philosophy and formulated something a bit less radical.
Quoting Leontiskos
The encyclopedias say that the sources say that he inherited the role of "king of the Ionians". Little (actually, nothing) is known of what this actually involved, but it is known that he resigned the office in favour of his younger brother. One might argue that his philosophy betrays aristocratic, rather than democratic, attitudes.
I'm reminded of the arguments about celibacy between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches about celibacy - and, no doubt, in the Protestant movement. I wonder whether that influenced her in this piece. (The Eastern traditions have views about this as well.)
It seems pretty clear that appeals to biography are not going to yield any secure results if we want an empirical, scientific hypothesis. Yet no-one believes that we do not learn from our experience (i.e. what happens in our lives) and it seems wildly implausible to think that we can sit down and set aside everything that we have learnt - even as a thought experiment.
Whether Descartes is reporting an episode in his life or not, he presents the story in the Meditations as a model. He is not reporting his conclusions, but presenting a model or paradigm of how he reached them and how he solved them and intended us to follow him.
Yet the sceptical conclusions are hard to square with the possibility of the project. I think he was aware of this, and tried to insulate the conclusions as simply a thought-experiment, not just in posing the problem, but in solving it. (One could compare the way the Pyrrhonians dealt with the same issue).
In a way, he seems to have succeeded Everyone has tried to refute scepticism since then. In another way, then, he failed, because so many people since then have not adopted his solution, but tried to work out a better one. One thinks of Berkeley, Hume and Kant - though were they responding to Descartes? I'm not sure about that.
First, this list was prefaced by my saying:
Quoting Fooloso4
The history of philosophy is not the biography of philosophers and their marital status.
Midgley begins by saying:
Are you able to distinguish a philosopher's marital status by reading his philosophy? What do you know of the married lives of these men? Rather than demonstrating its importance for the history of philosophy it illustrates how misdirected this can be.
In Xenophon's Symposium Socrates is asked by Antisthenes:
to which he replied:
Is this the kind of married life Mary advocated and you imagine marks an important distinction between philosophers? Do you think Xenophon's Oeconomicus was a marital guide, written for men who were married or intended to marry?
In an earlier post I pointed out a few things that Aristotle said about marriage:
Quoting Fooloso4
Midgley says:
This is not true. The pre-Socratic philosophers were natural scientists, but I admit I have not checked their marital status. Midgley does, however, identify two bachelors by name, Plato and Descartes. Natural science was a part of the studies at Plato's Academy. Descartes wrote on medicine and optics.
It seems rather unlikely that Midgley was talking about marriage ancient-Greek-style. Wouldn't the natural assumption be that she meant marriage 20th century style?
Quoting Fooloso4
What does that tell us about their philosophy - or indeed about their science?
Quoting Fooloso4
Well, we do think it is important to read their work in its context, and sometimes details of their lives give us pause for thought. I'm sure you can think of examples.
Well, she does not make the distinction, which is part of the problem with her misrepresentation of the history of philosophy.
Quoting Ludwig V
It tells us that Midgley is wrong when she says:
No distinction was made between philosophy and science.Science is from the Latin word for knowledge.
Quoting Ludwig V
I do not think it is important to determine their marital status in order to read them. Context has more to do with their historical and cultural situatedness than with their marital status. Marriage too must be put in this context, as you point out. With regard to details of their lives, in an earlier post I pointed out that:
Quoting Fooloso4
It may give us pause for thought but I do not think it is that important for reading him. The details are one thing, how they may have influenced someone's philosophical writings something else.
I think it is a very interesting thing to consider () but I don't think it overly influenced her piece, given that she sets monks aside as a different category.
The related idea is that men in ancient times were much more capable of solitude and self-sufficiency than women, combined with the fact that one will tend to become good at whatever they devote their time to. Ergo: ancient men tended to be better at things that require solitude and self-sufficiency, and this would not have been appreciably different in Descartes' time. The question stands as to whether solitude and self-sufficiency caters to philosophy.
True. But this is short talk for the BBC, not a scholarly disquisition. So the assumption that her audience would assume that she was talking about marriage as popularly conceived in the mid-20th century is not unreasonable.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, of course that's true. The sciences did not spin off from philosophy until much, much later. But how does that show that Plato and Descartes, in their different ways, did not both regard the human soul as radically distinct from physical objects? Or, as MIdgley summarizes their philosophies and her objection to them:-
Quoting Fooloso4
Fair point. You seem to be suggesting that this is an alternative explanation for someone having difficulty with interpersonal relations. So the most you can say is that Midgley does not consider that a philosopher might have difficulty with interpersonal relationships for more reasons than one, or even that not being married and liking solitude might not be related as cause and effect, but both have a common cause.
I think it would be reasonable to argue that this is not really a philosophical question, but a psychological question (in our terminology). But that allows that it is, or could be, a question.
Quoting Fooloso4
So we agree on that. But that legitimates asking the question whether they were married or not and considering whether it may have affected their philosophy. It seems likely to me that we would not find a strong correlation between marital status and specific philosophical doctrines, but we need at least to consider the possibility, don't we?
Quoting Leontiskos
Midgley certainly thought it did.
Virginia Woolf (admittedly not strictly a philosopher) is making a similar point in her famous "A Room of One's Own"
On the other hand, I believe that Sartre and de Beauvoir wrote in a busy café, at least sometimes.
Well, I was taken. by this line:
A curiously accurate characterisation of marriage. It acknowledges the difference between a flatmate and a partner. There is a very different commitment, the willingness to work together while accepting those aspects of one's partner that are not within in one's control. More than a recognition of the other, marriage seeks the likes of Joy in the presence of the other.
Midgley points out that it is redundant to deduce the existence of one's wife or husband from first principles. Doubt here is absurd.
Perhaps, but: 1) We are not that audience. We could read it as a quaint period piece, but if we are to evaluate it on its philosophical merits we might ask if it stands the test of time. 2) If her intention was to persuade young men to marry it is revisionist history. When she says:
someone in the mid-20th century hearing this and taking "a normal domestic life" to be the married life of the mid-20th century would be misled and might conclude that if they do not marry they are not normal.
Quoting Ludwig V
This is the claim I was responding to:
As I read it she is claiming a concern to avoid contamination by the world of objects.
Quoting Ludwig V
No. There are various reasons why someone does not marry. It was in response to Midgley's sweeping claims about immaturity and forming attachments.
Quoting Ludwig V
That is something I would judge from the fruits it bears. It would have to go further than just marital status, however. A happy or unhappy marriage, for example, might have to be taken into consideration. See the reference to what Socrates said in Xenophon's Symposium in a previous post.
His course in marrying Xanthippe is similar to that of a horse-trainer breaking a willful horse. It is not marriage he wished to deal and associate with, but mankind at large. We see from Plato's Phaedo that he had no affection toward her. He did, however, on Plato's telling have some concern for the welfare of his children. I don't know if there is a correlation with his teachings, but it does seem that he preferred to hang out in the marketplace rather than at home with her.
Yes, it is like that in some cases. In others it is transactional or a battlefield.
Quoting Banno
As is the assumption that this needs to be pointed out.
Cast your eye down the list of discussions on the forum home page. While you and I might know better, Cartesian scepticism is unfortunately not uncommon.
I think that's a false opposition and that the test of time is not so much whether the text is right or wrong, whether on its own terms or ours. It is whether it helps us to understand ideas about philosophical problems that may not take for granted what we take for granted.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't see any such intention here. Though I agree that the claim that marriage is normal and even mature might lead young men astray (but not, of course, mature people like ourselves).
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, and that is puzzling. It could be a rhetorical gesture towards the detailed argument about dualism. After all, such ideas are present, if only as unacknowledged background. For Plato, for example, it is clearly not an inappropriate description of his story of the ascent of the soul to heaven. For Berkeley, it is very clear, since he says, loudly, that the concept of matter is an excuse for scepticism and atheism and he is motivated by the desire to put paid to it. However, I prefer to think, in this context, that she uses the word to surprise her audience into thinking of a familiar model in a different way. This isn't a scholarly philosophical text.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, and I agree that those claims are problematic. I just think that there's a baby in the bathwater.
Quoting Fooloso4
I'm very much in favour of judging from the fruits that it bears, though maybe the intentions should also be taken into account - not necessarily as an excuse.
Quoting Fooloso4
Socrates doesn't speak of taming Xanthippe, more of getting along with her. Your comment takes us to yet another model - the courtship of Petruchio and Katherina in "The Taming of the Shrew". That is indeed a story of oppression. But it is true that Socrates sounds far too cold-blooded for our expectations. But then, arranged marriages disappoint us Westerners. Yet one can't arbitrarily say that they aren't marriages or even that they exclude the possibility of love.
I also like it a lot. But commitment is tricky. I dont think one can do it in advance. No matter what ceremony is supposed to establish the commitment, it needs to be maintained, or perhaps performed from day to day and even from hour to hour. If and when circumstances change, it may need to be renewed life throws things you did not sign up for at you.
Quoting Fooloso4
Quite so. We should not say that marriage is like this, or like that, only that it can be like this or like that even swopping from one to another in the course of a day. What it will be turn out to be may not be what you expect. It is very much down to the complicated interaction between the parties.
Anything is possible when it comes to love. I cant resist quoting what is probably Catullus only philosophical observation:- I hate, yet love. Perhaps you ask why that is so. I do not know, and Im in torment.
And then we might consider the various other kinds of partnership that exist in human life - all different and all important. Friendship, for example, can be a swallow in summer and a life-long relationship. In the latter case, the commitment turns out to be the case, rather than being made in advance, but nonetheless can be as deep as marriage can be. Theres a galaxy of others. We form these relationships, we dont deduce them, or even sign up for them.
From "Rings & Books" --
So her argument is that traditional philosophy privileges one kind of human experience, typified by Descartes' solitary thinker (and, perhaps Rodin's statue, which also suggests the thinking is a solitary occupation) or Virginia Woolfs desire for a room of her own. But still, she should have concluded with "That, I suggest, is a typical and equally valid human experience." Her attempts to give a balanced view, acknowledging that solitary thinking has achieved some good results, lead me to think that this is what she was aiming for.
The surprising depth of what is going on here is like Stanley Cavell's project of accepting philosophical scepticism as part of human life and trying to look behind Wittgenstein's gestures towards human practices and human life, to understand what it is about human life that gives rise to scepticism. His work shows that one gets into really messy territory if one pursues that. (Where messy is not derogatory, but more like Wittgensteins rough ground.) So, in a smaller way, does this piece.
So, philosophy, as the ideas which are produced from the solitary thinker, is a representation of that kind of human being, the solitary thinker. Now, Aristotle shows how contemplation is the highest virtue. So can we conclude that philosophy provides us with the very best ideas?
I agree, but it is one battle I usually choose not to fight.
It looks like a simple question, but it isn't. I wouldn't want to reply without looking up his argument for a start. One reply might start from the argument here, that solitary thinking (which may or may not be what he is talking about) doesn't produce the best ideas on its own. The answer from that stand-point would be, no. But that might mean rejecting his argument about "contemplation". That is thinkable. I'm not a fan of his hierarchical argument for the Supreme Good.
Quoting Fooloso4
I also agree, though sometimes my conscience pricks me. Someone should, at least from time to time, try to introduce a little doubt into their thinking.
Looking at this again I need to revise what I said.
Xenophon is making a little joke. The name Xanthippe means "yellow horse". Not to push this too far but Xenophon wrote a book "On the Art of Horsemanship". The horseman does not simply get along with a horse. He rides it. It must be broken and taught. Xenophon says the breaking of a horse should be left to an expert trainer and not to the horseman. But teaching the horse is up to the horseman.
This raises the question of whether and in what sense Socrates course is like that of the expert horseman. Is Xanthippe like an unbroken horse? In that case, with regard to her his course is not like that of the expert horseman who deals with horses that are broken. But as he says:
Of course mankind is not broken either. Perhaps the philosopher can only teach those who have been made ready.
Yes. Introduce a little doubt into there their doubtful thinking, that is, into what is doubtful about their doubting.
You could be right. If the name Xanthippe was just dreamed up by Xenophon that the idea that there's something else going on here would have some legs. As it is, I think you are reading too much into this.
What I know of Xenophon doesn't suggest a man likely to make jokes of this kind.
I think that this refers to mankind in the sense that Xanthippe is also part of mankind. All he wants to achieve is
That doesn't sound like he's thinking of training horses.
Quoting Fooloso4
Well, Descartes does say that he wants to doubt everything that can be doubted. So I don't doubt that I'm justified in disrupting their doubt.
Quoting Fooloso4
Ah, now, that's pretty much true. You can take a horse to the water, but you can't make it drink.
For what it's worth, I believe you'll find it in Bk 6 of Nichomachean Ethics. A lot of any such argument is a sort of stipulation of intuitive principles, so of course the premises are debatable. I think the general idea is that contemplation produces the most universal, principles of theory, and these are required to ground practical principles, and practical principles are required for moral actions. Therefore contemplation produces the highest principles because these are a requirement for all the other virtues. So contemplation is the highest virtue. Then, he moves to show how contemplation is consistent with "happiness" at the end of Bk 10.
It is not a name he makes up but one he plays off of. This was and remains a common practice.
Quoting Ludwig V
Perhaps, but it may be that it is a mistake to not read into him enough. One is easily fooled by his apparent simplicity and straight forward writing style. Xenophon was once widely read but fell out of favor. Machiavelli was an exception. A great admirer of Xenophon. Both are strategic writers. Xenophon has more recently received renewed interest and attention. One area of focus is his use of humor and irony.
Quoting Ludwig V
Of some other kind then? From the IEP:
Quoting Ludwig V
I agree. As I pointed out from his book on horsemanship he says that the horseman should leave the training to others, but the analogy between the horse (Xanthippe) and the rider (Socrates) along with the problem of educating horses and wives holds. Antisthenes' challenge to Socrates was with regard to educating her. Socrates does not answer and tacitly affirms that she is:
My suggestion is he does not answer because he cannot educate her. If they, horses and wives, are not first broken they cannot be educated.
Quoting Ludwig V
This is one thing you don't doubt. I agree. Having fought this battle many times over the years I now usually leave it to others.
Quoting Ludwig V
Or as Xenophon might have it, a wife to water. In the Oeconomicus he also makes the uses the analogy of horses and wives.
This reminds me of Foucault, who speaks of the "art of partnership" in his Care of the Self. Foucault traces the changing ideas about marriage from the Classical writers to contemporary thinkers. One theme he develops is how the reciprocal nature of companionship leads to its own recognition of the "solitary" as a matter for care. Respect for the other strengthens the union in the business of the world as well as personally improving the life of the mate.
The book argues that the "art of partnership" has its own life in the different ethical standards it works within. But it does not live outside of those.
In terms of being a bachelor, Foucault depicts them as being less restrained than married men but still living in the fabric of the social reality continued through marital life. Not too many accounts of bachelorettes tripping the lights fantastic, however.
Thanks for the references. I knew it was in the NE but had forgotten which book(s).
Quoting Fooloso4
Well, it is certainly possible that this is a Taming of the Shrew scenario. I don't know the texts well enough to argue with you.
My most recent encounter with him was reading his Apology of Socrates and finding that Socrates, in that text, says that he was feeling his age and preferred to be executed by the Athenians rather than endure the long, horrible process of dying of old age. Very different from the flim-flam that Plato treats us to. Of course, the two explanations are not totally incompatible. But the down-to-earth attitude of Xenophon's account seems to me to fit well with the Anabasis - just as the high-falutin attitude of Plato's is entirely typical of his writing. Not enough to contradict you, but enough to explain why I'm sceptical.
Quoting Banno
Do you mean that there is no doubt that Xanthippe existed? I don't know what the evidence is, I'm afraid. It is true that no-one questions it. But if it just rests on Xenophon's account, some scepticism is not unjustified.
Quoting Paine
I like the idea of an art of partnership. But the themes you mention seem to me to be more about what partnership should be than what it is. Would that be unfair?
Quoting Paine
Yes, if I've understood this right, the life of the unmarried (in the traditional view) does seem to be going on in the context of the family, hence the married life of others; it is also regarded as a stage of life, with the expectation that marriage will supervene at some point in the not-too-distant future. No doubt that was the reality for many, but one wonders whether it was for all. But then, if those who didn't fit the pattern were marginalized and forgotten, it would simply demonstrate how powerful the orthodox pattern was.
Results do vary. I have had enough good fortune to say it is true. I have had enough bad fortune to deeply appreciate what "lack of care" is like. One of the virtues of Foucault's book is that he constantly attends the consequences of things going south.
There is that matter of expectation to consider regarding bachelors' options, but one interesting element of Foucault's analysis is that couples have more power than singles in shaping the possibilities in particular places. Having patrons or an institution to help a single makes a big difference.
No.
Quoting Ludwig V
Just that.
And, at least in the case of the Phaedo, unwanted.
I think this should be looked at in light of Socrates' megalegoria, his "big talk". The Athenians intend to punish him, but in response he is in effect claiming they are doing him a favor by his not having to suffer from old age. But not everyone suffers from old age and there is no indication of decline in the case of Socrates. If there is to be a decline it will be at some time in the future, perhaps many years in the future. He also mentions being wasted by disease, which can occur at any age.
Both Plato's and Xenophon's Socrates look forward to his death.
That's perfectly true. What's interesting is the different take on the trial.
I sympathize with him. Seventy was a great age in those days. It is still well over the hill, and for most, in sight of the end. One does get more concerned and pessimistic about one's health as the years tick by.
Plato's Socrates is the founding myth of philosophy. Naturally, Plato smoothed out, - tidied up - the story and, equally naturally, I like anything that gives me a sense of something more real. Xenophon gives me that sense. So does the scene with Xanthippe at the trial.
As I said before, it's perfectly possible - even likely - that Socrates did what he did for both reasons. After all, given that they were very likely to impose impossible conditions on him even if they didn't kill him, it was win/win. It was a great opportunity to send his message to the city, and even to posterity and he wasn't that bothered about staying alive.
PS. As an example of Plato's editing of the story, why don't you read the end of the Phaedo and then look up the symptoms of hemlock poisoning?
Otherwise, by your account, Socrates actively sort out her company. Xanthippe may have been making the point that Socrates would have no further opportunity to educate his friends after the hemlock, perhaps in an attempt to have him make an effort to save himself.
Seventy isn't that bad...
Take care that it really is parsley...
I think that too. In this case however, anyone who has been introduced to philosophy can tell the article is silly, exposition was never needed.
It may be that her reputation for being difficult is due entirely to Xenophon. I don't know why he might do this. With regard to the scene in Plato's Phaedo, it may be that Socrates no longer wanted her present simply because she had become distraught. We do not know how long she had been there before this or what their private conversation was like. The comment: "you know her" (60a) might be taken in different ways. This is the only mention of her in Plato's dialogues.
I'll leave that up to the reader to decide. Opinions vary.
Hmm. I wonder if this is more about Plato than Socrates?
Interesting. Thanks for the discussion with .
Socrates did have a young child when he was put to death. Neither Plato nor Xenophon give us any indication of failing health mental or physical. I am suspicious of Xenophon's claim about Socrates fear of failing health. This strikes me as cowardly. Elsewhere he talks about Socrates courage.
Xenophon himself lived to at least seventy-four. I am not aware of any account of him suffering any of the things he attributed to Socrates fearing.
I'm not sure that you mean by "this". For me, what is most interesting is the difference between two representations of the same event. Assuming that neither side is lying, but that both are selecting, we might expect to get a more balanced view of what actually happened.
Quoting Fooloso4
This takes us to the heart of the euthanasia issue. I'm with Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations. I hope I will have the courage to recognize when my time is up; I would welcome the opportunity to choose to make a dignified exit. There is something cowardly about clinging desperately on to the last shreds of life, though I admit that from another perspective all we can ever do is postpone death. But this may only be the result of my life experience.
Given that Socrates was actually in good health, you may be right. But what were the real likely outcomes of the trial?
Socrates gives something of an answer in the Crito, but frames it in the context of his violation of his (implicit) contract with the Laws. But I think it was unrealistic to think that this accusation and this trial could possibly be the end of the matter. The trial was the result of a long persecution, as Socrates tells us in the Apology; that would not have ended. Exile would not have resolved the issue, especially when he started practising his philosophy in the place he was exiled from or even when his reputation followed him. (He talks about having to constantly move on from one city to another.)
Socrates frames his questioning process as a collaborative exploration in which each participant helps the other(s). But it is not difficult to see that they might see the process as entirely combative and even dishonest (for goodness sake, we all know what piety or courage is, even if we can't define it!). That's the heart of the problem.
Quoting Fooloso4
Perhaps. I think it is more complicated than that. Plato wants to present an inspiring scene (or version of the scene). The philosopher meets his end with calm and courage. Xanthippe disrupts that, but, in the presentation, reminds us that this is the scene of a disaster. By being escorted away, she is prevented from disrupting the project. Whether we see that as a rather brutal exclusion of his wife or a protection of Socrates is another matter.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes. It seems to me that there is a great deal to be said for Xanthippe's bad temper. He irritated everyone else, why would he not irritate his wife? All that time spent in futile debate with strangers, when he could be earning a living. For Xanthippe, that would not have been a marginal issue. How did Socrates pay the bills? Though if there were two women in his life (Myrto), perhaps her issue with him was simpler than that. We'll never really know.
Don't get me wrong. Plato succeeded in creating a story which has turned out to be the founding myth of philosophy. It was the first philosophical text I ever read, and still works well with beginning students. It's just that it would not be philosophical to refrain from exploring what a less sympathetic stance would look like.
There is a correlation in Laws, where the qualifications for a suitable bride is discussed:
Quoting Plato, Laws, Bk 6, 772D
The matter of a union beneficial to the City is discussed as a balance of dispositions of the couple as well as the development of the children:
The limits of legislation noted here is quite different from the language of the Republic. It does echo the concern for the children's well-being in Phaedo. It also points to the threshold separating the public and private aspects of marriage addressed by the OP.
AN interesting quote. It does indeed point to the threshold between public and private aspects, or at least between what should be prescribed and what left up to the parties. (I'm not sure exactly what you mean by the reference to the OP.)
However, Plato also sticks to one of his fundamental principles here:-
It's one thing to recommend marrying prudently or at least taking prudence into account. But it's quite another to prioritize the "city" in making the decision.
There are different ways to represent an event. Neither of them is writing history in the modern sense. Aristotle tells us that:
(Poetics 1451b)
Plato and Xenophon are both concerned with the truth of the matter. The truth of what actually happened does not lie in the particulars of the event. More generally what is represented is the character of Socrates, the philosophical way of life, and the tension between the city and the philosopher.
We should also consider an author's audience, who he is addressing. Plato and Xenophon are not simply relating events, they are giving a defense of the Socratic way of life to an audience that may include members of the jury who are hostile to Socrates or ambivalent about their decision, and those who may be attracted to philosophy but were concerned about the city's hostility to it.
Xenophon begins his Apology:
It should be noted that Xenophon relies on the testimony of Hermogenes. Xenophon's Memorabilia is also about the trial. He begins:
Here he speaks in his own name. The tone of the work is quite different. With regard to old age Socrates councils:
(Memorabilia, 2)
The irony, of course, is that Socrates himself suffered censure. If he had not been convicted would this concern with his possible decline have been at issue? If so, then at what age does it become an issue?
Quoting Ludwig V
In both Plato's and Xenophon's Apology Socrates refuses to allow his friends to pay a penalty. Socrates refused this option because do so would be an admittance of guilt. The larger concern for Socrates was not his own fate but the fate of philosophy.
Quoting Ludwig V
Socrates is referring to Aristophanes comic play "The Clouds". There is not indication that at the time it amounted to more than a few good laughs. Metetus, Anytus, and Lycon brought changes 24 years later in order to serve Anytus' political ambitions. During that time Socrates continued to live unimpeded.
Quoting Ludwig V
And seasoned professionals as well. It really is remarkable how much attention is paid to Plato today.
Plato, who Midgley says:
had, as is evident from the passages you quoted, a far more penetrating, encompassing, and public minded notion of marriage then Midgley gives him credit for.
In the words of another bachelor:
(Nietzsche. Zarathustra, XX).
It seems to me that the acknowledgement of not being able to explain the peculiar alchemy that brings a benefit (both publicly and privately) to children speaks to an awareness counted by Midgley to be a terra incognita for bachelors like Plato.
Quoting Ludwig V
The City has the prerogative to expect that from citizens. There is a tension in Plato about how love and friendship occur within this prerogative. The personal dynamic seen in Phaedrus and Symposium is absent in Laws except as horizons.
Observing this tension caused me to recommend The Care of the Self to the discussion. As a "history of philosophy", Foucault directly addresses how ideas about marriage changes through different articulations. It is a condition with a history and future challenges.
Perhaps so. At least it seems that he is acknowledging that such alchemy exists. Though quite a lot of his argument here is prudential rather than principled.
Quoting Paine
I wouldn't have objected to that difference, since they are clearly focusing on one or the other. I know very little about the details of the Laws. More or less by accident, I do know that his treatment of atheists does not suggest any respect for individuals. Neither does the Republic. I have a feeling that he didn't recognize that society is for the benefit of the individuals comprising it, not the other way about and I mind a great deal about that.
Quoting Paine
Yes, that is important. Arguably, we should never talk about marriage simpliciter, but always marriage in its social context - and even then should generalize cautiously.
Yes, that's right. Plato's Socrates says that he doesn't fear death because nothing can harm a good person. I understand the argument, but I don't put any stock in it.
Quoting Fooloso4
There are two possibilities. It becomes an issue when others use one's age to marginalize one's opinion. It also becomes an issue, but rather later, when one's decline actually sets in. No fixed age.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, but the laughs are at the expense of the sophists and Socrates is made out to be one. Doctrines which he did not hold are put into his mouth and mocked. Are you saying that Socrates was not maligned?
What I am saying it that the trail was not
Quoting Ludwig V
As to him being maligned. What is clear is that Aristophanes lumps Socrates with the sophists. Plato distances Socrates from the sophists in some respects, but also leads us to question in what ways they do not differ. The sophists were a diverse group. Note that in the trilogy of related dialogues Sophist, Statesman, Theaetetus we might expect the third to be Philosopher. Why is there no dialogue Philosopher? The Sophist asks "what is the sophist?" and the statesman "what is the statesman?", but the Theaetus asks "what is knowledge?". It is up to us to ask "what is the philosopher?"
Malign or align?
I like to imagine that Socrates enjoyed the play. Recognizing it as both a serious challenge and appreciating the playful humor.
The dialogues are a far cry from stating "All men are created equal." There are many contested "histories" looking into how that talk came about. The dialectic did not start there.
But I disagree with saying that the benefits of individuals were not of paramount concern.
The opening dispute in the Republic is over whether the administration of justice is an arbitrary rule disguised as a universal truth. The model of the good city is built from the analogy of a person living the best possible life, not the other way around.
The limits to our knowledge of the Good expressed in the Republic are echoed in the Laws.
The discussion of pleasure in the Philebus is centered on the intersection of universal conditions and the experience of an individual human being.
The resistance to the philosophers as an assault upon traditional values was expressed in many different ways by different authors at the time. Talk about educating children was itself found to be offensive. The Meno gives a taste of that.
My two drachmas. Er, four, to be exact.
In a sense, you are right, and Socrates doesn't explicitly say that it is. He does say that his hardest task is not to refute that actual accusations, but hard to remove the effects of what people have been saying about him for a long time. Sorry, I wasn't careful enough in what I said. Quoting Fooloso4
Both, I would say, depending on your point of view. Of course the real situation - even what little we know about it - is more complicated than that. But Socrates' description is in a specific situation focusing on the effects on the jury and his task defending himself.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't rule out Socrates enjoying it - as a caricature. But a caricature is not necessarily harmless.
Yes. Arguably, that was Plato's big mistake. The relationship between part and whole is quite different in the two cases. He assumed it was the same.
Quoting Paine
Well, it was, in many ways. But the assault did not come only from philosophy. Exactly how important other factors (such as the rise of the Persian Empire or the effects of overseas trade &c.) were is hard to determine.
Are you saying that all of those points support any particular conclusion?
This was not something to be addressed in a court of law. His way of life was his defense of his way of life. He identifies what he actually does as the real source of his reputation:
(20d)
He goes on to talk about the oracle at Delphi. Socrates' irony should not be overlooked. He is on trial defending himself against charges of impiety and he tells a story of how he set out to refute the oracle (21c). He does this by refuting everyone who had a reputation for being wise.
In addition, he changes what the oracle said:
(21c)
The oracle did not say that Socrates was the wisest, it said that no one was wiser, that is, that others might be as wise as him.
Quoting Ludwig V
It runs much deeper than a caricature. The first problem taken up at the beginning of the Sophist is not the identity of the sophist but the identity of the philosopher. At the start of the dialogue Theodorus calls the Stranger "a real philosopher". Socrates responds:
(216c)
The philosopher appears to be what he is not. If the Stranger is a philosopher then he may appear to be what he is not. It is only by successfully identifying the philosopher that we can identify the imitator. Socrates then asks if the sophist, statesman, and philosopher are one or two or three. (217a)
There are problems with making the argument that justice is the same in the individual and the city. My point is that the individual is seen as being made up of components that have different means and ends. A consistent theme throughout the Dialogues is that the best relationship amongst these parts is the source of virtue and true happiness. The pursuit of that relationship is deemed more worthy than the expression of traditional norms.
And so we have Socrates goading Antyus:
Quoting Meno, 94C
There are different respects in which something can be the same. Plato was well aware that the politics of the soul and the politics of the city are not the same in all respects. This difference is central to the problem of justice. The freedom of the philosopher in the city is not the same as freedom from internal discord. The philosopher is by his philosophical nature not part of but apart from and at odds with the city. This is what is at play in the definition of justice as "minding your own business". In order for the philosopher to mind his own business he is forced to mind the business of the city because the city will not allow him to philosophize, as is evident in Socrates own case. It is only when the philosophers rule and take on the business of the city that the city stays out of his business.
In the Crito Plato asks whether we belong to the city, whether it and its laws are our master. Through the laws the city answers that we do belong to the city and it and its laws are our master. But the argument is full of holes. It is, as Socrates says:
(44c)
The opinions of the best people may be at odd with the opinion of the laws and city. In addition, the citizens of the Athenian democracy, that is, the multitude, are the very ones whose opinions Socrates scorns.
Quoting Fooloso4
But the city has no business of its own, or rather the business of the city is the sum of everybody's business. So when the philosopher takes on the business of the city, he takes on the business of everybody. That's because each person's business is dependent on other people's business and other people's business depends on each person's business. Interdependence, not agglomeration. This applies also to individuals and their parts.
He thinks that analysing something consists entirely of taking it pieces, and doesn't realize that it is necessary to understand the relationship between them. Agglomeration is all he knows.
Had you thought what life would be like for the ordinary people in his city? It's a tyranny. From their point of view, it would be a Machiavellian society run by force and deception. It could count as a benevolent tyranny if only he could think of how things would look from the point of view of the subject citizens. But he can't do that, because he can't recognize most of them as people, because the elements of people are not people and he's stuck in his analogy. The relationship between a citizen and the city is not like the relationship between someone's appetites and them.
He seduces us by telling the story from a stand-point of someone who is not a citizen of his city and focusing on the philosopher, so we imagine his city from the point of view of the philosopher and we follow his point of view. But the people who live in the city have their own points of view and that matters more than Plato's greater good.
Quoting Paine
And does Socrates/Plato know who the best people are? He doesn't even trust his own philosophers, since he expects to foist his "noble lie" (a mistranslation if ever there was one) even on them.
Quoting Fooloso4
True There might indeed be others as wise as him, but only if they know that they don't know. But they don't know that, so they are less wise than him. And has he spoken to everyone, to make sure that there is no-one apart from him who knows that they don't know?
The business of the city, over and above that of the citizens, is the good of the whole. This is why the philosopher, contrary to his own interests, is compelled to return to the cave.
Quoting Ludwig V
Here too it is the good of the whole and not the sum of the parts.
Quoting Ludwig V
Just the opposite. It is question of who or what rules. In the just city and soul reason rules. In other cities and souls some other part, spirited or appetitive, leads.
Quoting Ludwig V
First, the city in speech is intended to make it easier to see what justice is. It is not intended to be a blueprint for an actual city. Such a city is neither possible nor desirable. More on that in a moment. Second, the ruling class, followed by the spirited, are the least free. The appetitive class is the most free to mind its own business.
So why so much time and effort painting the picture of a city that is neither possible nor desirable? Because, contrary to some interpretations, the argument is anti-ideological. The first city that Socrates makes is rejected as too austere. It is, Glaucon complains, a city fit for pigs. (372b) And so, Socrates revises it to make a city more suitable for human beings by conventional standards. In other words, we cannot start with a city as it should be, even if that is what is best. We must start with human beings as they are. Analogously, we cannot start with human beings as they should be ideally if they are to be the best human beings, but with human beings as they are.
The question of what it would take for a city or soul to be truly just leads to consideration of both the possibility and desirability of such a city or soul. Actual cities and souls, even the best of them, must be a compromise. But the city Socrates makes as a compromise with its luxuries and relishes is still not a city we would wish to live in. It is, in fact, in some ways a less desirable city then the first city.
Quoting Ludwig V
You have conflated two very different things, the people of an actual city and the mythological philosophers of the Republic. It is not that he does not trust these philosophers, it is that in order for them to become the guardians of the city as part of their education they must believe the story. The truth is, all societies have their stories, their myths, their lies.
Quoting Ludwig V
This is how the term is translated in most, including what are generally considered our best translations. While it is true that the term lie is not found in that phrase, it is preceded by:
the reference is to 382a
(https://alexpriou.substack.com/p/platos-republic-in-its-thucydidean context)
I feared we might end up with a discussion that is more than I can handle right now. I would have to re-read the Republic first in any case. Some comments:-
Quoting Fooloso4
I hope I never accused you of being idiosyncratic or distorting anything. I thought it was a question of how we interpret the text. But it is true that the line between interpreting the text and what the text actually says is uncomfortably fine. Which is not to say that this interpretation is not of great interest, though I think you will admit it is not the traditional interpretation, or at least not the interpretation I was given when I learnt about all this.
On the question of the translation "noble lie", I knew, of course that it is the standard translation. I was questioning whether it was appropriate. There is a case for it, especially in 382, justifying something useful if it is "serviceable" (in Burnet's translation). Whether, and how far, that argument works is the issue.
Quoting Fooloso4
I could agree with that.
I'm not sure about the relationship between justice in the ideal city and in actual cities. But you are right, that Plato's project is not to outline either an ideal or an actual one. It is stated, for example, in 382:-
Part of the project (though not explicitly stated) is to provide a diagnosis of the various deviant forms of the city, which he tracks back to dominance by a faction other than the rational one. What he has got right here is that when things go wrong, it is because the city is dominated by a faction.
But my objections, I would think, go deeper than that. To start with, he posits a parallel (analogy) between the structure of the person and that of the city. Each has an appetitive element &c. But his analysis is presented as if were a dissection. But insofar as it is correct, or not wrong, it is not a dissection. It is not a question of parts parts of the city or parts of the person. Even it were, the relationship between a city and its citizens and a person and their parts (I'm thinking mainly of physical parts here) is not the same. I'm not sure how far the theory of Forms is involved in this, but it seems plausible to suppose that it is.
Quoting Fooloso4
The parts of a person are not people and have no rights of their own. I am obligated to my body, not for its own sake, but for my sake. The parts of a city are people and they do have rights of their own. The city is obligated to its people, for their own sake, not merely for the role they play in society. There is no business of the city over and above the good of its citizens. If it cannot maintain or improve that, it has no business.
Here's the thing. Each person (even, I think, on Plato's own account) is complete, with an element (if a weak one) of reason, "thumos" and appetite. So the city cannot (without injustice) treat anyone as if they were pure appetite or pure anything else.
Quoting Fooloso4
What matters more is the system and how it works - or, better, how the citizens (including the rulers) make it work.
Yes, but the "traditional" interpretation continues to change. Two quick examples of recent changes. There is now a greater awareness and serious attention to what the Phaedrus calls logographic necessity (264b). The dialogues are not doctrines surrounded by window dressing. The dramatic setting and action are important, not to be ignored or abstracted from when Plato is discussed in terms of theories and doctrines. There is also a shift in attention from the supposed period during which a dialogue was written to the dramatic time in which the dialogue takes place. Perhaps most significantly, consideration should be given to the fact that the Parmenides takes place when Socrates was young. Typically the focus is on whether this is a middle or late period dialogue with the assumption that this marks a change in Plato's views of the Forms. Rather than a change in Plato's view, the dramatic setting implies that what Plato has Socrates say about Forms in the dialogues was from early on informed by what he learned from Parmenides in that imaginary dialogue.
Quoting Ludwig V
If noble lie is accepted as the correct translation then the issue is whether and why such a lie is needed.
Quoting Ludwig V
I do not see it as "the theory of forms" but as the problem of knowledge of justice, or, rather our lack of such knowledge. Unless what justice is is something known then we are in the realm of opinion. This is our natural starting point. The task then is to try and determine what seems to be the best opinion when it comes to matters of justice and the just life.
Quoting Ludwig V
If I understand you correctly the point is that there is no clear divisions. I agree with that, but I think Plato points to that problem rather than maintaining the divisions. A world of Forms is not the world we live in. A world populated by people who are either rational or spirited or appetitive is not the world we live in. Our world is, as Socrates says, messy, things are mixed and blended.
Quoting Ludwig V
He is, of course, speaking metaphorically. But we are often at odds with ourselves. If I want to be healthy I should not sit on the couch eating cake. I might claim that I am free to do this or not do it, and even though there is a part of me that does not want to do it, I may end sitting on the couch eating cake anyway.
Quoting Ludwig V
That is the view of modern liberalism. We might endorse and defend this view, but it is a matter of political philosophy not a matter of fact or even settled agreement. It is not a one way street. There are things we owe to the city.
Quoting Ludwig V
As individuals? What stands as the good of the people? What I might regard as good for me might not be what you regard as good for you.
I'm all in favour of that. I was delighted when that approach began, though I have lost touch somewhat with how it has developed. It was a relief to be relieved of the chronology question. It was never clear enough to be helpful and the arguments for it were always suspiciously circular.
Quoting Fooloso4
Well, that goes at least part of the way towards what I'm hammering at.
Quoting Fooloso4
No, it's not that simple. We have to re-calibrate our view of Plato's view of the value of truth. You might say it is a welcome element of pragmatism, but that implies quite a change.
Quoting Fooloso4
I'm not sure I quite understand that. I think that the criteria for a just society will not be the same as the criteria for a just person. I think that the analogy between society and people is tempting, but radically misleading - just as the analogy of the ship of state is tempting but misleading.
Quoting Fooloso4
Tell me about it. But if there is a part of me that wants to do it, and another part that does, I am not in conflict with myself, and the problem is misrepresented. Although the temptation to describe the unwanted behaviour as not really me is almost irresistible.
Quoting Fooloso4
Sure. But the city as an institution has neither heart nor soul of its own; it is what it is because of the people who live in and by it. People are an end in themselves; the city is not, nor is any other social institution.
Quoting Fooloso4
What stands as the good of the people is a difficult question. I have another - what good is a good of the people that benefits no-one? Can anything that benefits only some of the people count as the good of the people?
It can be better for one of us to die - even unwillingly - if it saves many other lives. But that's not the real problem. The puzzle is why people will sometimes put the good of the city above their own or anyone else's good.
What I admit is a difficult problem that people often identify with an institution, so that they feel that they have benefited if the institution benefits. It's not exactly selfish, but it's not exactly altruistic either. Yet it seems to be an inescapable part of living in a society. The idea that we can have a neat division between individual rights and obligations and the rights and obligations of an institution is quite wrong, because we are inherently social creatures. Plato's argument - and I think the standard argument in ancient Greece - was that we cannot be self-sufficient, but it is more than that.
I do not think it is a question of the value of truth but of the problem of certain political truths around the natural interest in what one's own versus those of the city. The truth may be that about certain things at certain times sometimes it is better to lie. It is not simply a matter of pragmatism but of the good.
Quoting Ludwig V
That may be, but if we do not know what justice is in the one and the other we cannot say what the criteria should be. When Socrates suggestion that:
my response is: perhaps not! The opposite is likely to be the case. Unless we are very unjust we are likely to encounter more injustice in the city than in ourselves.
Quoting Ludwig V
Do you mean another part that does not? In that case you both want to do it and not do it. Isn't that a conflict?
Quoting Ludwig V
In line with the question of noble lies consider allegiance to the fatherland and/or mother earth. Patriots consider their state or country or homeland as more than just an institution. It is their own.
Quoting Ludwig V
The noble lie is a solution to this puzzle. People come to believe that the good of the city is their own good. All one big happy family.
Well, I don't subscribe to Kant's view. I guess it depends on circumstances, with a bias towards telling the truth.
Quoting Fooloso4
"Myth" is complicated. For me, a myth is a story that has acquired so much significance that it no longer matters much whether it is true or false. Yes, every society has those.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, it is. The idea of separate parts is a way of dissociating and avoiding it. But what is needed is a resolution of the conflict or at least a way of living with it.
Quoting Fooloso4
Ah, yes, so they do. But it too often means very undesirable things, such as thinking that behaviour that would be immoral between individuals is ok between cities. Or thinking that criticism of one's city is always to be rejected. It isn't necessarily a good thing.
Quoting Fooloso4
But is it? Anyway, their reason for believing that is not true - i.e. a bad reason.
What is at issue is the education of the guardians. It consists of gymnastics for the body, the proper kind of music to moderate their spiritedness, and the noble lie. They must believe that the good of the city is their own good if they are to protect it even if they die doing so. It there reason for believing is not true that is an indication that a lie is needed. A mercenary will only fight if it benefits them.
Why doesn't he worry about the education of everyone else?
Quoting Fooloso4
The best way - and the only safe way - to get them to believe that the good of the ciry is their own good is to ensure that the good of the city really is for their own good.
Quoting Fooloso4
No. It is an indication that reform of the city is needed. The lie just hides the problem.
Quoting Fooloso4
That makes them no different from the guardians.
Thanks for that snippet.
I wish we could know what lies behind it.
That's two different questions. Which do you want answered?