Bernard Williams and the "Absolute Conception"
At the conclusion of his very interesting book, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (1978), Bernard Williams offers some of his own thoughts about the nature of philosophical inquiry.
He points to a familiar problem: We would like some sort of absolute knowledge, a View from Nowhere that will transcend local interpretative predispositions. But what if we accept the idea that science aims to provide that knowledge, and may be qualified to do it? What does that leave for philosophy to do? Williams says we should then regard philosophy as one of the social sciences, which do not attempt or claim that kind of transcendence.
His use of social science is a little non-standard in this regard, but this is all he means: a human science, a science that interprets rather than claims absolute knowledge. If there is or could be such a thing as the View from Nowhere, a view of reality absolutely uninterpreted by human perspectives and limitations, then scientific practice would produce this view, not philosophy.
And yet, he points out, if all this is true there will still need to be one piece of philosophy which has absolute status: namely, the very piece of philosophy which explains why the natural sciences may offer absolute knowledge while the social sciences, including philosophy, cannot. And, Williams maintains, that explanation will involve us in almost all of philosophy. Its not a piece that can be broken off and treated differently. Doesnt this lead after all to the conclusion that philosophy is absolute knowledge? -- perhaps even the highest form?
This, as I say, is familiar, and can be taken in various ways including as a kind of refutation by self-contradiction of the idea that philosophy is a social science. Amusingly, the refutation could also go the other way philosophy would be shown not to be an absolute conception!
But now Williams makes a very original move, as far as I know. He writes:
So philosophy can remain a local inquiry a social science, in Williams vocabulary and offer a conception of the world that includes the idea of absolute knowledge, as long as that very conception doesnt claim to be absolute knowledge.
I think this is ingenious. Im also uncertain whether it gets us free of the contradiction implied in the original formulation, about the one piece of philosophy that does need to claim absolute status. Also, not everyone will accept Williams idea that the natural sciences aim at, and may deliver, an absolute conception. But thats not a crucial feature of his view. Even if science cant do this, the question remains whether philosophy can. If we take that less optimistic view of science, we simply have to change its description in the one piece of philosophy -- which remains, it would seem, absolute.
Would anyone like to join me in analyzing this argument? And if its unclear in my paraphrase, I can quote more from Williams to set it up better if need be.
He points to a familiar problem: We would like some sort of absolute knowledge, a View from Nowhere that will transcend local interpretative predispositions. But what if we accept the idea that science aims to provide that knowledge, and may be qualified to do it? What does that leave for philosophy to do? Williams says we should then regard philosophy as one of the social sciences, which do not attempt or claim that kind of transcendence.
His use of social science is a little non-standard in this regard, but this is all he means: a human science, a science that interprets rather than claims absolute knowledge. If there is or could be such a thing as the View from Nowhere, a view of reality absolutely uninterpreted by human perspectives and limitations, then scientific practice would produce this view, not philosophy.
And yet, he points out, if all this is true there will still need to be one piece of philosophy which has absolute status: namely, the very piece of philosophy which explains why the natural sciences may offer absolute knowledge while the social sciences, including philosophy, cannot. And, Williams maintains, that explanation will involve us in almost all of philosophy. Its not a piece that can be broken off and treated differently. Doesnt this lead after all to the conclusion that philosophy is absolute knowledge? -- perhaps even the highest form?
This, as I say, is familiar, and can be taken in various ways including as a kind of refutation by self-contradiction of the idea that philosophy is a social science. Amusingly, the refutation could also go the other way philosophy would be shown not to be an absolute conception!
But now Williams makes a very original move, as far as I know. He writes:
Williams, 303:But we are not forced to that result [that philosophy is absolute knowledge]. The absolute status of philosophy would not be required just by their being some absolute conception of the world, but rather by our knowing that there was, and what it was. We have agreed . . . that we would need some reasonable idea of what such a conception would be like, but we have not agreed that if we have that conception, we have to know that we have it. . . . To ask not just that we should know, but that we should know that we know . . . is to ask for more very probably for too much.
So philosophy can remain a local inquiry a social science, in Williams vocabulary and offer a conception of the world that includes the idea of absolute knowledge, as long as that very conception doesnt claim to be absolute knowledge.
I think this is ingenious. Im also uncertain whether it gets us free of the contradiction implied in the original formulation, about the one piece of philosophy that does need to claim absolute status. Also, not everyone will accept Williams idea that the natural sciences aim at, and may deliver, an absolute conception. But thats not a crucial feature of his view. Even if science cant do this, the question remains whether philosophy can. If we take that less optimistic view of science, we simply have to change its description in the one piece of philosophy -- which remains, it would seem, absolute.
Would anyone like to join me in analyzing this argument? And if its unclear in my paraphrase, I can quote more from Williams to set it up better if need be.
Comments (113)
Neither science nor philosophy provide a view from nowhere, but what Williams has done is to take applied and derivative thinking (empiricism) and mistake it for a more fundamental and grounding perspective (philosophy).
The duty of philosophers is to formulate ideas, with the aim of finding absolute knowledge, and write them in a concise form. To do this, a basic training in the fields of science and art is required.
Why not? Does Williams have any argument? The multiplication of these threads looks like wishful thinking and prejudice. There is something approximating an argument here:
Quoting J
That's an argument, though a particularly bad one. Does Williams think the following are also sound?
Quoting J
No, I don't think so. Feel free to try to show that.
Quoting J
If you really think this is "ingenious," then why don't you try to explain the argument in your own words?
I will help you by providing an option:
The conclusion looks like a non-sequitur, and the reasoning is vague and confusing, perhaps intentionally so. (3) even looks false on its face. So feel free to explain what the argument is supposed to be and how it is supposed to be "ingenious."
(There is a funny scene from a movie or a show where a shyster child "makes change" with the other children's bills, and "ingeniously" always ends up richer himself. I can't recall the title. Williams' argument is reminiscent.)
The presupposition that a view from nowhere, absolute knowledge, objective reality, exists is the foundation of the orthodox view of what you are calling "natural science." It is metaphysics, philosophy, not science. Is this what you have called "one piece of philosophy which has absolute status?" The problem is that this is just one metaphysical view among many.
Quoting J
This is exactly backwards. Philosophical conceptions of "a view of reality absolutely uninterpreted by human perspectives and limitations" include Kant's noumena and Lao Tzu's Tao, along with many others in just about all philosophies. Science has nothing to say about this.
The fly that is stuck in your bottle is pretty simple: "How do I have certainty, given that I am a fallible being?"
I kinda wish Williams had left natural science out of his argument about the absolute conception, because I can see it's distracting several posters. But let me try to reply.
Williams has set this up as a "what if". What if we accept what you're calling "the orthodox view"? He's well aware that this is all it is, he's only pointing to it as the view (he was writing in the 1970s) most likely to garner support from those who think an absolute conception, a View from Nowhere, is available. It is, as you say, philosophy, not science.
So no, the "one piece of philosophy which has absolute status" -- or seems to; this is Williams' question -- is the one that would declare what does or doesn't have absolute status. Science may or may not figure in this. And it doesn't matter whether you think science has that status, or not. Either declaration, yea or nay, is going to appear as a philosophical statement claiming to demarcate an important area of human inquiry.
Apologies if my OP didn't make this sufficiently clear, though as I say, by starting with the so-called orthodox view of science as a potential absolute conception, Williams may have made the issue more confusing than it needs to be. I hadn't realized that until reading your, and others', responses.
Quoting T Clark
So, same response here. I have no idea if Williams believes this. I certainly don't. He's giving us a way to frame his question about absolute conceptions that he hopes will be familiar to his readers. His question -- and mine, in this OP -- is not about which absolute conception, if any, is correct. The question is about whether the argument I quoted succeeds in removing the onus of "absolute conception" from the "piece of philosophy" that claims to know that there is an absolute conception, yet presents itself as "merely local."
The whole thing is an attempt to see whether this house of conceptual cards can stand -- whether Williams has saved it, or only saved the appearances.
Maybe read the quote from his p. 303 again, in the light of all this?
Williamss position is fallibilist. He rejects the view from nowhere. There may be an absolute reality but we dont have to claim that our philosophical accounts of this absolute can themselves be known absolutely in order to make progress in our understanding of reality. We can do this through local, embodied and situated practical inquiries.
Good. That's how I read Williams' position as well. But the question remains: Does the move he makes in the material quoted from p. 303 suffice to show how this is possible? Williams says that we don't have to know either 1) that there is an absolute conception, or 2) what it is. Short of such knowledge, philosophical statements, including this very "piece of philosophy", are exempted from self-contradiction; as long as I don't claim knowledge about what the conception is, my talk about it can remain "local."
In short, I can be right about this, but not assert it as a piece of knowledge. As long as I don't say I know that I've got it right, I've avoided the trap.
Do you think this works, or is it only clever?
Your whole OP revolves around a highly unclear quote that you in no way attempt to clarify:
On top of this, the quote is itself a response to an objection, which is itself a response to a position of Williams'.
So:
Quoting J
"As long as I don't say I know that I've got it right, then I've avoided the trap/objection." So what is this trap/objection that Williams is trying to avoid? Is it the "trap" wherein a philosopher might claim to know something? :yikes:
What is problematic in that formulation is the hidden or implicit metaphysics in the modern conception of science. A part of that is the assumption that the natural sciences, or nature, or our conception of nature, is in principle complete or able to be completed, as others have said. But then these founding assumption are themselves ignored, meaning that the natural sciences cannot be complete in principle, as they neglect the very foundational assumptions upon which they rest.
Scientific objectivity is methodological - it's about designing studies, collecting data, and interpreting results in ways that minimize bias and personal influence. It involves using controlled experiments, peer review, replication, and statistical analysis to separate reliable findings from subjective impressions. The goal is to let the evidence speak for itself, regardless of what the researcher might personally prefer to find.
Philosophical detachment, on the other hand, is more about an existential stance toward knowledge and experience. It involves stepping back from immediate emotional investment or personal attachment to outcomes. A philosopher might cultivate detachment to see issues more clearly, to avoid being swayed by passion or self-interest, or to maintain intellectual humility about the limits of human understanding.
The key difference is that scientific objectivity is primarily about method and process, while philosophical detachment is about attitude and perspective. So the former provide criteria which can be validated in the third person, whereas the latter requires subjective commitment. So modern philosophy finds itself caught between two impulses: the traditional philosophical concern with wisdom, meaning, and understanding (which seems to require some form of first-person insight), and the modern demand for empirical rigor and third-person validation. The result is that philosophical detachment itself becomes suspect - how can you verify that someone has achieved it? How can you test whether it actually leads to truth rather than just personal satisfaction? Which explains why so much of contemporary philosophy focuses on conceptual analysis, logical argumentation, and empirically-informed theories rather than the exploration of ways of being.
So, there's real difference between the scientific and the philosophical attitude towards these questions, but it's very hard to articulate in terms that are acceptable to the former. From a scientific perspective, if you can't specify what would count as evidence for or against a claim, if you can't operationalize your concepts, if your insights can't be independently verified - then you're not really saying anything meaningful. The scientific framework becomes the measure of what counts as legitimate knowledge.
And as the scientific framework is by definition is reliant on conditions, then nothing whatever can be said about any supposed philosophical absolute which by definition is unconditional. That's the problem in a nutshell.
Could have been worse; it might have read Quoting J
:wink:
added: or
"what if we accept the idea that revelation aims to provide that knowledge"
or
"what if we accept the idea that mysticism aims to provide that knowledge"
and so on.
I know! It's a perfectly valid and interesting topic -- what to make of science and its defenders as an absolute conception -- but not the one I was hoping to address, picking up from Williams.
I agree with a great deal that you're saying. I think Williams might too, because as @Joshs pointed out, he does not espouse a scientific View from Nowhere, and as I was trying to explain, he mentions it only as a convenient point of reference to help locate what he's really asking about.
Maybe I can phrase Williams' problem using this:
Quoting Wayfarer
Let's grant that. Williams is asking, If philosophy asserts this, is it asserting a piece of absolute knowledge? It's certainly a striking and important assertion, if true; the question is, what is its claim to being knowledge, and of what sort? Is it "merely local" -- that is, the product of a philosophical culture which cannot lay claim to articulating absolute conceptions of the truth?
I don't think Williams much cares whether science, or scientism, would agree that the target truth claim is indeed absolute knowledge. What he wants to know is, Does philosophy say that it is? And isn't this self-contradictory, if we stipulate that local news is the only kind you're going to get on the Philosophy Channel?
As you can see, Williams suggests a solution that involves rejecting the claim to knowledge: "we would need some reasonable idea of what such an [absolute] conception would be like, but we have not agreed that if we have that conception, we have to know that we have it." And I'm asking, is this legit? By remaining agnostic about the absolute truth of "The natural sciences cannot be complete in principle", have we succeeded in saying something about an absolute conception ("a reasonable idea of what it would be like") without claiming to know it, or affirming it to be absolutely true? In a way, yes, but don't we want to say more? Or can the "more" only happen from some version of an absolute conception? We can see how the snake swallows its own head . . .
Right. Williams' question is about the idea of an "absolute conception," not any one in particular.
Our problem: If philosophy allows that some other discourse - science, religion, mysticism, revelation... provides an absolute account of the truth, then what is left for Philosophy?
Well, the come back is that philosophy still has at least that it's science, religion, mysticism, revelation or what ever that provides an absolute account of the truth... this becomes the last bastion of philosophy.
But then philosophy does lead to at least this little bit of absolute knowledge... and so philosophy's having allowed that some other discourse is the source of absolute knowledge is itself an absolute knowledge...
But then the "very original move", that even if philosophy provides a conception that includes the idea of absolute knowledge, this doesnt entail that philosophy knows that the conception is itself true in an absolute sense. It's still presumably the science or religion or revelation or mysticism that performs this task...
How is that? Is that close enough?
Then this seems to me very close to what we have been discussing concerning philosophy as plumbing.
The claim that science seeks a "view form nowhere" is a misrepresentation. Science seeks a view from anywhere. It phrases it's pronouncements in terms that maximise the contexts in which they can be taken as true.
Since the cardinality of contexts is undefined, there is no end to what science has to say.
Very close. I bolded in an absolute sense to make it even clearer. Philosophy is going to talk about some other inquiry's absolute conception, and talk about it in a way that remains tied to non-absolute conceptions. The things phil says about these absolute conceptions are not put forward as true beyond the historical or cultural context of the philosopher -- they are not "known to be true" in the same way that the absolute conception knows things to be true.
I think that is what Williams is suggesting.
Quoting Banno
Interesting. I'll reflect on that. You may be right, precisely because I'm not happy with that conclusion, and want more from philosophy! Which leads me to view Williams' move with suspicion. Can the mere avoidance of self-reflection or self-appraisal still leave philosophy able to say what it wants? Well, I guess that very much depends on who's doing the wanting. :smile:
To be continued . . .
The idea of reality was created by philosophy and is not what scientific practice produces, thus one reason why philosophy is larger than science (is prior to it, as it were). The basis of any stability, predictability, universality, and certainty (facts) of science is based on its method, not its correlation to a real world. Because the practice is repeatable, and not dependent on us (can be done by anyoneis not local), is what gives science its power, and also allows it to be (really) wrong sometimes.
Fair enough. "View from Nowhere" has gotten entrenched, via Nagel, but maximal contexts makes sense. And Nagel didn't mean science in particular.
Ooooo nice...
Trouble is I don't think any of science, revelation, mysticism or whatever can have "absolute knowledge"... 'casue I don't see how we can make that sort of phrase work.
So if its a philosophical claim, then how is it to be adjudicated? Surely that would require some framework within which the expression philosophical absolute is meaningful. I suppose when Williams asks whether, if we were to possess such an insight, we must know we possess it, hes invoking the Cartesian expectation that a genuine absolute insight would be, as Descartes claimed of the cogito, apodictic self-certifying by virtue of its subject matter.
But if we never say more than heres what an absolute would be like if there were one, have we said anything of consequence? Or would it have been better not to have asked the question?
I think what we're experiencing here is a version of what Richard Bernstein called the Cartesian anxiety: the fear that unless we can affirm an absolute with certainty, were condemned to relativism. But perhaps that anxiety itself arises from a false dichotomy: philosophical reflection can meaningfully trace the limits of conditioned knowledge without pretending to stand outside of it. When I said that 'the natural sciences cannot be complete in principle,' I'm not making a metaphysical declaration from on high but reflecting critically and necessarily on the conditions of intelligibility that science presupposes but doesn't (and doesn't necessarily need to) account for. That stance doesn't claim to possess the absolute but it does require that we be open to 'the unconditioned' as a necessary item in the philosophical lexicon. Which we're generally not!
(Here's a relevant piece of analytical philosophy on this subject, The unconditioned in philosophy of religion, Steven Shakespeare, which makes the case for the necessity of 'the unconditioned' in place of a putative deity in this debate.)
We have agreed . . . that we would need some reasonable idea of what such a [absolute] conception [of the world] would be like, but we have not agreed that if we have that conception, we have to know that we have it. Williams
In the spirit of the argument, what I am pointing out is that the need (desire) for certainty created the absolute conception of the world. It is philosophy that created what such a conception would be like, and it was its job to understand that reason for such a framework (idea)to know that [why] we have it.
Quoting J
That is philosophys claim, but it neither claims it absolutely, nor locally, as these are predetermined, created standards.
I went back and reread the OP and your response to my comment, as well as all the other posts on this thread. But I dont get it. I cant even figure out what the question on the table is. Its frustrating because this is exactly the kind of question I like best.
Lets leave it at that. Ill follow along and see what I can get out of this.
Quoting J
Quoting Wayfarer
Without a full and exhaustive (-ing), discussion of what knowledge is, lets assume we are all pretty much right that our desire for certainty (an absolute) is a unachievable standard we created; that philosophers (humans) have always wanted knowledge to be math-likeelevating science as the closest (to: complete, predictive, universal, abstract, etc). The presumed fallout without that is chaos, which @Wayfarer rightly points out is equally imagined.
#comment-1000146" class="quote-link">Quoting J
Quoting Wayfarer
A philosophical claim has its power only in as much as you see it for yourself. We are not avoiding reflection; that is exactly the method. But it is not reflection on the self as much as the conditions of intelligibility, put otherwise, the interests we all have in this or that practice (not our personal interests). Thus knowledge of something is uncovering the particular criteria for judgment of identity, completion, correctness, etc. to itself (a practice). Now, of course, one may dissent, disagree, live against our practices, opt out, but the key is philosophy is able to make what is presumed (say, the need for an absolute)what is: not knownmade intelligible (as in, aware of/explicit).
we have to know that we have [an absolute conception of the world]. . . . To ask not just that we should know, but that we should know that we know -Williams
Thus we have multiple uses or senses of know happening at once without distinction, we have to know [as in: understand (be aware of) the criteria] that we have [for] an absolute conception of the world To ask not just that we should know [be aware], but that we should be [absolutely certain] that we know [have the right criteria].
It's confusing because if you just say it plainly it is seen to be silly, so it has to be dressed up in a lot of cryptic language that one must then refuse to clarify.
@J's professor, Bernard Williams, is allergic to the idea that philosophers have knowledge (and so is @J). So this is what happens:
So the idea is that philosophers can't have knowledge, even though they know that scientists have knowledge, and this is okay as long as philosophers say, "I am right about my claim that scientists have knowledge, but I am not saying I know that scientists have knowledge." *
If you like you can replace "knowledge" with "absolute knowledge" and then ask @J what the heck "absolute knowledge" is supposed to be (and you can do the same thing for any other such substitution).
Normal philosophers without an allergy to knowledge just say that they know that scientists have knowledge, and that this knowing is of course itself knowledge. So the philosopher at the very least has some knowledge, namely the knowledge that scientists have knowledge, and since the normal philosopher is not allergic to knowledge the world will not collapse upon admitting that he knows something.
* Note how intimately connected this is to @J's continual claims that there can be non-assertive assertions. The non-knowledge-claim about being right is for @J an example of his non-assertive assertion. Or in other words, the knowledge claim that isn't a knowledge claim is just one of those assertions that isn't an assertion, so it's not ad hoc at all! lol
I linked earlier to an article by Steven Shakespeare on the unconditioned in philosophy of religion. One of his key points is that the unconditioned might serve as a more open-ended alternative to the term God in philosophical discourse, especially when trying to speak about the absolute without presuming a theistic framework. The unconditioned, as he frames it, is not just another necessary being in all possible worldsits that in virtue of which any world, or any necessary being, is intelligible at all.
This seems to resonate with the question Williams raises: can philosophy speak meaningfully of something absolute without claiming to know it in the apodictic, Cartesian sense? Maybe whats needed isnt absolute knowledge but an orientation toward the limits of conditioned thoughta recognition that philosophy, at its best, gestures beyond what it can fully capture.
Im not claiming any esoteric insight, but Id suggest that to speak of the unconditioned meaningfully may require not just analysis but transformation: something more like philosophical detachment than scientific objectivity. And that, I think, also points toward a different conception of knowledge than the scientificone closer to insight or self-knowledge. Its not often found in the dominant strains of Anglo-American philosophy, but its much more characteristic of certain strands of European and Asian thought.
I cant help think it must be something like gnosis or one of its cognates - subject of that rather arcane term 'gnoseology' which is comparable to 'epistemology' but with rather more gnostic overtones. In any case, it is knowledge of the kind which conveys a kind of apodictic sense, although that is a good deal easier to write about than to actually attain.
No science, besides the accidental, is ever done that isnt first thought, but even accidental science makes necessary thought relative to purpose.
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Quoting J
Yeah, humans, huh? If they want something badly enough, theyll change the conditions under which it was formerly impossible, in order to satisfy themselves that it isnt. First glance, absolute knowledge is unintelligible; second glance, absolute knowledge is at least conceivably transcendent relative to human intelligence; third glance, absolute knowledge as a valid conception, the attainment of which remains nonetheless logically impossible; at some future glance, absolute knowledge may be provided by empirical science. Theyll talk it to death, thereby losing sight of what set the stage in the first place.
A true brain teaser, given from and determinable only by that which refuses access to its works, all the while allowing us the knowledge that we dont know how it works.
This may be helpful:
So yes, this is spinning off from Descartes' project, and we see this particularly when Williams first names "secondary qualities" as needing explanation (something Descartes understood) and then links this with "local non-absolute conceptions," which probably would have been meaningless to Descartes but is very much of concern to us.
I'm not sure if Williams' framing of "absolute knowledge" requires that it be apodictic. This is one of the puzzles about what absolute knowledge, should such exist, would look like. Does math count as absolute knowledge? It is arguably self-certifying.
As for certainty:
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. One of the hallmarks of the absolute conception, as opposed to a local or relativized conception, would be a type of certainty. But we have to spell this out carefully: The certainty is meant to guarantee that whatever is being asserted is framework-independent, pre-interpretation, true no matter who is asserting it, in no matter what context. This has understandably been questioned as either impossible or incoherent.
But is it the kind of certainty that says, "This very statement [about the grounds and limitations of the absolute conception] is certainly true"? That goes to the heart of my discomfort with Williams' "move."
Quoting Wayfarer
Agreed, and I think Williams is trying to show a way for this to be legitimate.
Quoting Wayfarer
Good statement of what I meant by Quoting J
Do you have an opinion about this "more"? How would you answer your own question? I'm guessing you would point to a wisdom-tradition response that "gestures beyond" this kind of philosophy. . . ? (as suggested by your subsequent post, from which I quote below) My own answers would be similar.
Quoting Wayfarer
(* the claim is: "as long as I don't claim knowledge about what the [absolute] conception is, my talk about it can remain "local.")
I was with you all the way, until this. Maybe I'm not understanding you. Let's grant that both "absolute" and "local" are predetermined, created standards. How does this exempt philosophy from nonetheless speaking from one or the other? What would be the third alternative?
Snake swallows tail again . . . but you're right.
Quoting T Clark
I feel bad about this, and will try to think of other ways to clarify what we're talking about. For now, please do keep following along, maybe someone else will do better than I.
*
There are a number of other interesting points that people have raised, thanks. I look forward to responding, but I'll be out of cyberworld all day and evening. Carry on!
Dont feel bad. Getting lost in philosophy is nothing new for me.
Youre right, in science, objectivity is methodological, but thats not all it is. The existence of objective reality is the foundation of orthodox science, at least historically. Thats an ontological, not methodological, claim.
Yes, good. And the presupposition is that the certitude in question must be justifiable, and therefore disagreements must be adjudicable. Science is thought to be adjudicable because it is thought to have clear objects and criteria.
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Quoting Antony Nickles
Quoting J
I see that point of @Antony Nickles as crucial. A truth-claim is neither "absolute" nor "local." These are contrived categories which tend to break down as soon as an explication is requested.
I think this is an argument I could probably make. Not so much that philosophers dont have knowledge, but that philosophy does not involve knowledge. Certainly metaphysics doesnt. Neither do aesthetics or morals.
Okay, and do you say that science involves knowledge? And if you know that scientists have knowledge, then is your knowledge of this philosophical? Can "philosophy" know that science involves knowledge?
Sure.
Quoting Leontiskos
No. Its just regular old everyday knowledge.
Quoting Leontiskos
Philosophy cant even figure out what knowledge means.
Okay, so it looks like on your view there is "scientific knowledge" and there is "everyday knowledge," but there is no such thing as "philosophical knowledge."
Well, theres certainly is knowledge about philosophy, for example Aristotle was born on a certain date and died on a certain date. He wrote certain things. But as I said, philosophy doesnt involve knowledge. It doesnt work with knowledge.
Ill admit, Im just playing around with this idea. As I said in my previous post, I think I can make this argument. That doesnt necessarily mean I believe it. Ill think about it some more.
Quite right. But Greek philosophy was also animated by just that ideal. See Becoming God: Pure Reason in Early Greek Philosophy, Patrick Lee Miller:
Plainly, 'reason' had a very different meaning in that context than it does for us. Not the tidy propositional format of 'justified true belief' but the basis of an all-encompassing way of life. Of course there's been much water under the bridge, there's no way to re-inhabit the ancient mind, but at least the lexicon of ancient philosophy provides a better vocabulary than does modern.
In Neoplatonism:
There are similes in Buddhism and Vedanta. In Ved?nta, Brahman is not an object of knowledge it is the ground of the knower. The jñ?ni (knower) realizes his/her identity as I am Brahman. In Buddhism, ultimate truth (param?rtha-satya) cannot be framed in conceptual thought. It requires a transformative mode of knowing that is not reducible to cognition, but is existential or participatory, knowing by being. This is what Pierre Hadot called philosophy as a way of life and what the early Greek philosophers likely meant by "know thyself.
I think we are pushing a few things together maybe. I took the view from nowhere as the requirement of a criteria of certainty (which I take Descartes to be desiring, even in bringing up God). But if we are talking about a conception of the absolute, then weve reached the cliff @Banno was worried about, as that would be theologys discussion with science. If we are talking about a conception of absolutely everything, then wed describe justice and rocks the same way.
Quoting J
Above I said Thus knowledge of something is uncovering the particular criteria for judgment of identity, completion, correctness, etc. to itself (a practice). As Wittgenstein was trying to point out, different practices have different criteria, different standards (not just certainty)what matters as that counting as such-and-such (pointing, apologies, a moral stance, a fact); as it were, being true to itself.
Quoting J
When I said here that A philosophical claim has its power only in as much as you see it for yourself, the kind (sense/use) of knowledge I am talking about is acceptance, acknowledgment (in contrast to other senses of knowledge: as awareness, or a promise that I have authority). Our reflection on our (shared) interests in the things we do is recognized in our ability to articulate. More may be dreamt of than in our philosophy, but thats not to say we cant acknowledge, say, how science is important to us, or paraphrase a poem, or even discuss the unknowable (@Wayfarer).
To throw another couple monkeys in, Cavell (from Wittgenstein) would say that our relation to the world is not only through knowledge, which is not to say it is opinion or faith, but that part of what it is to take action is not knowing what to do, but in doing it, being the one who does it, is held responsible for having done it. There is also our own growth; e.g., changing how we think, rather than just what we think (even more than wisdom).
I like that - a simple argument. There's benefit in having different ways to describe different things, hence collapsing everything into one description is leaving things out?
Quoting J
wasn't the entire Western practice, but a particular analytic conception which is often quite severe about what counts as good philosophical discourse.
Quoting Antony Nickles
As I said to @Wayfarer, above:
Quoting J
Is this the same thing, the same flavor of certainty, as the kind Descartes sought? I don't think so. This sort of certainty is more like an argument which goes: "Well, if what I claim to know is framework-independent, true no matter who asserts it, etc., et al., then surely it must be certain. What more could I require, in the way of certainty?"
Quoting Antony Nickles
And here's yet another way to construe certainty: Certainty is what we get when we discover we are viewing the world from an absolute point of view. This, I wouldn't hesitate to call apodictic. It is self-verifying in much the same way that Descartes' God cannot be a deceiver. Interesting question: Can this version of certainty ever attach itself to something that isn't God? There are those who believe that scientific realism is self-verifying, on pain of contradiction.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Quoting Banno
What Banno says, would indeed be the problem if speaking from within some absolute conception implied only one type or level of description. But does that follow? Perhaps you could say more about why we'd have to describe abstracta and physical items the same way.
Quoting Antony Nickles
OK, but . . . does this answer my question about absolute vs. local? Sorry if I'm not seeing it. To put it another way: Is what Witt says coming from an absolute, a local, or neither viewpoint?
Quoting Antony Nickles
I think Williams' problem, and mine, would be: "More may dreamt of than in our philosophy, but that's not to say we can't acknowledge how philosophy is important to us." -- is that true, W and I are asking? What form does that acknowledgement take? Is it the same sort of discourse that allows phil to speak about a discipline outside itself, such as science?
Or, philosophy is like science with no balls.
Does philosophy ever assert what is true about the world?
ADDED:
Quoting J
Correct assumption. Which makes it true - out in the world, apart from your own models and modeling, I actually was thinking balls equal a testicular variety of material. Absolutely correct.
Quoting J
Additional criteria would be completeness (encompassing all variables and outcomes); infallibility or predictability; being right without being responsible; ensuring agreement, being only either true or false, etc. It seems we are taking abstraction from context or an individual (or human fallibility, limitation) as the criteria for certainty. Im trying to point out how forced this is by differentiating topics and claiming that their individual criteria and their appropriate contexts are necessary and sufficient for being accepted (that we can all assert intelligible and rational claims about their framework). That this does not ensure agreement is philosophys (and moralitys) lack of power (which @Fire Ologistpoints out correctly) which science claims (though as easily ignored it appears). But this a categorical difference (it works differently) not a relegation to individual persuasion, opinion, belief, rhetoric (locality).
Quoting J
If we insist on removing a topic from its context and specific criteria, then we lose the ability to judge a thing based on its own standards.
Quoting J
Yes. Philosophy is the unearthing of the criteria for a practice, such as why we value, and how we judge, science. The philosophical assessment of science is not based on sciences own criteria.
Quoting J
As I said earlier: Our reflection on our (shared) interests in the things we do is recognized in our ability to articulate. in order for you to see it for yourself; to provide your own proof.
To simplify, if I claim (describe sufficiently) how a mistake is different from an accident, or what constitutes a correct and sufficient apology or excuse (or scientific study), you may agree with those criteria. You may claim others more important. You may assert other distinctions are necessary. We may need to discuss examples in order to resolve the issues. This conversation is intelligible and rational because we share these practices (over the course of human history) and the evidence (and our standing to make claims) is available to all of us. This is not local, so much as, specific. Not based on the individual, but the particular (criteria and context of a practice). Abstraction makes philosophy impossible; thus, ironically, our desire to want everything to be like science is the death of rational discourse.
Its more that most of the intellectual resources of Western philosophy became concentrated on science (natural philosophy) to the extent that the other aspects of it withered away. Banno has referred to surveys which show that a very small percentage of the academic philosophy profession defend philosophical idealism. Most seem to align with some form of physicalism, such as non-reductive physicalism (Davidson et el). So the lexicon for alternative philosophical conceptions has [s]dried up[/s] been deprecated - the presumption is that the word is physical (whatever that means) and science is the way to investigate it (wherever that leads). Meanwhile philosophers can talk quietly amongst themselves at conferences and publish learned papers for each other.
Regarding frameworks, I certainly accept that there are meaningful frameworks, or rather, domains of discourse, but again, the implicit presumption will generally be that these will be subsumed under the heading of natural science (or naturalism in philosophy). But that is why I will call out to Indian and current idealist philosophy from time to time, as their philosophies have not on the whole been subsumed under naturalism, to the degree that Anglo philosophy has.
:up:
Or loudly, in the basement of the internet. Amongst themselves.
Quoting Wayfarer
Not yet subsumed, but I suspect only because it still feels impolite.
Yes. Partly because of their cleverness. Untouchable, one might say with admiration.
The "we" here is understood as referring to those within Williams' hypothesis -- the proponents of the "absolute conception" who might be understood as claiming that such a conception would provide certainty. I, and I think Williams, would agree that this is forced, or at least unnecessary. There remains, though, the question of whether "being accepted" is the right way to look at it. The problem is that while "we all" can indeed make intelligible and rational claims in support of a given framework, another group of "us all" can dispute them, with equal rationality.
Quoting Antony Nickles
How are you understanding "power" here?
Quoting Antony Nickles
Agreed, but why would speaking from an absolute conception have to involve this kind of removal? Wouldn't a genuine View from Nowhere provide, along with many other things, an account of those standards, and why they can serve as a basis for judgment? What would be questioned, from this view, would be the absolute nature of such judgment -- only the Absolute Conception gets to say absolute things.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Right, but that wasn't quite my question. The philosophical assessment of philosophy is presumably based on philosophy's own criteria. You don't see a problem there?
Quoting Antony Nickles
An important question. I looked back at Williams to clarify how he was using "local":
So I'm pretty sure Williams means what you mean by "specific to a context of a practice." Such a context would require the "interpretative predispositions" Williams speaks of. But he's obviously uncomfortable with leaving it at that. Notice how he pairs "local" with "distorted". Again, I don't know to what extent Williams shares this view; I read him as trying to make the best case he can for why we ought to be concerned with this question, in much the way Descartes was. He would change your statement, "Abstraction makes philosophy impossible," to a question: "Does abstraction (of the V-from-N sort) make philosophy impossible? Why have so many philosophers, beginning with Descartes, tried to locate genuine philosophy within an Absolute Conception?"
Which brings us full circle around to Williams' "move" that I quoted and discussed in the OP. I think this is his way of dissolving the problem.
:up:
Quoting J
This seems to be generalizing a sense there is relativism in any practice where the requirement for certainty (authority) does not apply. Philosophy is describing the workings of practices in which we already share interests (in the practice; thus their normativity) so its just a matter on agreeing on the explication of the criteria. To say you can speak intelligibly and have reasons doesnt mean you can say anything you want (intelligibly) in claiming, say, how an apology works (or how knowing does). Again, we might not end up agreeing, nor circumscribe every case or condition, but its not as if anything goes.
Some practices are human, some are just people who throw cabers. But making how they are judged explicit is not an interpretation nor does it rely on predispositions (I can only imagine the assumption is that since we dont usually speak of them they are some natural, individual inclination.) Plus, if we have different but related practices, that does not make either any less accountable, reconcilable, nor necessarily destroys the criteria for identity of the practice itself. In different things this matters more or less. Doing science, more, making tea, less (or not).
Quoting J
Sciences power is, among other things, it is predictable and verifiable as an independent authority (though I may still disagree, take its findings as not important).
Quoting J
We cant measure everything with the same spoon. I just did account for those standards, and why they can serve as a basis for judgment. We cant with one hand give that there are a multitude of criteria and with the other require that the judgment of each thing requires the same basis. It depends on the thing whether the judgment is absolute or not. Judging a good shoe and what is considered a planet are different in kind, not hierarchy, or scope. The more we restrict our criteria, the less meets the standard, so the less we actually notice, can understand, and so get to say anything about.
Quoting J
This is a good question which requires a lot to explain, but Descartes fear of making mistakes created the desire to never make one again. If Plato could use knowledge to be certain of everything, we would have control prior to doing anything (life as physics by math in space). Wittgenstein called this the requirement for crystalline purity of logic, that we want prior to a moral act. If we turn our doubt into a problem, we require a particular answer (knowledge), one that meets preset criteria (certainty).
Quoting J
But how philosophy is done, and what even counts as philosophy is always an internal struggle of the discipline; its self-guidance and lack of external adjudication makes it harder to reconcile, but not impossible (there is no better/other). This is the benefit of looking at the tradition as a set of texts, and not necessarily a set of problems.
But arent the limits of science also the limits of empiricism? That is: science deals with contingent facts with what happens to be the case. It excels in explicating the conditioned and the observable, but it brackets questions about the unconditioned or the unconditional questions that point toward what must be the case if anything is to appear at all, or what cannot not be the case. These are, in an older register, questions about the Absolute. Just the kinds of questions which positivism eschews.
Thats why I introduced the notion of the unconditioned. Theres a conceptual kinship between the unconditioned and what philosophers have called the unconditional the necessary, the absolute, the ground that is not itself grounded. But empirical science, by its own design, isnt structured to accomodate that. It works within a domain of contingencies, not ultimates. Thats not a criticism its part of its power but it is a limit. And as I said before, that limit has become like an unspoken barrier in many ways.
Wittgenstein, at the end of the Tractatus, makes a similar point:
[quote=TLP 6.416.522] The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no valueand if there were, it would be of no value.
If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.[/quote]
Which raises the key question: what lies outside the world not as a factual object or hidden variable, but as the condition for intelligibility itself? Its not a thing, not an empirical entity. And yet philosophy (in its reflective capacity) cant help but trace the contours of what it cannot fully name whether its called the unconditioned, the transcendental, the One, or the Ground. Not a thing, but not nothing.
This isnt a claim to absolute knowledge, but an acknowledgment that some form of orientation toward the unconditioned may be a necessary feature of any philosophical reflection that seeks to account for intelligibility, normativity, or value without falling into relativism. So, his 'that of which we cannot speak' is not the 'taboo on metaphysics' that the Vienna Circle took it to be - as Wittgenstein himself said:
[quote=6522]There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.[/quote]
(See also Wittgenstein, Tolstoy and the Folly of Logical Positivism, Stuart Greenstreet, originally published by the British Wittgenstein Society.)
Quoting MoK
I lived life is not something one can learn though. Not everyone gains much wisdom with age but I doubt no one gain any whatsoever.
A basic education can easily lead someone down a blind alley just as it can broaden horizons. Awareness of this is knowledge, whilst understanding it is ourselves who are certainly succumbing to blind alleys or overreaching beyond the horizon is where wisdom lies.
Ironically it seems tha failiure is the only way to make any kind of progress in life. Bravery is learning to keep on keeping on. I believe this is why Sisyphus was regarded as the wisest of all.
"Just" a matter of agreeing! Would that it were so simple. I'm not holding out for some radical relativism that would make sensible conversation about this impossible. I'm only pointing out that, within any practice that is deeper and more complicated than, for instance, "what constitutes a correct and sufficient apology or excuse," there is likely going to be debate about framework and criteria that is difficult to resolve. You go on to add "(or scientific study)" to the example about apologies and excuses, but do you really think this is in the same ballpark? Apologies may be seen to be largely conventional, and the prospects for agreement are bright, but is this true of scientific practice? I don't think so.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Right. But the things that do go, will keep the discussion about normativity alive.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Is that like stirring the possum? :smile:
I don't think "[specific criteria]" will do as a substitute for my "[A philosophy which doesn't claim to speak from an Absolute Conception]". Williams is talking about an entire (non-absolute) philosophical framework, not criteria for a practice. His point is that you don't even get to practices without certain understandings about basic background stuff. These understandings, on this way of seeing it, are "local predispositions" because we've stipulated that the philosophical framework is non-absolute. And let's not forget that all this is being set up by Williams in order to question it -- to ask what is at stake by setting up the local/Absolute binary in this way.
Quoting J
Quoting Antony Nickles
Yes. The point is that the Absolute Conception can do that too. It doesn't need to remove a topic from its context.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Here you're raising a good question about what "absolute conception" really means. What's the cash value? If we were to discover such a conception, would it mean that all those alleged possible criteria get reduced to some common denominator, conceptually? Is that the "basis" upon which the absolute conception itself rests? I don't know. For Williams' purposes -- and, he suggests, for Descartes' -- an absolute conception would allow us to make sense of, to explain in a unified way, "local" things like secondary qualities, social practices, and disagreements within philosophy. Here's another quote that may help:
Quoting Antony Nickles
Say more about this? What is the difference in kind that you see?
Quoting Antony Nickles
Well, yes, that's how I see it, but can you reconcile such a view with what you're saying about "agreeing on the explication of criteria"? When philosophy takes itself as its subject, I believe it enters a unique discourse. Philosophy may talk about science by looking at scientific criteria; the assumption is that philosophy's criteria for how to do this are not on the table. But when the inquiry turns inward, we don't have the luxury of bumping any questions of judgment or method to some off-the-table level.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Interesting. Can you elaborate?
Your entire quote from the Tractatus is very apropos to the question of an Absolute Conception. We could make this substitution:
"In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no Absolute Conceptionand if there were, it could not be absolutely true."
What I'm getting at is that the View from Nowhere puts some very peculiar demands on us as denizens of "the world." If "all happening and being-so is accidental," nothing we say in philosophy can escape this. It's all "local," in Williams' terms. "What makes it non-accidental [that is, what makes the Absolute Conception absolute, or unconditioned] cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental." So, how could we meet this demand?
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, something like this. Do you think "trace the contours of what it cannot fully name" is the situation Williams is describing when he points out that "to ask not just that we should know, but that we should know that we know" is asking too much?
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes.
Quoting J
This is not at all true of the whole lineage of philosophy arising from Nietzsches work (Heidegger, Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida). The self-reflexivity you are suggesting is missing from philosophy is at the very heart of their method.
That is the world Im interested in. I dont think the experts in speaking about this half-world are only priests and mystics and poets. I think there is rigorous philosophic work that can be done on whatever that is that you just referenced.
To give it some type of grounding, I call it, the personal. Persons dont seem to equate to things, but cant be denied as if nothing either.
Good stuff, Wayfarer. Id love to be able to get rigorous about the unconditioned. Id love to discuss love for instance, as a substance, like a thing, but not a thing, but not nothing. Seems eons away from where philosophy is today
Quoting J
What I meant was that for the philosophers I mentioned, the act of philosophical self-reflection is not an inner process of solipsistic self-confirmation. Instead the self comes back to itself (constitutes itself) from the world. To reflect is to self-transform, to be thrown elsewhere. The objection to scientific thinking is its tendency toward platonism (subject-object dualism) in the presuppositions guiding it. Anthony will be able to show how for Wittgenstein traditional philosophy gives into this platonism alongside the self-conception of the sciences. Williams approach devices the li geri f attachment to the platonism inherent in the distinction between the real
world and the apparent world.
-
Quoting J
Why is that a problem?
Or rather, how do you determine that every claim is made "with equal rationality"?
What you always end up saying is, "Oh, well not every claim is made with equal rationality. But every claim from the set of [serious/professional/rational people] is made with equal rationality, and I have no way to tell you how to identify that set." These threads of yours always involve this same petitio principii, which amounts to a sort of question-begging assertion in favor of relativistic pluralism.
I suspect what's at bottom is the same old TPF schtick of, "You have the burden of proof." "I don't know why any one claim could be said to be more rational than any other claim, and you have the burden of proof in showing such a thing." I don't see that sound methodology is being used in trying to support such theses in these sorts of threads. This is one place where Wittgenstein's "therapeutic" diagnosis seems especially apt.
Life is a great teacher! Your knowledge is developed through your interaction with mental events. Uncertainty in life allows us to learn from our mistakes, so we face new things every day, including new challenges, which keep our minds engaged and entertained.
Quoting I like sushi
Very correct!
Quoting I like sushi
Philosophy of art, for example, is a branch of philosophy. Without an art training, you cannot philosophize about art.
Quoting I like sushi
Could you please provide a few short quotes from him?
Williams approach evinces a lingering attachment to the platonism inherent in the distinction between the real world and the apparent world. I am reminded of Nietzsches 6 stages from Twilight of the Idols:
1)The wise and pious man dwells in the real world, which he attains through his wisdom (skills in perception warrant a more accurate view of the real world).
2)The wise and pious man doesn't dwell in the real world, but rather it is promised to him, a goal to live for. (ex: to the sinner who repents)
3)The real world is unattainable and cannot be promised, yet remains a consolation when confronted with the perceived injustices of the apparent world.
4)If the real world is not attained, then it is unknown. Therefore, there is no duty to the real world, and no consolation derived from it.
5)The idea of a real world has become uselessit provides no consolation or motive. It is therefore cast aside as a useless abstraction.
6)What world is left? The concept of the real world has been abolished, and with it, the idea of an apparent world follows.
Williams seems to be on stage 2 or 3
On the relation between Williams, Nietzsche and Platonism, you might enjoy Rortys To the Sunlit Uplands
Yes. No work can be done or progress made if one believes equal rationality applies to both sides of any dispute.
Rationality may exist on both sides, but how equal? The inequality of the rationality is what constitutes any dispute, whether one side (or both) are making invalid arguments and/or using unfounded facts.
1. Either the stone of infallibility exists, or else it doesn't
2. If it exists, then there is an end to relativistic pluralism
3. If it does not exist, then there is no end to relativistic pluralism
4. The stone of infallibility does not exist
5. Therefore, there is no end to relativistic pluralism
For my money @J wants (5), and this is post hoc rationalization, even though he styles it as a "search." But even if that is wrong, the whole framing around the horizon of infallibility is entirely confused. That is the fundamental error of both Williams and @J: this obsession with infallibility, which has become the gravitational center of their thought whether they like it or not. The correct response to this bizarrely redundant argument is, "Why do you care so much about infallibility?"
That's right, and this is precisely why one of @J's heroes contradict themselves:
Quoting Leontiskos
Relativistic "stances" undermine dialogue and knowledge altogether. If no one view is more rational than any other, then there is no reason to search for what is better.
Out of curiosity, what do you take Williams' position to be on the question of the Absolute Conception? Could you set it out in Williams' terms, rather than indicate how other philosophers might derogate it?
Its important to recall that The View from Nowhere is itself a critique of the limits of scientific objectivity. Nagels argument is that while the drive toward objectivity is crucial, it also distorts especially when we try to abstract away the subject entirely: the world can't be reduced to what can be said from no point of view. At some level, the subjective standpoint is indispensable. Hes says he's not advocating idealism, but insisting that the nature of being has an ineliminably subjective ground or aspect (although that is what I think both idealism and phenomenology actually mean.)
In this, Nagel approaches something like a dialectic: not a fusion of subjective and objective, but a dialogical relationship between them. Theres a similarity with a schema given by Zen teacher Gudo Nishijima Roshi in his commentary on D?gen (the founder of the S?t? Zen sect). In To Meet the Real Dragon Nishijima describes a fourfold structure of philosophical reflection, which he calls 'Three Philosophies and One Reality'. He says that everything in life can be seen through these perspectives:
Nishijima emphasizes that these modes are not to be collapsed into each other. Each is partial, and reality overflows even their synthesis. Reality, in this view, is not reducible to any standpoint not even to a dialectic but it must be met, not captured. (Hence the uncompromising emphasis on practice in Zen schools.)
What this offers, perhaps, is a different way of engaging the demand for the unconditioned. Not by striving for a view from nowhere in the sense of Archimedean objectivity, but by learning to move fluidly among perspectives without assuming any one of them is exclusive. If there is an Absolute, it does not speak to us in the voice of a single register. Its approached only through this layered reflection and perhaps not known as much as embodied.
I think this is the reason why the Western philosophical tradition struggles with these questions shaped, as it has been, by all-or-nothing theological categories, especially since the Reformation: belief or unbelief, salvation or damnation, truth or heresy. Nondualism allows for a more nuanced philosophical stance one that doesnt demand total certainty, but also doesnt surrender to relativism:
[quote=The Embodied Mind, Varela, Thompson, Rosch, First Edition, p143] Whether one tries to find an ultimate ground inside or outside the mind, the basic motivation and pattern of thinking is the same, namely, the tendency to grasp. In Madhyamika (Middle Way Buddhist philosophy) this habitual tendency is considered to be the root of the two extremes of "absolutism" and "nihilism." At first, the grasping mind leads one to search for an absolute ground for anything, whether inner or outer, that might by virtue of its "own-being" be the support and foundation for everything else. Then, faced with its inability to find any such ultimate ground, the grasping mind recoils and clings to the absence of a ground by treating everything else as illusion.[/quote]
Also see: Three Philosophies and One Reality, Gudo Nishijima Roshi.
@Leontiskos @Fire Ologist
They are not attempting to create an account that 'abstracts away from the subjective entity"... or some such.
They are creating an account that will work with the broadest generality, that is pretty much an application of the Principle of Relativity.
It's preference for accounts that work in multiple situations.
It's the view from anywhere.
The view from nowhere isnt a critique of what scientists do, but of what scientific objectivity aspires to a standpoint purified of subjectivity. Nagels argument is that this abstraction leaves out the very thing it cant explain: the subject itself. And if you've ever studied philosophy of science (Polyani, Kuhn, et el), you would know that this criticism is perfectly well-grounded.
So it claims. And my reply is that it is not what scientists aspire to.
They are not seeking to remove perspective, but to give an account that works from as many perspectives as possible.
The view from anywhere.
It means precisely the same thing. No, they're not seeking to remove perspective, they're seeking an observation, outcome, or finding which will be the same for anyone conducting the same experiment or making the same observation in the same circumstances. It's called 'reproducibility' (the same thing that's allegedly in crisis in the social sciences.)
Well, no.
A view from nowhere has no location. A view from anywhere has any location. These are not the same.
The intent of a given principle is that it be applicable in as many cases as possible. It's much the same as that the principles on which we base our physics be the same in all reference frames, including accelerated and non-inertial ones.
That is not to claim that the principles on which we base our physics be the same in no reference frame whatsoever.
You have claimed this, but I do not believe that you have succeeded in defending such a view.
And that is becasue the juxtaposition of objective and subjective here cannot be made coherent.
What we might call objective is defined with respect to all observers. But this still presupposes observers and their framesso its not objective in the naïve sense of from nowhere.
Alternately, what is called subjective is often grounded in shared practice as Wittgenstein might say and so not purely private or solipsistic.
Science is not trying to give an account of what the universe would be like were there no observers. It is trying to give an account of what the universe is like for any observer.
Hence it is not denying the observer.
"Reference frame" came from math prior to Einstein. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation
Right but that idealised observer is precisely not a concrete subject. It's a perspectiveless abstraction, stripped of embodiment, situatedness, or any first-person particularity. In other words, it's not any actual observer, but a methodological abstraction which is exactly what Nagel critiques in The View from Nowhere. The idealised observer is, furthermore, of the same general type as the frictionless planes and dimensionless points that constitute the lexicon of science generally - an abstraction.
Fair enough, but the reference frame entered the public discourse through Einstein, and as that excerpt says, Einstein drew on those discoveries in devising his theories.
There is no idealised observer.
There's you and me and them.
Science seeks to give an account that works for any of us.
That "perspectiveless abstraction, stripped of embodiment, situatedness, or any first-person particularity" is a philosopher's invention.
Nothing of the kind, it's an accurate description of basic scientific methodology. When you publish a scientific paper you may or may not get pubic recognition of what you've discovered or said, but who you are is by definition quite irrelevant to the content. But I'm done squabbling over it.
Quoting Banno
I would think it important to add to this for any observer participating in the particular community of scientists who share a domain of study. Many scientist are quite humble this days about the reach of their theories. They appreciate that no overarching account of the natureof reality is possible, no reduction of all disciplines to some fundamental science (such as physics). Approaches, methods , theories , vocabularies concerning a given phenomenon differ depending on what aspect of that phenomenon is being examined, and for what purposes. In sum, the view for everyone is a regional goal of science, not a universal one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus
Albert Camus wrote a piece on Sisyphus that is very famous.
See, I like that. That rings. Truth found must be the same truth for any seeker, or there may be nothing there to be found.
Quoting Banno
Yes. Not my truth. Nor the truth absent all of us. But the same truth for any of us.
Quoting Banno
Now hold on. If something can be seen by any observer, and each observer has their unique situatedness, embodiment and particularity, but that same science can be seen by any observer, then doesnt it follow that the observers particularity is not part of the scientific observation? Like if the view from anywhere shows the same science, science remains nowhere in particular?
Although I would agree science only rests in an observer. Its just that any observer from anywhere will do. This is like saying the view from nowhere is still a view (still has an observer). So it is really a view from nowhere in particular, but a view nonetheless.
Nuh. Science looks for an explanation of what is seen that will be applicable to multiple observers.
Not the same thing.
Folk see different things. Science looks for a common explication.
Quoting Banno
?? How nuh? You have to really want to disagree with me to find these disagree.
You are talking about a view from nowhere in particular. A view from anywhere is a view from nowhere in particular. Whats wrong with that? It doesnt refute what you said.
Folks can be too stupid to see science. Thats a non sequitor.
Science looks for the common. We agree on that.
Yep. :up:
Quoting Banno
Now how do you say philosophy is different?
@J is convinced that science can give an account that works from as many perspectives as possible, but philosophy can't. Usually what someone of @J's persuasion eventually comes to realize is that either both can or both can't. Scientific knowledge and philosophical knowledge go hand in hand, given that the difference between the two is not as great as has been supposed. The idea that scientific knowledge is possible but philosophical knowledge is not is utterly strange, to say the least. It seems more a consequence of philosophers staring into the mirror of their own reflection than anything of interest.
Quoting J
Sure: knowing, understanding, thinking, seeing, being just, but they all have (specific) ways we judge them and philosophy is the way we talk about what is essential to us about them. There is no fact that ensures those discussions even will be resolved, but that doesnt annihilate the ability or process to do so, nor make it a matter of individual opinion (or a sociological matter). Separately, I would think agreement on the criteria for what constitutes good (even correct) scientific method would be easier.
Quoting J
We feel we need justification for the background stuff beforehand, because we require it to be abstract and absolute. We have no specific topic or situation to dig into. Its like wanting to agree on the terms of discussion before you can start a conversation. We may not come to an agreement on criteria, but there is at least some substance to talk about.
Quoting J
Now Im not sure what to think, but my concern has only been that dictating that a conception be absolute forces what constitutes local in comparison. And again, I think we are smooshing together absolute as a criteria and absolute as all-encompassing (unified).
As a reader of Austin, my curiosity is piqued by a discussion of error (he looks into action by examining excuses). Only, I dont think relativism is to be overcome, nor do I imagine a theory of error. But yes, error and mistakes and failure and impasse must be accounted for. We have a conflict of interest, however, because our conception wants to avoid the possibility of doubt, or maybe include every outcome. So in saving some of the world (or gaining a complete picture of it), we relegate the rest to error or "local predispositions".
Quoting J
Maybe the easiest way to say this is that a moral disagreement is different than an aesthetic one or a scientific dispute. Kant might call the differences categorical, in what makes a thing imperative (to itself). Wittgenstein says the different criteria tell us what kind of object a thing is, what is essential to that kind of thing (for us), what possibilities each thing has.
Quoting J
Yes, the last bastion is undefended, without justification or authority, without an arbiter of right. Thus why it is a claim for acceptance, that you accept my observations because you see them for yourself, that you have gathered on your own what evidence is necessary for you to concede. As Wittgenstein puts it, we see the same color to the extent we agree to call it that. This may or may not dovetail into seeing philosophy as a set of descriptions, rather than answers. Doubt creates a gap in our relation to the world, which we turn into a problem of a lack of knowledge, of being unable to envision the world at all (absolutely).
Yes, and when one despairs of progress are they being reasonable? What is their time frame and criteria for progress? Is it really true that we have not made moral or philosophical progress over the last 4,000 years?
Quoting Antony Nickles
And this is why a theory of error is helpful, at least in nuce. It helps one see their own errors and move beyond them. The notion that a theory of error or a theory of knowledge or a theory of justification must always be other-focused is entirely non sequitur.
:up:
Quoting Antony Nickles
However, this desire for terms beforehand only arises after the conversation has already started (something Banno always points out). So it seems to me that when we want to start a conversation, we need to treat the start as actually a middle and move backwards from the middle of the discussion looking to clarify the criteria, while moving forwards in the discussion to develop some substance to talk about. And each step in either direction informs each step in the other direction (criteria informs what substance is identified, and substance identified begs clearer criteria in support thereof) - so we need to juggle both directions at once to soundly and validly move at all.
This is good. I think we forget, because the phrase is now part of the atmosphere, that "The View from Nowhere" was undoubtedly intended to sound absurd, to provoke the response, "Wait a minute, how could there be any such thing?" (Possibly a partial reason why Nagel chose it over "view from anywhere"?) Many who haven't read the book think Nagel uncritically espouses such a view. Rather, he's asking how it is that the philosophical desire for rationality and universalizability seems to pull us toward an impossible point of view, one that in addition abandons what it means to live a life -- that is, subjectivity. And yet we can't just ignore what appear to be the claims of rationality either. So -- yes, a dialectic.
Thanks for the link!
Again, your responses are thoughtful, on point, and help develop the questions of the OP. Much appreciated.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Right. And we have to hold out against those who see this as a binary -- either we get a resolution or it's just a matter of opinion and/or "how people do."
Quoting Antony Nickles
Easier than similar criteria for philosophy, anyway. Though I'm alive to the fact that there's a lot of soul-searching going on in the scientific community these days, or maybe it's just the philosophy-of-science community.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Agreed. The criteriological usage is perhaps closer to Descartes, for what that's worth? -- criteria for certainty = knowledge that cannot be doubted or shown to be false, hence "absolute" knowledge. Looking at the other usage, I'm not sure whether an Absolute Conception that unifies and explains all knowledge would also need to demonstrate itself to be certain. And that's part of Williams' question -- does such a conception have to know that it is correct? He calls that "going too far."
Quoting Antony Nickles
Well, Williams concludes, "The most ambitious ideas that have been entertained of the absolute conception must fail," and this is part of why. I'd only add that I think "error" in Williams' sense, and "local predispositions," are distinct, though equally troubling, categories. From the absolute viewpoint, are all local predispositions errors? Not exactly. They are incomplete, and perhaps dependent on a framework that can't be made part of an absolute conception. But this isn't the sort of "error" that Williams believes an Absolute Conception needs a theory to explain. That error would be the one that claims to be "a rival view" to the Absolute Conception itself.
Quoting Antony Nickles
OK. When you wrote:
Quoting Antony Nickles
I thought you might be thinking that the shoe question could not be settled objectively, whereas the planet question could. But I should have considered your choice of "planet" more carefully, since that's a recent example of a supposedly scientific question that turned on a matter of terminology. So -- objective as to language, in a way, but not as to heavenly bodies!
Quoting Antony Nickles
Or as any other particular thing, including "therapy" for misuses of language. Do you think there's a way to characterize what most of us call philosophy -- that is, the sort of conversation we're having here -- in Wittgensteinian terms that give it a use rather than a misuse? In a funny way, that's an "absolute conception" question too, though not Williams'.
Perhaps it would be worth considering the twin paradox.
The two twins do not see the same thing, yet the observations of each twin occurs in accordance with Special Relativity.
We appear to agree that the local/absolute framework needs to be set aside, I would say because it is merely a wish, a desire, a manufactured dichotomy. So other observations would not be rival views, in competition (not other claims to still conquer skepticism). They would simply not be complete or certain, though not thus errors or simply predispositions. They would still be rational, communal, and correct based on the individual criteria for each thing.
Quoting J
Again, focusing on specific rather than abstractly unified, we can explain all knowledge correctly because even knowledge actually has different variations (senses/uses) which have tailored criteria.
Do you mean, they would not be from our point of view, or from the point of view of an Absolute Conception that claims to be able to give an explanation of them?
This is perhaps another way of asking, If we agree to set aside the idea of a legitimate Absolute Conception, how are we going to characterize what an alleged Absolute Conception is saying? Isn't the AC itself now revealed as an error? Is there a way to describe it, more mildly, as merely another "incomplete" view?
:up:
It's great to see someone address this topic with clarity, answer questions directly, philosophize forthrightly, etc. Thanks for that.
Quoting Antony Nickles
In different ways, though. For @J and Williams it is not set aside insofar as it remains as a central foil to any thinking going forward. For many others it must actually be set aside as a manufactured dichotomy, which cannot be appealed to as some kind of eternal foil for all future thinking. The question is whether one continues to be haunted by the infallibilist paradigm that they have "set aside."
Its not the view that we are to overcome, not the form of answer, but letting go of the desire for the outcome.
It is a naive argument. The cartesian method asks, is there anything that one cannot doubt, and this brings inquiry to bear on where doubt cannot go. There is an analytic divide in this that, at least up front, has to be understood: OTOH, there is language, and language is contingent, and this is important to see, for anything said can be doubted, and the moment is conceived, it is subject to anything that can be brought against it in metaphor, irony, exaggeration, and any of the literary devices you can think of. I like to say, in language, the Gods are just grist for the mill, for nothng is sacrosanct because language is self annihilating: the moment something is uttered, it plays implcitly against what it is not, and all I have to do is speak this: You say God loves us all, and I say, God? But does he love elephants? Paramecia? Does God have agency? Bigger than something, or smaller? And look, there is NO end to this fun. All inquiries into anything at all end up in aporia, indeterminacy, and what is there is entirely open to play. Nothing survives. Which is why Karl Rahner, the Heideggerian Jesuit priest, now tells us that none of it, the rituals, to prayers, the hymns, and the metaphysics of Jesus the redeemer, the son of God, and so on--none it is "true" because God is simply ineffability itself. I would add: God could actually show up at my doorstep and take me into the depths of her being, and language or reason would not bat an eye, and this is because language never was that which had the power to possess "the world" or anythinhg at all. Language is pragmatic, intra-referential or "deferential" but always "at a distance" from its own "ground," that is, unable yo say what "it" is (an interesting book I just began reading by Derrida, The White Mythology, starts on about the good read).
Even logic itself can be doubted, for while it does seem impossible to doubt the "intuition" of something like modus ponens, this bit of reasoning is cast in language, and language is contingent, historical, from the Greek (logic, from logos, which comes from prehistorical roots), and thus the actuality of this "intuition" (which needs to be crossed out as it is written! Because it, too, it a particle of language) and its connection to the prehistoric ground in language must at so9me point be revealed to have that foundational connection with its actual counterpart, the intuition, that makes language actually BE the intuition itself, and this, of course, is absurd. The "aboutness" of language can NEVER be shown, because one in doing so will always encounter the language itself used to show this. You see the problem here? Anyway: So there is no way science will ever do this: disclose the world's own most actuality, so to speak. Science issues from language (Rorty says science is essentially social) and language has no foundational or center of its own (Derrida. You ask me what a doctor is, and I can give answers that never end).
OTOH, take John Cleese, a master ironist (whose family name was once Cheese, and he regretted it being changed) and ask him if there is nothing that survives the death by a thousand cuts that irony can deliver, and he will say there is nothing that cannot be undone, talk about the political, philsophical, religious, the agony of death and torture, NOTHING cannot be undone, and everything can be gainsaid, DOUBTED, refuted, rendered uncertain, even logic! But put in his midst an occurrent actuality of someone suffering, bleeding, in screaming agony, you will find Cleese in a crisis that cannot be gainsaid, derided, doubted, or undone. You have arrived at your desideratum: an absolute, but this absolute stands outside language.
You want to know if Williams' thoughts are compelling. No, because he doesn't understand (based on your info) the nature of doubt and certainty. Doubt is IN every possible utterance, for language is self annihilating, and thus to speak of certainty is to be open to doubt, no matter how certain you are. But there is a paradox on our midst, for language is also the way one bears witness to what is not language.
Consider that the the Cartesian method is to discover what cannot be doubted, and this is impossible to "say" that is, put in a proposition, because all propositions are contingent and this is because language does not produce certainty beyond doubt. All propositions can be doubted because the ground for language is not a singularity: try to say what a thing is and you will be question begging the meaning of the terms you use to say it, and those terms will rely of other terms, and this is the contingency of language. No utterance is "stand alone" about what it is about; rather the aboutness is diffuse, and is the totality of the language. Think of the way Hegel said that when you point something out, and say There it is! the term 'there' is a universal term, and can be used in a great many contexts, and so what it is before you that is being indicated with 'there' is in no way brought to light with this term. All terms are like this. Language doesn't "speak" the world as it is outside of language, for all of our possible references are universal terms, not particulars. Even the term 'particular' fails refer to something other than language.
I sometimes ask, does General Motors exist? Of course, it exists; it employs thousands, is on the stock exchange, has been making cars for more than a century. and so on. But there was a time when it didn't exist, so how is it that it was simply summoned into existence? We want to think of someting existing as being more than someone's saying so and making money in it. Isn['t GM just like some cultural institution, like marriage or funerals, and what about our names, Jim or Constance or Tiffany: do these people with these names "exist"? We want to say the people do, but the names as such really don't. The point I would make is that EVERYTHING is like this. This is why Williams has to talk about a View from Nowhere: if language is indeterminate, self referential, contingent, then anything that can be said cannot possibly be absolute. But then, what is "nowhere" is right before your waking eyes. You see the cup on the table, but you know your comprehension is tied to a totality of language possiblities, none of which have any authority to speak "about" anything outside of these possibilities. That cup has another dimension entirely, for what sits in the table is not language at all. It is "other" than language.
In the OP you talked about "reality absolutely uninterpreted by human perspectives and limitations" but
science is the LEAST able to put forth foundational meaning like this, for it thinks what is said about the world, actually discloses the world apart from the language that constructs the disclosure, as if calling somethign a fence post or a hydrogen atom "speaks" what that over there IS. Science is firmly rooted in this supposition. But most importantly, science ignores the MOST salient features of our existence (and all of existence): affectivity and "subjective" affairs like thinking, moods, apprehensions, anxieties, anticipating, remembering, resolving, CARING, and so on. And it is here I am saying you will find your desideratum: put lighted match under the palm of you hand. There are TWO phenomena here. One is the actuality of screaming pain, and the other is everything that can be said about it. We generally take the two to be one, but this is wrong. Language is inherently interpretative, and never "touches" the actuality; while this living actuality if pain: can this in any way possible be doubted? Not for a millisecond. It cannot be gainsaid because pain is not language. "It" stands apart from language, yet it is there, most emphatically in your midst; an absolute. An "absolute" is, of course, language, and I am writing these words, and yet, what I talk "about" manages to reach beyond language's totality....or does it?
This is the essential question of ontology. The ethical/aesthetic dimension of our existence is a dimension that is, by the standards of our collective understanding, nowhere.
That about Hegel needs to be made clearer. Oh well.