Well-written advice on writing well from Brand Blanshard.
Category: Metaphilosophy
Against Philosophical Dismissal
To dismiss Hegel is as bad as to dismiss Donald Davidson. On second thought, it is far worse. For you cannot understand Marx without understanding Hegel, and you cannot understand the current culturally Marxist, 'woke' mess we are in without understanding Marx and his successors. Davidson & Co. can be safely ignored if it is the latter understanding you are after.
Ideas, whether true or false, whether rationally defensible or indefensible, have social and cultural consequences. Short-sighted folk dismiss philosophy as so much hot air. But when the 'air' of such Luftmenschen as Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche drifts down from the ivory towers and the garrets and influences the climate on the ground, then things can get 'hot' in a different sense.
Tom and Van: A Tale of Two Idealists
Top of the Substack stack.
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Tony Flood comments (12/23):
This was enjoyable on so many levels. There's irony in labeling these gents "idealists" (I know the sense in which you meant it) since Marxists considered theists like Merton metaphysical "idealists," but and how could any mathematician, even a Marxist one, be anything but an idealist when it comes to the reality of numbers? Your historical vignette is rich and your comparison and contrasts apt.
I know that Karl Marx occupied himself with the foundations of analysis (calculus), but I don't know whether or not he wrote anything about the philosophy of mathematics. To answer Tony's question with a question: Why couldn't a Marxist take a nominalist tack and simply deny the existence of numbers and other mathematical items?
Tony replies (12/24):
"Why couldn't a Marxist take a nominalist tack and simply deny the existence of numbers and other mathematical items?"
Abstractly, Bill, I have no idea what tack Marxist materialists might take if pressed about the reality of numbers, e.g., what (and "where") they are (Plato's problem); how they're "unreasonably effective" in the natural sciences, which Marxists revere, i.e., how numbers can cause mathematical belief (Benacerraf's problem); and how numbers are knowable on the materialist/naturalist terms to which Marxists subscribe, i.e., what neural process could possibly answer to the perception of a mathematical object (Goedel's problem). I wish I could have asked Stalinist mathematician Dirk Struik (1896-2000) these questions when he and I were comrades, but I wasn't asking them then. (I'm not asking them these days, but your question stimulated memories of when I did.) Nominalism is not an integral way out for Marxists, but what grounds Marxists have for valuing integral solutions, I have no idea.
Thanks for the Wigner pdf. It gets at a question that fascinated me when I was a student of electrical engineering at the end of the 'sixties. How is it that the theory of complex numbers — developed a priori in response to a purely theoretical question about the roots of negative integers — finds application in alternating current theory?
I say 'developed,' Wigner says 'invented.' "The principal emphasis [in mathematics] is on the invention of concepts. Mathematics would soon run out of interesting theorems if these had to be formulated in terms of the concepts which already appear in the axioms." I wrote 'developed' because of my platonizing tendency to view mathematical entities — 'entities' betrays me too inasmuch as it begs the question I am about to pose – as discovered rather than invented. The question that my use of 'entities' begs is precisely the question whether mathematical 'items' — a colorless, non-question-begging bit of terminology — are made up by us (in which case they cannot be called entities or beings) or are really but non-spatially 'out there' in Plato's topos ouranios. My platonic drift links up with my classical theism and issues in the view that the unspeakably vast actual infinity of mathematical items are accusatives of divine awareness: their Being is their being-known/created by the archetypal intellect. This sort of view allows for the mediation of two extremes, a synthesis if you will.
Thesis: math items exist in themselves in splendid independence of ectypal intellects (whether human, Martian, angelic, whatever). Antithesis: math items do no such thing; they are the conceptual/linguistic fabrications of ectypal intellects such as ours. And now my mind drifts back to Hartry Field's nominalistic Science without Numbers, circa 1980, the gist of which is that science can be done without ontological commitment to any so-called abstract entities. There are some very smart nominalists and they are hard to beat. Shooting from the hip, I say Field 'out-quines' Quine.
But here's a thought. Suppose Wigner is right and mathematica are inventions by us, which is to say that they are conceptual/linguistic fabrications that do not refer to anything real anywhere, whether in Plato's heaven or on Aristotle's earth. Would that not make the problem of the applicability of mathematics to the physical world utterly insoluble?
There is a Kantian-type solution, but then you have to take on board the Kantian baggage.
It looks like I have, willy-nilly this Christmas eve, added a log to my aporetic fire in support of my metaphilosophical thesis that the central problems of philosophy, though obviously meaningful, pace the later Ludwig, are all of them absolutely insoluble by intellects of our constitution. Insofar forth, I am mightily impressed by the thesis of the infirmity of reason. The Fall had noetic consequences.
Below: Raphael, The School of Athens depicting Plato gesturing upwards, as if to the mundus intelligibilis and Aristotle downwards as if to the mundus sensibilis.
Beyond Philosophy
Josef Pieper, Death and Immortality, trs. Richard and Clara Winston, Herder and Herder, 1969, pp. 129-130. Originally in German under the title Tod und Unsterblichkeit in 1968:
Thus we have now at last touched, and perhaps overstepped, the boundary which is set for the philosophical enquirer. Really to reach this boundary — therein lies, I think, the true meaning and distinctive opportunity of philosophy. The great philosophers have always seen in philosophy a challenge to penetrate beyond philosophizing.
I divide the paths beyond into two main groups, call them 'mundane' and 'transcensive' or perhaps 'descensive' and 'ascensive' for want of better terms. Two examples of the former are Pyrrhonism as represented by the skeptic way of Sextus Empiricus and political activism as represented by Karl Marx and his followers. I have had plenty to say about both in these pages.
Examples of the higher and nobler paths include religion and mysticism. Here I write about their relation to each other and to philosophy.
The main thing, as it seems to me, is to forge onward and not fall back.
The Affinity of Philosophy and Madness: David Stove on the Logos
From an interview with a philosopher of madness who is also a mad philosopher in the sense that he has experienced severe psychotic episodes requiring hospitalization, Wouter Kusters:
JB: So, to paraphrase again, the ‘mad person’ is grappling with the very same profound questions as the philosopher, but is doing so in more chaotic, ‘uncontained’ and perhaps, as a result, confusing way. The content — i.e., preoccupations with philosophical, spiritual, religious matters common in those so diagnosed — is not a ‘symptom’ of a disease process but indicative of a radical immersion in these immense conundrums of existence. I also take you to be saying that the mad person may have gone a little too far into this and has entered a sort of philosophical freefall. The key difference between the mad person and the philosopher, then, is not one of biology or pathology, but of the context and container in which this exploration is taking place. Is that right?
WK: Yes, that is absolutely right. But with this caveat: it could also be argued that both philosophy and madness are themselves symptoms of a disease process, the logical outcome of our endowment, since prehistory, with a consciousness that can reflect on its own emptiness. But the key difference between the mad person and philosopher still lies where you place it, yes.
As a philosophical maverick, I am neither analytic nor Continental, but someone who, conversant in both idioms, has published in both types of journals. I chop logic and engage in close analysis and argumentation, but I am also no stranger to such existential moods as Heideggerian Angst, Sartean nausée, and Camusian absurdité. Not only have I had these feelings, I am also open to their possibly revelatory value as disclosing deep truths about our predicament in this life. I am thus interested in the question of the relation of philosophy to topics the 'well-adjusted' are apt to consider border-line mad or 'pathological' and thus of no objective significance. What follows is something I wrote years ago about and against the spiritually superficial Australian positivist David Stove who has no sympathy whatsoever for the mad and mystical depths of genuine philosophy. What I wrote is perhaps too polemical. But I persist in my conviction that Stove was a deeply superficial fellow, a philosophistine, a term I will define below.
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Commenting on philosophy's alleged "deep affinity with lunacy," Australian positivist David Stove writes,
That the world is, or embodies, or is ruled by, or was created by, a sentence-like entity, a ‘logos’, is an idea almost as old as Western philosophy itself. Where the Bible says ‘The Word was made flesh’, biblical scholars safely conclude at once that some philosopher [Stove’s emphasis] has meddled with the text (and not so as to improve it). Talking-To-Itself is what Hegel thought the universe is doing, or rather, is. In my own hearing, Professor John Anderson maintained, while awake, what with G. E. Moore was no more than a nightmare he once had, that tables and chairs and all the rest are propositions. So it has always gone on. In fact St John’s Gospel, when it says ’In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’, sums up pretty accurately one of the most perennial, as well as most lunatic, strands in philosophy. (The passage is also of interest as proving that two statements can be consistent without either being intelligible.) (From The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies, Basil Blackwell 1991, p. 32.)
A few comments are in order.
1. Let’s start with the parenthetical claim at the end. To say that two statements are (logically) consistent is to say that they (logically) can both be true, that there is a (logically) possible world in which both are true. But a statement cannot be true or false unless it possesses meaning: meaningfulness is a necessary (though not a sufficient) condition of having a truth-value. Now to be meaningful and to be intelligible are the same. It follows that Stove is wrong and that it is not the case that two statements can be consistent without either being intelligible. Consistency is defined in terms of truth, and truth requires intelligibility.
2. Are The Word was with God and The Word was God, taken singly, unintelligible? Not unless you are a positivist who ties intelligibility to empirical verifiability. But the principle of cognitive significance that positivists employ (according to which every cognitively meaningful statement is either logical/analytic or else empirically verifiable in principle) is itself empirically unverifiable. And since it is neither a truth of logic nor an analytic truth or logical truth, it is itself meaningless by its own criterion. Stove is hoist by his own petard, or cooked by his own stove.
3. To say or imply that no concrete thing in the world could have a proposition-like structure, and that anyone who thinks this is a lunatic, is itself a lunatic thing to say. I maintain that the world’s basic particulars are concrete facts and thus have a proposition-like structure, and I am no lunatic. (See my A Paradigm Theory of Existence, Kluwer 2002). Closer to Australia, atheist David Armstrong, no slouch of a philosopher, and sane as far as I can tell, argues, quite sensibly, that contingent truths require truth-makers and that the latter are states of affairs, proposition-like entities. Stove’s suggestion that a view like this is insane shows that there is something deeply wrong with Stove. 'I am seated’ is true in virtue of the fact of my being seated. My being seated is a proposition-like entitiy. Insanity? Or common sense?
4. The trouble with Stove is that he is a positivist, an anti-philosopher, someone with no inkling of what philosophy is about. He is very intelligent in a superficial sort of way, witty, erudite, a pleasure to read, and I am sure it would have been great fun to have a beer with him. But he is what I call a philosophistine. A philistine is someone with no appreciation of the fine arts; a philosophistine is one with no appreciation of philosophy. People like Stove and Paul Edwards and Rudolf Carnap just lack the faculty for philosophy, a faculty that is distinct from logical acumen.
5. My tone is harsh. What justifies it? The even harsher tone this two-bit positivist assumes in discussing great philosophers who will be read long after he is forgotten, great philosophers he must misunderstand because he cannot attain their level.
For more on Kusters, I refer you to the NDPR review of his book, A Philosophy of Madness: The Experience of Psychotic Thinking, Nancy Forest-Flier (trans.), MIT Press, 2020, 738pp., $39.95, ISBN 9780262044288.
Why Colin McGinn is the Best Philosopher Ever
Technical Philosophy, Compartmentalization, and Worldview
Could the Visible Surface of a Physical Thing be a Mental Item?
The Sparring Partner offers the following tetrad for our delectation.
1) I take this to be the visible surface of a desk.
2) It is almost certain that this in fact [is] the visible surface of a desk, but it is possible that it is not (it may be the result of a highly realistic virtual reality program).
3) If this were not the visible surface, it would be a mental item.
4) It is impossible that the visible surface of a desk could ever be a mental item.
The S. P. thinks that these four are collectively inconsistent. That is not true. They are consistent on the following theory.
My man sees something. One cannot see without seeing something. This is a special case of the thesis of intentionality. What my man sees, the intentional object, has the properties of a desk surface; it has the look of a desk surface. What he sees may or may not exist. (Better: what he sees is possibly such that it exists and possibly such that it does not exist). The intentional object is bipolar or bivalent: either existent or non-existent. In itself, the intentional object is neutral as between these two poles or values. If the intentional object does not exist, then it is merely intentional. If the intentional object exists, then it is real.
So far I have accommodated (1) and (2).
If the intentional object is real, then it it part and parcel of the desk itself. If so, then the intentional object is not a mental content. This should also obvious from the fact that the intentional object is distinct from the corresponding act: it is not contained in the act, and in this sense it is not a content (reeller Inhalt in Husserl's sense) of the act. The act is mental, but is object is not mental, or at least not mental in the same sense. The act is an Erlebnis. it is something one lives through (er-leben); one does not live through an intentional object. Call the intentional object the noema. The noema is not a mental content but it it also does not exist in itself. It exists only as the objective correlate of the act. It is other than the act, and not contained in the act, but is nonetheless necessarily correlated with the act such that, if there were no acts (intentionale Erlebnisse), then there would be no noemata.
I have just now accommodated (3) and (4). I have shown how the members of the tetrad could all be true. An apparently inconsistent set of propositions can be show to be consistent by making one or more distinctions. In this instance, a distinction between mental item as content and mental item as noema.
The answer to the title question, then, is yes.
Here is a simpler and more familiar example of how this works. The aporetic dyad whose limbs are The coffee is hot and The coffee is not hot is apparently inconsistent. The inconsistency is removed by making a distinction between two different times one at which the coffee is hot, the other at which it is not.
Is the above theory, which I have only sketched, tenable? Does it definitively solve the problem? I don't believe so. And this for the reason that the solution gives rise to problems of its own.
If a polyad is solved by the making of a problematic distinction, then the solution is stop-gap and not definitive.
Obscure, Neglected, and Underrated Philosophers
A reader demands a list. Here we go. It is very far from complete. To list is not to endorse. A philosopher my be well worth studying but far from the truth of things. Contemporary academic philosophy is hyper-professionalized and over-specialized. An exposure to some of the following may have a broadening effect. Philosophy is a mansion with many wings and many rooms. Asterisks indicate a MavPhil category on the right sidebar.
Constantin Brunner (English)
Constantin Brunner (German)
Philosophy Under Attack
An exercise in philosophical apologetics.
Substack latest.
Are Philosophical Problems Soluble?
Edward Buckner writes,
In my PhD thesis I argued that philosophical problems cannot be resolved. I think you still take the same view. My thinking today is that while the problems exist in some sense, they cannot be coherently stated in logical form. I.e. “The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.”
I do indeed consider the central problems of philosophy to be insoluble. But I don't agree that the problems cannot be coherently stated in logical form. And I don't agree that a problem to be genuine must be soluble. Consider the following antilogism:
1. All genuine problems are soluble.
2. No problem of philosophy is soluble.
3. Some problems of philosophy are genuine.
The above inconsistent triad is a clear and coherent presentation in logical form of a philosophical problem, namely, the meta-problem of whether only soluble problems are genuine. The problem is obviously genuine (as opposed to pseudo), but not obviously soluble. Hence it is reasonably held to be insoluble.
If you disagree, tell me which of the three propositions you will reject, and why it must be rejected. For example, you might tell me that (3) is to be rejected and its negation accepted. The negation of (3) is:
~3. No problems of philosophy are genuine.
Now prove (~3). You won't be able to do it.
So What’s up with the Metaphilosophy Book?
I was happy to find the following item in the mailbag the other morning:
Hi Bill,
I recall (however, I can't find exactly where) that you mentioned in an old blog post your intention to publish a work on metaphilosophy at some point in the future. I am curious, is this still a goal of yours? If so, is it in progress? I would be delighted to read it, but I understand if you've chosen not to pursue that project.Your grateful reader,Chandler
Thank you for your inquiry, Chandler. Yes, the metaphilosophy book is in progress, and has been for longer than I care to reveal. Why am I taking so long with it?
I gave the following dissertation advice a few posts ago:
. . . finish the bloody thing now while you are young and cocky and energetic. Finish it before your standards become too exacting. Give yourself a year, say, do your absolute best and crank it out. Think of it as a union card. It might not get you a job but then it just might. Don't think of it as a magnum opus or you will never finish.
My current predicament is the opposite. I am now old and my standards have become as exacting as they ever will be. I'm under time pressure but it's of a different sort than the young person's. The young philosopher needs to 'make it' and secure a space within which he can pursue his vocation. He has to solve 'the problem of the belly.' He may also be driven by worldly ambition. I have secured the space, solved the problem of livelihood, and I have renounced all worldly ambition in line with Wittgenstein's 1948 observation, "Ambition is the death of thought." (Ehrgeiz ist der Tod des Denkens, Culture and Value, p. 77)
So now I can afford to set high standards. Trouble is, they slow you down. That's good in one way. I take to heart the advice of Wittgenstein and Brentano. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 80: Der Gruss der Philosophen unter einander sollte sein: "Lass Dir Zeit!" "This is how philosophers should greet each other: 'Take your time!'"
A similar thought is to be found in Franz Brentano, though I have forgotten where he says this: Wer eilt, bewegt sich nicht auf dem Boden der Wissenschaft. "One who hurries is not proceeding on a scientific basis."
On the other hand, the clock is running, the flag will fall, and the time control is sudden death. There is no secondary or tertiary control; nor can one take an 'incomplete' when the Grim Reaper comes knocking, his scythe glistening in the rays of the setting sun.
Progress in Philosophy
I am making progress in philosophy, which is not to say that philosophy is making progress in me.
The Philosopher and the Christian
Substack latest.
Neither Piety nor Polemic
Neither piety nor polemic belong in philosophy proper.
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Commentary:
0) No proper aphorism is an aphorism if it explains itself or gives reasons for its own truth. And yet a good aphorism is the tip of an iceberg of thought susceptible of commentary.
1) So when I, as a philosopher, speak of God, I never use the pious 'He' but only 'he.' Of course I hold no brief against piety as such. Indeed, our society is in steep decline in part because of a lack of piety, reverence, respect, and cognate virtues. A sign of decline is the widespread use of 'irreverent' as a term of praise. The hard Left's erasure of collective historical memory via the destruction of monuments and memorials is premised on a dangerous lack of respect for our forebears and what they bequeathed to us and and has stood the test of time.
2) Philosophy is a conversation among friends who seek the truth together and who love the truth more than they love one another. There is simply no place for the polemic of deeds or the polemic of words among friends. Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas. The Latin saying is often taken as a gloss on Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1096a10-20, where the Stagirite distances himself from the theory of Forms. But one finds the thought already in Plato's Republic at 595b-c and 607c.
3) That philosophy is a conversation among friends holds for political philosophy as well, since it too is philosophy and is not to be confused with politics. Whether or not Carl Schmitt is right that the essence of the political resides in the opposition Freund (friend) – Feind (enemy), political action and discourse is almost always, even if only accidentally, polemical. It is a mistake to confuse politics with political philosophy.
4) I tend to alliterate. Is this a stylistic defect? I don't think so, but in matters literary as in matters of the palate, de gustibus non est disputandum. You have a right to your contrary opinion if contrary it is.
5) Philosophy proper is not to be confused with what passes for philosophy among the paid professors of the subject. To know what it is and what it is capable of you must not merely consult but work through the works of the great philosophers appropriating their mindset as you proceed. Ralph Waldo Emerson exaggerates with his "Plato is philosophy and philosophy Plato," but it is an exaggeration in the right direction.