Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Torch Songs

    "A torch song is a sentimental love song, typically one in which the singer laments an unrequited or lost love, where one party is either oblivious to the existence of the other, or where one party has moved on." (Wikipedia)

    Sarah Vaughn, Broken Hearted Melody.   YouTuber comment: "Late 1959. I was in 4th grade, listening to KFWB Los Angeles."  Same here. Same year, same grade, same station, KFWB, Channel 98! Color Radio! My favorite deejay was B. Mitchel Reed.  I learned 'semolian' and 'mishigas' from him. His real surname is 'Goldberg,' which means mountain of gold. I will say no more lest I provoke my alt-Right correspondents.  

    Timi Yuro, Hurt. When I first heard this I was sure she was black. I was wrong. She's Italian, and her real name is Rosemarie Timotea Auro. What pipes!

    Billie Holliday, The Very Thought of You

    Roy Orbison, In Dreams

    Peggy Lee, Oh You Crazy Moon 

    Ketty Lester, Love Letters 

    Etta James, At Last  

    Lenny Welch, Since I Fell for You

    Sentimental you say? What would life be without sentiment? You say it's overdone? You suffer from an excess of cool. It's Saturday night, punch the clock, pour yourself a stiff one, and feel. Tonight we feel, tomorrow we think.  About sentimentality and everything else under the sun.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Philosophically Salient Senses of ‘See’

    This entry is relevant to my ongoing discussion with Dr. Buckner.

    It is plain that 'sees' has many senses in English.  Of these many senses, some are philosophically salient.  Of the philosophical salient senses, two are paramount.  Call the one 'existence-entailing.'  (EE) Call the other 'existence-neutral.' (EN)  On the one, 'sees' is a so-called verb of success.  On the other, it isn't, which not to say that it is a 'verb of failure.'  

    EE:  Necessarily, if subject S sees x, then x exists.

    EN:  Possibly, subject S sees x, but it is not the case that x exists.

    Now one question is whether both senses of 'see' can be found in ordinary English.  The answer is yes.  "I know that feral cat still exists; I just now saw him" illustrates the first.  "You look like you've just seen a ghost"  illustrates the second.  If I know that the feral cat exists on the basis of seeing him, then 'sees' (or a cognate thereof) is being used in the (EE) sense as a 'verb of success.'  If ghosts do not exist, as I am assuming, then one who sees a ghost literally sees something that does not exist.  We call this second sense of 'sees' the phenomenological sense.  

    So far, I don't think I've said anything controversial.  I have simply pointed out two different senses and thus two different uses of 'sees' in ordinary, non-philosophical English.

    We advance to a philosophical question, and embroil ourselves in controversy, when we ask whether, corresponding to the existence-neutral sense of 'sees,' there is a type of seeing, a type of seeing that does not entail the existence of the object seen.  One might grant that there is a legitimate use of 'sees' (or a cognate thereof) in English according to which what is seen does not exist without granting that in reality there is a type of seeing that is the seeing of the nonexistent.

    One might insist that all seeing is the seeing of what exists, and that one cannot literally see what does not exist.  So, assuming that there are no ghosts, one cannot see a ghost.  As Joe Biden might say, "Come on man, you can't see what ain't there!"

    But suppose a sincere, frightened person reports that she has seen a ghost of such-and-such a ghastly description.  Because of the behavioral evidence, you cannot reasonably deny that the person has had an  experience, and indeed an object-directed (intentional) experience.  You cannot deny, given her fear-indicating behavior, verbal and non-verbal, that she had a visual experience as of  something ghastly. You cannot reasonably say, "Because there are no ghosts, your experience had no object."  For it did have an object, indeed a material (albeit nonexistent) object having various ghastly properties. After all, she saw something, not nothing. Not only that, she saw something quite definite with definite properties.  She didn't see Casper the Friendly Ghost but a ghastly ghost.

    You might object, "No, she merely thought she saw something." But there was no thinking or doubting or considering going on; she saw something and it scared the crap out of her.

    This example suggests that we sometimes literally see what does not exist, and that seeing therefore does not entail the existence of that which is seen.  If this is right, then the epistemologically primary sense of 'see' is given by (EN) supra.  If so, then problems arise for realism about the external world. For example, how do I know that the tree I see in good light (etc.) exists in itself whether or not I or anyone see it? 

    Henessey's response:  "I grant the reality of her experience, with the reservation that it was not an experience based in vision, but one with a basis in imagination, imagination as distinguished from vision."  The point, I take it, is that what we have in my example of a person claiming to see a ghost is not a genuine case of seeing, of visual perception, but a case of imagining.  The terrified person imagined a ghost; she did not see one.

    I think Hennessey's response gets the phenomenology wrong.  Imagination and perception are phenomenologically different.  For one thing, what we imagine is up to us: we are free to imagine almost anything we want; what we perceive, however, is not up to us.  When Ebeneezer Scrooge saw the ghost of Marley, he tried to dismiss the apparition as "a bit of bad beef, a blot of mustard, a fragment of an underdone potato," but he found he could not.  Marley: "Do you believe in me or not?"  Scrooge: "I do, I must!"  This exchange brings out nicely what C. S. Peirce called the compulsive character of perception.  Imagination is not like this at all.  Whether or not Scrooge saw Marley, he did not imagine him for the reason that the object of his experience was not under the control of his will.

    The fact that what one imagines does not exist is not a good reason to to assimilate perception of what may or may not exist to imagination.

    Second, if a subject imagines x, then it follows that x does not exist.  Everything imagined is nonexistent.  But it is not the case that if a subject perceives x, then x does not exist.  Perception either entails the existence of the object perceived, or is consistent with both the existence and the nonexistence of the object perceived.

    Third,  one knows the identity of an object of imagination simply by willing the object in question.  The subject creates the identity so that there can be no question of re-identifying or re-cognizing an object of imagination.  But perception is not like this at all.  In perception there is re-identification and recognition. Scrooge did not imagine Marley's ghost for the reason that he was able to identify and re-identify the ghost as it changed positions in Scrooge's chamber.  So even if you balk at admitting that Scrooge saw Marley's ghost, you ought to admit that he wasn't imaging him.

    I conclude that Hennessey has not refuted my example. To see a ghost is not to imagine a ghost, even if there aren't any.  Besides, one can imagine a ghost without having the experience that one reports when one sincerely states that one has seen a ghost.  Whether or not this experience is perception, it surely is not imagination.

    But I admit that this is a very murky topic! 

    Bill Vallicella

    One response to “Philosophically Salient Senses of ‘See’”

  • Combat Veterans

    They descended into hell and some rose again from the dead. Who am I to ask them any questions? Do I have the right?

    Craig was a housemate of mine in undergraduate days. When he was 18 he ran away from a troubled home and joined the Marine Corps. He ended up in Vietnam. One day I asked him what it was like. Distraught, he ran from the room. Later he told me the story. His platoon entered a village.  After the fire fight, he alone was unscathed. Everyone else was either killed or badly wounded. Craig told me that as he walked toward what he thought would be certain death, he was overcome with a feeling of deep love for everybody and everything. In that Grenzsituation, that boundary or limit situation, my friend perhaps glimpsed the world's ultimate depth dimension, a peace surpassing all understanding in the eye of the storm of war.

    To encroach with curiosity upon the liminality of such experiences shows a lack of respect.  So now I ask no questions.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Notes on Idealism, Realism, Frege, and Prichard

    Ed Buckner sent me a pdf the first couple pages of which I reproduce below. Bibliographical data here. Emphases added. My commentary is in blue. 

    …………………………………….

    Twentieth Century Oxford Realism

    Mark Eli Kalderon and Charles Travis

    1 Introduction

    This is a story of roughly a century of Oxford philosophy told by two outsiders.
    Neither of us has ever either studied or taught there. Nor are we specially privy to
    some oral tradition. Our story is based on texts. It is, moreover, a very brief, and
    very highly selective, story. We mean to trace the unfolding, across roughly the
    last century, of one particular line of thought—a sort of anti-idealism, and also a
    sort of anti-empiricism. By focussing in this way we will, inevitably, omit, or give
    short shrift to, more than one more than worthwhile Oxford philosopher. We will
    mention a few counter-currents to the main flow of 20th century Oxford thought.
    But much must be omitted entirely.

    Our story begins with a turn away from idealism. Frege’s case against idealism, so far as it exists in print, was made, for the most part, between 1893 (in the preface to Grundgesetze volume 1) and 1918-1919 (in “Der Gedanke”). Within that same time span, at Oxford, John Cook Wilson, and his student, H.A. Prichard, developed, independently, their own case against idealism (and for what might
    plausibly be called—and they themselves regarded as—a form of “realism”). Because of the way in which Cook Wilson left a written legacy it is difficult at best to give exact dates for the various components of this view. But the main ideas were probably in place by 1904, certainly before 1909, which marked the publication of Prichard’s beautiful study, “Kant’s Theory of Knowledge”. It is also quite probably seriously misleading to suggest that either Cook Wilson or Prichard produced a uniform corpus from the whole of their career—uniform either in content or in quality. But if we select the brightest spots, we find a view which overlaps with Frege’s at most key points, and which continued to be unfolded in the main lines of thought at Oxford for the rest of the century.

    Frege’s main brief against idealism could be put this way: It placed the scope of experience (or awareness) outside of the scope of judgement. In doing that, it left us nothing to judge about. A central question about perception is: How can it make the world bear on what one is to think—how can it give me what are then my reasons for thinking things one way or another? The idealist answer to that, Frege showed, would have to be, “It cannot”.

    BV: This is not at all clear. An example would be nice. Let me supply one. I see a tree. The seeing is a perceiving and this perceiving is a mental state of  me, the perceiver.  I see that the tree is green.  Seeing that the tree is green I come  to think that the tree is "one way or another," e.g., green as opposed to not green.  The authors seem to be asking the following question: How can perceiving something — a tree in my example — make the world give me the perceiver a reason for thinking the tree to be "one way or another," green for example?

    This is a very strange question, one that has no clear sense.  Or at least I don't know what the authors are asking. If the question has no clear sense, then the supposedly idealist answer has no clear sense either. The authors are presumably defending some sort of realism about the objects of sense perception. If so, then it is not my perceiving that makes the world do anything. Their question ought to be: how do physical things in the external world, things that exist and have (most of) the properties they have independently of my or anyone's perceivings, make our perceivings of these things have the content that they in fact have? How does the green tree over there bring it about that I am now having an experience as of a green tree? Or is this perhaps the very question the authors are trying to ask their convoluted way?

    But let's read on.

    What, in Frege’s terms, “belongs to the contents of my consciousness”—what, for its presence needs someone to be aware of it, where, further, that someone must be me—cannot, just in being as it is, be what might be held, truly, to be thus and so. (This is one point Prichard retained throughout his career, and which, later on, he directed against others who he termed “sense-datum theorists”. It is also a point Cook Wilson directed, around 1904, against Stout (see section 4).

    BV:  There is a solid point here, but it needs to be put clearly. The tree is in space and is green. No content of consciousness is in space or is green. Therefore, the tree is not a content of consciousness. This syllogism refutes a form of subjective or psychological idealism. But who holds it? Certainly not Kant. But let's leave Kant out of the  discussion for now. More important than Koenigsbergian exegesis is the deep and fascinating question of idealism versus realism.

    What I said in the preceding paragraph needs a bit of refining. If I see a tree, then I am aware of something. That awareness-of or consciousness-of is an episode in my conscious, mental life.  So it is appropriately referred to as a 'content of consciousness.' Now consider that awareness-of just as such.  (Of course, you cannot consider my awareness, but you can consider your own similar but numerically different awareness.) Is it green? No. It is colorless. The awareness-of, as such, is not the sort of 'thing' that could have a color.  

    The awareness of green is not a green awareness.  If it were green it would have to be extended in space. No color without extension. But the awareness-of, though it is in time, is not in space.  So here we have a content of consciousness that is neither colored nor in space. 

    We should all will agree, then,  that a perceiving as of a green tree is not a green perceiving. This is so even if the perceiving is not merely as of the tree, but of it in the sense that implies that there exists a tree that is being perceived. Again, all colors are extended in space. But no mental act is extended in space. Ergo, no mental act is colored. A fortiori if mental acts  are as G. E. Moore once said, "diaphanous."  

    What about the content of a mental act? It too is a 'content of consciousness.' Macbeth had an hallucinatory visual experience as of a dagger. The dagger-appearance is what I am now calling the content. It is clearly distinct (though not separable) from the hallucinatory experiencing.  The hallucinatory act/experiencing is not spatially extended.  What about the dagger-appearance?  Did it not seem extended to Macbeth? Don't pink rats look to be extended in space by that drunks who hallucinate them? Yes they do.  What we can say here is that while the dagger-appearance is phenomenologically extended, it is not extended in objective space. 

    But there is a deeper reason for opposing subjective idealism. This I believe to be the solid point that Prichard makes.

    If I judge a tree to be green, I judge it to be green whether or not I or anyone so judge it.  So if the tree is green, it is green in itself whether or not there are any perceivers.  The point is quite general: to judge of anything x that it is F is to judge that it is F in itself whether or not there are any judgers. It doesn't matter whether the judgment is true or false: a judgment that x is F purports to lay bare the way things are independently of judgers, whether or not in fact things are as the judgment states. 

    So if I say that the perceiving is green, I thereby commit myself to saying that the perceiving is green in itself whether or not there are any perceivers.  But it is contradictory to maintain that something that can exist only as a content of consciousness, and thus cannot exist in itself, can also exist in itself apart from any consciousness.

    What I am calling 'the solid point 'puts paid to any form of idealism that identifies physical objects with contents of consciousness if those contents exist only in contingent minded organisms such as human animals.   If there exists a tree that I perceive, it is as little in my consciousness as it is inside my head. But please note that the point just made presupposes the reality of the external world and thus begs the question against those forms of idealism that avoid the mistakes that subjective/psychological idealists make.

    So, in particular, it was crucial to Frege that a thought could not be an idea (“Vorstellung”), in the sense of “idea” in which to be one is to belong to someone’s consciousness. The positive sides of these coins are: all there is for us to judge about—all there is which, in being as it is might be a way we could judge it to be—is that environment we all jointly inhabit; to be a thought is, intrinsically, to be sharable and communicable. All these are central points in Cook Wilson’s, and Prichard’s, Oxford realism. So, as they both held (early in the century), perception must afford awareness of, and relate us to, objects in our cohabited environment.

    BV: The authors seem to be saying that it is not about ideas, Vorstellungen, contents of consciousness, etc. that we make judgments, but about the common physical environment in which we human animals live.  This remains vague, however, if we aren't told what "the environment" is.  Do they mean particular things in the physical world, or are they referring to the physical world as a whole? And while it is true that thoughts (either Frege's Gedanken or something very much like them) are communicable and thus sharable — unlike contents of consciousness that are numerically different for numerically different people — what does this have to do with "the environment"? Fregean and Frege-like thoughts are abstract objects; hence, not to be found in the physical "environment."  Of course, for Frege, thoughts/propositions are not contents of consciousness; it does not follow, however, they are in the "environment."  There are in Frege's third realm, that of abstracta. (I promise to avoid tasteless jokes about the supposedly anti-Semitic Fege and the Third Reich.) 

    There is another point which Prichard, at least, shared with Frege. As Prichard
    put it:

    There seems to be no way of distinguishing perception and conception
    as the apprehension of different realities except as the apprehension
    of the individual and the universal respectively. Distinguished in this
    way, the faculty of perception is that in virtue of which we apprehend
    the individual, and the faculty of conception is that power of reflection
    in virtue of which a universal is made the explicit object of thought.
    (Prichard, 1909, 44)

    Compare Frege:

    A thought always contains something which reaches out beyond the
    particular case, by means of which it presents this to consciousness as
    falling under some given generality. (1882: Kernsatz 4) But don’t we see that the sun has set? And don’t we also thereby see that this is true? That the sun has set is no object which emits rays which arrive in our eyes, is no visible thing like the sun itself. That the sun has set is recognized as true on the basis of sensory input. (1918: 64)

    For the sun to have set is a way for things to be; that it has set is the way things are according to a certain thought. A way for things to be is a generality, instanced
    by things being as they are (where the sun has just set). Recognizing its instancing
    is recognizing the truth of a certain thought; an exercise of a faculty of thought.

    By contrast, what instances a way for things to be, what makes for that thought’s
    truth, does not itself have that generality Frege points to in a thought—any more
    than, on a different level, which Frege calls “Bedeutung”, what falls under a (first-level) concept might be the sort of thing things fall under. What perception affords is awareness of the sort of thing that instances a way for things to be. Perception’s role is thus, for Frege, as for Prichard, to bring the particular, or individual, in view—so as, in a favorable case, to make recognizable its instancing (some of) the ways for things to be it does. The distinction Prichard points to here is as fundamental both to him and to Frege as is, for Frege, the distinction between objects and concepts.

    BV: Now things are now getting interestingly 'aporetic.' How do I know that the sun has set? I see the sun, and I see the horizon, but I don't literally see (with my eyes) that the sun has set. If the italicized words pick out an entity, it is an invisible one. As Frege says, "That the sun has set is no object that emits rays . . . ."

    How do I know that the tree is green? I see the tree, and I see green at the tree, but I don't see that the tree is green. Why not? Well, 'That tree is green' is logically equivalent to 'That green tree exists.' So if I can see that the tree is green, then I can see that the green tree exists. But existence is not empirically detectable. I can sense green, but I cannot sense existence. So I cannot see that the green tree exists.  Therefore, I cannot see that the tree is green.  Existence and property-possession are invisible. More generally, they are insensible, and not because of our sensory limitations, but because existence and property-possession are not empirically detectable by any manner of critter or by any device. 

    And yet I know that the tree is green and I know that the sun has set. But how? Frege's answer, "on the basis of sensory input" is lame.  Sure, there has to be sensory input for me  to know what I know in these cases, but how does it work? Such input is necessary, but it cannot be sufficient.  Here is what Frege says in Der Gedanke:

    Das Haben von Sinneseindruecken ist zwar noetig zum Sehen der Dinge, aber nicht hinreichend. Was noch hinzukommen muss, ist nichts Sinnliches. (Logische Untersuchungen, 51)

    To be sure, the having of sensory impressions is necessary for seeing things, but not sufficient. What yet must be added is nothing sensory.

    Necessary, because seeing (with the eyes) is a sensory function that cannot occur without sensory data, which is to say, sensory givenness, sensory input. Not sufficient, because what I need to know to know that that the tree is green, is that the physical individual/object does in reality instantiate the concept/property. The problem is that I cannot see the copulative linkage in the green tree any more than I can see the existence of the green tree. For again, to see either the linkage or the existence I would have to be able to sense them when there is no sensory awareness of either.  

    What Frege adds that is not sensory is the thought/proposition. But this item is off by itself in a platonic topos ouranios. How on Earth or in Plato's Heaven can Fregean thoughts avail anything for the solution of our problem? To know that the tree is green in reality I need to know the sublunary unity of thing and property here below. How is that knowledge aided by the positing of a 'ouranic' item, the thought/proposition, whose subject constituent is an abstract item as abstract as the thought itself? The Fregean thought brings together a subject-constituent, a sense, with a predicate-constituent, also a sense.  It does not bring together the concrete tree and its properties.

    What the authors say above on behalf of Frege and Prichard is thus no answer at all. We are told, "Perception’s role is thus, for Frege, as for Prichard, to bring the particular, or individual, in view—so as, in a favorable case, to make recognizable its instancing (some of) the ways for things to be it does."  Are they joking?  This glides right past the problem.  What I need to know to know that the tree is green is the linkage or togetherness of individual and property in the thing in the external world. The thing is a this-such or a something-which. You cannot split the this from the such.  You cannot split perception from conception assigning to the first the job of supplying bare individuals and assigning to the second the job of providing universals.  For the problem, again, is 'methectical,' a problem of methexis: how do sensory individual and  intelligible universal meet to form the sublunary this-such?

    Kant has an answer (whatever you think of it): the synthesis of individual and property/concept is achieved by the transcendental unity of apperception! 

    I will have more to say about this in a later post.

    Bill Vallicella

    3 responses to “Notes on Idealism, Realism, Frege, and Prichard”

  • Self Respect

    Just as we should not become too familiar with others, we should not become too familiar with ourselves. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • First Thought of the Day

    Life is a task; the world is a proving ground. First thought, best thought.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Nisi duae res necessariae

    Cicero garden library

    Bill Vallicella

  • Sunday Morning Sermon: A Life Well Lived

    To make good use of your time in this world, think of your life above all as a quest, a seeking, a searching, a striving.  For what?  For the ultimate in reality, truth, value, and for their existential appropriation.  

    One appropriates reality by being authentic, truth by being truthful, values and norms by living them.  

    It may all be absurd in the end, a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."  But one cannot live well on the assumption that it is.

    So assume that it is not and seek the truth along all avenues of advance.

    Bill Vallicella

  • A Contemplative Nun on Thomas Merton

    This just over the transom from Karl White:

    Hope you're well. May be of interest.

    Hi Karl,

    Your message arrives at an opportune moment. The day before yesterday I received Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Christian Perfection and Contemplation: According to St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross. Garrigou-Lagrange's work is the real deal from perhaps the hardest of the hard-core paleo-Thomists.
     
    While reading the chapter on infused contemplation, I thought of Thomas Merton. Merton's sense of the reality of the Unseen Order was weak and underdeveloped because of the strong lure of the secular — to which, however, he never entirely succumbed, pace the thesis of David D. Cooper's excellent but mistaken Thomas Merton's Art of Denial: The Evolution of a Radical Humanist (University of Georgia Press, 1989, 2008).  Cooper attributed the evolution (devolution?) to Merton's failure to achieve infused contemplation. As I read him, however, Merton never lost his faith. He did, however, remain to the end deeply conflicted. All the Merton commentators that I have read agree that he came to question the contemptus mundi he expressed in The Seven Storey Mountain.  As for whether or not Merton attained infused contemplation, if he had why are there no references to it in his journal? There is a paucity of spiritual disclosure in those private pages of a monk who one would think would reveal the most intimate secrets of his inner life. I have read all seven volumes of his journal several times over. He is one of those key figures without whom you cannot understand the 'Sixties.
     
    Thanks for the link.  I read the Ellsberg-Sr. Wendy correspondence with interest.
     
    Regards,
     
    Bill
    Bill Vallicella

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Rock and Roll Apologetics

    A curious sub-genre of meta-rock devoted to the defense of the devil's music.

    The Showmen, It Will Stand, 1961 

    Bob Seger, Old-Time Rock and Roll

    But does it really "soothe the soul"? Is it supposed to?  For soul-soothing, I recommend the Adagio movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Adagio molto e cantabile.

    Rolling Stones, It's Only Rock and Roll (but I Like It)

    Electric Light Orchestra, Roll Over, Beethoven.  Amazingly good.  Roll over, Chuck Berry!

    Danny and the Juniors, Rock and Roll is Here to Stay

    Chuck Berry and Friends, Rock and Roll Music

    Off-topic bonus cut:  The Chantels, Look in My Eyes, 1961.  YouTuber comment: "Emanating from the Heart Chakra. Something pop songs rarely do anymore. Feel it?" The popular music of this period had human meaning, coming from the heart and speaking to the heart, even when it passed over into schmaltz and sentimentality.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Against H. A. Prichard and the ‘Standard Picture’ of Kant

     In an earlier post, drawing on the work of Henry E. Allison, I wrote:

    The standard picture opens Kant to the devastating objection that by limiting knowledge to appearances construed as mental contents he makes knowledge impossible when his stated aim is to justify the objective knowledge of nature and oppose Humean skepticism. Allison reports that Prichard "construes Kant's distinction between appearances and things in themselves in terms of the classic example of perceptual illusion: the straight stick that appears bent to an observer when it is immersed in water." (p. 6)  But then knowledge is rendered impossible, and Kant is reduced to absurdity.

    Anyone who studies Kant in depth and in context and with an open mind should be able to see that his transcendental idealism is not intended as a subjective idealism. A related mistake is to think that subjective idealism is the only kind of idealism. The "standard picture" is fundamentally mistaken. Appearances (Erscheinungen) for Kant are not the private data of particular minds, and thus not ideas in the Cartesian-Lockean sense, or any other sort of content of a particular mind. Kant distinguishes crucially between Erscheinung and Schein/Apparenz between appearance and illusion/semblance. Because of this distinction, appearances [in the specifically Kantian sense] cannot be assimilated to perceptual illusions in the way Prichard and the "standard picture" try to assimilate them. 

    In this entry I will expand upon the above by taking a close look at the stretch of text in H.A. Prichard's Kant's Theory of Knowledge (1909) in which he discusses the straight stick that appears bent when immersed in water.  This is a classical example of perceptual illusion.  It illustrates how an appearance (in one sense of the term) may distort reality (in one sense of the term).  Call the first the A1 sense and the second the R1 sense. My claim, of course, is that this empirical A1-R1 distinction is not the same as Kant's distinction between phenomena and things in themselves, and that anyone who, like Prichard, thinks otherwise has simply failed to understand what Kant is maintaining.  Kant's distinction between phenomena and things in themselves is the distinction between empirically real, intersubjectively accessible, public, causally interacting things in space and time, on the one hand, and those same things considered apart from the a priori conditions of our sensibility.  The Earth and its one natural satellite, the Moon, are examples of phenomena in Kant's sense.  Neither is a private, mental item in a particular mind as a modification of such a mind or an item internal to it. The Earth and the Moon are not mental phenomena in any Cartesian, Humean, or Brentanian sense, but empirically real, physical things. But though they are empirically real, they are transcendentally ideal when considered independently of the conditions of our sensibility.

    In sum, there are two distinctions. The first is the distinction between private mental contents of particular minds and real things external to such minds. For example, Ed is enjoying a visual experience of his by-now-famous desk.  Neither the desk as a whole nor any part of it is literally in Ed's mind, let alone in his head. The desk, like his head and the rest of his body, is in the publicly accessible external world.  Now let 'A1' denote Ed's experience/experiencing whereby his desk appears to him, and let 'R1' denote the desk itself which is external to Ed's mind/consciousness. Prichard's mistake is to conflate this A1-R1 distinction with Kant's distinction between phenomena and things in themselves. The R1 of the first distinction is the A2 of Kant's distinction which, again, is the distinction between intersubjectively accessible objects in space and time and those same objects viewed independently of the conditions of our sensibility.

    I now turn to Chapter IV of Prichard's book. The chapter is entitled "Phenomena and Things in Themselves."  Prichard takes Kant to be saying that spatial and temporal relations are "relations which belong to things only as perceived." (p. 79.)  Prichard goes on to say, "The thought of a property or a relation that belongs to things as perceived involves a contradiction."  He brings up the submerged stick which is in reality straight, but appears to a perceiver as bent. Prichard then makes the unexceptionable point that 

    . . . the assertion that something is so and so implies that it is so and so in itself, whether it be perceived or not, and therefore the assertion that something is so and so to us as perceiving, though not in itself, is a contradiction in terms. 

    This is certainly true. After I explain why it is true, I will explain why it has nothing to do with Kant.  One cannot assert of anything x that it is F without thereby asserting that x is F in reality.  What one asserts to be the case one asserts to be the case whether or not anyone asserts it.  (Of course, it doesn't follow that what one asserts to be the case is the case. All that follows is that what one asserts to be the case purports to be the case independently of anyone's act of assertion.  Saying this I am merely unpacking the concept of assertion.) So if I assert of x that it is bent, then I assert that x is bent in itself or in reality whether or not there are any assertors or perceivers.  To assert that x is bent is to assert that a mind-independent item is bent. (Of course, it does not follow that there is a mind-independent item that is bent; all that follows is that if some item is bent or straight or has any property, then it is mind-independent.) Therefore, if I assert of an illusory appearance that it is bent, then I fall into contradiction. For what I am then asserting  is that something that is mind-dependent — because it is illusory — is not mind-dependent but exists in reality. 

    This is what I take Prichard to be maintaining in the passage quoted. Thus charitably interpreted, what he is saying is (by my lights) true.  But what does this have to do with Kant? Kant is not not talking about private mental items internal to particular minds such as an illusory appearance as of a bent stick. He is not saying of such an appearance (Apparenz) or semblance (Schein) that it is the subject of spatial and temporal relations.  If he were, then he would stand refuted by Prichard's unexceptionable point. But it strains credulity to think that a great philosopher could blunder so badly. 

    Note also that to read Kant as if his phenomena (Erscheinungen) in space and time are private mental phenomena is to impute to him the sophomoric absurdity that mental data which are unextended are extended as they must be if they stand in physical relations. Such an imputation would be exegetically uncharitable in excelsis.

    Finally, if space and time and everything in it is mental in Prichard's sense, and internal to particular minds like ours, then the upshot would be an utterly absurd form of subjective idealism. 

    …………………………………….

    Further tangential ruminations.

    How do I know that the visual datum is an illusory appearance? If I know that what appears to me — the immersed-stick visual datum — is illusory, then I know that what appears to me cannot be bent or straight or have any spatial property. For what is illusory does not exist, and what does not exist cannot have properties. But how do I know that the visual datum does not exist?

    That is precisely what I don't know in the cases of perceptual illusion in which I am really fooled — unlike the classic stick case above that fools no adult. No adult is 'taken in' by acquatic refraction phenomena. "Damn that boatman! He gave me a bent oar!"  Here is a real-life example.

    Crotalus atroxHiking in twilight, I experience a visual datum as of a rattlesnake. I jump back and say to my partner, "There's a rattler on the trail."  I assert the visual datum to be a rattler, which of course implies that in reality there is a rattler.  (And that I jumped back shows that my assertion was sincere.) A closer look, however, shows that I mistook a tree root for a snake. What I initially saw (in the phenomenological sense of 'see') was only an illusory appearance. If I then say that the illusory appearance is a rattler or is venomous, etc. then I fall into contradiction. The point is that illusory appearances do not exist and therefore cannot have properties: they cannot be bent or straight or venomous or of the species crotalus atrox, etc.

     

    Bill Vallicella

    2 responses to “Against H. A. Prichard and the ‘Standard Picture’ of Kant”

  • David Benatar on Epistemic Injustice

    An excerpt from The Uphill Battle of Unpopular Ideas:

    Regarding epistemic matters, many of those who identify themselves as progressives speak about “epistemic injustice” – the injustice that occurs when certain people, typically women and darker skinned people, are accorded less standing or authority as knowers or transmitters of knowledge. This is a profound and important concept.
     
    The problem is that progressives have missed a key, but obvious, dimension to epistemic injustice. The more somebody is actually the victim of epistemic injustice, the less likely and less widely they are to be recognized as such. Indeed, the absence of that recognition is precisely what feeds the epistemic injustice. Not only are you not taken as seriously as you should be, but it is not widely recognized that this is the case.
     
    The corollary is that the more widespread the recognition of a particular manifestation of epistemic injustice is, the less likely it is that the purported victim actually is a victim. This is not a logical point but rather a psychological one. It is logically possible for X, Y, and Z to recognize that W is the victim of epistemic injustice while continuing to take W less seriously than W should be taken. Psychologically, however, those who regard W as a victim of epistemic injustice are more likely not to inflict that injustice themselves, either because they are sensitive to the potential problem or because they compensate (and not infrequently overcompensate) for it.
     
    One upshot of this is that while those espousing orthodox views are likely to be given more credence, even when the orthodox views are flawed, those expressing unpopular but well-founded views are likely to be given less credence than they should be given. That is a stark form of epistemic injustice – and one typically not recognized by those who are concerned about epistemic injustice.
     
    Even mentioning this comes at a risk. This is because there are orthodox views about who the victims of epistemic injustice are – and they do not include those who hold unorthodox views (for example, about epistemic injustice). Everybody can agree that it is unseemly to claim epistemic injustice when it does not exist. However, the difference between orthodox and unorthodox views about when this applies is that the orthodox views are, by definition, dominant. The point of this observation is not to elicit sympathy, but to articulate the ironies and paradoxes.
    Bill Vallicella

  • Guest Post: Buckner on Prichard on Kant

    PRICHARD ON KANT: IN DEFENCE OF THE ANGLOSPHERE

    D.E. Buckner

    Bill Vallicella discusses here the ‘standard picture’ of Kant ’s transcendental idealism as a theory that affirms the unknowability of the ‘real’ (things in themselves) and relegates knowledge to the purely subjective realm of representations (appearances), adding that “P. F. Strawson and H. A. Prichard are exponents of this reading along with many others in the Anglosphere”. He argues that “Appearances (Erscheinungen) for Kant are not the private data of particular minds, and thus not ideas in the Cartesian-Lockean sense, or any other sort of content of a particular mind. Kant distinguishes crucially between Erscheinung and Schein/Apparenz: between appearance and illusion/semblance.” He develops this theme in another post here, in the context of Kant’s ‘rainbow argument’ (A45/B63).

     

    Bill does not explain the Anglospheric reading. In this post, I shall outline Prichard’s objection to the rainbow argument, as set out in Kant’s Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909, pp. 94 ff). He objects, in effect, that the rainbow argument is an argument by analogy. Just as a rainbow is to the raindrops which create the illusion of a rainbow during a sunny shower, i.e. as appearance stands in relation to reality, so the raindrops are to the ‘things in themselves’. “Not only are the raindrops mere appearances, but even their circular form, nay, even the space in which they fall, are nothing in themselves but mere modifications or fundamental dispositions of our sensuous perception; the transcendental object [i.e. the thing in itself], however, remains unknown to us” (B62-3)." My emphasis.

     

    But the analogy is a poor one. Prichard says (p.97) that we can only distinguish something as the thing in itself from an appearance, “so long as we mean by the thing in itself what Kant normally means by it, viz. something which exists independently of perception and is not an appearance at all.” I.e., the relation between rainbow and raindrops is not analogous to that between raindrops and things in themselves, because ‘thing in itself’ signifies something absolute and not relative, namely what the scholastics called a per se being, a thing that exists independently of any other thing, and particularly of any sentient thing. If a raindrop really is a per se being, then it exists independently of any other such being, so cannot be an appearance of something. If on the other hand it is not a per se being, then the analogy collapses: we cannot say that just as a rainbow stands to raindrops, so raindrops stand to raindrops-in-themselves.

     

    Kant’s argument thus depends on a sleight of hand. “He reaches it by a transition which at first sight seems harmless … while he states the problem in the form ‘Are things in themselves spatial or are they only spatial as appearing to us?’ he usually states the conclusion in the form ‘Space is the form of phenomena’, i. e. phenomena are spatial. A transition is thereby implied from ‘things as appearing’ to ‘appearances’” (pp. 73-4).

     

    Underlying the mistake, says Prichard, is the identification of perception with judgement. Our apprehension of what things are is essentially a matter of thought or judgement, and not of perception. “We do not perceive but think a thing as it is”. For example, the proposition “the portion of the great circle joining two points on the surface of a sphere is the shortest way between them via the surface” expresses a judgment that is valid for everyone.

     

    Kant, however, treats the judgement as a perception; for if we apply his general assertion to this instance, we find him saying that what we judge the portion of the great circle to be essentially belongs to the perception of it, and is valid for the sensuous faculty of every  human being, and that thereby it can be distinguished from what belongs to the same perception of a great circle accidentally, e. g. its apparent colour, which is valid only for a particular organization of this or that sense. In this way he correlates what the great circle really is, as well as what it looks, with perception, and so is able to speak of what it is for perception. But, in fact, what the great circle is, is correlated with thought, and not with perception; and if we raise Kant’s transcendental problem in reference not to perception but to thought, it cannot be solved in Kant’s agnostic manner. For it is a presupposition of thinking that things are in themselves [my emphasis] what we think them to be; and from the nature of the case a presupposition of thinking not only cannot be rightly questioned, but cannot be questioned at all.

     

    Simply put, a proposition is true or false depending on whether it agrees with reality or not.

     

    As I shall argue elsewhere, this ‘Anglospheric’ point by Prichard marks a turning point in the philosophy of perception, indeed in philosophy itself. For nearly 300 years, beginning with the discovery of Descartes and others that the process of vision begins with the retinal image, the focus of philosophy was on perception, i.e. images, and not on language. Indeed, it is hard to find any informed linguistic analysis in the writing of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Kant and other. Church regarded Hegel’s Logic as marking the very lowest point of the history of logic. In the twentieth century Anglosphere, by contrast, the philosophy of perception is marked by a ‘linguistic turn’ to focus on language and philosophical logic. But that is a separate issue, as is the question of why philosophy on the Continent, much or all of it in the tradition that originates with Brentano and Husserl, took such a different turn.

     

    Bill Vallicella

    One response to “Guest Post: Buckner on Prichard on Kant”

  • MaverickPhilo@Twitter

    Here I am. Pay me a visit. I don't quite know the ropes yet.

    Who will be Facebook's Elon Musk? Hats off to the latter. Middle finger to the former. Without free speech, republics collapse. Our republic is collapsing and there may be no stopping the slide into the abyss; but as the saying goes, 'it ain't over 'til it's over.' We fight on.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Free Speech, Censorship, Toleration, and a Lame Libertarian Argument

    Substack latest. 

    Bill Vallicella

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  3. Hey Bill, Got it now, thanks for clarifying. I hope you have a nice Sunday. May God bless you!

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