On Matter, Meaning, and the Elusiveness of the Real
As I sit here writing this, in the living room of my 13th-floor apartment, I wish I could share with you the absolute splendor of the view from the big windowpane on the opposite side of the room. The greens of the forest foliage stretch out before me until they reach the horizon, where they hand off their duties to the soft shades of blue and white of the sky and its clouds.
At this time of year, the sun makes the colors so vibrant that the whole scene feels almost alive. Theres a palpable suggestion in the experiencea quiet force that draws me in, ever deeper, until I become convinced that what Im seeing is the real world. After all, Im seeing it, so it has to be real, no?
But what if what I am seeing is not what is really there, but merely a representation, just like a portrait does not contain the real person? What if seeing is not believingbut merely interpreting?
The real question is: how serious am I willing to be in answering that? Because the answers might shatter everything I believe to be true. Every conviction I hold might be up for some serious maintenance.
It doesnt take deep insightthat would exclude me as it is reserved only for the best of thinkersto realize that this impression of reality, this unspoken suggestion that the scene is truly out there, doesnt actually travel from the outside to the inside. Theres no one out there suggesting anything to me. The suggestion arises from within. Its the ever-present inner voicethe elusive man within the manthat delivers the suggestion. Its a confabulated agency emerging from the workings of my brain, trying to convince me that what I experience is truly what is out there.
At this point, I have to resist the urge to chase that inner guy who just appeared on the scene. Who is he, and how does he fit into the puzzle? However interesting that question is, itll have to waitwe cant lose sight of our endeavor.
If the suggestion is entirely an internal process, then were left with a harder question: what sparked it? Something must have triggered the processsome form of input. So what, then, is out there? Perhaps its better to speak of a message being received. But who or what is the sender?
I see green foliage and a blue sky. But does it make any sense to say there was ever a message sent by "foliage", or by "blue"? No, it doesnt. These concepts only exist internallyand only after the message has been received.
And so, since any concept or idea of the external can only manifest after reception, there can never be direct contact between the internal me and the external sender. My understanding of the external is thus not reality itself, but an abstractionan idea constrained by the nature of the message. I can never know who or what the sender truly is.
However, reality includes a piece of the puzzle that works in our favor: order. It turns out that reality is ordered. There are patterns and consistenciesrecurrences that make perception and interpretation possible in the first place.
Without order and repetition, there can be no message, no coherence, no experience to make sense of. And so, if something does appear meaningful to usif we feel as though something is being suggestedits only because there is enough order in the world to allow that suggestion to take shape. Patterns and repetitions are nothing more than expressions of ruleslaws of nature unfolding over time. In essence, we could say the sender is not a conscious agent, but rather a representation of the rulesthe underlying structure that makes the message possible at all.
In a way, we are not receivers of reality, but interpreters of regularityforever decoding the grammar of the world without ever seeing the author. In that light, reality speaks not with intention, but with structureand we, the interpreters, mistake the syntax for a voice.
So when I talk to you about what is out there, I know that youll interpret what I mean at some point to be matter, and at another point maybe youll understand it to be rules, depending on the level of abstraction requiredby my explanation, and by your level of understanding or interpretation. There doesnt seem to be a distinct boundary between the two. The fact is that when we talk about this, theres always a certain level of abstraction involved by necessity, because there is no direct contact with the external.
And when I talk to you about matter, I dont feel the need to explain what I mean. The word feels obvious. You know what matter is. You learned it in school. Youre made of it. You dont need to look it up. Youve seen pictures in science books, maybe even watched documentaries about how it's all just atoms and fields and particles buzzing about with some weird emptiness in between. Most of us, even those with only a vague interest in science, have picked up a mental image of matterand this image feels good enough.
But as soon as you try to define it, that confidence begins to slip.
I presume the meaning of matter is so culturally embedded and habituated that it feels obviousan amorphous, self-evident concept directly loaded with meaning, without the scaffolding of definition. That presumption is convenient. Because if you asked me to explain matter, Im almost certain Id produce a mess of circular definitions and vague metaphors. A word salad. Or, to borrow a line from former U.S. President Joe Biden: You know the thing!
Is it atoms? Well, yes. But those are made of smaller particlesprotons, neutrons, and electrons. Are those the matter, then? Maybe. But then what about quarks and gluons and the fields that make up those particles? What about energy? What about the Higgs field? What about quantum states, or wavefunctions? Does matter collapse into some mysterious math soup when you zoom in far enough?
Or worse, does it disappear entirely?
Because if it does, then whats left of the thing you were so sure was real? You can say the word matter, but what are you pointing to, exactly?
And now weve stumbled upon one of the central confusions of communication: we use words like real, physical, and objective, without having any rock-solid idea what they refer to. They work well enough for practical purposesdont touch the stove, its matter and its hot. But when we slow things down and look closely, the bedrock starts to look like smoke. There is no stable ground to land on. The closer we try to get to the thing itself, the more it unravels into interpretation, probability, model, rule.
Still, the reason we get away with this vagueness is that matter is treated as a kind of baselinean unquestioned reference point for what is real. When we say something exists, we usually mean it exists materially. Matter is what things are made of; it is the assumed substance of reality itself. So in everyday use, to speak of matter is to speakimplicitlyof what is.
Despite all this vagueness, we keep using the word. Matter. With conviction.
This chapter is about that strange conviction. Not to dissolve it, but to understand what holds it together.
The Circular Mirror
But if we ever want to gain any deeper insight into what is real, we will inevitably have to examine what this real is supposedly made of. And this is where the simple confidence behind words like matter begins to break down. Because in treating matter as the substance of reality, and in turn defining reality by its materiality, we complete a neat but circular loop:
Matter is what is real; real is what is made of matter.
The two ideas prop each other up like mirrors facing one anotheroffering the illusion of solidity while anchored only in the assumption of each other.
The Illusion of Shared Meaning
Language is our primary tool for sharing thoughts. We speak, write, gesture, trusting that our words will carry meaning from one mind to another. Often, this works well enough.
You say tree, and I imagine something tall, rooted, with leaves. You say anger, and I recall a set of feelings and expressions. We appear to be aligned.
But this apparent alignment rests on a fragile, often invisible, presumption: that we are all referring to the same thing when we use the same word.
This is the illusion of shared meaning.
The fragility of this illusion becomes clear the moment ambiguity creeps in. One persons tree may be a birch, anothers a tropical palm. One persons anger may involve shouting, anothers silent withdrawal. When the stakes of interpretation rise, we find ourselves needing to clarify, define, refine. We offer examples, analogies, exclusions. Each clarification reveals more cracksmore ways the original word could be taken, more meanings nested inside meanings.
What was once a single shared word becomes a conversation about the word itself. Communication shifts from expressing a thought to negotiating the boundaries of what the thought could mean. We add layers of specification, but no matter how much detail we append, there is never a guarantee that we have landed on a truly shared conceptonly a version that seems pragmatically sufficient.
And even that is an assumption.
The very fact that we so often need to clarify, redefine, and restate is evidence that language is not a mirror of thought but a rough sketchlike a blueprint hand-drawn from memory, not a photograph. Each mind fills in the gaps differently.
When we say matter, or time, or justice, were not transferring some universal essence. Were offering a token of meaning based on personal history, cultural influence, and pragmatic use. The other person accepts that token and matches it to their own internal landscape. Meaning, then, is less a shared structure and more a tolerated overlapa fuzzy intersection we agree not to examine too closely. Communication proceeds only because we agree to treat that overlap as sufficienteven though we have no way of verifying how aligned our meanings actually are.
The Pragmatic Fantasy
This fragile, approximate nature of language shapes the way we build our understanding of reality. Our use of language enables us to construct what might be called a pragmatic fantasya model of reality that works well enough to build societies, conduct science, and write books like this one.
But its important to understand that this fantasy is not reality itself. Its a simulation. A collaborative approximation.
We dont know that the concept of matter maps onto anything ultimate or fundamental. What we know is that using this concept leads to working bridges, functioning smartphones, and testable predictions. And so we treat the word matter as if it refers to a solid, unquestionable entity. We build physics on it. We base metaphysics on it.
But in truth, what were working with is a tool, not a revelation.
This leads to a subtle but critical insight:
Agreement is not the same as understanding.
What we often take as mutual comprehension is sometimes just mutual conveniencea shared nod that bypasses the deeper question of whether our internal meanings truly align. Two people can use the same word, nod in shared confidence, and walk away believing they mean the same thingwhen in fact they dont. Theyve simply agreed to suspend the question of meaning long enough to get on with the task at hand.
This works. It keeps things moving. But it also means that pragmatism can operate even when the ground beneath it is fractured.
The illusion of shared understanding is often good enough to build on, but its still an illusion.
The Limits of Physics and Language
And yet, despite this semantic instability, we dont live in a fog. Our models work. Languageimperfect as it islets us probe deep into nature, build predictive systems, and construct formal descriptions of the world.
Nowhere is this more evident than in physics, where centuries of conceptual scaffolding have culminated in definitions that seem to reach beyond metaphor, into the structure of reality itself. To be fair, we can offer definitions. Physics today might tell us that matter is energy localized in excitations of fields, or that it is a particular configuration of mass-energy interacting through fundamental forces.
These definitions are not meaninglessthey work. They let us build machines, predict behavior, send rockets to Mars. But this is precisely the point: these are not descriptions of 'what is', but functional stories that work well enough for now. They belong not to the world-as-it-is, but to the ongoing human project of taming what we can never fully grasp.
This is how human cooperation thrives. By minimizing semantic friction, we get things done. But at the cost of depth. When we take agreement for granted, we lose sight of the cracks beneath our shared reality.
And when we finally stop to ask, What do we actually mean by this word?, the answers scatter.
Most of our most fundamental wordsbeing, thing, real, true, self, worldare never defined in everyday life. We inherit them. We intuit their use. We improvise meaning through context and feedback.
But rarely do we ask:
What does this word actually refer to beneath the hood of language?
This is not merely a convenient philosophical stanceits a structural inevitability. The very notion of something being external implies its separation from the internal field of perception and cognition. If what we perceive were identical to what exists out there, the distinction would collapse, making the terms meaningless. So we are left with projectionsinterpretive shadows, like those cast on the wall in Platos cave. Whatever the world may be in itself, our only access to it is through its filtered and restructured reflection in consciousness. This is not a flaw in our thinkingits the condition that makes thinking possible.
This is precisely when the instability we prefer not to face begins to show. We find that real is not a thing, but a consensus. That matter is not substance, but a conceptual placeholder. That shared understanding is often just synchronized guessing.
But we continue nonetheless. Because the illusion, somehow, delivers.
And maybe thats the most fascinating part: that something so abstract and uncertain can still be powerful enough to build rockets, define identities, and wage wars.
The Revolving Door of Thing and Meaning
Try to pin down what matter is, and you quickly find yourself caught in a loop. You say: Matter is the stuff things are made of. Okay, but what is stuff? What are things? These words refer to other words, other assumptions, never quite delivering on the promise of a stable concept. Its a linguistic Möbius striptwisting back onto itself with no clear inside or outside, no solid grounding.
We enter what Ill call the revolving door between things and meanings. When we try to grasp the realness of something, we look for its ingredients, its substratewe want to know what its made of. But before we can ask what something is made of, we need to know what the something even is. We need a concept for the thing, a mental boundary that gives it identity. Without that, the question dissolves into vagueness.
And to form that concept, we rely on an idea of what it means to be real. So we ask what makes a thing realonly to find that our answers once again lean on the idea of matter. And there it is: the circle closes. Matter is whats real, and real is whats made of matter.
Round and round.
Were not grappling with reality directlywere orbiting it, using concepts that point to other concepts, hoping theyll eventually land on something solid. But concepts arent reality. Theyre mental scaffolding: useful, provisional, and ultimately self-referential. No matter how precisely we define or refine them, they remain abstractionsmaps drawn in our heads, not the terrain itself.
And so the more rigorously we chase the essence of matter, the more we expose the emptiness of the chase. What we find isnt substance. Its structure. An agreement. A pattern of usage mistaken for contact with the real.
Nowhere is this more evident than in physicsthe most celebrated attempt to describe reality in precise terms. Physics has tried to define matter through models: particles, fields, waves, strings. But these are ultimately constructs.
No scientist has seen a quark. No one has touched an electromagnetic field. These concepts are inferred, modeled, and statistically validated. They work. They predict. But are they real?
What we call matter may simply be the name we give to the observed consistency in patterns that behave in certain ways. And that behavior is always interpretedthrough our senses, our instruments, our frameworks. All of which are shaped by perception and cognition.
In that light, perhaps matter isnt a thing in itself, but a kind of placeholdera token of successful compression. A conceptual interface. Much like icons on a desktop dont reveal the actual structure of computer files but instead offer useful metaphors for interacting with them, our idea of matter might function as a perceptual shorthand for navigating a deeper, unknowable substrate.
In that sense, matter is not what reality is made of. Its what our internal models say reality is made of. There is no ultimate thing behind the word matter, the idea of matter is an abstraction built atop abstractions. If we dig all the way down in search of something unambiguous, we may find only shifting probabilities, patterns of interaction, or even just equations.
What, then, does it mean for something to be real? Is the test of reality its perceptibility? Its consistency? Its usefulness in predictions?
Or are we simply projecting realness onto patterns we recognizeconstructing the world as a narrative that feels solid enough to walk around in?
You Know the Thing
So we return to Bidens mumble: You know the thing! It's funny because its vague. But its also profoundly honest.
Much of our language about reality is a performance of understanding. We gesture at the thing with confident words like matter, energy, substance. But when pressed to explain, we hesitate, defer, or spiral into jargon. We rely on shared illusionon the assumption that others know what we mean, and that we know what they mean.
But if were serious about understanding whats real, well have to drop the performance. Well have to admit were standing on metaphor, not bedrock.
And that might be the first real thing weve said.
At this time of year, the sun makes the colors so vibrant that the whole scene feels almost alive. Theres a palpable suggestion in the experiencea quiet force that draws me in, ever deeper, until I become convinced that what Im seeing is the real world. After all, Im seeing it, so it has to be real, no?
But what if what I am seeing is not what is really there, but merely a representation, just like a portrait does not contain the real person? What if seeing is not believingbut merely interpreting?
The real question is: how serious am I willing to be in answering that? Because the answers might shatter everything I believe to be true. Every conviction I hold might be up for some serious maintenance.
It doesnt take deep insightthat would exclude me as it is reserved only for the best of thinkersto realize that this impression of reality, this unspoken suggestion that the scene is truly out there, doesnt actually travel from the outside to the inside. Theres no one out there suggesting anything to me. The suggestion arises from within. Its the ever-present inner voicethe elusive man within the manthat delivers the suggestion. Its a confabulated agency emerging from the workings of my brain, trying to convince me that what I experience is truly what is out there.
At this point, I have to resist the urge to chase that inner guy who just appeared on the scene. Who is he, and how does he fit into the puzzle? However interesting that question is, itll have to waitwe cant lose sight of our endeavor.
If the suggestion is entirely an internal process, then were left with a harder question: what sparked it? Something must have triggered the processsome form of input. So what, then, is out there? Perhaps its better to speak of a message being received. But who or what is the sender?
I see green foliage and a blue sky. But does it make any sense to say there was ever a message sent by "foliage", or by "blue"? No, it doesnt. These concepts only exist internallyand only after the message has been received.
And so, since any concept or idea of the external can only manifest after reception, there can never be direct contact between the internal me and the external sender. My understanding of the external is thus not reality itself, but an abstractionan idea constrained by the nature of the message. I can never know who or what the sender truly is.
However, reality includes a piece of the puzzle that works in our favor: order. It turns out that reality is ordered. There are patterns and consistenciesrecurrences that make perception and interpretation possible in the first place.
Without order and repetition, there can be no message, no coherence, no experience to make sense of. And so, if something does appear meaningful to usif we feel as though something is being suggestedits only because there is enough order in the world to allow that suggestion to take shape. Patterns and repetitions are nothing more than expressions of ruleslaws of nature unfolding over time. In essence, we could say the sender is not a conscious agent, but rather a representation of the rulesthe underlying structure that makes the message possible at all.
In a way, we are not receivers of reality, but interpreters of regularityforever decoding the grammar of the world without ever seeing the author. In that light, reality speaks not with intention, but with structureand we, the interpreters, mistake the syntax for a voice.
So when I talk to you about what is out there, I know that youll interpret what I mean at some point to be matter, and at another point maybe youll understand it to be rules, depending on the level of abstraction requiredby my explanation, and by your level of understanding or interpretation. There doesnt seem to be a distinct boundary between the two. The fact is that when we talk about this, theres always a certain level of abstraction involved by necessity, because there is no direct contact with the external.
And when I talk to you about matter, I dont feel the need to explain what I mean. The word feels obvious. You know what matter is. You learned it in school. Youre made of it. You dont need to look it up. Youve seen pictures in science books, maybe even watched documentaries about how it's all just atoms and fields and particles buzzing about with some weird emptiness in between. Most of us, even those with only a vague interest in science, have picked up a mental image of matterand this image feels good enough.
But as soon as you try to define it, that confidence begins to slip.
I presume the meaning of matter is so culturally embedded and habituated that it feels obviousan amorphous, self-evident concept directly loaded with meaning, without the scaffolding of definition. That presumption is convenient. Because if you asked me to explain matter, Im almost certain Id produce a mess of circular definitions and vague metaphors. A word salad. Or, to borrow a line from former U.S. President Joe Biden: You know the thing!
Is it atoms? Well, yes. But those are made of smaller particlesprotons, neutrons, and electrons. Are those the matter, then? Maybe. But then what about quarks and gluons and the fields that make up those particles? What about energy? What about the Higgs field? What about quantum states, or wavefunctions? Does matter collapse into some mysterious math soup when you zoom in far enough?
Or worse, does it disappear entirely?
Because if it does, then whats left of the thing you were so sure was real? You can say the word matter, but what are you pointing to, exactly?
And now weve stumbled upon one of the central confusions of communication: we use words like real, physical, and objective, without having any rock-solid idea what they refer to. They work well enough for practical purposesdont touch the stove, its matter and its hot. But when we slow things down and look closely, the bedrock starts to look like smoke. There is no stable ground to land on. The closer we try to get to the thing itself, the more it unravels into interpretation, probability, model, rule.
Still, the reason we get away with this vagueness is that matter is treated as a kind of baselinean unquestioned reference point for what is real. When we say something exists, we usually mean it exists materially. Matter is what things are made of; it is the assumed substance of reality itself. So in everyday use, to speak of matter is to speakimplicitlyof what is.
Despite all this vagueness, we keep using the word. Matter. With conviction.
This chapter is about that strange conviction. Not to dissolve it, but to understand what holds it together.
The Circular Mirror
But if we ever want to gain any deeper insight into what is real, we will inevitably have to examine what this real is supposedly made of. And this is where the simple confidence behind words like matter begins to break down. Because in treating matter as the substance of reality, and in turn defining reality by its materiality, we complete a neat but circular loop:
Matter is what is real; real is what is made of matter.
The two ideas prop each other up like mirrors facing one anotheroffering the illusion of solidity while anchored only in the assumption of each other.
The Illusion of Shared Meaning
Language is our primary tool for sharing thoughts. We speak, write, gesture, trusting that our words will carry meaning from one mind to another. Often, this works well enough.
You say tree, and I imagine something tall, rooted, with leaves. You say anger, and I recall a set of feelings and expressions. We appear to be aligned.
But this apparent alignment rests on a fragile, often invisible, presumption: that we are all referring to the same thing when we use the same word.
This is the illusion of shared meaning.
The fragility of this illusion becomes clear the moment ambiguity creeps in. One persons tree may be a birch, anothers a tropical palm. One persons anger may involve shouting, anothers silent withdrawal. When the stakes of interpretation rise, we find ourselves needing to clarify, define, refine. We offer examples, analogies, exclusions. Each clarification reveals more cracksmore ways the original word could be taken, more meanings nested inside meanings.
What was once a single shared word becomes a conversation about the word itself. Communication shifts from expressing a thought to negotiating the boundaries of what the thought could mean. We add layers of specification, but no matter how much detail we append, there is never a guarantee that we have landed on a truly shared conceptonly a version that seems pragmatically sufficient.
And even that is an assumption.
The very fact that we so often need to clarify, redefine, and restate is evidence that language is not a mirror of thought but a rough sketchlike a blueprint hand-drawn from memory, not a photograph. Each mind fills in the gaps differently.
When we say matter, or time, or justice, were not transferring some universal essence. Were offering a token of meaning based on personal history, cultural influence, and pragmatic use. The other person accepts that token and matches it to their own internal landscape. Meaning, then, is less a shared structure and more a tolerated overlapa fuzzy intersection we agree not to examine too closely. Communication proceeds only because we agree to treat that overlap as sufficienteven though we have no way of verifying how aligned our meanings actually are.
The Pragmatic Fantasy
This fragile, approximate nature of language shapes the way we build our understanding of reality. Our use of language enables us to construct what might be called a pragmatic fantasya model of reality that works well enough to build societies, conduct science, and write books like this one.
But its important to understand that this fantasy is not reality itself. Its a simulation. A collaborative approximation.
We dont know that the concept of matter maps onto anything ultimate or fundamental. What we know is that using this concept leads to working bridges, functioning smartphones, and testable predictions. And so we treat the word matter as if it refers to a solid, unquestionable entity. We build physics on it. We base metaphysics on it.
But in truth, what were working with is a tool, not a revelation.
This leads to a subtle but critical insight:
Agreement is not the same as understanding.
What we often take as mutual comprehension is sometimes just mutual conveniencea shared nod that bypasses the deeper question of whether our internal meanings truly align. Two people can use the same word, nod in shared confidence, and walk away believing they mean the same thingwhen in fact they dont. Theyve simply agreed to suspend the question of meaning long enough to get on with the task at hand.
This works. It keeps things moving. But it also means that pragmatism can operate even when the ground beneath it is fractured.
The illusion of shared understanding is often good enough to build on, but its still an illusion.
The Limits of Physics and Language
And yet, despite this semantic instability, we dont live in a fog. Our models work. Languageimperfect as it islets us probe deep into nature, build predictive systems, and construct formal descriptions of the world.
Nowhere is this more evident than in physics, where centuries of conceptual scaffolding have culminated in definitions that seem to reach beyond metaphor, into the structure of reality itself. To be fair, we can offer definitions. Physics today might tell us that matter is energy localized in excitations of fields, or that it is a particular configuration of mass-energy interacting through fundamental forces.
These definitions are not meaninglessthey work. They let us build machines, predict behavior, send rockets to Mars. But this is precisely the point: these are not descriptions of 'what is', but functional stories that work well enough for now. They belong not to the world-as-it-is, but to the ongoing human project of taming what we can never fully grasp.
This is how human cooperation thrives. By minimizing semantic friction, we get things done. But at the cost of depth. When we take agreement for granted, we lose sight of the cracks beneath our shared reality.
And when we finally stop to ask, What do we actually mean by this word?, the answers scatter.
Most of our most fundamental wordsbeing, thing, real, true, self, worldare never defined in everyday life. We inherit them. We intuit their use. We improvise meaning through context and feedback.
But rarely do we ask:
What does this word actually refer to beneath the hood of language?
This is not merely a convenient philosophical stanceits a structural inevitability. The very notion of something being external implies its separation from the internal field of perception and cognition. If what we perceive were identical to what exists out there, the distinction would collapse, making the terms meaningless. So we are left with projectionsinterpretive shadows, like those cast on the wall in Platos cave. Whatever the world may be in itself, our only access to it is through its filtered and restructured reflection in consciousness. This is not a flaw in our thinkingits the condition that makes thinking possible.
This is precisely when the instability we prefer not to face begins to show. We find that real is not a thing, but a consensus. That matter is not substance, but a conceptual placeholder. That shared understanding is often just synchronized guessing.
But we continue nonetheless. Because the illusion, somehow, delivers.
And maybe thats the most fascinating part: that something so abstract and uncertain can still be powerful enough to build rockets, define identities, and wage wars.
The Revolving Door of Thing and Meaning
Try to pin down what matter is, and you quickly find yourself caught in a loop. You say: Matter is the stuff things are made of. Okay, but what is stuff? What are things? These words refer to other words, other assumptions, never quite delivering on the promise of a stable concept. Its a linguistic Möbius striptwisting back onto itself with no clear inside or outside, no solid grounding.
We enter what Ill call the revolving door between things and meanings. When we try to grasp the realness of something, we look for its ingredients, its substratewe want to know what its made of. But before we can ask what something is made of, we need to know what the something even is. We need a concept for the thing, a mental boundary that gives it identity. Without that, the question dissolves into vagueness.
And to form that concept, we rely on an idea of what it means to be real. So we ask what makes a thing realonly to find that our answers once again lean on the idea of matter. And there it is: the circle closes. Matter is whats real, and real is whats made of matter.
Round and round.
Were not grappling with reality directlywere orbiting it, using concepts that point to other concepts, hoping theyll eventually land on something solid. But concepts arent reality. Theyre mental scaffolding: useful, provisional, and ultimately self-referential. No matter how precisely we define or refine them, they remain abstractionsmaps drawn in our heads, not the terrain itself.
And so the more rigorously we chase the essence of matter, the more we expose the emptiness of the chase. What we find isnt substance. Its structure. An agreement. A pattern of usage mistaken for contact with the real.
Nowhere is this more evident than in physicsthe most celebrated attempt to describe reality in precise terms. Physics has tried to define matter through models: particles, fields, waves, strings. But these are ultimately constructs.
No scientist has seen a quark. No one has touched an electromagnetic field. These concepts are inferred, modeled, and statistically validated. They work. They predict. But are they real?
What we call matter may simply be the name we give to the observed consistency in patterns that behave in certain ways. And that behavior is always interpretedthrough our senses, our instruments, our frameworks. All of which are shaped by perception and cognition.
In that light, perhaps matter isnt a thing in itself, but a kind of placeholdera token of successful compression. A conceptual interface. Much like icons on a desktop dont reveal the actual structure of computer files but instead offer useful metaphors for interacting with them, our idea of matter might function as a perceptual shorthand for navigating a deeper, unknowable substrate.
In that sense, matter is not what reality is made of. Its what our internal models say reality is made of. There is no ultimate thing behind the word matter, the idea of matter is an abstraction built atop abstractions. If we dig all the way down in search of something unambiguous, we may find only shifting probabilities, patterns of interaction, or even just equations.
What, then, does it mean for something to be real? Is the test of reality its perceptibility? Its consistency? Its usefulness in predictions?
Or are we simply projecting realness onto patterns we recognizeconstructing the world as a narrative that feels solid enough to walk around in?
You Know the Thing
So we return to Bidens mumble: You know the thing! It's funny because its vague. But its also profoundly honest.
Much of our language about reality is a performance of understanding. We gesture at the thing with confident words like matter, energy, substance. But when pressed to explain, we hesitate, defer, or spiral into jargon. We rely on shared illusionon the assumption that others know what we mean, and that we know what they mean.
But if were serious about understanding whats real, well have to drop the performance. Well have to admit were standing on metaphor, not bedrock.
And that might be the first real thing weve said.
Comments (138)
Welcome to the forum, although I see you've been around for a while. This is a really good OP, although it's scope is too big for me to respond to it effectively. You've basically summarized all of metaphysics in one long post. Still, a couple of thoughts.
"What is real?" is a metaphysical question. It doesn't have a correct answer. Is the quantum wave function real? Of course it is. Of course it isn't. It all depends on where we stand, what perspective we take and that depends on the problem we are trying to solve.
What is matter? Matter is something that has the characteristic of mass. When you apply a force to something with mass, it accelerates. That's how you can tell.
What you are describing sounds like a social contract*1, in which what we both see is real, and what we individually imagine is ideal or unreal (or woo woo). Some of us prefer one or the other, or both Reality & Ideality. For Scientists & Materialists, seeing is believing. But for Philosophers & Spiritualists, imagining may be believable too. Yet, as various philosophers & scientists have noted : seeing is always interpreting*2. :smile:
*1. Shared reality refers to the perception that one's thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are aligned with those of another person or group. It's the sense that you and others experience the world in a similar way, leading to a feeling of connection and validation. This shared understanding can be about anything from trivial matters to fundamental beliefs, and it plays a significant role in social bonding and personal well-being.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=shared+reality
*2. In philosophy, the idea that "seeing is interpreting" suggests that our perception of the world is not a passive reception of raw sensory data, but rather an active process of making sense of that data based on prior knowledge, experiences, and expectations. We don't just see what is physically present; we interpret what we see based on our internal frameworks.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=philosophy+seeing+is+interpreting
Hello there, and thanks for your kind words.
I agree that there is a myriad of perspectives that we can take. I want to examine what these perspectives tell us not only about reality, but also about what false beliefs we have adopted in order to make sense of the world. I want to investigate how much bagage we can shed, before we get lost or loose ourselves. And whatever the case might be, so far it looks like most of what we believe is simply a fairy tale.
Quoting T Clark
Now this is a problem, disguised as a party trick. When we talk about matter, we talk about something substancial. Yet, what you do here is defining matter as being completely described by the characteristic of mass. A characteristic is just a number with some corelations to other numbers (characteristics). So the whole concept of substancialtity gets lost in the process.
This is exacly what I am trying to get to: matter is a concept and therefor the whole of reality is conceptual. Not only in our head, not only in the way we perceive and interpret things, but from the outside as well as from the inside. The exterior reality has to be itself an expression of something even more fundamental. As far as I can understand, that something is the principle of the laws of nature and the natural order. I'm still thinking through that one.
Yes, in subsequent chapters I will illustrate that the social contract is a conditio sine qua non. Without this, no 2 individual entities can relate to one another. The danger for misunderstanding is always there, but so is the opportunity for refinement. In the end, the result will always be pragmatic, never ideal.
Idle question(s). 'Your context' does not provide any grounds to doubt "what is really there" and, in such a context, you're "seeing" is indubitable (pace Zhuangzi ... Descartes ... Kant ...) so that it makes most sense for (sober, awake, pragmatic) you to act accordingly.
NB: AFAIK, the real is ineluctable and therefore inevitably hazardous to everyone who neglects or ignores it.
Idealists don't play in traffic?
Won't find any in foxholes either. :smirk:
One, in fact, can live by bread alone a hell of a lot longer than one can live on faith alone. Why? Because the latter denies reality.
Metaphysics is the one philosophical subject that means the most to me. I have spent a lot of time thinking about it and have written about it on the forum too many times. I have a canned lecture - T Clark Explains Metaphysics. It goes like this - Yada, yada, yada - metaphysical statements are not true or false, they have no truth value - yada, yada, yada - R.G. Collingwood - yada, yada, yada - most disagreements here on the forum are caused by people not recognizing the difference between metaphysics and science - yada, yada, yada.
The perspectives we take don't tell us anything about reality - they create reality. Define it. Are hallucinations real? Well, maybe a hallucinated elephant isn't a real elephant, but it's a real hallucination. And, yes, everything we believe is a story, but it's not a fairy tale. Some stories are true, or at least useful.
Quoting Kurt
I put this in specifically to make my point about the difference between metaphysics and science. Science deals with things you can observe, measure, calculate e.g. matter. Scientific statements can be true or false. Metaphysics deals with things that can't be evaluated empirically. Metaphysical statements can't be true or false.
Quoting Kurt
Laws of nature are just as much stories as everything else. Actually - more so.
I agree. There is no such thing as truth. The best we can do is come to an agreement and call that "the truth". In actuality it's more like a placeholder, like a suspended version of truth.
Refutes itself.
Yes, because 'metaphysical statements' are themselves only, in effect, categorical interpretations of conceptual proposals about formal truth claoms or empirical truth claims.
Yes, in a way it does, but as I said: what we call truth is in fact a suspended medium. We call it truth but held to the light, we can see the cracks. We just choose not to do that for pragmatic reasons. And that is totally fine by me.
For the same reason we presume a difference between dogs and cats.
I didnt say there was no such thing as truth, I said metaphysical statements are not true or false.
Because its a useful distinction.
The metaphysics you said was neither true nor false?
Why not start with the premise that the world is pretty much just as it seems to be, and look for evidence to the contrary?
The Greek philosophers also entertained these arguments. They begin by questioning what appears indubitably obvious to all of us, namely, the reality of appearance. How do we know what amongst this flux of sensations is real? Bedrock real, indubitably so? Nowadays it's easy to sit at a computer and compose questions like these, but I sense the early philosophers asked these questions with a seriousness of intent and concentration that is not easily conveyed and that we don't appreciate. We only see more words - and then incorporate those words into our pragmatic fantasy.
Quoting Kurt
A comparable metaphor from another source might be the M?y? of Indian mythology. M?y? is a power that veils the true nature of reality, making the material world appear real and endowing it with a kind of intrinsic reality which it does not really possess. Why? Because reality includes the subject, which is not found amongst the panorama of phemomena, but is that to whom all of this appears and occurs. The nature of the subject - 'who am I?' - is understood to be the gordian knot, the unravelling of which dispels the power of m?y?.
Quoting Kurt
That's because our culture has defined reality in such a way that materialism seems to the only viable attitude. Criticisms of materialism seem inexorably to point towards a metaphysic, often somehow religious, which is not compatible with the mainstream analysis, the 'pragmatic fantasy' you describe. But the times are changing, and many voices, not all of them religious in any obvious way, are beginning to call that into question.
Including yours.
How can they do that? They construct the ladder from their senses to arrive at the conclusion their senses cannot be trusted. See the straight stick, see the crooked stick, trust enough on what we see, to understand what we see cannot be trusted.
Look around?
Who "constructs the ladder from their senses"? It's easy enough to understand which stick is straight, which crooked.
Maybe you're overthinking the problem.
No. As Ive said previously in this thread, its useful to be able to know the difference between a rock and the pain you feel when you drop it on your toe.
I will know the truth. Any being who cannot bear the truth is indeed unworthy.
My thinking is that, whatever the answers might be, they are the answer to how we come about. People say, "That steel isn't really solid. It's mostly empty space between nuclei and electrons, and the way electrons repel each other is what gives us the illusion of solidify." I say that's empty space between nuclei and electrons, and the way electrons repel each other is, is how solidity is accomplished. And whatever all the specifics are that explain the specifics of my existence are are just how my existence is accomplished. It doesn't matter. (I don't mean [I]matter[/I], I mean [I]matter[/I]. :grin:)
If there is no rock, only "sensations-of-rocK", as some are prone to supose, then is there is no difference between the pain and the sensation-of-rock, no?
Why not start with the premise that the world is pretty much just as it seems to be, and look for evidence to the contrary.
The world pretty much seems to have an in here and out there.
Since Descartes.
Why not start with the premise that the world is pretty much just as it seems to be, and look for evidence to the contrary?
Are you perhaps dropping too much acid?
Overwhelmingly, the world appears to do much as advertised.
When I was briefly swept up in associated New Age ideas and Theosophy this fact bothered me greatly.
Appeals to the supernatural lack direct empirical exemplars; one cannot simply point to observable cases in support. Instead, such appeals often proceed obliquely, through critiques of the epistemological limits of science or argument from hallucination or the inadequacies of a materialist/naturalist ontology. The strategy tends to rely on undermining the dominant framework, entering through a kind of philosophical back door, if you'll pardon the clumsy metaphor.
Spot on - see hereabouts.
"the Elusiveness of the Real" is pretty much exactly wrong.
I don't know what more to add. The fact that you replied to me shows that the world is pretty much as it seems.
The absolute lack of anything meaningful here, says no (and that's on your terms lmao).
:up:
It seems some are just unable to see the forest. Trees be damned.
So the topic is "On Matter, Meaning, and the Elusiveness of the Real", yet you claim that pointing out that what is real is right there before you is irrelevant.
How are we to make sense of that?
How can you see the forest?
That nicely brings out the paradox in the conclusion. It's not a question of mistrusting everything we see, but of deciding what to trust. Mistrusting what you see that told you that your couldn't trust what you see is confusing.
It's the move from mistrusting what you (think you) see of the stick to mistrusting everything that you see that is the mistake. If I look at the forged money and compare it to the real money, I can conclude that some money is forged. But if I conclude that the real money might be forged as well, I've cut off the branch I'm sitting on.
It is true that each coin/note that I see could be a forgery, but it does not follow that all coins and notes might be forgeries. It it did, the distinction between real and fake money has collapsed.
Quoting Patterner
Your reply is correct. But "people" already know that. The problem is that what you take as the explanation of solidity, they take as undermining solidity. You have to show them that they have messed about with the meaning of "real". It is a mistake to allow them to get away with that, because once that's happened, there's no way back.
Quoting Tom Storm
If you start with the idea of the supernatural, the strategy makes sense. But what gives you the idea that there is such a thing?
Quoting AmadeusD
I think if you look a bit closer, you'll notice that you are only telling half the story. The people who argue that what's going on is not what it seems to be will have another explanation of what is "really" going on. Which also turns out to be false. It's been the pattern ever since records began, and likely before that. Socrates is the only person who had it right - he stopped at "we don't know".
Quoting Kurt
You are right to think that it is the specialized use of "real" (and company) that is the source of the problem. But you seem to be repeating the mistake by using "rock-solid" and "bedrock" in a metaphorical way without examining what they might mean in this exotic context. You might also ask yourself whether there is really anything wrong with being good enough for practical purposes and consider whether it is your decision to "slow things down" that is the source of the trouble.
If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck. I'm going with duck.
I don't. I'm responding to the claims.
Not according to the pop-up headlines I get on the internet. Every day there's new discoveries which defy science. Furthermore, there's a whole range of human activities which are completely unpredictable.
I wouldn't say that this constitutes miracles, only that science doesn't really have the capacity to predict what the world will do.
Fair enough. I wasn't quite clear where you stood.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm pretty sure that every day there are more discoveries that do not defy science. But they are not so newsworthy. Your sample may be a bit biased.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't know what you mean. It seems to me - but perhaps I'm naive - that the sun, the moon, and the tides are pretty much predictable. though the wind and the rain are less so. The stock in my corner shop is usually what I expect, though there are regrettable lapses. My car usually starts when I want it to; it has only let me down when I have not used it in a while, which is pretty much predictable. Football, cricket etc. matches happen when expected, though I grant you that the results are less predictable. Which number will come up in a lottery is not predictable, although we can be sure that someone will win - normally. Other gambles are also unpredictable, except that we know that the bank or the bookie will win.
Some things are predictable, some things are not, and we have pretty good knowledge of what we can predict and what we cannot. Yes, there are surprises. But mostly things rumble along pretty much as expected.
It's extraordinary to claim that the world is coherent and predictable yet we all fail to come to a common understanding of what the world is, how it came to be, what our purpose is (or even if there there is one), what is moral, what is real, what is truth, what language is, etc.
Maybe the world is coherent and predictable to me and those that disagree with the way I interpret simply don't have the intellect to grasp the way I interpret it.
If the world is so coherent and predictable then why do you assert that so many people on this forum are wrong in the way they are interpreting their experiences of the world? Why don't you agree with me 100% of the time?
But isn't it fair to say that this is, precisely, the "world doing as advertised", including the unpredictability of people? I don't mean this just as a smart comeback, but something deeply true. Our scientific view of the world allows us to predict with confidence that our views will be regularly upended by new insights and discoveries! We didn't use to know that, but now we do, and that is now "how the world works."
I could put this point another way: If it were announced that science had determined a sort of completeness proof, whose conclusion was that no further changes in scientific theory or practice were possible, that would be not as advertised. It would be truly surprising and disturbing.
They type on their device fully expecting a reply from Banno, and sometimes get one.
There's a truly extraordinary lack of self awareness in complaining on the internet about "the elusiveness of the real".
A foundational performative contradiction.
The explanations for things like the human mind, self, and consciousness might be very different than the very vague idea I'm sure most people have before exploring these topics. But whatever the explanation, I still really like chocolate ice cream, Bach, and sex.
It seems you don't even know what I'm saying, here. I'm not sure why you're responding the way you are, in that sense. Why not ask something? Harry (and MU) has a good point, but that wasn't the one I was aiming for. Do we want to discuss these things, or make drive-by shots on each other? I, for one, would rather an opportunity to elucidate, if you're not getting me. It seems you're not. I'm then going to assume you want to know, so:
You make an (in my view) unsupportable claim. I objected. Your response was again, brute claim. Your response to me (admittedly glib, but I was under the impression "in good fun") was to say this:
Quoting Banno
This isn't a response to what I said. It's a description, impugning what I said. That's bad faith. The bold is your position. You hold it. That's fine. It doesn't do anything for anyone who doesn't hold it. It also isn't particularly on point for what I actually said. So, lets begin something less glib..My position:
The world is often not as we expect or can tell at first glance. This has been true for hte entirety of human history.
As I noted. Are you arguing against this premise?
Sure, the world is sometimes not as expected. But we can see this only becasue overwhelmingly it is coherent. Chairs do not turn into cats, chalk is not democracy and so on.
The point being made is that doubt takes place against a background of certainty.
If I've misrepresented you, show me how. Is what I've said above, wrong? How?
And I agree with you that sometimes we are surprised or mistaken. My point is that this can only take place if we are usually unsurprised and correct.
Quoting AmadeusD
I assume the answer is here? Quoting Banno
If so, good. That's a great place to start. I would proceed by trying to understand how, against this background, you can make the claim that "the world is as it appears" without qualification. I don't, really. I understand the impetus, though I would say this might be giving you some issues:
Quoting Banno
As I see it, no. Folk are noticing discrepancies between their expectations and understandings, and what ends up being (at least presented as) verified. There's a second issue there, though which is that a failure to consistently behave as expected is enough for what I'm saying. Does that maybe temper the point you're reading, and allow you to come closer to the mark?
If not, it's just that I don't understand what you're getting at in pointing out some regularity in cause/effect and the wider comment which has been made?
Well, we still have the unpredictability of human actions to account for.
Quoting J
You can interpret unpredictability as a form of predictability if that makes you feel good. I'd prefer not to enter that world where contradiction is the norm.
Quoting Banno
Not me.
Quoting Banno
Wrong again.
Zero out of two is not very good.
Quoting AmadeusD
Drive -by shots are likely the best way to deal with someone like Banno who never listens. The more noise those shots make, the better. Maybe that would wake him up. Banno's certitude has dulled his senses to the point that he's now just daydreaming about how it is impossible for him to be wrong.
Quoting Banno
The vast majority of what you observe tomorrow, will be totally unexpected from today's perspective. The fact that you can provide a few general examples of what you can expect tomorrow, means very little when there will be thousands, maybe millions, of particular occurrences which you will observe, and will be completely unexpected.
Quoting Banno
It's very obvious that you have this backward. We tend to be certain of a very few things, generalities, which are correct, against a background of a vast multitude of particularities which we are uncertain about. If you believe that the passing of time, provides for you, a background of certainty, then you are well practiced in the art of self-deception.
Just that, in a fairly straight forward way. The arm chair appears to be an arm chair because it is an arm chair, the cat appears to be a cat becasue it is a cat.
If I got up tomorrow and found the armchair was red rather then blue, it would still be an arm chair, still be in my lounge room, still be a piece of furniture, still be worn on the arms, still be solid... the list of things that would not have changed is innumerable. And far outweighs the change in colour of the arm chair. If the arm chair changed to red, I might well seek an explanation. It seems perverse to seek an explanation as to why it stayed blue. That's what arm chairs do.
But hat sort of thing doesn't happen much.
So, which is more reasonable - to supose that it really is an arm chair, and sit on it to do these posts, or to do as the OP suggests and look for a justification that it is an arm chair?
Why should I doubt, here?
If nothing else, it will be a lot less effort.
The arm chair does consistently behave as expected.
This is something I have noticed too. I'm not totally sure why, since historically arguments for God rely on exactly the opposite sort of pitch, and they largely still do for religious thinkers who are part of traditional religionseverything being very well nailed down. I think it has something to do with the particular allure of New Age spirituality as a sort of freedom from both traditional religious practice and secular materialism. But I also think the challenging of epistemic norms helps to empower the individual, and "freedom as authenticity" is very important there too.
I've recently realized this is a cherry-picking thing. And more power to him. When he wants, it's a good exchange. Can't force it. Apparently, his better work is via PM. All good imo. Even my frustration with him (which is palpable at times) is no reason to think he needs to be treated less reasonably.
Yes, it certainly seems you picked up the wrong tool. I was offering one more to the tune of things like causation is weird, plenty of phenomena are explained in counter-intuitive ways (lightning from the ground as a trivial example). The world doesn't "be like it is" in a lot of respects.
The lack of qualification is a problem. The world is decidedly not as it appears to the senses, often. Our disagreements about perception notwithstanding, those counter-intuitive facts seem to support my initial point. Most people are not thinking of things the way you are, regardless. Barely anyone looks a cup and just thinks "that's a cup, no more to it".
The explanation (analysis) of solidity is a surprise - counter-intuitive, if you like. One can see why some people want to say that solid things are not "really" solid. But everyday phenomena are not denied by the explanation - on the contrary, they are affirmed. Perhaps we need to change the definition, perhaps we don't. That's another question.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
True.
Quoting AmadeusD
True.
Quoting Banno
True.
Quoting J
True.
I'm reminded of the difference of opinion between Heraclitus - everything changes - and Parmenides - nothing changes. Both were right. Both were wrong.
The interesting bit then was why the disagreement arose - the philosophical issues and ideas behind it.
So what lies behind the disagreement here?
Quoting Banno
So that's Banno's diagnosis - it's about scepticism.
I'm not at all clear where other people stand. Is it about scepticism? If not, what?
The deeper question that I think we should be talking about is what lies behind the ancient philosophical tradition of denying common sense reality.
As brilliant and imaginative as many people are, I cannot imagine anyone is ever going to come up with any workable explanation for how things exist as they do if there was not coherence and predictability. If electrons did not always have negative charges. If mass did not always warp spacetime. If light did not always travel at c. If the strong nuclear force wasn't always about 100 times stronger than the electromagnetic force and 10^38 times stronger than gravity. Many many other examples of consistency in our reality.
If these things were not consistent, nothing of what we know would exist.
I don't follow that. How does skepticism enter the picture? I took @Banno to mean that we wouldn't have a reason to doubt something or find it odd unless we were used to things being a certain way. That's not meant to be skeptical doubt, I don't think.
Quoting Ludwig V
Part of common-sense reality is a robust confidence that we can accept it. "Reality" here refers not only to the content of whatever beliefs and perceptions we may have, but also to the efficacy of our own equipment, so to speak. I read the early Greeks as mostly questioning (not denying) the former. But there are many examples to pick from, and I shouldn't generalize.
I'm sure it is not meant to be traditional philosophical sceptical doubt. On the contrary, that background of certainty is what prevents it running out of control, so to speak, and becoming the radical doubt that we were all brought up to combat. I'm sorry I wasn't clear.
Quoting J
Thanks for outlining how you understand the word. Generalization is indeed a tricky business. I tend to regard it with deep suspicion, especially in the context of philosophy. The disagreement about certainty and uncertainty seems to me to be a case where generalization has generated a furious and false debate. It sweeps differences aside and makes them hard to see. No, I'm not saying that all generalizations do that. I am saying that some do, and it's not helpful.
Greek philosophy has a long history and many varieties. But, according to Plato, Zeno and Parmenides did not pull their punches when discussing the reality of Being. Come to that, nor did Plato. Pyrrho and the Sceptics were, perhaps, gentler, in that they always saw both sides of the question and refused to come down on either side.
You will have noticed @Patterner's discussion of solidity earlier. I'm fascinated by the temptation (which I partly share) to deny that tables and rocks are "really" solid when the explanation actually affirms, and does not deny, that solidity is, in everday contexts, exactly what it seems to be. The same phenomenon is capable of two different and incompatible interpretations. What can we make of this?
(I would add, echoing Ryle, that, while the explanation of physics has its power and meaning, it comes to us through the perspective of ordinary, everyday reality. There should be no need for us to make a choice between the two. They are both necessary.)
Long ago, when I was philosophically active, there was a widespread opinion that scepticism was vanquished and could be put to bed (or its grave). It turns out that was not so. It seems to be still alive and kicking. Cavell was right - we need to get deeper into the phenomenon and understand better where it comes from. Part of that is noticing that Cartesian scepticism is not the only variety of scepticism, and that denial of common sense reality goes back a long way in philosophy, arguably right back to the beginning. It may be that it is an essential feature of any enquiry that we might recognize as philosophical. But it also seems to be found useful in religion - another point where religion and philosophy seem to coincide or at least to be near neighbours.
Quoting Patterner
Yes. We need the assumption of coherence and predictability because that's what generates our questions. I think of it as a "hinge", but more of a methodological assumption than a belief. It can't be simply empirical - what could refute it?
You're welcome. FWIW, I was going for an understanding of "common-sense reality," not "reality" as such, which is very hard to use effectively at all.
Quoting Ludwig V
I think we can dissolve the problem by pointing to the equivocations. "Solid" can mean a couple of different things, and it's only when the uses get confused that it looks like there's a problem. I'm not sure they're even incompatible, at least not in a puzzling sense -- as you say, we get a deeper, more accurate explanation for how good old common-sense "solidity" is actually accomplished.
I agree that bringing in "really" as a qualifier for "solid" is hopeless!
Quoting Ludwig V
I'm reading Bernard Williams' book on Descartes at the moment, and he reminds us that Descartes several times warns us not to take his methodical doubt as genuine doubt -- the sort of doubt it might be reasonable to have about, say, sense perceptions. In the Discourse, he contrasts his method with what we normally do, which is to "follow opinions which one knows to be very uncertain, just as though they were indubitable." Instead, for the purposes of his project:
As Williams discusses, Descartes is not trying to say that it is in any way reasonable to go from "can deceive us sometimes" to "deserve to be doubted as a whole." This is a philosophical method designed to find some criteria for knowledge, not a way of life. Why such a methodical, unreasonable doubt would help us do this, is another story, which Descartes goes on to explain.
I've said why. Often, 'common sense' is absolute horseshit. That's why we have things like 'folk psychology' to dismiss. Obviously, that's not the end of the story is there is something weighty to what Banno is saying, but it doesn't butter bread for the fact that quite often (and far more often, with lay people (what that says, I don't care in the present moment)) the world turns out to not be as it is. Given that this is the case, 'common sense' isn't quite 'common' as it seems. I think all 'common sense' says is that there are ways of thinking that tend toward problem solving in real time. Lots of people are not able to do this.
Here's a funny thing: After learning that atoms are mostly space, one does not find oneself sinking into one's arm chair. Things remain solid.
Learning that atoms are mostly space does not change the fact that arm chairs are solid. Both are true.
If there is a problem of perception here, it is the misperception that things consisting mostly of space cannot also be solid.
I suspect this is only so amongst apprentices, and the occasional journeyman. I'll maintain that Austin and Wittgenstein put the sort of scepticism in the quite well written OP to bed.
It's a very interesting question why radical skepticism existed in the ancient world (and was indeed somewhat popular for the sort of position it is, being addressed across centuries from Parmenides to Augustine) but not really anything quite like Cartesian skepticism.
I think part of the problem of attempts to "put skepticism to bed," is that they are often using something like Kripke's "skeptical solutions." For instance, in his context, "the argument from underdetermination has real strength and cannot be defeated... but that's ok because..." There is something similar going on in Quine, and a lot of other thinkers. So, perhaps it's partly that the skeptical solutions are not considered acceptable, or are themselves considered to be radically skeptical. I have certainly seen philosophers say this, not only about Wittgenstein, etc., but even about Kant's attempted solution. And then Hume was self consciously riffing on ancient skepticism.
There was, however, a pretty long period between the decline of the Academics and Descartes where skepticism was, if not entirely dead, at least in a coma, which is interesting too.
One interesting historical facet is that the original Empiricists (Sextus and co.) were seen as skeptics, and for reasons not that unlike Hume, and the later modern traditions type of arguments (underdetermination being the common thread I can see, but also, while not a common metaphysics, a denial of common metaphysical positions).
IDK, I'd love to find a good treatment of the history. My inclination is that some of the resistance might also have to do with the "thin" anthropology used in some resolutions to skepticism, which is unappealing to some.
What lies behind the traditional philosophical denial of common sense would seem to be the assumption that this world, not being perfect, cannot be the true world. The human desire for a transcendent reality, as opposed to this "mere shadow world" has a lot to do with the desire for life to be fair?that is to punish the wicked hereafter when they elude punishment down here, and to provide us with salvation and eternal life. Most of us would rather not die; so being in denial of the fact of death is one strongly motivated strategy for coping with it.
Quoting AmadeusD
Some common sense may be based on illusion to be sure. The idea we have of the nature of consciousness and self are good candidates. On the other hand if such "folk" notions cannot be definitively refuted, and if they are "native" to the human mind, then perhaps they serve a useful purpose, even though they tell us nothing substantive about the real nature of things?given that the real nature of things in the ultimate sense that the human mind seems so addicted to entertaining is not at all decidable.
Quoting Janus
(I added a comma for ease of reading). I agree.
I've very tempted to engage with this, but I'll have to save that treat for another time. For now, let me just say that even if Cartesian scepticism has been resolved, I'm sure that people will continue to read and discuss Descartes' account, just as people still read Plato and Berkeley.
Quoting J
I'm sure it's an excellent book and people do seem to forget that quite often. But do we really understand what methodical doubt means, if it does not mean doubt? The only thing that is clear is that the normal context in which we understand what doubt is, is set aside. So what does this amount to?
Quoting AmadeusD
I would be the last person to deny that. There's a lot of it about. But it's as well to be selective in what one dismisses out of hand.
Quoting AmadeusD
That may well be true. I put it down to the "otherness" of snakes - and spiders, especially big ones - and we are programmed to be suspicious of other, incomprehensible, creatures.
Quoting Banno
Well, I do think that, in the absence of countervailing evidence it seems natural to regard solid things as those that occupy space, just as it seems natural to suppose that the earth is flat, and static - and to wonder what it rests on.
Quoting Banno
Maybe you are right. But I don't find it easy to work out in this very special environment who is apprentice and who is professor - and, as Cicero pointed out, there is nothing so absurd that some philosopher will not believe it. (I will refrain from citing examples.)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
You put your finger on a fascinating phenomenon. When I returned to Hume recently, I was astonished to find that he is not at all what I would consider a sceptical philosopher; then I realized that Descartes' reputation is also a complete misunderstanding, since his project was precisely to resolve the nightmare he conjures up. The same goes for others, as well. It's very confusing. Is there any philosopher since Descartes who has actually defended, as opposed to trying to resolve, scepticism? Earlier scepticism was different in that it was proposed as a basis for achieving ataraxia or apatheia and so living a happy life.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm afraid I can't help you. By "thin" anthropology, do you mean the sketchy references to ways of life and/or evolution? It's difficult being a philosopher and wanting to take allied discussion in other departments seriously. There just isn't time. Or that's my excuse.
Quoting Janus
Yes, all of that. Ethics in general, and justice in particular, is an interesting combination of incompatible desires. On the one hand, the desire of the powerless to restrain the powerful and on the other hand, the desire of the powerful to control the powerless.
Quoting Janus
Perhaps the ability and desire to push things further is what lies behind the tendency to look for ever more ultimate ultimates and get lost, as it were, in outer space. That's one thing that I don't see in non-human animals.
Two cents:
Given that common sense reality just means we know things as they are, my understanding of the tradition of denying common sense reality, stems from the major premise contained in at least some versions of that tradition, that the human cognitive system is representational, in that everything to which it is directed is mere affected senses, re: sensation, from which alone no cognition is at all possible.
However deep the question, whether it should be talked about or not is governed by whos talking. To those who insist a chair is a chair, tend to neglect how it came to be one .probably less than profitable.
Quoting Ludwig V
I'll respect your wish not to engage with Descartes at the moment, though I'd enjoy that conversation. Suffice it to say, both your questions deserve thoughtful answers.
I will, however, point out that the reason the X-Men's Kate Pryde can pass through solid objects is because she's able to take advantage of the spaces between. So there's that.
I think Dave Matthews Band's [I]The Space Between[/i] is a great song.
Yes, you raise a good point. By "skeptical" I think many critics of "skepticism" do mean precisely a methodological skepticism. This move essentially tears up most of the "web of belief," including central threads, and then attempts to rebuild the entire thing based on a very small set of remaining presuppositions. As I mentioned in an earlier thread, I think this has the effect of making philosophy chaotic, as in "strongly susceptible to initial conditions," where you get radically different "skeptical solutions," based on which part of the web was allowed to remain standing at the outset. Hence, a very large diversity of "camps" or "schools" developing out of common sorts of skepticism as a methodological starting point. Also, appeals to pragmatism over truth here seem to make the difference between the camps seem less secure.
This is different from an approach that starts from what is known and then tries to explain a metaphysics of knowledge. In terms of empiricism, this wasn't unknown to the ancients. Gerson has a good article on Neoplatonic epistemology, and this was basically Plotinus' camp's main thrust, that the empiricist is incapable of knowing anything. They only know something like representations of things, and can never step outside them to compare them with reality, and underdetermination leads them towards equipollence, which might aid ataraxia, but certainly not any further move into the erotic ascent and henosis. But if an epistemology cannot secure even our most basic, bedrock beliefs, what we already "know we know," then the claim is that the epistemology has obviously failed.
Plus, the modern paranoid or depressed skeptic is basically following the same route and just taking different emotional import from this.
In this context, I can absolutely see why Hume is considered a skeptic. His position is skeptical re causes [I]as generally understood[/I]. Saying "x can't exist or be attained so we should use the word x for y instead," (e.g. constant conjunction for causes, deflation, something limited to a specific human game, or coherence for truth, objective for the phenomenal realm, etc.) is arguably an equivocation and denial of the original x, or at least that's the critics' claim (and the claim of some supporters who embrace skepticism as the proper conclusion of these arguments.) This is not unlike how the immediate successors of Kant took his philosophy into dualism and subjective idealism, even though his letters show he didn't want to reach these conclusions. But what one wants and what one's philosophy suggests or at least allows (fails to exclude), can two different things.
There is also Hume's thing about consigning the bulk of non-empirical human "knowledge" and past philosophy to the flames, or the unresolved problem of induction (made particularly acute by the prior move to make abstraction a sort of induction) being resolved by just playing billiards and forgetting about it. So too, the guillotine sort of assumes at least a mild sort of anti-realism as a premise, since if anything can be "truly good" if can presumably be "truly choiceworthy," and thus there can be syllogisms using facts about the choiceworthyness of actions that suggest (although do not force) action.
If it be allowed that scepticism as such, is, .the principle of a technical and scientific ignorance, which undermines the foundations of all knowledge, in order, if possible, to destroy our belief and confidence therein ., Kant treats scepticism as a natural prerogative or intrinsic condition of reason itself, its ubiquitous nature thereby mandating it best be done properly, which just means to be sceptical in accordance with a method by which one is .endeavouring to discover in a conflict of this kind, conducted honestly and intelligently on both sides, the point of misunderstanding .
So it can be said scepticism, at least in this form, is both defended insofar as it is inescapable, and, resolved insofar as it is subjected to a proper method.
I'm not sure I understand all of this. But I do agree that representing our "cognitive system" as representational does indeed set one up for scepticism about the things that are supposed to be represented. Just one more reason not to set oneself up in that way in the first place.
Quoting J
I can resist anything except temptation. I would welcome reading your answers.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That sounds like Aristotle, and I must admit, it makes more sense to me. One must remember, however, that he is also quite content to revise the knowledge that is handed down to him when necessary
; it is not sacrosanct or immune from doubt or anything like that. In specific circumstances, questioning one's presuppositions, beginning again with a clean slate are perfectly reasonable tactics. But as an approach to all knowledge, from the beginning,.... that's a different matter.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think you are being fair to him.
1. It's not the really the bulk of human knowledge that's in danger - just "divinity and metaphysics".
2. His view of abstraction is somewhat similar to his idea of induction, but lacks the problematic element of making predictions.
3. You may not like his resolution of the induction issue, but he does at least provide a candidate. Admittedly, it involves accepting that empirical observations cannot justify a generalization, but then explaining that we humans are just going to continue to rely on it, justified or not. What's wrong with that?
4. Hume's key complaint about radical, Pyrrhonic scepticism is that it makes no difference to anything. So even though it may be sound, it is of no consequence. It is for that reason that he recommends ignoring it.
Quoting Mww
I suppose so. But then, the same could be said of both Descartes and Hume who are usually considered sceptical philosophers.
Yes, and many others. And yes, certainly things can be revised, even radically so. That's why I'd say the difference is methodological. Post-Descatres, there is an extreme focus on method, while philosophy also starts to be thought of more as a "system" or "game." So, even though many later thinkers in this mold are adamantly "anti-foundationalist," they still retain this orientation towards foundational skepticism and the idea that method can overcome it and "build back."
Yeah that's fair, it wasn't clear as written; "human" should be "humanist." That is, "the bulk of non-empirical human knowledge," as in (but not exclusively) "the humanities," due to his epistemic standards. E.g., "morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment. Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived," when combined with the prior claims about history, etc. being grounded in observations of particulars, would seem to exclude most of the classical education's curriculum ("humanist knowledge," not "human knowledge"). Writers in the "Canon" like Plutarch, Tacitus, Juvenal, Cicero, etc. would be mostly valuable for the observations of fact they record under such criteria (probably the least useful thing about them), and this would seem to hit folks like Confucius too.
Obviously, he doesn't really seem to intend that we should burn these (at least I don't think so), but rather that they don't represent knowledge.
Arguably, I think we could also take the precepts as sort of demoting the authority of techne, i.e. arts, and indeed there is an interesting relationship between moral anti-realism, which affects our understanding of ends, and the arts, which are defined by ends, but seem to also involve "the understanding" and expertise. I'd have to reread it again though. Certainly, I think this demotion occurs at some point before the 20th century though (the speculative sciences were always ranked higher in a way, but not to the same extent). For instance, if you try to justify moral realism by appealing to the "facts" known by medical science, you will often face the objection that medicine is not really a science precisely because it is a productive art, whereas medicine as the "science" the the healthy body is all over older philosophy, even though it is also recognized as an art.
I think the preceding sections suggest that it's everything that isn't occurring according to observation or the relatively narrow range of the a priori; those topics are just particularly bad offenders. We're not really burning them, but we're downgrading them to taste and sentiment.
But, I am sympathetic to thinkers who say that moral ant-realism or skepticism is itself a sort of radical skepticism (i.e. not limiting it to theoretical knowledge). For one, if nothing is ever truly good, then truth cannot be truly better than falsity, "good faith" good, and so too for "good methods," or "good argument," since these all relate to ends, i.e. "the Good," "that at which all things aim."
Right, and this view of abstraction is what aids the deflation of causation. This isn't really Hume's idea though, it's in earlier thinkers and goes back to Ockham in its etiology; Hume is just following the dominant trend in Anglo philosophy to its logical conclusion. He is a brilliant diagnostician in this sense.
It's still a "skeptical solution," though right? That was my point, people don't find these compelling (particularly the appeals to pragmatism, because arguably the skepticism also affects our knowledge of whether anything is ever truly useful). So, even if I did like his solution, I could still see why some people aren't satisfied with it and embrace a more "depressed/anxious" skepticism instead. That is, they simply do decide to worry about it, and I cannot really blame them for that. For instance, for Bertrand Russel, Hume's case implied that "there is no intellectual difference between sanity and insanity."
Very good, Oscar. :wink:
Quoting Ludwig V
It does mean doubt, but applied in a special way. I think Cartesian methodical doubt has two negative characteristics:
It is not a means of questioning each experience we may have, to determine if it is "real."
It is not supposed to carry over into daily life at all, but rather serve as a method for discovering what we may know for certain.
To the first point, Bernard Williams puts it succinctly: "There is the universal possibility of illusion, and there is the possibility of universal illusion." Descartes argues that any given perceptual experience might be illusory (based on the idea that we may be dreaming). But this does not mean that perceptual experience in toto must be unreliable. These are two different thoughts; the latter does not follow from the former. You can believe that any given X is illusory without also having to believe that, therefore, all Xs are illusory.
So this is not an attempt to determine what must in fact be illusory. It is not a method we take into our everyday experiences. Neither the specific nor the general sort of doubt is being asserted. At this juncture, Descartes wants to know what is possible, not what is true. His idea is that, if we can find something about which not even the possibility of doubt can be raised, we will have found a foundation upon which to build our knowledge of the world.
Does that fit your sense of Descartes' project?
Quoting Ludwig V
So if the above sketch is on the mark, then I'd say that Descartes does not defend skepticism at all. Really, he wants to defeat it. His methodical doubt is a version of giving the Devil his due, of being willing to concede every conceivable lack of certainty in the interests of making his case strong. Had Descartes used this method and discovered nothing that was certain (and been able to rest content with that), I'd call him a skeptic, if an unhappy one.
I've never been quite sure why Descartes is sometimes seen as "introducing doubt" or "questioning certainty" of previously unshakable ideas. He is merely pointing out, correctly, that the possibility of doubt exists in the places he names. At no point does he recommend that we in fact doubt sense perceptions, either one by one or collectively. In a letter to one of his critics, he says:
Descartes compares this to an absurd practical attitude of constant "methodical doubt" and concludes: "This is so self-evident to everyone that Im surprised that anyone could think otherwise."
:fire:
Yessir.
The inability of the powerless to coordinate in order to restrain the powerful just might be a candidate for the major source of human misery?the central pathos of the human condition.
Quoting Ludwig V
Right, that certainly seems to be a major human tendency. I also think humans love to pull things apart to see how they work, and then that search for constitutive function focuses on the smaller and smaller and smaller.. Both of these searches?for the greatest overarching principles and the smallest constitutive entities would seem to be impossible without symbolic language, which is probably why we don't see such concerns in other animals?and there would also seem to be a powerful element of misleading reification in both.
He may well have had that target in his sights.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
H'm. That is certainly what was happening, though paradoxically during the next century or so, the humanities also got elevated to the sure sign of being a civilized person - and essential for the gentry who did not need to earn their own living.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, from the point of view of a realist, that would indeed seem to be so. But if you don't have and/or can't recognize, the Good, but, perhaps, only a range of activities and/or ends that are worthwhile in their own right, then moral anti-realism seems less like a form of scepticism. To be clear, for someone who doesn't but Aristotle's crowning of the hierarchy of purposes, or who thinks that the supposed crown is an illusion, "truly good" is just rhetorical pleonasm.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes. Philosophers are very good at buying in to the latest intellectual developments, and, mostly, making too much of them. They usually settle down after 100 years or so.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Accusations of insanity are quite near the surface of philosophical argument. After all, not so long ago and during Russell's lifetime, a philosophical thesis was either true and trivial or nonsense. It was a high-stakes game. Fortunately, psychiatrists didn't buy into that mistake - they were busy making different mistakes.
Quoting Janus
Yes, indeed. Though, of course, the powerful, when they are not complacent, live in fear that the powerless will get themselves together - and then they are unstoppable. Cardinal Bellamine said it best - "The voice of the people is the voice of God".
Quoting Janus
Yes, symbolic language is very important. But I get worried when people try to deduce that we are not animals.
Reification is a major curse for any philosopher that has an ear (eye) for language.
Quoting J
It fits my sense of his project. But I don't like the project.
Quoting J
Yes, that's right. So there are two versions of what is going on. I think you will find that the distinction is often not drawn, but I may be wrong. In any case, if you (and perhaps WIlliams) grant that the project of doubting everything is incoherent, we are left with the examination of specific doubts.
The programme is to consider each of our doubts, in order to distinguish the uncertain from the certain. He needs, therefore, to exempt from scrutiny all the knowledge that enables him to distinguish between truth and falsity.
In fact, he exempts a number of other things from his examination. One of them is his own sanity - he does not think that he is an emperor. Another is that his senses do not always deceive him, though he seems to forget that in other passages.
If I asked you to believe that I am going to spend my week-end on the moon, could you do it? Or would you look for some evidence and fit your belief to the evidence? Doubting without evidence is not rational, and sticking "methodical" in front of the doubt does not make any difference to that. You could easily pretend to believe me, but somehow I don't think that's what Descartes had in mind.
He wants us to set aside our practical, moral and aesthetic concerns and think about the apple in a completely disinterested way. He does not consider that to think about the apple in that way (a theoretical stance) may be to be unable to think about the apple as we know it.
Quoting J
That is in interesting change. But I don't think it changes much,
In any case, the question of what is possible is not at all clear. Many people believe that it is possible that the sun will not rise tomorrow morning, simply because it is not self-contradictory to assert that it has not risen. Is it possible that I don't in fact have two hands? To put it another way, someone who thinks that it is possible that he is being duped by an evil demon has a pretty elastic sense of what is possible.
The model of mathematical knowledge, particular geometry on the moden of Euclid, is in the background here. Because of Euclid's approach, it seems that a meaning can be given to the idea of foundations of knowledge. Whatever we may say about that approach in mathematics, it does not follow that the same model will work for all knowledge, particularly if the proposal is for one system for all knowledge.
What do you mean by saying that he is not asserting his doubt? Are all his assertions in Meditation 1 not really assertions? They certainly conform to the normal requirements for asserting doubt.
Quoting J
Yes, I'll give him that. The trouble is that he has discovered a methodology that runs out of control and doubts too much.
Quoting J
But all he does here is to announce that we are not supposed to take our methodical doubts seriously. Which undermines the entire project. He wants to prevent that, but all he can say is "But I never meant it that way". We need a bit more than that, don't you think?
Yes, I'm being difficult. Some readers might feel that I should be more charitable. I'm not sure about that. I don't doubt his sincerity, by the way, though some people do argue that he is insincere.
Aristotle's Ethics is focused on just this question though, identifying what is sought for its own sake. Wouldn't the anti-realist position rather be that nothing is truly more or less desirable, that "desirable" just means "whatever we just so happen to currently desire." So, whenever falsity is preferred to truth, bad faith perceived as more "useful" than good faith, etc., it is simply better, because "better" just means "I prefer." That's the popular summary statement of emotivism: "x is good" just means "hoorah for x," and "y is bad," just means "boohoo for y." As Hamlet says, "nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so."
Of course, few anti-realists deny that things can be better or worse vis-a-vis some ends, since this seems absurd. So normally it is the claim that ends themselves cannot be judged better or worse, normally packaged with a denial of the rational appetites (the desire for truth and goodness themselves) so that even rather obvious ends like "not being lit on fire" must stem from a sort of arational sentiment/feeling (this being the result of the axiomatic the denial of rational appetites). Anti-realism is also made more plausible by the Enlightenment division of the good, such that the good of the appetites is divorced from a sui generis "moral good," so that one doesn't have to deny things like: "it is bad for men to be lit on fire," but only the amorphous declaration that "lighting men on fire is 'morally' bad."
Hence, "truly better or worse" can still be used by some anti-realists. Different race cars can be truly better or worse; some are faster. You can have truly better or worse choices for which school you attend, which vacation you go on, etc.. It's rather the "moral good" that is denied. But the counter is that this "moral good" is incoherent, and that the topics of ethics is so bound up in practical reason as a whole that the denial of this new category doesn't actually secure anti-realism the way the anti-realist thinks it does, or at the very least is an inappropriate category for analyzing pre-Enlightenment ethics (Western and Eastern).
Right, although the common criticism is that this isn't actually justified, making it an arbitrary sentiment tacked on to what appears to be good grounds for skepticism (if we accept the argument). Not wanting to endorse a position and arguing for positions that imply that self-same position are two different things, and thinkers often do both. That, and that he contradicts himself in trying to have his cake and eat it too, like when he argues from an is to an ought re treating children well a few pages after arguing for the impossibility of such a move.
Not at all. This moment in Western philosophy deserves the most careful scrutiny. And your reading is not uncharitable in the sense that you're determined to put the worst construction on what Descartes is saying. You, and I, both want simply to understand what he was up to.
I think we should take Descartes at his word when he says that he does not intend "methodical doubt" to be applied in daily life. His quoted words in the letter make that pretty clear, and Williams cites a number of other instances.
So we have to ask, Why, then, apply it as part of his Method? What can be achieved by conjuring up a sort of doubt that would never occur to us in real life? You say:
Quoting Ludwig V
but I think he does more than that. He wants us to take methodical doubt very seriously indeed, as a method of ascertaining what might constitute certain knowledge. I called this a kind of "giving the Devil his due" skepticism; Williams calls it "pre-emptive skepticism," meaning much the same thing. Descartes wants certainty, not merely what seems overwhelmingly likely. So he's willing to make enormous concessions to what a hardened skeptic might claim.
Now here you may part company with his inventory of what could be doubted. You say:
Quoting Ludwig V
Elastic is hardly the word! Descartes has to conceive the possibility that all his experiences (save one, as we will see) could be illusory. But -- his grounds for thinking that being two-handed could be doubted have nothing to do with comparing the certainty of this belief with the certainty of some other belief. Here, as with the demon, it is "the possibility of universal illusion." So if you want to say that Descartes goes too far here -- that there's no need for the rigamarole of methodical doubt because we already know what can't be doubted -- you'd have to show why the demon (or Matrix!) hypothesis is impossible. And there are a number of modern arguments, broadly analytic or Wittgensteinian in nature, that make that case.
I think generally when we affirm what is obvious, we do so by comparing the obvious thing with something less obvious, but that strategy is not open to you here, if you meet Descartes on his own ground. It's not that "I have two hands" must be shown to be indubitable, but rather that "whatever I affirm that I perceive clearly and distinctly" is indubitable -- that is, cannot, under any circumstances, be mistaken. So, with respect, this isn't quite it:
Quoting Ludwig V
That's just what Descartes finds self-evidently absurd. We're pushing doubt a level up, instead, and asking what is possible to doubt, not how we would go about settling an actual occasion of doubt.
And yes, I do indeed believe that Descartes is not asserting anything as in fact doubtful. Rather, he is asserting what may possibly be doubted. You say:
Quoting Ludwig V
I don't think so. I read him as asserting what is possible, not what is the case. It's the difference between saying, "That bird could be an oriole" and "That bird is an oriole." These are both assertions; if I make the first one, it will be true if the bird could be an oriole, and false if it could not be. The second assertion says something quite different; it will be true if the bird is in fact an oriole, false if it is not. I believe the former mode is what Descartes is talking about.
Lots more to say on this subject! -- especially, we can go into a lot more depth about why Descartes has such faith in Methodical Doubt as a method that will lead to certainty. But I'll stop bending your ear -- tell me what you think.
True, if the individually powerless could manage to coordinate and agree to act to secure their interests, the powerful would have no chance. It's just that, in the absence of egregious oppression and lack of quality of life, this never seems to happen.
Quoting Ludwig V
I think you know from past discussions that I would be the last to indulge in human exceptionalism and conclude that we are somehow more than mere animals. We are only exceptional inasmuch as we are very unusual animals. That said, there are also many other very unusual animals.
Quoting J
It seems to me to be a question of what we can logically doubt, and I think the answer is 'anything that can be imagined to be false without logical contradiction'. It seems we cannot doubt the LNC itself without falling into incoherence.
The obverse is what we can absolutely certain of; and I think that would be only what is true by definition or according to some rule or set of rules we have accepted; i.e. tautologies and mathematics and they really tell us nothing outside of their contexts.
It seems to me that Descartes was pushing for metaphysical certainty, and I think it has been amply demonstrated that metaphysical certainty is impossible.
I'm not sure; it's more complicated than it looks.
Descartes doesn't start with, "The LNC is true; therefore . . . " He seems to place relatively little weight on the status of logical certainties. Indeed, he says that the evil demon could make us wrong even about "2+2 = 4". Would he agree, then, that his methodical doubt should exempt logical truths? Evidently not. "I think," for Descartes, has a certainty and an incorrigibility that "LNC" does not.
So if I say that the LNC is indubitable -- that it is not possible to doubt it -- Descartes wants me to explain this in the same way I would explain the alleged indubitability of perceptions, and he doesn't think I can do that. The evil demon holds sway not only over the physical world, but the logical world as well. (Once the demon's sway is broken, as the Meditations proceed, we can recover certainty about logic and much else.)
This raises enormous problems for the role of logic in Descartes' own method, of course.
That said, if we accept a rough equation of "What can be logically doubted" and "What it is possible to doubt," then yes, you've described the general level of doubt that Descartes is employing. He's using methodical doubt for a specific, highly unusual purpose -- a kind of metaphysical litmus test. As I wrote to @Ludwig V, there's a lot more to be said about why Descartes thought this would be so effective as a means of discovering certainty.
Quoting Janus
Hmm. Is the cogito meant to be an example of metaphysical certainty? Many philosophers do disagree that the cogito does what Descartes wanted it to, but to say it's been "amply demonstrated" is an exaggeration, wouldn't you say? Or perhaps you have some other level of metaphysical certainty in mind.
Quoting Ludwig V
So this goes back full circle to the main intent of my OP. I wanted to show this tension between reality as it is and reality as we understand it to be.
Agreements are impossible without an alignment of understanding.
Understanding is impossible without generalizations.
I think you are right about the false debate generated by generalizations, because the whole debate is meaningless. There should be no disagreement about certainty and uncertainty, because they should not be treated as mutualy exclusive opposites. Rather they should be viewed as conceptual extremes that define a field of tension between them, like a spectrum.
It is "our job" to come to an understanding by finding each other on this field of tension. By taking the same position on this spectrum, we come to a shared understanding. It should be obvious that
this position is a volitile one, that will require continuous adjustment and refining to fit the pragmatic narative that lies at its foundation.
Yes, I have seen it expressed that way. I don't think it does more than make an interesting beginning for a theory. Hamlet's version is somewhat different. I've always wondered where it came from - Shakespeare may have thought it up himself, but it is also likely that he read it somewhere.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Ah, I see. You are using "truly" to distinguish a realist concept from an ant-realist concept. In which case we are just talking about two concepts of desirability, and a concept is either useful or not, and never true or not. Yes. I'm dodging the question. That's because I don't know what I think (yet).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, it often means that, though, I would say, never just means that. See above.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It all depends on what you mean by rationality. Conventional logic, as I'm sure you know, can't establish good and bad. But we can reason about good and bad, ends and means. Why would anyone want to deny that we desire truth (on the whole) and goodness (so far as we understand it)?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Now you have me puzzled. Why would anyone deny that we have a concept of morality, and of ethics?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes. Sometimes, however, they do so because they think that position A does not imply position B. So I need details.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Fascinating. Could you let me have the reference so I can look it up?
Oh, I don't doubt his sincerity and I do take him at his word. But his move removes doubt from its usual context, and especially it's usual consequences. So it is a bit like shaking hands without touching. It's a greeting, but not a greeting. Or pulling a punch. That's what gives force to Hume's complaint that radical scepticism (not that he mentions Descartes) has no consequences. One doesn't quite know what it means.
Quoting J
Yes, in one way I understand all that. Perhaps you could think of my obstuseness as an application of his method to his method. (Oh, I do hate arguments like that. Don't take me seriously).
See what I mean?
Quoting J
Oh, yes. We could get them out of the books and see what we think of them. But improvising on the basis of an unreliable memory is also quite fun.
Quoting J
Now you are switching back to wholesale undermining of an entire class. We have ways of telling when our sense our misleading us (I prefer "telling when we have misinterpreted our senses"). How else does Descartes know that he has been misled in the past? This won't do at all.
Quoting J
Yes. I get that. It is a common way of presenting sceptical arguments. I'm not sure it is actually in the text. But it might be. The trouble is that the presentation usually collapses possibility into logical possibility, and establish what are now contingent statements on the basis premisses that make them all a priori or analytic (cf. Euclid or mathematics in general). But if we want to eliminate all contingent statements from our knowledge base, we'll end up in a sad state, don't you think?
Quoting Janus
No, it doesn't. Most people don't care much about the big picture and just want to be left in peace. True, that can be a mistake, but it seems to me that's how it is.
Quoting Janus
Sorry. That remark was intended in general, not in particular. I write quite quickly when I finally get to the keyboard. Sometimes I don't put things precisely enough. But I've found that if I write too slowly, I end up not writing at all.
Quoting Janus
There's a good point there. If Descartes does try to doubt the LNC, the project will fall apart. Same thing if he doubts his memory. He makes quite a fuss about that at the end of the first meditation.
Quoting Janus
Yes. That's a trap. The price of absolutely certainty is paralysis in the empirical world. But perhaps we don't live in the empirical world? If we want to return to normal life (a dubious prospect, but still..) we need to re-cast this conceptual space. That's what Wittgenstein is trying to do - and, in his way, Moore.
Absolutely right. So I read you as saying, "There is only one good purpose to which doubt can be put -- its usual context -- and because Descartes is suggesting otherwise, it's unsatisfying, like shaking hands without touching."
But we can instead say, "This is why Descartes is a great philosopher, not just an interesting one. He believed he had found a whole new and important use for doubt, one that is precisely not its ordinary use. And the ramifications of his idea were so provocative that we've been discussing it ever since!"
Again, we'd need to really dig in to his reasons for "inventing" Methodical Doubt, and what he hoped it could accomplish. I'm willing, if you like.
Quoting Ludwig V
:rofl: Story of my life.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes, the doubt here is applied to the class, not individuals within the class. The "how else" question is largely answered by Descartes in terms of dreaming. He says he's been misled in a dream --and not known it at the time -- to such an extent that he thinks we have to take the possibility as real. But remember, the question is not "Did it happen?" but "Could it happen?" Of course you may feel it simply could not, but that's disagreeing about a result concerning what can be doubted, not the method itself.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes! That's why Descartes is so concerned to win back all (or most) of the territory he concedes as uncertain. He uses doubt to demonstrate, in the end, a method by which we can learn what is certain.
Certainly we can say that. My arguing that he is wrong does not mean that I don't think he is a great philosopher (though it might mean that I think he is an even greater mathematician/physicist). His achivement is that he came up with a really interesting wrong idea - so interesting that it has dominated Western philosophy for over three hundred years. If I could achieve anything even close to that, I would be very pleased with myself.
Quoting J
OK. Hit me.
Lee Braver wrote a book called "Groundless Grounds" in which he argues that Wittgenstein and Heidegger both argue that a key part of their very different projects was to return philosophy from its obsession with the theoretical and derive its understanding from everyday life. I'm not scholar enough to know for sure, but I think he makes a very good case. That's why I'm going on about it.
Quoting J
Yes, he has been misled by a dream. But when he woke up, he realised the truth. It's that insistence on being absolutely certain now that creates much of the problem. These philosophers have no patience!
Suppose he told us that he dreamt he was an astronaut and flew to Mars last night. Are we to think it could have happened? And isn't the fact that it couldn't have happened the key reason why he, and we, are so sure that he dreamt it? And that is true even though it is not self-contradictory to assert that he did fly to Mars last night.
Quoting J
In a way, you are right. I wouldn't seriously question the idea that, in a specific context, it might be helpful to re-examine one's assumptions. But Descartes' project is removed from any specific context, and it's target is everything he, and we, think we know. That's a very different kettle of fish - and that grandiose aim, to criticize everything is a typical philosophical over-reach.
People forget that something can be possible and not the case. It was possible that my parents might have lived to be a hundred years old. Yet I know that they didn't. Earlier, I gave as an example of something that is certain "I have two hands". That comes from G.E. Moore and Wittgenstein discusses it. It is a contingent statement, so it is, in theory, possible that I do not have two hands. But if I consider the idea carefully, it makes no sense; there is not the remotest actual argument for supposing that I do not have two hands.
Quoting J
There are two moments in his project. Creating the doubt, and resolving it. I may be questioning the creation process, but, in a way, I am already participating in his project. There is another line available, which is to accept his project, and consider whether his retrieval is successful. Unfortunately, there is another vast literature on that. What's worse is that many since then have tried to rescue the situation. No-one's really put the issue to bed. It would seem that he achieved too much in the first phase and not enough in the second.
Of course, that may be because it has now become a standard exercise - no, initiation - for those beginning philosophy; no-one else, except Socrates, has achieved that. The two of them constitute the founding myths of philosophy. That's paradoxical, in a way; one of the founders of philosophy discovered that he knew nothing and the other unwittingly showed that it is not possible to know anything anyway. No wonder philosophy is a mess.
It's "in the air," especially in England, the birthplace of nominalism, as a sort of extension of theological volanturism. Consider Shakespeare's younger contemporary Milton's great lines:
[I]...What though the field be lost?
All is not lostthe unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power...
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
[b]The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.[/b]
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.[/I]
Theological volanturism obviously starts much earlier, but through nominalism and the politics of the Reformation the idea that God makes whatever is good or bad so by a sort of bare act of will gets transferred over to man. There is, strictly speaking, no Good, but what is called "good " God obviously still has the claim the proper authority, and those who opposed him will suffer no doubt, but it is at least not incoherent for Satan to proclaim "evil be thou my good." Whereas on the realist account that comes through the via antiqua, while evil can obviously still be willed, this always involves a certain sort of ignorance, since evil itself is nothing, a privation of perfection and of being.
This reminds me that I have a PM from @boundless I need to respond to, but we were talking about how this volanturism emerges following the Black Death, but also why it seems to come to Islam first and is more successful there.
Sort of. When there is an appeal to usefulness to ground practical reason, which appears to become groundless in anti-realism, the next obvious question seems to be "what do we mean by useful?" Are there facts about what is useful, or is it just a matter of taste? Is "the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven," and is "nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so?" This would seem to imply than anything can be useful, according to an act of will.
I think most anti-realists allow that some things can be factually more or less useful towards some end, since this seems to be an obvious empirical fact (e.g. you cannot smash rocks with a hammer made from butter). But in denying any 'higher ends' by which proximate ends are ordered they seem to rule out any sort of ordering for "usefulness," which seems to lead towards the idea that "useful" is just whatever we just so happen to consider to be useful at the moment.
But this has problems to. Regret is a ubiquitous experience. Are we to say that those last tequila shots of the night were "useful" when I was feeling no pain and gulping then down, but the self-same event became unuseful when I awoke brutally hung over hours later? The phenomena of regret might suggest that what is "useful" is what we will consider useful at some point in the future, or with more information, but here the issue is that there seems to be facts about this sort of usefulness, and the idea that more information helps ground practical judgement is at odds with the idea that they are afactual.
Indeed, because this position has clear difficulties if not moderated. And yet an expansive volanturism seems to imply that it must be so, else the will is constrained in what is considered good or bad, which would seem to suggest the possibility that "what we are" and "what things are" determines their "usefulness," which again, seems very fact-like and less "taste-like." I think the difficulty here is avoiding inconsistency. So, when Rorty debates Eco, he wants to say that what a screwdriver is doesn't necessitate (or even "suggest") how we use it, since we could just as well use it to scratch our ear as turn a screw, and yet in an obvious sense this isn't so. A razor sharp hunting knife is not a good toy to throw into a baby's crib (at the very least, for the baby) because of what both are, and this is true across all cultural boundaries and seems that it must be true.
It's the denial of the appetite for them as such. So it doesn't deny that we might desire truth to attain some other means, but it does deny a rational appetite to know truth of itself that is a part of reason. IDK, this seems to be all over modern anthropology. Homo oecononimicus maximizes utility, and desire for truth is rolled into that black box and generally ignored. Rawls' bare abstract agent is invested in procedural reason, not the old intellectual appetites. Hume says quite straightforwardly that reason can never motivate action, full stop. Reason becomes entierly instrumental. Likewise, "the merit of benevolence, arising from its utility, is a proof that the notions of morals are not derived from reason."
Nor can Hume just say, "but people just possess a sentiment for goodness itself," because this would obviously imply that there is something, goodness, to have an appetite for, which is distinct from people's other sentiments, which is at odds with the entire thesis.
They don't, and I'm not sure how you read that as a denial of the existence of the field of ethics. Rather, the denial is that ethics has any real subject matter outside opinion and illusory judgement. It is just taste and emotional sentiment. Plenty of users here make this sort of claim, and plenty of famous thinkers.
This:
...is not a philosophical resolution of skepticism. The anguished skeptic can just say: "well it still bothers me."
There are lots of critiques of Hume's attempt to ground morality in a sort of universal sentiment and average utility. MacIntyre's treatment in After Virtue comes to mind. A key point is that it doesn't keep egoism out, see the point above. It does not imply that it is actually better for us not to act like egoists and lie and cheat, etc. just in cases where we know we can get away with it. To the claim: "but people have a tendency to not want to do that sort of thing," the egoist can just reply "but I do want to do it."
Arguably, Hume might not contradict himself, if we take his "grounding in sentiment" to be purely descriptive. But then he hasn't done anything to ground morality either, and hasn't justified a move from moral nihilism the way he claims he has. So it's a sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Quoting Ludwig V
It occurs to me that maybe the best way to do this is for you to say why Methodical Doubt is a "wrong idea." That way I could try to articulate what I understand as Descartes' reasons so as to address your points specifically, rather than just paraphrase the Discourse and Meditations.
Quoting Ludwig V
Interesting. I don't know that Descartes addresses this question. His "Pure Enquirer" is definitely imagined as a 1st person, present-tense viewpoint.
Quoting Ludwig V
We'll get into this, I'm sure, but I believe the project does have a specific context -- that of attempting through 1st person reflection to arrive at a standard of certainty out of which we can build up our knowledge. What you mean, I guess, is that there is no specific context of ordinary doubt, the sort we come upon in daily life. But I'm arguing that it's precisely the genius of the method that this be the case. Can you keep open the possibility that he is simply not "doubting things" in the ordinary way, and that there's method to his madness?
Quoting Ludwig V
Not Descartes! He insists on this. As discussed above, he is interested in what is possible, not actual.
Quoting Ludwig V
Well, you know what Descartes would say to that: The evil demon has done a very good job here. He has convinced you that your senses are completely reliable, and the resulting beliefs incorrigible. Or to leave the demon out of it: Dreams can be very realistic. We rarely doubt what they represent to us. It is possible, then, that I am something quite other than what I appear to myself to be, and only imagining the reality I experience.
Let me stress again, Descartes doesn't believe this. It's the "pre-emptive skepticism" idea again. He's saying, "Let no one ever accuse me of not taking every conceivable skeptical possibility seriously." If you don't think that doubting your hands is a skeptical possibility, no matter. This counts nothing against the method; you're just saying that Descartes is over-scrupulous or too imaginative.
Quoting Ludwig V
That's clever, but I hope you acknowledge that both those characterizations of the founders are highly debatable. If Descartes really "showed that it is not possible to know anything," why has that conclusion not won universal acceptance?
I would say that there are facts about what is useful, but that they are contextual, not absolute.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
My answers are "yes" and "needs clarification".
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That's true. But there is no problem about that. Practical judgement is a combination of values, desires and facts. That's what makes it practical. Values and desires are not facts, because they are neither true nor false.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't see a problem. A screwdriver has a standard use, which is what is designed for; but it can be used in many different, non-standard, ways. We could call this improvisation, but Derrida has a splendid term for it - bricolage.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes. But I'm not sure how you interpret that in the terms of the philosophical arguments.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
He does indeed. "Reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions." One assumes that he is not deducing the "ought" from the "is". But Aristotle said it first, in the Nicomachaean Ethics, I think Bk. VI. Actually, he said "Reason by itself moves nothing." Not quite the same, but close enough to suspect an ancestral relationship with Hume's remark. (Aristotle goes on to construct the practical syllogism to explain the rational basis for action. Nobody has improved on it, but then nobody has explained how it moves us.)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
H'm. I take this as about the distinction between wanting something for the sake of something else "external" to it and wanting that thing for it's own sake. The difference between playing music to entertain people in order to earn money and playing music for it's own sake - no ulterior motive; ("For pleasure would not count as an ulterior (or external) motive).
It's curious that you call the latter ("for its own sake") a rational appetite, when the point is that it has no external ground or purpose, whereas playing music for money does, and therefore has a reason, so is clearly rational. Can you help me?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think that's a problem. What "useful" means depends entirely on the context - it isn't a property in its own right, capable of applying to something independently of other properties; it applies to something in virtue of some other properties or qualities that the something has or doesn't have. Similarly, what's good depends entirely on the context.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Oh, I see. I'm sorry that I misread you. Though, I'm sure you will agree that they would not necessarily describe what they are denying in that way.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No, it is not. But then, Hume's point is that there is no philosophical resolution of scepticism. The reason he is not bothered by that is that he thinks it has no point, no consequences. Life goes on, just as usual. Essentially, that's his point about induction. There is no justification that reason can supply, so we will continue to rely on it, just as we have always done. It's not as if there is a useful alternative. He's not wrong, IMO.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't remember the texts (not Hume, and not Macintyre, either.) enough to engage with this properly. You are right that if his theory is purely descriptive, then it cannot justify ("ground") morality. Perhaps Hume thinks that the fact that we do value the things that we value is all the ground we need? Or perhaps he is thinking of the issue in the same way as he thinks of the philosophical sceptic. The arguments may be impeccable, but they won't make any difference - we shall continue to value the things that we value. However, while we can comfortably let philosophical sceptics moulder in their prison, it is harder to ignore the moral nihilist who ignores the moral rules.
I did, a little while ago, look at his argument about miracles. There, he uses as his final court of appeal "universal agreement" about various things. That does seem a bit of a broken reed, particular when "universal" means "people like me". That is a real weakness. But philosophers do tend to refer to a "we" that believes or does, this and that. I've never been happy with that, but it is almost impossible not to rely on it without awkward and long-winded circumlocutions.
I can see that he has thought about what he is doing, and is not just doing it for entertainment or on some other impulse. But I can't pretend, to myself or you, that I think there is a sound basis for the project in what he says.
Reviewing one's assumptions is not a bad idea. Copernicus reviewed the assumption that the earth was the centre of the universe. Kepler reviewed the assumption that the planets moved in circles. Newton reviewed the assumption that different physical laws applied to the stars and the earth. In addition Euclid's geometry was a great success. It started from a few definitions and axioms and drew a whole world from it. Descartes is following success and taking it further. But that's where the problems arise. So, to question axioms with theoretical doubts in a theoretical context is a good thing (provided it is not over-done!). But Descartes doesn't set up a theoretical context that gives sense and meaning (and so the possibility of resolving things) to his doubts.
However, there's no problem about agreeing to disagree and moving on to other things. That's a perfectly normal thing to do in conversations like this. Is that what you had in mind?
Quoting J
I get that. But I don't think it defuses very much of what I've been banging on about. If he is prepared to believe in the possibility of the evil demon, his concept of possibility is much more elastic than mine. In the context of a pscychiatric assessment, that could count as evidence of losing touch with reality. But he has invoked "methodical", so I suppose he gets a pass.
Quoting J
There is a difficult argument here about how "other" you can be and still be yourself. You might have been born in a very different environment and grown up as a very different person - so different that you would not have been the person that you are. Where's that line? Hard to say, but it exists.
Again, if you opened up that discussion in a psychiatric consultation, you would have some explaining to do. But again "methodical" gets you a pass.
Quoting J
I can understand that. We can assess it, then, by considering how far he set these doubts to rest. Sadly, that was not very far. We might point out that it did provoke a good deal of serious philosophical thought about how to meet the challenge. Which is a success of a sort.
Quoting J
Perhaps. It is possible to be so scrupulous that you prevent yourself from achieving what you want to achieve. It is also possible to be so imaginative that you lose touch with reality.
Quoting J
If a quotation from the texts answers my objection, there's nothing wrong with quoting it.
But here is my attempt to rationalize the arguments I've put into a single, possibly coherent statement. But I haven't tried to re-state them. I'm assuming you can remember what they were. There's not an awful lot of text, so you should be able to find the relevant parts of my messages if your memory lets you down:-
What does methodical doubt mean (other than as a get-out-of-jail-free card)?
Questioning ones data, axioms, assumptions in a theoretical context is fine. The context limits the corrosion and ensures that there are ways to distinguish true from false. But without context, one just gets universal corrosion.
Can one choose to doubt (or believe)?
One cannot doubt or believe to order. What gives rise to doubt or belief is evidence. Doubt and belief that is not based on, or at least open to the effects of, evidence is irrational.
The demon
This isnt really an argument, but more of a way of making it easier to apply radical doubt more widely. In any normal situation it would be a paranoid fantasy, but so its as well that it doesnt really affect the argument.
What can he not doubt at all?
He mentions that he is certain of his own sanity. His expresses concerns about his own memory but believes he has a way of relying on it.
He doesnt mention reason (law of excluded middle and non-contradiction), his knowledge of language or his pen and paper or the existence of his future readers. Doubting any of these would wreck the project.
The Argument from Experience
He says he has been deceived by his senses, so he will mistrust all sense-experience. He also says he has been deceived in a dream, so he does not know he is not dreaming now.
Doubting some sense-experience makes sense, but not the whole class. It is more accurate to say that our experience (senses or dreams) does not prove that everything is doubtful, but that we can tell true from false.
Wittgensteins concept of hinge propositions and Moore's common sense fits here. Hinge propositions are (mostly empirical) propositions that are so deeply embedded in the network of our understanding that they cannot be coherently doubted without demolishing the possibility of ever knowing anything.
Doubt and Possibility.
There seems to be an assumption that if a proposition is contingent, it is possible that it is false, which means that it cannot becertain and can be doubted. This leaves Descartes with an impossibly strict criterion for indubitablity.
But the argument is invalid. It doesnt follow from the fact that p is possible that p is true. Logical possibility does not amount to doubt or even uncertainty.
Quoting J
It is a serious distortion of what Descartes actually said. I was thinking more of his effect on generations of philosophers after him. Perhaps the failure of his constructive phase is, in a way, not his fault. But it was a serious failure, at least for philosophy. Ordinary life, of course, has muddled on as usual. But that's part of my complaint.
My parents had a phrase "that's clever-clever" which they frequently applied to me in my teens. It meant something like "clever and annoying" or "clever on the surface but pointless when you think about it". It applies to this paragraph. I should have deleted it rather than posting it.
I'd thought we could focus more on why Descartes chose methodical doubt as a way to establish certainty. But given the many objections you raise, and given your honesty that you're not really open to the idea that there could be a sound basis for it, I'm fine with letting it go. Agreeing to disagree about Descartes' project is almost a sure sign of philosophical maturity! :smile:
Quoting Ludwig V
This is another, separate question, also interesting. I assume you don't think Descartes was successful in raising his methodical doubt, given your objections to the method. But are you saying that he failed to set the doubts to rest on his own terms? -- that is, allowing for the purpose of argument that real doubts were raised, are you saying he failed to allay them in the ways he believed he had?
Quoting Ludwig V
This is the only one of your objections I'd really want to push back on. I'm having trouble seeing why Descartes doesn't have a legitimate theoretical context. Maybe you can give an example of a theoretical context where "questioning one's data . . ." etc. does make sense?
Quoting Ludwig V
Oh no worries. Just checking to make sure you didn't really believe it was that simple! :wink:
I hope, at my age, I can at least claim to something like philosophical maturity!
Quoting J
I'm not saying I couldn't be convinced. The core of the problem is that, so far as I can see, Descartes has little or nothing to tell us about what he means by "methodical doubt", so it looks as if he thought it was obvious. His astonishment that people took the idea of doubting everything more seriously than he intended shows, I would say, that he hadn't thought it through very much.
Quoting J
That's fair enough. I have elaborated, or even qualified, my objection in my previous message. Here it is again:- Quoting Ludwig V
If you consider these cases, you can see that the theoretical context includes ways of questioning axioms, replacing them with others and methods of working through the consequences and proving the results. (Essentially, mathematical workings to draw out the implications of the data and prove that the new model made better predications that the orthodox ideas.) You could argue that in following the mathematical format, that is what he is trying to do. But the format does not work in the context of this project. One obvious problem is that the data is not systematically organized or in a format that allows mathematical methods to be applied. The other is that the assumption that all knowledge can be turned into a single comprehensive logical structure is, to put it politely, a massive task with no guarantee of success. (Bear in mind, here, that the new science (with Descartes' help) decided to exclude anything that could not be handled mathematically, such as colours and sounds, not to mention emotions and values. But those are part of what he is now taking on.)
Perhaps looking at his constructive phase - the cogito and what follows will make this clearer.
Quoting J
That's not just my opinion, There is a raft of issues about the cogito. I think we may be about to move on. I'll need to remind myself about all that, so it may take a little while.
Quoting J
I'm glad of that. This medium is not kind to subtleties that can easily be conveyed in actual conversation. There was no way that I could inflect my voice or face to say - don't take this too seriously. I'm not adept with smileys.
Quoting J
I'm not sure what you are referring to. Perhaps I didn't articulate my thoughts well there?I meant to say that it has been amply demonstrated that metaphysical certainty in the traditional "absolutist" sense is impossible to attain. Would you not agree that Descartes was attempting to discover what he (and by extension, we) could be certain of vis à vis what necessarily exists?
Quoting Ludwig V
just in case there has been a misunderstanding I was not thinking you were accusing me of human exceptionalism, so no apology needed.
As I think Ludwig is suggesting my point was that any discourse which purported to deny the LNC must necessarily be involved in an incoherent performative contradiction because to do so would undermine discourse itself.
I don't see people as living wholly within the empirical world. As Sellars pointed out we live with both the scientific images and the manifest images of the world, or within the space of causes and the space of reasons. The latter cannot be understood (parsimoniously at least) solely in terms of causes.
I have only just discovered this message of yours. It certainly changes things a lot. It shows how easy it is to get things wrong if you don't read the text again from time to time.
I think we need to remember that in Descartes's time, the idea that logic was the foundation of mathematics was far in the future. He would have seen the LNC and the cogito as a different category from mathematical truths. I really don't know what the ideas were at the time.
Quoting Janus
If we see the LNC and the Law of Excluded Middle as both undermining the possibility of making an assertion, then the cogito will fit beside them, because it is validated in the act of asserting it. I don't recall any commentary that takes on board his inclusion of mathematical truths in his methodical doubt.
Perhaps @J could check Williams' book and see what he says?
Quoting Janus
I wouldn't say that people live wholly in the empirical world. That thought was badly expressed. I wouldn't disagree with Sellars.
Oh, indeed. Descartes himself dealt with a number of objections from people who pointed out that the "I" in "I think" could use a lot more specification. And there is the so-called "impersonal cogito," which considers whether it should more properly be phrased as "there is thinking going on" rather than "I think". (Williams analyzes this one at some length and believes it is an incoherent objection.)
Quoting Janus
Yes, I would (and of course we understand that "necessarily exists" doesn't mean "must exist". It means, given the fact of thinking, then necessarily I must exist.) And given the continuing lively debate about Descartes' project, and much else in metaphysics, I say again that "amply demonstrated" and "impossible" are too strong. I'm agnostic, leaning toward skeptic, about metaphysical certainty, but the debate is hardly over.
Quoting Janus
Yes, with a few qualifications about the type of discourse. I appreciate the reminder from Ludwig that logical truths and their role in reasoning was a different animal, back in Descartes' time. It is part of Descartes' interesting "flavor" that his approach is so subjective, so first-personal, attempting to find certainty in experience rather than what we would call analyticity.
Quoting Janus
I agree. In the current context, though, Ludwig probably meant "empirical" to cover both. Oh yes, I now see he agrees with Sellars. But the problem being raised is whether:
which would remain a problem however you choose to construe "empirical." My view is that there's no reason to restrict one's actions to what can be based on certainty. It's a good question whether Descartes would have viewed lack of certainty as a reason for inaction. Maybe it's somewhere in his writings.
Quoting Ludwig V
I will. The book is so good that I'm reading it slowly, lots of notes, and have only gotten to God! Williams is quite hard on D here, as are most philosophers I've read.
Yes. Though I don't think he would have thought of it that way. Most likely, he would have thought of reason as the primary source of knowledge.
Quoting J
There's a bit of an ongoing issue about that. I prefer to insist on certainty, but alter the definition to something we can achieve - i.e. not simply the logical possibility of being wrong. People like you prefer to insist that it is not irrational to act on high probabilities. It's pretty much six of one and half a dozen of the other.
Quoting J
It's wonderful to find a philosophy book that one just wants to read it slowly. Most philosophers are hard on someone who believes in God. Some people, though, suspect that he was just paying lip service.
Quoting J
I think the point is that D will be aware of his thought, but not of himself thinking it. The observing self is never part of what is observed, so it's existence is a deduction. So even on the impersonal view, D's own existence will be proved as the first next step. D's view of it is "he does not deduce existence from thought by means of a syllogism, but recognizes it as something self-evident by a simple intuition of the mind". The concepts of self-evidence and intuition are not popular in modern philosophy, mainly because they are unreliable guides to truth. (I'm sure you see the irony!).
Not that I think he is wrong. His argument is "If I convinced myself of something [or thought anything at all], then I certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who deliberately and constantly deceives me. In that case, I, too, undoubtedly exist, if he deceives me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I think that I am something." So, the doubter can doubt everything, but the act of doubting reveals his own existence. To put it in modern terms, asserting "I am thinking" itself proves that he exists. It is a self-confirming assertion. Compare, for example "I am here". Stanford Encyclopedia - Descartes' Epistemology (See section 4.1) attributes this view to Hintikka and discusses it more detail
However, the idea that the cogito is an inference still has supporters, who argue that D's rejection of proof by syllogism does not exclude an inference. I think this is not a strong answer - a bit like a lawyer wriggling. However, you can find a detailed discussion in the SEP article above.
I think the two most discussed views nowadays are these two - inference and performance. There are others, including Williams' own critique. Wikipedia - cogito ergo sum has objections from Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Macmurray, and Whitehead. I hope you don't mind if I refer you to Wikipedia for those.
It is possible to get lost for quite a while in this. But, however it is interpreted, what matters most is what he does with it. So I suggest you at least look at the rest of Meditation II and consider whether his process does what he needs it to do. I'll be interested to know what Williams says about this.
PS - a last point.
Quoting J
I found it hard to find the answer to the question what philosophy of mathematics Descartes might have espoused. So far as I can see, the existing orthodox philosophy centred on the idea of mathematical objects - all variants of platonism, in a way. But mathematics was in the throes of a major upheaval at the time - to which Descartes contributed. So anything is possible. But I don't see how he could align mathematics and logic without modern logic.
Just a quick response for now: Yes, this is what Descartes says too, and Williams tells us that both "je pense" and "cogito" were much broader than the English "I think". Descartes would have meant something closer to "I have mental experiences" or "I am conscious". The cogito does not imply a consciously formed thought, as we might say in English, "I thought of that" or "I had that thought." And this becomes important in understanding exactly what Descartes believes we can infer from the cogito: You don't have to form the thought "I think" in order to be thinking, on his usage. Self-awareness is not part of existence.
I've not heard that before, that I remember. It cuts out a lot of messing about, so it is a very interesting idea.
So we can paraphrase it as "Whenever I think something, I exist", or "If I think, I exist" which certainly makes it not performative and supports the inference (provided we hold D. to a narrow interpretation of syllogism. It also cuts out Gassendi's argument about "I" and makes sense of the way that he derives the illumination by reflecting on what the demon has been doing to him, rather than what the demon is doing now. Does he need to trust his memory?
However, it is a subtle aspect of the meaning. I checked the classical Latin cogito and the entry did not clarify the point one way or the other. I don't know enough to argue about the finer points of 17th century French or Latin usage in 17th century France. Does he back his claim up?
I think you meant to say the rejection of the LNC and the LEM? In a purely semantic or logical sense saying "I think" or "I do X" ( where "X" could be anything at all) means or entails that "I" exists, to be sure.
Quoting J
The question, beyond the purely semantic or logical entailment of "I" in "I think" is as to in what sense the I exists, or in other words, just what is the I. Changing it to "there is thinking going on" seems reasonable, although it begs the question as to what thinking is, beyond the logical entailment that any assertion is an example of thought.
I am not well-read in Descartes, but I have the impression that he is looking for substantive or metaphysical proofs of existence, not merely stipulative semantic ones.
Quoting J
Perhaps I am more skeptical than you in thinking that it is not possible that the debate could ever be over. I mean the situation seems quite different than in the sciences where new information can always come to light?in the context of purely rational thought, wherein it seems to be writ that empirical findings have no demonstrable metaphysical implications, where is any new information going to come from?
He quotes this, from the Principles:
"All forms of consciousness (modi cogitandi) that we experience can be brought down to two general kinds: one is cognition (perceptio), or the operation of the intellect; the other is volition, the operation of the will. Sensation, imagination, and pure intellection are just various forms of cognition; desire, aversion, assertion, denial, doubt, are various forms of volition."
and concludes that
To give the most charitable hearing to Descartes' project, I think we ought to agree that this is what he meant. Consider a memory -- say, of the Brooklyn Bridge. When it comes to mind, do we say that I have "thought" the Brooklyn Bridge? Not really; in English, that's awkward. But such an example would surely serve for Descartes' point -- if I can have such an experience, I must exist. Whether we call it an English "thought" or a French "pensee" or simply a mental event doesn't really affect the point.
I'm afraid that I have never understood exactly what metaphysical certainty is, so I'm not going to express an opinion.
Quoting Janus
I agree that it's not a question of new information. But that doesn't mean that new ways of thinking about the problem, especially new ways of interpreting what we already know, are ever entirely impossible. I tend to see what are labelled metaphysical questions as questions of interpretation. So the developments that started the analytic tradition bring a new perspective to old questions and enable debates to radically change. Questions of interpretation don't have closure in the way that questions of information or even rationality sometimes do.
Quoting J
The quotation from the Principles does confirm Williams' reading. That reading is also at least compatible with the Meditations. I'm convinced. I've never been keen on the dancing around with Descartes' self. It all seems a bit gossamer, even subjective.
As others have pointed out in this discussion, you begin from a concept of the real as something that is presumed to have an absolute status in itself, such that our failures at grasping or modeling or holding onto it constitute illusions, falsehoods, mirages. One wouldnt speak this way about a the real unless we believed it were the kind of thing that an unquestionable and absolute status. But if we can never directly attain the real through our representations and models, what allows us to think about it at all?
Our concept of the real in terms of what it is we are failing to attain must hold some kernel of the real within itself, no? For instance, what is it that allows the real to slip from our grasp? The enemy of the real would seem to be change, impermanence, transformation, unpredictability. The real
must be that which can reliably be returned to over and over again as the exact same. And where do we find the basis of this capacity in our concepts? We find it in the pure repetition of number. We might be then be inclined to say that mathematics is only possible because there are real things in the world.
But what if we instead say that the pure self-identical repetition that mathematics describes is not modeled after the real world, but invents the very notion of the real as pure self-identity. In that case, when we find ourselves lamenting the failure of human thought to attain the real, we are confusing our own invention (the real as pure, persisting self-identity) with the actual world. This, the reason the real is unattainable is because we can only achieve it by turning away from the actually experienced world in order to create the empty abstractions of mathematics. We have a choice. We can have the real in its purity if we abstract from experience all contextual meaning and relevance and calculate emptily. Or we can experience the world meaningfully in its rich contextually changing unfolding, and use the mathematical concept of the purely , self-identically real as a tool of convenience.
I agree. So the question is whether the "I" in "I think" can survive the change to "there is thinking going on," not semantically, but in terms of a demonstration of some actual entity called "the self" or "I". As I mentioned, Williams goes into a lot of detail on this and I don't have it all under my belt, but his main point boils down to claiming that "thinking is going on" can't be given content without some indexical, and that it would be perverse not to accept the most likely candidate, namely "I". He acknowledges that this doesn't provide much knowledge about the self -- but so does Descartes. In fact, Williams says:
So that's possibly equivocal. I read him as mainly wanting to defeat the idea of an "impersonal formulation," not necessarily concluding that the Cartesian "I" is our only alternative.
Quoting Ludwig V
Something like this would be part of my reply to @Janus as well. But as both of you have noted, we can construe "metaphysics" in a number of ways, any one of which will be more or less conducive to the "closure" question. So perhaps not a fruitful line of inquiry.
Right, not new information, but new perspectives based on new interpretations. I agree that metaphysical questions are questions of interpretation. Just as with poetry there can be no closure, and that is not a bug, but a feature. It is the impossibility of closure that leads me to say there can be no certainty in relation to metaphysical speculations.
Well, yes. In a way. But in case like this, you may find that people will infer that metaphysical speculations are always uncertain. But that's misleading. Better to say that metaphysical speculations are neither certain nor uncertain. But that doesn't mean that it's an open house. Interpretations do have to meet standards before they are acceptable. You can't interpret the duck-rabbit as a picture of a lion. That's why one talks of interpretations as valid or invalid, (or plausible or not, etc.) rather than true or false.
I think I have Williams' answer here.
He says that Descartes used the term "eternal truths" for what we might call the truths of mathematics, logic, or analyticity. Such truths have the characteristic of "irresistibility" -- once understood, they are seen as necessarily true. When Descartes begins his journey back from doubt, he finds that these eternal (analytic) truths are indeed clearly and distinctly seen to be true. So, Williams asks, how did Descartes overlook this fact previously? How was he able to apply methodical doubt to a series of propositions he now finds irresistible? I think this was your question as well.
Williams writes:
Hmm. What to make of this? It sounds like a flaw in the process of methodical doubt, though Williams doesn't go that far. Also, while he provides the references for Descartes' agreement to this construal, he doesn't quote from them. I think I will chase them down and find out what Descartes actually said. Presumably D himself didn't think this was a flaw, and I'd like to know why.
To be continued.
Would you say the question ''what is real?" Doesn't have a correct answer because it is a metaphysical question?
As in for all x if x is a metaphysical question then the answer to that question can't be true or false?
If so why?
Quoting Jack2848
A statement that cant be verified or falsified, even in theory, does not have a truth value. Metaphysical statements cant be verified or falsified.
Quoting Ludwig V
These are standards of correctness, no? It is incorrect to interpret the duck-rabbit as a picture of a lion. Why? Because we are applying a pre-existing standard that says the image must be a duck-rabbit and nothing other than a duck-rabbit. This is the role of a metaphysics. It lays down criteria and standards of correctness. But since such standards apply only WITHIN that metaphysical system, it has nothing to say about an alternative metaphysical stance within which it makes sense to say that a duck-rabbit may also be a lion.
Fascinating. It looks like a flaw to me. Inattention is feeble. But it is possible to make mistakes in calculations and draw incorrect inferences, though philosophers seem curiously reluctant to mention the fact. No doubt any evil demons around will be only too happy to help that tendency along. So Descartes can maintain his usual premiss and sustain his methodical doubt. But then he faces another challenge, to explain how come those truths that he doubted a little while ago are now seen as are irresistible. There's a possible answer. I guess one could argue that seeing something clearly and distinctly requres that one pay attention to it.
Quoting Joshs
My remark that the duck-rabbit can't be a lion was not, so far as I'm aware, a metaphysical claim. It's simply true. The idea that it could be a lion really passes my imagination. What do you mean here by a metaphysical system? Kant versus Berkeley, vs Aquinas etc? Can you elaborate?
Quoting Ludwig V
Im equating metaphysical system with paradigm , worldview or Wittgensteinian form of life. Is the duck-rabbits not being a lion is simply true, is it simply true in the same way as Moores declaration that this is a hand?
What you are saying seems to me to boil down to an assertion that metaphysical speculations must be coherent and make intuitive sense in order to be judged valid and plausible. If so, I agree.
So, it seems reasonable to me to think the Presocratic speculations about cosmic constitution made sense to them in terms of what were thought to be the basic elements and the everyday experience of finding things to be made of different materials.
Poor old W - he must be spinning in his grave. I can see that, in some ways, metaphysical systems may play a part in our lives similar to the part he attributes to "forms of life". But insofar as they are theoretical, in the sense that physics is theoretical, they can't be forms of life.
Quoting Joshs
I think the duck-rabbit's not beiing a lion is simply true. I'm not sure what to say about a picture that has, or at least appears to have just one interpretation - like my picture of my mother. We have to say, I think, that the puzzle pictures are a special case. But seeing my mother in the picture must also be an interpretation. I'm really not sure what to say about this.
I'm not sure what to say about the comparison with Moore's hand. However, one of the points about Moore's hand is that we would not know what to say to someone who insisted on doubting that he himself did not have a hand. We would have to work out what he meant. In that way, I think the two statements are comparable.
Quoting Janus
Certainly they made sense to them. But they don't make sense to us. Now, are we going to worry about whether they made sense simpiciter or in a non-relative sense of making sense. I hope not.
It's easy to dismiss their theories. But some of their questions survive to this day, in the form of logical paradoxes. (It's just that we don't draw the same conclusions from them.) They weren't idiots.
Quoting Ludwig V
One can generate a theory in physics , such as the Newtonian or the Quantum model. It can then be revealed how ones theory is guided by certain metaphysical presuppositions. The presuppositions can tie together a family of theories, just as a form of life can do. The metaphysics may be something one has not explicitly constructed as a formal position; it may instead have been inherited from ones community. Im getting this concept of metaphysics from contemporary Continental authors, who apparently treat the term in a less technical and more encompassing way than the writers you are drawing from.
That challenge, he can handle, in the same way he restores certainty to all the items formerly doubted. More troubling is the "appeal to inattention," a curious defense. Does D have to say that he should not have doubted the "eternal truths"? Or that he should not have been inattentive to them? Does this amount to the same thing, if they're irresistible?
Quoting Ludwig V
May I rephrase? Neither of you is debating some point of identity. The claim boils down to, "When I look at the duck-rabbit, it is not possible for me to see a lion." That, at any rate, would be the first-personal version. Should we expand it?: "It is not possible for anyone to see a lion." This all seems to depend on what sense of "possibility" you want to invoke. I guess we should ask Joshs, "Do you mean that we should acknowledge that someone, somewhere, could be taught to see a lion in the duck-rabbit?" If that's the idea, I agree; it is not strictly impossible. But I agree with Ludwig that this has little to do with metaphysics, unless the sort of "Continental-style" use of the word that Josh mentions is needed in order to imagine these uncanny lion-seers. That is, perhaps you need a whole different "inheritance from a community," not just an odd fact about what can be seen in the duck-rabbit.
What about "this is a/my hand"? (If we say "my," we arguably up the certainty factor.) There are two possible rephrasings here, I think: "1) It is not possible for me to not see this as my hand" and "2) It is not possible that this is not my hand." I think Ludwig, and maybe Moore, mean the first; my hand, when seen, has the property of self-evidence. Again, though, is it possible to imagine a tribe or culture in which "being a hand" was not an important thing to notice? In such a case, I suppose I could see my hand but not be sure that "this is a hand," because I don't know the concept.
As for the 2nd rephrasing, we enter semantical issues. Could what I believe is "my hand" be something else? Depends on what we want "my hand" to mean. If I include in "my hand" the idea of "flesh and blood part of my body, which is also flesh and blood, and to which I am related in the ways I believe I am," then sure, doubt is possible. Brains in vats, Matrix, et al. But if we simply mean (as Descartes does, when speaking about "thought" or "doubt") "this apparent experience of an object that I am having," then it's hard to see how this could be doubted by some other metaphysic or belief system. (allowing "object" as a neutral noun, for lack of a better one)
So, is there a difference between "not being able to see the lion" and "not being able to not-see my hand"? Does either one equal "simply true"? I'll keep mum.
Quoting J
Dont discount odd facts, because what makes them odd connects them to the functioning of a metaphysics. Let me explain. In another thread, Banno pointed out that the difference between a language game and a form of life is that the latter ties together a multitude of language on the basis of family resemblances. I would say the difference is a matter of breadth or scope. The form of life, like a metaphysical stance, has a relative stability about such that it functions as a dependable anchor or hinge. Moores certainty concerning his hand relies on his faith that he can repeat the same assertion multiple times, over multiple days or weeks or months, and it will still have the same sense.
But it is important to appreciate that it will never be the exact same sense, because the form of life or hinge making Moores assertion intelligible in the way that he means it is slowly morphing over time , but much more slowly than the empirical assertions and language games that it authorizes. Lets say that a form of life or metaphysical system undergirds the duck-rabbit puzzle. Whatever it consists of, it anchors a much wider range of situations than just the one in which one identifies a figure in a drawing. In the very restrictive situation of the drawing , there is already a lot of background normative criteria that people have in common in order to play the duck-rabbit game. They are agreeing that it is a drawing, that their task is to identify what it resembles, that the figure within it can be interpreted in different ways, they see enough detail in the image to recognize a duck or a rabbit.
It belongs to that language game that a failure to correctly identity the figure as either duck or rabbit is a near impossibility. Why? Because it may be assumed that the images structure provides rules for its correct recognition as either duck or rabbit. But the lesson Wittgenstein wants to teach us about the duck-rabbit is that seeing-as doesnt ground itself in the consulting of a picture theory, that is, a set of rules to be followed. Seeing as can never rely on a pre-existing rule, fact or criterion, which is why odd facts belong to the very nature of seeing something as something, For Witt the near impossibility of seeing the image as a lion results of a confusion arising out of our use of language. Seeing as shares with forms of life and metaphysical stances its normative impetus (showing up not what something. is but how it is), a certain stability over time of such normative certainty, and that the consulting of criteria, rules and grounds is. or enough to produce the odd fact of actually seeing something as something.
This is an interesting point, but I missed what follows from it. You go on to show how the duck-rabbit "game" is embedded in a host of other background conditions. And you draw attention to Witt's point that we don't apply a rule when we play this game. All fine, but what were you meaning to say about the slow changes that occur as a form of life "morphs along"? That the duck-rabbit game may eventually no longer be playable?
They make sense to us insofar as we can see why they would have made sense to them, and that's about it, I'd say. The point was only that, absent empirical evidence or logical necessity, the plausibility of metaphysical speculations can only be assessed according to the degree to which they may or may not make intuitive sense, and of course that will vary somewhat from individual to individual.
Thus in saying that there can be no certainty regarding the truth of metaphysical speculations, I am not claiming that people cannot feel certain about them, but that whatever certainty they might feel is underdetermined.
Quoting J
I guess Im trying to emphasize that concepts like truth, certainty and impossibility, whether applied to stable forms of life or more rapidly changing language games, may be used in such a way that they are assumed to be fastening themselves onto an unchanging ground or fact of the matter, when instead the how that they establish only maintains itself through use, and use redefines the sense of what it has established ( the how is modified in its maintenance) . Its not just that the duck-rabbit game may eventually no longer be playable, but that to play it is to use the meanings established by it, and to use the meanings is to reawaken and reinterpret its sense.
Quoting Joshs
H'm. Well, there's no stopping people using a term like metaphysics in a different way. But I can't set aside the difference between a theoretical stance, which seems baked into the concept and essentially different from a form of life which is the engagement of a living being with needs and desires (and hence values) in the world. Certainly, for Wittgenstein (though he doesn't put it this way) and for Heidegger, insistence on the latter is a fundamental part of their philosophies - IMO.
Quoting J
The difficulty is that "irresistible" seems to mean that he could not have doubted eternal truths. Well, only in the way that he can utter the sentence "I doubt the Law of Non-Contradiction". My complaint is that he can't follow through with the consequences of that doubt. It's the follow-up that makes it real. (I'm sure that you are thinking, "Oh, but one can doubt the LNC". In a sense, yes. But think about what one would do and say that puts flesh on the bones. Descartes doesn't give us that, on the excuse that his doubt is (merely methodical). I say that it's not a real doubt.)
Quoting J
We can utter the words. But we can't put any flesh on the bones. (If we could, we could see the lion in the picture.)
Quoting J
I'm doubtful about the concept of self-evidence. I think the point here is that a claim like "This is my hand" explains what it is to have a hand. If you insist on doubting that, I shall ask why. You don't have any reason beyond repeating "That hand might be an illusion", I shall not be impressed. I'll think you just don't understand what it is to have a hand or to see a hand. Contrast the situation when I explain that I have a prosthetic hand, not a real one.
Quoting J
If I have a hand, it is part of my life. You might think differently and not have the same concept, but the hand will show up in your thinking in one way or another. Your supposition that it might not is empty - just a form of words.
Quoting J
Well, I'm not sure what to say, either. But those cases are clearly not the same as the duck-rabbit, because there is no coherent alternative interpretation. So I'm driven to say, on the one hand that there's no reason to withhold "true" from either and that our seeing involves a process just like interpretation.
Quoting Joshs
That's just like Heraclitus' river or Theseus' ship. I don't exactly disagree. But I also insist that I am the exact same person as I was 20 years ago. It's normal for things to change over time without losing their identity. However, one could say that we now see hands differently from Moore's day, because physics has revealed that solid objects are not what we thought they were.
Quoting Joshs
Yes. But I don't think that any of that is metaphysics. But those practices are embedded in our form of life.
Quoting Joshs
H'm. I'm reluctant to say that seeing something as something is an odd fact. It seems normal to me. I would say that the odd fact is the puzzle picture.
Quoting Ludwig V
Youre right that Wittgenstein equates philosophy with metaphysics and metaphysics with theory, but the situation is different with Heidegger:
Seems to be straying into the mystical there. Requiring understanding and knowing not just through the lens of the mind. But from other parts of the being.
I must have misunderstood something. Heidegger understands our cognitive, theoretical, stance as "present-at-hand" and our real-life experience as "ready-to-hand". He analyses Descartes approach through presence-at-hand (which I'm equating to a theoretical stance and therefore methodical doubt) as implying a model seeing us as subjects, the world as object and knowledge as what links the two. These are what Heidegger calls ontological presuppositions and he therefore points out that this mode returns metaphysics to First Phiilosophy. Now, here's my confusion. Doesn't he also criticize this model because it does not begin to explain our everyday lives as active and engaged in the world - ready-to-hand? So, isn't the return of metaphysics part of his working through of a model which he does not deny, but which he wants to limit the role of to specialized occasions, positing "ready-to-hand" - as the model for our "real" lives.
Quoting Punshhh
Yes. I understand the parts of Heidegger that I understand. But there's much I don't understand and that I skirt round, hoping to avoid sinking into any marshes that are concealed there.
Quoting Joshs
Well, it will certainly be playable for as long as we (and the people we teach to play) are around, because we are the players. I agree that we cannot know what may happen afterwards. Nobody plays push-pin any more. No-one can rule out the possibility that the concepts necessary for duck-rabbit will disappear or change in such a way the game will no longer be played. But, by the same token, no-one can rule out the possibility that ii may last as long as human beings, or life on earth or till the heat death of the universe.
Quoting Ludwig V
The ready to hand forms a totality of relevance, which is what Heidegger calls world. We use the hammer in order to hammer the nail, in order to build the house, in order to have shelter or pay our bills. This chain of in order tos encompasses everything in my world relevant to my functioning in it. But the ready to hand doesnt constitute the most primordial understanding of Being. If I understand a science in terms of a totality of relevant pragmatic relations between me and the world, this constitutes for Heidegger only a regional ontology. What makes it theoretical isnt that it ignores relations of relevant use, but that it fixes this totality of pragmatically relevant relations. As a theory, a science acts as a paradigm, map, model of pragmatic relations. It explains the how of the organization of the particulars of the science.
We can understand a microscope as a present to hand thing or a ready to hand tool, but for Heidegger, we are not understanding Being primordially until we see the totality of equipmental relevance that the tool belongs in its changeabilty. Heideggers world as whole , including all of its relations of pragmatic relevance, is constantly transforming its sense. It changes along with our mood ( attunement). We can think of a metaphysics as a totality of relevance which is mistakenly reifed. We cant avoid the metaphysical gesture, since we are always thrown into a world ( equipmental totality) . We always have a pre-understanding of the world ( what you are calling ontological presuppositions), which means that it is already familiar to us at some level. Heidegger isnt critiquing the very existence of metaphysics and its ontological presuppositions. Without these presuppositions there is no world. He is critiquing our thinking of it in reifying terms.
Quoting Punshhh
If the mystical implies contact with a faculty separate from the mental, then this is quite different from Heideggers intent. His project critiques the modern notion of subjectivity going back to Descartes. The subject, consciousness, the object and objectivity are all put into question by his approach.
Quoting Joshs
OK. Mischievous questions. Does the totality of relevance include what Derrida calls bricolage (which I understand to mean, roughly, non-standard uses. Using a screwdriver to fish out a small object that has got into a space I cannot get my hand into. Does it include accidents, as when I trip over a screwdriver or drop one on the cat?
Quoting Joshs
I don't quite see what it is that is being reified. In fact, if it is a mistake to reify it, there is nothing to reify and "it" has no place in that sentence. I can't even ask my question. Do you mean thinking of the screwdriver as an object?
Quoting Joshs
I get that. Science is not the primordial understanding of anything. The primordial understanding must be the understanding I have when I start the science. That's why I thought the present-at-hand was the primordial understanding.
Quoting Ludwig V
This is where Heideggers idealism (and Derridas) becomes conspicuously notable, in spite of the fact that his work moves beyond a traditional idealism-realism binary. There simply is no aspect of experience that excludes itself from the encompassing web of intelligibility by which we are understandingly attuned to the world as a whole. For instance, Heidegger talks about breakdowns in the use of tools as events which bring to the fore and light up the chains of ready to hand interrelations which are normally not paid attention to when the work is going smoothly. In other words, breakdown only makes sense in the context of a ready to hand involvement with tools. The same thing is true of accidents. A. accident only has meaning as an accident in the context of that activity which it subverts and surprises. If we use a screwdriver for a purpose other than the usual one, there must be some context of sense that bridges the gap between this new use and the normal one. Quoting Ludwig V
What youre talking about is the issue of how our comportment toward beings is modified such that the fundamental hermeneutic relation towards the world becomes disclosed in terms of reified present to hand objects. Heidegger explains:
Quoting Ludwig V
Present to hand objects are not primary. They are derivative of the structure of active purposeful involvement with the world.
The distinction Im making is that mind in terms of thought, knowing, understanding etc is secondary to what the brain is doing in these processes. So [I]mind[/I] is present only in so much as it is a constituent part of the processes of the biological organism and any role it plays in hosting soul, or spirit. The higher faculties of mind, self conscious awareness, knowledge, understanding thinking etc are just one of these roles that the brain performs and is secondary to the others.
So I see mind in terms of a progression from the brain, facilitating the mind, which facilitates the higher brain functions. Brain-mind-higher mind function.
So toward-itself and out-from-itself, transcendence are projections of being facilitated by the mind, forming the sense of self. That self then does the thinking, knowing, understanding.
Im just thinking out loud here.
Sometimes my typing is an embarrassment. I should have said "That's why I thought the ready-to-hand was the primordial understanding." So Descartes' methodical doubt could not be the foundation of our knowledge and understanding of the world.
You say that metaphysical statements can't have a truth value. Because they can't be verified nor be falsified.
Do you really mean to say that. We shouldn't give a truth value to a metaphysical question for this reason? Or do you mean that they truly can't be true or false. In the sense that i.e. free will exists and doesn't exist and doesn't (exist and not exist) and so on?
I assume you mean the former. Which I would agree with. But that would be a prescriptive claim in the form of a descriptive one. Which caused confusion.
I guess I mean it both ways. A question that cant be answered either truly or falsely is either metaphysical or meaningless. Turning that around, a metaphysical statement has no truth value. It is neither true nor false.
Youre pretty new here, so you likely arent familiar with my deep interest in, you might say obsession with, metaphysics. Ive written about it many times here, and I bring it into many of my posts. As I understand it, metaphysics is the study of what R.G. Collingwood called absolute presuppositions. These are the underlying assumptions that we bring, either consciously or non-consciously, into our understanding of how reality works.
As I said, they are neither true nor false. Your example of free will is a good one. We could argue about whether we think thats correct or not, but lets not. Its a very long argument, and I rarely convince anyone of my position. Its also a bit off subject for this thread.
Collingwood: the only modernization of Kant worth a damn. (That I know about)
Absolute presuppositions of the one, are the transcendental principles of the other.
I clearly haven't read nearly as much philosophy as you, so I can't compare philosophers. I will say I feel very at home with Collingwood, and not just with metaphysics. I also really like his "Principles of Art." I wouldn't have thought of him as following Kant, but my experience with Kant is limited to the "Critique of Pure Reason" and his categorical imperative.