A Material Churl in A Material World
by rsbakker
Aphorism of the Day: The cup of ego always but always leaks on the doily of theory. Thus the philosophical tendency to embroider in black.
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I’d like to thank Roger for introducing a little high-altitude class into TPB while I was undergoing intense tequila retoxification treatment in Mexico. I’ll be providing my own naturalistic gloss on his metaphilosophical observations at some point over the ensuing weeks. In the meantime, however, I need to do a little spring cleaning…
Since I plan on shortly rowing back into more Analytic waters I thought I would fire a couple of more broadsides across the Continental fleet as I bring my leaky rowboat about. The (at times heated) debate we had following “The Ptolemaic Restoration,” has left me more rather than less puzzled by the ongoing ‘materialistic turn’ in Continental circles. Object Oriented Ontology has left me particularly mystified, especially in the wake of Levi Bryant’s claim that ‘object orientation’ need not concern itself with the question of meaning, even though, historically speaking, this question has always posed the greatest challenge to materialist accounts. As Ray Brassier acknowledges in his 2012 After Nature interview:
[Nihil Unbound] contends that nature is not the repository or purpose and that consciousness is not the fulcrum of thought. The cogency of these claims presupposes an account of thought and meaning that is neither Aristotelian–everything has meaning because everything exists for a reason–nor phenomenological–conscious is the basis of thought and the ultimate source of meaning. The absence of any such account is the book’s principal weakness…
What is truth? What is meaning? What is subjectivity? In short, What is intentionality? These are absolutely pivotal philosophical questions for any philosophy that purports to be ‘materialist.’ Why? Because if we actually had some way of naturalizing these perplexities, then we could plausibly claim that everything is material. And yet Bryant, when pressed on this selfsame issue, responds:
I’m not working on issues of intentionality. Asking me to have a detailed picture of intentionality is a bit like asking a neurologist to have a detailed picture of quantum mechanics or black holes. It’s just not what neurologists are doing. I’ll leave it to the neurologists to give that account of intentionality” (Comments to “The Ptolemaic Restoration,” March 14, 2013 6:45pm)
I fear the analogy escapes me. Asking him to have some picture of intentionality, given his claim that ontology is flat, is asking him how he has managed to smooth out the wrinkles that have hitherto nixed every attempt to flatten ontology in the manner he attempts. It is ‘like’ asking a materialist to respond to the traditional challenge to their position, nothing more or less. His inability to do this would suggest a gaping hole in his position, and thus the need to either retract his claim that ontology is flat, or to explore remedial strategies to shore up his position. But his unwillingness to do this seems to suggest he’s not interested in developing anything approximating a serious philosophical view. Failing some accounting of this issue, his brand of object orientation simply will not be taken seriously, not in the long run. The questions are just too basic, too immediate, to indefinitely ignore. If ontology is ‘flat,’ if ‘objects’ exhaust ontology, the most obvious perplexity becomes, What is this very moment now? A concatenation of objects? Our living perspectives, we are told, are some kind of material process. So then, What the hell are they? What kind of objects or units could they be? If soul or mind or being-in-the-world or what have you is ‘really’ a material process, then why, as Descartes so notoriously pointed out, does it so clearly seem to be anything but?
Leibniz, of course, gives us the most historically resonant image of the problem faced by object-oriented attempts to explain this-very-moment-now with his windmill:
One is obliged to admit that perception and what depends upon it is inexplicable on mechanical principles, that is, by figures and motions. In imagining that there is a machine whose construction would enable it to think, to sense, and to have perception, one could conceive it enlarged while retaining the same proportions, so that one could enter into it, just like into a windmill. Supposing this, one should, when visiting within it, find only parts pushing one another, and never anything to explain a perception. Thus it is in the simple substance, and not in the composite or in the machine, that one must look for perception. Monadology, §17
It’s not that it merely seems difficult to imagine how any organization of material things, any mechanism (no matter how complicated), could possibly result in something like this-very-moment-now, it seems downright unfathomable. And this pertains as much to its intentional structure as to its phenomenal content. As Brentano famously writes:
Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgement something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on. This intentional in-existence is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon exhibits anything like it. We can, therefore, define mental phenomena by saying that they are those phenomena which contain an object intentionally within themselves. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, 68
In a more contemporary context, David Chalmers summarizes the problem with characteristic elegance and clarity:
First: Physical descriptions of the world characterize the world in terms of structure and dynamics. Second: From truths about structure and dynamics, one can deduce only further truths about structure and dynamics. And third: truths about consciousness are not truths about structure and dynamics. “Consciousness and Its Place in Nature“
For whatever reason, soul, mind, being-in-the-world, whatever they are, seem dramatically incompatible with objects (whatever they are). Now the attraction of the so-called ‘materialist turn’ in Continental circles is obvious enough: it aligns speculation with the sciences, and thus (apparently) affords it a relevance and theoretical credibility that prior Continental philosophy so obviously lacked. The problem, of course, is that Continental materialisms are by no means content with those limits. Though they repudiate the discourses that preceded them, they refuse to relinquish the domains those discourses took as their natural habitat. Ethics. Politics. Not to mention the human condition more generally. These are the things Continental philosophy takes itself to be primarily about. So even though science–historically at least–has been shut out of the domain of the intentional, these materialisms continue to theorize these domains. But where Brassier or Roden, for instance, advert to an Anglo-American tradition that, because it never abandoned its scientific affiliations, managed to develop sophisticated responses to the question of meaning, others reference vague compatibilities or occult formulations or worse yet, simply stomp their feet.
This is why for me so much of the speculative materialist turn in Continental philosophy strikes me as an exercise in ignorance, wilful or accidental. Historically speaking, soul or mind or being-in-the-world have constituted the great bete noire of all materialist philosophies, and yet these object oriented newcomers, these ‘realists,’ think they can scrupulously theorize things like the materiality of language while completely ignoring the mystery of how that materiality comes to mean.
And this, I’m afraid to say, makes it difficult to see these positions as anything other than sophistry, ingroup language games where the difficult questions, the very questions upon which the bulk of philosophy are raised, are dismissed or wilfully ignored to better facilitate a kind of claim-making possessing no real cognitive constraints whatsoever. A kind of make-believe philosophy.
Some hard words, I know–but these are ideas, not relatives, we’re talking about. Meanings. I encourage anyone who takes umbrage, or just anyone merely sympathetic to Bryant’s (or Hagglund’s or Zizek’s) account, to show me the short-circuit in my thinking. As I’ve said before, I’m just a tourist. When I find issues that seem this glaring, this damning, I can’t shake the feeling that I have to be missing something. Lord knows it’s happened before. In fact, it’s the only reason I occupy the miserable position I hold now… Being wrong.
Three Pound Brain 
It seems to me that extremely complex philosophic constructions are very similar to extremely complex mythologies.
So it seems a celebration of what a mind can conceive in its fantasy, and far removed from whatever objective and fixed idea you can get.
The only hope, even in this context, is about winning the war and imposing fantasy on reality. Philosophy ultimately celebrates one side of the fundamental dichotomy, but this also means that it can’t reconcile anything and can’t solve any conflict. It just affirms itself.
But that is kind of mirrored by your BBT. You aren’t developing your own philosophy as consequence of BBT, because BBT represents that other side of the dichotomy. So philosophy ceases to exist on that side.
Fantasy worlds, ayuh. If you see fantasy worlds as the product of scientific disenchantment (which drives the transformation of scripture into myth into commodified make-believe), then BBT, if confirmed, would represent the completion of the process, the point at which we ourselves become just another ‘anthropomorphism.’ It’s simply an ugly possibility as it stands now. A worst-case scenario.
I’m just surprised at the extent some things can go. See this image for example:
When I saw it my reaction was to be baffled at how complex it looked (and it’s one of many). I’ve shown it to a friend who told me it looks like a diagram about a computer processor. And that’s an image about Kabbalah, describing some of the spiritual world, so something claiming zero connection with “realty”.
So I was thinking, how is it possible that these people went so far as creating something incredibly complex, incredibly detailed, that has absolutely no connection whatsoever with reality? It was fascinating for me because these weren’t just abstract, philosophical ideas or principles on which religion is usually built. It’s not about morals. It’s just mapping something that does not exist. And it seems as complex as science. It’s not telling you something of this world, it’s not an allegory. It just don’t seem to have a purpose.
I had the same reaction when I watched some university lessons done by Deleuze. They seem to make no sense. It’s really complicate stuff that you need to study for a long time before you can actually understand how it works and how intricate it is. And every big philosopher actually demands a similar amount of dedication in order to be understood. Extremely complicate and intricate stuff that can take you many years of study.
In the end I wonder if they made an experiment of the kind that highlights areas of the brain that are stimulated. I suspect that same areas would fire if you study philosophy, or religion, or are reading The Silmarillion. These are all gigantic and majestic cultural constructions. All of them giving the illusion that they sustain themselves and that they might be real.
Not that everyone owns a hadron collider, but looking back I recall the culture around science was the idea of ‘run the experiment yourself’. Go make a little electro magnet motor, for example. Test it. Yes, it’s all complicated, yet you can take physical components and run the test yourself. You don’t have to just take someones word for it.
So there’s complex, and then there’s so complex that you don’t even need to just take someones word for it – it’s simple enough to run the experiment yourself.
…annoying questions irrelevant to the discussion at hand:
A) In mid-February you stated that you were “working on the final chapters” and then had “a lot of rewriting”. Have you reached the rewritting stage yet?
B) You described the book as a “monster”. The Judging Eye was 448 pages and The White-Luck Warrior was 606 pages (Peguin Canada versions). What do you think we’ll be in for post-rewritting in terms of length of the story?
C) Has work on cover art begun for either Peguin Canada, Overlook Press or Orbit?
D) Will we get new maps (Ishterebinth &or Golgotterath zoom-ins)?
E) Due to the lag between text completion and publication, can you rule out the possibility a book by the end of 2013?
Some yeses or nos please!
Besides my Unholy Consult questions,is there a physical post-feedback/rewrite version of Light, Time, and Gravity? Insomniac Press seems to have nothing listed. Has the blog version become definitive?
I’m waiting until The Unholy Consult is done before diving into a final rewrite of LTG. The serial form I posted last year is simply a draft – and a rough one at that.
There will be new maps – I know that much for sure. Otherwise, I’ll be sure to answer your other questions, Benjamin, as soon as I know the answers myself!
F) Was the scene in TTT where the the ciphrang attacks the hundred pillars guard in any way inspired by Sir Lancelot charging the castle gates?
I would contend that, much as Ray may not feel this way now (having been taken by the allure of ‘the normative’), the absence of such an account in Nihil Unbound is its greatest strength. To simply index an account of meaning as neither Aristotelian nor Phenomenological in the senses articulated above would be prudent insofar as it safely rules out what cannot be the locus of meaning or subjectivity while not foreclosing all that which can with a philosophically untenable positive account. Because meaning concerns both both acting and being acted upon, being open to contingency, any positive account is ‘open’ to the charge of being particular and hegemonic. We make meaning(s) for ourselves but it is neither endemic to the material nor particularly durable as a construct [as any depressive worth his salt can attest].
I think I agree that it isn’t necessarily a shortcoming of the book (which I think will be regarded as a landmark), but it is a requirement, I think, for anyone who claims to be a materialist. Some kind of sustained reckoning must be given, even if it ultimately settles on Mysterianism. Personally, I’m no more convinced anyone ever has ‘made meaning’ than I am that the earth was once the centre of the universe. This is what (I would argue) what makes meaning the ‘dramatic idiom,’ as Quine contends, what underwrites translational indeterminacy (as an Analytic would characterize it) or semantic promiscuity (as a Continental would characterize it): it’s a profound misrecognition of something else.
I have some sympathy for the point you are putting forward here, but it’s not one that applies only to OOP. Quine, after all, does something similar – for example in ‘On What There Is’ he effectively just dismisses meanings with the same gesture he uses to dismiss universals (“I feel no reluctance toward refusing to admit meanings”). Meaningful sentences don’t need meanings to be meaningful. Thus the move by Bryant to ignore the issue of meanings is not simply some odd weakness in the account, unless the analogous move by Quine is to be dismissed on the same basis. OOP doesn’t then develop the type of quantificational analysis of functional structures that Quine does but then neither does it have to since they already exist.
But Quine doesn’t ‘just dismiss’ meaning. His meaning skepticism is developed throughout his corpus. There’s also the fact that Quine is a (arch) pragmatic naturalist, and so not a materialist in any straightforward metaphysical sense! Hagglund’s ‘materialism,’ I think, is pretty much ornamental, whereas Zizek’s, at least in The Parallax View, strikes me as opportunistic. And I fear Bryant’s strikes me as sophistical (while admitting this could just be a face-saving way of saying I don’t get it).
Dock: I think this is just mysterianism about normativity, which should be resisted in favour of an attempt to seriously grapple with the explanatory demand Scott is highlighting.
Scott: I think what both so called ‘new materialisms’ and OOO have in common (and where Levi’s work is emblematic insofar as it forms the intersection of the two) is that they approach metaphysical questions with a vocabulary that is already implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) intentional. This is implicit in Latourian and Bennettian invocations of ‘agency’ in describing the natural world and the envelopment of the social within it, and explicit in the Harmanian analyses of objects as attempting (yet failing) to ‘grasp’ one another. I don’t mean to be rude, but the explanatory programs are rotten to the core from this perspective.
I agree entirely – or I’m beginning to. Since they have no conceptual tools to accommodate obvious intentional phenomena in their schemes, they fudge by anthropomorphizing, then bank on their readers’ ignorance of the problems attending intentionality to get away with it. I suppose it stands to reason that any materialistic turn in traditionally continental circles would suffer these kinds of teething pains, given that their prior intentional speculative modes of thought were far more forgiving of ersatz conceptualization.
I think this is more or less spot-on.
RsBakker,
What is your definition of “meaning?” You seem to presume that continental doesn’t have theories of meaning, but it in fact does and was ahead of analytic until the latter took phenomenological considerations more seriously through such thinkers as Wittegenstein, etc. I suspect you have specific incompatible definitions in mind or are omitting the history of continental.
Aside from that point, I found your post to be entertaining and for the most part on point, except that your biasagainst continental really shows.
‘Meaning,’ I fear, is a low-dimensional distortion of what our brains are doing this very moment.
To be clear, I absolutely adore traditional continental thought. That said, I fear it’s becoming increasingly difficult to dispute that the sciences of the brain are going to make hash of it the way science more generally has made hash of every traditional, prescientific domain it has colonized. I think this is nothing short of tragic.
I agree entirely, provided that “tragic” is understood to mean “awesome”, and “adore” implies gloating contempt.
ochlocrat,
It’s both tragic and awesome. Tragic in that, no, there’s probably no Magic Cartesian Soul or anything like it (and possibly no moral ground whatsoever). Awesome in that the implications of a ‘proof’ of such a thing is potentially transformative in ways we can’t even conceptualize (see https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/thinker-as-tinker/)
Abalieno,
Ad hominem and straw man fallacies are cheap.
I’m simply saying that philosophy can’t say anything relevant about BBT.
What can instead challenge Bakker’s theory is what’s on the other side of the dichotomy: tests and experiments. That’s what can prove or disprove, or adjust BBT. That’s where the theory is very open.
But I just don’t understand Bakker’s fixation with philosophy if he determined it to be full of bullshit.
Is there some process in philosophy to differentiate between a valid theory and pure speculation? The only one I see is aesthetic. Which is the same as creating fancy fantasy mythologies.
The fixation has to do with trying to wake traditional philosophy up. There’s a tremendous amount of creativity locked up in these discourses, creativity that will be squandered so long as they continue pretending that they are somehow immune to the processes of delegitimation that have undermined all previous prescientific discourses. BBT shows a way that empirically tractable speculation can mow their grass – that it’s all but game over, in effect.
A short answer to your question, Abalieno,
Aside from the aesthetic, there is the practical, the ethical, the political, etc. In fact, your suppositions lose most (not all) of their force if we stop treating philosophy as separate from science, practice, etc. To be honest, if someone starts the discussion in the terms that you do–you repeated the straw man fallacy–then you probably won’t have too many bother to converse with you that could demonstrate otherwise.
Besides, why even presume that philosophy and science are even talking about the same subject? Much of the time, their subject and purposes are different. I can only imagine that one has an artificially limited view of philosophy to think that such general statements can be made.
RsBakker,
Who’s claiming to be immune from processes of delegitimation? I’m sure you’ll find some, but you seem more interested in being provocative than precise, which is not becoming someone devoted to science.
Jason: “Aside from the aesthetic, there is the practical, the ethical, the political, etc. In fact, your suppositions lose most (not all) of their force if we stop treating philosophy as separate from science, practice, etc. ”
Too bad that you cannot treat Philosophy as the same as Science, so his “suppositions” remain entirely intact. His point, that Scott’s BBH is useless until Scott applies the Scientific Method is entirely founded in the requirements Science demands of its adherents. The merely cognitive efforts of Philosophy are simply ignored by Scientists. Science requires experimentation, which Philosophy chooses not to participate in. (And it is a choice. I promoted it to Scott long ago, and he acted as though confused by the suggestion. A smart person is capable of determining the experimentation necessary to prove his hypothesis. Scott could, if he desired.)
Besides, why even presume that philosophy and science are even talking about the same subject?
Well, that was my point. They deal with two separate areas, hence the dichotomy. What I was saying is that they can’t cross over.
“the practical, the ethical, the political” these are all autopoietic things. Reflexivity in the language. They are all EXTREMELY variable as long you apply each to each own. Which means again that they only deal with their own side of the dichotomy and only reproduce themselves indefinitely. You can increase the complexity in this system, so have the idea of some sort of direction or evolution of thought, but it never really explains anything. It just charts arbitrary territory in a way that self-generates its own rules. Till it becomes extremely well organized, which is the illusion of truth, sufficiency and solidity. That’s what happens.
Complexity increasing is one truth of the cultural world. Hair being split. Every little thing becoming absurdly divided, and so complex. Smaller and smaller parts.
The point is exactly that philosophy can become so pretty and complex to claim its own independent existence from reality. As with religion, or with a sufficiently complex mythology.
As for BBT, I don’t understand what you can do with “creativity”, since it’s exactly what one should probably AVOID. It’s all about the power of make-believe and the need to root it down onto something.
P.S.
And these days science already claims parts of philosophy:
As it is shown here, there’s plenty of creativity involved, since they have to come up with fancy theories that are extremely hard, if not impossible, to test. But at least it’s all speculation emerging from hard data. Instead of speculation piled on top of other speculation.
Abalieno,
It’s funny how words can be misleading, by accident or on purpose.
“science already claims parts of philosophy”
How can a concept like “science” claim anything? I’m sure by this you meant “scientists already claim parts of philosophy”. But how can they when, by definition, every part of philosophy deals with things that can’t be shown by observation? Isn’t it more like: scientists claim parts that were formerly only claimed by philosophers?
In the video they emphasise that those theories are not based on observed data. Furthermore they use the term “observable universe”. Either some evidence can be found to support those theories, which makes them (yes even the mutiverses) part of the observable universe and so part of science, or such evidence in impossible, which makes them part of philosophy. It doesn’t matter if they are scientist, who do the philosophy, it still remains what it is. There is a trendency of scientists to “diss” philosophy, but I think it is dishonest and only happens for political (in a broader sense) reasons. Can is a clean line of what is science and what is philosophy and it seems to me that philosophers in gerneral are much more aware of this than many scientists. It would be very healthy for the discussion if those scientist would actually study those parts of philosophy they are criticising, cause else they are missing an important step in the scientific method.
(Abalieno, my little rant wasn’t really directed at you, because I know too little of you position to assume that you make those claims I’m criticising)
I was simply saying that a kind of creative philosophy is needed to make sense of some empirical data. Or even of the sort of deduction about the klein bottle: mathematical models that aren’t directly based on “experience”.
Those theoretical models in the video will have to be tested, eventually. The video says as much. Until then they aren’t even “science”.
BBT is effectively the same. It’s Bakker’s own speculation and creativity that comes from some scientific evidence. Putting together disparate things into a coherent model. So it needs to be tested in order to be confirmed and accepted. Until then it’s a stimulating idea that may be very close to truth.
But the stuff pertinent to philosophy is something else. It only needs the substance of thoughts and is built upon aesthetics of thought. So it’s art. Being art, it is “liberated” from making sense. Or, more correctly, the opposite: since it’s art it’s only about sense, and is liberated from being true.
Those theoretical models in the video will have to be tested, eventually. The video says as much. Until then they aren’t even “science”.
What are they then? Surely “philosophical”, but are they philosophy? Something else?
I like that you mentioned art. I think you are right that some philosophy can be described in such a way but surely not all of it. But if so, in my view that would make the theories in the video also a kind of art.
The following is from the wikipedia article for pure mathematics:
“To develop accurate models for describing the real world, many applied mathematicians draw on tools and techniques which are often considered to be “pure” mathematics. On the other hand, many pure mathematicians draw on natural and social phenomena as inspiration for their abstract research.”
Isn’t this a better way of seeing the relationship between science and philosophy, if in this you substitute ‘applied mathematics’ with ‘science’ and ‘pure mathematics’ with ‘philosophy’?
sorry – what does “empirically tractable speculation” mean here?
no snark this time – did you mean “motivated” for “tractable”? i’m genuinely puzzled.
of course, i’m puzzled by much of this (the jargon and allusions escape me, often, too).
i find the central premise odd: “If soul or mind or being-in-the-world or what have you is ‘really’ a material process, then why, as Descartes so notoriously pointed out, does it so clearly seem to be anything but?”
it’s really just an argument from lack of imagination, no?
hmmm…that does seem weird = PHILOSOPHY!
being-in-the-world seems obviously and demonstrably contingent on material processes, since we’re all just a strong hit of acid away from a pretty clear demonstration of it.
why “wake up” traditional philosophers if they’re not bothering anybody? i agree with abalieno on this point. let them take turns saying words if they wanna.
why “wake up” traditional philosophers if they’re not bothering anybody?
Because much like sex education is a thing, cognitive education is a thing as well. Are you going to give such education? You passed on guest blogging, even? And that’s not much effort? You could say you’re busy doing other things – ie, you’re not paid to do this sort of education. Ignoring certain issues with that for now, well these academics are paid to do things like this, so surely it makes sense to turn to them (since people who aren’t paid to give cognitive education == people who aren’t giving cognitive education)?
Anyway, off topic, I keep reading your handle as revolver ochlocrat, as some kind of metal gear reference…had to say it at some point…
Callan,
As a philosopher, I find it ironically amusing that you might suggest that experts in logic and critical thinking might need cognitive education.
Aside, I wonder what BBT has to do with philosophers in any way that actually alters their research. Honestly, many of the “discoveries” of cognitive and neuroscience were well-established hypotheses centuries and decades before they became scientifically established.
hey callan.
quick note – you’re thinking of revolver ocelot, i think.
(also, metal gear solid 4 was solid).
Kreistor,
Why do you continue to imply, as others have, that philosophy is an experimental, empirical science? It’s easy to denigrate a field for failing to meet a standard that has little relation to its goals. When something becomes a science within philosophy, it ceases to be philosophy, barring logic. So again, all these comments are fallaciously beside the point.
By the way, when I do read scientific analyses of results relating to my field, I note that the assumptions are often laughably archaic by philosophic standards. How does that occur? Because it’s been decades since science and philosophy were considered radically separate fields by the common and intellectual public.
Meanwhile, I await a science of ethics. Until then, I will hang out in this bastion of liberal democratic philosophy we call the U.S. while watching sociology, psychology, and economics rediscover old philosophical ideas. (Hey, don’t I get to be at least a fraction as self-satisfied as some other posters?)
Jason, I’m not really a fan of incongruous==irony. I prefer irony as the undermining of intent by the apparent execution of intent – like an expert critical thinker who questions everything…except their critical thinking education.
Not a big fan of ‘It’s like rain on your wedding day’ irony.
Aside, I wonder what BBT has to do with philosophers in any way that actually alters their research.
Well, you can just say aloud it wont, if that’s your position.
Otherwise, if you’ve read any of it and it hasn’t raised any question marks – could be it just doesn’t raise question marks?
Ochlocrat, that’s the one! And I’m water off a ducks back, aren’t I? \:)
ugh bakker i love ya so much but i need more info on unholy consult! saying you don’t have any new info after i’ve been waiting months for even a little bit of info just drives me crazy
“Kreistor, Why do you continue to imply, as others have, that philosophy is an experimental, empirical science?”
Uh… what? I think that is completely opposite of the point I have continually made, from my first post (lost months ago now, but you can check Roger’s threads for my recent return). Philosophy is merely a cognitive game played by a self-declared intelligencia, which uses techno-babble to keep out the undesirable common sense that defeats most of its self-indulgent, self-congratulatory BS. Philosophy has absolutely no grounding in the empirical or perceptive, has a tendency to get trapped in cyclical unsolvable arguments, and that is why it is irrelevant and incapable of reaching the goals some seem to have for it. (Including your later hint at ethics.)
You were the one that suggested you could counter an argument by making Philosophy into Science, not me. My point is that you can’t achieve that, for the very quote you just made. Specifically, you previously said, “In fact, your suppositions lose most (not all) of their force if we stop treating philosophy as separate from science, practice, etc. ” To be treated the same as Science, Philosophy would have to become empirical. I am on record stating that if Philosophy did that, it would become a new discipline and cease being Philosophy.
Yet you have now identified exactly why Philosophy must always be treated as different from Science, so you have now given evidence that you are not arguing from an identifiable belief system, but from pure contrariness. The best part about contrarians is that they can’t keep track of all their own arguments, and wind up making their own counter-arguments. So, which is it? Is Philosophy going to become empirical and join Science to counter Abalieno’s argument, or are you just spouting whatever argument you think happens to counter your opponent, and it’s all about winning the debate for you? (Thereby proving my point that Philosophy is a debater’s game, and nothing more.)
“By the way, when I do read scientific analyses of results relating to my field, I note that the assumptions are often laughably archaic by philosophic standards.”
And despite your humour, Science has had astronomically more success than Philosophy. So, has Philosophy proven that the stars aren’t painted on spheres that circle the Earth yet? I’m too bored with you to look it up. Wondering how you’d do that without empirical data, though. Maybe it can explain the bubble nature of galaxy clustering? No, wait, you can’t even detect that without going into the unacceptable empirical, can you? And how does Dark Energy enter into the puzzling structure of our galaxy? You need Scientists and their “archaic” Hubble telescope to tell you how the Universe is built, so… what exactly was your point about who is laughing at whom? Was it a Philosopher that invented the techniques of DNA mapping that are leading to repairing the genetic damage that prevents some human beings from ever becoming Philosophers, or are Scientists repairing brains using MRI’s and CT scans? Sorry, the dizzying success of Science to improve people’s lives (including by repairing them to think rationally) is blinding me to your point.
“Meanwhile, I await a science of ethics.”
You haven’t kept track of anything I’ve written, have you? You’d know that doesn’t even come close to my beliefs, if you had.
Philosophy has absolutely no grounding in the empirical or perceptive
Have you ever heard of ’empiricism’? How about ‘commonsense philosophy’? In the comments to an earlier post, you expressed admiration of — and agreement with — G.E. Moore’s commonsense ‘refutation’ of skepticism (“Here’s a hand; it exists; therefore, the external world exists”). Moore was making a philosophical argument. Does that argument have “absolutely no grounding in the empirical or perceptive”? If not, why would you say that no philosophy has such grounding? If so, why do you apparently find the argument convincing, given that you seem to be committed to believing only those claims that are ’empirically’ or ‘sensually’ grounded?
I assume that whoever you’re responding to in this post was making the following point: You imply that philosophy is like the natural sciences insofar as you judge the success or failure of philosophy on the model of the natural sciences, i.e., you fault philosophy for not being science. But if they’re fundamentally different, then the fact that philosophy isn’t science is not a problem in and of itself. The commenter’s point about ethics is that natural science isn’t any good when it comes to normative domains; I’m sure you would agree. It seems, then, that insofar as we’re human beings engaged in the world, we require (and as a matter of fact employ) standards of belief and rationality that are not those of the natural sciences.
You yourself are no different in this respect. Notice that the following claim is not a scientific claim: “Philosophy is merely a cognitive game played by a self-declared intelligencia, which uses techno-babble to keep out the undesirable common sense that defeats most of its self-indulgent, self-congratulatory BS.” In fact, if I were to classify this claim, I would call it ‘philosophical’ (since metaphilosophy is, after all, a kind of philosophy — it is the philosophy of philosophy). It’s a stunningly simplistic and uninformed metaphilosophy, but a metaphilosophy all the same.
Your response to these issues boils down to the following: “But philosophy isn’t science! Look at how great science is! Philosophy isn’t that, so philosophy’s stupid! Na-na-na-boo-boo!”
Whether or not you’re right, you simply haven’t addressed the issues at hand.
delavagus: “I assume that whoever you’re responding to in this post was making the following point: You imply that philosophy is like the natural sciences insofar as you judge the success or failure of philosophy on the model of the natural sciences,”
No, that is merely what you’re used to from other scientifically minded criticisms. I said, “Sorry, the dizzying success of Science to improve people’s lives (including by repairing them to think rationally) is blinding me to your point.” in the post to which you’re replying. That should lead to the conclusion that I am judging success by the effect of the two Disciplines on improving people’s lives, not in the capacity to reproduce the Natural universe. Your entire post is a straw man, and easily provably so.
What success did Moore have on pulling Philosophy out of the skepticism tailspin? He may have diminished the debate at the time, but it has recovered and is soldiering right along as if he never did anything. It does not matter that there is one discipline in Philosophy that accepts the existence in the external world, when Philosophy as a whole can’t move on because it is still mired in the continual recovery of the skepticism of our existence. So my position stands. Until Philosophy has accepted at least that the external world must exist and rejected the Skeptic demand for proofs that can never be provided due to the intransigence of the Skeptics, it is hamstrung by being forced to repeatedly cover the same old ground. Jason suggested that Philosophy has moved on and Science’s arguments against it are “archaic”. The truth is that Philosophy is still mired in all of the old archaic arguments it has had for over 3000 years, because no truth has ever been accepted, including the existence of the external world. There is nothing more archaic than debating with a Philosopher. They pretend to have advanced, but it is the illusion of redefinition: by creating new technical terms, Philosophers think they have created something, when all they’ve actually achieved is adding words to the dictionary and made it harder for Philosophy to be understood by the common man, thereby decreasing its usefulness.
That is fundamentally different from Science. You’ve seen my complaint about the wording of “Blind Brain Theory”: it is correctly the “Blind Brain Hypothesis”, because nothing gets to be a Theory in Science until it is accepted by the Scientific community as a whole. When I point at the theory of Dark Energy, I am pointing not at a small group of disciples (the way you do with empiricists), but at Science’s acceptance as a whole that the expansion of the universe is increasing in velocity. There are certainly holdouts and doubters that think that it may be an error in calculation or observation (there is rarely universal acceptance of any theory), but they must accept the majority opinion, even while they work to find the flaw in the theory. A few people saying, “Prove we exist” doesn’t hamper Science as a whole the way it does Philosophy.
delavagus: “In fact, if I were to classify this claim, I would call it ‘philosophical’ (since metaphilosophy is, after all, a kind of philosophy — it is the philosophy of philosophy). It’s a stunningly simplistic and uninformed metaphilosophy, but a metaphilosophy all the same.”
When did I claim that everything I believe is Scientific? We had this conversation before. Have I not indicated that I am a proponent of many more beliefs than that, including that of God? Science is expansionary: it only covers the realm that it can perceive, but as detection expands, so does that which Science can codify. All Scientists must make a decision about that which Science cannot perceive — the spiritual at the very least — which fundamentally causes all Scientists to have beliefs outside Science. As time passes, and instrumentation changes, we can detect what was previously undetectable, and so realms that were outside Science become Scientific. What is magic? Magic is that which Science has merely not yet defined. If Scientists believed nothing that Science did not cover, it could not expand the way it does. So, yes, I make Philosophical arguments on subjects that Science has no detection mechanism for. The realm of Philosophy is largely anecdotal, so yes, when I make some statements about Philosophy, I do so from what you would define as a Philosophical perspective. It’s impossible not to, and foolish to think pointing it out makes a dent in my argument. After all, I’m doing exactly what I said Philosophy suffers from… having a debate.
This goes to a previous poster’s statements concerning the expansionary nature of Science into Philosophical grounds. The boundary of Science is that of what it can perceive. For instance, we could not examine inside a living brain until MRI’s and CAT scans were discovered. This prevented Science from impinging on Philosophy’s attempts to explain thought. But now, we can see the pathways of the brain operating, identify which parts are being used for what purpose, and identify the potential “heuristics” Scott is so interested in, if we see disparate problems re-using the same pathways. Science is pushing Philosophy out of one of its fields, as brain imaging becomes increasingly detailed. Science grows. Philosophy shrinks. And there is no doubt that it will be a Scientist running experiments in a lab that will uncover the nature of thought, not Scott and his debating here. Even if Scott does get lucky and get it right, he has no mechanism to demonstrate his discovery is accurate, and so he will never get credit for it. No more than Gene Roddenberry gets for inventing the Communicator, which you carry in your pocket as a Cell Phone now.
Again, my position on Philosophy is largely based on its abject failure to solve any problem of any sort, and get mired down in debate, even to the level of failure to accept fundamental and obvious perceptive truths (such as “we exist”). While Philosophy may desperately try to redefine other peoples’ solutions to issues as a “philosophical” solution (especially in the political realm), the efforts of declared philosophers has been notably unsuccessful, especially as Science extends its boundaries. Jason suggests that Philosophy should cover ethics, for instance, but our ethics currently has more to do with the teachings of religion than Philosophy, since it is more commonly tied to morality than cognition.
That should lead to the conclusion that I am judging success by the effect of the two Disciplines on improving people’s lives…
So you’re a pragmatist, then: the proof is in the pudding. Fair enough (though note that this is a philosophical, not a scientific, position).
The problem is that the historical record — the history of ideas — doesn’t support your claim that philosophy has not improved people’s lives. On the contrary, it was skeptical doubts about traditional myths, and the philosophical questioning for which this skepticism paved the way, that gave rise to the first stirrings of Western science in ancient Greece. If science has improved people’s lives, then so has philosophy, by making science possible. +1 for philosophy!
In the modern period, the rediscovery of ancient skepticism gave impetus to the Renaissance skepticism regarding medieval Scholasticism, which paved the way for the philosophical questioning that gave rise to modern experimental science. So +2 for philosophy!
Then there are the Enlightenment emancipatory philosophies in which originate our modern doctrines of the equality of human beings. These philosophies toppled the ancien regime, paved the way for democracy, and continue to serve as the philosophical ground of the various human rights movements. So +3, 4, and 5 for philosophy!
Roger,
I don’t understand why you still waste time with him when he showed, that a) he clearly has no idea what he is talking about, b) doesn’t even listen to what you say most of the time, ignores many of your questions and c) seem to be arguing just for the sake of having an argument and accuses you of doing so.
He is a troll, just ignore him.
You’re right, of course. My problem is that I have an entirely unreasonable faith in people’s ability to be reasonable. Thus, I often end up beating my head against immovable objects.
dietl, everyone argues for the sake of having an argument. No ones in some better position than that (far as I can tell, anyway). Please don’t water down the word ‘troll’ by applying it to someone who genuinely wants to pitch an argument (whether they get tied in knots around it or not) rather than someone who is simply trying to screw with your psychology. It’s crying wolf to do so.
I’m not so sure. It seems to me that Kreistor/Chris W is acting like a troll in much the same way that Vox Day is a troll whenever he posts here.
Callan,
I would agree with you if “arguing for the sake of it” was my only point but it wasn’t. Of course, troll is a subjective word and he might only be a troll by my definition. But I think everyone can see that he showed at least some trollish behaviour.
I’d like to point out the following:
– As every troll, he has some valid critique in some of his posts but the way it is presented is the problem.
– He showed, as far as I saw it, this trollish behaviour only when posting to Roger. My advice was only directed at him, because Kreistor somehow seems to have a problem with him. His arguments with others didn’t seem so trollish.
– Somethings that might support my “theory”
Kreistor: I’m just playing with him, and laughing at his efforts,
This discussion for him is all about “defeating” and “winning the debate”, which isn’t bad by itself but it clearly suggests that he isn’t really open to what is being said. Again, it’s not a sufficient but a necessary condition for being a troll.
My post for him was a “provocation”. He acts as if I called him stupid and myself smart, which wasn’t the case and puts this all to a complete different level. Only point (a) of my post could only be considered to be an insult, but I don’t think anyone else would have interpeted it in such a way if he wasn’t a troll. To clear things up: (a) was just my subjective opinion and was by no means meant to be insulting. Being called a troll has nothing to do with intelligence, for there can be all different kind of trolls.
That’s all I have to say to this, so noone needs to feed me 0:-)
It seems, then, that insofar as we’re human beings engaged in the world, we require (and as a matter of fact employ) standards of belief and rationality that are not those of the natural sciences.
That’s because Nature is CRUEL. We are horrified by the way nature normally works, which is why human beings OPPOSE Nature at all times.
That’s the point of the dichotomy, we are on “this” side. The side of meaning, of thoughts, of philosophy, of morals. Of helping those who are left behind, the crippled, the old, the sick. All kinds of human virtues exist opposite of Nature, because Nature has no compassion, regret, piety and everything else.
All kinds of human virtues exist opposite of Nature…
So humans are supernatural beings, then?
It’s the stuff embedded in the “hard problem”. Or the dichotomy.
We see body/soul as opposite. Two warring domains. So it’s like they exist independently and opposed. Though we know that the mind is produced by the body, as a sort of emergent behavior, so a better representation would be about putting the mind within the greater set of the body.
But for “us”, conscience is a thing. Its own dimension. Detached from the rest of Nature. So the dichotomy is reproduced in terms of inside/outside.
As long you see things in the perspective of this Cartesian Dualism, human beings are indeed out of Nature. Nature can’t have “agency”.
This is also significant in pragmatic terms. Nature selects the genetic material that is most appropriate for life, through reproduction. But with human beings reproduction isn’t anymore the only way to impact the future. Writing a book can have even more significant consequences, because you can influence people. So human beings affect the future in two ways, through genetic material, AND through culture.
So this dichotomy continues to be valid. Human beings creates this odd two-dimensionality. Which is again the Cartesian dualism, my own dichotomy, or the “hard problem” all different ways to name the same thing.
So this dichotomy continues to be valid.
Does it? Isn’t the ‘problem’ precisely that the dichotomy does not seem to be valid? Are you endorsing Cartesian dualism? The appeal to culture simply begs the question: if human beings are natural through and through, then there can be nothing supernatural about their language, books, or culture. Likewise with our ‘agency.’
I think both parties are seeing each other as trolling, really – the full context of Kriestor’s ‘ I’m just playing with him, and laughing at his efforts’ is that he see you as just repeating the same ground as if it’s new – and he feels there’s nothing he can do with such, from his perspective, blind stubborness on your part.
Seems to me the usual frustration insults slip through – like Rogers ‘This is nonsense!’
I think both sides are being a little bitchy, but there’s a difference between two sides who have a model of an idea to describe but are bitchy in doing so, vs someone who has no idea, they just want to screw with you. Maybe my idea of a troll is old fashioned, but it’s the latter. Even if the other party iss too bitchy to continue talking with, atleast they brought an idea along to the fray – atleast respect that.
I’m not so sure.
It’s me being the sure one?
It seems to me that Kreistor/Chris W is acting like a troll in much the same way that Vox Day is a troll whenever he posts here.
Ugh – you’re going to make me…brrrrr…defend Vox? What a cruel blade….well played, well played!
Vox degenerates, at the drop of a hat, to extreme bitchyness.
Which makes it even more annoying that he does work from an idea/ideas – a dumb as hell idea, but he’s not just there to troll you (sadly I think ROH is probably closer to that). And yeah, try to pierce his idea and he uses stupid responces combined with bitchyness. But he genuinely believes some of the shit he spouts – he’s not just saying it to screw with you. There is some genuineness, even though he can only defend it with a four years old sensibilities (probably because he thinks he needs put in no more effort since it’s all so very obvious!)
So even Vox isn’t a troll – just an extreme bitch. And a baby.
There, defended him while laying a few gut punches into him myself…
In the end, I think both sides aught to respect that the other honours them by bringing real ideas to the table (who can say if the idea is true? But a real idea, YES!)
ChrisW/Kreistor, as well as Vox, fits virtually all the Urban Dictionary definitions of a troll. Consider these:
(1) “One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument.”
(2) “One who purposely and deliberately (that purpose usually being self-amusement) starts an argument in a manner which attacks others on a forum without in any way listening to the arguments proposed by his or her peers. He will spark of such an argument via the use of ad hominem attacks (i.e. ‘you’re nothing but a fanboy’ is a popular phrase) with no substance or relevence to back them up as well as straw man arguments, which he uses to simply avoid addressing the essence of the issue.”
Though I’m sure he would see himself this way:
“One of many unsung internet heroes who are almost entirely misunderstood. Contrary to popular belief, many trolls are actually quite intelligent. Their habitual attacks on forums is usually a result of their awareness of the pretentiousness and excessive self-importance of many forum enthusiasts. As much as people may hate trolls, they are highly effective – their actions bring much of the stupidity of other forum users out into the great wide open.”
Having something to say — having an ‘idea’ — does not prevent one from being a troll.
And anyway, YES.
We live in super-naturality. Religions, gods, spirits, all kinds of symbols, philosophy, metaphysics. All this stuff affects us greatly because it exists “this side” of the dichotomy. The mind is the “soul”, which is a metaphysical concept.
Body/mind, and conscience generate that level we consider “above” natural. Emergent.
Without the mind none of the truly supernatural stuff wouldn’t exist. Gods and spirits weren’t created by trees, rivers, stones or birds. They are created by minds.
If one believes in “god”, then it means he believes in consciousness. Because he must believe that nature can give origin to an independent world, consciousness (and agency/free will), that consequently gives origin to another emergent level: the gods. So we either give credit to this metaphysical multi-dimensionality, or we accept that there’s one dimension only. The BBT.
That was also my line of thoughts opposite to Scott’s. Scott believes that BBT will “neutralize” this side of the dichotomy, explaining everything in natural terms, and erasing everything existing this side. While I believe that even if BBT is valid, there’s still the possibility for this side to excise itself from “truth”. And make its own virtual domain. Where virtuality is normative.
We learn the truth, then acquire ways to manipulate it, and so make that truth relative. At that point “truth” becomes only an idea valid in a certain time-span. Past that point what you believe is also what is ultimately true.
We live in super-naturality.
Why should I believe this? The points you raise in support of it all beg the question.
We learn the truth, then acquire ways to manipulate it, and so make that truth relative. At that point “truth” becomes only an idea valid in a certain time-span. Past that point what you believe is also what is ultimately true.
I think this view is incoherent. You can call it ‘truth’ if you want — just like you can decide to call tables ‘chimpanzees’ and chairs ‘computers’ — but it doesn’t mean that you’re talking about the concept of truth.
One last thing… I’ve always considered Wittgenstein’s Tractatus as an example of a similar pattern to the one I described about “truth”. Look at the very end:
My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)
He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly
This idea of the ladder, as an obligatory way to progress. Then when you’ve climbed it, look down, and the ladder disappeared. But the process brought you somewhere else.
So is the model of truth. There’s a journey that requires to understand truth. And when you’ve finally grasped it, truth is no more. You are into a different level and that “truth” was only needed so that you could arrive where you are.
Wittgenstein took the ladder-analogy from the ancient skeptics. Just had to mention that.
Does it? Isn’t the ‘problem’ precisely that the dichotomy does not seem to be valid? Are you endorsing Cartesian dualism?
I’m endorsing Cartesian dualism as a way to frame the problem, not as a way to answer it.
What I think is that things could go both ways. BBT could either erase our level, or we could excise our level from the natural world. It’s like the difference between “believing” and “not believing”. It could go both ways.
If human beings are natural through and through, then BBT will cancel our level. But it’s not the only possible outcome.
If human beings are natural through and through, then BBT will cancel our level. But it’s not the only possible outcome.
True. But it’s not as though it’s either BBT or supernaturalism, as you seem to think. There are many possible ‘outcomes’ here.
I think this view is incoherent. You can call it ‘truth’ if you want — just like you can decide to call tables ‘chimpanzees’ and chairs ‘computers’ — but it doesn’t mean that you’re talking about the concept of truth.
In fact I’m not focusing on words, I’m trying to be understood.
What I mean is the natural truth. Scientific truth, the external world. My point is, take this line:
“This fictional apple is red.”
What color is the apple? The answer is red. So this “truth” is red.
But if you get to REWRITE the sentence at any time, then there isn’t a truth. The apple is red as long that line states so. It changes when the line is rewritten.
So if human beings get not only to know reality (through BBT), but actually to manipulate it, then “truth” becomes a changeable idea.
It’s not anymore about WHAT is true, but WHEN it is true.
So BBT may reveal a “truth”. But it could also manipulate experience. And at that point truth almost becomes a matter of choice. Or at least it CAN become a choice.
In fact I’m not focusing on words, I’m trying to be understood.
I get what you’re saying here, I really do. But I think it’s a mistake to suppose that ‘understanding’ — at least of the sort we’re dealing with here — can be achieved outside of language. So you should focus on the words! They are, in contexts such as these, the medium of understanding.
As for the rest of what you say, it seems to me like a confused jumble. You refer to ‘natural truth’ and to ‘scientific truth,’ but then you bring up the question of ‘truth in fiction’ (something about which there has been a great deal of philosophical discussion). Oddly, you seem to treat ‘natural’ and ‘scientific’ truth on the model of ‘fictional’ truth, but that seems deeply confused to me. At the very least, you should know that the move — from ‘natural’ and ‘scientific’ truth to ‘truth-in-fiction’ — is contentious and would require you to do a great deal more work to motivate it or to make it at all convincing.
For me the dichotomy is so crystal clear that it’s almost a thing for kids.
“Natural truth” and “truth in fiction” are the two things as they are on the two sides. BBT says that natural truth can’t be brought in language, since it’s post-semantic. I simply give it a name to refer to it, not to define what it is. It’s simply the truth as it is from that side of the dichotomy. It’s the law of the world whether human beings are in it or not.
This side, instead, truth is language, of course. The thing is, we kinda know that truth in language, or science as we know it currently, comes from that other side. Because before we give it a name, it gets filtered by “experience”.
The problem is that BBT gives not only knowledge on truth on that side. But it also, as consequence, gives control on EXPERIENCE. Which means that “us” stranded on this side could at some point ignore truth on that other side, and through control over experience, shape the world as we see fit.
Experience is the membrane that generates the dichotomy. If you control it, then you can ignore there’s even another side.
For me the dichotomy is so crystal clear that it’s almost a thing for kids…
Yet every remark you make following this one makes it ‘crystal clear’ that the dichotomy is not crystal clear, nor a thing for kids. It’s extremely complex, in fact.
At any rate, I don’t think you appreciate the range of possibilities here, the numerous points of possible branching-away. But whatever. It doesn’t matter.
At least I was trying to motivate.
You seem to just say that there are all these different opportunities but can’t seem to explain a single one.
Kids can understand Cartesian Dualism. It doesn’t require any advanced philosophical study. And besides I’ve never met anyone before criticizing Cartesian Dualism by saying this duality limits what actually is a “range of possibilities”.
The external world is one thing, experience and consciousness is another thing. I don’t see where these gazillions of possibilities are placed. It’s like a scientific theory. It’s either true or not. There aren’t other possibilities.
Just pick up pretty much any intro book on the philosophy of mind, and you’ll discover there numerous examples of positions that are neither BBT nor Cartesian dualism.
Delavagus: “On the contrary, it was skeptical doubts about traditional myths, and the philosophical questioning for which this skepticism paved the way, that gave rise to the first stirrings of Western science in ancient Greece. If science has improved people’s lives, then so has philosophy, by making science possible. +1 for philosophy!”
So, you’ll claim the Platonic/Socratic/Aristotlean era as Philosophical and a great boon for society, but ignore that the pseudo-religious adherence to its beliefs caused humanity to be ignorant peasants for 2000 years? Science was mired in the philosophical mind-trap of Aristotlean science for over two millenia, and you count this as a success? Are you conveniently forgetting that the Roman Catholic church was defending Aristotle’s geocentric universe when it locked up Galileo?
Those foolish philosophers were wrong even in their own day by their own astronomical observations, but the cognitive “genius” of their philosophy allowed them to ignore their own empirical data and go with their grandiose, cognitive arguments, instead of recognizing the failure of those ideas by the observational deviations from their model;s predictions. (Yes, their own basic observations, recorded in their own texts, mathematically disprove Aristotle’s geocentric universe.) Successful debate led to the narcissistic belief in the superiority of their false universal constructs, which suppressed the empirical-based science Aristotle almost grasped. You point to that as success. I point to that as abject failure, and evidence that Philosophy has done more to hamper human development than any other Discipline, including Religion, since religion merely espoused Aristotle throughout the middle ages. Aristotle had at his fingertips the mathematics that could have described the universe, but he was sucked up into the philosophical realisms that Socrates and Plato promoted, seeking a cognitive analysis of observation instead of the mathematical analysis we would finally use to overcome his obviously flawed geocentric universe. Aristotle, distracted by Philosophy, missed it and cost us 2000 years.
The Philosophical mindtrap hamstrung humanity, and it was only when Aristotle and his crowd were utterly rejected that we were able to finally discover the truth and proceed under the umbrella of observation and experimentation, instead of the cognitive explanations of Alchemy that were the true ancestor of Aristotle. So, no, I do not accept your example as evidence of improvement of humanity, and I will in fact lay two thousand years of darkness at the very feet of your own claim, as the counter-evidence of your prejudicial view of Philosophy’s “addition” to humanity’s understanding of the universe.
Delavagus: “for which this skepticism paved the way”
There’s a definition problem here. You’re trying to co-opt all skepticism as Philosophical Skepticism, and I reject that, and have since the start. Science includes a skeptical nature in the Scientific Method, but that does not connect it in any way to your concept of Philosophical Skepticism (the one you’ve been posting and defending). The purpose of our skepticism is to reject the ego-based hypotheses of humans seeking a spotlight: scientists will repeat a claimant’s experiments in order to validate the claimant’s observations and conclusions, as well as invent other experiments to rigorously test the hypothesis, and in this way the claimant’s ego can be rejected as the cause of the generation of the hypothesis. This is why cold fusion has continually been rejected: it has not been regularly reproducible, even if we have seen some odd behaviors in some experiments. Scientists are skeptical by nature; however, scientists are not Skeptics in the way you have built your logical construct. Your Skeptical rationalization attempts to justify assault against Foundational Truths on purely cognitive grounds. That is most certainly against Scientific thinking, and evidence that Skepticism has no place in Science or in attacking its foundations, and so could not have provided the foundation for Science that you claim Aristotle et al provided. We accept skepticism based on observation and experimentation towards the Axioms and unprovable Theories, but cognitive Skepticism gets laughed to the curb. So, no, I completely reject your claims: that skepticism led to the development of science, and in fact it seems more accurate to say that Philosophy needed to be fully overcome for Science to finally be fully unleashed from the noose of cognitive criticism.
There is a difference between being skeptical and being a Skeptic, but you don’t seem to be differentiating the two. Do you believe that all skepticism in any form is Philosophical in nature, regardless of the subject matter? If so, we’re pretty much done, since you’re ranging far beyond the scope of Philosophy. Philosophy may have a branch of thinkers called Skeptics, but they do not get to claim the efforts of members of other Disciplines that happen to include skeptical approaches to claims of discovery.
So, no, I am not letting you use a cross-definition to assimilate all skeptical thinking into the Philosophical Skeptical school of thought. Small-s skepticism didn’t even lead to modern Science, and it was skepticism of a Skeptic — Aristotle — that freed us from 2000 years of intellectual darkness dominated by purely cognitive efforts to explain the universe, rather than the empirical efforts we use today. I flat-out reject your history as nothing more than prejudicial cherry-picking that ignores the vast negative effects that Philosophy created which suppressed science as a result of the same citation you try to use as a claim of its foundation. Science truly began when Newton explained the movement of the planets with Calculus, and trash-binned the Aristotlean universe. There was nothing Philosophical about that, even if Newton was skeptical of Aristotle.
dietl: “I don’t understand why you still waste time with him”
Because Philosophy is about debate, not truth or bettering mankind’s understanding of himself or his universe. Roger can’t give up without defeating me, because it isn’t about proving what is true for him, but about winning the debate. The truth is that nothing in his last post was new: it was all retreaded arguments from old posts, merely reorganized. Consequently, I’m just playing with him, and laughing at his efforts, because he thinks he’s approached from a new direction.
Gotta love your provocation, though. I don’t understand, eh? I’ll accept that is one possibility. The other is that the explanation is full of flawed logic and it easily falls apart with a little choice critical thinking, but you’re simply not intelligent enough to recognize a bogus argument when you see one, and you fall prey to the well-honed lie of a debater that’s more con-artist than philosopher. That’s the other possibility, isn’t it? See how easy it is to call the other guy stupid, and yourself smart? Well, at least I can defend myself by pointing out that you did it first. I call your post “Invitation to Flame War” which was inspired by your failure to follow the standard forum rule “Don’t feed the Trolls.” Except that since I never attacked you in any way, and was staying well within bounds of the subject matter with Roger, I wasn’t actually Trolling. Which means that I was the one that just fed the Troll, since I can demonstrate direct attack on my intellectual capacity.
Science truly began when Newton explained the movement of the planets with Calculus, and trash-binned the Aristotlean universe.
This is nonsense. Newton himself disagrees with you: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
Yes, because a good quote is proof of…. not sure what that quote proves, except that Isaac was respectful. But it does kinda demonstrate that this is a debate, since quotes are only opinions. Let’s not forget who calculated the age of the universe at around 6000 years, based on text from the Bible. Are you certain it’s his opinion you want to use against me? Newton was, after all, convinced of God’s existence, which makes him your nemesis, and suggests that if I turn on your own tap, I could drown you in your own source.
And I’m not forgetting that you’ve still got that 2000 years of horror to explain away. Or have you forgotten?
More nonsense. (1) Newton’s theism does not make him my ‘nemesis.’ Montaigne believed in God too, and he’s my boy. (2) Newton’s religious belief has nothing to do with the issues at hand, which are (a) whether modern science — and science in general — was raised on ground cleared by skepticism and philosophy, and (b) whether science ‘truly began’ with Newton.
And I’m not forgetting that you’ve still got that 2000 years of horror to explain away.
And the nonsense keeps coming! Nothing I’ve said burdens me with any such task — a task that is ill-conceived anyway. (Why those 2000 years specifically? What about before? What about after? It’s not as though the world isn’t still full of horrors today!)
Yes, because a good quote is proof of…. not sure what that quote proves, except that Isaac was respectful.
It proves that Newton understood his place in intellectual history far better than you do!
Delavagus: “(1) Newton’s theism does not make him my ‘nemesis.’ Montaigne believed in God too, and he’s my boy”
Ah, yes, sorry about that. So many people have been putting words in my mouth around here that I guess I got into the same bad habit. Frankly, I think I dealt with it more elegantly than you are, though.
“Newton’s religious belief has nothing to do with the issues at hand”
Religious belief (specifically attacking it) is at the core of your own 5-part article. You specifically mention attacking Religious belief in your treatise supporting Skepticism. Most of the time you hide behind words like “traditional” and “dogmatism”, but you broke ranks a couple times. The truth is that there are no dogmatisms for you to attack with Skepticism, except Religious belief, so if you actually believe you weren’t writing about attacking Religion, then you’ve achieved a pretty astounding level of internal double-speak. Anyway, here’s an example:
From Part IV: “Without a commitment to PEN, whether explicit or implicit, the skeptical dialectic could not get off the ground. In the face of rational challenges to, say, the belief that the Bible is the word of God, a person uncommitted to PEN could both (a) persist in that belief without making any attempt to defend or justify it and (b) nonetheless continue to think that her belief is rational and justified. (Alternatively, of course, she could simply give no credence to all that ‘fancy talk.’) Such a person would remain outside of the domain of contextual questioning. It is clearly possible to do so. ”
You made religion part of this long ago by stating that it is irrational for believing the Bible is the Word of God, and thereby making it the obvious target of your entire treatise of Skepticism. (Despite prompting, you have yet to provide any other example of a dogmatism that fits your target definition.) And now you are lauding Newton’s rationality and criticizing his irrationality simultaneously. And just to point out the direct connection, if it’s not obvious, to achieve the age of the Universe, Newton had to fundamentally believe in the Bible as the Word of God, planting him squarely in the cross-hairs of your quoted example.
“Nothing I’ve said burdens me with any such task — a task that is ill-conceived anyway. (Why those 2000 years specifically? What about before? What about after? It’s not as though the world isn’t still full of horrors today!)”
Uh, yes, you most certainly did do so. You stated: ” On the contrary, it was skeptical doubts about traditional myths, and the philosophical questioning for which this skepticism paved the way, that gave rise to the first stirrings of Western science in ancient Greece.” You made a claim that Philosophy generated Science and thereby benefited mankind. I’m stating that is only possible if you ignore the intervening 2000 years of darkness that plagued humanity, which ended only when Aristotle was finally rejected and Science broke free from the cognitive Philosphical noose Aristotle wrapped around his Physics.
So to answer each question you asked: “Why those 2000 years specifically?” Because you chose the starting point (when Aristotle published) and I chose the end when he was finally kicked to the curb (Newton). Everything “scientific” between those dates lie at Aristotle’s feet. Everything. Since that includes ages of ignorant, religious adherence to Aristotle’s faulty beliefs, I get to shackle your example with its failures as well as your claims to success. You could, of course, try to find another example of how Philosophy has benefited humanity and abandon this one as ill-conceived.
“What about before?” You’re claiming he somehow benefited mankind by replacing the Greek religious foundation of the nature of the universe with his crystal spheres, five elements, and other false conclusions (which were inspired by Philosophical cognitive processes, instead of the empirical processes that replaced him). I am stating that it achieved no benefit for mankind, since one false view is no better than another false view, and that cognitive description that denied empiricism only succeeded in darkening mankind’s view towards the truth. Exactly how did mankind benefit by believing in crystal spheres? You’re the one claiming it helped… how did it help? I’ve demonstrated it lead to 2000 years of Alchemic BS that sought magical solutions based on Aristotle’s five elements. It’s up to you to prove it was somehow advantageous to go to that system over the previous system, whatever it was. If that is too obfuscated: Aristotle’s system was no better than the previous, and what he did create was such a good cognitive bunch of philosophical BS that it fooled people for 2000 years.
“What about after?” After is covered by the complete split of Science from Philosophy by its acceptance of empiricism and mathematical modelling, while rejecting purely cognitive arguments as inadequate to describing a Universe the mind cannot control. You can’t claim any part of Science’s discoveries after Newton, even in the slightest without a major spin-job. The reasons include:
1) Philosophy has no corollary to the Scientific Method,
2) Science has accepted its Foundational Truths while Philosophy has not
3) Science has identified a methodology of determining new truths from old (Logic), while Philosophy still meanders rudderless in cognitive gamesmanship
Try as you might, you can’t penetrate and claim Science as Philosophy. You can’t even understand why Science has been so successful (which you stated clearly in V). If you can’t understand its success, how can you claim it’s Philosophical in nature? You would have to give up your claim to superior understanding of Philosophy, since the fact that I understand perfectly well why Science has succeeded means I have a superior understanding of Philosophy as well.
You should teach a course on cherry-picking!
It’s amazing the way you’ve managed to completely miss the point of my posts. You clearly don’t understand my critique of philosophy, nor do you understand what skepticism is or how it works — thus, you also don’t understand my views regarding the upshot of skepticism — nor do you understand the structure or implications of the view I call presupposition contextualism.
The historical story has gone right over your head, and you’ve utterly failed to grasp the import of my remarks about science. (A hint regarding the latter: given the sense in which ‘I can’t explain why science has been so successful,’ neither can you, by your own admission: for my point, clearly, was that we cannot understand science philosophically, i.e., we cannot provide a philosophically satisfying account of science. This is something you yourself no doubt agree with!)
the “shoulders of giants” quote comes from a letter to Robert Hooke:
“What Descartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
It’s about optics, as suggested by the full context (“colours of thin plates”), and not “philosophy” in general, nor skepticism in particular.
i suppose “philosophical” is in there, but it’s meaning was quite different in 1676, because science was “natural philosophy” as distinct from, say, metaphysics, or as Descarte put it in 1647:
The first part of philosophy is metaphysics, which contains the principles of knowledge, including the explanation of the principal attributes of God, the non-material nature of our souls and all the clear and distinct notions which are in us. The second part is physics, where, after discovering the true principles of material things, we examine the general composition of the entire universe and then, in particular, the nature of this earth and all the bodies which are most commonly found upon it, such as air, water, fire, magnetic ore and other minerals. Next we need to examine individually the nature of plants, of animals and, above all, of man, so that we may be capable later on of discovering the other sciences which are beneficial to man. Thus the whole of philosophy is like a tree. The roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences, which may be reduced to three principal ones, namely medicine, mechanics and morals.”
metaphysics has now been completely excised from what we mean by “science” today. however, “principles of knowledge” is increasingly a topic of neuroscience and the cognitive sciences. much of the philosophical discourse in “epistemology” survives in the history of ideas as an appendix in our current body of knowledge.
science wasn’t “raised on ground cleared by skepticism and philosophy”. it turned out that only some intellectual tools could really cut grass, and those are what we now call the scientific method. to conflate science with philosophy based on etymology is to conflate cutting weeds with wanting to.
still, some people prefer to beat reeds with broomhandles, figuratively speaking. we still call them philosophers today.
the “shoulders of giants” quote comes from a letter to Robert Hooke… It’s about optics, as suggested by the full context (“colours of thin plates”), and not “philosophy” in general, nor skepticism in particular.
Yes, but the general point holds: Newton rightfully saw himself and his work as belonging to a preexisting intellectual tradition. (And, by the way, there was no ‘science’ back then: science was called ‘natural philosophy.’ The two domains were not distinguished the way they are today.)
metaphysics has now been completely excised from what we mean by “science” today.
That’s debatable. Biologists, for example, are coming to realize in increasing numbers the extent to which their explanations depend on teleology. The latent metaphysics of contemporary science is rarely recognized because scientists are, by and large, bad philosophers.
science wasn’t “raised on ground cleared by skepticism and philosophy”.
What do you think I mean by claiming otherwise? What do you think I mean when I say that science was raised on ground cleared by skepticism and philosophy?
“science wasn’t “raised on ground cleared by skepticism and philosophy””
If this is true, how comes that when I look into the wikipedia article for ‘Scientific method’ and go to ‘History’, that I almost exclusively read about skeptics and philosophers?
RSB, do you have any use for the work of Jessie Prinz?
dietl: – As every troll, he has some valid critique in some of his posts but the way it is presented is the problem.
Yes, I was attempting to sustain the argument. I have a meta-point that I was holding back. You’ve noticed something is up, so I’ll end this now. I’ll post what this was all about at the end.
– He showed, as far as I saw it, this trollish behaviour only when posting to Roger. My advice was only directed at him, because Kreistor somehow seems to have a problem with him. His arguments with others didn’t seem so trollish.
Sorta true. I’d respond to anyone that supports Roger in any way in the same way.
– Somethings that might support my “theory” “Kreistor: I’m just playing with him, and laughing at his efforts, ”
Yep. Kinda trollish, except that what I’m laughing about isn’t what you think I’m laughing about.
So, let’s end this. It’s over Roger, so don’t bother.
Roger, what did your 5 post argument achieve? It seemed to me that you were justifying an all-out assault on “dogmatic” belief, or more specifally, any Foundational Truth that you believed to be irrational. The whole mental construct begins, and seems to end, with assault on a Foundational truth, such as the example above (The Bible is the Word of God) or others that should be included (1=1, The Law of Conservation of Energy, Reason forms the basis for legal judgement, and so on) but may not be because of the prejudicial nature of the word “rationality”. After all, everyone believe that they are rational and those that disagree are not, correct?
The problem is that the construct doesn’t have limits. It can be used outside your chosen field to rationalize assault on any belief, by anyone believing that they are rational. In this thread, someone chose the dogmatic belief in Skepticism as the target. That would be me. I have been doing exactly what you tried to justify doing: attack your belief based on my own conviction that it is irrational.
It’s not hard. I find your conclusion vile, so it isn’t difficult to call it irrational. The only people in the world that can demand justification of belief are judges appointed by serving decades as lawyers and gaining the trust of judges that they have achieved a minimum standard of reason. The legal profession is the closest approximation to what you seem to desire for Skepticism, but your construct carries no morality in determining who deserves to be judged, or by what standard we determine what is irrational, or who even gets to decide what rationality is. Why Philosophy, especially when I’ve pointed out that it has become the Haven for Atheist anti-Christians that use the word Skepticism as rationalization for hatred? How are you going to keep the haters out and retain only the rational critics?
So, I hope you enjoyed being the victim of your own rationalization. I don’t think it was as fun as you expected. And it was certainly just as unsuccessful as your own efforts will be, if you are ever foolish enough to try to put your construct into action. You’ll face the same level of frustration and accusations of irrationality that have been leveled at me.
What’s good for the goose…
Roger, what did your 5 post argument achieve? It seemed to me that you were justifying an all-out assault on “dogmatic” belief, or more specifally, any Foundational Truth that you believed to be irrational. The whole mental construct begins, and seems to end, with assault on a Foundational truth
This is a stunningly ham-fisted misreading of my view. You are a cherry-picker extraordinare, my friend! A real virtuouso!
Yes, the skeptical dialectic involves calling everything into question. But that is not where it ends. I was very clear that it ends by overthrowing itself: i.e., philosophy construed as the exercise of autonomous reason ends by destroying its own foundations. (I would think you would find this account very compelling!) What is the result? Precisely to restore the primordial authority of the everyday, i.e., to return us to common life, but cured now of dogmatism. I would remind you of this important passage from my fourth post:
The only people in the world that can demand justification of belief are judges appointed by serving decades as lawyers and gaining the trust of judges that they have achieved a minimum standard of reason.
Wow! I mean, really. That’s just crazy. Real wacko stuff. You think courtrooms are the only places where people can rightfully demand that others justify themselves? What world do you live in?
Besides, the only ‘demand’ I ever talked about was the demands of human reason itself. It is we ourselves who demand of ourselves that we justify our beliefs! The whole ‘courtroom of reason’ lies within every single one of us — only, in most cases, the trials are moot, for if you lack an intellectual conscience, there will be no adjudication, only the incessant issuing of verdict after verdict…
(Which is precisely the experience I feel reading your posts!)
Roger,
Having something to say — having an ‘idea’ — does not prevent one from being a troll.
So how do you get out of falling under the definitions of troll you posted above?
It’d be easiest to argue kreistor hasn’t executed the skepticism you described, in the way he’s engaged you.
Of course his point is he thinks he has and it’s damning that you’d call someone a troll when they do so.
It’s certainly considerably more effort on his part than just calling someone a ‘fan boy’ or something (to refer to that urban dictionary example), even if it isn’t an execution of what you describe. It’s something to appreciate.
At the very least, why didn’t the description of Pyrrhonianism get across? It’s easiest to blame the listener, of course. But perhaps this also says something about the description not being terribly clear?
How am I not a troll? Well, most obviously, I’ve not gone onto someone else’s site and started arguing, let alone with the sole intention (which is what would make me a troll) of telling the blogger how stupid and wrong they are.
Pretty straightforward stuff.
At the very least, why didn’t the description of Pyrrhonianism get across?
I remain convinced that he didn’t actually read my posts. That would explain it, yes?
*about to head to thesunrevolvesaroundtheearthblog.com*
*rethinks…*
If you went onto such a site with the sole purpose of telling the blogger how stupid and wrong he is, then you’d be a troll. But if you went on there and honestly tried to understand how they could hold a view you find so deeply mistaken, then you wouldn’t be a troll, even if your goal all along was to show them that they’re wrong.
Disagreeing does not make one a troll, but rather the manner in which one gives expression to one’s disagreement. (This should ring a bell… It’s related to something I’ve been trying to say… What could it be?)
“If you went onto such a site with the sole purpose of telling the blogger how stupid and wrong he is, then you’d be a troll.”
“…then you wouldn’t be a troll, even if your goal all along was to show them that they’re wrong.”
With that addition at the end, I honestly can’t see the difference between the two?
(This should ring a bell… It’s related to something I’ve been trying to say… What could it be?)
Speaking of manner…I can’t remember you writing anything advising to be patronising…until now?
So what happens when your ‘it’s fine to write this’ is someone elses patronising?
Do you think your notion ‘it was fine’ is ‘how things are’? You’re the only one to judge manner? Or are we both in a no mans land, neither your ‘fine’, nor my ‘you were patronising’ being ‘how things are’ and we could instead both attempt to make some compromise and accommodations to each others clearly differing notions?
Or does it seem yet another odd thing from me for me to describe your notion of the right manner as merely a circle, and my own notion of the right manner as merely a circle, with a gap in between the two where they do not overlap – a no mans land between them?
Speaking of Ray, I found the audio for some talks he did based on his new book:
http://myfreemp3.eu/music/Sellars
those interested in the origin of the split between “scientists” and “natural philosophers” may like this:
http://blog.ted.com/2012/06/28/the-invention-of-the-scientist-laura-snyder-at-tedglobal-2012/