Having to believe
Leo Smith
Apologies for pulling this out of the astrology thread, but it struck
me as a very good basis for something else that I would like to see
discussed.
From Astrology as reflection thread
and...@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) wrote
[ .... ]
> It seems to me that metaphysical realists have a lot of
> choices - and not all of them are so silly. But then a modern
> scientists who _doesn't_ say that today's theories may be
> wrong is just an idiot. In fact I have to look sideways at
> any scientist who doesn't have some serious idea about
> exactly what is wrong with todays theories - has he read
> enough science? What kind of scientist would he be if he has
> no idea what problem to do next?
[...]
> I think what comes most to mind is Wolfgang Stegmuller's
> alternative, quoted here from Kung's _Does God Exist_:
> The academic expert, concentrated on his special field
> (mathematics, history, natural science), does not like
> to be told _that basic assumptions of his thinking are
> metaphysical in character_; the metaphysician does not
> like to be told _that his mental activity rests on
> prerational, primordial decision_; philosophers of all
> types - apart from skeptics - do not like to be told
> _that the kinds of skepticism that are to be taken
> seriously are irrefutable_; and skeptics themselves, of
> all shades, do not like to admit _that they cannot
> prove their standpoint_. Such a complex assessment more
> or less provokes the indignant protest: "This cannot
> possibly be your _last_ word. One way or another there
> must be a solution of some kind". To which I can only
> reply: "The solution is in your hands, at any time.
> Make up your mind. Decide."
I have never seen that put better. In one glorious paragraph
Stegmuller has illustrated that there is no absolute standpoint: It
is _always_ a matter of personal choice. It is a choice whether one
believes or does not.
There is also a further implication. This is what Castaneda referred
to as 'having to believe'. I think that a more acceptable way to
phrase that in this group would be to say that it is a necessary
precondition of all human rational activity, that for the purposes of
that activity at least, certain pre-rational assumptions are made.
e.g. In order to 'do Science' a necessary precondition is the
assumption of some separate and observable reality.
What Stegmuller seems to me to be saying - and I so agree - is that
this assumption can never be proved: It can only be shown to be
effective.
The real question for me is what is the effect of carrying over this
assumption into HUMAN ACTIVITY THAT IS NOT SCIENCE. It seems to me
that this assumption is being applied far beyond the context in which
it is effective, because it seems that we are uncomfortable with a
'multi-valued' reality. So on the one hand we have the realists
saying 'It must be real, because it works' and the New Agers saying
'But you have no rational justification for it, so we can choose
any model we want'.
In conclusion: although we 'have to believe' in order to act...is it
valid and/or effective to suspend belief at the cessation of the
action? Can a man believe in material reality in the working day, as
he designs a mechanical structure, yet see it all as Maya as he
meditates, and be considered a rational and consistent man, or is he
condemned to be considered a hypocrite and inconstant, because he
varies his beliefs according to his purpose?
Tagi Mordred Nagashiva
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The word of Sin is Restriction.
Leo Smith writes:
[much material omitted]
...It is _always_ a matter of personal choice. It is a choice whether one
believes or does not.
Response:
I disagree with this. I think that this can only be said of the individual
who has to some degree seized consciousness. Those who labor under the
dream of ignorance are in no way responsible for their thought-patterns.
They are programmed pure and simple. Anybody with a sparkle of self-
consciousness suddenly assumes gradual responsibility for their belief-
systems, concretizing them into solid dogma or freeing up their mind
so as to risk the ravages of intellectual chaos.
Leo:
There is also a further implication. This is what Castaneda referred
to as 'having to believe'. I think that a more acceptable way to
phrase that in this group would be to say that it is a necessary
precondition of all human rational activity, that for the purposes of
that activity at least, certain pre-rational assumptions are made.
e.g. In order to 'do Science' a necessary precondition is the
assumption of some separate and observable reality.
Response:
I agree with this as far as it goes. Idealistically, Science is not
simply a rational endeavor but engages the entirety of the scientist,
from mental to emotional and physical bodies. It is only in our object-
worshipping stage as a society that we begin to need assumptions for
truth. Previously these truths were poetic and called 'myth'. Today,
because we think we are 'reasonable' enough to limit our rational
processes to pre-assumptive structures, we do in fact need them.
Leo:
What Stegmuller seems to me to be saying - and I so agree - is that
this assumption can never be proved: It can only be shown to be
effective.
Response:
This is what much of the philosophy of science has come to assume:
that 'knowledge' cannot be obtained by science and that its activity
only substantiates a priori assumption. While I agree with the
latter conclusion, I think that a qualification must be stipulated
for the former.
Assumptions are usually forged in lingual terms. This need not always
be the case. To the extent that we may form NON-linguistic assumptions
about Universe, so our science may be able to 'prove' them to us
(subjectively). An example, admittedly unorthodox, is when we apply
science to mysticism. Which assumptions are most effective for certain
base-level experiences of the world? Our 'proof' comes only as the
result of living with an assumption-set. This 'proof' does not give us
'objective knowledge' in the sense that it is true for everyone, but it
does give us a subjective 'knowledge' (gnosis) which IS effective toward
a certainty that transcends mere intellectual rigidity.
Our 'assumption' in this context may amount to an emotional approach,
even an energetic 'attitude' rather than a lingual through-contruct.
Leo:
The real question for me is what is the effect of carrying over this
assumption into HUMAN ACTIVITY THAT IS NOT SCIENCE. It seems to me
that this assumption is being applied far beyond the context in which
it is effective, because it seems that we are uncomfortable with a
'multi-valued' reality. So on the one hand we have the realists
saying 'It must be real, because it works' and the New Agers saying
'But you have no rational justification for it, so we can choose
any model we want'.
Response:
I think that Science should in no way be separated out from
other aspects of life. That it can and is shows how afar afield
we are in terms of a 'science' which is valuable to people.
Leo:
In conclusion: although we 'have to believe' in order to act...is it
valid and/or effective to suspend belief at the cessation of the
action? Can a man believe in material reality in the working day, as
he designs a mechanical structure, yet see it all as Maya as he
meditates, and be considered a rational and consistent man, or is he
condemned to be considered a hypocrite and inconstant, because he
varies his beliefs according to his purpose?
Response:
First, I'm in no way convinced that we HAVE to believe in order to
act, except metaphorically. Yes, if 'we' can do anything, then
'we' must be having a self-concept. If 'action' takes place, then
there must be a model in which this 'action' may be said to happen at
all. But this is trivially true.
It seems more important to me that there MAY be people (those who
have so merged, harmonized with their environment) who do not need
to formulate mental models in order to engage society. I am thinking
of people who go about in a sort of 'aware trance state', intuiting
from short-term memory and metaphorical, contextual 'feelings' about
things. Such a person needs to know nothing. They could be illiterate
and yet function quite well.
Yet perhaps when knowledge structures (culture, for example) are engaged
an individual would need to re-engage believing, but I'm not
sure that just because we are human we must carry around little models
in order to participate in the cosmic mystery. In fact, most evidence
I've gathered from mystical, magical and shamanic studies indicates
precisely the OPPOSITE: that at the height of self-consciousness
we no longer need the 'reality-filter'. We have 'direct experience',
a link-in with All. Those who can engage this becoming-state are
certainly the exception to the assumption above.
Invoke me under my stars. Love is the law, love under will.
Yours in response,
Fr. Nigris
Gary Merrill
In article <memo....@cix.compulink.co.uk>, sha...@cix.compulink.co.uk (Leo Smith) writes:
|>
[Stegmuller stuff deleted.]
|> I have never seen that put better. In one glorious paragraph
|> Stegmuller has illustrated that there is no absolute standpoint: It
|> is _always_ a matter of personal choice. It is a choice whether one
|> believes or does not.
Just a passing comment on this. I find it interesting that Leo has
such a reaction to Stegmuller, given his original (and some subsequent)
comments re Quine. In fact, the same view is to be found in Quine
(ontological relativity, dogmas of empiricism, naturalized epistemology,
and all that), and I think Stegmuller would be among the first to
concede a debt to Quine. Quine also seems to think highly of Stegmuller,
as vide his remarks in his autobiography.
|> There is also a further implication. This is what Castaneda referred
|> to as 'having to believe'. I think that a more acceptable way to
|> phrase that in this group would be to say that it is a necessary
|> precondition of all human rational activity, that for the purposes of
|> that activity at least, certain pre-rational assumptions are made.
This is in fact a very old, and oft-repeated, observation. I suppose
it bears repeating from time to time. If we do not share at least
*some* pre-rational assumptions then, as Plato observed, communication
is impossible. To a significant extent, philosophy is the process of
identifying the pre-rational assumptions and working out their
consequences.
|>
|> e.g. In order to 'do Science' a necessary precondition is the
|> assumption of some separate and observable reality.
This is also a precondition for simply continuing to live. Those
who fail to make it end up with severely shortened lifespans. There
is in fact a strong force of natural selection on those who adopt
the wrong (okay, *a* wrong) epistemology.
|> What Stegmuller seems to me to be saying - and I so agree - is that
|> this assumption can never be proved: It can only be shown to be
|> effective.
|>
|> The real question for me is what is the effect of carrying over this
|> assumption into HUMAN ACTIVITY THAT IS NOT SCIENCE. It seems to me
|> that this assumption is being applied far beyond the context in which
|> it is effective, because it seems that we are uncomfortable with a
|> 'multi-valued' reality. So on the one hand we have the realists
|> saying 'It must be real, because it works' and the New Agers saying
|> 'But you have no rational justification for it, so we can choose
|> any model we want'.
I'm not sure what the multi-valued reality stuff is, nor what other
contexts you have in mind where this assumption fails. I have a vague
feeling that what is lurking behind these questions is old phenomena/
noumena or observation-statement/theoretical-statement distinction
together with the usual non-uniqueness problem in saving the phenomena.
Anything else?
|>
|> In conclusion: although we 'have to believe' in order to act...is it
|> valid and/or effective to suspend belief at the cessation of the
|> action? Can a man believe in material reality in the working day, as
|> he designs a mechanical structure, yet see it all as Maya as he
|> meditates, and be considered a rational and consistent man, or is he
|> condemned to be considered a hypocrite and inconstant, because he
|> varies his beliefs according to his purpose?
The latter if one is a metaphysical realist, the former if an anti-realist.
Some have attempted to make a distinction between *believing* a theory
(or *accepting* the theory) and believing the theory to be *true*. And
then there is Quine's view of the "web of belief" in which some beliefs
are more central than others, but non can claim absolute supremacy
(contra the positivists observation-statement as the foundation of
knowledge).
--
Gary H. Merrill [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC 27513 / (919) 677-8000
sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
Andrew Mullhaupt
>From Astrology as reflection thread
> and...@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) wrote
>> I think what comes most to mind is Wolfgang Stegmuller's
>> alternative, quoted here from Kung's _Does God Exist_:
[...]
>Stegmuller has illustrated that there is no absolute standpoint: It
>is _always_ a matter of personal choice. It is a choice whether one
>believes or does not.
But it is not clear that Stegmuller means that there is no absolute truth.
You get to choose, and there will be no proof to support or refute you,
but that does not mean all of the choices are correct, or in fact that
any of them are.
>e.g. In order to 'do Science' a necessary precondition is the
>assumption of some separate and observable reality.
No. I think we've seen this claim before. You do not need a "separate"
reality to do science. You do need some kind of observation, but this
too is stretched by modern physics. It seems that science is sometimes
willing to settle for observable consequences and a heavy handed Ockham's
razor, which allows physicists to think things like John Wheeler's idea
that the laws of physics came into being with the universe. I would guess
that it's arguable if this can be considered science.
>The real question for me is what is the effect of carrying over this
>assumption into HUMAN ACTIVITY THAT IS NOT SCIENCE. It seems to me
>that this assumption is being applied far beyond the context in which
>it is effective, because it seems that we are uncomfortable with a
>'multi-valued' reality.
Are you trying to argue against something which you would admit cannot be
'proved'?
I read in one of M. J. Adler's books that philosophy doesn't arrive at new
knowledge, it just clarifies that which you already have.
>So on the one hand we have the realists
>saying 'It must be real, because it works'
This sounds more pragmatic than realistic to me.
>and the New Agers saying
>'But you have no rational justification for it, so we can choose
>any model we want'.
Someone who says this is relying more heavily on rationality than most
philosophers, in that this attitude expects that anything which will be
correct to affirm or deny will be capable of rational justification.
>In conclusion: although we 'have to believe' in order to act...is it
>valid and/or effective to suspend belief at the cessation of the
>action? Can a man believe in material reality in the working day, as
>he designs a mechanical structure, yet see it all as Maya as he
>meditates, and be considered a rational and consistent man, or is he
>condemned to be considered a hypocrite and inconstant, because he
>varies his beliefs according to his purpose?
He can do what he likes. But this use of belief is nothing new to philosophy-
not since Averroes. I do not think there are many adherents to this today.
Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Andrew Mullhaupt
>
>In article <memo....@cix.compulink.co.uk>, sha...@cix.compulink.co.uk (Leo Smith) writes:
>|> e.g. In order to 'do Science' a necessary precondition is the
>|> assumption of some separate and observable reality.
>
>This is also a precondition for simply continuing to live.
Uh what? You mean that people must accept the cogito in order to
live? This is skating close to the program of the anthropic principle.
It's a bit like challenging the person who denies a separate reality
to shoot himself. If he's convinced that he believes in the Newtonian
physics he's filled his 'dream reality' with, maybe he better not!
What I take your meaning to be is more along the lines that you have
to act _as if_ there is a separate reality. It would seem clear that
a truly unobservable reality has no point of contact with the choices
one lives by,
>who fail to make it end up with severely shortened lifespans. There
>is in fact a strong force of natural selection on those who adopt
>the wrong (okay, *a* wrong) epistemology.
Sounds like you're implying that one set of words must be used to map
to this separate reality - or else what? For an anti-realist, you put
a big load on language, "Right thinking or bust" (?)
Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Peggy Brown
[stuff deleted...]
>I'm not sure what the multi-valued reality stuff is, nor what other
>contexts you have in mind where this assumption fails. I have a vague
>feeling that what is lurking behind these questions is old phenomena/
>noumena or observation-statement/theoretical-statement distinction
>together with the usual non-uniqueness problem in saving the phenomena.
>Anything else?
[stuff deleted...]
A label for everything....how nice and comfortable...
- Peggy -
Gary Merrill
There are many (non-isomorphic) mappings that may be used successfully.
It does not follow from this that *any* mapping is "correct". The
anti-realist does not believe that *anything* goes, but rather that
there is no particular mapping with a special claim to preferred status.
The world is really out there -- under one or another description.
There are a number of "right" descriptions you may pick. But there are
*wrong* descriptions as well. Choose one that is wrong enough and you
are dead meat. In this sense, indeed, "Right thinking or bust."
Gary Merrill
"Labels" are quite useful in communication when their meaning is
shared among the communicants. Rather than using the "labels" I
*could* have described at great length the concepts to which these
particular labels apply, thus eliminating the labels from my question.
But since I felt that Leo has at least passing familiarity with
these labels, efficiency of communication is served by using them.
Since the labels have rather standard meanings in the history of
philosophy and are the sort of things one comes across very early
in studying much metaphysics or philosophy of science, it seemed
reasonable that most others interested in this discussion would
have requisite familiarity with them as well. Perhaps the
reference to the non-uniqueness problem is a bit beyond this, but
I have given previous reference (for example, to Van Fraassen,
where this is described). Anyone unfamiliar with it is of course
free to ask (as I asked about Leo's reference to "multi-valued
reality"). To constantly need to redefine and review common
fundamental vocabulary and concepts is an impediment to discussion.
Leo has shown himself to be conversant with these concepts and
quite capable of familiarizing himself with others in a fairly
rapid fashion.
Beyond this, the section of my posting you quote is in fact
a *question* to Leo. I do not, therefore, think it is meaningful
to describe this as "comfortable".
Leo Smith
Ta...@cup.portal.com (Tagi Mordred Nagashiva) writes (who else?) :-)
>Leo Smith writes:
>[much material omitted]
>...It is _always_ a matter of personal choice. It is a choice whether one
>believes or does not.
>Response:
>I disagree with this. I think that this can only be said of the individual
>who has to some degree seized consciousness.
[.. much vintage tagi omitted..]
Yes: I agree that I should have said that it is ultimately possible
to vary ones beliefs consciously or unconsciously, and that such a
process is in fact normal and natural: I think that the recent habit
(in historical terms) of attempting to apply one model to all aspects
of human expereience which peaked AFAIAC in the late victorian age is
both ultimately not justifiable and not functionally optimum.
>Leo:
>There is also a further implication. This is what Castaneda referred
>to as 'having to believe'. I think that a more acceptable way to
>phrase that in this group would be to say that it is a necessary
>precondition of all human rational activity, that for the purposes of
>that activity at least, certain pre-rational assumptions are made.
>e.g. In order to 'do Science' a necessary precondition is the
>assumption of some separate and observable reality.
>Response:
>I agree with this as far as it goes. Idealistically, Science is not
>simply a rational endeavor but engages the entirety of the scientist,
>from mental to emotional and physical bodies.
Mental emotional and physical bodies? You been readinf theosophical
stuff Tagi? That sounds to me like a pre-rational assumption you're
making there....
>It is only in our object- worshipping stage as a society that we
>begin to need assumptions for truth. Previously these truths were
>poetic and called 'myth'. Today, because we think we are 'reasonable'
>enough to limit our rational processes to pre-assumptive structures,
>we do in fact need them.
I think you are adding shades of meaning to my original statement
that I didn't want it to caarry. I agree with most of what you say,
but it doesn't necessarily contradict my assertion. That is if you
take the pre-rational assumption bit with very small (NOT CAPITAL)
leading letters. i.e. it is not necessary to assume that objective
reality is really there to do science, but you have to divide up your
experience into subjective and objective to do the science bit. You
have to deny the occult assertion that what you think and feel as
against what you physically do, has any effect on material reality.
Otherwise your theories make no sense, as the theory itslef would
effect material reality. (As in fact it does in modern physics, since
thinking is largely considered to be based on and involved with
electro-chemical process).
So although in the limit, even the positivist (I hope I am using the
word in the right way: perhaps realist is better) has to admit that
what he thinks about the world does indeed directly affect it, the
effect is small and can be ignored for _nearly all practical
purposes_.
BUT there are two points here: The first is that it cannot be
ignored in all cases, and the second is that this last statement -
this crack in the beautifully integrated structure of Realism, does
not invalidate Realism, but it moves it from the centre pillar of the
structure to being just another way of approaching problem solving.
As an engineer, I don't have a problem with that: Whatever works is
the engineering maxim. It is the logicians and 'pure' scientists who
seem to have an emotional problem with multiple realities...
>Leo:
>What Stegmuller seems to me to be saying - and I so agree - is that
>this assumption can never be proved: It can only be shown to be
>effective.
>Response:
>This is what much of the philosophy of science has come to assume:
>that 'knowledge' cannot be obtained by science and that its activity
>only substantiates a priori assumption. While I agree with the latter
>conclusion, I think that a qualification must be stipulated for the
>former.
Is that so? I am not sure that you will get agreement here. My
impression is that many people's attitude is that because science is
so stupendously effective it _must_ ipso facto represent a very close
mapping with an underlying reality. And that what Science is doing IS
actually revealing yet greater detail of that reality. I disagree:
but others here don't, I suspect.
>Assumptions are usually forged in lingual terms.
No: You are putting up an Aunt Sally here to have the fun of knocking
it down. I never said that any pre-rational assumption had to be in
lingual terms. Indeed they almost always aren't framed in words at
all. We may try to express them with words, but I think the concepts
are way beyond the words...or what do _You_ mean by lingual.
[... paragraph deleted because I didn't actually understand it, or
the point you were tring to make. ..]
>Our 'assumption' in this context may amount to an emotional approach,
>even an energetic 'attitude' rather than a lingual through-contruct.
I think I agree. But you are putting more structure on the matter of
experience by even talking about 'emotional' at this stage.
I prefere the minimalist approach: When I look at all 'my' knowledge,
it seems to me that whatever experience I have of the world is
generally organised AS IF I were a separte physical being in a
physical world of space time. However some experiences I have had
show that this knowledge CAN be organised on other basis' (what is
the plural of basis!) and that this re-organisation had pragmatic
value. Therefore I assume that the 'Realistic' model is not reality -
it is _A_ map of experience. To me, the ONLY reality is personal
experience. It seems 'irrational' to use any other starting
point....but most cosmologies do _NOT_ start here. In the beginning
was God/The Big Bang/Tao.....
>Leo:
>The real question for me is what is the effect of carrying over this
>assumption into HUMAN ACTIVITY THAT IS NOT SCIENCE. It seems to me
>that this assumption is being applied far beyond the context in which
>it is effective, because it seems that we are uncomfortable with a
>'multi-valued' reality. So on the one hand we have the realists
>saying 'It must be real, because it works' and the New Agers saying
>'But you have no rational justification for it, so we can choose
>any model we want'.
>Response:
>I think that Science should in no way be separated out from
>other aspects of life. That it can and is shows how afar afield
>we are in terms of a 'science' which is valuable to people.
I don't think that follows. If you want - as I believe you do - to
extend the concept of science to be the understanding of all possible
models of all possible experience then I suppose that your goal is
laudable. I don't think it is pragmatic though. We start life in a
very multi-valued world. The experience (we have) of our parents is
almost like a different world from the world of school and the
playground: Different rules seem to apply. Only much later are the
realities integrated to form subsets of a larger set of unified
realities: Until then the experiences occupy almost discrete areas.
I think that is necessary and valid. If you wnat to call the
'meta-set' science OK. But as has been pointed out before, most
people don't, and it may confuse the isssues to do so.
>Leo:
>In conclusion: although we 'have to believe' in order to act...is it
>valid and/or effective to suspend belief at the cessation of the
>action? Can a man believe in material reality in the working day, as
>he designs a mechanical structure, yet see it all as Maya as he
>meditates, and be considered a rational and consistent man, or is he
>condemned to be considered a hypocrite and inconstant, because he
>varies his beliefs according to his purpose?
>Response:
>First, I'm in no way convinced that we HAVE to believe in order to
>act, except metaphorically. Yes, if 'we' can do anything, then
>'we' must be having a self-concept. If 'action' takes place, then
>there must be a model in which this 'action' may be said to happen at
>all. But this is trivially true.
That was the way I meant it: but I don't think it is trivial. what we
think of as 'real' is as much a self-description as a
world-description. In fact it describes a relationship between us and
the world. Our idea of reality utterly underlies everything we are
and everything we do as human beings. I totally agree with what I
_think_ Castaneda was driving at in 'tales of power'. We don't really
exist without some self-consciousness and that implies as a necessary
part of the same process a degree of world consciousness. The
'flavour' of that model is our personality - our character. In order
for 'us' to function in a 'world' we have to have some feeling for
the boundaries of each - some pre-rational assumption, some basis for
discrimination. This is what I believe he means when he talks of the
'tonal'. He has wrapped that whole area of human experience up and
given it a name.
We can't operate without such a basis - or at least I do not aspire
to the dizzy heights of the 'Nagual' :-) BUT that does NOT mean that
the fact of the Tonal is trivial. If it were unalterable it would be.
If there was only one way to structure experience into a self-world
duality it WOULD be trivial: This is indeed the claim of the
realists (or rather they claim that the structure already exists: All
we do is to become aware of it), and DOES make my assertion trivial.
But as an anti-realist I assert that there are other ways to organise
experience. And that although at the deepest level the choices I have
are in some ways not mine, at every turn of the way, I have the power
to choose how I relate to my experience.
>It seems more important to me that there MAY be people (those who
>have so merged, harmonized with their environment) who do not need
>to formulate mental models in order to engage society. I am thinking
>of people who go about in a sort of 'aware trance state', intuiting
>from short-term memory and metaphorical, contextual 'feelings' about
>things. Such a person needs to know nothing. They could be illiterate
>and yet function quite well.
Yes: This is a very Zen sort of thing. I would say that this is more
a question of having internalised a model to such an extent that you
are not cosnciously aware of it :-)
>Yet perhaps when knowledge structures (culture, for example) are engaged
>an individual would need to re-engage believing, but I'm not
>sure that just because we are human we must carry around little models
>in order to participate in the cosmic mystery. In fact, most evidence
>I've gathered from mystical, magical and shamanic studies indicates
>precisely the OPPOSITE: that at the height of self-consciousness
>we no longer need the 'reality-filter'. We have 'direct experience',
>a link-in with All. Those who can engage this becoming-state are
>certainly the exception to the assumption above.
Well: There are several points there. Since I am responding off the
wall I will say that I am taking them in reverse order... but may
deviate ;-)
I totally agree that shamanism, mystical awareness etc. are states of
less structure. And that human beings can achieve them. BUT in order
to function in the normal sense we CAN'T walk around in states of
mystical union - or at least not without a bit of practice first. AND
if these states are any more than delusional, who is walking around
in what? You have taken a rather narrower definition of 'belief' than
I intended. Perhaps it is better as Castaneda does, to actually
create (or borrow from a foreign culture) terms to describe the
position. What you rae saying in your paragraph is analagous to
Castaneda saying that whilst the Tonal is everything we know, it is
not everything there is. There exists the Nagual, and there exists
ways of accessing it. That is just the same as saying that mystical
experience exists and there are methods to experience it.
No: All I am saying is that there exists a possibility of unifying
the mystical experience, the religious experience, in fact all
experience under one rather looser meta-structure. The way to do this
is to move from the primary assumption of ourselves as beings in a
world, and place experience itself as the starting point - and make
as few assumptions as possible, and be aware of those assumptions as
they are made.
I maintain that the end product of the intellectual process of that
is something like that described in 'Tales of Power' - you end up
with an understanding of humans as perceivers of perception. That is
the start and the finish point. That is really as far as one can
reasonably go. Whatever lies beyond that is not open to our
perception, and although it may be intuited from our perception, such
intuitions are always suspect and secondary. There has to be
something beyond our perception, but it must remain unknowable.
The end process of taking that meta-model to heart, is to devalue the
human model making process from a description of reality, to a
pragmatic approach to problem solving. The human and emotional
aspects of that philosophy are examined in a populist way in other of
Castaneda's copious outpourings.
But the fact remains: For you and I to communicate in the way that we
are (or are not!) doing now, we both have to proceed on the basis of
certain worldview models in which computers, modems, people,
countries etc. etc. all exist. If I did not believe that this message
would get through, there would be little point in posting it. I have
to believe that it will, and will have meaning, in order to proceed
with it.
Who knows what beliefs I will put in place tomorrow, or indeed may be
putting in place somewere else this very moment (:=) in order to
achieve somne completely different purpose?
Bye
Leo
Peggy Brown
>
>In article <BruHG...@acsu.buffalo.edu>, oisp...@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Peggy Brown) writes:
>|> In article <Brqpq...@unx.sas.com>, sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes...
>|> >
>|> >In article <memo....@cix.compulink.co.uk>, sha...@cix.compulink.co.uk (Leo Smith) writes:
>|> >|>
>|> >
>|>
>|> [stuff deleted...]
>|>
>|> >I'm not sure what the multi-valued reality stuff is, nor what other
>|> >contexts you have in mind where this assumption fails. I have a vague
>|> >feeling that what is lurking behind these questions is old phenomena/
>|> >noumena or observation-statement/theoretical-statement distinction
>|> >together with the usual non-uniqueness problem in saving the phenomena.
>|>
>|> >Anything else?
>|>
>|> [stuff deleted...]
>|>
>|> A label for everything....how nice and comfortable...
>
>"Labels" are quite useful in communication when their meaning is
>shared among the communicants. Rather than using the "labels" I
>*could* have described at great length the concepts to which these
>particular labels apply, thus eliminating the labels from my question.
Labels are also used to devalue something, so that it fits better
into the realm of the common place and the "anything else."
- Peggy -
Gary Merrill
Could you expand on this? For example, could you show how my question
to Leo either devalues or attempts to devalue anything? In particular,
could you indicate how establishing something as based on (to pick
a single example) the phenomena/noumena distinction devalues it? In
the process, could you please give an account of the labels *you* are
using? For instance, what do you mean by "value", and how is this
affected by the question I asked? And what is meant by "the realm of
the common place" and "the 'anything else'"?
Peggy Brown
No, will not expand on this. Too much work.
I expect you *know* what I meant. Now you wish to discuss it (to
death) on your own terms, so you can "win" a philosophical battle
of some sort.
Not worth the energy to do battle over this.
- Peggy -
Christopher P Menzel
>In article <Brw9B...@unx.sas.com>, sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes...
>>|> >shared among the communicants. Rather than using the "labels" I
>>|> >*could* have described at great length the concepts to which these
>>|> >particular labels apply, thus eliminating the labels from my question.
>>|> [stuff deleted..]
>>|>
>>|> Labels are also used to devalue something, so that it fits better
>>|> into the realm of the common place and the "anything else."
>>|>
>>|> - Peggy -
>>
>>Could you expand on this? For example, could you show how my question
>>to Leo either devalues or attempts to devalue anything? In particular,
>>could you indicate how establishing something as based on (to pick
>>a single example) the phenomena/noumena distinction devalues it? In
>>the process, could you please give an account of the labels *you* are
>>using? For instance, what do you mean by "value", and how is this
>>affected by the question I asked? And what is meant by "the realm of
>>the common place" and "the 'anything else'"?
>>
>
>No, will not expand on this. Too much work.
>
>I expect you *know* what I meant. Now you wish to discuss it (to
>death) on your own terms, so you can "win" a philosophical battle
>of some sort.
>Not worth the energy to do battle over this.
I for one have *no* idea what you meant, and the impression I'm left
with is only that, failing any clear answer to a clear and reasonable
question, you cast vague and unwarranted aspersions.
Chris Menzel
Leo Smith
>The anti-realist does not believe that *anything* goes, but rather
>that there is no particular mapping with a special claim to preferred
>status. The world is really out there -- under one or another
>description. There are a number of "right" descriptions you may pick.
At last: A clear definition.
>But there are *wrong* descriptions as well. Choose one that is wrong
>enough and you are dead meat. In this sense, indeed, "Right thinking
>or bust." -- Gary H. Merrill
Well right and wrong imply value judgement. So our anti realist has
assumed
(i) A separate reality
(ii) selection criteria for his worldview
before he gets on with the task of having such. Are these necessary
preconditions?
Thomas Price
>>|> A label for everything....how nice and comfortable...
>>
>>"Labels" are quite useful in communication when their meaning is
>>shared among the communicants. Rather than using the "labels" I
>>*could* have described at great length the concepts to which these
>>particular labels apply, thus eliminating the labels from my question.
>[stuff deleted..]
>
>Labels are also used to devalue something, so that it fits better
>into the realm of the common place and the "anything else."
Peggy, if you disdain or distrust terminology-intensive discussion,
what are you doing reading this newsgroup?
Tom
******************************************************************************
Tom Price | Obscure Dropout | tp...@cs.cmu.edu | Simplicity, simplicity
******************************************************************************
Gary Merrill
|>
|> No, will not expand on this. Too much work.
|>
|> I expect you *know* what I meant. Now you wish to discuss it (to
|> death) on your own terms, so you can "win" a philosophical battle
|> of some sort.
|>
|> Not worth the energy to do battle over this.
No guts, no glory. I'll happily discuss it on your terms. I just
need to know what they mean. If you don't want to finish a battle,
don't start one.
Andrew Mullhaupt
>
>In article <11...@kepler1.rentec.com>, and...@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) writes:
>There are many (non-isomorphic) mappings that may be used successfully.
>It does not follow from this that *any* mapping is "correct". The
>anti-realist does not believe that *anything* goes, but rather that
>there is no particular mapping with a special claim to preferred status.
>The world is really out there -- under one or another description.
>There are a number of "right" descriptions you may pick. But there are
>*wrong* descriptions as well. Choose one that is wrong enough and you
>are dead meat. In this sense, indeed, "Right thinking or bust."
I agree with the anti-realist that the real world is out there "somewhere",
and that we do not seem to have a uniquely appropriate description for it.
But given my idea that most people function on the basis of unexamined
beliefs most of the time, you should expect that I think it matters little
to your lifespan if you pick a _wrong_ description. It may not even affect
your functioning, especially if you pick a world picture on the basis that it
agrees with your unexamined beliefs...
What's at stake here is not the necessity of philosophy, but the added value
of philosophy. And when you look at the lives of modern philosophers, I
don't see a convincing pattern of well being emerging.
Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Gary Merrill
Surely you don't mean to suggest that this is peculiar to *modern* philosophers!
In addition, there is a *great* deal of latitude in possible interpretations
of "added value". For example, it may well be that the added value of, for
example, Bertrand Russell's efforts in philosophy is to be found in its
contributions to various fields in both the humanities or sciences (ranging
from logic, foundations of mathematics, relativity, etc. to ethics and
political philosophy) even though it can be argued pretty strongly that these
efforts did not make Russell a "better person" or a happier one. (Or perhaps
I have completely misread your implication here?)
Gary Merrill
|> Well right and wrong imply value judgement. So our anti realist has
|> assumed
Someday I would like someone to give a reasonably precise account of
what a "value judgement" is and how it can be distinguished from other
sorts of judgements (apparently devoid of value or not based on value?).
Then I would like it to be shown why such imputations of "value
judgements" are always offered with the implication (or outright
claim) that it is somehow "bad" or "unreasonable" to make such
judgements. (Isn't such a claim a value judgement itself? But I
digress.) I'm not suggesting that we get into this hairball in
this thread, but every once in a while someone will respond to something
with "That's a value judgement," as though this is some kind of
conversation stopper, counter argument, or counterexample.
|>
|> (i) A separate reality
|> (ii) selection criteria for his worldview
|>
|> before he gets on with the task of having such. Are these necessary
|> preconditions?
|>
|>
|>
Not to answer these questions directly (as though I *could* provide
especially lucid answers), but instead ...
Stumbling about the UNC bookstore this weekend I came across a
relatively recent book of Van Fraassen's entitled _Laws_and_Symmetry_
which appears to be a rather complete treatment of most of the
topics raised in this thread (from his anti-realist perspective).
The publication date was 1989. The book deals with the fundamental
questions raised by Leo in (i) and (ii) and goes into great detail
in terms of specific examples drawn form the sciences and views of
other philosophers of science. I haven't read it yet, but since
Bas's intuitions and mine always seemed to be pretty much in synch
I expect I will agree with most of it. Regardless of such agreement
or disagreement, however, I think it likely that those interested
in the topics we have been fooling with would benefit from looking
at it.
Ken Arromdee
>Someday I would like someone to give a reasonably precise account of
>what a "value judgement" is and how it can be distinguished from other
>sorts of judgements (apparently devoid of value or not based on value?).
A value judgment is a judgment where agreement on certain values is
important to the outcome of the judgment. Although all judgments are in some
sense based on value, in many of them there's no significant disagreement
among people due to disagreements about value.
--
Hi! Ani mutacia shel virus .signature. Ha`atek oti letoch .signature shelcha!
Ken Arromdee (UUCP: ....!jhunix!arromdee; BITNET: arromdee@jhuvm;
INTERNET: arro...@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu)
Thomas Price
>>It does not follow from this that *any* mapping is "correct". The
>>anti-realist does not believe that *anything* goes, but rather that
>>there is no particular mapping with a special claim to preferred status.
>>The world is really out there -- under one or another description.
>>There are a number of "right" descriptions you may pick.
The term "anti-realism" is new to me, but it looks as if it is a wheel
which I recently re-invented. Consequently I would be intensely happy
if anyone were to point me to some literature on "anti-realism." Books
are preferred to journal articles, but either will do.
Many thanks,
William Tucker
Tagi says:
>It seems more important to me that there MAY be people (those who
>have so merged, harmonized with their environment) who do not need
>to formulate mental models in order to engage society. I am thinking
>of people who go about in a sort of 'aware trance state', intuiting
>from short-term memory and metaphorical, contextual 'feelings' about
>things. Such a person needs to know nothing. They could be illiterate
>and yet function quite well.
Leo answers:
Yes: This is a very Zen sort of thing. I would say that this is more
a question of having internalised a model to such an extent that you
are not cosnciously aware of it :-)
I (William T.) think:
Rather than having an STATIC internal model, you have patterns and you
continually update your mapping to reality based upon your need(s). Reality
holds it's own shape, what you need instead is a means for ordering and
controlling your perceptions.............a personal set of patterns, tools
of perception as it were, not involved with thinking per se. I
simply disagree with the use of the term model, it implies coherent view
of the overall stucture.........one that could block growth. Growth occurs
most easily when change is a normal way of being, if it's not something
that you have to start and stop. That's why "seeing through the eyes of a
child" is a mode rather than an incident. If you constantly change by having
to rearrange everything once you learned something new, you wouldn't bother.
It's too much work, which is why so many metaphysicists would rather spout old
b.s. rather than make some of their own, aside from the ego thing of being
recognized as being right by "appealing to authority," not to say all
references to others work is laziness and ego, but I can only get so
much in a sentence.
I would like to refer to the immortal words of
L.M.P. McPherson:
"If we are intellectual explorers, we strive towards truth, holding beliefs
only tenatively as we leave our minds open to other possibilities that might arise from evidence that contradicts a currently held set of beliefs, evidence
that suggests that the nature of reality is other than we thought....This
process of shedding beliefs has long been considered, in esoteric circles, to be a key to wisdom, and it explains the use of the snake -- who periodically sheds
his skin -- as a symbol for wisdom (or "knowledge" in the Genesis story)."
Just my opinion.
Wm T.
.standard disclaimer
NEIL MCKINNON
>There are many (non-isomorphic) mappings that may be used successfully.
>It does not follow from this that *any* mapping is "correct". The
>anti-realist does not believe that *anything* goes, but rather that
>there is no particular mapping with a special claim to preferred status.
>The world is really out there -- under one or another description.
>There are a number of "right" descriptions you may pick. But there are
>*wrong* descriptions as well. Choose one that is wrong enough and you
>are dead meat. In this sense, indeed, "Right thinking or bust."
>--
I was wondering what the important differences are between your anti-realist
position here and a realist position. My reading on this topic is probably
fairly limited, but as far as I can see the anti-realism of, say, Dummett
and Putnam is ultimately based on intuitions that truth ought not be non-
epistemic. Their semantics for truth seemed quite similar to me. For
Putnam, a sentence is true only if it is part of an Ideal theory (i.e one
that maximally satisfies observable evidence and maximally satisfies our
constraints on theory acceptance, like simplicity). For Dummett a sentence
is true only if it is conclusively verifiable (which comes to it being a
sentence in an Ideal Theory of the Universe). Once you make truth
epistemic, what you are left with is some sort of coherence theory of truth,
whereby any consistent set of beliefs is true. The objection to this is
that there may be sets of internally consistent beliefs which are
inconsistent with each other, and this contravenes another strong intuition
about truth, i.e (~A & A) cannot be true. Putnam's and Dummett's views seem
to me to reduce to a coherence theory, since there may be many internally
consistent theories which equally satisfy all constraints on acceptance and
yet are inconsistent with each other. This is so because an ideal theory is
not something we have epistemic access to any more than an "external
reality". Consequently these semantics do not make truth any more
accessible than a realist conception of truth.
I was hoping someone could give (or direct me to) more information on
the topic of realism/anti-realism, if they feel that the above is a
misrepresentation of anti-realism. As it stands I cannot see the sense of
an anti-realist position.
Neil.
Leo Smith
>In article <memo....@cix.compulink.co.uk>, sha...@cix.compulink.co.uk (Leo Smith)
writes:
>|> Well right and wrong imply value judgement. So our anti realist has
>|> assumed
>Someday I would like someone to give a reasonably precise account of
>what a "value judgement" is and how it can be distinguished from
>other sorts of judgements (apparently devoid of value or not based on
>value?). Then I would like it to be shown why such imputations of
>"value judgements" are always offered with the implication (or
>outright claim) that it is somehow "bad" or "unreasonable" to make
>such judgements.
Whoah there Gary! Remember in this arena I am NOT trying to win
arguments...(unlike some possibly) I am trying to whittle down
philosophical systems to their bare bones if you like, to find in
each the 'key assumption' if there is one, or the facts on which they
claim to be based. In other words there ought (in my theory) to be a
way to reduce any worldview to some basic set of assumptions: In the
case of anti-realism these were the two criteria I cited - the
assumption of a separate reality, and the assumption that there was
some way of distinguishing 'good' models from 'bad' models. For
example Randall has said a couple of times that science is good
because essentially - (and forgive me if I don't get the subtle
nuances right here Randall) it gives power of the reality it
describes, and is useful to prolong life and increase material
living standards.
I don't know what else to call that except a value judgement: Hey - I
get it from both sides - the academics think I am a lunatic new-ager,
and the New Agers think I'm a reactionary scientist, probably a
closet heterosexual at least - if not a raving Nazi :-)
Anyway, I am trying to get (and with your help, amongst others, am
basically succeeding) in getting a fairly broad map of the
philosophical territory I want to know about.
>(Isn't such a claim a value judgement itself? But I digress.) I'm not
>suggesting that we get into this hairball in this thread, but every
>once in a while someone will respond to something with "That's a
>value judgement," as though this is some kind of conversation
>stopper, counter argument, or counterexample.
That was NOT my intention: Remember I am NOT a logician. To me, value
judgements are valid. The warm light of value judgement is as
interesting as the cold light of reason.
|>
|> (i) A separate reality
|> (ii) selection criteria for his worldview
|>
|> before he gets on with the task of having such. Are these necessary
|> preconditions?
|>
|>
|>
>Not to answer these questions directly (as though I *could* provide
>especially lucid answers), but instead ...
>Stumbling about the UNC bookstore this weekend I came across a
>relatively recent book of Van Fraassen's entitled _Laws_and_Symmetry_
>which appears to be a rather complete treatment of most of the topics
>raised in this thread (from his anti-realist perspective). The
>publication date was 1989. The book deals with the fundamental
>questions raised by Leo in (i) and (ii)...
...Great....
>.... and goes into great detail....
Shit: I am just running out of TIME!!! :-)
>in terms of specific examples drawn form the sciences and views of
>other philosophers of science. I haven't read it yet, but since Bas's
>intuitions and mine always seemed to be pretty much in synch I expect
>I will agree with most of it. Regardless of such agreement or
>disagreement, however, I think it likely that those interested in the
>topics we have been fooling with would benefit from looking at it.
Gary: I think that I will try and summarise MY position as briefly as
I can, and invite your comments, and comments from others too. This
is about 300 lines so hit those skip buttons NOW!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Proposition I
=============
Every one of us when we engage in almost any conscious activity make
at many levels and at many times a series of ad hoc assumptions which
are neccessary preconditions for the activities we do.
The assumptions are both DESCRIPTIVE - i.e. we assume boundaries
between things, in the broadest senses, RELATIONAL - i.e. we assume
laws and causes are reasonable ways for things to behave and
VALUATIONAL - i.e that for us at least, some innate sense of choice
and better and worse exist.
I don't think I have done any more with that than describe normal
human behaviour.
Proposition II
==============
The 'necessary preconditions' cited above, become in nearly all of us
nearly all of the time, rigid 'facts' which are 'felt' to have 'a
priori' status. e.g. 'Of course physical reality exists, its what you
stub your toe against dummy! You can't argue with FACTS :-)'
A corollary of this is that belief becomes dogma. Credo becomes Est.
The internal structure is EXTERNALIZED. This also explains why people
are so intensely threatened by anything which challenges those very
core assumptions. Literally, their worlds are at stake :-(
Propsition III
==============
This is where I am having difficulty formulating the words.. Here
goes nothing.
Having possible accepted propositions I & II which together are not
_inconsistent_ (I hope) with the anti-realist approach, although I
feel their scope is potentially greater, I would suggest, without
supporting arguments, that these 'worldviews' - stable externalised
arrangements of experience containing order and rules - have some
properties that can be talked about.
(a) Some are more stable than others. A view such as the
current scientific one, in which many elements reinforce many
other elements, which consists of many immutables and yet has
many degrees of freedom, provides an extraordinary stability.
Other worldviews which are more inherently self contradictory
(reductio ad absurdum: Cheese is made of Not-Cheese) are less
stable. By stable I mean exhibit longevity.
(b) All must contain at the very least an unprovable
assertion (the original assumptions or axioms, or a transform
thereof). In the case of modern philosophical thinking I have
been trying to probe for that very axiom set. They may
(possibly must) also contain a Godelian-like paradox.
Certainly there will be recursive territory where the nature
of the original assumption will make some conclusions suspect
or invalid. In the case of the normal worldview, we started
our physics with mechanics - the description of lumps of
solid matter in space time, but we end by denying that
'matter' has any definite existence in space time. Instead
we have probabilistic interactions between energy states, and
a curious interaction with the observer. This is consistent
with the fact that the observer is a hidden assumption in the
original worldview that mechanics and physics starts with.
(Note for any coyote sorcerers out there: Compare with the
concept of the 'key joint' as the place to affect any system
:-))
(c) Any value judgement that may be applied to such a
worldview (e.g. It is better to believe in Physics than
Astrology) must essentially either be a prime assumption
(e.g. 'because I feel it to be so') or an externalization of
a primary assumption (e.g. 'Because it WORKS' which is the
externalization of the assumption that utility in PREDICTION
is the most important part of any descriptive structure).
Moving on, I would suggest that within this broadly defined territory
- maps of experience - as Metzner once described such systems, some
other pieces of 'knowledge' and experience can be fitted in quite
easily.
Proposition IV
==============
Kuhnian 'Paradigm shift' is an externalization of a process, which if
understood internally is actually the mystical or religious
experience. The degree is dissimilar, but the experiences are in the
same class. Before you leap to disagree, what I am saying is that the
meta-physics or meta-mysticism that I am describing PLACES these
experiences together by virtue of IT'S innate assumptions (of course
it has some. I'll get to them in a minute). By redefining the axes
they become aspects of the same thing. I am not going to support this
statement other than to say that the key thing is that both involve
real modifications to the 'worldview' structures.
The extent to which this is felt as an actual shift in reality is
dictated by the general level of externalization. The histories of
Galileo, of Einstein, of the Copenhagen movement, and of such figures
as Buddha and so on provide interesting insights in these respects.
Proposition V
=============
The practical ways of modification of worldviews have been known and
understood by a few people in any given generation for a long long
time. In any given age there are those who are de-facto in charge of
the ordering of the externalised consensus model: Today these are the
scientists and the philosophers in our Western model. Hi there :-) In
previous ages the monks and scribes performed those functions: The
mundane side of the Christian church in fact was largely responsible
for interpreting what was reality, or as I would see it, in laying
down the axioms.
There are also those who have in every age demonstrated access to
other internalised versions of different worldviews. These are the
priests, the shamans, the magicians and sorcerers, the mystics and
the saints. The buddhas and the necromancers. The poets and the
artists.
Their function is always to say 'let us consider other
possibilities...'
Conclusions
===========
What are the axioms of this meta-model?
Basically that the nearest we get to A priori truth is personal
experience. In this I am in stark contrast to the externalizers,
whose axiom I feel is more 'The nearest you get to A priori truth is
that there is a reality out there and it is available to our reason'.
- Personal experience as a phrase, is a pointer back from
where we find ourselves, to where we came from as thinking
beings: i.e Raw experience.
The minimal structure I have imposed is the 'worldview' - the
personal experience of what is real at any given point (not
necessarily in time either) This I visualise as something like a
vortex in a stream of consciousness (don't take that too literally:
meant poetically) in that vortices are metastable structures, but
they exist within a dynamic frame, and there are an infinite set of
them.
There is an implied value judgement as well: That the exercise of
trying to define a minimal description of reality is important. In a
sense I feel I am applying Occams Razor to mysticism: By taking
personal experience as ad hoc 'a priori' the meta structure I have
described becomes the simplest I can conceive of.
Further thoughts
================
Why bother with all this? Is it just armchair philosophising? Not to
me, no.
The first thing is that I feel that a major change in the way
we look at reality might simplify theoretical physics. I can't
justify it, but everytime I re-read a book on quantum physics I get
an irritating feeling that everybody, myself included, has missed
something blindingly obvious, and that actually all the data is there
it just hasn't fallen into place. Perhaps its just an feeling that
there must be a simpler explanation, but I feel that if only it were
looked at in terms of....something other than space-time-energy -
maybe something based on a theory of consciousness - then all the
bits would form a new and much simpler pattern.
Secondly, there is I feel a great need to be particular about what is
real, and what is a description of reality. There is an enormous
amount of needless friction between people on this one point. By
wrapping everything up in the label 'description' a LOT of the heat
between the internalizers and the externalizers can be removed, and
both aspects of human endeavour can be placed in a new perspective.
In so many cases of disagreement it becomes a matter of whittling
down the situation to discover the axiomatic part of bothe arguments:
At this point if the axioms conflict, at least one can be aware of
that and 'agree to differ' or if that is not possible......
...Thirdly I feel that acknowledgement of the basis for Western
thought on its primary axioms, together with the acknowledgement that
those axioms are axioms, not a priori facts, would definitely be of
value in relating to the Eastern cultures, particularly Islam. If one
is to be engaged in an idealogical war, I feel that at least one
should know what ideals one is protecting :-) Certainly I would tend
to see the rise of Islamic fundamentalism for example, as a case
where the Islamic worldview is EXTREMELY threatened by the Western
axiom set: The Islamic priests are threatened with the total loss of
their function by the scientists. The innate assumptions of Western
thought - that of racial and sexual equality (in word if not in
deed), the 'sanctity of life' that comes from Christian ethics and
the scientific implication that what is important is what produces
results (capitalism?) is completely contrary to the assumption of the
Islamic fundamentalist, - namely that what is important is to live,
and if necessary to die, correctly and according to a spiritual code.
So Gary (If you are still with me, and whoever else is left :-)) my
intention is not to preach 'I am right - I have THE correct
interpretation of reality' - but more to say :-
"I have, after many years, been unable to decide not only on what
reality might be, but even on how to go about finding it. Although my
background as a technologist gives me great ability to function in a
technological society, and drive fast cars (:-)), it does not answer any
fundamental questions about anything. Neither unfortunately has my
forays into philosophy. Indeed there seems to be a general consensus
amongst philosophers that their business is merely to define with
unerring precision, the questions:-).
Ultimately I have come to rely on my personal experience and have
found value in understanding the experience of others by working
along the lines I have described. I offer this (meta) view free of
copyright, to those who may find it useful or interesting. It cannot
be said to be final, unique, or even totally rigorous, but it has
been of use to me. I would welcome those who have an equal interest
in developing an integrated approach to knowledge to post their
meta-worldviews for interest and comparison"
Leo
Gary Merrill
In article <denmckinnon...@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au>, denmc...@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au (NEIL MCKINNON) writes:
|> Gary Merrill writes:-
[Stuff about Putnam and Dummett deleted.]
I don't recall anything about Dummett's stuff (perhaps I never read
it, perhaps it came out after I left academia), but I think you
probably have characterized these things pretty accurately. I
also don't recall (at the moment) many of the details of Putnam's
views, and so I'm not sure about your analysis of his view of
truth. But let's assume it's correct (your analysis, not his view).
I think it is wrong to "make truth epistemic". The danger here,
of course, is that it then turns out that there are no unknowable
(and perhaps no unknown truths), and this is just pretty far from
the classical concept of truth and our intuitive and common sense
one as well. Further, one need not do this in order to maintain
an anti-realist position. You can introduce the purely epistemic
notion of truth, but you are still stuck with having the *other*
one as well -- it doesn't just go away because you'd rather not
use it.
We do not have ideal theories. The crucial question is not "What
is an ideal theory?" but "What is a good theory?" and "What makes
one theory better than another?" The bottom line is not "What is
true?" but "What is it most reasonable to believe?"
|> Putnam's and Dummett's views seem
|> to me to reduce to a coherence theory, since there may be many internally
|> consistent theories which equally satisfy all constraints on acceptance and
|> yet are inconsistent with each other.
I think you are wrong here. Remember, (at least for a lot of us)
one of the minimal constraints on acceptability is "saving the
phenomena" -- a correspondence constraint. *Each* of these theories
must satisfy this constraint, but this constraint alone is not
strong enough to pick among those in the class.
|>
|> I was hoping someone could give (or direct me to) more information on
|> the topic of realism/anti-realism, if they feel that the above is a
|> misrepresentation of anti-realism. As it stands I cannot see the sense of
|> an anti-realist position.
|>
|> Neil.
Again, to both you and Tom Price, I recommend starting with the
following:
_The_Scientific_Image_
_Laws_and_Symmetry_
both by Bas Van Fraassen. In the latter, Van Fraassen spends quite
a bit of time considering such alternative positions as David
Lewis's realism. If you (or anyone else) wants to e-mail me your
normal mail address, I could send one or two old papers of mine
that deal with some of the fundamentals. But Van Fraassen's stuff
will be more up to date and complete.
Gary Merrill
Shades of Aristotle! The unexamined life is not worth living. All men,
by nature, desire to know. Striving for the golden mean, ... These
are hardly "non-Western" values or goals. (Also, of course, shades of
Aquinas, Kant, et al.)
|>
|> So Gary (If you are still with me, and whoever else is left :-)) my
|> intention is not to preach 'I am right - I have THE correct
|> interpretation of reality' - but more to say :-
Yes, I did actually get this far. It is nice to see someone outside
of academia devote so much time and effort at striving for a coherent
and precisely articulated account of his world view (though I think
this goes on much more often than most academics expect). Much
of what you say of course echos a great deal of the history of
philosophy. Reading it I recall bits and pieces of Aristotle,
Aquinas, Kant, Hume, Quine, ... I point this out only as a
justification for not having any "response" to your remarks in
this venue -- though I think none is called for.
I would suggest that you are mistaken in one fundamental view,
and that is when you claim that your "forays into philosophy"
have not answered your questions. To the contrary, it would
appear that *your* foray into philosophy has been of great benefit
to you in answering these questions, in even being able to
phrase the questions, and in making your views reasonably clear
to others. This is what philosophy (as distinct from merely
reading the history of philosophy) is *supposed* to do for you.
To some significant degree, it appears to have succeeded.
jhau...@sara.cc.utu.fi
denmc...@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au (NEIL MCKINNON) writes:
>
>>There are many (non-isomorphic) mappings that may be used successfully.
>>It does not follow from this that *any* mapping is "correct". The
>>anti-realist does not believe that *anything* goes, but rather that
>>there is no particular mapping with a special claim to preferred status.
>>The world is really out there -- under one or another description.
>>There are a number of "right" descriptions you may pick. But there are
>>*wrong* descriptions as well. Choose one that is wrong enough and you
>>are dead meat. In this sense, indeed, "Right thinking or bust."
>>--
>
> I was wondering what the important differences are between your anti-realist
> position here and a realist position. My reading on this topic is probably
> fairly limited, but as far as I can see the anti-realism of, say, Dummett
> and Putnam is ultimately based on intuitions that truth ought not be non-
> epistemic. Their semantics for truth seemed quite similar to me. For
> Putnam, a sentence is true only if it is part of an Ideal theory (i.e one
> that maximally satisfies observable evidence and maximally satisfies our
> constraints on theory acceptance, like simplicity). For Dummett a sentence
> is true only if it is conclusively verifiable (which comes to it being a
> sentence in an Ideal Theory of the Universe). Once you make truth
> epistemic, what you are left with is some sort of coherence theory of truth,
> whereby any consistent set of beliefs is true. The objection to this is
Not *any* consistent set of beliefs. The body of beliefs must also be
consistent with observations. Maybe this is what you meant, but then it would be
more reasonable to talk of judgements instead of beliefs.
> that there may be sets of internally consistent beliefs which are
> inconsistent with each other, and this contravenes another strong intuition
> about truth, i.e (~A & A) cannot be true. Putnam's and Dummett's views seem
I don't see why this should worry the anti-realist too much, because s/he
is not saying that we have a free choice between different (consistent)
sets of beliefs or conceptual systems. What the anti-realist (at least of the
Putnamian type, if I am not mistaken) *is* saying is that we can't
judge the truth or falsity of our beliefs outside the scheme of
description that we are using. This seems to me to suffice to counter
the above objection that anti-realism would lead to the possible
truth of (~A & A). This objection makes sense only if we assume that
there might be different ideal theories which would all be consistent with all
possible evidence. Even then I don't see any guarantee that the negation of a
true judgement in one such theory would even necessarily be expressible in
another. And even if it were, this need not worry the anti-realist, because
*inside* an ideal theory, (~A & A) can not be true.
> to me to reduce to a coherence theory, since there may be many internally
> consistent theories which equally satisfy all constraints on acceptance and
> yet are inconsistent with each other. This is so because an ideal theory is
> not something we have epistemic access to any more than an "external
> reality". Consequently these semantics do not make truth any more
> accessible than a realist conception of truth.
I think they do. On any sensible anti-realist conception of truth, a true
judgement needs to be consistent with observable evidence. This seems to me to
ensure that e.g. the belief that I am now sitting by a computer is true,
because I don't see how any theory (in a loose sense) could be observationally
adequate unless it implied the truth of this belief.
>
> I was hoping someone could give (or direct me to more information on
> the topic of realism/anti-realism, if they feel that the above is a
> misrepresentation of anti-realism. As it stands I cannot see the sense of
> an anti-realist position.
>
> Neil.
I hope I have made the position seem at least a bit more sensible.
--
Jussi Haukioja
JHAU...@SARA.UTU.FI
jhau...@sara.cc.utu.fi
denmc...@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au (NEIL MCKINNON) writes:
>
>>There are many (non-isomorphic) mappings that may be used successfully.
>>It does not follow from this that *any* mapping is "correct". The
>>anti-realist does not believe that *anything* goes, but rather that
>>there is no particular mapping with a special claim to preferred status.
>>The world is really out there -- under one or another description.
>>There are a number of "right" descriptions you may pick. But there are
>>*wrong* descriptions as well. Choose one that is wrong enough and you
>>are dead meat. In this sense, indeed, "Right thinking or bust."
>>--
>
> I was wondering what the important differences are between your anti-realist
> position here and a realist position. My reading on this topic is probably
> fairly limited, but as far as I can see the anti-realism of, say, Dummett
> and Putnam is ultimately based on intuitions that truth ought not be non-
> epistemic. Their semantics for truth seemed quite similar to me. For
> Putnam, a sentence is true only if it is part of an Ideal theory (i.e one
> that maximally satisfies observable evidence and maximally satisfies our
> constraints on theory acceptance, like simplicity). For Dummett a sentence
> is true only if it is conclusively verifiable (which comes to it being a
> sentence in an Ideal Theory of the Universe). Once you make truth
> epistemic, what you are left with is some sort of coherence theory of truth,
> whereby any consistent set of beliefs is true. The objection to this is
Not *any* consistent set of beliefs. The body of beliefs must also be
consistent with observations. Maybe this is what you meant, but then it would be
more reasonable to talk of judgements instead of beliefs.
> that there may be sets of internally consistent beliefs which are
> inconsistent with each other, and this contravenes another strong intuition
> about truth, i.e (~A & A) cannot be true. Putnam's and Dummett's views seem
I don't see why this should worry the anti-realist too much, because s/he
is not saying that we have a free choice between different (consistent)
sets of beliefs or conceptual systems. What the anti-realist (at least of the
Putnamian type, if I am not mistaken) *is* saying is that we can't
judge the truth or falsity of our beliefs outside the scheme of
description that we are using. This seems to me to suffice to counter
the above objection that anti-realism would lead to the possible
truth of (not A & A). This objection makes sense only if we assume that
there might be different ideal theories which would all be consistent with all
possible evidence. Even then I don't see any guarantee that the negation of a
true judgement in one such theory would even necessarily be expressible in
another. And even if it were, this need not worry the anti-realist, because
*inside* an ideal theory, (not A & A) can not be true.
> to me to reduce to a coherence theory, since there may be many internally
> consistent theories which equally satisfy all constraints on acceptance and
> yet are inconsistent with each other. This is so because an ideal theory is
> not something we have epistemic access to any more than an "external
> reality". Consequently these semantics do not make truth any more
> accessible than a realist conception of truth.
I think they do. On any sensible anti-realist conception of truth, a true
judgement needs to be consistent with observable evidence. This seems to me to
ensure that e.g. the belief that I am now sitting by a computer is true,
because I don't see how any theory (in a loose sense) could be observationally
adequate unless it implied the truth of this belief.
>
> I was hoping someone could give (or direct me to more information on
> the topic of realism/anti-realism, if they feel that the above is a
> misrepresentation of anti-realism. As it stands I cannot see the sense of
> an anti-realist position.
>
> Neil.
I hope I have made the position seem at least a bit more sensible.
--
Jussi Haukioja
JHAU...@SARA.UTU.FI
jhau...@sara.cc.utu.fi
denmc...@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au (NEIL MCKINNON) writes:
>
>>There are many (non-isomorphic) mappings that may be used successfully.
>>It does not follow from this that *any* mapping is "correct". The
>>anti-realist does not believe that *anything* goes, but rather that
>>there is no particular mapping with a special claim to preferred status.
>>The world is really out there -- under one or another description.
>>There are a number of "right" descriptions you may pick. But there are
>>*wrong* descriptions as well. Choose one that is wrong enough and you
>>are dead meat. In this sense, indeed, "Right thinking or bust."
>>--
>
> I was wondering what the important differences are between your anti-realist
> position here and a realist position. My reading on this topic is probably
> fairly limited, but as far as I can see the anti-realism of, say, Dummett
> and Putnam is ultimately based on intuitions that truth ought not be non-
> epistemic. Their semantics for truth seemed quite similar to me. For
> Putnam, a sentence is true only if it is part of an Ideal theory (i.e one
> that maximally satisfies observable evidence and maximally satisfies our
> constraints on theory acceptance, like simplicity). For Dummett a sentence
> is true only if it is conclusively verifiable (which comes to it being a
> sentence in an Ideal Theory of the Universe). Once you make truth
> epistemic, what you are left with is some sort of coherence theory of truth,
> whereby any consistent set of beliefs is true. The objection to this is
Not *any* consistent set of beliefs. The body of beliefs must also be
consistent with observations. Maybe this is what you meant, but then it would be
more reasonable to talk of judgements instead of beliefs.
> that there may be sets of internally consistent beliefs which are
> inconsistent with each other, and this contravenes another strong intuition
> about truth, i.e (~A & A) cannot be true. Putnam's and Dummett's views seem
I don't see why this should worry the anti-realist too much, because s/he
is not saying that we have a free choice between different (consistent)
sets of beliefs or conceptual systems. What the anti-realist (at least of the
Putnamian type, if I am not mistaken) *is* saying is that we can't
judge the truth or falsity of our beliefs outside the scheme of
description that we are using. This seems to me to suffice to counter
the above objection that anti-realism would lead to the possible
truth of (~A & A). This objection makes sense only if we assume that
there might be different ideal theories which would all be consistent with all
possible evidence. Even then I don't see any guarantee that the negation of a
true judgement in one such theory would even necessarily be expressible in
another. And even if it were, this need not worry the anti-realist, because
*inside* an ideal theory, (~A & A) can not be true.
> to me to reduce to a coherence theory, since there may be many internally
> consistent theories which equally satisfy all constraints on acceptance and
> yet are inconsistent with each other. This is so because an ideal theory is
> not something we have epistemic access to any more than an "external
> reality". Consequently these semantics do not make truth any more
> accessible than a realist conception of truth.
I think they do. On any sensible anti-realist conception of truth, a true
judgement needs to be consistent with observable evidence. This seems to me to
ensure that e.g. the belief that I am now sitting by a computer is true,
because I don't see how any theory (in a loose sense) could be observationally
adequate unless it implied the truth of this belief.
>
> I was hoping someone could give (or direct me to more information on
> the topic of realism/anti-realism, if they feel that the above is a
> misrepresentation of anti-realism. As it stands I cannot see the sense of
> an anti-realist position.
>
> Neil.
I hope I have made the position seem at least a bit more sensible.
--
Jussi Haukioja
JHAU...@SARA.UTU.FI
jhau...@sara.cc.utu.fi
In article <denmckinnon...@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au>,
denmc...@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au (NEIL MCKINNON) writes:
>
>>There are many (non-isomorphic) mappings that may be used successfully.
>>It does not follow from this that *any* mapping is "correct". The
>>anti-realist does not believe that *anything* goes, but rather that
>>there is no particular mapping with a special claim to preferred status.
>>The world is really out there -- under one or another description.
>>There are a number of "right" descriptions you may pick. But there are
>>*wrong* descriptions as well. Choose one that is wrong enough and you
>>are dead meat. In this sense, indeed, "Right thinking or bust."
>>--
>
> I was wondering what the important differences are between your anti-realist
> position here and a realist position. My reading on this topic is probably
> fairly limited, but as far as I can see the anti-realism of, say, Dummett
> and Putnam is ultimately based on intuitions that truth ought not be non-
> epistemic. Their semantics for truth seemed quite similar to me. For
> Putnam, a sentence is true only if it is part of an Ideal theory (i.e one
> that maximally satisfies observable evidence and maximally satisfies our
> constraints on theory acceptance, like simplicity). For Dummett a sentence
> is true only if it is conclusively verifiable (which comes to it being a
> sentence in an Ideal Theory of the Universe). Once you make truth
> epistemic, what you are left with is some sort of coherence theory of truth,
> whereby any consistent set of beliefs is true. The objection to this is
Not *any* consistent set of beliefs. The body of beliefs must also be
consistent with observations. Maybe this is what you meant, but then it would be
more reasonable to talk of judgements instead of beliefs.
> that there may be sets of internally consistent beliefs which are
> inconsistent with each other, and this contravenes another strong intuition
> about truth, i.e (~A & A) cannot be true. Putnam's and Dummett's views seem
I don't see why this should worry the anti-realist too much, because s/he
is not saying that we have a free choice between different (consistent)
sets of beliefs or conceptual systems. What the anti-realist (at least of the
Putnamian type, if I am not mistaken) *is* saying is that we can't
judge the truth or falsity of our beliefs outside the scheme of
description that we are using. This seems to me to suffice to counter
the above objection that anti-realism would lead to the possible
truth of (not A & A). This objection makes sense only if we assume that
there might be different ideal theories which would all be consistent with all
possible evidence. Even then I don't see any guarantee that the negation of a
true judgement in one such theory would even necessarily be expressible in
another. And even if it were, this need not worry the anti-realist, because
*inside* an ideal theory, (not A & A) can not be true.
> to me to reduce to a coherence theory, since there may be many internally
> consistent theories which equally satisfy all constraints on acceptance and
> yet are inconsistent with each other. This is so because an ideal theory is
> not something we have epistemic access to any more than an "external
> reality". Consequently these semantics do not make truth any more
> accessible than a realist conception of truth.
I think they do. On any sensible anti-realist conception of truth, a true
judgement needs to be consistent with observable evidence. This seems to me to
ensure that e.g. the belief that I am now sitting by a computer is true,
because I don't see how any theory (in a loose sense) could be observationally
adequate unless it implied the truth of this belief.
>
> I was hoping someone could give (or direct me to more information on
> the topic of realism/anti-realism, if they feel that the above is a
> misrepresentation of anti-realism. As it stands I cannot see the sense of
> an anti-realist position.
>
> Neil.
I hope I have made the position seem at least a bit more sensible.
--
Jussi Haukioja
JHAU...@SARA.UTU.FI
Leo Smith
>Gary Merrill writes:-
>>There are many (non-isomorphic) mappings that may be used successfully.
>>It does not follow from this that *any* mapping is "correct". The
>>anti-realist does not believe that *anything* goes, but rather that
>>there is no particular mapping with a special claim to preferred status.
>>The world is really out there -- under one or another description.
>>There are a number of "right" descriptions you may pick. But there are
>>*wrong* descriptions as well. Choose one that is wrong enough and you
>>are dead meat. In this sense, indeed, "Right thinking or bust."
>>--
>I was wondering what the important differences are between your
>anti-realist position here and a realist position. My reading on this
>topic is probably fairly limited, but as far as I can see the
>anti-realism of, say, Dummett and Putnam is ultimately based on
>intuitions that truth ought not be non- epistemic.
Someone fill me in on thge usage of epistemic here? Ae you saying
that Putnam et al are moving from absolute to relative ways of
adjudging 'truth' ?
>Their semantics for truth seemed quite similar to me. For Putnam, a
>sentence is true only if it is part of an Ideal theory (i.e one that
>maximally satisfies observable evidence and maximally satisfies our
>constraints on theory acceptance, like simplicity).
Ok. You answered. truth is the simplest explanation that fits the
bill?
>For Dummett a sentence is true only if it is conclusively verifiable
>(which comes to it being a sentence in an Ideal Theory of the
>Universe). Once you make truth epistemic, what you are left with is
>some sort of coherence theory of truth, whereby any consistent set of
>beliefs is true.
For a change I can actually understand this:-)
>The objection to this is that there may be sets of internally
>consistent beliefs which are inconsistent with each other, and this
>contravenes another strong intuition about truth, i.e (~A & A) cannot
>be true.
This is a much better way of saying something I tried to say before:
about self fulfilling prophecies and the assumption game. Interesting
use of the word intuition you have there as well...is this another
case of a word bent slightly out of shape?
>Putnam's and Dummett's views seem to me to reduce to a coherence
>theory, since there may be many internally consistent theories which
>equally satisfy all constraints on acceptance and yet are
>inconsistent with each other.
Is this so? At a superficial level it seems that it may be - and yet
'strong intuition' makes me feel that maybe it can't. It is easy to
see that a wave/particle duality is possible because we live with it,
but these are not contradictory - they are complementary. It seems to
me that any theory of reality that _does_ assume a real reality out
there that ultimately is accessible has to deny this assertion -
because any seeming contradictions must ipso facto be reslovable by a
clearer and more detailed description.
If however our realities are in some way entirely internal, then I
can see that we might completely disagree yet be completely
internally consistent.
>This is so because an ideal theory is not something we have epistemic
>access to any more than an "external reality". Consequently these
>semantics do not make truth any more accessible than a realist
>conception of truth.
Somewhat less so by my reckoning.
>I was hoping someone could give (or direct me to) more information on
>the topic of realism/anti-realism, if they feel that the above is a
>misrepresentation of anti-realism. As it stands I cannot see the sense of
>an anti-realist position.
Yes: I am less surte today than I was a few days ago about what Gary
means. Any chance of a resume?
>Neil.
Leo
Andrew Mullhaupt
>
>In article <11...@kepler1.rentec.com>, and...@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) writes:
>
>|> What's at stake here is not the necessity of philosophy, but the added value
>|> of philosophy. And when you look at the lives of modern philosophers, I
>|> don't see a convincing pattern of well being emerging.
>
>Surely you don't mean to suggest that this is peculiar to *modern* philosophers!
Yeah but presumably they have had the chance to learn from their predecessor's
"mistakes". I think that people who innovate in philosophy are a bit like
people who innovate in religion - they're often pessimists who believe that the
present understanding has no hope of success. Sometimes they're totally
pessimistic like Marcuse or Nietzsche - they declare the larger questions
insoluble, or arrive at horrifying solutions (Nietzsche's eternal recurrence).
Now an example or two doesn't prove anything, but I find any idea that the
practice of philosophy has a beneficial effect on one's life as unfounded,
but in the older traditions this was one of the explicit aims of philosophy.
Needless to say there is a value judgement here, and presumably any philosophy
which abhors value judgements must fail to justify its practice, and it must
even leave this failure unexplained. Is there any reason to expect that such
a philosophy may leave us no happier than before?
BTW when I say modern I mean the Enlightenment onwards.
Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Randall Holmes
>some way of distinguishing 'good' models from 'bad' models. For
>example Randall has said a couple of times that science is good
>because essentially - (and forgive me if I don't get the subtle
>nuances right here Randall) it gives power of the reality it
>describes, and is useful to prolong life and increase material
>living standards.
I am not concerned with whether science is "good"; I am concerned with
whether it is true (which, in its own terms, is the same thing, I
suppose). I do not regard the argument from power as a proof; it is
merely a strong hint. Science does not give power over "the reality
it describes"; it gives power over everyday reality, the real reality,
the one that counts.
--
The opinions expressed | --Sincerely,
above are not the "official" | M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person | Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution. | hol...@opal.idbsu.edu
Gary Merrill
|>
|> >Their semantics for truth seemed quite similar to me. For Putnam, a
|> >sentence is true only if it is part of an Ideal theory (i.e one that
|> >maximally satisfies observable evidence and maximally satisfies our
|> >constraints on theory acceptance, like simplicity).
|>
|> Ok. You answered. truth is the simplest explanation that fits the
|> bill?
Not "simplest", but "best" -- whatever this turns out to be. It
includes such things as saving the phenomena, simplicity, coherence
with other accepted theories, generality, etc.
Please note that this is not an essential feature of an anti-realist
position (as I at least hinted at in a previous posting). Van
Fraassen, for example, feels very strongly (and offers lengthy
argument) that "inference to the best explanation" is invalid.
Gary Merrill
|> Now an example or two doesn't prove anything, but I find any idea that the
|> practice of philosophy has a beneficial effect on one's life as unfounded,
|> but in the older traditions this was one of the explicit aims of philosophy.
Well, I do not want to make the strong claim that philosophy (or philosophical
reflection, or whatever) will *necessarily* have a beneficial effect on
one's life, as this is demonstrably false. However, it likewise seems clear
that such reflection and analysis has a beneficial effect on *some* lives.
I feel it has had a beneficial effect on mine, I think it has had a beneficial
effect on Leo's, and I bet it has had a beneficial effect on yours. The
fact that one does not (or perhaps cannot) arrive at "ultimate answers" or
"first principles" does not imply that the attempt to do so fails compeletely
to be beneficial -- sometimes in very practical ways.
Leo Smith
>In article <memo....@cix.compulink.co.uk>, sha...@cix.compulink.co.uk (Leo Smith)
writes:
>|> results (capitalism?) is completely contrary to the assumption of the
>|> Islamic fundamentalist, - namely that what is important is to live,
>|> and if necessary to die, correctly and according to a spiritual code.
>Shades of Aristotle! The unexamined life is not worth living. All
>men, by nature, desire to know. Striving for the golden mean, ...
>These are hardly "non-Western" values or goals. (Also, of course,
>shades of Aquinas, Kant, et al.)
Well you may say that. You may even LIVE that way. Or you may even
understand that OTHERS might have been programmed that way.
But I don't hear anybody shouting it at George Bush, or Margaret
Thatcher (Margaret who? - well that's politics :-)) loud enough for
them to pay any mind. My complaint is that the intellectuals have
abandoned the popular mind to the tender ministrations of the
capitalist ethic, the fundamentalist cult, and the science fiction
writer.
People like Hawkins don't help either - they are just peddling
different dogmas :-)
I'll challenge you to last ten minutes with Aquinas in
soc.religion.??? :-)
>|>
>|> So Gary (If you are still with me, and whoever else is left :-)) my
>|> intention is not to preach 'I am right - I have THE correct
>|> interpretation of reality' - but more to say :-
>Yes, I did actually get this far. It is nice to see someone outside
>of academia devote so much time and effort at striving for a coherent
>and precisely articulated account of his world view (though I think
>this goes on much more often than most academics expect). Much of
>what you say of course echos a great deal of the history of
>philosophy. Reading it I recall bits and pieces of Aristotle,
>Aquinas, Kant, Hume, Quine, ... I point this out only as a
>justification for not having any "response" to your remarks in this
>venue -- though I think none is called for.
Hmm. It would have been great for someone to say 'no you are wrong
because of X' or 'you are right and I am changing the way I do things
becauise you have convinced me' However the final outcome seems to be
'you are entitled to choose your own philosophy' as long as it is
broadly within rational limits :-)
>I would suggest that you are mistaken in one fundamental view, and
>that is when you claim that your "forays into philosophy" have not
>answered your questions. To the contrary, it would appear that *your*
>foray into philosophy has been of great benefit to you in answering
>these questions, in even being able to phrase the questions, and in
>making your views reasonably clear to others. This is what philosophy
>(as distinct from merely reading the history of philosophy) is
>*supposed* to do for you. To some significant degree, it appears to
>have succeeded.
Huh? I had it all worked out a different way before that. I came to
THIS newsgroup hoping to get facts or new logic: Actually all I got
was a new vocabulary. And a dissapointing sense that philosophy is
now merely a check on scientific theory making and a little bit of
use to neural scientists. It does _not_ offer better views of life
and the human condition, just extremely _precise_ ones. This is of
value to theoretical physicists, but I think it is the New Ager and
the Politician who might benefit a little more :-)
Lee Story
[...] I think that people who innovate in philosophy are a bit like
people who innovate in religion - they're often pessimists who
believe that the present understanding has no hope of success.
Sometimes they're totally pessimistic like Marcuse or Nietzsche -
they declare the larger questions insoluble, or arrive at
horrifying solutions (Nietzsche's eternal recurrence).
Though there are "horrifying" aspects to Nietzsche's arguments when
thoroughly worked out (as in "Zarathustra" or "Beyond Good and Evil"),
I can't see that his eternal recurrence is the product of pessimism,
nor should it be a cause of same. Indeed it seems positively
delightful when compared to will-less heavens filled with drugged
souls in the process of merging with godhead. I don't see at all,
from the argument offers here, what the relevance of pessimism is to
innovation.
Now an example or two doesn't prove anything, but I find any idea
that the practice of philosophy has a beneficial effect on one's
life as unfounded, but in the older traditions this was one of the
explicit aims of philosophy. Needless to say there is a value
judgement here, and presumably any philosophy which abhors value
judgements must fail to justify its practice, and it must even
leave this failure unexplained. Is there any reason to expect that
such a philosophy may leave us no happier than before?
This seems to confuse "a beneficial effect" with "happier", and to
invent the notion of the "practice" of a philosophy (in which "a
philosophy" must be quite different from mere "philosophy", where the
notion of "practicing" seems ridiculous; indeed, seems to me to be
better labelled "a religion", deistic or not). Needless to say,
your paragraph has befuddled me completely.
This reply says "I don't understand" in so many ways that I hesitate
to post it, but I really found your comments, Andrew, more impenetrable
than the abstruse Wittgensteinian discussions which spring up from
time to time in these groups. And usually you seem to me to make sense.
Regards,
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lee Story (l...@wang.com) Wang Laboratories, Inc.
(this email address disappears 14 August;
I may be reborn as l...@bostech.com or something similar in September)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEIL MCKINNON
>From: jhau...@sara.cc.utu.fi
>Subject: Re: Having to believe
>Date: 28 Jul 92 15:02:10 GMT
Yes, I was wrong to say that Putnam's view of truth simply reduces to a
coherence theory. Clearly it does not. What I should have said,
rather, is that it is ultimately open to the same objection, due to
the fact that we may never be able to single out one theory in particular
as ideal, and further, that there may be a number of theories which are
contradictory yet indistinguishably ideal.
>I don't see why this should worry the anti-realist too much, because s/he
>is not saying that we have a free choice between different (consistent)
>sets of beliefs or conceptual systems. What the anti-realist (at least of the
>Putnamian type, if I am not mistaken) *is* saying is that we can't
>judge the truth or falsity of our beliefs outside the scheme of
>description that we are using. This seems to me to suffice to counter
>the above objection that anti-realism would lead to the possible
>truth of (~A & A). This objection makes sense only if we assume that
>there might be different ideal theories which would all be consistent with all
>possible evidence. Even then I don't see any guarantee that the negation of a
>true judgement in one such theory would even necessarily be expressible in
>another. And even if it were, this need not worry the anti-realist, because
>*inside* an ideal theory, (~A & A) can not be true.
I don't think you have really answered the objection. I was talking
meta-theoretically, and what you have suggested in the last sentence is
merely that from the perspective of a particular theory, a contradictory
theory cannot be true.
>> to me to reduce to a coherence theory, since there may be many
internally >> consistent theories which equally satisfy all constraints on
acceptance and >> yet are inconsistent with each other. This is so because
an ideal theory is >> not something we have epistemic access to any more
than an "external >> reality". Consequently these semantics do not make
truth any more >> accessible than a realist conception of truth.
>I think they do. On any sensible anti-realist conception of truth, a true
>judgement needs to be consistent with observable evidence. This seems to me to
>ensure that e.g. the belief that I am now sitting by a computer is true,
>because I don't see how any theory (in a loose sense) could be observationally
>adequate unless it implied the truth of this belief.
As far as I can tell, Putnam *must* say of a sentence that it is true if and
only if it is true of an ideal theory. This is to avoid an objection Putnam
himself raised against Dummett (in Reference and Understanding). Dummett at
one stage wanted to say that a sentence is true if and only if it is "
warrantedly assertible". The objection to any anti-realist criterion for
truth which is less than "conclusively verifiable" or "true in an ideal
theory" is that a sentence of a certain type, or a theory, can be true at
one time and then false later on (or simultaneously by separated
societies in the same world). So the sentence "The tree-god exists and
controls the elements" may have been true 15000 years ago when a tribe held
this belief and it seemed warranted to them. However it is not true today,
since the Tree-god theory does not explain observational evidence well now.
But it was true then!
As far as I can tell, Putnam must also add this property to an ideal theory:
not only must it maximally explain all observational evidence, but it must
explain all *possible* observational evidence. This addition ensures that
there cannot be a host of contradictory ideal theories, all true at
different times, which maximally explain all observable evidence possessed
at their respective times. Now, in
addition to possibly not being able to distinguish between certain
prospective ideal theories when we have all possible observational evidence,
there is the problem of knowing *when* we are in possession of all
observable evidence. And it seems to me that this is an insoluble problem.
Hope this makes sense!
Neil.
Hakki Kocabas
>
> We do not have ideal theories. The crucial question is not "What
> is an ideal theory?" but "What is a good theory?" and "What makes
> one theory better than another?" The bottom line is not "What is
> true?" but "What is it most reasonable to believe?"
we do not _believe_ in theories...because we do not treat our theories
as we treat _the scriptures_...we may believe in a scripture, but what is
the use of saying "We believe in our theories or such and such a theory !" ?
I think you are confusing the theories with scriptures ...
See what happens then;
Jussi Haukioja says:-
JH>Not *any* consistent set of beliefs. The body of beliefs must also be
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
JH>consistent with observations. Maybe this is what you meant, but then it
^^^^^^^^^^^
JH>would be more reasonable to talk of judgements instead of beliefs.
^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^
it would be even more reasonable if we didn't confuse "theories" with
"scriptures" n the first place, and utter nonsense like:
"I believe in such and such a theory (QM if you believe:-)),
it is the truth itself, and it's consistency with observational
evidence implies the truth of my outstanding belief :->
I would look rediculous if I didn't have a belief in (QM) after such solid,
consistent observable evidence, there would be something wrong with my
judgement (:->if I had any left), wouldn't it My Dear Adaimantus ?
It would also be unsensible :-> bla..bla..bla..
bla..
bla..bla..bla..bla..
bla..bla.."
(see how I've jumbled belief/believe/theory/truth/consistency/observational/
evidence/judgement/observable-evidence/unsensible and it is really bad
if I still managed to pass my message to you :-> Unless you think that
I am wasting my time :->)
JH>I think they do. On any sensible anti-realist conception of truth, a true
^^^^^ ^^^^
JH>judgement needs to be consistent with observable evidence. This seems to
^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
JH>to me ensure that e.g. the belief that I am now sitting by a computer
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
JH>is true,
^^^^^^^
is that a belief "now sitting by a computer"? Do you waste your belief
for such a trivia :->?
JH>because I don't see how any theory(in a loose sense)could be observationally
^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
JH>adequate unless it implied the truth of this belief.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
here we end up in the abyss of confusions with our concepts like:
observation/consistent/evidence/judgement/truth/true/theory/belief..
JH>Jussi Haukioja
JH>JHAU...@SARA.UTU.FI
> Gary H. Merrill
****
Gary Merrill
In article <60011.21...@kcbbs.gen.nz>, Hakki_...@kcbbs.gen.nz (Hakki Kocabas) writes:
|> > |> Gary Merrill writes:-
|> >
|> > We do not have ideal theories. The crucial question is not "What
|> > is an ideal theory?" but "What is a good theory?" and "What makes
|> > one theory better than another?" The bottom line is not "What is
|> > true?" but "What is it most reasonable to believe?"
|>
|> Not "What is it most reasonable to believe?", but "Is it useful?", because
|> we do not _believe_ in theories...because we do not treat our theories
|> as we treat _the scriptures_...we may believe in a scripture, but what is
|> the use of saying "We believe in our theories or such and such a theory !" ?
|> I think you are confusing the theories with scriptures ...
The confusion is not mine. I did not, for example, use the "believe in"
locution that your comment rests so heavily upon. If you really want to pursue
this, you need to begin by distinguishing what it means to *believe* something
as opposed to *believe in* it. At this point, I do not have a clue as to
what your criticsim really is.
|>
|> See what happens then;
|> Jussi Haukioja says:-
|>
|> JH>Not *any* consistent set of beliefs. The body of beliefs must also be
|> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|> JH>consistent with observations. Maybe this is what you meant, but then it
|> ^^^^^^^^^^^
|> JH>would be more reasonable to talk of judgements instead of beliefs.
|> ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^
The specific jargon is unimportant, but what is the distinction you intend
here between judgements and beliefs?
|> it would be even more reasonable if we didn't confuse "theories" with
|> "scriptures" n the first place, and utter nonsense like:
|>
Okay, but first you need to tell me with some precision what the difference
*is*.
|> "I believe in such and such a theory (QM if you believe:-)),
|> it is the truth itself, and it's consistency with observational
|> evidence implies the truth of my outstanding belief :->
|> I would look rediculous if I didn't have a belief in (QM) after such solid,
|> consistent observable evidence, there would be something wrong with my
Well, you've certainly picked an odd theory to bestow such strong belief in!
|> judgement (:->if I had any left), wouldn't it My Dear Adaimantus ?
|> It would also be unsensible :-> bla..bla..bla..
|> bla..
|> bla..bla..bla..bla..
|> bla..bla.."
|>
|> (see how I've jumbled belief/believe/theory/truth/consistency/observational/
|> evidence/judgement/observable-evidence/unsensible and it is really bad
|> if I still managed to pass my message to you :-> Unless you think that
|> I am wasting my time :->)
I think I am beginning to agree with this last part here.
|>
|> here we end up in the abyss of confusions with our concepts like:
|> observation/consistent/evidence/judgement/truth/true/theory/belief..
Please ... not "we". Do not include me in the confusions you have
manufactured all by yourself.
Robert Vienneau
> discuss Putnam and Dennett's antirealism.
I have trouble with the correspondence theory of truth for the
following reasons. An assertion that a theory is the most simple of
those presently known or corresponds best with observational data must
be in some language. Part of Putnam's point, as I understand it, is
that no God-eye view exists that is accessible to us. Our notion of
simplicitly and best fit and so on depends on our interests (values).
Likewise, no non-theory laden language exists to describe observational
data. I find Putnam to be giving an argument very like Wittgenstein,
except, of course, Wittgenstein did not give arguments. Actually, Putnam
seems to be also trying to perform Wittgenstein-like therapy.
Now there's nothing wrong with saying that A is true in theory X, but
~A is true in Y. Putnam definitely rejects the view that languages are
incommensurable. If, when one translates A from the language used by
X to the language used by Y, A (in X) means A in Y, then one must reject one
of the theories. Or one can formulate a metalanguage. In that language,
(A in language X) and (~A in language Y) may be perfectly valid.
But argumentation over theories may change our languages, our concepts,
our interests, and even our notions of what is true. I do not see any
problem with that. I also do not see the problem arising from the
possibility of statements that are true, but nobody knows to be true. It
may well be that everybody in a community believes ~p. It also may be
the case that the community (or the experts within that community who
know most about the subject), when presented with evidence, as they
understand evidence, formulated in their language and with their
concepts, would come to agree to accept p. Just because nobody has
presented that evidence to date and all believe ~p, doesn't make p any
less true in that community's language. (BTW, it also may be that the
community would be mistaken to accept p if they were presented with the
evidence.)
Where all this leaves truth, I do not know. Whether this a view between
coherence and correspondence theories, you can argue about. But, given
the arguments of Putnam and Goodman, I do not see how anybody can
successfully maintain the existence of a language that captures all the
concepts needed to describe the world from any perspective that we will
ever care about, and that only true statements in that language are
true.
Robert Vienneau
r...@kaman.com
--
The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
internet: bbs.oit.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80
Hakki Kocabas
|> > |> Gary Merrill writes:-
|> >
|> > We do not have ideal theories. The crucial question is not "What
|> > is an ideal theory?" but "What is a good theory?" and "What makes
|> > one theory better than another?" The bottom line is not "What is
|> > true?" but "What is it most reasonable to believe?"
|>
|> Not "What is it most reasonable to believe?", but "Is it useful?", because
|> we do not _believe_ in theories...because we do not treat our theories
|> as we treat _the scriptures_...we may believe in a scripture, but what is
|> the use of saying "We believe in our theories or such and such a theory !" ?
|> I think you are confusing the theories with scriptures ...
>>>The confusion is not mine. I did not, for example, use the "believe in"
>>>locution that your comment rests so heavily upon. If you really want to
>>>pursue this, you need to begin by distinguishing what it means to *believe*
>>>something as opposed to *believe in* it. At this point, I do not have a
>>>clue as to what your criticsim really is.
Not "What is it most reasonable to believe?", but "Is it useful?",
such and such a theory !" ? while you reject "Such and such theory is
true."
or you tell me what is *it* in "What is it reasonable to believe?"
If it is anything other than an illusion in our language which disappears
into thin air, when we squeeze it through the grammar of our language..
I still think you are confusing the theories with scriptures ...
|> See what happens then;
|>
|> JH>Not *any* consistent set of beliefs. The body of beliefs must also be
|> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|> JH>consistent with observations. Maybe this is what you meant, but then it
|> ^^^^^^^^^^^
|> JH>would be more reasonable to talk of judgements instead of beliefs.
|> ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^
>>>The specific jargon is unimportant, but what is the distinction you intend
>>>here between judgements and beliefs?
|> it would be even more reasonable if we didn't confuse "theories" with
>>>Okay, but first you need to tell me with some precision what the difference
>>>*is*.
I suggest you persue this issue till you get your request satisfied, that
would clarify many confusions in the use of words like:
|> belief/believe/theory/truth/consistency/observational/
|> evidence/judgement/observable-evidence/unsensible
|> and it is really bad
|> if I still managed to pass my message to you :-> Unless you think that
|> I am wasting my time :->)
>>>I think I am beginning to agree with this last part here.
>>>Okay, but first you need to tell me with some precision what the difference
|> here we end up in the abyss of confusions with our concepts like:
|> observation/consistent/evidence/judgement/truth/true/theory/belief..
>>>Please ... not "we". Do not include me in the confusions you have
>>>manufactured all by yourself.
WHO manufactured this report? :
|> > We do not have ideal theories.
As if we could ever have any :->
and WHO manufactured these questions? :
|> > "What is a good theory?"
"I believe QM is better than Newton's Mechanics, and it is the most
reasonable to believe ;->"
But then you can always reject saying: The specific jargon is unimportant..
If I'm bad, I'm BAD!
You'll know it..
>>>Gary H. Merrill
|> >Gary H. Merrill
|>Hakki
Andrew Mullhaupt
>
> The
>fact that one does not (or perhaps cannot) arrive at "ultimate answers" or
>"first principles" does not imply that the attempt to do so fails compeletely
>to be beneficial -- sometimes in very practical ways.
But this seems to indicate that the benefit is due to the philosopher, not
the philosophy. There seems to be a strong (and not unexpected) component of
intersubjectivity here. Is there much separating you from pragmatism here?
The point at the bottom of this is, does philosophy justify itself? Looks
like some do, and some don't. As always, the pragmatist has a very simple
and self-consistent theory. And one feature of this theory is that it is
capable of justifying religion in the same way.
Let me focus the issue into a single question: "Is truth good?".
Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Andrew Mullhaupt
>In article <11...@kepler1.rentec.com> and...@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) writes:
>I can't see that his eternal recurrence is the product of pessimism,
>nor should it be a cause of same. Indeed it seems positively
>delightful when compared to will-less heavens filled with drugged
>souls in the process of merging with godhead.
Yes, and perhaps coronary disease is better than cancer, but that doesn't make
either of them good. Nietzsche's eternal recurrence was certainly a bummer
for Nietzsche.
> I don't see at all,
>from the argument offers here, what the relevance of pessimism is to
>innovation.
The relevance is simple. In order to move from one "systeme du monde" to
another, their has to be a motivation from the perception of the inadequacy
of the old world view. The 'revolutionaries' are likely to be the minds
who come unmoored first when the stability of the old order falters. The
exodic motion is often associated with a searching period during which
painfully important issues are unresolved. The impulse which moves one
away from old answers in search of new is usually doubt, skepticism, mistrust
or pessimism.
>This seems to confuse "a beneficial effect" with "happier", and to
>invent the notion of the "practice" of a philosophy (in which "a
>philosophy" must be quite different from mere "philosophy", where the
>notion of "practicing" seems ridiculous; indeed, seems to me to be
>better labelled "a religion", deistic or not). Needless to say,
>your paragraph has befuddled me completely.
Philosophy does not spring unbidden from the brow - I am asking about the
motivation (agenda?) of the more modern philosophers. In many ways
philosophy _is_ a practice, (for example what Socrates has left us
more than anything else is a _process_).
>This reply says "I don't understand" in so many ways that I hesitate
>to post it, but I really found your comments, Andrew, more impenetrable
>than the abstruse Wittgensteinian discussions which spring up from
>time to time in these groups. And usually you seem to me to make sense.
I haven't really opened up the subject very far, I suppose. At this point
I'm still trying to draw Gary out about the relation of anti-realism to
pragmatism. I am engaged more on reconaissance here than anything else.
In particular, I want to examine the motivations of the people who have
moved on from the hard positivism of the first part of this century.
Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Gary Merrill
|> >
|> > The
|> >fact that one does not (or perhaps cannot) arrive at "ultimate answers" or
|> >"first principles" does not imply that the attempt to do so fails compeletely
|> >to be beneficial -- sometimes in very practical ways.
|>
|> But this seems to indicate that the benefit is due to the philosopher, not
|> the philosophy. There seems to be a strong (and not unexpected) component of
|> intersubjectivity here. Is there much separating you from pragmatism here?
Should there be?
|> The point at the bottom of this is, does philosophy justify itself? Looks
Self justification? One ought always be suspicious of such things.
|> like some do, and some don't. As always, the pragmatist has a very simple
|> and self-consistent theory. And one feature of this theory is that it is
|> capable of justifying religion in the same way.
Huh? I think I'll pass on this
|>
|> Let me focus the issue into a single question: "Is truth good?".
The question is at least too briefly put and, probably as a result of that,
unintelligible. I am not being intentionally obtuse when I say that I
really don't understand this question as it has been put.
Thomas Price
>
>Huh? I had it all worked out a different way before that. I came to
>THIS newsgroup hoping to get facts or new logic: Actually all I got
>was a new vocabulary. And a dissapointing sense that philosophy is
>now merely a check on scientific theory making and a little bit of
>use to neural scientists. It does _not_ offer better views of life
>and the human condition, just extremely _precise_ ones. This is of
>value to theoretical physicists, but I think it is the New Ager and
>the Politician who might benefit a little more :-)
>
William Barrett, is his very enjoyable study of Existentialism, _Irrational
Man_, suggests that philosophy underwent a split after Kant. Specifically,
after Kant did away with the Ontological argument for the Existence of God
by declaring that existence is not a predicate. Barrett suggests that
there are two responses to this development: 1) to say that since existence
is not a predicate and cannot be handled concisely and formally, it must not
matter -- symbols and semantic systems therefore take on paramount importance;
2) to say that the reason existence is not a predicate is that it is too
rich and deep and wonderful to be caught in any semantic system. In other
words, 1) predicates and predicate-systems are more important, or 2) existence
is more important.
This gives us a new way of interpreting recent philosophical history. We can
see analytical and linguistic philosophy, positivism, etc., really taking
off in the first part of this century as a result of the conviction that
after Kant mankind had finally cleared away this existence rubbish and gotten
down to something clean and cold and hard and tangible (cf Wittgenstein's
early hopes for the significance of his Tractatus). That is, we can see it
all as a consequence of the first response to Kant's demonstration. But what
of the second?
Existentialism proper ran into a dead-end with Sartre, pretty much (whom
Barrett tries to show as handicapped by Cartesian dualism, BTW) but the
second response to Kant went much farther than academic existentialism.
It went into literature and the humanities. (Now you're hearing me talk
and not Barrett.) F.H.Bradley --> T.S. Eliot ; Frazier and Weston and
other mythologers --> James Joyce and Ezra Pound. Aldous Huxley. The
importance of mythological study, developing in parallel with analytical
and related philosophy, likewise springs from Kant's dismissal of the
Ontological Argument, and represents the missing half of philosophy.
> And a dissapointing sense that philosophy is
>now merely a check on scientific theory making and a little bit of
>use to neural scientists. It does _not_ offer better views of life
>and the human condition, just extremely _precise_ ones.
In sum: that is true of Philosophy proper, but we can identify where the
parts of Philosophy that used to do that went to. "This my field of study which
was dead is alive again! Put shoes on its feet, and a ring on its hand, and
kill the fatted calf ..." It hasn't really been a prodigal discipline, but
just travelling under false names.
> I came to
>THIS newsgroup hoping to get facts or new logic
Here's a suggestion, then. The anti-realist position (broadly understood)
is, I think, the default intuitive epistemology held by most educated
people today who have not made a careful study of contemporary epistemology.
Initial assumptions are arbitrary but each set has its own unique consequences
(a world) to be discovered by discipline and effort. So, what are some of the
options? Check out world mythology for them. Follow Wittgenstein's hints
that the true reality was beyond semantics; pair him up with Bradley and
declare that analytical philosophy is true and useful but only applies to
Relational Consciousness [the second of Bradley's three stages --
1) Non-differentiation; the "primitive" nondualistic world of "children and
savages" 2) Relational Consciousness -- the world of semantic systems and
subject-object distinctions 3) Transcendence -- the world of handwaving
on the part of Literary Critics who deal with Eliot (sorry if that's an
inside joke! Anybody familiar with Eliot criticism will know what I mean)]
and the real ground of being is beyond words, as do witness, with Bradley,
Wittgenstein, Huxley, at least 2/3 of the major world mythologies, and a
cast of thousands.
Sorry if this sounds too much like a stream-of-consciousness pro-Rand post.
I will be happy to expand more lucidly (and show my ignorance) on request.
Gary Merrill
In article <1992Aug03.1...@cs.cmu.edu>, tp...@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price) writes:
|> William Barrett, is his very enjoyable study of Existentialism, _Irrational
|> Man_, suggests that philosophy underwent a split after Kant. Specifically,
|> after Kant did away with the Ontological argument for the Existence of God
|> by declaring that existence is not a predicate. Barrett suggests that
|> there are two responses to this development: 1) to say that since existence
|> is not a predicate and cannot be handled concisely and formally, it must not
|> matter -- symbols and semantic systems therefore take on paramount importance;
|> 2) to say that the reason existence is not a predicate is that it is too
|> rich and deep and wonderful to be caught in any semantic system. In other
|> words, 1) predicates and predicate-systems are more important, or 2) existence
|> is more important.
|>
|> This gives us a new way of interpreting recent philosophical history. We can
|> see analytical and linguistic philosophy, positivism, etc., really taking
|> off in the first part of this century as a result of the conviction that
|> after Kant mankind had finally cleared away this existence rubbish and gotten
|> down to something clean and cold and hard and tangible (cf Wittgenstein's
|> early hopes for the significance of his Tractatus). That is, we can see it
|> all as a consequence of the first response to Kant's demonstration. But what
|> of the second?
It is rather difficult to place within this taxonomy the rather vast amount of
work that has been done in the area of "free" logics -- which often are logics
(formal systems) with an explicit existence predicate -- and intentional logics
(in which one frequently seeks to deal with traditional types of arguments
involving the existence predicate). A substantial amount of effort has been
expended in such areas in an attempt to handle these notions formallly (if not
concisely), and it is doubtful if those expending the effort have thought of
themselves as existentialists (or Wittgensteinians).
Thomas Price
(Gary Merrill) writes:
>It is rather difficult to place within this taxonomy the rather vast amount of
>work that has been done in the area of "free" logics -- which often are logics
>(formal systems) with an explicit existence predicate -- and intentional
>logics (in which one frequently seeks to deal with traditional types of
>arguments involving the existence predicate).
In fact, it's impossible, since the taxonomy is only applicable to fields which
accept the statement "existence is not a predicate" as a given.
Not surprisingly, I know nothing about the logics you mention.
>A substantial amount of effort has been
>expended in such areas in an attempt to handle these notions formallly (if not
>concisely), and it is doubtful if those expending the effort have thought of
>themselves as existentialists (or Wittgensteinians).
I'd be very surprised if they did: Barrett's book is about existentialism
but my contention is that the energy he identifies as going from
traditional philosophy into existentialism also went into the mythologically-
influenced literature of this century. Furthermore, I was only using
Wittgenstein for the example of his hope that philosophical problems would
necessarily disappear once illusions about language were destroyed; although
he is the only individual I could point to as having ever explicitly made such
a claim, I do not think that to make such a claim is to become a
"Wittgensteinian."
Gary Merrill
I took your endorsement of Barrett's dichotomy to exclude other responses.
I.e., I understood "there are two responses" to mean "there are only two
responses" or "there have been only two responses", rather than "there
have been at least two responses". Add to this the claim about how this helps
us view the development of analytical philosophy, linguistic philosophy,
and positivism, and I was concerned that a bit too much was being overlooked
here. A third response to Kant's "demonstration" is that it simply is *wrong*,
or perhaps "muddled", "confused", or "incoherent" are better descriptions.
The very assertion that "Existence is not a predicate" is what some refer
to as a "category" mistake. Of course existence is not a predicate any
more than, say, redness is a predicate. This leaves open the question as
to whether there is a *property* corresponding to the *predicate* "exists"
(and similar questions phrased in more or less realistic or nominalistic
terms), and what sort of property this is. (A rephrasing of Kant's argument
may then be appropriate.)
Certainly "exists" *is* (grammatically) a predicate, and to deny this is
preposterous. I don't think anyone would suggest that this is the import
of Kant's argument. I have not read Barrett's work and will not presume
to judge it based on the brief summary that has been given. If the summary
is accurate, however, I think it fairly clear that Barrett has misunderstood
both the force of the argument and its consequences. Whatever else may be
claimed, Kant's argument (though considered a "classic") hardly sealed
the fate of the ontological argument
Thomas Price
Apologies to everyone if I have edited too much out. Maybe I'm spoiled;
I use rn and can always control-shift-p to find the previous article.
>The very assertion that "Existence is not a predicate" is what some refer
>to as a "category" mistake. Of course existence is not a predicate any
>more than, say, redness is a predicate. This leaves open the question as
>to whether there is a *property* corresponding to the *predicate* "exists"
>(and similar questions phrased in more or less realistic or nominalistic
>terms), and what sort of property this is. (A rephrasing of Kant's argument
>may then be appropriate.)
Well, I think we're all either too sophisticated or not sophisticated
enough to be making that "category mistake" -- to say that existence is
not a predicate is to say that it isn't meaningful to use it so. But
clearly you have something else in mind?
>Certainly "exists" *is* (grammatically) a predicate, and to deny this is
>preposterous. I don't think anyone would suggest that this is the import
>of Kant's argument.
Let's step back from the history of philosophy for a moment and look at
Western intellectual history. The Enlightenment was the introduction
of the primacy of Rationalilty into Western Thought; educated people believed
that the universe was essentially rational and therefore essentially
understandable. At some point in the nineteenth century the Enlightenment
ended and it was understood that irrationality (or arationality; in this
instance either will do) could not be ignored and are necessary parts of
a complete world-picture. There are various ways of doing this but today
the most common one is to regard thinking as proceeding from a set of initial,
fundamental assumptions -- whether cultural or intellectual -- and to regard
the choice of those assumptions as not rational. This is a simple description
of the the Western response to the end of the Enlightenment.
When did the Enlightenment end? Is there a single declaration that the universe
(at least the universe understandable by humans) is not essentially rational?
Kant's declaration that "existence is not a predicate" implies that no
predicate system can be rationally grounded, because no portion of it can be
declared to exist, to correspond absolutely with reality. Thoughts exist
independently of things, as shadows and descriptions of them. The relationship
between a predicate system and the world it is supposed to represent cannot
be described within that system since there is no predicate within that
system which can correspond to Reality, or Existence, or anything other than
conceptual representations of existence. (Yes, all this buys into the
external reality/internal mental representation dichotomy in a big way;
I'll comment on that in a second.) So the adoption of any particular
conceptual representation of existence must be arational.
Of course, historical change always depends upon a multitude of factors.
I understand that. But it's useful to identify a single factor
for the purposes of constructing a "taxonomy of scholarship". I could just
as well say that the Enlightenment ended with Neitzsche, but his contribution
doesn't lend itself so well to the creation of two categories. We can more
easily consider thought in the West after Kant as falling into two broad
categories in response to his declaration about existence: one
which emphasizes existence and one which emphasizes predicate systems.
(Yes, I'm using terminology sloppily, but I've said all this before
clearly enough.)
There is of course a third category. Contemporary philosophy
denies the whole representation/external
reality dichotomy; I think that the logics which Gary described do so and
therefore are completely outside the purview of this taxonomy. I should say
that all my comments apply only to thought which accepts as given the
representation/external reality dichotomy.
Alternatively, and in addition, my comments are mainly useful to people
who accept the representation/external reality dichotomy, as they can
stick contemporary philosophy into the "hung up on predicate systems"
category -- they can collapse categories 2 and 3 above -- and feel good about
it. This is what I do now; on an emotional level, I accept the in/out
dichotomy so I don't feel troubled about using it for the purposes of
my general historical understanding, even when that general understanding
includes thought which quite explicitly denies it. Intellectually, however, I
am aware of the shortcomings of such behavior. It's fairly moot now since
my reading schedule is sufficiently backed up to prevent me from doing
anything about it for a while yet, but I am very curious about "category3"
contemporary philosophy and look forward to continuing this thread. (And
yes, part of my backed-up reading list is Richard Rorty's _Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature_, if anybody was going to suggest that.)
Thomas Price
I use rn and can always control-shift-p to find the previous article.
>The very assertion that "Existence is not a predicate" is what some refer
>to as a "category" mistake. Of course existence is not a predicate any
>more than, say, redness is a predicate. This leaves open the question as
>to whether there is a *property* corresponding to the *predicate* "exists"
>(and similar questions phrased in more or less realistic or nominalistic
>terms), and what sort of property this is. (A rephrasing of Kant's argument
>may then be appropriate.)
Well, I think we're all either too sophisticated or not sophisticated
enough to be making that "category mistake" -- to say that existence is
not a predicate is to say that it isn't meaningful to use it so. But this
isn't really what I want to post about here!
>Certainly "exists" *is* (grammatically) a predicate, and to deny this is
>preposterous. I don't think anyone would suggest that this is the import
>of Kant's argument.
Let's step back from the history of philosophy for a moment and look at
categories in respinse to his declaration about existence: one
which emphasizes existence and one which emphasizes predicate systems.
(Yes, I'm using terminology sloppily, but I've said all this before
clearly enough.)
There is of course a third category. Contemporary philosophy
denies the whole representation/external
reality dichotomy; I think that the logics which Gary described do so and
therefore are completely outside the purview of this taxonomy. I should say
that all my comments apply only to thought which accepts as given the
representation/external reality dichotomy.
Alternatively, and in addition, my comments are mainly useful to people
who accept the representation/external reality dichotomy, as they can
stick contemporary philosophy into the "hung up on predicate systems"
category -- they can collapse categories 2 and 3 above -- and feel good about
it. This is what I do now; on an emotional level, I accept the in/out
dichotomy so I don't feel troubled about using it for the purposes of
my general historical understanding, even when that general understanding
includes thought which quite explicitly denies it. Intellectually, however, I
am aware of the shortcomings of such behavior. It's fairly moot now since
my reading schedule is sufficiently backed up to prevent me from doing
anything about it for a while yet, but I am very curious about "category3"
contemporary philosophy and look forward to continuing this thread. (And
yes, part of my backed-up reading list is Richard Rorty's _Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature_, if anybody was going to suggest that.)
Tom
Andrew Mullhaupt
>
>In article <11...@kepler1.rentec.com>, and...@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) writes:
>|> Is there much separating you from pragmatism here?
>
>Should there be?
Yes. If (as I think an anti-realist wants to) you want to deny the existence
of an independent objective reality, you end up with a different argument
than the pragmatist. The pragmatist who finds the idea of an independent
objective reality useful can affirm it. I was under the impression that
the anti-realist doesn't allow one to go this far with inter-subjectivity.
>|> Let me focus the issue into a single question: "Is truth good?".
>
>The question is at least too briefly put and, probably as a result of that,
>unintelligible. I am not being intentionally obtuse when I say that I
>really don't understand this question as it has been put.
The question is briefly put, but is it _too_ briefly put? It's not the
form of the question which is troublesome, since I could ask "Is sugar
sweet?" or "Is height purple?", etc., and I would expect that you could
deal with them.
So it looks from here like the objection is to assigning some kind of
meaning to truth or goodness, or at least objecting to talking about the
relation between the two ideas.
Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Gary Merrill
|> There is of course a third category. Contemporary philosophy
|> denies the whole representation/external
|> reality dichotomy; I think that the logics which Gary described do so and
Say what?! Exactly *who* denies this, and in what manner? It is
precisely this dichotomy (in the form of observation statements
vs. theoretical statements, for example) that the positivists are
always getting thumped for. Their intellectual descendants (and
those Vienna Circle guys still living) *still* endorse it -- as does
any self-respecting empriicist. Can you give examples of this alleged
denial?
Gary Merrill
Andrew: I wish I could devote more time, and better thought, to the issues
and questions you raise. As it is, I've been away from this stuff for some
time and I'm spewing all this out while simultaneously modifying and testing
a fairly complex compiler. I plan to start reading some of the more recent
stuff in the area shortly (Van Fraassen's more recent work, for example),
but it will take me a week or so. Until then I can only make what I honestly
regard at this point as semi-incompetent responses. I hope these are not
a waste of time for others.
In article <11...@kepler1.rentec.com>, and...@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) writes:
|> In article <BsEuB...@unx.sas.com> sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
|> >
|> >In article <11...@kepler1.rentec.com>, and...@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) writes:
|> >|> Is there much separating you from pragmatism here?
|> >
|> >Should there be?
|>
|> Yes. If (as I think an anti-realist wants to) you want to deny the existence
|> of an independent objective reality, you end up with a different argument
I certainly do *not* want to deny this, nor do other anti-realists with
whom I am acquainted. Briefly put, the anti-realist does not deny that
there is an independent objective reality but rather that we can have (or
that it is even meaningful to talk about) a unique description of it.
The important questions here are most clearly put in terms of theories
and their relation to that reality and our beliefs. For the realist,
what is it that makes a theory *good*? That it corresponds to the
objective reality -- that it is *true*. Further, the *best* theory is
not only true, but *complete*, and one theory is *better* than another
to the degree that it more fully describes the objective reality.
To the anti-realist, since it is clear that there will be *many* non-
isomorphic theories each of which describes the objective reality, the
realist's position is nonsense. Whatever criteria one uses for choosing
among theories, truth cannot be the ultimate one (too many of the theories
are true).
Now you might say at this point: "Well, you're waffling a bit here."
If you take two of these non-isomorphic theories, there will be some
area in which they differ, and there's your lack of objective reality.
Well, okay. But it does not follow from this that the anti-realist
denies an objective reality altogether. Certainly all the theories must
save the phenomena -- there is *at least* this much objective reality.
Let me try another tack. To deny an objective reality is to imply that
*any* theory will do (or, let's say, any *consistent* theory). And we
don't hold *that*.
Inquisitor: So, you claim that there *is* an objective reality?
Anti-realist: Oh, yes!
Inquisitor: What's it like then?
Anti-realist: Well, I can't say, exactly.
Inquisitor: You mean you don't have any good theories?
Anti-realist: To the contrary, I've got too *many* good theories.
Inquisitor: Don't you mean you just haven't found the *true* one
yet?
Anti-realist: No. They're all true -- as far as "true" makes any
sense. It's better to say that they are all "good"
or "acceptable", or even "best" theories.
Inquisitor: Well, which one best describes the objective reality?
Anti-realist: They *all* do, you twit! They differ from one another
in the nooks and crannies, some may be easier to use
than others, and so on, but they are all descriptively
equivalent (since this is part of the criteria for
theory acceptance).
Inquisitor: One of them *must* be a better description of the objective
reality than the others.
Anti-realist: Isn't!
Inquisitor: Is!
...
|> than the pragmatist. The pragmatist who finds the idea of an independent
|> objective reality useful can affirm it. I was under the impression that
|> the anti-realist doesn't allow one to go this far with inter-subjectivity.
|>
|> >|> Let me focus the issue into a single question: "Is truth good?".
|> >
|> >The question is at least too briefly put and, probably as a result of that,
|> >unintelligible. I am not being intentionally obtuse when I say that I
|> >really don't understand this question as it has been put.
|>
|> The question is briefly put, but is it _too_ briefly put? It's not the
|> form of the question which is troublesome, since I could ask "Is sugar
|> sweet?" or "Is height purple?", etc., and I would expect that you could
|> deal with them.
|>
|> So it looks from here like the objection is to assigning some kind of
|> meaning to truth or goodness, or at least objecting to talking about the
|> relation between the two ideas.
|>
|> Later,
|> Andrew Mullhaupt
Yes, it is the form of the question that is problematic. Sugar, being
a physical substance, has physical properties: sweetness, color, etc.
What of truth? If I were to attempt to make sense of the "Is truth good?"
question I would try rephrasings such as "Is everything that is true good?"
(clearly not, and you can't mean this), "Is striving for the truth good?"
(probably, but I don't think you mean this either). Perhaps I could begin
to get a handle on this if you could give me some examples of properties
that you feel truth *does* have. I'm afraid in order to make sense of
things I have to interpret statements of the form "Truth is ..." as shorthand
versions of such things as "Every true statement is ..." or "The concept
of truth is ..."
Gary Merrill
I might offer the following in an attempt to unmuddy some of the
waters concerning what the anti-realist position is. This is
basically the view I held about ten years ago and is taken from
my "Three Forms of Realism" (APQ, July 1980).
First, we can distinguish three forms of realism:
Metaphysical Realism: The entities postulated by a (good or acceptable)
scientific theory really exist. Alternatively:
the theoretical terms of science denote actually
existing entities.
Semantic Realism: We must interpret scientific theories realistically
-- i.e., we must take the theoretical terms of science
to function as denoting terms.
Epistemic Realism: To accept a theory is to believe that it is true,
to believe that its terms denote existing entities.
Alternatively: to have good reason for holding a
theory is to have good reason for holding that the
entities postulated by the theory really exist.
I then argued or observed the following:
1. The instrumentalists (Mayo and the early postivists)
reject all three forms.
2. Carnap rejects metaphysical realism and accepts both
semantic and epistemic realism. (There is a rather
lengthy analysis in support of this.)
3. Van Fraassen accepts semantic realism and rejects both
metaphysical and epistemic realism. (His rejection of
epistemic realism is explicit: "The language of science
should be literally construed, but its theories need not
be true to be good." His rejection of metaphysical
realism is implicit, but I omit the argument for this
here.)
4. An argument was then offered to show that the semantic
position is independent of the other two positions.
(There is a fairly long counter-argument contra Shapere
offered as well.)
This leaves us with a brand of anti-realism differing substantially
from that of the positivists (both early and late). It separates
what a theory *means* from what it means to *accept* the theory and
whether the theory is *true*, and it does not fall prey to criticisms
launched against the postivist program in general or against the
instrumentalist position.
I hope that this makes certain issues a bit clearer. There are a
number of ways in which one can be a "realist", and failing to
distinguish these invites confusion.
Michael Zeleny
sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
>In article <1992Aug05.1...@cs.cmu.edu>,
>tp...@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price) writes:
TP:
>>> There is of course a third category. Contemporary philosophy
>>> denies the whole representation/external
>>> reality dichotomy; I think that the logics which Gary described do so and
GM:
>Say what?! Exactly *who* denies this, and in what manner? It is
>precisely this dichotomy (in the form of observation statements
>vs. theoretical statements, for example) that the positivists are
>always getting thumped for. Their intellectual descendants (and
>those Vienna Circle guys still living) *still* endorse it -- as does
>any self-respecting empriicist. Can you give examples of this alleged
>denial?
Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, and Joseph Margolis.
Would you kindly give examples of "those Vienna Circle guys still living"?
>--
>Gary H. Merrill [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
>SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC 27513 / (919) 677-8000
>sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
cordially,
mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
Gary Merrill
In article <1992Aug6.1...@husc3.harvard.edu>, zel...@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
|> In article <BsKFp...@unx.sas.com>
|> sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
|>
|> >In article <1992Aug05.1...@cs.cmu.edu>,
|> >tp...@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price) writes:
|>
|> TP:
|> >>> There is of course a third category. Contemporary philosophy
|> >>> denies the whole representation/external
|> >>> reality dichotomy; I think that the logics which Gary described do so and
|>
|> GM:
|> >Say what?! Exactly *who* denies this, and in what manner? It is
|> >precisely this dichotomy (in the form of observation statements
|> >vs. theoretical statements, for example) that the positivists are
|> >always getting thumped for. Their intellectual descendants (and
|> >those Vienna Circle guys still living) *still* endorse it -- as does
|> >any self-respecting empriicist. Can you give examples of this alleged
|> >denial?
|>
|> Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, and Joseph Margolis.
Oh, right! Sorry. I normally don't think of this bunch as exhausting
the arena of "contemporary philosophy".
|>
|> Would you kindly give examples of "those Vienna Circle guys still living"?
Did Hempel die?
Thomas Price
>|> denies the whole representation/external
>|> reality dichotomy; I think that the logics which Gary described do so and
>
>Say what?! Exactly *who* denies this, and in what manner? It is
>precisely this dichotomy (in the form of observation statements
>vs. theoretical statements, for example) that the positivists are
>always getting thumped for. Their intellectual descendants (and
>those Vienna Circle guys still living) *still* endorse it -- as does
>any self-respecting empriicist. Can you give examples of this alleged
>denial?
Um ... I recently had a brief email discussion with Jonathan Kastin, who
asserted that W.V.O. Quine, for one, takes a position denying the dichotomy
above. My blanket statement "Contemporary philosophy" was, of course, too
sweeping and I hurriedly retract it.
Jonathan, if you're reading this, may I suggest that you start a parallel
thread on "Internal/Exernal Dichotomy" -- I'd love to have your contributions
at this point but I'm in some danger of completely losing the train of
this thread.
Gary, let's try this: I say "_Some_ contemporary philosophers deny the
dichotomy etc." above, and my purpose in doing so is to admit that there is
an extant position from which all my talk of history before and after Kant
looks silly -- but this admission does not necessarily mean that my talk is
useless; I believe I adequately discussed this already. _Now_ what say you?
Is my talk meaningless in your eyes for completely other reasons? Or does the
mere existence of the position of which I allege Quine to hold torpedo me?
Mark Peterson
[...]
>>Vienna circle...
>
> Did Hempel die?
Gary --
Was Hempel one of the original Vienna Circle? Interesting.
mark
--
mark ce peterson | uw-washington county | hi...@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
dept of philosophy | west bend, wi. 53095 | (414) 335-5200
The shorter the tether, the sooner the goat starves.
ONSTOTT CHARLES OR
> In article <BsKFp...@unx.sas.com>
> sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Aug05.1...@cs.cmu.edu>,
>>tp...@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price) writes:
>
> TP:
>>>> There is of course a third category. Contemporary philosophy
>>>> denies the whole representation/external
>>>> reality dichotomy; I think that the logics which Gary described do so and
>
> GM:
>>Say what?! Exactly *who* denies this, and in what manner? It is
>
>
least the first two. Further, Heidegger could be thought of as the most
influencial philosopher of this century(although there are still 8 years
remaining--gives you some time eh Mikhail?). Also, you could add
any of the Heideggerians includding Paul Tillich(who was at Harvard)
and the still living Hubert Dreyfus(who is from there and is now at
Berkley).
AS for GM: The external-representational thesis has actually
undergone a lot of attack, and has been shown to be rather impotent.
It is a now dead theory, in my opinion, that is best left behind and
forgotten so that we might actually make some real philosophical
advances. Read Heidegger to find out why.
>
> cordially,
> mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
BCnya,
Charles O. Onstott, III
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles O. Onstott, III Account at Oklahoma State University for summer.
Graduate Student in Religious Studies ons...@a.cs.okstate.edu
University of Chicago
Sorry guys, no quote from C. G. Jung for now...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Zeleny
ons...@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR) writes:
>From article <1992Aug6.1...@husc3.harvard.edu>, by
>zel...@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny):
>> In article <BsKFp...@unx.sas.com>
>> sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
>>>In article <1992Aug05.1...@cs.cmu.edu>,
>>>tp...@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price) writes:
TP:
>>>>> There is of course a third category. Contemporary philosophy
>>>>> denies the whole representation/external
>>>>> reality dichotomy; I think that the logics which Gary described do so and
GM:
>>>Say what?! Exactly *who* denies this, and in what manner? It is
MZ:
>> Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, and Joseph Margolis.
CO:
> Uh, I think you forgot Martin Heidegger who, of course, influenced at
>least the first two. Further, Heidegger could be thought of as the most
>influencial philosopher of this century(although there are still 8 years
>remaining--gives you some time eh Mikhail?). Also, you could add
>any of the Heideggerians includding Paul Tillich(who was at Harvard)
>and the still living Hubert Dreyfus(who is from there and is now at
>Berkley).
I am sure that my uncle could be thought of as the most influential
philosopher of this century, too; it all depends on where you decide to
measure the influence. On a more universal conception of influence, you
might consider Russell, or, if you are not put off by chronological
details, Frege. Other candidates might include Cantor, Freud, Chomsky,
Husserl, Nietzsche (with the same qualification), Tarski, Austin, G\"odel,
and Wittgenstein, in no particular order; Heidegger would come in way
behind this crowd. In fact, in the philosophical circles with which I have
first-hand acquaintance, he has no influence whatsoever. Indeed, with the
current waning of interest in Heidegger's drivel among the politically
correct French intelligentsia, this may happily become true of all
philosophical circles.
CO:
> AS for GM: The external-representational thesis has actually
>undergone a lot of attack, and has been shown to be rather impotent.
>It is a now dead theory, in my opinion, that is best left behind and
>forgotten so that we might actually make some real philosophical
>advances. Read Heidegger to find out why.
Umm, right. Far be it from me to argue with a true believer.
>BCnya,
I doubt it.
> Charles O. Onstott, III
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Charles O. Onstott, III Account at Oklahoma State University for summer.
>Graduate Student in Religious Studies ons...@a.cs.okstate.edu
>University of Chicago
>
>
>Sorry guys, no quote from C. G. Jung for now...
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have fun in grad school.
cordially,
mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
"Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."
ken bell
>Subject: Re: Having to believe
>Later,
>Andrew Mullhaupt
I like the question, "Is truth good?" James conceived truth to be a
species of goodness in belief; truth for him was a kind of good-making
characteristic of beliefs. (That's my contribution to the thread on
pragmatism--not much, uh?)
I don't think the question, "Is truth good?" is flatly 'unintelligible.' It
is, however, susceptible of two interpretations, depending on one's moral
philosophy, the answer would appear to be No, not if you mean by 'good'
intrinsically good; and yes, if you don't mean it in that way. I take it
that only *a belief in the truth* could be of value in itself. Sidwick was
surely right about this. Only knowledge or true belief--states of mind--
can be good in themselves, because only *experiences* can have intrinsic
value. A truth which could not be believed or known by anyone (if that even
makes sense) would apparently be of no value whatever.
So perhaps the question should be interpreted as asking whether knowledge is
good? But the answer to that is clearly yes.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kenny Bell * Welcome to Mind Wars
Ericsson Network Systems, Inc * Abstract Arts BBS 386-7907
P.O. Box 833875 * Severity with oneself is heroism.
Richardson, TX 75083-3875 * --A.G.Sertillanges (France, 1943)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Merrill
|> > Uh, I think you forgot Martin Heidegger who, of course, influenced at
|> >least the first two. Further, Heidegger could be thought of as the most
|> >influencial philosopher of this century(although there are still 8 years
|> >remaining--gives you some time eh Mikhail?). Also, you could add
|> >any of the Heideggerians includding Paul Tillich(who was at Harvard)
|> >and the still living Hubert Dreyfus(who is from there and is now at
|> >Berkley).
|>
|> I am sure that my uncle could be thought of as the most influential
|> philosopher of this century, too; it all depends on where you decide to
|> measure the influence. On a more universal conception of influence, you
|> might consider Russell, or, if you are not put off by chronological
|> details, Frege. Other candidates might include Cantor, Freud, Chomsky,
|> Husserl, Nietzsche (with the same qualification), Tarski, Austin, G\"odel,
|> and Wittgenstein, in no particular order; Heidegger would come in way
|> behind this crowd. In fact, in the philosophical circles with which I have
|> first-hand acquaintance, he has no influence whatsoever. Indeed, with the
|> current waning of interest in Heidegger's drivel among the politically
|> correct French intelligentsia, this may happily become true of all
|> philosophical circles.
How very unkind, Mikhail, though one can hope. I am staggered that mention
has not been made of Marx, Sartre, Husserl, or Habermas. Maybe we should
vote. I think I'd vote for Russell, but possibly for Quine (voting for
Russell seems like cheating since there were so many of him). It might
be amusing to step back and attempt to enumerate the *criteria* one would
use in making such a decision. One could, for example, take "influence"
to mean something like "effect on the output of academic philosophers"
(imposing a metric involving footnote references, subjects of articles,
etc.?). In such a case I would expect Heidegger to be right up there
(along with a large number of others). Alternatively, one might take
"influence" to mean something like "having a practical effect on the
lives of normal people". In this case I think that Chomsky (and perhaps
Tarski and others) would head the list. More difficult to nail down
this criterion, but if you start with, say, Chomsky and Tarski, and
trace things through the history of programming languages and the likes
of von Neumann and Scott, you end up with quite a bit of influence.
|> CO:
|> > AS for GM: The external-representational thesis has actually
|> >undergone a lot of attack, and has been shown to be rather impotent.
|> >It is a now dead theory, in my opinion, that is best left behind and
|> >forgotten so that we might actually make some real philosophical
|> >advances. Read Heidegger to find out why.
If these advances occurred, it must have been when I wasn't watching
very closely.
|>
|> Umm, right. Far be it from me to argue with a true believer.
I don't think I care to do better than this.
Peter Cash
...[infinite regress of quotation deleted to avoid misattribution]
...
>>>|> Let me focus the issue into a single question: "Is truth good?".
>>>The question is at least too briefly put and, probably as a result of that,
>>>unintelligible. I am not being intentionally obtuse when I say that I
>>>really don't understand this question as it has been put.
Interesting and correct. But what makes the question unintelligible is not
so much brevity as the lack of any context. There is no hint as to what
kind of answer the questioner expects, no clue about what he means by
"good" or "truth".
>>The question is briefly put, but is it _too_ briefly put? It's not the
>>form of the question which is troublesome, since I could ask "Is sugar
>>sweet?" or "Is height purple?", etc., and I would expect that you could
>>deal with them.
No it's not the form--it's the lack of context. _Can_ I answer a question
like, "Is sugar sweet?". Probably, your first reaction to my reluctance is
that I'm being perverse--you think the question _can_ be answered, that it
is easy to answer. This is because you are--like all of us--ready to
_imagine_ a context for isolated questions and statements.
When we overhear something--for example, a phrase spoken with unusual
emphasis during an otherwise inaudible conversation--we _want_ to
understand it; therefore, we supply a context, a background against which
the phrase makes sense. Because we are all knowledgable about the
conventions and practices of our culture, because we are familiar with the
kinds of things that are commonly said, our guess is often correct.
When I hear talk about the sweetness of sugar, the context that occurs to
me immediately is the scientific story about the sense of taste. We've all
learned that our tongue has taste receptors on its surface, and that
different regions of our tongue are stimulated by various substances, and
thus give rise to the various kinds of taste. Sugar, for example,
stimulates those regions that make us say, "Mmmm...that's sweet."
So there is the _illusion_ that I can understand the question, "Is sugar
sweet?", because I tend to place it in the context of "scientific talk
about taste buds". Even given this context, the question is silly, of
course. But this imagined context gives us the impression that the silly
question is, at least, intelligible--that we know how to answer it. "Yes,
of course sugar is sweet. What a dumb question."
But is it really so? Do I know how to answer this question? It seems to me
that we tend to focus on our ability to understand isolated bits of
conversation, and forget how often we _misunderstand_ what is said when the
context is not clear. What if the question is part of a poem:
Why are roses red,
why is the violet blue,
why is sugar sweet
and why do I love you?
(Ok, ok, sorry--I'm not a poet. 8^)
Whatever the answer to the question in this doggerel might be, it's _not_
"because sugar stimulates certain taste organelles on your tongue..."
Usually, what is said has a context--it is part of a set of circumstances,
part of a story. And it is this context that allows us to understand what
is being said, or asked. One of the great sources of confusion in
philosophy has always been the tendency to cut language loose from its
moorings--to leave sentences to drift off into the vaporous atmosphere of
philosophical discourse, while pretending that we all know what is being
said. This may have negligible consequences when it is done with questions
like, "Is sugar sweet?", but does much damage when it comes to questions
about existence, truth, and goodness.
...
>I don't think the question, "Is truth good?" is flatly 'unintelligible.' It
>is, however, susceptible of two interpretations, depending on one's moral
>philosophy,
Only _two_ interperetations? Surely there are more!
...
>So perhaps the question should be interpreted as asking whether knowledge is
>good? But the answer to that is clearly yes.
So whenever someone can be said to "know" something, then this a good
thing? What about the thief who has come to know the combination to your
wall safe? Is it good that he knows this?
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist. |
Peter Cash | (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein) |ca...@convex.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anders G|ransson
cash> When I hear talk about the sweetness of sugar, the context that occurs to
cash>me immediately is the scientific story about the sense of taste. We've all
cash> learned that our tongue has taste receptors on its surface, and that
cash> different regions of our tongue are stimulated by various substances, and
cash> thus give rise to the various kinds of taste. Sugar, for example,
cash> stimulates those regions that make us say, "Mmmm...that's sweet."
Hello.
But how did we learn to go "Mmmm...that's sweet.". By the use of
sugar! This is, in my opinion, rather a case of a "grammatical
sentence" in the old witter language.
hot summer regards Anders
cash> --
cash> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
cash> | Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist. |
cash> Peter Cash | (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein) |ca...@convex.com
cash> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--
_____
"The fact that there seems to be a big gap in quality between
the works of Wittgenstein and most of his followers would
appear to indicate that there is much more to the method than
can be learnt from Wittgenstein's teaching"
Hao Wang in "From Mathematics to Philosophy".
ken bell
>From: ca...@convex.com (Peter Cash)
>Subject: Understanding out of context
>Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1992 17:51:01 GMT
No, I see your point. And I think what I meant was, that knowledge of
truth, not just truth itself (whatever that would be), could be (had the
potential of being, etc) good, not that it always and necessarily is good.
Hey, I was just trying to help clarify the question, though perhaps I was
supplying my own *backround context* for giving it sense.
Peter Cash
>> In article <1992Aug10.1...@news.eng.convex.com>, ca...@convex.com (Peter Cash) writes:
>
PC> me immediately is the scientific story about the sense of taste. We've all
PC> learned that our tongue has taste receptors on its surface, and that
PC> different regions of our tongue are stimulated by various substances, and
PC> thus give rise to the various kinds of taste. Sugar, for example,
PC> stimulates those regions that make us say, "Mmmm...that's sweet."
>But how did we learn to go "Mmmm...that's sweet.". By the use of
>sugar!
I wasn't trying to represent this "scientific account" as an explanation of
how such sentences get their meaning, or as a paradigm of how we come to
understand things that are said. I was suggesting that in a very special
kind of case--a case in which we hear a sentence like this out of
context--we are tempted to supply a context. And I was suggesting that this
is one context that _I_ am tempted to supply.
I certainly wasn't suggesting that we come to understand "That's sweet!" by
means of any such "scientific" account. Eating honey is certainly a more
reasonable "explanation" of _that_.
This topic of how, or in what sense, sentences heard (or read) outside of
any context make sense is a most interesting one to me. I suppose that
comes from my orientation as an ordinary language philosopher.
>This is, in my opinion, rather a case of a "grammatical
>sentence" in the old witter language.
And what did "Old Witters" mean by a "grammatical sentence"? How does it
differ from other kinds of sentences? Care to enlarge on this?
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist. |
Peter Cash | (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein) |ca...@convex.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Torkel Franzen
>But how did we learn to go "Mmmm...that's sweet.". By the use of
>sugar! This is, in my opinion, rather a case of a "grammatical
>sentence" in the old witter language.
I see that you haven't kept abreast of recent developments. Wittgen-
stein's literary executors have finally been forced to release certain
notes made by Wittgenstein in 1949 or 1950 - they have apparently
been know under the code name "the pink papers" - in which he states,
in effect, that "sugar is sweet" is a synthetic statement, and that
it is the task of philosophy to unearth such synthetic truths in
ordinary language. The executors have previously taken the view that
these notes belong to Wittgenstein's "pink" or insane period and
should be suppressed, but there was a leak.
Jason Pouflis
>I don't think the question, "Is truth good?" is flatly 'unintelligible.' It
>is, however, susceptible of two interpretations, depending on one's moral
>philosophy, the answer would appear to be No, not if you mean by 'good'
>intrinsically good; and yes, if you don't mean it in that way. I take it
>that only *a belief in the truth* could be of value in itself. Sidwick was
>surely right about this. Only knowledge or true belief--states of mind--
>can be good in themselves, because only *experiences* can have intrinsic
>value. A truth which could not be believed or known by anyone (if that even
>makes sense) would apparently be of no value whatever.
>So perhaps the question should be interpreted as asking whether knowledge is
>good? But the answer to that is clearly yes.
O I C now!
so "Is truth good?"
= "Is it beneficial to an entity to have correct information?"
where truth is correct information
and something is good if it benefits an entity.
?
Jason Pouflis.
Andrew Mullhaupt
>I certainly do *not* want to deny this, nor do other anti-realists with
>whom I am acquainted. Briefly put, the anti-realist does not deny that
>there is an independent objective reality but rather that we can have (or
>that it is even meaningful to talk about) a unique description of it.
I think that a problem for me here is the question of uniqueness up to
isomorphism. For the realist, I suppose, can consider that the reality
itself is the ultimate description. In other words the realist can save
his phenomenon by redefining the notion of description or theory. Perhaps
we should expect him to do this - on the grounds that if his notion of
description fails to conform to the fundamental reality, he _must_ revise it.
>To the anti-realist, since it is clear that there will be *many* non-
>isomorphic theories each of which describes the objective reality,
Is this a statement aimed at the slipperiness of reality or the imprecision
of theory? The former, I worry about, the latter, I probably accept.
>the
>realist's position is nonsense. Whatever criteria one uses for choosing
>among theories, truth cannot be the ultimate one (too many of the theories
>are true).
>
>If you take two of these non-isomorphic theories, there will be some
>area in which they differ, and there's your lack of objective reality.
It seems to me that there is a case where you can find agreement between
two non-isomorphic theories, i.e. where translation between the theories
is supported. So what goes wrong when you have a truth from one theory
in disagreement with the other, which can be put in some definite relation
with a truth which _is_ translatable? In the other theory, either this
definite relation fails to be so solid, or else truth gets bent sharply
toward inconsistency. In other words, people who like truth to have definite
coherence will (as far as I can tell) probably not accept both theories
as true.
>Let me try another tack. To deny an objective reality is to imply that
>*any* theory will do (or, let's say, any *consistent* theory). And we
>don't hold *that*.
That's not what I meant. To me, denying objective reality might imply only
that _no_ theory will do it all.
> Anti-realist: They *all* do, you twit! They differ from one another
> in the nooks and crannies, some may be easier to use
> than others, and so on, but they are all descriptively
> equivalent (since this is part of the criteria for
> theory acceptance).
But what prevents the realist from defining reality to be the 'equivalence
classes' formed by the relation of descriptive equivalence, and declaring
your many theories to be isomorphic as far as this reality is concerned?
I'm speculating that any obstacle you can throw in front of the realist
bent on this program would have to be one of two things. The first possibility
is that descriptive equivalence is far short of truth equivalence, and the
descriptive equivalence classes do violence to the notion of truth. Given
what you've said, I suppose this is not the roadblock of choice. The second
possibility is that the derived theory may appear to be more complex than
any of the original theories. But then what separates you from objective
reality is a matter of aesthetics. Is it possible that one of the many true
descriptions that the anti-realist accepts as true is the description of the
realist? (If you can't beat 'em, adjoin 'em...)
(Me)
>|> >|> Let me focus the issue into a single question: "Is truth good?".
>
>Yes, it is the form of the question that is problematic. Sugar, being
>a physical substance, has physical properties: sweetness, color, etc.
>What of truth?
Not so fast. As one who has gone on the record as rejecting the transcendent,
what is there _but_ physical properties? In other words, is there not a kind
of physicist's Godel numbers at work here? Why can't I define truth to be a
particular physical phenomenon? Does the message _necessarily_ extend beyond
the medium in which we find it? Admit this and the next thing we know you'll
be telling us that there's more to human life than chemistry.
>If I were to attempt to make sense of the "Is truth good?"
>question I would try rephrasings such as "Is everything that is true good?"
>(clearly not, and you can't mean this), "Is striving for the truth good?"
>(probably, but I don't think you mean this either). Perhaps I could begin
>to get a handle on this if you could give me some examples of properties
>that you feel truth *does* have.
Me? talk about truth? I though what I did in this group was to ask bendy
questions and try to elucidate multiple points of view. If I was an
anti-realist, maybe I would be talking about truth by doing this.
I asked the question to see what people would say. It was _your_ idea of
truth and goodness that I am hoping to explore. But since you asked, I'll
elucidate on truth from where I sit.
Truth is, after all good. It is good, since it can be used for good. Nothing
else can replace truth in its useful form. Nothing forces us to accept the
good of truth so well as the _bad_ that can only avoided by the use of truth.
The goodness of truth seems to be available even when truth is only present
in approximation, but we tend to find greater value in better approximations.
We cannot always know truth, especially since the more reliable identifications
of truth come from rigorous logical frameworks which can have definite
limitations or require intentional choices. Ideas of truth which evade these
difficulties tend to leave out important elements which unify our view of
different instances of truth.
Truth is frequently viewed as a Hellenic abstraction, but there are several
strong connections between truth and the physical world. The most obvious
(and perhaps least observed) aspect is that all known instances of truth
have been recorded in the physical world. Even truth in fiction or dreaming
seems to be the result of intentional or volative acts of physical beings.
The second important connection of truth to the physical world is the
apparent considerable success in the truthful description of the world. That
there are speculative physics based on alternative coherences than Aristotelian
logic reinforces this idea - when the truthful description of the world is
problematic, we seem committed to truth more than logic, or any other component
in the picture. A third connection is furnished by our understanding that
truth - in all the physical instances - is directly governed by specific laws
of nature which we think we understand. I have in mind here the information
theoretic interpretation of thermodynamics, and possibly some other things.
How's that for a start? My approach is essentially to view truth as a natural
phenomenon, (which includes the possibility that it is a human artifact). You
can argue that my conclusion that truth is good is susceptible to subversion
in various unpleasant cases. The same is true for water, e.g. you can drown
in it, but just try life without it.
Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Michael Zeleny
sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
>In article <1992Aug9.0...@husc3.harvard.edu>,
>zel...@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
CO:
>>>Uh, I think you forgot Martin Heidegger who, of course, influenced at
>>>least the first two. Further, Heidegger could be thought of as the most
>>>influencial philosopher of this century(although there are still 8 years
>>>remaining--gives you some time eh Mikhail?). Also, you could add
>>>any of the Heideggerians includding Paul Tillich(who was at Harvard)
>>>and the still living Hubert Dreyfus(who is from there and is now at
>>>Berkley).
MZ:
>>I am sure that my uncle could be thought of as the most influential
>>philosopher of this century, too; it all depends on where you decide to
>>measure the influence.
This statement has provoked some questions. To clarify: my uncle was a
very influential philosopher among the nurses of a certain Odessa Clinic
No.XXX, not to mention assorted neigborhood vodka drinkers and domino
players. I think he influenced my father, and through him, me. Then
again, his philosophy was expressed entirely as an oral teaching in the
vernacular, so it didn't get very far. He's retired now, but may still be
forthcoming with wise homilies on occasion.
MZ:
>> On a more universal conception of influence, you
>>might consider Russell, or, if you are not put off by chronological
>>details, Frege. Other candidates might include Cantor, Freud, Chomsky,
>>Husserl, Nietzsche (with the same qualification), Tarski, Austin, G\"odel,
>>and Wittgenstein, in no particular order; Heidegger would come in way
>>behind this crowd. In fact, in the philosophical circles with which I have
>>first-hand acquaintance, he has no influence whatsoever. Indeed, with the
>>current waning of interest in Heidegger's drivel among the politically
>>correct French intelligentsia, this may happily become true of all
>>philosophical circles.
GM:
>How very unkind, Mikhail, though one can hope. I am staggered that mention
>has not been made of Marx, Sartre, Husserl, or Habermas. Maybe we should
>vote. I think I'd vote for Russell, but possibly for Quine (voting for
>Russell seems like cheating since there were so many of him). It might
>be amusing to step back and attempt to enumerate the *criteria* one would
>use in making such a decision. One could, for example, take "influence"
>to mean something like "effect on the output of academic philosophers"
>(imposing a metric involving footnote references, subjects of articles,
>etc.?). In such a case I would expect Heidegger to be right up there
>(along with a large number of others). Alternatively, one might take
>"influence" to mean something like "having a practical effect on the
>lives of normal people". In this case I think that Chomsky (and perhaps
>Tarski and others) would head the list. More difficult to nail down
>this criterion, but if you start with, say, Chomsky and Tarski, and
>trace things through the history of programming languages and the likes
>of von Neumann and Scott, you end up with quite a bit of influence.
Certainly the influence of Marx has been very pervasive in this century;
however I included only those who have practiced philosophy during the said
period. Clearly, my examples do not distinguish between philosophy and
allied disciplines like mathematics, linguistics, or psychology, in which
one can make a philosophical contribution. Thus the presence of Frege,
Cantor, Russell, and Tarski, and G\"odel; however if you wish to add Quine,
I'll insist on placing him well after Church, who clearly surpasses him in
influence both as a teacher (compare Kleene, Rosser, Turing, Henkin, Davis,
and Scott to anyone Quine has ever produced; with the possible exception of
Putnam, not a single one among Quine's students comes close to them in
technical accomplishment) and as a theoretician: notably, of the three kind
of abstraction, viz. set-theoretic (Cantor), descriptive (Russell for
definite, and Hilbert for choice abstraction), and functional (Church)
discovered in this century, the latter may yet prove to be the most
fruitful. (The groundbreaking accomplishment of Moses Sch\"onfinkel should
certainly be acknowledged at the same time.) Quine's theoretical
influence, by contrast (I can almost hear Randall Holmes beginning to
steam), has been largely negative; by mentioning him, you are committing
yourself to the inclusion of such best-selling skeptics as Thomas Kuhn.
Likewise for G\"odel, who can be contrasted with Tarski as being mostly
responsible for remarkably important results and dazzlingly ingenious proof
techniques, rather than entire theoretical frameworks, exemplifying the
essence of the Platonistic approach to linguistic meaning. I am in no
position to judge the relative merits and the future promise of cylindric
algebras, as contrasted with their classic Boolean subsystems; likewise, I
am unable to pronounce on the philosophical import of the accomplishments
of MacLane and Grothendieck. Perhaps Colin McLarty could say something
about it.
As for linguistics, I would add the name of Jakobson to that of Chomsky.
In psychology, no one seems to come close to Freud; however in social
sciences Marx competes with Weber and Durkheim. Phenomenology would have
Heidegger trailing Husserl by quite a distance, separating the founder from
a mere epigone; as for the former's other philosophical accomplishments, I
place them in the same category as Hitler's triumphs in the area of race
relations. I've no idea as to what to do with Habermas, Derrida, Gadamer,
Levinas, and assorted lesser figures; in effect, I am happy to address them
indirectly, by concurring with Jules Vuillemin's observation:
"The whole of Anglo-Saxon philosophy has undergone Russell's influence, for
better or worse. This is, moreover, the only living philosophy. It is
sufficient praise of an author to state that a philosophy that ignores him
is a dead philosophy."
CO:
>>> AS for GM: The external-representational thesis has actually
>>>undergone a lot of attack, and has been shown to be rather impotent.
>>>It is a now dead theory, in my opinion, that is best left behind and
>>>forgotten so that we might actually make some real philosophical
>>>advances. Read Heidegger to find out why.
GM:
>If these advances occurred, it must have been when I wasn't watching
>very closely.
Charles must mean the ongoing relativist project to supplant the reigning
philosophical ideal of honest mathematical rigor with that of legalistic,
retro-flavored, sincere eristic bullshit, on which see another thread
in talk.philosophy.misc and elsewhere.
MZ:
>>Umm, right. Far be it from me to argue with a true believer.
GM:
>I don't think I care to do better than this.
Soit.
>--
>Gary H. Merrill [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
>SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC 27513 / (919) 677-8000
>sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
cordially,
mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
who will be in Paris two weeks from today!
Anders G|ransson
cash> Nntp-Posting-Host: zeppelin.convex.com
cash> X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
cash> Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
cash> not necessarily those of CONVEX.
cash> In article <1992Aug10....@sics.se> a...@sics.se (Anders G|ransson) writes:
>> In article <1992Aug10.1...@news.eng.convex.com>, ca...@convex.com (Peter Cash) writes:
ag> This is, in my opinion, rather a case of a "grammatical
ag> sentence" in the old witter language.
Apologuises for not supplying the proposition "Sugar is sweet"
which was the one I considered "grammatical" in W:s sense.
''PC> And what did "Old Witters" mean by a "grammatical sentence"? How does it
''PC> differ from other kinds of sentences? Care to enlarge on this?
What I had in mind was that the meaning of "sweet" is
established by the use of sugar, so "sweet" would be "the taste
sugar bring" so "Sugar is sweet" would be "sugar has the taste
sugar has" which would of course then be tautological and that
is what (I think) a "grammatical proposition" is.
(W mean something more than "tautological" with his
"grammatical propositions", as he replaced the old predicate
logic with his more inclusive notion "grammar" the corresponding
change from "tautological" to "grammatical" was perhaps
inevitable!!!...)
(In so far the meaning of "sweet" is established without sugar
this is of course wrong. But the question is not whether the
meaning of sweet can be established without sugar, but how
in actual fact (in a given society) it is established.)
The context for a proposition like "Sugar is sweet" is often
hard to find since everybody already knows that sugar is sweet.
If someone denies this we would immediately suspect the he entertains
different meaning of either "sugar" or "sweet" from us others.
The only real world context for "sugar is sweet" that occurs to
me is in a situation where someone receives training
in English.
best regards Anders
''PC> --
''PC> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
''PC> | Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist. |
''PC> Peter Cash | (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein) |ca...@convex.com
''PC> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--
_____ag
Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence.
(T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets)
Gary Merrill
|> >isomorphic theories each of which describes the objective reality,
|>
|> Is this a statement aimed at the slipperiness of reality or the imprecision
|> of theory? The former, I worry about, the latter, I probably accept.
The slipperiness of reality is not distinguishable from the imprecision
of theory.
|> >the
|> >realist's position is nonsense. Whatever criteria one uses for choosing
|> >among theories, truth cannot be the ultimate one (too many of the theories
|> >are true).
|> >
|> >If you take two of these non-isomorphic theories, there will be some
|> >area in which they differ, and there's your lack of objective reality.
|>
|> It seems to me that there is a case where you can find agreement between
|> two non-isomorphic theories, i.e. where translation between the theories
|> is supported. So what goes wrong when you have a truth from one theory
Agreement within a restricted domain, certainly.
|> in disagreement with the other, which can be put in some definite relation
|> with a truth which _is_ translatable? In the other theory, either this
|> definite relation fails to be so solid, or else truth gets bent sharply
|> toward inconsistency. In other words, people who like truth to have definite
|> coherence will (as far as I can tell) probably not accept both theories
|> as true.
I'm not sure what your point is here. The assumption about all these theories
is that they are "ideal" in the sense of satisfying *all* of our criteria for
theory acceptance -- in particular, that all of them save the phenomena. There
is *no*way*to*tell* which is true (assuming for a moment that *saying* one is
true and the other is not makes sense). The typical example here would be two
theories that are alike in their fundamental "observational" vocabulary, their
predictions, etc., but differ in their "theoretical" terms. Of course you would
not accept *both* theories as true, but the anti-realist position is that
*neither* is true -- and that this does not render either theory less acceptable.
The realist position is that *one* of the theories is true (or rather, that
*some* theory is true), but it is conceded that we *can't* know which one.
Even if we are willing to say that this position is coherent it certainly is rather
*empty* since you cannot sensibly go on to say that the goal of science is
construction of the (or a) *true* theory -- because we couldn't *know* it was
the right one even if we had it. We could not distinguish it from all the other
"ideal" theories.
|>
|> >Let me try another tack. To deny an objective reality is to imply that
|> >*any* theory will do (or, let's say, any *consistent* theory). And we
|> >don't hold *that*.
|>
|> That's not what I meant. To me, denying objective reality might imply only
|> that _no_ theory will do it all.
|>
|> > Anti-realist: They *all* do, you twit! They differ from one another
|> > in the nooks and crannies, some may be easier to use
|> > than others, and so on, but they are all descriptively
|> > equivalent (since this is part of the criteria for
|> > theory acceptance).
|>
|> But what prevents the realist from defining reality to be the 'equivalence
|> classes' formed by the relation of descriptive equivalence, and declaring
|> your many theories to be isomorphic as far as this reality is concerned?
This is fine, but it isn't *realsim* in the usual sense of this term since it
leaves out a certain portion of each theory (usually thought of as the "theoretical"
terms and the laws in which these appear). In fact, in any real theory, such
terms are so entwined in the theory that you wouldn't have much left over for
your equivalence classes. You are also then stuck with having to provide some
semantics for these terms and laws since you aren't interpreting them in the
usual denotational way (your reject Semantic Realism for this part of the theory).
So where do you go? Back to instrumentalism?
|> I'm speculating that any obstacle you can throw in front of the realist
|> bent on this program would have to be one of two things. The first possibility
|> is that descriptive equivalence is far short of truth equivalence, and the
|> descriptive equivalence classes do violence to the notion of truth. Given
|> what you've said, I suppose this is not the roadblock of choice. The second
|> possibility is that the derived theory may appear to be more complex than
|> any of the original theories. But then what separates you from objective
Without an example, I'm not sure what this would amount to.
|> reality is a matter of aesthetics. Is it possible that one of the many true
|> descriptions that the anti-realist accepts as true is the description of the
|> realist? (If you can't beat 'em, adjoin 'em...)
This is what the realist would have us believe. However, again, the point is
that it is useless to make such a claim. All of science and epistemology
proceeds quite smoothely without additonal claims that we ought to pursue
a "true" theory or that we would know one if we saw one.
|>
|> (Me)
|> >|> >|> Let me focus the issue into a single question: "Is truth good?".
|> >
|> >Yes, it is the form of the question that is problematic. Sugar, being
|> >a physical substance, has physical properties: sweetness, color, etc.
|> >What of truth?
|>
|> Not so fast. As one who has gone on the record as rejecting the transcendent,
|> what is there _but_ physical properties? In other words, is there not a kind
|> of physicist's Godel numbers at work here? Why can't I define truth to be a
|> particular physical phenomenon? Does the message _necessarily_ extend beyond
|> the medium in which we find it? Admit this and the next thing we know you'll
|> be telling us that there's more to human life than chemistry.
I object to the use of "truth" as though it were a mass noun such as "sugar".
Sugar is sweet. Sugar is white. Similar assertions involving truth are at
best shorthand or metaphorical. You still haven't given me any examples of
*other* properties that truth might have (except "good").
|> Truth is, after all good. It is good, since it can be used for good. Nothing
It can also be used for evil. Thus it is good and evil. Whoopee!
|> else can replace truth in its useful form. Nothing forces us to accept the
|> good of truth so well as the _bad_ that can only avoided by the use of truth.
|> The goodness of truth seems to be available even when truth is only present
|> in approximation, but we tend to find greater value in better approximations.
Your off the rails here, Andrew. Rein it in and get a grip. (This is not
bad as poetry. But as cognitive analysis it is bordering on the contentless.)
|> We cannot always know truth, especially since the more reliable identifications
|> of truth come from rigorous logical frameworks which can have definite
|> limitations or require intentional choices. Ideas of truth which evade these
|> difficulties tend to leave out important elements which unify our view of
|> different instances of truth.
|>
|> Truth is frequently viewed as a Hellenic abstraction, but there are several
|> strong connections between truth and the physical world. The most obvious
|> (and perhaps least observed) aspect is that all known instances of truth
|> have been recorded in the physical world. Even truth in fiction or dreaming
|> seems to be the result of intentional or volative acts of physical beings.
|> The second important connection of truth to the physical world is the
|> apparent considerable success in the truthful description of the world. That
|> there are speculative physics based on alternative coherences than Aristotelian
|> logic reinforces this idea - when the truthful description of the world is
|> problematic, we seem committed to truth more than logic, or any other component
|> in the picture. A third connection is furnished by our understanding that
|> truth - in all the physical instances - is directly governed by specific laws
|> of nature which we think we understand. I have in mind here the information
|> theoretic interpretation of thermodynamics, and possibly some other things.
|>
|> How's that for a start? My approach is essentially to view truth as a natural
|> phenomenon, (which includes the possibility that it is a human artifact). You
How utterly weird. You mean like a tornado?
Anders G|ransson
torkel>In article <1992Aug10....@sics.se> a...@sics.se (Anders G|ransson)
torkel>writes:
>But how did we learn to go "Mmmm...that's sweet.". By the use of
>sugar! This is, in my opinion, rather a case of a "grammatical
>sentence" in the old witter language.
torkel> I see that you haven't kept abreast of recent developments. Wittgen-
torkel> stein's literary executors have finally been forced to release certain
torkel> notes made by Wittgenstein in 1949 or 1950 - they have apparently
torkel> been know under the code name "the pink papers" - in which he states,
torkel> in effect, that "sugar is sweet" is a synthetic statement, and that
torkel> it is the task of philosophy to unearth such synthetic truths in
torkel> ordinary language. The executors have previously taken the view that
torkel> these notes belong to Wittgenstein's "pink" or insane period and
torkel> should be suppressed, but there was a leak.
I have always wondered why they suppressed this:
"If in the midst of life you are surrounded by death -
so in sanity you are surrounded by madness"
(Wittgenstein in earlier editions of "Remarks on..")
from later edition of "Remarks on the foundations..".
What you here disclose about W:s "pink" period might lead to
an explanation.
Michael Zeleny
mar...@grover.cs.unc.edu (Charles R. Martin) writes:
CRM:
>I dunno, MZ... the overwhelming importance of Goedel-Roesser and via
>them Turing on philosophy I think would be hard to overestimate. (I
>agree with you about Heidegger et al -- I suspect that by 2092 they'll
>be about as well known as the Thomists and neo-Platonists, but no longer
>an active influence.)
Let me begin that I am in no way interested in belittling the importance of
the incompleteness results, to which you are alluding. However, it is
quite clear to me that their philosophical influence is far inferior to
that of such disciplines as set theory, model theory, and \lambda-calculus.
As I said earlier, I am not qualified to pass judgment on the status of
categories, topoi, and cylindric algebras (I wish someone else would), but
my basic influence metric is founded on the premiss that positive
developments are far more important than limitative results. Of course, I
am open to any arguments to the contrary.
As for the active influence of the neo-Platonists and the Thomists,
methinks you underestimate it. Consider Plotinus' influence on the English
Romantics (e.g. Coleridge) and French Moderns (Baudelaire and Mallarm\'e),
whose historical importance for our time is really hard to overestimate,
and Aquinas' stature within the ideology of the Catholic Church, which is,
regrettably, still quite influential.
>--
>Charles R. Martin/(Charlie)/mar...@cs.unc.edu/(ne c...@cs.duke.edu)
>O/Dept. of Computer Science/CB #3175 UNC-CH/Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175
>H/3611 University Dr #13M/Durham, NC 27707/(919) 419 1754
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>"I am he who walks the States with a barb'd tongue, questioning every
>one I meet,/Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew
>before?/ Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your
>nonsense?" _Leaves of Grass_ xxiii.4.
cordially,
mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
Gary Merrill
In article <MARTINC.92...@grover.cs.unc.edu>, mar...@grover.cs.unc.edu (Charles R. Martin) writes:
|>
|> I dunno, MZ... the overwhelming importance of Goedel-Roesser and via
|> them Turing on philosophy I think would be hard to overestimate. (I
|> agree with you about Heidegger et al -- I suspect that by 2092 they'll
|> be about as well known as the Thomists and neo-Platonists, but no longer
|> an active influence.)
In general I agree. However, I think Michael's view of Quine's contributions
is less than accurate. (I will not debate the issue regarding students.)
It is, oddly enough, a view that I might well have agreed to until
recently when my participation in this group caused me to look back
over a number of papers and then further into Quine's autobiography
and contributions. Even if you restrict attention to the purely
technical contributions (in set theory, concatenation theory, etc.)
these are impressive. (I agree that it may be argued that the
contributions may not be as truly "foundational" as those of Tarski
et al., although I think a lot of the set theory stuff compares
favorably to contributions of Zermelo or von Neumann.) Add to this
the contributions in the areas of epistemology and philosophy of
language (which cannot be painted with the broad brush of "negative")
which one does not find in Tarski, Goedel, et al. and you begin
to see a philosopher much along the lines of Russell (minus any
moral philosophy which, in Russell's case, is probably best left
unanalyzed). Then there is the general area of metaphysics --
in which we must include not only the "negative" (but major)
contributions of such works as "Two Dogmas", "On What There Is",
complaints about modal logic, etc., but also the positive contributions
(sometimes with Goodman) in the area of nominalism.
In short, one tends to forget how much (and in how many areas) Quine
has done, and how much this has stood the test of time (however briefly
measured that may be at this point). In addition, unlike such
philosophers/logicians/mathematicians as Tarski and even Carnap, and
unlike such philosophers/non-logicians/non-mathematicians as
Heidegger, Sartre, et al., Quine's influence spans many diverse
"schools" of philosophy. Again, there are many reasonable criteria
one might choose to determine "influence" or "importance". While
I have usually favored the intuitions and approach of Tarski and
Carnap over Quine, I think it must be conceded that the influence
of Quine has, and will continue to be, substantial.
(I detest this talk of "influence", by the way. It is usually
done completely in the absence of any clearly stated criteria,
and it is never clear to me what the point is of attempting to
establish that A had more "influence" than B. Having participated
in it even to the degree that I have above, I feel somehow "unclean".
I'm done with it.)
Peter Cash
> >>>>> In article <1992Aug10.2...@news.eng.convex.com>, ca...@convex.com (Peter Cash) writes:
>''PC> And what did "Old Witters" mean by a "grammatical sentence"? How does it
>''PC> differ from other kinds of sentences? Care to enlarge on this?
>What I had in mind was that the meaning of "sweet" is
>established by the use of sugar, so "sweet" would be "the taste
>sugar bring" so "Sugar is sweet" would be "sugar has the taste
>sugar has" which would of course then be tautological and that
>is what (I think) a "grammatical proposition" is.
I think you are tempted to make this characterization ("tautologous" or
"grammatical") because you are not thinking about any particular use for
the sentence "Sugar is sweet".
>(In so far the meaning of "sweet" is established without sugar
>this is of course wrong. But the question is not whether the
>meaning of sweet can be established without sugar, but how
>in actual fact (in a given society) it is established.)
>The context for a proposition like "Sugar is sweet" is often
>hard to find since everybody already knows that sugar is sweet.
>If someone denies this we would immediately suspect the he entertains
>different meaning of either "sugar" or "sweet" from us others.
Not necessarily. Perhaps he has suffered a brain injury: "Ever since the
accident, everything is turned upside down for me. Sugar is not sweet.
Violets smell like onions." Perhaps this unfortunate victim tastes sugar
from time to time, to see if it is, perhaps, sweet.
Yes, I suppose sugar tastes like sugar. To most of us, most of the time. But
I can think of contexts in which it might be informative to say, "Sugar
tastes sweet!" or "Sugar just doesn't taste like sugar." So is it ever
correct to say that some sentences are _necessarily_ tautologous? How can I
tell if they are tautologous or not--unless I know the context in which
they are used?
What can I tell about a sentence that has no context? Once again, I pick a
fluttering piece of paper out of the air. On it is scrawled, "The better
man flies the rake." What can I say about this? Well, it's a grammatically
correct sentence in the English language, isn't it? Sure: it has a subject
and a verb, and the verb has an object. I think...if the words mean what I
think they mean. If it's not a sentence in some language I don't know, a
sentence where all the words just happen to look like English words that
mean something totally different.
So I can't even say whether it's a grammatically correct English sentence.
Can I tell what it means? Whether it's tautologous or not? I don't think
so. I can think of _possibilities_, yes; but I can't say anything for sure.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist. |
Peter Cash | (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein) |ca...@convex.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Heiner Biesel
>In article <MARTINC.92...@grover.cs.unc.edu>
>mar...@grover.cs.unc.edu (Charles R. Martin) writes:
>CRM:
>>I dunno, MZ... the overwhelming importance of Goedel-Roesser and via
>>them Turing on philosophy I think would be hard to overestimate. (I
>>agree with you about Heidegger et al -- I suspect that by 2092 they'll
>>be about as well known as the Thomists and neo-Platonists, but no longer
>>an active influence.)
>Let me begin that I am in no way interested in belittling the importance of
>the incompleteness results, to which you are alluding. However, it is
>quite clear to me that their philosophical influence is far inferior to
>that of such disciplines as set theory, model theory, and \lambda-calculus.
>As I said earlier, I am not qualified to pass judgment on the status of
>categories, topoi, and cylindric algebras (I wish someone else would), but
>my basic influence metric is founded on the premiss that positive
>developments are far more important than limitative results. Of course, I
>am open to any arguments to the contrary.
In a strict interpretation Goedel's results could be said to be limitative.
However, the implications of that limitation are, as you pointed out earlier,
profound, at least for mathematics. As for limitative results in general, I'm
of the opinion that limits tell us more about reality than proofs of
existence. They structure things wonderfully, channel our inquiries into
productive areas, produce order where there was only chaos.
Since this thread deals with philosophical influence, loosely defined,
I am somewhat surprised that no-one has as yet mentioned the impact of
quantum theory. Our notions of causality, continuity, simultaneity are
being profoundly affected by the implications of quantum chromodynamics.
Of course, it may well be that this impact had not yet been felt by the
proverbial "man in the street", but philosophers and physicists have to
grapple with it.
Regards,
H. Biesel
thomasc
>
>I dunno, MZ... the overwhelming importance of Goedel-Roesser and via
>them Turing on philosophy I think would be hard to overestimate. (I
>agree with you about Heidegger et al -- I suspect that by 2092 they'll
>be about as well known as the Thomists and neo-Platonists, but no longer
>an active influence.)
Get this crap off of sci.math and back onto sci.philosophy.analytic.only.because.phenomonologists.have.the.cooties where it belongs!
-Thomas C
Torkel Franzen
com (Heiner Biesel) writes:
>In a strict interpretation Goedel's results could be said to be limitative.
Which of Godel's results do you have in mind? Not, I suspect, the
completeness theorem for first order logic, lately mangled in the group.
The incompleteness theorems? His work in set theory? The Dialectica
interpretation?
Torkel Franzen
(Peter Cash) writes:
[About "the better man flies the rake":]
>So I can't even say whether it's a grammatically correct English sentence.
>Can I tell what it means? Whether it's tautologous or not? I don't think
>so. I can think of _possibilities_, yes; but I can't say anything for sure.
I guess this is a test? Some statements have meaning in a very large
context, and "the better man flies the rake" is one of them. I'm sure
you would recognize this statement, even if it came fluttering out of
the sky, as one of Wittgenstein's most famous aphorisms. Of course, we
may still ask ourselves what Wittgenstein meant by it.
(For those who are not witterheads: Wittgenstein cryptically states,
in his Englische Bemerkungen, "The good man rides the flake, but the
better man flies the rake.")
Torkel Franzen
FI (Marko Amnell) writes:
>I don't know
>about influence, but to me the greatest philosopher of the century was
>Frank Ramsey.
Ramsey was a remarkable person to be sure, but your evaluation of his
philosophical work is highly eccentric. Could you explain your attitude
further?
>This is a test to see if I can post more successfully than my previous
>embarrassing attempt.
Your article here arrived with a senseless "Followup-To: %r" line.
Marko Amnell
>In article <MARTINC.92...@grover.cs.unc.edu>
>mar...@grover.cs.unc.edu (Charles R. Martin) writes:
>
>CRM:
>>I dunno, MZ... the overwhelming importance of Goedel-Roesser and via
>>them Turing on philosophy I think would be hard to overestimate. (I
>>agree with you about Heidegger et al -- I suspect that by 2092 they'll
>>be about as well known as the Thomists and neo-Platonists, but no longer
>>an active influence.)
>
>Let me begin that I am in no way interested in belittling the importance of
>the incompleteness results, to which you are alluding. However, it is
>quite clear to me that their philosophical influence is far inferior to
>that of such disciplines as set theory, model theory, and \lambda-calculus.
This is a test to see if I can post more successfully than my previous
embarrassing attempt. Your allusion to lambda-calculus caught my eye
since I'm reading an unpublished paper my Thomas Forster right now in
which he shows that certain permutation models of NF preserve the
well-typed formulae of lambda-calculus. This backs up Gary Merrill's
assertion about the importance of Quine's work in logic. I don't know
about influence, but to me the greatest philosopher of the century was
Frank Ramsey.
Marko Amnell
Marko Amnell
>In article <1992Aug13.0...@klaava.Helsinki.FI> amn...@klaava.Helsinki.
>FI (Marko Amnell) writes:
>
> >I don't know
> >about influence, but to me the greatest philosopher of the century was
> >Frank Ramsey.
>
> Ramsey was a remarkable person to be sure, but your evaluation of his
>philosophical work is highly eccentric. Could you explain your attitude
>further?
I'm not alone in thinking highly of Ramsey's philosophical writings.
Hugh Mellor's blurb to Ramsey's _Philosophical Papers_ reads
"Frank Ramsey was the greatest of the remarkable generation of Cambridge
philosophers and logicians which included G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell,
Ludwig Wittgenstein and Maynard Keynes." So if my elevating Ramsey
above Russell and Wittgenstein (who Hilary Putnam, eg., says are "in a
class of their own" in 20th century philosophy) qualifies me as
"highly eccentric" then so be it (it wouldn't be the first time...).
I like Ramsey because like Peirce he is highly original and clear.
But let's not continue with this "who's the greatest of them all"
silliness further (I already regret joining the fray).
>
> >This is a test to see if I can post more successfully than my previous
> >embarrassing attempt.
>
> Your article here arrived with a senseless "Followup-To: %r" line.
Yeah, I know. I'm trying to learn how to use these darn % things.
Marko Amnell
Mark Peterson
> zel...@husc8.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>
>>In article <MARTINC.92...@grover.cs.unc.edu>
>>mar...@grover.cs.unc.edu (Charles R. Martin) writes:
>
>>CRM:
>>>I dunno, MZ... the overwhelming importance of Goedel-Roesser and via
>>>them Turing on philosophy I think would be hard to overestimate. (I
>>>agree with you about Heidegger et al -- I suspect that by 2092 they'll
>>>be about as well known as the Thomists and neo-Platonists, but no longer
>>>an active influence.)
>
>>Let me begin that I am in no way interested in belittling the importance of
>>the incompleteness results, to which you are alluding. However, it is
>>quite clear to me that their philosophical influence is far inferior to
[...]
etc....
This got me to thinking... I would have said Nietzsche was the major
philosopher of the 20th century. Or maybe Henry Ford.
But more to the point....
It's interesting to remember that back around, oh, 1795 to maybe 1817,
Fichte was thought to be considerably more important than Kant and for
a while there Immanuel was all but forgotten. I just *know* that more
of you have read Science of Knowledge than Critique of Pure Reason....;-)
In any case, this is what I think of every time I hear (or see, I
guess) these discussions. It would be interesting if, in 2092, it was
Jacques Ellul and Levinas that are remembered from the 20th century.
Or one of y'all... hmm.
hiho
--
mark ce peterson | uw-washington county | hi...@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
dept of philosophy | west bend, wi. 53095 | (414) 335-5200
The shorter the tether, the sooner the goat starves.
Torkel Franzen
.FI (Marko Amnell) writes:
>But let's not continue with this "who's the greatest of them all"
>silliness further (I already regret joining the fray).
I care nothing about "greatest of them all" blather. I'm just curious.
What philosophical work, ideas, conclusions, theories, whatever, of Ramsey's
prompt you to regard him as the greatest philosopher of the century? Or,
if you like, forget about the greatest philosopher bit, and let's just
consider Ramsey.
Marko Amnell
>In article <1992Aug13.1...@klaava.Helsinki.FI> amn...@klaava.Helsinki
>.FI (Marko Amnell) writes:
>
> >But let's not continue with this "who's the greatest of them all"
> >silliness further (I already regret joining the fray).
>
> I care nothing about "greatest of them all" blather. I'm just curious.
>What philosophical work, ideas, conclusions, theories, whatever, of Ramsey's
>prompt you to regard him as the greatest philosopher of the century?
The whole of his corpus. So I don't care what anyone says, Ramsey's
still a big man in my book ...well over 17 stone they said...
Marko
Torkel Franzen
FI (Marko Amnell) writes:
>The whole of his corpus. So I don't care what anyone says, Ramsey's
>still a big man in my book ...well over 17 stone they said...
Yes, but Ramsey himself (polemicizing against awe before the vastness of
the universe) claimed not to be impressed by his own size.
Randall Holmes
>In article <Bsrsz...@unx.sas.com>
>sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Aug9.0...@husc3.harvard.edu>,
>>zel...@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>certainly be acknowledged at the same time.) Quine's theoretical
>influence, by contrast (I can almost hear Randall Holmes beginning to
>steam), has been largely negative; by mentioning him, you are committing
>yourself to the inclusion of such best-selling skeptics as Thomas
Kuhn.
I was relaxing and enjoying the demolition of the person with the
interesting definition of "contemporary philosophy", and felt that
joining in would be excessive, but now I guess I MUST say something.
You should all be aware that I am NOT a philosophical disciple of
Quine. I am a mathematician who happens to work on a set theory which
Quine defined. At the time I started working on NF, I thought that
Quine was a nominalist (and so, of course, anathema); since then, I
have discovered that his philosophical views are similar to mine in
some ways. But my views are independent of his; perhaps you sense the
common influence of my actual philosophical mentor, Bertrand Russell
(my views are not very similar to his, but neither were his various
schemes to each other, as someone just pointed out). I just read
_Word and Object_ and some volumes of Quine's essays for the first
time a few weeks ago!
[...]
>"The whole of Anglo-Saxon philosophy has undergone Russell's influence, for
>better or worse. This is, moreover, the only living philosophy. It is
>sufficient praise of an author to state that a philosophy that ignores him
>is a dead philosophy."
I'm just another example of this phenomenon, not the local Quinean.
>
>CO: (Charles Onstott)
>>>> AS for GM: The external-representational thesis has actually
>>>>undergone a lot of attack, and has been shown to be rather impotent.
>>>>It is a now dead theory, in my opinion, that is best left behind and
>>>>forgotten so that we might actually make some real philosophical
>>>>advances. Read Heidegger to find out why.
>
>GM:
>>If these advances occurred, it must have been when I wasn't watching
>>very closely.
I couldn't say it better...
>>Gary H. Merrill [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
>>SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC 27513 / (919) 677-8000
>>sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
>
>cordially,
>mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
>who will be in Paris two weeks from today!
Watch out; that's a _bad_ neighborhood. Au revoir, et bonne chance!
>"Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."
--
The opinions expressed | --Sincerely,
above are not the "official" | M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person | Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution. | hol...@opal.idbsu.edu
Randall Holmes
>
>In article <MARTINC.92...@grover.cs.unc.edu>, mar...@grover.cs.unc.edu (Charles R. Martin) writes:
>|>
>|> I dunno, MZ... the overwhelming importance of Goedel-Roesser and via
>|> them Turing on philosophy I think would be hard to overestimate. (I
>|> agree with you about Heidegger et al -- I suspect that by 2092 they'll
>|> be about as well known as the Thomists and neo-Platonists, but no longer
>|> an active influence.)
I hope so.
>
>In general I agree. However, I think Michael's view of Quine's contributions
>is less than accurate. (I will not debate the issue regarding students.)
>It is, oddly enough, a view that I might well have agreed to until
>recently when my participation in this group caused me to look back
>over a number of papers and then further into Quine's autobiography
>and contributions.
I agree.
Even if you restrict attention to the purely
>technical contributions (in set theory, concatenation theory, etc.)
>these are impressive. (I agree that it may be argued that the
>contributions may not be as truly "foundational" as those of Tarski
>et al., although I think a lot of the set theory stuff compares
>favorably to contributions of Zermelo or von Neumann.)
Quine's contribution is considerable; I knew him as a significant
figure without knowing much about his philosophy at all.
Add to this
>the contributions in the areas of epistemology and philosophy of
>language (which cannot be painted with the broad brush of "negative")
>which one does not find in Tarski, Goedel, et al. and you begin
>to see a philosopher much along the lines of Russell (minus any
>moral philosophy which, in Russell's case, is probably best left
>unanalyzed).
I was feeling insecure about my attributing my own sympathy with Quine
to a common inheritance from Russell; it's nice to see corroboration
for this. Quine is quite explicit somewhere about not wanting to
enter the lists of moral philosophy.
Then there is the general area of metaphysics --
>in which we must include not only the "negative" (but major)
>contributions of such works as "Two Dogmas", "On What There Is",
>complaints about modal logic, etc., but also the positive contributions
>(sometimes with Goodman) in the area of nominalism.
>
>In short, one tends to forget how much (and in how many areas) Quine
>has done, and how much this has stood the test of time (however briefly
>measured that may be at this point). In addition, unlike such
>philosophers/logicians/mathematicians as Tarski and even Carnap, and
>unlike such philosophers/non-logicians/non-mathematicians as
>Heidegger, Sartre, et al., Quine's influence spans many diverse
>"schools" of philosophy. Again, there are many reasonable criteria
>one might choose to determine "influence" or "importance". While
>I have usually favored the intuitions and approach of Tarski and
>Carnap over Quine, I think it must be conceded that the influence
>of Quine has, and will continue to be, substantial.
Is anyone listening who is familiar with the artificial language
Loglan, or its cousin Lojban? This language is one of the more
surprising offshoots of Quine's philosophy; it can be described as
having actually implemented the philosophical grammar which Quine
builds in _Word and Object_ (although the person who did the
grammatical work tells me that he laid the groundwork before W&O came
out, and it is, again, a matter of common influences).
>
>(I detest this talk of "influence", by the way. It is usually
>done completely in the absence of any clearly stated criteria,
>and it is never clear to me what the point is of attempting to
>establish that A had more "influence" than B. Having participated
>in it even to the degree that I have above, I feel somehow "unclean".
>I'm done with it.)
It doesn't matter who influences you or whom you influence; is what
you say true? It all comes back to this...
>
>
>--
>Gary H. Merrill [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
>SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC 27513 / (919) 677-8000
>sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
ONSTOTT CHARLES OR
> In article <Bsrsz...@unx.sas.com>
> sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Aug9.0...@husc3.harvard.edu>,
>>zel...@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
MZ:
>
> very influential philosopher among the nurses of a certain Odessa Clinic
> No.XXX, not to mention assorted neigborhood vodka drinkers and domino
> players. I think he influenced my father, and through him, me. Then
> again, his philosophy was expressed entirely as an oral teaching in the
> vernacular, so it didn't get very far. He's retired now, but may still be
> forthcoming with wise homilies on occasion.
>
CO:
Quite interesting, really.
> MZ:
[Long list of mathematical philosophers along with Marx not categorized
as such.]
Well, you do work in mathematics don't you. Although I had already
stated that he could be "thought of" as the most influential, not intendting
do tread on anyones toes, I think in terms of philosophical publishing
we find his name most frequently. In terms of deliniating the philosophy
of mathematics and mathmatics itself, we run into a bit of a problem.
But there are clearly those who insist that math is philosophy, or
ought to replace it, and those who view math as a branch of philosophy
and as such probably do not find, as Heidegger clearly doesn't, that it
answers any of the classical philosophical questions. Since, of course,
in Sein Und Zeit, Heidegger is concerned with classical philosophical
questions, I do not find that many of your mathematicians apply.>
MZ:
> In psychology, no one seems to come close to Freud; however in social
I think here you will find that Carl G. Jung comes quite close to
Freud, in particular in recent years.
Phenomenology would have
> Heidegger trailing Husserl by quite a distance, separating the founder from
> a mere epigone; as for the former's other philosophical accomplishments, I
> place them in the same category as Hitler's triumphs in the area of race
> relations.
Ah-ha, I now get the impression that you haven't read much of
Heidegger, OR, you have read Derrida's De L'espirit. The statement
of Heidegger and Hitler is completely unjustifiable. Perhaps you should
study the history of Heidegger's relationship with the Nazi's(and his
later withdrawl over the defense of Husserl, a jew) before vous bandez.
Further, you might actually take a look at his concept of
At-Homeness readily understandable from a first reading of Poetry, Language
and Thought.
MZ:
>Jules Vuillemin's observation:
>
> "The whole of Anglo-Saxon philosophy has undergone Russell's influence, for
> better or worse. This is, moreover, the only living philosophy. It is
> sufficient praise of an author to state that a philosophy that ignores him
> is a dead philosophy."
>
In American philosophy, unfortunately, we find that this statement is
rather justifiable for there exists a large group of people still
caught up in this representational crap. Of course, we found that
AI, founded on such ideas, (and here I mean the logic-based AI tradition),
failed miserably in terms of explaining how humans think.
NOw, you can either claim that we are detached and
distanced from the world by means of a representation, or you can
look to the other side and see how we are so involved in the world
thanks to the function of the sign. On this, you might find the
neuro-physiological theories of Humberto Maturana quite interesting.
MZ:>
> Charles must mean the ongoing relativist project to supplant the reigning
> philosophical ideal of honest mathematical rigor with that of legalistic,
> retro-flavored, sincere eristic bullshit, on which see another thread
> in talk.philosophy.misc and elsewhere.
>
Nothing could be farther from the truth. But alas, I don't feel that
you understand Heidegger very well and as such don't feel compelled to
explain him to you. Of course, I don't believe in the ideal that
honest mathematical rigor will solve the most basic philosophical
question ever posed -- "what is?" Math presupposes that fundamental
question and as such, fails to answer it. This does not mean, however,
that math is not useful--but in so far as my concern it is not.. Which
leads us back to the issue of Heidegger's influence on philosophy.....
> MZ:
>>>Umm, right. Far be it from me to argue with a true believer.
>
> GM:
>>I don't think I care to do better than this.
>
MZ:
> Soit.
CO: Oui, Soit.
>
>>--
> mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
> who will be in Paris two weeks from today!
Ah, now he is trying to make me jealous. First he argues with me,
then he pulls this one--really below the belt Mikhail. I was
supposed to be in Bretagne for this month...
> "Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."i
C'est ca vrai et tres evidement.
BCNya,
Charles O. Onstott, III
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles O. Onstott, III Account at Oklahoma State University for summer.
Graduate Student in Religious Studies ons...@a.cs.okstate.edu
University of Chicago
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Zeleny
hi...@csd4.csd.uwm.edu writes:
>> zel...@husc8.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>>>mar...@grover.cs.unc.edu (Charles R. Martin) writes:
CRM:
>>>>I dunno, MZ... the overwhelming importance of Goedel-Roesser and via
>>>>them Turing on philosophy I think would be hard to overestimate. (I
>>>>agree with you about Heidegger et al -- I suspect that by 2092 they'll
>>>>be about as well known as the Thomists and neo-Platonists, but no longer
>>>>an active influence.)
MZ:
>>>Let me begin that I am in no way interested in belittling the importance of
>>>the incompleteness results, to which you are alluding. However, it is
>>>quite clear to me that their philosophical influence is far inferior to
MP:
>[...]
>
>etc....
>
>
>This got me to thinking... I would have said Nietzsche was the major
>philosopher of the 20th century. Or maybe Henry Ford.
They are both right up there, though Ford's contribution would be better
represented by Taylor.
MP:
>But more to the point....
>
>It's interesting to remember that back around, oh, 1795 to maybe 1817,
>Fichte was thought to be considerably more important than Kant and for
>a while there Immanuel was all but forgotten. I just *know* that more
>of you have read Science of Knowledge than Critique of Pure Reason....;-)
"All but" is quite right; Immanuel seems to have been second only to
Jean-Jacques among certain radical elements of the period. In any case, I
do not propose to concern this discussion with questions of popularity.
Some value judgments just don't have any factual content, don't you agree?
MP:
>In any case, this is what I think of every time I hear (or see, I
>guess) these discussions. It would be interesting if, in 2092, it was
>Jacques Ellul and Levinas that are remembered from the 20th century.
>Or one of y'all... hmm.
Interesting indeed. However, if you are prepared to accept this
possibility, I would like to hear more about your reasons. By the way, I
am glad to see that you haven't joined the crowd in dismissing this subject
as philosophically unimportant, if not outright frivolous. Contrary to the
heartfelt prejudice of certain philosophasters, I regard the history of
philosophy, up to and including the present moment, as inseparable from
philosophy itself. Naturally, questions of influence are of paramount
importance for any historical enterprise.
>hiho
>--
>mark ce peterson | uw-washington county | hi...@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
>dept of philosophy | west bend, wi. 53095 | (414) 335-5200
>
> The shorter the tether, the sooner the goat starves.
cordially,
mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
Mark Peterson
> MP:
>>But more to the point....
>>
>>It's interesting to remember that back around, oh, 1795 to maybe 1817,
>>Fichte was thought to be considerably more important than Kant and for
>>a while there Immanuel was all but forgotten. I just *know* that more
>>of you have read Science of Knowledge than Critique of Pure Reason....;-)
>
> "All but" is quite right; Immanuel seems to have been second only to
> Jean-Jacques among certain radical elements of the period. In any case, I
> do not propose to concern this discussion with questions of popularity.
> Some value judgments just don't have any factual content, don't you agree?
Fact/value dichotomies? You can say this to somebody who works in
Hegel? ;-)
But... this *is* a discussion about popularity. The thread has
bantered about who has had the most influence on 20th century
philosophy and who from the 20th century will be seen to have had the
most influence. I don't think we'll know until it's over. And any
judgment ahead of this must depend on popularity. Despite the fact
that I work with Hegel I am willing to concede that history hasn't
ended just yet.
And what would 'influence' mean? Number of footnote citations or
articles generated? Fichte was all the rage, but I'd be willing to
argue that Kant -- probably -- had more influence on philosophy.
--although not where the 18th century was concerned. At that time any
philosopher with any brains at all would have pointed out that Kant
was interesting, but passe. I mean, why deduce transcendental
categories when you have identity philosophy and <gasp> dialectic?
Anyways, short form: 'most influence' means 'most influence on my work'
means 'who I like the most' means 'who I find the easiest to
understand.'
[geez, pretty cynical today....]
Today you still hear the experts talk about who's passe and who isn't.
But as far as I can tell, 19th century continental went into the bin
because the British couldn't translate German very well, and
existentialism has followed largely because the deconstructionists
couldn't read Danish. ;-)
[ignore that, I'm just in a mood...]
> MP:
>>In any case, this is what I think of every time I hear (or see, I
>>guess) these discussions. It would be interesting if, in 2092, it was
>>Jacques Ellul and Levinas that are remembered from the 20th century.
>>Or one of y'all... hmm.
>
> Interesting indeed. However, if you are prepared to accept this
> possibility, I would like to hear more about your reasons. By the way, I
> am glad to see that you haven't joined the crowd in dismissing this subject
> as philosophically unimportant, if not outright frivolous. Contrary to the
> heartfelt prejudice of certain philosophasters, I regard the history of
> philosophy, up to and including the present moment, as inseparable from
> philosophy itself. Naturally, questions of influence are of paramount
> importance for any historical enterprise.
My lord, something we agree on? Maybe I'm wrong then. -)
Nah, you're right. But when does a recent something count as
'history'? Thorny, but my own sense is that you have to wait more
than a few years to determine what someone's influence is going to be
over the long term. Short term influence does come down, I think, to
popularity. Levinas is not all that popular right now. Set theory
and analytic philosophy is.
[You know, I gave a paper this summer to an international gorilla
workshop (yes, really...) on eco-terrorism and the ethics of
extinction that was pretty popular.... hmm.]
Following influence through the history of the discipline is useful,
mostly, as an aid to understanding why someone wrote as they did, and
thus getting a handle on just what they meant. I couldn't have
understood Hegel without knowing something about Kant, or Heidegger
without Nietzsche, or Ian Hacking without some Popper, or a host of
Anglo-Americans without some Russell or Lewis. So where does that
leave us?
Michael Zeleny
In article <1992Aug14.0...@a.cs.okstate.edu>
ons...@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR) writes:
>From article <1992Aug11.1...@husc3.harvard.edu>, by
>zel...@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny):
>>In article <Bsrsz...@unx.sas.com>
>>sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
>>>In article <1992Aug9.0...@husc3.harvard.edu>,
>>>zel...@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
MZ:
> [Long list of mathematical philosophers along with Marx not categorized
>as such.]
COO:
> Well, you do work in mathematics don't you.
Not by any stretch of the imagination.
COO:
> Although I had already
>stated that he could be "thought of" as the most influential, not intendting
>do tread on anyones toes, I think in terms of philosophical publishing
>we find his name most frequently.
I challenge you to corroborate this claim with references to, say, the
Philosophical Index. You know how to do research, don't you?
COO:
> In terms of deliniating the philosophy
>of mathematics and mathmatics itself, we run into a bit of a problem.
>But there are clearly those who insist that math is philosophy, or
>ought to replace it, and those who view math as a branch of philosophy
>and as such probably do not find, as Heidegger clearly doesn't, that it
>answers any of the classical philosophical questions. Since, of course,
>in Sein Und Zeit, Heidegger is concerned with classical philosophical
>questions, I do not find that many of your mathematicians apply.
I find the question of the nature of meaning to be the second most
important classical philosophical question, the first being that of the
structure of reality. The contributions of Frege, Russell, Cantor, Tarski,
Church, et al. to one or both of them, as the case may be, could hardly be
overestimated.
MZ:
>>In psychology, no one seems to come close to Freud; however in social
COO:
> I think here you will find that Carl G. Jung comes quite close to
>Freud, in particular in recent years.
To be consistently unkind, I think that the above will hold for you only if
you either watch a lot of television, or have a preference for Aryan
psychoanalysis over the pernicious Jewish kind. (Check out Jung's
occupation during the ascendancy of the Third Reich, if you have any
lingering questions about that last one.)
MZ:
>> Phenomenology would have
>>Heidegger trailing Husserl by quite a distance, separating the founder from
>>a mere epigone; as for the former's other philosophical accomplishments, I
>>place them in the same category as Hitler's triumphs in the area of race
>>relations.
COO:
> Ah-ha, I now get the impression that you haven't read much of
>Heidegger, OR, you have read Derrida's De L'espirit. The statement
>of Heidegger and Hitler is completely unjustifiable. Perhaps you should
>study the history of Heidegger's relationship with the Nazi's(and his
>later withdrawl over the defense of Husserl, a jew) before vous bandez.
>Further, you might actually take a look at his concept of
>At-Homeness readily understandable from a first reading of Poetry, Language
>and Thought.
Aside from making a suggestion that you read the text more thoughtfully
before dashing off an ill-considered retort, I can only say that, having
studied the history of Heidegger's relationship with the Nazis in some
detail, I find your attempted rebuttal of the same quite bereft of
substance, and highly suggestive of bad faith. In particular, I direct
your attention towards the 1953 republication of the _Introduction to
Metaphysics_ with its encomium to Hitler and National Socialism intact, the
vain post-war attempts of Karl Jaspers, Rudolf Bultmann, and many others to
obtain a retraction of Heidegger's Nazi views, the odious assimilation of
the moral import of Nazi Judeocide to that of the postwar displacement of
Germans from East Prussia, and last, but not least, the withdrawal of the
dedication to Husserl from _Sein und Zeit_, which gives lie to your claim
of defense. Finally, I note Heidegger's lifelong glorification of one of
the most vicious German antisemites, Abraham a Santa Clara. In short, we
are dealing with the single most scrofulous figure of modern philosophy,
and your halfhearted attempts to rehabilitate his person put you in a very
bad light indeed.
MZ:
>>Jules Vuillemin's observation:
>>
>>"The whole of Anglo-Saxon philosophy has undergone Russell's influence, for
>>better or worse. This is, moreover, the only living philosophy. It is
>>sufficient praise of an author to state that a philosophy that ignores him
>>is a dead philosophy."
COO:
> In American philosophy, unfortunately, we find that this statement is
>rather justifiable for there exists a large group of people still
>caught up in this representational crap. Of course, we found that
>AI, founded on such ideas, (and here I mean the logic-based AI tradition),
>failed miserably in terms of explaining how humans think.
>NOw, you can either claim that we are detached and
>distanced from the world by means of a representation, or you can
>look to the other side and see how we are so involved in the world
>thanks to the function of the sign. On this, you might find the
>neuro-physiological theories of Humberto Maturana quite interesting.
You might have noticed that I am not terribly fond of the grandiloquent
claims made by the artificial intelligentsia; however I like even less the
sort of pretentious label-mongering found in your remarks on American
philosophy. If you have something cogent and meaningful to say on the
subject of "this representational crap", by all means go ahead and say it;
otherwise kindly try to channel your vacuous vitriol in the far more
fruitful direction of religious studies, whose practicioners fortunately
can't be expected to know any better.
MZ:
>>Charles must mean the ongoing relativist project to supplant the reigning
>>philosophical ideal of honest mathematical rigor with that of legalistic,
>>retro-flavored, sincere eristic bullshit, on which see another thread
>>in talk.philosophy.misc and elsewhere.
COO:
> Nothing could be farther from the truth. But alas, I don't feel that
>you understand Heidegger very well and as such don't feel compelled to
>explain him to you. Of course, I don't believe in the ideal that
>honest mathematical rigor will solve the most basic philosophical
>question ever posed -- "what is?" Math presupposes that fundamental
>question and as such, fails to answer it. This does not mean, however,
>that math is not useful--but in so far as my concern it is not.. Which
>leads us back to the issue of Heidegger's influence on philosophy.....
You really must bone up on your interpretive skills, or your knowledge of
the history of philosophy, whichever is found to be responsible for your
incomprehension. No one expects mathematics to solve "the most basic
philosophical question ever posed" (though I note in passing that it does a
very good job of telling what is); in fact, my reference was to the famous
Platonic project of addressing all philosophical questions with strict
mathematical rigor. As you may know, the rival approach, that of the
Sophists, was characterized by a deliberate methodological deflation of
philosophy, bringing it down to the level of a kitchen debate. Heidegger,
and his followers like Rorty, are quite explicit about favoring the latter
tactic; unfortunately it looks like you are doing the same. If this is not
so, please tell me why not; on the other hand, if this is indeed the case,
I wish you all the best of luck in the pandering business.
MZ:
>>>>Umm, right. Far be it from me to argue with a true believer.
GM:
>>>I don't think I care to do better than this.
MZ
>>Soit.
COO:
>Oui, Soit.
So why are you still arguing?
>>>--
>>mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
>>who will be in Paris two weeks from today!
COO:
>Ah, now he is trying to make me jealous. First he argues with me,
>then he pulls this one--really below the belt Mikhail. I was
>supposed to be in Bretagne for this month...
Tough titty, mon vieux, but it's every man for himself.
MZ:
>>"Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."
COO:
>C'est ca vrai et tres evidement.
If you want to make yourself understood, you really have to do something
about that grammar. On the chance that the above represents an expression
of apreciation, I recommend further explorations of the writings of D.A.F
de Sade, whose thesis that God, if he exists, must be a Nazi sympathiser
(my paraphrase), would go over particularly well in your chosen field of
studies.
>BCNya,
> Charles O. Onstott, III
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Charles O. Onstott, III Account at Oklahoma State University for summer.
>Graduate Student in Religious Studies ons...@a.cs.okstate.edu
>University of Chicago
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
cordially,
mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
eleven more days and counting...
"Nous donnons la mort, nous saurons la subir."
jhau...@sara.cc.utu.fi
again after a blackout of two or three weeks.
In article <denmckinnon...@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au>, denmc...@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au (NEIL MCKINNON) writes:
>>> I was wondering what the important differences are between your anti-realist
>>> position here and a realist position. My reading on this topic is probably
>>> fairly limited, but as far as I can see the anti-realism of, say, Dummett >>>>> and Putnam is ultimately based on intuitions that truth ought not be non-
>>> epistemic. Their semantics for truth seemed quite similar to me. For
>>> Putnam, a sentence is true only if it is part of an Ideal theory (i.e one
>>> that maximally satisfies observable evidence and maximally satisfies our
>>> constraints on theory acceptance, like simplicity). For Dummett a sentence
>>> is true only if it is conclusively verifiable (which comes to it being a
>>> sentence in an Ideal Theory of the Universe). Once you make truth
>>> epistemic, what you are left with is some sort of coherence theory of truth,
>>> whereby any consistent set of beliefs is true. The objection to this is
>>Not *any* consistent set of beliefs. The body of beliefs must also be
>>consistent with observations. Maybe this is what you meant, but then it would be
>>more reasonable to talk of judgements instead of beliefs.
I was asked what I tried to accomplish by distinguishing between beliefs and
judgements. I was certainly not trying to escape to an "abyss of confusions
with our concepts". What I *was* trying to do was to reduce the risk of
misunderstanding. The term "judgement" covers much more easily such things as
seeing that it is raining, seeing the tracks of sub-atomic particles etc. Talk
of "observational judgements" is a lot more natural than talk of "observational
beliefs" (at least this is how it seems to me). This change in terminology, in
my opinion, helps to keep in mind that true beliefs must cohere both with
each other *and* our experiences.
>Yes, I was wrong to say that Putnam's view of truth simply reduces to a
>coherence theory. Clearly it does not. What I should have said,
>rather, is that it is ultimately open to the same objection, due to
>the fact that we may never be able to single out one theory in particular
>as ideal, and further, that there may be a number of theories which are
>contradictory yet indistinguishably ideal.
>
>
>>I don't see why this should worry the anti-realist too much, because s/he
>>is not saying that we have a free choice between different (consistent)
>>sets of beliefs or conceptual systems. What the anti-realist (at least of the
>>Putnamian type, if I am not mistaken) *is* saying is that we can't
>>judge the truth or falsity of our beliefs outside the scheme of
>>description that we are using. This seems to me to suffice to counter
>>the above objection that anti-realism would lead to the possible
>>truth of (~A & A). This objection makes sense only if we assume that
>>there might be different ideal theories which would all be consistent with all
>>possible evidence. Even then I don't see any guarantee that the negation of a
>>true judgement in one such theory would even necessarily be expressible in
>>another. And even if it were, this need not worry the anti-realist, because
>>*inside* an ideal theory, (~A & A) can not be true.
>
>I don't think you have really answered the objection. I was talking
>meta-theoretically, and what you have suggested in the last sentence is
>merely that from the perspective of a particular theory, a contradictory
>theory cannot be true.
This meta-theoretical talk is precicely what the anti-realist is saying isn't
justified (or even meaningful). According to him/her there is no theory-
independent basis on which different theories can be compared to each other. As
for the possibility of two different ideal theories which disagree on the truth
of, say, A: I personally don't see any problem with saying that, judging from
the viewpoint of theory I, theory II is wrong about A, and vice versa.
> >> to me to reduce to a coherence theory, since there may be many
>internally >> consistent theories which equally satisfy all constraints on
>acceptance and >> yet are inconsistent with each other. This is so because
>an ideal theory is >> not something we have epistemic access to any more
>than an "external >> reality". Consequently these semantics do not make
>truth any more >> accessible than a realist conception of truth.
>
>>I think they do. On any sensible anti-realist conception of truth, a true
>>judgement needs to be consistent with observable evidence. This seems to me to
>>ensure that e.g. the belief that I am now sitting by a computer is true,
>>because I don't see how any theory (in a loose sense) could be observationally
>>adequate unless it implied the truth of this belief.
>
>As far as I can tell, Putnam *must* say of a sentence that it is true if and
>only if it is true of an ideal theory. This is to avoid an objection Putnam
>himself raised against Dummett (in Reference and Understanding). Dummett at
>one stage wanted to say that a sentence is true if and only if it is "
>warrantedly assertible". The objection to any anti-realist criterion for
>truth which is less than "conclusively verifiable" or "true in an ideal
>theory" is that a sentence of a certain type, or a theory, can be true at
>one time and then false later on (or simultaneously by separated
>societies in the same world). So the sentence "The tree-god exists and
>controls the elements" may have been true 15000 years ago when a tribe held
>this belief and it seemed warranted to them. However it is not true today,
>since the Tree-god theory does not explain observational evidence well now.
>But it was true then!
>
>As far as I can tell, Putnam must also add this property to an ideal theory:
>not only must it maximally explain all observational evidence, but it must
>explain all *possible* observational evidence.
This depends on what you mean by "possible". Taken in a loose sense of the
word, this seems to me to be plainly false. In some sense of "possible", it
certainly is possible that gravity ceases to exist tomorrow. However, if this
doesn't happen, an ideal theory need not (should not) say anything of the
matter. (I realise that this is a problematic example, but I hope the point is
clear. Other kinds of example would do just as fine.) So the word must be read
something like "possible-for-us-in-this-world". An account of possibility
independent of the observer and the setting is part of what the anti-realist is
denying. (No circularity here: this is not meant to be an argument for
anti-realism, but a defense of the reasonableness of the position.)
> This addition ensures that
>there cannot be a host of contradictory ideal theories, all true at
>different times, which maximally explain all observable evidence possessed
>at their respective times.
How does it ensure that? All it ensures is that there cannot be ideal theories
which disagree on some *observational* judgement. But this is already so
because of their idealness. Disagreement can exist on judgements which cannot
be directly observed. To block this kind of disagreement, "possible" above
should be read as "possible-on-the-basis-of-what-is-REAL-and-what-is-NOT-
REAL". This is precisely what the anti-realist is denying.
> Now, in
>addition to possibly not being able to distinguish between certain
>prospective ideal theories when we have all possible observational evidence,
>there is the problem of knowing *when* we are in possession of all
>observable evidence. And it seems to me that this is an insoluble problem.
>
I think the answer is quite straightforward: never. The ideal theory is just an
idealization. This doesn't matter, however: even if we can't reach an ideal
theory, we can be justified in believing some of our theories (etc.) to be part
of an/the ideal theory.
>Hope this makes sense!
>
>Neil.
Hope so too!
Jussi.
NEIL MCKINNON
of Putnam: i.e. Models and Reality, Realism and Reason, Reference and
Understanding. I realized then that what I had posted here involved a
significant misconstruction of Putnam's anti-realism. (I haven't read his
book, "Reason, Truth and History" - perhaps that would help me understand
him better?) So thanks for your replies, Jussi. (Oh, and someone else
whom I forget, who made a similar response.) This is where I am now with
Putnam.
Putnam's semantics for truth are in terms of verification, after Dummett
(Realism and Reason, Models and Reality). As Putnam says, these semantics
are done in such a way that facts are "soft all the way down". In other
words, there are no hard, truth-conditional facts upon which verifications
are ultimately based. Instead, the primitive observation statements of
one's language are verified by the very act of our saying them. Now it
becomes clear that the objections I offered previously would clearly not
budge anyone who accepted Putnam's position. The (A&~A) problem does not
arise because there is no meta-theoretic concept of truth as Jussi
pointed out. There may be different ideal theories true for different
speakers, formulable (in theory) around the observation statements of each
speaker.
Here is where I digress from what is explicit in Putnam. Hopefully these
are things implicit in his doctrine.
I suggest a reconstruction of what it is for a sentence to be
true (hopefully following Putnam). A sentence is true for person x if and
only if it is (a) part of an ideal theory for x, or (b) an observational
sentence consistent with the ideal theory, or (c) it is verified by
deduction from a set of previously verified sentences.
It follows that truth is relativized to each individual, his/her
observations, and the ideal theory applicable to him/her at any given time.
There is something else which is interesting to note. Putnam's criteria for
the status Ideal Theory were that the theory in question satisfies maximally
all operational constraints (i.e. observational evidence) and theoretical
constraints *we* put on theory acceptance. Now it occurs to me that the
ideal theory (and therefore much of what is true) applicable to an
individual is partially dependent upon the theoretical constraints that
person chooses to impose on theory acceptance. Not everyone will follow
Putnam's line (i.e. the ideal theory must be maximally simple, conservative
etc.). Some will want to impose a constraint like "must not conflict with
a literal interpretation of the Bible." Other things are a mystery to me,
like what theoretical constraints would be laid down for the ideal theory of
4 year old Christopher?
What bothers me about this picture now is that it does not seem to explain,
for example, the convergence of beliefs within a society, and how we use our
language successfully as a communal device to attain goals. Putnam feels
the need to retain realism (though he is an anti-realist at base) as an
model to explain these things, but I don't see how they can in fact be
explained if without assuming that there might be a language-independent,
objective Universe.
Neil.
Andrew Mullhaupt
>
>In article <11...@kepler1.rentec.com>, and...@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) writes:
>|> Is this a statement aimed at the slipperiness of reality or the imprecision
>|> of theory? The former, I worry about, the latter, I probably accept.
>
>The slipperiness of reality is not distinguishable from the imprecision
>of theory.
I can't swallow this. The reason seems to be that granting that we're talking
about your 'ideally accepted' theories, i.e. theories that we can't find anything
wrong with, but that the possible multiplicity of such theories points more
to inadequacy in the criteria for evaluating theories than that the underlying
reality is to blame. The idea that truly different world views can be equally
and maximally validated (which seems to be lesson 1 of anti-realism) seems
premature to me - have we ever come across even one such theory? And it seems
to be some kind of word game has to result when we confront a concrete situation
which turns up an essential difference between to maximally validated theories
(there must be some such circumstance, or else in what sense are these theories
different) and yet we have to wonder how in this experimentum crucis, the
outcome validates both different theories.
> The assumption about all these theories
>is that they are "ideal" in the sense of satisfying *all* of our criteria for
>theory acceptance -- in particular, that all of them save the phenomena. There
>is *no*way*to*tell* which is true (assuming for a moment that *saying* one is
>true and the other is not makes sense). The typical example here would be two
>theories that are alike in their fundamental "observational" vocabulary, their
>predictions, etc., but differ in their "theoretical" terms. Of course you would
>not accept *both* theories as true, but the anti-realist position is that
>*neither* is true -- and that this does not render either theory less acceptable.
Actually, I do not consider such theories as _different_. Just as you can
claim that Hamiltonian mechanics and Lagrangian mechanics are theoretically
different, they are not different until you come to a situation (nonintegrable
nonholonomic constraints) where this difference is actually meaningful. As
a result most people consider these two theories as restatements of the
same theory. Until you have a difference which is observable, how different
is the theory?
>|> But what prevents the realist from defining reality to be the 'equivalence
>|> classes' formed by the relation of descriptive equivalence, and declaring
>|> your many theories to be isomorphic as far as this reality is concerned?
>This is fine, but it isn't *realsim* in the usual sense of this term since it
>leaves out a certain portion of each theory (usually thought of as the "theoretical"
>terms and the laws in which these appear). In fact, in any real theory, such
>terms are so entwined in the theory that you wouldn't have much left over for
>your equivalence classes.
I tend to agree, but there are no two real theories which are maximally
validated. As far as I can tell, whenever we have to theories which differ,
we've either concluded that they are observably different, or else that
they are only apparently different interpretations of the same theory -
(i.e. many worlds as an interpretation of the Copenhagen theory). It's kind of
like a question about translation and hermeneutics - is general relativity
in Russian the same as in French? If so, then there may very well be other
'translations' of theory, perhaps not so obvious. Thermodynamics may very
well be none other than information theory. There is essentially no difference
between measure theory and the usual mathematician's probability theory. When
you want to say two theories are different, I think it means that there must
be some meaningful situation where they _disagree_. Note that if the
disagreement is about a situation that both theories accept as unobservable,
the theories both are defective by making essential predictions which are
theoretically unobservable, and so this doesn't arise for ideal theories.
>You are also then stuck with having to provide some
>semantics for these terms and laws since you aren't interpreting them in the
>usual denotational way (your reject Semantic Realism for this part of the theory).
>So where do you go? Back to instrumentalism?
The semantics are provided through the mechanism of equivalence. If this
is a problem, then the theories you started with were not equivalent enough
in the first place. You may ask which theory of these to prefer - the
answer may be that _all_ of the original theories are defective, else you
would be able to tell which one to prefer.
>|> reality is a matter of aesthetics. Is it possible that one of the many true
>|> descriptions that the anti-realist accepts as true is the description of the
>|> realist? (If you can't beat 'em, adjoin 'em...)
>This is what the realist would have us believe. However, again, the point is
>that it is useless to make such a claim. All of science and epistemology
>proceeds quite smoothely without additonal claims that we ought to pursue
>a "true" theory or that we would know one if we saw one.
I agree completely with this. But I don't see how the realist can't cope
with it. Why can't the realist do science as usual with the expectation
that there may very well be a true theory of real reality. I don't see
convincing evidence that there is one, but I certainly don't see that there
can't be one. The question looks open to me.
>I object to the use of "truth" as though it were a mass noun such as "sugar".
>Sugar is sweet. Sugar is white. Similar assertions involving truth are at
>best shorthand or metaphorical. You still haven't given me any examples of
>*other* properties that truth might have (except "good").
Sugar is not quite so single-minded an idea - it refers as well to people
and relationships between them, and even programming glosses (syntactic
sugar). But in these cases the statement "Sugar is sweet" can be asserted
as well. (Sugar and sweetness are tightly coupled and can remain associated
even across metaphors - the association is a definite relationship which
extends beyond denotation.)
But even if one relegates sugar to the physics of its constituent atoms,
there is a bit of trouble. DNA has lots of 'sugar' in it but is it sweet?
And is sweetness the chemical reaction on the taste bud, or does it also
include other physical aspects of the perceptive mechanism, and what
about fictional sweetness - is the honey that Winnie the Pooh eats
sweet?
So where is truth any different?
>|> Truth is, after all good. It is good, since it can be used for good. Nothing
>It can also be used for evil. Thus it is good and evil. Whoopee!
I thought this line might get short shrift. However, the two assertions are
not necessarily equivalent. One can take the view that the possibility of
good use makes something good, as opposed to that which cannot be used for
any good whatsoever. When something is used for ill, it does not negate
the possibility of the good use. If you have a Persian notion that good and
evil are symmetrical, then this may not convince you. But this is not the
only view, since you can look at evil as not being anything other than a
deficiency of good - i.e. good and evil need not be opposites.
>|> else can replace truth in its useful form. Nothing forces us to accept the
>|> good of truth so well as the _bad_ that can only avoided by the use of truth.
>|> The goodness of truth seems to be available even when truth is only present
>|> in approximation, but we tend to find greater value in better approximations.
>Your off the rails here, Andrew. Rein it in and get a grip. (This is not
>bad as poetry. But as cognitive analysis it is bordering on the contentless.)
It is also to take the assertions seriously. I claim that truth is not
replaceable - which seems to directly contradict the anti-realist position
that truth fails to distinguish equally valid but actually different theories
of the world. I point towards the idea that there is value is using truth
as an ideal, and I sort of expected to get refuted - the idea that this is
content free makes me wonder about the content in the anti-realist position
that opposes it...
Let's use a concrete example. Until this century, there was a dreaded lethal
disease called pellagra which was utterly beyond the understanding of medecine
and was responsible for a horrible lingering death in a significant fraction
of the population of the American south. It was found that the disease was
a nutritional deficiency, and that it could be reversed by changing the diet
of patients. This saved untold misery, but it was only an approximation to
the truth. It was later determined what the specific ingredient was (niacin,
I think), and this enabled further progress. So there was goodness in the
approximation, more goodness as the approximation was refined, just as
I claimed. Could the knowledge that niacin deficieny causes horrible lingering
death be put to ill use? It could certainly be a part of some demented
crime, yes. But we are not rendered neutral to this knowledge by this fact.
Where it might be clear is in the alternative - would it be better not to
know about niacin since it can be used for evil? It is a very serious
matter to contemplate affirming this. Unless you can say yes to this, then
this truth must be counted good _because it can be used for good and despite
the possibility of evil use_.
>|> We cannot always know truth, especially since the more reliable identifications
>|> of truth come from rigorous logical frameworks which can have definite
>|> limitations or require intentional choices. Ideas of truth which evade these
>|> difficulties tend to leave out important elements which unify our view of
>|> different instances of truth.
>|>
>|> Truth is frequently viewed as a Hellenic abstraction, but there are several
>|> strong connections between truth and the physical world. The most obvious
>|> (and perhaps least observed) aspect is that all known instances of truth
>|> have been recorded in the physical world. Even truth in fiction or dreaming
>|> seems to be the result of intentional or volative acts of physical beings.
>|> The second important connection of truth to the physical world is the
>|> apparent considerable success in the truthful description of the world. That
>|> there are speculative physics based on alternative coherences than Aristotelian
>|> logic reinforces this idea - when the truthful description of the world is
>|> problematic, we seem committed to truth more than logic, or any other component
>|> in the picture. A third connection is furnished by our understanding that
>|> truth - in all the physical instances - is directly governed by specific laws
>|> of nature which we think we understand. I have in mind here the information
>|> theoretic interpretation of thermodynamics, and possibly some other things.
>|>
>|> How's that for a start? My approach is essentially to view truth as a natural
>|> phenomenon, (which includes the possibility that it is a human artifact). You
>
>How utterly weird. You mean like a tornado?
Yes. Also like the perception of a tornado. Also like the perception of
sweetness, even as a fictional metaphor. (Aside to the determinists - your
theory predicts Winnie the Pooh. I'm impressed.)
But did you expect me to divorce truth from the physical world - where all
the sightings have been? And can we separate truth from humans? (Are we
having AI yet?) Real (natural) truth is the elephant to our blind men -
including the staggering masterpieces of mathematics and the sciences.
So when I claim that truth is good, and you disagree, but we're both looking
at the same world, is it the slipperiness of the theory or the imprecision
of reality? Is this a matter of translation, or have I made your argument
for you?
I take the point of view that the blind men and the elephant analogy is
a bit like the claim of anti-realism, which says that the blind men can't
agree, they're all thinking straight and making valid observations, and
espousing different theories.
But the refutation of the analogy (and I think the problem I have with
anti-realism, by analogy) is that there is something _wrong_ with the
picture. The theories _are_ incomplete and defective because the men
are blind. They are not maximally validated, since the theory a sighted
person could supply would be accepted by the blind men. It would integrate
their individual pieces of the picture, and _truth_ would be that quality
which enabled them to accept the theory. The situation that the blind men
do not transcend, of multiplex irrefutable theories, says nothing about
whether there is or is not a succesful theory beyond their grasp.
Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
ONSTOTT CHARLES OR
>
> COO:
>>Oui, Soit.
MZ:
>
> So why are you still arguing?
>
I wasn't aware that we had begun. I'm still playing the
petulent-child game with you of which you are quite a master and
I a student..'
Despite the fact that your discussion seems to lend itself to
the typical petulent-child stuff we expect from you, I find that
you seem at least quasi interested in a discussion on Heidegger.
Now, you have claimed him to be a sophist; an example of those
who try to deflate philosophy; a kitchen philosopher(which either
means you never got past Heidegger's discussion on Idle Talk or
you fail to recognize his claim that the rest of philosophy is
contrived). These are absolutely uninteresting and unfruitful
claims against Heidegger, despite your attempt to redirect your
personal fruitlessness against myself. Now, I will ask you a
simple question and hope that you will answer it: In what way
do you find Heidegger to be any of these things? Do you not
understand the methodology that he, among others like himself
such as Ortega Y Gassett and Kierkegaard, employ? Or is it that
you find that that sort of methodology is an unfruitful one? If so,
in the latter, how? I can not respond to your claim because I can not
beigin to understand in what fashion you arrive at such a conclusion.
Further you claim that Heidegger is philosophically devoid of methodology
and at the same time claim him to be a Nazi--now if I have my Derrida
right, these two are mutually exclusive. So you, alas, are the
one without justification. Further, I find Heidegger's withdrawl
from the Nazi party a sufficient message as to his feelings about it
despite unspoken words. Further, I find myself fascinated by his
ideas and rather bored by his political life.
Last, the reason why I find representational theories to be "crap"(and
I leave it to you to determine the precise meaning of this--am
I really refering to feces?) is that it attempts to categorize and
as such remains bound to the ontical. Further, I can not accept
your thesis that the first task of philosophy is to find the "structure of
reality" as I believe the first task of philosophy is 'to find.'
Second, it comes as no surprise that you find the
second task of philosophy as that which concerns meaning--this point
and your first task go hand in hand. It turns out, Mikhail, that the
two tasks you have set forth, as divided in two, can not
be seperated. Confused? Always look to the function of the sign,
the function of the sign is to structure. Since it was the structure
you were looking for, and since the sign is to structure, your first
task should have stated "find meaning." And finding meaning, Mikhail,
is the purpose of philosophy--See...Heidegger isn't so bad, now is he?
Your next question is probably "so what's wrong?" The answer is:
nothing, so long as you don't pressupose reality in the finding of meaning
and here I say "reality" not "being" because being is always presupposed..
>>>>--
>>>mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
>>>who will be in Paris two weeks from today!
>
> COO:
>>Ah, now he is trying to make me jealous. First he argues with me,
>>then he pulls this one--really below the belt Mikhail. I was
>>supposed to be in Bretagne for this month...
>
> Tough titty, mon vieux, but it's every man for himself.
Yeah?? Well, Je m'en fiche. And just think, I would not be here
talking with you...
>
> MZ:
>>>"Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."
>
Ca, c'est vrai et tres evidement.
>
> cordially, (I never understood this part..)
> mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
BCnya,
Michael Zeleny
hi...@csd4.csd.uwm.edu writes:
>From article <1992Aug14.0...@husc3.harvard.edu>,
>by zel...@husc8.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny):
>>In article <1992Aug13.1...@uwm.edu>
>>hi...@csd4.csd.uwm.edu writes:
MP:
>>>But more to the point....
>>>
>>>It's interesting to remember that back around, oh, 1795 to maybe 1817,
>>>Fichte was thought to be considerably more important than Kant and for
>>>a while there Immanuel was all but forgotten. I just *know* that more
>>>of you have read Science of Knowledge than Critique of Pure Reason....;-)
MZ:
>>"All but" is quite right; Immanuel seems to have been second only to
>>Jean-Jacques among certain radical elements of the period. In any case, I
>>do not propose to concern this discussion with questions of popularity.
>>Some value judgments just don't have any factual content, don't you agree?
MP:
>Fact/value dichotomies? You can say this to somebody who works in
>Hegel? ;-)
Remind me to send you a sed file containing supplementary punctuation of
the sort you are using above, next time you feel befuddled by one of my
dichotomies.
MP:
>But... this *is* a discussion about popularity. The thread has
>bantered about who has had the most influence on 20th century
>philosophy and who from the 20th century will be seen to have had the
>most influence. I don't think we'll know until it's over. And any
>judgment ahead of this must depend on popularity. Despite the fact
>that I work with Hegel I am willing to concede that history hasn't
>ended just yet.
I think popularity has to participate in this kind of judgment only as a
limiting factor: if X is not popular enough, we might not be aware of his
great destiny. But I trust this possibility may be safely disregarded.
MP:
>And what would 'influence' mean? Number of footnote citations or
>articles generated? Fichte was all the rage, but I'd be willing to
>argue that Kant -- probably -- had more influence on philosophy.
>--although not where the 18th century was concerned. At that time any
>philosopher with any brains at all would have pointed out that Kant
>was interesting, but passe. I mean, why deduce transcendental
>categories when you have identity philosophy and <gasp>dialectic?
Well, there you are then. Just try and articulate what constitutes Kant's
influence, in all its splendor and magnitude.
MP:
>Anyways, short form: 'most influence' means 'most influence on my work'
>means 'who I like the most' means 'who I find the easiest to
>understand.'
>
>[geez, pretty cynical today....]
I have no problem with that. In fact, these days my claims to universality
of judgment are pretty much limited to a priori matters.
MP:
>Today you still hear the experts talk about who's passe and who isn't.
>But as far as I can tell, 19th century continental went into the bin
>because the British couldn't translate German very well, and
>existentialism has followed largely because the deconstructionists
>couldn't read Danish. ;-)
>
>[ignore that, I'm just in a mood...]
I seem to recall seeing you claim the same thing before.
MP:
>>>In any case, this is what I think of every time I hear (or see, I
>>>guess) these discussions. It would be interesting if, in 2092, it was
>>>Jacques Ellul and Levinas that are remembered from the 20th century.
>>>Or one of y'all... hmm.
MZ:
>>Interesting indeed. However, if you are prepared to accept this
>>possibility, I would like to hear more about your reasons. By the way, I
>>am glad to see that you haven't joined the crowd in dismissing this subject
>>as philosophically unimportant, if not outright frivolous. Contrary to the
>>heartfelt prejudice of certain philosophasters, I regard the history of
>>philosophy, up to and including the present moment, as inseparable from
>>philosophy itself. Naturally, questions of influence are of paramount
>>importance for any historical enterprise.
MP:
>My lord, something we agree on? Maybe I'm wrong then. -)
The sheer diversity of your ascii iconography never ceases to amaze me.
Aside from that, our agreement has been noted and cherished.
MP:
>Nah, you're right. But when does a recent something count as
>'history'? Thorny, but my own sense is that you have to wait more
>than a few years to determine what someone's influence is going to be
>over the long term. Short term influence does come down, I think, to
>popularity. Levinas is not all that popular right now. Set theory
>and analytic philosophy is.
Both set theory and analytic philosophy have histories, reaching back as
far as any other philosophical subject. Surely their content is not not
limited to the popularity of their subject matter. I am willing to wager
that Frege and Cantor will have a far more lasting influence on philosophy
than any of their contemporaries, with the possible exception of Nietzsche.
The nature of this influence is of great interest to me.
MP:
>[You know, I gave a paper this summer to an international gorilla
>workshop (yes, really...) on eco-terrorism and the ethics of
>extinction that was pretty popular.... hmm.]
>
>Following influence through the history of the discipline is useful,
>mostly, as an aid to understanding why someone wrote as they did, and
>thus getting a handle on just what they meant. I couldn't have
>understood Hegel without knowing something about Kant, or Heidegger
>without Nietzsche, or Ian Hacking without some Popper, or a host of
>Anglo-Americans without some Russell or Lewis. So where does that
>leave us?
Just at the point where we must recognize that understanding is a
historical process; so, for example, I must protest when Randall says
this sort of thing:
In article <1992Aug13.2...@guinness.idbsu.edu>
hol...@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:
RH:
>It doesn't matter who influences you or whom you influence; is what
>you say true? It all comes back to this...
On the contrary, without detailed knowledge of who influences you, it is
impossible to tell what you mean, and consequently impossible to tell
whether it's true; as for the complementary question of whom you influence,
it can be most valuable in determining the pragmatic ramifications of your
theses, which, I believe, are inseparable from their meaning. In this
sense, even notorious misreadings, like that perpetrated by the Nazis on
the corpus of Nietzsche, are quite relevant to the question of its content.
Writing doesn't stop the moment your pen leaves the paper; indeed, it goes
on as long as your words retain their power to provoke, inspire, debauch,
irritate, edify, challenge, exasperate, and befuddle their readers. As
Sade said through one of his characters, writing is the perfect form of
crime, one which continues to inflict its corruption and derangement on the
world long after the demise of its perpetrator. How can we hope to
understand any of its substance without taking into account this endless
daisy chain of perpetual influence?
>--
>The opinions expressed | --Sincerely,
>above are not the "official" | M. Randall Holmes
>opinions of any person | Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
>or institution. | hol...@opal.idbsu.edu
>hiho
>
>--
>mark ce peterson | uw-washington county | hi...@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
>dept of philosophy | west bend, wi. 53095 | (414) 335-5200
>
> The shorter the tether, the sooner the goat starves.
cordially,
Michael Zeleny
ons...@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR) writes:
>From article <1992Aug14.1...@husc3.harvard.edu>, by
>zel...@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny):
COO:
>>>Oui, Soit.
MZ:
>>So why are you still arguing?
COO:
> I wasn't aware that we had begun. I'm still playing the
>petulent-child game with you of which you are quite a master and
>I a student..'
If we haven't begun arguing, we are unlikely to start now. Incidentally,
the difference between a petulant child and a crotchety old man is that the
latter never stoops to spelling flames.
COO:
>Despite the fact that your discussion seems to lend itself to
>the typical petulent-child stuff we expect from you, I find that
>you seem at least quasi interested in a discussion on Heidegger.
You and yours are sadly mistaken.
COO:
>Now, you have claimed him to be a sophist; an example of those
>who try to deflate philosophy; a kitchen philosopher(which either
>means you never got past Heidegger's discussion on Idle Talk or
>you fail to recognize his claim that the rest of philosophy is
>contrived).
Please remind me not to use any classical allusions next time I speak to
you. On second thought, I see little to choose between Gorgias the Mad and
Heraclites the Dark. Maybe you'll get this one...
COO:
> These are absolutely uninteresting and unfruitful
>claims against Heidegger, despite your attempt to redirect your
>personal fruitlessness against myself.
On the contrary, your personal merits were never in question. Try again.
COO:
> Now, I will ask you a
>simple question and hope that you will answer it: In what way
>do you find Heidegger to be any of these things? Do you not
>understand the methodology that he, among others like himself
>such as Ortega Y Gassett and Kierkegaard, employ? Or is it that
>you find that that sort of methodology is an unfruitful one? If so,
>in the latter, how? I can not respond to your claim because I can not
>beigin to understand in what fashion you arrive at such a conclusion.
Well then, try reading my article until you get its point. I feel that I
have been quite explicit in stating my grievance; however it is evident
that you didn't get it, and I don't feel like belaboring the obvious.
COO:
>Further you claim that Heidegger is philosophically devoid of methodology
>and at the same time claim him to be a Nazi--now if I have my Derrida
>right, these two are mutually exclusive.
Please do not put words in my mouth. Pace Gorgias, even kitchen debate has
its methodology. Funny, I thought you knew your classics a little better
than that...
COO:
> So you, alas, are the
>one without justification. Further, I find Heidegger's withdrawl
>from the Nazi party a sufficient message as to his feelings about it
>despite unspoken words. Further, I find myself fascinated by his
>ideas and rather bored by his political life.
This hackneyed dichotomy may well apply to a master chef; however I find a
philosopher's ideas to be inseparable from his political life. And on the
subject of the latter, the final word on Heidegger has been written. Too
bad for his ideas.
COO:
>Last, the reason why I find representational theories to be "crap"(and
>I leave it to you to determine the precise meaning of this--am
>I really refering to feces?) is that it attempts to categorize and
>as such remains bound to the ontical.
Only if you believe that sign must remain bound to the thing signified.
Having said that, I must confess to holding that reality is utterly
exhausted by the ontical.
COO:
> Further, I can not accept
>your thesis that the first task of philosophy is to find the "structure of
>reality" as I believe the first task of philosophy is 'to find.'
Feel free to impersonate the man of La Mancha all you want; as for me, I
prefer `to find' in its transitive capacity.
COO:
>Second, it comes as no surprise that you find the
>second task of philosophy as that which concerns meaning--this point
>and your first task go hand in hand. It turns out, Mikhail, that the
>two tasks you have set forth, as divided in two, can not
>be seperated. Confused? Always look to the function of the sign,
>the function of the sign is to structure. Since it was the structure
>you were looking for, and since the sign is to structure, your first
>task should have stated "find meaning." And finding meaning, Mikhail,
>is the purpose of philosophy--See...Heidegger isn't so bad, now is he?
You seem to be confusing the function of the sign with its structure. The
function of the sign is to denote; otherwise, I assure you, we wouldn't be
having this conversation.
COO:
>Your next question is probably "so what's wrong?" The answer is:
>nothing, so long as you don't pressupose reality in the finding of meaning
>and here I say "reality" not "being" because being is always presupposed..
I don't presuppose much of anything these days, -- doctor's orders.
Instead, I deduce things, as far as I can, and no further. Reality of
meaning is one of them; being, though decidedly not a big deal, is another.
Have I mentioned Parmenides yet?
>>>>>--
>>>>mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
>>>>who will be in Paris two weeks from today!
COO:
>>>Ah, now he is trying to make me jealous. First he argues with me,
>>>then he pulls this one--really below the belt Mikhail. I was
>>>supposed to be in Bretagne for this month...
MZ:
>>Tough titty, mon vieux, but it's every man for himself.
COO:
>Yeah?? Well, Je m'en fiche. And just think, I would not be here
>talking with you...
No disrespect, but I think I'll live, and so will you.
MZ:
>>>>"Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."
COO:
>Ca, c'est vrai et tres evidement.
You still have to do something about that grammar...
>>cordially,
COO:
> (I never understood this part..)
A little Latin might help.
>>mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
>BCnya,
And I never fail to get mildly annoyed by this one.
> Charles O. Onstott, III
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Charles O. Onstott, III Account at Oklahoma State University for summer.
>Graduate Student in Religious Studies ons...@a.cs.okstate.edu
>University of Chicago
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
cordially,
mikhail zel...@husc.harvard.edu
(only nine more days to go)