firezdog

On Philosophy and Significance

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:00:59 GMT

Yesterday I was considering philosophy as an activity whose aim is to consider the *significance* of things. The goal of philosophy would be to determine, not what is true, but how it is possible that any particular statement is true. This is obscure, so let's consider an example. That two and two are four is true -- no one will debate that. The philosophical question, then, would be, what makes it possible for two and two to be four? How *can* two and two be four? But what is the sense of this question? Suppose someone answers in this way: "You know how to count to four. But counting to four necessarily involves counting to two twice -- counting up to two, and then counting up to two again. I mean this: on one hand, count up. For each finger that you lift on that hand, lift up a finger on the other hand, until you get to two on that hand, and then start over. Now do that twice. When you've done, you'll have four fingers raised up on the first hand." Is this an answer to the question, how is it possible that two and two are four? It seems to me that I have been given a *method* for determining that two and two are four. If that's the case, then I can reply that I wasn't looking for a method. What I want to know is why two and two are four, rather than some other number. "But I just told you why! I told you to count in a certain way, and as a result it turns out that two and two are four." So is it that two and two are four because of counting? And why should counting make it the case that two and two are four, and not some other number? When I ask these further questions, you don't know what to say -- I take this as a sign that we have started to do philosophy. In virtue of what about counting is it that two and two are four? "How is it that counting makes it possible that two and two are four?" -- Well it's clear that counting *doesn't* make it possible for two and two to be four. Rather it must be because two and two are four that they come out to be four when you count. Counting doesn't make numbers possible, but it's rather the other way around. And what do I mean if I ask, how is it possible that two and two are four? I mean, why are they four and not some other number? But how could they be any other number? That two and two are four is as they say a necessary truth! And now what if I were to ask, what makes it possible for something to be necessary? Again, you might want to say -- it is not because things are possible that they are necessary -- if anything, it must be the other way around: possibility is possible only because of necessity! To say of necessity that it is possible must involve some kind of a mistake! And now we are in the philosophical realm: we have distinguished between the fact *that* two and two are four, the *method* whereby two and two are known to be four, and what I suppose one might call the *nature* of this fact, that it is necessary and not possible. And the question still arises, how can something be necessary? Only now I would suppose we are not asking how it is possible for it to be true that things are necessary. We come up against the "guiding word" in philosophical inquiry -- "why"? We don't ask, how is it possible that things are necessary, but rather -- why are things necessary? Whatever we mean by asking, why, we are not to explain this in terms of possibility. "Why are things necessary?" cannot not mean "How is it possible that things are necessary?" -- since this is an absurd question (though perhaps not in every context). Now if this is a real question at all -- if I've really traced out the beginnings of a philosophical inquiry, then we need to ask ourselves whether this question has anything to do with what I called significance. Does the question "Why are things necessary?" aim at the significance of necessity or something else? If it aims at the significance of necessity, then I suppose we must be asking, "What is it about the world that things are necessary?" -- or again, "How are things necessary?" -- and we begin to go around in circles! What might we be trying to determine? Are we trying to determine what makes necessity intelligible -- how it is that one is capable of understanding things *as* necessary? "No! For now we are going to be explaining necessity in terms of possibility. It is not the case that for something to be necessary is for it to be capable of being understood as necessary!" Further, if we answer in this way, it seems like we'll be in the same position as we were when we tried to say that two and two are four because that's what you get when you count them up. And it is not because of understanding that things are necessary, anymore than it is because of counting that two and two are four, but rather the other way around: because two and two are four, we are able to count them out; because of necessity, we can understand necessity. If there were no necessity -- if necessity were impossible! -- we could not understand necessity, because one cannot understand something that doesn't (in some way!) exist to be understood.

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:15:06 GMT

Heidegger *does* turn metaphysics into epistemology: he makes that which is prior in the order of understanding into that which is prior in the order of being. (And often his argument for doing this simply *is* that it is prior in the understanding!)

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:07:48 GMT

Heidegger also says that temporality temporalizes, but that temporality is not a being. But something cannot have effects if it does not exist! Why is it that time cannot exist? Why can't time be a being? If there is time at all, then time is a being! -- Unless perhaps time is a way in which things are.

Dualism

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:58:39 GMT

What one has to show is not that what dwells in and on things is different from that which just "sits there" -- what one has to show is that what just "sits there" can *also* be a thing that dwells. Sitting and dwelling are not mutually exclusive! (Heidegger is a dualist notwithstanding all his protestations to the contrary.)

Notes

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:38:07 GMT

1. The question of the meaning of being is the question, what makes being possible? [SZ 324] But if what makes things possible is a project, then it is because we have a certain sort of project (living) that being is possible. And this would be backwards -- since being is what first makes it possible for us to have a project! One can say that existence is our project -- that we're concerned with our existence -- that to live is to be concerned about one's existence (either explicitly -- one asks, what is existence? -- or insofar as one determines how one is going to exist, one "perpetuates" one's existence -- i.e., one endures). But there must be a being that is prior to existence and which is shared both by those things that exist and those things that do not exist (those things that are "lying around" but are not "there" -- those things that occupy a position but do not "inhabit" or "dwell" -- we "dwell" in and upon things, whereas some things just "sit there"). Being does not first become possible in the understanding of being -- unless you interpret possibility as something which itself belongs to those who "dwell on being". But there must be another sense of possibility which is prior to this sort of possibility as well! Heidgger says that things are "given" -- and this is what makes it possible for things to be given. What makes it possible for things to be given is partly that there is someone to receive them, but partially that they are there to give.

2. The future [SZ 325] is "letting-come-toward-itself that perdures [preserves!] the eminent possibility [death]". But if one lets something approach, then there must be an approaching. That things approach is more basic (the "coming of the future"). The future (understood in terms of the present) is "that which approaches" (and does this make things any more clear than simply saying, the future is the future, or, the future is what is not yet?). Time too must be something prior to those who dwell on (and in) time. If those who are who dwelling are to "come towards themselves", then it must be possible for them to come towards themselves, and again the word "possible" is ambiguous -- it is possible, first, because those who dwell can dwell in and upon "coming towards themselves" -- can make this their project -- but second, because it *can* be made into a project. The possibility involved in "being able to make something into a project" cannot itself be this: that one is capable of the capacity to make it one's project. Or rather, what makes one capable of the capacity must not be another capacity -- it must be ontologically prior to capacity.

Intuitions (From Facebook)

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:12:29 GMT

The whole point of intuitions is that they aren't supposed to belong to any one person. If intuitions are just like beliefs -- if an intuition is basically a prejudice -- then intuitions are worthless -- except maybe as a starting place. But I want an intuition to be that in virtue of which we are able to apply a concept and articulate the rules for applying that concept (the conditions under which the concept applies). (Intuitions would have to be pre-discursive, so they make discursive practice -- the articulation of thoughts -- in the first place possible.)

I think if our intuitions turn out to lead to paradoxes, that's a serious, serious problem. Because we have nowhere else to go to get behind our intuitions. Even science, which rejects the common-sense understanding of the world, has to have its own foundations in common-sense, I would think. Skepticism about intuitions, to me, would be skepticism about the possibility of understanding anything at all. (The idea that people can't really differ in their intuitions, in the most proper meaning of that word, lies behind my feeling of unease at so-called "experimental philosophy". It seems ridiculous to try and determine empirically what people's intuitions are -- because intuitions are not beliefs -- and because the effort to determine what intuitions are itself makes use of them. Plus intuitions should be necessary features of our understanding, and not simply contingent ways in which we happen to understand things. Science can only discover contingent
facts -- can only discover how the world happens to be, I would think.)

But I state all these opinions, of course very dogmatically. That does bother me to some extent. But what I want to do is to make sense of the world. I take the lingo I come across and try to use it in a way that seems sensible to me. And if it turns out I've made a mistake -- when it turns out I've made a mistake -- I don't want everything to be thrown into confusion. As a philosopher, I'm like a kid who's trying to learn how to use new words -- and of course I make many mistakes. But I need a language even to understand that I've made a mistake, and so the question arises, if I've misunderstood something fundamental, to what more fundamental thing can I retreat in order to understand my misunderstanding?

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:50:24 GMT

What is truth? Never overlook the fact that the things we say are true or false. Any extension of the word 'true' beyond the things we say -- whatever they happen to be -- at best depends upon resemblance (katabasis eis allo genos) -- is at worst an arbitrary and metaphorical way of speaking. The most illuminating thing that can be said in this regard must be that what is true is not false, and that what is false is not true. (Does saying this amount to anything more than that what is true is true and what is false is false?) But the question, what is true, is not the same question as, what is truth? Truth is (in good Platonic fashion) that in virtue of which true things are true. Truth is that which makes things true, just as goodness is that which makes things good. The most illuminating thing that can be said in answer to the question, why is this true, must be that it is true in virtue of possessing truth -- and this seems trivial. But its very triviality is what it makes it illuminating -- more illuminating than it would be to lay out conditions (for instance, that truth is the correspondence of what is said to that about which it is said). Nobody can disagree, to take the parallel case, that what makes things good is goodness, but one can disagree that what makes things good is utility, or virtue, or whatever. And yet in saying that what makes things good is goodness, one has not said *nothing*. The meaning of this statement is this, that things are good in virtue of the relation they bear to goodness. This statement reveals, behind the world of appearances (of things which look and sometimes in fact are good), a world of forms which produces, which is responsible for these appearances. Now if all of these forms existed only in and of themselves, one would merely have reproduced the world. But if these forms bear necessary relationships to each other (perhaps because they themselves can be understood as instances or appearances of further forms) then one has opened up a whole new field of investigation, the result of which promises to help us understand why things that are one thing, must also be another thing. For any particular, it seems arbitrary that it is in any way at all, since it very well might not have been that way -- since it itself might not have been. If anything is in a certain way necessarily, it must be so not on its own merits, but because there is a necessary connection between one form and another. There are no accidents in the world of forms, because there is nothing specific to them which could be an accident. Things which are only through another thing might not have been through that thing, whereas things which are in and through themselves could not have been anything else than what they are.

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:19:07 GMT

So the way to proceed in philosophy is just to consider ideas, to try to discover what they mean, and to decide, based upon their meaning, whether they are true. In order for this to be an adequate characterization of the method of *philosophy* one would have to show either (a) that the word 'idea' signifies a kind of thought which is eminently philosophical; or (b) that discovering the meaning of an idea is something that only philosophers do -- and in particular, that an idea's "meaning" is to be distinguished from some other aspect of the idea; or (c) that philosophers are interested in "the truth" in a special sense. Philosophers are not interested in the truth in a special sense, *pace* Heidegger. It is tempting, then, to think that there are specifically philosophical ideas. A philosophical idea would have to have a certain kind of content -- for instance a certain generality: "philosophy is the consideration of the way things, in the broadest sense of that word, hang together, in the broadest sense of that phrase". So a philosophical idea might be, "I have no knowledge of the external world", or "There is no external world", or "There is no such thing as goodness", or "The good is the maximization of happiness". But I think, on the other hand, whereas there may be certain ideas that have been particularly associated with philosophy, that it is a mistake to characterize philosophy in terms of those ideas. Philosophy should be distinguished from other types of thoughts neither in terms of the ideas it considers, nor in terms of the truth that it seeks: a philosopher is interested in whether propositions are true in the same way as anyone else is interested in whether they are true, and the propositions a philosopher is interested in may be the same as the propositions anyone else is interested in. It is tempting, then, to say that philosophy is distinguished by the investigation of meaning. Philosophers try to discover a special kind of meaning -- what one might call significance. What is the significance of a physical law? What is the significance of an everyday assumption? And given its significance, can the statement be true? Well I *have* shifted the meaning of truth: now it seems that philosophers are interested in the possibility of something's being true. Also, if the significance of something involves a special sort of proposition, philosophy will take as its subject matter these special propositions. -- But philosophy is not interested, I want to say, in these special propositions that express the significance of everyday statements. Philosophy is interested in whether, *given their significance*, these everyday statements can be true. The only question that arises in relation to the significance of a statement is whether or not this is *really* the statement's significance. For instance, if it seems that, in the light of the significance of a statement about knowledge, that the statement about knowledge cannot be true, then some doubt arises as to whether or not one has correctly interpreted the statement. -- So it comes down to this: philosophers are engaged in a special sort of interpretation of the truth. What this interpretation is, it is hard to say.

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:17:21 GMT

We seek the good. We make mistakes. It's as if, distracted by the multitude of goods, we don't realize the right good. Everything we do is for some good, but it might not be for good itself. And what about murder? I can't even conceive of it. We make mistakes -- we make terrible mistakes -- mistakes that can't be taken back. We're overcome by lethargy and we let ourselves waste. But there's still the moral sense -- the sense of what the world *should* be. Someone who has no sense of what the world should be doesn't know what to do with himself. Individually we do try for the world as it should be. The question is whether what the world should be for each of us individually is compatible with what the world should be for us in relation to each other. Certainly we can be each other's good. Another person can be my good -- can be a part of the world as it should be, for me. But this doesn't yet amount to the world as it should be, for us. Or for that matter, the world as it should be, in itself. What is the world as it should be in itself? The manifestation of order, the fact that there are laws, is evidence that the world itself has a goal. "But these laws are exceptionless." I mean the world is intelligible -- the world strives to be intelligible. But the world is only intelligible *in general* and not in particulars. It's as if one can never make complete sense of particulars, because particulars -- the bare material -- the bare whatness of the world -- has no sense in itself. Things are only intelligible in relation to each other. The progress of the universe is the unfolding of a system. But how does that relate to the good? How does that relate to the world as it ought to be? The world *can* be made sense of -- it can be made intelligible. Mathematics is what is intelligible in itself -- so the world is intelligible insofar as it manifests or instantiates a mathematical structure. It would not be surprising, if you think this way, to discover that the world is not perfectly intelligible: there's an aspect to things that can't be grasped. There are certain irregularities, perhaps -- very small irregularities, fluctuations -- because the world which manifests intelligibility is not intelligible in and of itself or through itself. There must be a distinction between a form and its instantiation. -- And we strive after the good, but we are not good -- insofar as we're something individual, something particular, we're stubborn. And we're torn between different goods. We can be good in different ways, and because we're drawn to so many different goods, we hesitate between them -- we hesitate, fluctuate, on the thresh-hold of the good. And insofar as we hesitate between goods, insofar as we fluctuate because we're being pulled in different directions, we are not good (and also insofar as we are one good but not the good). "Nobody can be everything" -- because each thing is a particular, is "itself, and not another thing". And it's insofar as things are not that they are not good and are not intelligible.

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:21:42 GMT

I'm really starting to have doubts about whether or not I want to become an academic. I went out for a dinner tonight sponsored by the department during which there were two main topics of conversation: Frege's doctrine of sense and reference and the decline of the UCSB school system. The first didn't really interest me and the second just depressed me. As for the first, it isn't that the sense-reference distinction has never caught hold of me, but lately all the philosophy I encounter seems to me obscure, heartless. It doesn't capture my attention (the way it used to?). That scares me. I worked so hard to transfer into the philosophy department. Did I make the wrong decision? And if philosophy doesn't really interest me, then why am I trying to become an academic anyway? It seems to me that if philosophy isn't worth studying, then nothing is. Maybe I could study math, but who knows if I wouldn't eventually become bored with it? I would never want to call myself a romantic, but lately I've been getting the feeling that the various arts and sciences are *relevant* insofar as they arise out of what they call "lived experience". It isn't that I want abstract theory to have practical applications, but I do want it to have significance. The problem is that something has significance the moment one is interested in it -- and that, of course, seems to make significance relative (unless someone can be interested in insignificant things -- which certainly does happen, but then one has to admit that they aren't insignificant *to him*). But the way I've always considered, there must be something that is significant in and of itself -- from itself -- or everything is potentially significant. If something is significant in and of itself and from itself, then it's significant to whomever encounters it. On the other hand, if everything is potentially significant, its potential to be significant is a possibility of the person who finds it so. I mean that if *someone* is capable of being interested in a subject, then, given that he and I must have a broadly similar psychological makeup, I can't imagine that his interest isn't also a possibility *for me*. It's just a matter, I would think, of seeing things the right way. Now if it's true that there's something significant in and of itself, the goal of life is to discover and contemplate or act in accordance with that thing; on the other hand, if everything is potentially significant, the goal of life is to cultivate a sensitivity to the significance of its various parts. I suppose I feel torn between the latter and the former. If the former is the case -- if there's something that's truly significant in-and-of-itself, then philosophy seems like a good candidate. And if philosophy fulfills this role, it must be practiced in the most rigorous, authentic manner in which it can be practiced -- one has to get after and understand the truth -- the *philosophical* truth from which in some sense all other truths spring or which makes all other truths possible in the first place (a heavy thing). It wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to say that the philosopher is someone who is trying to understand God. On the other hand, if everything is potentially significant, then you have to turn yourself into a kind of hydra -- in that you have to grow many heads. (One has "a head for art" or "a head for math".) If the former is the case, then my discontent with philosophy would naturally lead me to seek out a more authentic form of contemplation, on the one hand, or a more disciplined approach to what I have to contemplate anyway, on the other. Unless of course the one true source of significance is another activity altogether. But I have to decide whether philosophy as I encounter it is really philosophy or something else -- and if it's really philosophy, then it's myself that I need to reform and not the things I encounter. I suppose, though, that if the right approach is to cultivate a sense of things' significance, then I also have to change myself, and I also have to learn to appreciate philosophy. What happened tonight? It isn't so much that I lost myself in the midst of other people, as Heidegger would say; rather, the problem was that I wasn't with them -- that I couldn't see their interests as interests -- that I couldn't imagine being one of them. The problem isn't, to restate the point, that I'm too much apart of public life, but rather that I'm too alienated from it.

Psychological Observations Masquerading as Logic

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:15:58 GMT

Everything becomes nonsense. Language is tricky. You want to get past language and just live with things. Without language, there is no science. Music is a purer form of language -- music exhibits the thing that it means as (while) it means it. But when I talk about something, what I talk about is absent, and I lose myself in the words. I see the calculator on my desk, and I say that the calculator is on my desk -- and even though the calculator is here, when I talk about it, I lose the calculator. What's before me is the sentence, and I understand that the sentence *means* the calculator, but I only see the calculator through the sentence. I grasp the sentence first, and then, through grasping the sentence, I learn something about the calculator. But when I discuss something, I get involved in the discussion, and I lose sight of the thing I'm discussing. Entailment, for instance, is a relation between sentences (propositions), and not a relation between the things they mention. So when I try to decide whether one proposition entails another, I consider the propositions, and not the things they represent. "But you don't: one proposition does not entail another, if it's possible for the first to be true and the second to be false. When you consider the two propositions, you try and imagine a situation in which one is true and the other is false." -- But I only see each situation as a situation in which the proposition holds or does not hold. And even the situation itself is something I conceive of only through its description. -- Further, if they *do* entail each other, they do for purely formal reasons -- so that if an entailment holds, it is not because of anything about the world, but only because of the structure of what entails and what is entailed.

*This* is all nonsense too! When you're overwhelmed with nonsense, you try to say something about it, and you just add to the nonsense! It's because you're trying to explain where the nonsense comes from. But if you could give an explanation of the nonsense, then it seems it wouldn't be nonsense -- it would make a kind of sense in light of its explanation. All you can do is give a word to the feeling, but the word has no meaning except to signify the presence of the feeling -- and you don't need to signify the presence of the feeling, because the feeling is already there. You can't say anything about the feeling through the word, unless the word has some sort of connection to other words -- unless you already know how to use that word.

But when I try to talk about anything I lose the sense of what I'm talking about. All of this philosophy seems to collapse into words. One shouldn't say anything about the words if that's true. The words aren't worth talking about. -- But when I talk about the words, the thing I'm talking about is given to me, even as I'm talking about it. My way of access to the thing is precisely through talking about it. In this way, the investigation has meaning. The investigation doesn't connect back to the things -- it keeps to the words and the sentences. "But philosophy isn't about words and sentences! Philosophy is about the mind, or about the good, or about knowledge, or about what is known, or about truth."

Perhaps there is some way of fastening on the thing and then talking about it. Maybe philosophy is like sketching: you constantly have to look back at the thing, really *look* at it, and then you remember what you've seen and write it down. Once you've written that down, then you start thinking about the sentences, the arguments, the formal structure of what you're doing -- just as the artist has to think about the lines, the shading, the proportion, which have nothing to do with what he's drawing and everything to do with how he's drawing it -- with the paper. But you keep glancing back at the thing, trying to really see the thing, and then you write about it and try to do justice to it. And it's so hard because it's so easy to get lost in the thing or to get lost in the words. But any precise description of the truth like any good drawing is adequate to that of which it is true, even though it does not attain that adequacy by sharing in its nature.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:01:38 GMT

It's simply incredible to think that I didn't eat breakfast because I was hungry. But if my physical condition already determined that I was going to eat breakfast, how could my hunger have had anything to do with it? My view of the world is "from inside the machine" -- I have thoughts, feelings, perceptions, beliefs, desires -- and it seems to me as if all of these make a difference to what I do. I felt hungry, so I decided to eat. In order to eat, I had to open the refrigerator and find the eggs, get sausage out of the freezer, turn on the stove, etc. I was aware of doing all of these things. To use a metaphor from Descartes, my relation to my body and my actions is even more intimate than the relation of a pilot to his ship; nonetheless, the pilot is the one who steers. But if the epiphenomenalist is right -- if my mental life has no relevance to my physical life and is, at most, a product of it -- then my mind is just, as they say, "along for the ride". It's hard really to grasp what this means, because, like the skeptical hypothesis, epiphenomenalism would seem to leave the phenomenology unchanged. Even if my mental life is just "along for the ride", it doesn't *feel* like that -- just as, in the case of skepticism, it doesn't *feel* like I'm a "brain in a vat". It is tempting to respond to these problems by kicking a rock, so to speak: I want to refute epiphenomenalism by moving my hand or making a decision. But if the epiphenomenalist is right, this is precisely what I *cannot* do. What are the consequences? In the case of skepticism, the result is that I do not have a reason for doing any of the things I do (let alone believing whatever it is I believe) -- unless, perhaps, I construe 'reason' so broadly as to include anything that causes me to act. For example, I have no more reason to wait for the bus on the sidewalk than I do on the middle of the street, since I have no reason to believe that either decision will be of any more consequence than the other. But that's crazy -- it's crazy to stand in the middle of traffic! Now what about in the case of epiphenomenalism? What are the consequences of it? The first thing that comes to mind is that epiphenomenalism is incompatible with free will. The mind is supposed to be something outside of natural processes which intervenes on those processes and changes them. It's because our minds can influence the world -- and because our minds are not influenced by the world in the relevant way -- that we are free. But if my mind can't reach into the world and change the course of events, then I am at their mercy. Nonetheless, there's something unsatisfying about this diagnosis. There are the two positions: either free will is compatible with determinism, or it is not. Now if it is not, then even if the mind *can* cause physical events, it cannot change the course of nature -- so the problem remains even if our minds are hooked up to the world "in the right way". -- But surely mental causation is necessary for free will, if not sufficient! Because if determinism is false, then it makes a difference whether the mind can reach into the world and cause events. But still, the worry seems to be misplaced. Suppose that compatibilism is true -- for instance, that an action's being "up to me" depends simply upon whether it's cause is internal or external (where internal causes are favored). Then many of my body's actions will be free actions. The problem is not, then, that I am at the mercy of external forces. The problem seems to be rather that in that case I will be at the mercy of my body. Regardless of whether or not my body is free to act as it pleases, whatever it does will not be of *my* doing. If epiphenomenalism is true, then my situation is like that of the protagonist in the end of "Being John Malkovich" -- everything happens, and even if I am more intimately connected to it than someone watching my visual field out of a TV screen, nonetheless, all I do is "watch". -- But now we're back to saying that I'm just "along for the ride"! We have to get clear about what that means -- what consequences it has -- and it is agreed that its meaning is not in any robust sense phenomenological.

Thoughts About the Mind Pt. 3

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:46:08 GMT

Our question is, does the mind causally interact with the body? There are, as I said, two questions -- the first, how mind-body interaction works, we needn't consider, because it is not distinct from the question how body-mind interaction works (I suppose whatever answer is given to the one question will suffice for the other). So the second question is what the mind contributes to the movement of the body, roughly. Now it seems obvious that the mind does contribute something to its movement: my mind is responsible for the words that appear on this page. If I decide to sit up straight, I sit up straight. And so forth. But there is also supposed to be a physical explanation for how all of these things happen. When I decide what to type, something goes on in my brain -- something physical -- and that causes me to move my fingers in a certain way -- and so on and so forth, until we get the words on the page. (If I were writing this out by hand, the story would be a bit simpler.) So now it seems like there are two explanations for why I do what I do. There's a mental explanation -- couched in terms of what I believe, what I desire, and whatever else goes on in my head -- and there's a physical explanation, which involves neurons, chemical signals, electricity, muscles, and so forth. Further, nature runs its course: if my body is disposed in a certain way this moment, then my body is going to be disposed in a certain way at the next moment according to the laws of physics. Quite apart from issues of free will (-- Is it really determinism that's causing the problem? What if there were a number of different possibilities, each assigned some degree of probability? Would that make matters any better?), the question becomes why the mental causes aren't just redundant. If it were possible to build an exact physical replica of my body that, for some reason or another, isn't conscious, wouldn't I do exactly the same things?

Thoughts About the Mind Pt. 2

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:30:59 GMT

There are, as I was saying yesterday, two distinct problems regarding mind-body causation -- one is how physical events have mental effects, the other how mental events can have physical effects (where a mental event is the effect of a physical event, and a physical event is the effect of a mental event). Both physical and mental events should be familiar: when two cars collide, that's a physical event; when I see them collide, on the other hand -- when it seems to me as if two cars have collided, that's a mental event. Further, these two events stand in a cause-effect relationship: the reason it appears to me that two cars have collided, in this case, is that they have in fact collided. The mental event in turn can have physical effects: because of what I saw, I stopped walking and ran to the scene of the accident. (I should also add here that mental phenomena, such as believing and desiring -- if these are not events -- also have physical effects.)

I am not going to discuss what it is that makes physical-mental causation problematic; rather, I want to consider mental-physical causation. There are two distinct worries:

1. How does mental-physical causation occur?
2. Why need mental-physical causation occur?

Whatever difficulties are involved in the first problem are the same difficulties that are involved in the problem of physical-mental causation, and so I leave those aside. What, then, about the second problem? One way of expressing it is this: what work is there for the mind to do? The physical world is supposed to be a closed system: the cause of a physical event is itself a physical event. This in itself is not enough to generate a problem, however: it might always turns out that mental events *are* physical events.

(There are two ways in which a mental event can be a physical event. It is possible either that a specific mental event is a specific physical event, or that the various kinds of mental events are the same thing as the various kinds of physical events. The former is called the token-identity theory, the latter the type-identity theory. Token-identity is preferred to type-identity because of so-called "multiple realizability": to put it crudely, a belief might manifest itself in one way for Jones and in another way for an intelligent computer or a Martian -- since they do not share the same "hardware". It might even manifest itself differently in Jones and in his comrade Smith. Now in the first case, that of type-type or kind-kind identity, the various kinds of mental events would be a subset of the various kinds of physical events. In the latter case, that of token-token identity, the various kinds of mental events would *not* be a subset of the various kinds of physical events, but nonetheless every event that was a certain kind of mental event would also turn out to be a certain kind of physical event. A belief in God is not a certain kind of brain activity, on this model, but Jone's belief in God is nonetheless, I suppose, a certain kind of brain activity or a certain configuration of his brain.)

Thoughts About the Mind

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:29:23 GMT

[The Mind-Body Problem] [What the mental is.] Even if we don't think of the mind as a substance, we are still puzzled as to how the mind can interact with the body or, more generally, with matter. One question is how matter gives rise to (if not causes) mind. In order to sharpen this question, we need to clarify what types of phenomena are *mental* phenomena. The most obvious of all is consciousness. It is difficult to say what exactly consciousness is (if it is even a 'what' at all) -- but perhaps you will understand what I mean if I say that consciousness is the appearance of the world to someone in the world (what Heidegger calls "the clearing" or, I think, *das Lichtung*). It is of course no clearer what we mean by 'appearance' than it is what we mean by 'consciousness'. Is a reflection or an image an appearance? It is certainly not the thing itself, and yet it is enough like the thing to incline to say that the thing is therein represented. But even if we are forced to admit that reflections and images are appearances, they are not, for all that, appearances to *someone*. A fine result, if we only knew what we meant by 'someone' -- and hopefully we do not mean someone who is conscious! There is another characteristic of appearances that, so it has been urged, applies to the domain of the mental more generally, and that is the fact that appearances have a *content* -- an appearance is always an appearance, if not of the thing itself, than at least *as of* that thing. Other features of the mental, which are not necessarily best understood as conscious phenomena, also seem to have this characteristic: a desire is a desire for something, a belief a belief in something, and so forth. Granted there is one feature of mental life, what might be called the purely qualitative aspect, that does not seem to be about anything: pleasure and pain, say, or the way that red things look. It is hard of course to give perfectly precise examples, because even a pain seems to have some content -- one might think that it announces a harm or an evil -- further, it has location, and so it at least seems to tell us where it is (there is no such thing, I think, as a general feeling of pain). But "the pure feeling itself" is not supposed to be a representation. Rather (and this is in itself is curious) it is what all the rest of the representations are made of. Something cannot, after all, function as a representation, or so it would seem, unless it consists of parts which are not in themselves representations. If someone were to ask me why this is the case, my only reply would be that if representations themselves always consisted of representations, then there would be no distinction between a representation and its structure -- or that in virtue of which it represents whatever it represents. But this is only a vague gesture, and I am not sure why it would be impossible -- only that this seems to be the case. (Even a sentence, which has semantic content, must consist of a string of symbols which do not have any content and whose varying arrangements themselves vary in meaning.)

Method

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:06:00 GMT

Read the article. Try to summarize it in your own terms, *without looking at the article*. This way, you have to think out all the crucial relations for yourself. In doing so, you come across problems -- some of which are due to errors in the reconstruction, to be sure, but others of which are inherent in the material. Then, when you've worked through the material, you go back to the material, using your refined understanding of it to guide your responses and fix your errors. In this way, the material also becomes more interesting, because it does not merely represent the labor of another, but also something of your own. It is interesting to consider whether this method works best in the humanities, or whether it could also be extended to the sciences and mathematics. I see no reason why it could not, except that one is far more likely to make errors as the material becomes more precise.

Some Ideas From Marx

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:58:46 GMT

Various terms: money, commodity, use-value, exchange-value, value, labor, labor-value.

A commodity is anything that gets exchanged for something else. Money is according to this definition a commodity.

If A is exchanged for B, B is also exchanged for A.

Why does exchange occur? In order to satisfy a need. The commodity's capacity to satisfy needs is its use value. Use value is determined by properties intrinsic to the commodity: bread satisfies our hunger because it is nutritious.

Exchange value is not determined by the intrinsic properties of the commodity. It seems as if it should be determined by the needs of those who participate in the exchange. What I can get for bread is determined by how much (and for that matter whether) the trader needs bread. (How much bread I am willing to part with is determined by how much I need what the trader offers.)

But wouldn't Marx say that exchange-value does not fluctuate with the needs of those who trade? Exchange-value is to be reduced to value, which is determined by labor. The value of a commodity is the quantity of work it takes to produce it. (N.B. "This does not relativize value to the productivity of the laborer." We don't measure labor by time. Labor is input -- it is the amount of energy needed to produce the thing. Value will of course vary according to the capacity of the worker -- a problem because we want the same quantity of the same commodity to have the same value in all circumstances. We can offset this by taking the society as a whole as our standard: the relation of output to input is given by the state of the society -- by how much input it takes to get this output in this community. Society is the producer as represented by the individual laborer. This makes the value of a product relative to those who exchange it, but this is not pernicious, since we define society as the context within which exchange takes place. -- "But don't different societies trade with one another?" "Yes, but even then they will have agreed upon standards according to which the exchange takes place. And the question is on what these standards are to be based. Are they to be based upon need, or something more objective?") Perhaps the underlying idea is that it would be irrational for me to exchange the products of my labor for commodities which are not the product of a labor equivalent to my own. "But this is still odd -- is no one ever prepared to make sacrifices because he is in need?" "If it is not without exceptions, nonetheless it will be, in any stable system of exchange, the general rule. Marx states the conditions for rational exchange."

The Moral Argument

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:54:24 GMT

1. I think that my worries are well motivated by what Smith calls "the moral argument" (presented on p. 126). We have, Smith says, an apparently inconsistent triad consisting of the following claims: (1) the objects of moral judgments objective matters of fact. (2) Whoever judges that it is right to perform an action is ceteris paribus motivated to perform it. (3) To be motivated to act consists in two things -- desiring to act and having an idea of how to act.

Now how do these three propositions conflict? Well suppose that I judge something right. Then I am motivated to do it. But in what does my motivation consist? An idea of how to do it and the desire to do it. But the worry is that this will conflict with (1). How (this is actually worth asking)?

Well suppose that I don't want to do something. Then I won't be motivated to do it. But then, according to (2), I won't judge that action to be right. So it appears that I judge something to be right only if I want to do it (and, to be precise, I have an idea of how to do it). (Is that reasoning correct?!)

This does not seem to bode well for (1) -- why not? Because I never judge anything to be right unless I want to do it! This gives all of my judgments a subjective coloring, doesn't it? It isn't logically incompatible with (1), but it is *epistemologically* incompatible, so to speak -- it gives me some reason to doubt that I am "getting things right". (I would need some prior reason to think that I only desire what's good -- and at least in my own case, I am not at all convinced of that. I will go so far as to say that I only desire what I think is good -- and even that's flattering -- but in the case of the good, as in other cases, esse is *not* percipi.) So it seems to me that (2) and (3) together cast doubt on the epistemic credentials of our moral judgments -- and that's where the impetus to reject the Humean theory comes from. (Smith thinks none of them are to be rejected, from what I gather.)

Qualms About Smith

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:13:10 GMT

1. A general worry about the Humean theory of motivation. "Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions." A nice reversal! Does it go like this? -- *First* I have the desire, then I figure out how it should be satisfied. Then what is a moral education? It must be this -- getting yourself to desire the right things. And how do I do that? Even if I know what I *should* desire, that gives me no motivation to desire it.

2. So you think, "I ought to want to exercise" -- but that won't motivate you to want to exercise. For that, you need to *want* to want to exercise. And what does it mean to be motivated to want to exercise? Perhaps the example is just too abstruse.

3. Or maybe you *can* reason your way into a desire. The Humean will say that I have a general desire to pursue the good. So once I realize that this is good, I will realize I have a desire to pursue it (not in of itself, to be sure, but insofar as it is good).

4. Well and good, as long as I *do* have a desire for the good. But what if I don't? "What, there's someone who doesn't want what's good?" So maybe it's part of our conception of wanting something that we think it's good.

5. Then will there be a cart-horse problem? -- "Why did he want that?" "Because he desired it." "And why did he desire it?" "Because he thought it was good." -- Then the Humean would only be able to get away with claiming that desire motivates us because he presupposes that we think what we want is good. Of course, you could reverse this -- the anti-Humean only gets away with claiming that belief motivates us because he presupposes that we *want* what we think is good.

6. Now is it possible to have a general desire? (Because the Humeans will lean on these general desires whenever they get in a fix -- see p. 99, re: "a present desire to further one's future interests".) Is it possible to want something, but nothing in particular? I suppose so -- what's wrong with wanting the best man to win? (Desiring is like knowing in that sometimes we say we know / desire a proposition, other times we say we know / desire an object.)

7. So it seems you can desire the good, generally speaking. But is there a good apart from what one desires? Perhaps this gets back to the worry in #5 -- is something good because I desire it, or do I desire it because it's good (the Euthyphro dilemma)? -- It would be nice if things were like this: first it appears to me that something is good, and then I desire it. (Likewise in the case of *sexual* desire -- beauty comes first. I *see* that someone is beautiful, and *then* I desire him. But will we have the same problem? Does this desire depend on a general desire for what's beautiful?) Passion follows reason, because reason has passions that passion hardly feels.

8. That's also the explanation I want to give for those cases in which I do something even though I know I shouldn't. I believe that it's bad but that belief is overwhelmed by the appearance that it's good. (That's why the belief doesn't constitute knowledge: if it were really knowledge, it would stand more firmly in the face of contrary evidence. -- Of course, one doesn't demand of knowledge that it be unyielding -- it's possible that I did know it was bad, but that my knowledge retreats in the face of the appearances.)

9. I *want* to say this, but it's not entirely plausible. Consider Davidson's example: you want to brush your teeth just as you're drifting off to sleep, but you know that if you get up to brush your teeth, you won't get back to bed. Nonetheless, the impulse (the habit?) impels you. There it isn't plausible to say that knowledge yields to appearance.

10. But it still explains (seems to explain) a lot of cases. It explains why I eat chocolate cake when I'm on a diet -- because the apparent good of the chocolate cake overcomes whatever belief I have about the consequences. (Humean: wouldn't it just be better to say -- more plausible to say -- that belief is overcome by desire? -- Perhaps. But what explains the desire? Maybe *that's* the issue -- a desire is explained by a belief -- namely that something is good. Desires don't just spring up *from themselves*!) It explains why I go out drinking on Sunday night -- the prospects outweigh the consequences, even though the consequences are more certain than the prospects.

Is Morality Innate? pt. 2

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 07:51:42 GMT

I still don't get the question. And I still am not sure what we hope to gain by asking it -- I'm not sure why it's an *interesting* question.

One reason it might be interesting -- and I raised this possibility last week -- is that it helps us to decide whether there is such a thing as morality. If it can be shown that our capacity to be moral evolved -- or even that our beliefs about morality contribute to the survival of the species -- then I think there is reason to believe that these beliefs are not true (or perhaps these aren't even beliefs -- rules, after all, are not true or false).

Now I think I'm still confused, so really what I'm interested in is this: if it can be shown that moral behavior has a *function*, then it seems to me that moral behavior would not have to be pursued "in itself". Now this issue runs *parallel* to nativism because one way of showing that moral behavior has a function would be to show that it evolved (rather than, say, being a byproduct of evolution). But Prinz's account of morality, which is not nativist, would have the same consequence, since according to him the function of morality is to preserve the social order (see the last section -- I found the article on his website, so I have p. 29).

Another way of putting this: if moral behavior can be shown to serve some function, then what reasons do we have to be moral? Insofar as I can select my end, it seems to me that I only have a reason to be moral if I select the end which morality serves.

So one thing that emerges from all of this is that showing that morality is innate doesn't seem like it can give me a *reason* to be moral -- I'm inclined to think quite the reverse. Now this is interesting, because I get the sense that the modern philosophers appealed to the innateness of morality precisely in order to justify it. I think this is best seen as a response to the problem of moral diversity: if morality has a "deep structure", then that diffuses the argument from disagreement -- whether they know it or not, both civilized and savages agree "in their hearts".

(A related note about innateness -- I think that the concept of biological innateness will never be very powerful precisely because biology is supposed to lack teleology. It was very easy for the moderns to say that morality is innate because they could appeal to God's intentions in their explanation of innateness. A caveat: I don't want to confuse ends with intentions -- but I think that it's natural to explain how biology can have ends *through* intentions. But -- as Fodor points out in response to Dennett's work -- intentionality is precisely what evolution lacks.)

(Please excuse my fondness for the word 'precisely'.)

Ambiguity in Outlines

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:51:04 GMT

Consider the following outline:

*Point A
**Point B
**Point C
***Point D

The question is this -- is Point D a sub-point of Point C or not? It seems to me (though I'm not quite clear on this) that we have an ambiguity: either Point D is meant to elaborate on *both* Point B *and* Point C *or* it is *only* meant to elaborate on Point C.

Now how do you get around this ambiguity?

Are Moral Norms Innate? -- Some Thoughts

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 04:23:18 GMT

I'm not so sure how important this question is, since even if moral norms *are* innate, that presumably has no affect on what moral norms we should adopt (the ideal "system of moral norms").

In Sripada's paper on the subject, he argues that they are and considers how this may be so. Much of his thinking depends on an analogy between the acquisition of moral norms and the acquisition of language. Language is supposed to be a system of rules, and so is morality. Someone who understands a language knows what to say in various situations; someone who has acquired a morality knows how to act. ("But we don't always behave the way we think we should." -- Well we don't always speak that way either. This must be Chomsky's distinction between competence and performance. A bad performance is not always the result of incompetence.)

I feel a bit uneasy about this. Is learning a system of morality really like learning a language? (Here one would like to invoke the distinction between knowing-how and knowing-that.) As Harman points out in response to Sripada, it is possible to be a competent speaker without knowing the principles the capacity to follow which one's competency consists in. But is it possible to follow a moral rule without intending to follow it? (I guess you can say that we are for the most part grammatical animals, even if we're not always aware of it -- but can we likewise say that we're for the most part *moral* animals, even if we're not always aware of it?)

Maybe that gets me: to be moral involves an intention to be moral -- and that requires moral sensitivity -- an awareness of the morally pertinent facts. (Well being grammatical involves some sensitivity to the grammatically pertinent facts, doesn't it? -- Or maybe all one has is the intention to express a thought, and one doesn't normally distinguish between the thought and the language one uses to express it -- thinks, without further experience, that the two are the same.)

Another way to get at this may be to say that a system of morality is, like a science, a system of propositions. We do have (they say) a common-sense science, and one could investigate what leads us to believe these things -- whether these beliefs are original or innate. (It would be better, at least, if consideration of the evidence is what leads us to hold the beliefs we do -- even -- especially -- those that are mistaken). But if this set of common-sense beliefs is true, then part of the explanation for why we believe what we do must be the truth of what we believe; if, on the other hand, this set of beliefs is false, then I suppose the investigation is useful in that it reveals whether we have any innate prejudices or handicaps that lead us into error -- so that we can avoid them. (Of course it isn't a very flattering picture.) So if an inquiry into whether or not we have innate morals has this end, then it's a good end (though one is making lemons out of lemonade).

But I suspect these sorts of genetic inquiries assume, from the outset, that the system of norms a particular society has adopted (and adapted) isn't a system of true beliefs -- because the mechanisms one invokes to explain the acquisition of these norms never seems to have anything to do with the truth (consider Sripada's discussion of incest norms -- they arise ultimately from evolution and proximately, if that's the right word, from the emotion of disgust -- so the reason that we have the morals we do is because we have an innate propensity to feel disgust at certain things -- as if disgust itself weren't a normative response!). And the effect of such an investigation, I worry, is to undermine the notion that we do have any correct moral beliefs.

I hasten to add that there's nothing wrong with this sort of archaeology. But there is a tendency to confuse an explanation of how things came to be the way they are with an explanation of how things are (how things work). I'm just worried that speculation as to how societies have acquired the moral norms they have might be mistaken for an explanation of the way norms operate and how we should operate with (and on) them.

Notes on Energy

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:36:57 GMT

I read today in a physics textbook that we never observe energy directly but only via its appearances -- so energy manifests itself sometimes as heat, sometimes as motion, sometimes as sound, etc. It seems to me it would be better to say that the energy of a thing is its capacity to change (remember I call motion a kind of change -- namely in position). If energy is a capacity, then there is nothing any more mysterious about "potential" energy then there is about "kinetic" energy. (Now it can't be right to say that potential energy is something's capacity to change with respect to its position, since not all positions are equal. Maybe you could say that something's potential energy is its capacity to change with respect to the direction of the force acting on it. Well there are other kinds of potential energy, I suppose...) So if you say that energy is capacity for change, then the statement that energy is conserved should be equivalent to the statement that nothing comes from nothing, shouldn't it? Energy is capacity for change -- so to say that energy is conserved is to say that the overall capacity of things to change does not itself change. That means things overall do not become more or less capable of changing. An isolated individual, of course (a billiard ball) can gain energy (say from a collision) -- but it can only again energy if something else loses energy. Capacity has got to be traded, like currency -- but it can't be produced (like the currency). Maybe that makes sense. After all, if the capacity for change could change, then it would have to have a capacity for changing its capacity to change, and so on and so forth. (Why? Something has a capacity if it can do something -- both when it does that thing and when it doesn't -- when it is realized and when it is unrealized. An unrealized capacity is called "potential" -- a realized capacity is "active". -- These are probably also what people call "powers".) So what's the problem? -- Does it go all the way down? Can it go all the way down? Well maybe it does -- so maybe that's a dead end.

The Ontological Argument

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:36:37 GMT

The ontological argument is supposed to go something like this:

(1) God is that greater than which nothing can be conceived.
(2) Suppose that God does not exist -- then something greater can be conceived.
(3) But this contradicts (1), therefore God exists.

A very puzzling argument! Starting with (1), what does it mean to say that God is that greater than which nothing can be conceived? We might put it like this:

(1') 'God' =df. 'that greater than which nothing can be conceived'.

Or, in English, that we mean by the name 'God' that greater than which nothing can be conceived. The question then arises whether or not this name is the name of anything at all (and whether, for that matter, it is the name of one thing -- although answering the first question in the affirmative would be impressive enough). The argument supposes that if it is not something's name -- someone's? -- then we have a contradiction. For if so, then we can conceive of something greater, namely a being whose name *is* God.

-- Well we can conceive of it -- but simply because I can conceive of a person whose name is Sam Gamgee, it doesn't follow that there is indeed a Sam Gamgee. Is the matter so simple as this -- that it does not follow, from the fact that I can conceive of something greater than God, that the object of my conception (so to speak) exists?

-- How can the objection be sound? It does not follow from the fact that I can conceive of something greater that that which is conceived to be greater exists. It follows from the fact that I can conceive of something greater that it was wrong to affirm both (1) and (2) -- both that God is the greatest conceivable being and that God does not exist. -- So why not give up (1)? -- Because (1) is just a stipulative definition. It can't be wrong to say that I shall mean by God that than which nothing greater can be conceived, anymore than it can be wrong to say that I shall mean by 'Cquare' (with a cedilia) the square circle. Of course, 'Cquare' does not name anything (and *a fortiori* not one thing), but that does not mean my definition of the term is wrong, unless I am only allowed to introduce into the language names for existing things. But this limitation seems rather severe. The only option then, is to reject (2) -- but if God doesn't not exist, then God of course exists.

I believe that's how the argument is supposed to work.

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:51:12 GMT

Is the fear of death a bad thing?

I wake up and I think to myself, I am going to die. Someday, this is going to end. ("This" -- what am I pointing to? I remember running up the street shouting, "This! This!" -- but there was nothing in particular I could point to, because it wasn't any of those things that were going to disappear -- or if they were, that wasn't what I meant. It was my consciousness of them. But it's futile to try to *point* to *consciousness*. -- In the same way that it's futile to try to point to a number? "That's one. *That's* one".) And I think, I don't want this to end. But it will. ("And it will never come back.") Then I feel sad and scared. Still, it's (likely) far away -- as far away as an old body.

Is death a bad thing? Because it isn't bad to fear bad things.

I only grasp death when I'm aware of the passage of time in a certain way. I'm most aware of the passage of time when I'm expecting something -- a beginning or an ending -- and maybe also when I'm enjoying myself -- at least for some kinds of enjoyment. What I'm aware of, is the *flow* of time -- I feel the future intrude on the present, and I'm aware of the present moment as something passing. Then I'm aware of death as something that will come. I feel that death will be present in the same way I feel that the present will pass. You could say I feel the presence of death.

And I know that nothing comes after death.

So I'm aware of the flow of time, and I'm aware that the flow of time will stop. (This is a kind of *seeing*. The difference between feeling one's mortality and, as I am now, writing about it is the difference between being caught in a storm and understanding the sentence, "It's raining".)

On the one hand, it seems it must be irrational to fear death, because death is inevitable. On the other hand, it seems that that's precisely *why* we fear death, *because* it's inevitable.

Why is it irrational to fear the inevitable? Because what good can fear accomplish? When we say that something bad, we mean also that it is to be avoided (bonum sequendum, malum vitandum -- the good is to be sought, the bad, shunned). But you can only avoid the evitable, and death, as we said, is inevitable. So how can one judge that death is bad? And if one cannot judge that death is bad, then how can one rationally fear it? ("Rationally" -- in what sense? Are judgments about good and bad always prescriptions for action? I'm not saying that when we call Hitler bad, we mean that people and behavior of that kind are to be shunned -- at least, I'm not saying that's *all* we mean. But is it wrong to say that that's part of what we mean? When we recognize the good, aren't we drawn towards it in the very act of recognition -- though the good is more than that impulse?)