Metaphysical Epistemology - the power of belief
R.G. Collingwood's recasting of metaphysics from its Aristotelian origin suggests a kind of metaphysics of belief.
Collingwood describes how all thinking is analytical/experimental. Metaphysical thinking is scientific and vice-versa; both are based upon and in search of absolute presuppositions. And an absolute presupposition is one which is actually believed as such.
To me, this suggests that the ultimate power of thought is the capacity to believe. And what validates some absolute presuppositions compared to others is their relative efficacy in furtherance of the thought process. viz., Based on certain absolute presuppositions, one is able to digest a wider variety of experience and information; these experiences cohere in a more comprehensive fashion and consequently facilitate superior retention, recollection and application.
It is easier to hypothesize something as a belief than actually to believe it. What people claim to believe can be a long distance from what they actually do. Collingwood expounds on the great danger and prevalence of self-deception in the process of knowing and I think he is right.
Collingwood describes how all thinking is analytical/experimental. Metaphysical thinking is scientific and vice-versa; both are based upon and in search of absolute presuppositions. And an absolute presupposition is one which is actually believed as such.
To me, this suggests that the ultimate power of thought is the capacity to believe. And what validates some absolute presuppositions compared to others is their relative efficacy in furtherance of the thought process. viz., Based on certain absolute presuppositions, one is able to digest a wider variety of experience and information; these experiences cohere in a more comprehensive fashion and consequently facilitate superior retention, recollection and application.
It is easier to hypothesize something as a belief than actually to believe it. What people claim to believe can be a long distance from what they actually do. Collingwood expounds on the great danger and prevalence of self-deception in the process of knowing and I think he is right.
Comments (227)
The whole question as to whether people really believe what they claim to believe is a good one and it also raises the question of social pressure to believe certain things. Do people hold on to beliefs systems in name for fear of rejection and lack of popularity? If they hold onto the beliefs because they have not explored contradictions in their thinking it does seem that they are self deception. Does that mean that they are afraid to explore further?
Think about how people seek out information. You don't read Wikipedia in order to engender belief, only to collect bits of information which potentially can figure in belief. If you want to engender belief, you actually read the source books, because only those are in any way an adequate representation of the totality of underlying absolute presuppositions. As Collingwood says, "the only way to find out if a book is worth reading is to read it."
Our culture has become superficial, and superficiality does not lend itself to producing actual beliefs, only "hypothetical" ones.
You can see how self-deception is very relevant when we allow ourselves to conform our memories for various different purposes.
If I believe I am writing this now, how is that a memory? It may become a memory, but only because it was first a belief.
I agree with you completely. Most people seem to just look up information on Wikipedia as if it has all the answers summed up, as if it is the new 'wise' philosopher. That is why I get a bit annoyed when people just create links to it. I use it as a basis for looking at potential for research and for a reference for thinking through ideas.
There is a big difference between information and knowledge and I think that the main difference is the way in which knowledge is a more thorough exploration of ideas, especially in terms of personal belief. Of course, even with people using books it is possible to just use them in a superficial way. However, it is probably less common than with the internet, because so often, including on this forum, people offer a link to someone else's ideas, but with no further elaboration of the meaning and significance of the ideas.
This statement could be painful but it is the most who is closest to reality. As you said to us one of the powers that can be in us the humans is believe in . This point makes and proves why we are so different from animals or other creatures inside the savage world. The fact that abstract concepts created in our vocabulary as "metaphysics" or "beliefs" shows why we always want to improve our lives the better we want... Probably to reach the best goal everyone aspire = happiness (I just say this because it remembered me so fast when you quoted Aristotle).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Empiricism? Yes I guess something complex as "belief" has to been taught in us previously. Imagine if it could actually exist people who do not understand this pattern because they never been taught to. Somehow there are people which just live an ordinary life without the pursuit of "bieleve" in something better o understand what is the real meaning of "beliefs".
But in this point I don't refer to religious/atheists persons. I refer to all of those who have the power of believe in something: the next vaccine or reduce the Carbon emissions (for example). Because believe in something like religion or atheism are even more complex that just believe in tangled things.
All those words which you are applying in reference to your belief, "I am writing this now", require a memory of meaning. To believe "I am writing this now" is to have confidence in your use of those words, and that requires your memory of how those words ought to be used.
Quoting javi2541997
This is a more specialized use of "believe", to say "believe in". It is better represented as having faith in a particular power, or capacity, to overcome obstacles. To simply "believe" is to have faith in one's power of memory, but to "believe in" is to have faith in some capacity to act.
Yes, people don't 'believe' they want to be happy, they just do.
This would be a vicious circularity. You can't believe something unless you already believed something. Clearly we do begin to believe, which is not an 'historical fact'.
Quoting Jack Cummins
For me, belief or lack of belief has never been self-deception so much as involuntary ignorance. I knew absolutely nothing about history when I was a child and didn't care in the least until I played a video game with encyclopedia-styled entries on historical topics. This factual content made an impression on my knowledge without really impacting me on an intellectual level, though I picked up some subtle strategies of behavior from the structure of the game. With time to reflect and read as an adult, it dawned on me that history, the analysis of precedent, is key for effective interpretation of the world, and I became absorbed in picking up as much comprehension of the previous two hundred years and its main antecedents as possible while integrating it with my philosophical background.
So from personal experience, it seems that three stages exist: carelessness about knowledge, dabbling accumulation of fact such that a general picture of reality takes shape semiconsciously, and active synthesis for the sake of optimizing one's grasp of truth. The procession from one stage to the next is like a phase change in matter, encountering inertial resistance at the beginning to exponentially progress, finally reaching a place where escape velocity is achieved and everything simply makes intuitive sense. The real challenge is in the phase changes, its almost like a shift in cultural awareness or perhaps even personality that is very difficult to actualize without a conducive environment and some well-crafted conditioning. I think my cultural milieu was designed to make me thoughtlessly ignorant, and I overcame that during a few periods of my life by way of gaining more independence to pursue personal interests and simply think in a self-directed way than is typical.
Natural curiosity+adequate resources+lack of environmental inhibitors=intellectual growth. Resources have become more than sufficient in modern society, and curiosity is a given, but some severe environmental inhibitions are in place, and dealing with that is where the real challenge presents itself.
There is no circle, because I do not equate belief with memory as if they are the same thing. Belief is derived from memory which is prior to belief, as required for it, such that a belief is a particular type of memory. To believe is to have an attitude of confidence toward your memory. Then a belief is the memory subjected to that attitude of confidence.
It is so interesting how you classified these complex concepts in two groups. I never thought the act of "believe" can lead us into another conception: "believe in" as you said. I guess this is just an a example of the classic question of "which one went first the egg or the gen?"
Having faith in something we can do comes when we are ready to pursue it. So I think firstly comes the act of "believe" in general terms and then "believe in..." specific terms.
So, probably, the epitome could be: being a believer in beliefs than can bring the power of act inside the world/society I live in.
Right, the belief is the "attitude of confidence" that is what we are discussing. It is not the memory, and it doesn't have to be "about" memory. Belief is always a living, current, fundamental commitment.
Exactly. There is a correspondence between the quality of belief and the quality of the presentation (enactment) of the belief. That would be the fundamental (or to use Collingwood's term, absolute) presupposition.
Yes, it is more of a tool for finding a source than an actual source, at least in any non-trivial sense.
I like this characterization, especially the analogy of the "phase change"....
True! You have described it even better than my statement: the importance of quality in the belief.
I guess in this point it will depend a lot of person themselves. Each one will qualify the belief as they consider appropriately. So this could be clearly subjective. For example: we all know that clearly climate change is a big problem. How much of the population will really consider it? Well I guess the one who gives quality to this belief.
Everyone (except a few) believe in climate change.
Someone believes in the quality of this belief and then wants to make a difference.
But here again we end up in the starting point as I said previously: happiness. Quoting Pantagruel
It makes sense. People who really believe can be committed in a way that people who do not really believe cannot.
I wouldn't be so quick to judge priority in this manner. Since we are essentially active beings, continually engaged in activities, I would think that it is quite likely that we "believe in" a particular capacity prior to formalizing a belief. So for example, if I have a walking trail which I regularly walk, and there's a water course, a stream or ditch which I must jump across, I gain confidence in my capacity to jump across, prior to gaining the belief that I can jump across. We see this clearly in the scientific method, where certain theories or hypotheses provide us with the capacity to predict, then after obtaining faith in this capacity (believing in it), we proceed toward the belief the hypothesis provides some sort of truth.
Quoting Pantagruel
I don't think that's quite right. A "belief" is a thing, the word used in this way is a noun. That thing is a memory which has been subjected to the process of believing. Believing is an activity and it is produced by the attitude of confidence. The belief is the result of this activity. So the belief is the memory which has been subjected to that process, of believing. It is not the attitude of confidence, nor is it the process (believing) which is produced by that attitude, it is the result of that process.
What you refer to here is the act of believing, which is distinct from, and ought not be called "belief".
So I guess you want to explain that we can only have the belief hypothesis when some methods and objectives are actually true. Yes. It depends a lot the feith in something that previously has to be true because it is quite difficult believing in something false.
So the premise can change here a little bit. First something (we call it "x") is true is our perspective. Secondly, we believe in the truest of x. Then, we believe in the capacity of make x understandable, studied, developed, compared, etc...
This is speculation. A belief is instantiated in the act of believing To the point, since we are measuring actual believing as a kind of commitment which further manifests the belief in some kind of action.
I disagree. That's the essence of the whole post. It is in criticism of the whole process of "hypothetical beliefs," which is what you are espousing. Beliefs are much more robust than their empirical "filler". Specifically, with respect to "absolute presuppositions" which are the topic.
Yes, you've recapitulated RGC's arguments. None of which contradicts my interpretation. He says quite clearly, the logical efficacy of a supposition does not derive from its truth, but only on its being supposed, i.e. believed. And absolute presuppositions are fundamental, that is, they are pre-supposed.
So, this is black letter from the "Essay on Metaphysics" and its what I meant and said. I certainly extended it further, built upon Collingwood's framework. That was also made clear.
I do own all three of those books you kindly recommend.
What about people who hold irrational beliefs - say paranoid psychotic delusions - that couldn't possibly derive from some type of memory process (because such belief content lies outside of previous experience)?
Gibberish.
You speak with such authority.
Here is an excerpt from the Journal "Graduate Studies at Texas Tech University," from "An Emendation of RGC's Doctrine of Absolute Presuppositions" which is completely consistent with my presentation.
My central thesis is that Collingwood's absolute presuppositions are basically beliefs that function in a certain way, and that what he calls metaphysics is actually the study of belief systems....Subsequently I shall offer numerous comments concerning the status of principia within a belief system, but at the moment, it is necessary to say something about the nature of belief in general. A belief is basically a habitual way of acting, not the actions themselves; belief is a habit such that, given a particular situation, one will act in a certain way. Collingwood used phrases suggestive of this doctrine in enough instances to lead one to suspect that he might have been
willing to concur with it had it come explicitly to his attention. For example, in discussing a change from one Absolute Presupposition to another, he stated that "it is the most radical change a man can undergo, and entails the abandonment of all his most firmly established habits and standards for thought and action. "
https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/2346/72442/ttu_icasal_000191.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
So, sorry Tim, but you are not quite the authority that you present or believe yourself to be.
This is dead wrong. Per the critical piece I cited. It is a reasonable line of inquiry within the parameters of Collingwood's writings, which do not extend that far, but certainly don't contradict the position.
There's nothing wrong with being wrong, only in not learning from it.....
You were the person who steered me toward Collingwood's essay a few years ago. I know it had a big impact on both of us. My first reaction when reading the original post in this thread was "No, that's not what Collingwood said at all." I was going to write something, but you got there first and what you wrote is better than mine would have been.
Which means I don't have to do anything. Yay!!
And just for good measure, here is from the Stanford Encyclopedia
Collingwood’s denial that absolute presuppositions have truth values informs a commitment to a kind of explanatory pluralism according to which the choice between different kinds of explanation does not depend on whether they capture pure being but on whether they are fit for purpose. He illustrates this explanatory pluralism by imagining a scenario in which a car stops while driving up a steep hill. As the driver stands by the side of the road a passerby, who happens to be a theoretical physicist offers his help. The car, he explains, has stopped because
the top of a hill is farther removed from the earth’s centre than its bottom and … consequently more power is needed to take the car uphill than to take her along the level. (EM 1998: 302)
A second passerby (who happens to be an Automobile Association man) proffers a different explanation: he holds up a loose cable and says “Look here, Sir, you are running on three cylinders” (EM 1998: 303). The first explanation invokes the sense of causation that belongs to the theoretical sciences of nature, sense III. The second explanation invokes the sense of causation that belongs to the practical sciences of nature, sense II. The choice between these explanations, for Collingwood is determined by the nature of the question asked. As he puts it:
If I had been a person who could flatten out hills by stamping on them the passerby would have been right to call my attention to the hill as the cause of the stoppage; not because the hill was a hill but because I was able to flatten it out. (EM 1998: 303)
In other words, the absolute presupposition is distinguished specifically with respect to its possible enaction, which is exactly what my whole OP revolves around.
The letters are black, the page is white, yes, that's black letter.
What I got out of the essay, whether or not Collingwood actually meant it that way, is that people are likely not to be aware of the suppositions underpinning their beliefs. That lack of awareness leads to misunderstanding and disagreement that are almost insurmountable.
The SE interprets Absolute Presuppositions explicitly as being essentially operational beliefs from a very unambiguous example in the Essay on Metaphysics.
The beliefs may not be explicit, but the actions are. People may not know what they believe, but they do act. And when they act, they are "realizing" their fundamental beliefs, whatever those are...
Perhaps you are getting hung up on the terminology? I try to go with the "overall sense" within the context of the work.
Would you cite that for me, please? Or something similar? I just want to know what is being used as an unambiguous example of an absolute presupposition.
I’m wondering if I know it by another name, is all.
Thanks.
Not necessarily true, but belief requires a reason to believe. Like any form of memorizing, it requires effort, and effort is only made when there is a reason to make it.
Quoting emancipate
False memories are common. That's what I described as self-deception. When what you remember happened, contradicts what another person remembers to have happened, then one or both of you are wrong. But they are still memories, even if they are mistaken.
These are the absolute presuppositions Collingwood describes for science:
And this is what Collingwood says about them.
I think this shows the difference of what @tim wood, Collingwood, and I mean when we say absolute presupposition from what you do. It's not a fact. It's not true, but it's not false either. It has no truth value. If you want to call that a belief, ok, but it's misleading.
I can't see how this relates to Aristotle's well-known hylomorphic (matter-form) dualism. The underlying logic of this metaphysics is that the mind knows the forms immediately through intellecual intuition. The form is in some sense the essence or what a particular thing truly is. When the intellect (nous) apprehends a form as a formal or logical truth, it does so in a way which is not mediated by the senses. The apprehension yields 'general truths' because universals subsume many particulars under a single form. And so on. None of which has anything much to say of beliefs, as such.
Yes. We have here the "hope" of wanting our live to improve. Everything needs an effort but previously we do need to have beliefs and then believe in... As you perfectly said previously.
More than a reason I guess is important how to perceive our feith. Sometimes hope and belief are upon the reason itself.
Probably the reason could say to you "do not do it because it is impossible" but the beielfs and feith say to you "let's do it we have another chance"
It's not. Collingwood is quite clear. It's a functional entity. Read the example from the Stanford Encyclopedia (which is from Essays in Metaphysics). Read the section of applicability to different schemas of physics. Whatever "absolute presuppositions" are, they are certainly real components of our psyche. If you don't like the word "beliefs" because of some connotations that you insist on applying to that term, I understand. They are "fundamental orientations" to which we are epistemically and practically committed.
My approach is outside the scope of his inquiry, but not contradictory. I would hope, both complementary and complimentary.
"the metaphysician discovers what absolute presuppositions have been made in a certain piece of scientific work by using the records of that work as evidence"
Absolute presuppositions are
1. held by individuals
2. have logical, epistemic and practical consequences with respect to specific inferences or actions
To me, this not only clearly belief, I would go so far as to say it exemplifies belief. It describes core or foundational beliefs, which are so fundamental that, by their very nature, they resist excavation. If you don't like my definition of belief, that's another matter. My post is predicated on this position. It represents an "absolute presupposition" of my conceptual framework. :)
Collingwood takes Metaphysics to its Aristotelian origin, which literally simply meant "everything in his works which came after the writings on physics". His conception of metaphysics is from the "ground up" and doesn't pertain to this particular Aristotelian tenet. This is a red herring in the context of this thread. Read Chapter 1 of the Essay on Metaphysics.
These “absolute presuppositions” hold congruent with the categories, insofar as any ontological or epistemic proposition is grounded by them a priori, without exception.
1.) is necessity; 2.) is reality; 3.) is causality; 4.) is possibility.
Thanks, . That’s what I wanted, from Collingwood himself, not a reference which gives me examples of what they do but does not tell me what they are.
Agreed, as far as I give ontology any consideration at all.
“..... and the proud name of an ontology which professes to present synthetical cognitions a priori of things in general in a systematic doctrine, must give place to the modest title of analytic of the pure understanding....”
(CPR, A247)
I've never seen the word "feith" before, and I'll assume that you mean "faith".
I believe it is very important, in any understanding of belief, which is not to be a misunderstanding, to apprehend the role of faith. Faith relates to the effort required to produce or create a belief. If we take belief for granted, as something which just naturally occurs without requiring effort, then we overlook the necessity of faith. From this perspective we'd have no approach to the cause of belief, thinking that beliefs just pop into existence spontaneously. But when we (correctly) see that belief requires effort, just like memorizing requires effort, then we can apprehend this effort as the cause of belief.
I think that faith relates to the effort required to produce belief. It is the confidence which we have in our efforts, that the efforts will produce results, be successful. But there is a real issue with losing faith, disillusionment, which happens if the goals start to appear as impossible, and the faith starts to look like a false faith. The significance of faith and effort, in the role of producing belief, is the reason why Plato associated belief, and intelligible objects in general, with "the good", rather than with "the truth". Assuming "x is good" leads to effort, while assuming "x is true" often leads to disillusionment.
Sorry. English is not my native language sometimes I make some grammar mistakes.
Yes I am agree with you. It is interesting how you you put feith previously to belief. I think you are right in this point. As much as we need the effort to improve our memory we need exactly faith to improve the beliefs. Here we see that the premises change again but to better.
We do the effort of having faith in x. Then, we start making a belief in x. Subsequently, "we believe in x"
So this is the chain which starts everything. I guess without feith nothing can starts.
Insofar as this might be interpreted as a fundamental commitment I'd agree. We don't just "get to believe" - there is more to it than that.
I suggest you read the paper. It's easily available on the web. It's long, but the part that means the most to me is in the beginning, so you don't have to read the whole thing.
To me, the most important insight of Collingwood's essay is that absolute presuppositions are not facts. They are not true or false. They are useful or not useful in the particular situation in which we find ourselves. As I see it, we choose absolute presuppositions, either consciously or, more likely, unconsciously. I'm not sure if Collingwood would agree with that.
If you leave that part out, as you seem to have, the whole thing falls apart.
Right. They are much more basic than facts. They constitute the viewpoints from which facts are perceived:
...different sets of absolute presuppositions correspond not only with differences in the structure of what is generally called scientific thought but with differences in the entire fabric of civilization.
(RGC, EM, ch 7, part 2)
Found it, thanks.
You don't merely believe that you are writing ( if you are writing) you are aware of the fact; you know ( leaving aside ridiculous forms of skepticism) that you are writing. Later, when you remember that you were writing, the real (but seemingly unlikely) possibility that you have misremembered what you were actually aware of doing at the time comes into play. So, as I see it belief does not precede memory, but sustains it.
How could it make sense to deny that suppositions are beliefs?
This, that the mind knows the forms immediately through intellectual intuition, is itself an "absolute presupposition" or in other words a foundational belief underpinning a worldview. If I hold this view, I believe in the veracity of what I take to be my intellectual intuition.
Spinoza also believed in intellectual intuition, and that underpins his whole philosophy, while Kant rejected the idea, and Hegel tried to resurrect it.
As I wrote in one of my posts:
Quoting T Clark
As you can see, the discussion is on absolute presuppositions.
As I said to Pantagruel, consistent with Collingwood, an absolute presupposition is neither true nor false. It has no truth value. If you and he want to call that a "belief," knock yourselves out, but you are being misleading. Perhaps you argument is with Collingwood and his choice of words rather than with me.
If you and Pantagruel want to misuse words and misrepresent what Collingwood said in a significant way, have at it. I reserve the right to keep pointing out what you are doing until I get tired of it.
We're not talking about presuppositions. We're talking about absolute presuppositions.
In any case, as I see it, if there is anything that we know, as opposed to merely believe, then it is ("Evil Demon" type skeptical doubts aside) what is apparent to our immediate senses, conventional facts about the world (like for example Paris is the capital of France), and analytic truths.
We might feel that we know what we take to be our intellectual intuitions about metaphysical matters to be true, but that we do know such things is warranted only by our feeling that we do. I can't see how it could be otherwise, and no one has ever convincingly explained to me how it could be.
If I have an experience of such a feeling of metaphysical knowing (and I have had many) I value them aesthetically, but I don't take them to be authoritative, or that thereby I definitely know anything definite about anything.
You can't disagree with him. Collingwood defines absolute presuppositions as having no truth value.
What does "absolute belief" mean?
As I said to T Clark I know that absolute presuppositions are understood by Collingwood to be beyond truth and falsity, and I am not convinced by that, although I do acknowledge that their truth or falsity cannot be empirically demonstrated.
I know that ordinary presuppositions are truth apt, and presupposition in this context can be synonymous with belief (indeed are if they are taken to be true); so I see no problem with saying that absolute beliefs are not truth apt (even though I might disagree with it just as I might regarding absolute presuppositions).
As to why not use Collingwood's terminology: I think that is a matter of mere taste, and it doesn't matter what you say about Collingwood as long as it does not distort his ideas. I don't see that @Pantagruel has done that; all I see Pantagruel doing is seeking to extend his ideas into another area of inquiry; I don't see Pantagruel taking issue with Collingwood's ideas.
"Absolute belief', in line with Collingwood's terminology, would just be a synonym for 'absolute presupposition' just as 'belief' is a synonym for 'presupposition'. This could also be aligned with Wittgenstein's "bedrock propositions".
I don't even know why I'm bothering to argue about this; I'm buying into the pedantry!
That may be arguable but it's irrelevant. Propositions don't have to be propounded, anymore than beliefs have to be believed or presuppositions have to be presupposed.
Not going to gang up on you, so I’ll just say I’m surprised you’d consider presuppositions are beliefs, or, as you say later, are truth-apt. Both of those would seem to make presuppositions congruent with empirical judgements and absolute presuppositions congruent with a priori judgements. Dunno how to justify that, at least from a metaphysical domain.You know...what with logical priority and all.
But you did stipulate “ordinary parlance”, so.....there is that.
If absolute presuppositions are claimed to be the unquestioned hidden basis of ones worldview, then they exist in their entirety prior to being named and/or picked out to the exclusion of all else.
Given that we're talking about that which existed in it's entirety prior to our naming and talking about it, we can be mistaken in what we say about such things.
Collingwood wants to say that these hav no truth value, but is that simply because they've gone unstated, and thus not articulated by the person holding them?
Quoting tim wood
:brow:
This is not the case. I take Collingwood's essay as an invitation to question our absolute presuppositions. I think it's true that they are often unexamined, but they should be. From what I can see, Collingwood agrees with that.
Quoting creativesoul
No, it's not because they are unstated. This next part is my interpretation. I don't remember if Collingwood wrote anything like this - APs (I give up. I'm tired of writing it out) have no truth value because they are metaphysical entities. They are chosen, not discovered. We philosophers, or scientists, or whatever we are, pick the most useful APs so we can play the game we are playing. As I've said, we might not be aware of that choosing. I think a lot of the difficulty between followers of science and those of religion is caused by the fact that we have chosen different APs.
Absolutely presupposing the above is something that cannot happen unless one can first say that. Absolutely presupposing the above is one result of an ongoing process. Roughly, it goes like this...
Be loved by your mother. Feel loved by your mother. Learn to talk about it. Have experiences where love is shown, shared, and lived with the individual one calls "mother". Live it often enough and the idea, the belief that your mother loves you becomes unconscious. Then, and not one second before then, can we begin to absolutely presuppose that our mother loves us.
That's a bare minimum criterion of what it takes.
Presuppositions can be beliefs, but APs are not. I'm thinking about whether APs are the same as a priori judgements. I think the answer again is maybe.
I don't think that is an AP. We don't need to go into it any further.
It speaks to both the believer and the belief that they form, have, and/or hold.
Divorcing believer from belief eliminates the very ability to take proper account of either. Basing one's subsequent considerations upon such a split leads the line of thought astray. That much can only be realized by virtue of keeping ourselves from inadvertently severing those connections.
The Gettier problem is built upon divorcing another individual from their belief.
Quoting T Clark
Good to know.
What is this a test?
Are you exhibiting the dreadful behaviour that you're charging others with?
I never said that a belief can be anything other than itself. I'm saying that we cannot expect to understand belief and how it works if we divorce belief from believer, which is exactly what you suggested earlier. The two emerge simultaneously. Where there has never been a creature capable of drawing correlations between different things, there could have been neither believer nor belief.
I'm certainly not going to pay for that which needs put out to pasture.
Yes, they. The candidates under current consideration... you know, the individuals capable of forming, having, and/or holding beliefs. All beliefs are meaningful to the creature forming, having, and/or holding them. Thus, because we report on those beliefs in statement form, and the same statement can have a plurality of acceptable meanings that vary according to the individual, we can certainly understand and see, if you will, that divorcing belief from believer and looking at only what's believed is to look at a statement of belief in general. The same statement can have more than one set of truth conditions, depending upon the believer.
As I mentioned earlier...
The divorce led to Gettier.
Have you read the Collingwood essay? I couldn't find an indication in your posts on this thread.
Reading it as we speak actually...
Found this particularly troubling...
...for it flies directly in the face of actually learning what clotheslines are called or what they're used for. He didn't decide either.
However, I think I can see what he means though. This time, on the deck, he 'decided' "that's a clothesline", after wondering about the line he saw, when he could have also suspended judgment and perhaps thought of other things the line could be besides a clothesline. Supposing it's a clothesline, presupposes it's use to hang clothes.
[quote]prop. i. Every statement that anybody ever makes is made in answer to a question.
I'm studying his framework of the differences between absolute and relative presuppositions...
As I said previously, they are fundamental to a perspective on a state of affairs, and our shared AP's constitute the milieu of our civilization.
Professional metaphysicians (...who claim for their own work the name of metaphysics because they regard it as a study of absolute presuppositions) may fail to do the kind of work which is required of them by the advance of ordinary or non-metaphysical thought because their metaphysical analysis has become out of date, i.e. presupposes that ordinary thought still stands in a situation in which it once stood, but in which it stands no longer.(Ch 8)
So "ordinary thought" is the manifestation of absolute presuppositions, and it is this which forms the object of study for the metaphysician, and the practical manifestation of Absolute Presuppositions (by the scientist and everybody else). Again, this is the sense in which I am aligning Absolute Presupposition with the concept of belief.
I'd say that our beliefs determine our thought more than our thought determines our beliefs. This is why these core beliefs (APs) are modifiable by way of metaphysical endeavour, rather than subjected to the whims of ordinary thought. They are constitutive beliefs.
I'd go as far as to suggest that the conscious self is that whose being is its beliefs. I think therefore I am as existential-synthesis. I am because (and what) I believe.
How can a scientific theory be conscious? You are talking about thinking people, and the thought of thinking people is based upon beliefs. As I have now repeatedly said, I think what is being quibbled over here is the nature of belief. I think Collingwood has called attention to a very important feature of belief, that it is structured around Absolute Propositions which are fundamental (metaphysical) perspectives on reality that we assume (with more or less awareness, depending on whether we are metaphysicians).
When scientists are forced to do their own metaphysics because ordinary thinking has outpaced current metaphysics, Collingwood calls them "amateur metaphysicians".
If we allow a supposition to be a belief, which is not contradictory, then from mere language we see a pre-supposition makes explicit that which has yet to meet the criteria of belief. If belief is the consequence of some cognition relative to a thing in conjunction with a judgement made upon it with respect to the subjective validity of the cognition, it follows that presupposition does not lend itself to any of those cognitive faculties relating thought to an object, but, if anything, given their validity, are necessarily antecedent to them. Hence, in Collingwood, the notion of “logical priority”.
(In Kant, “logical priority” is the transcendental condition making the categories possible, which Collingwood modernizes to “absolute presuppositions”, in his attempt to modernize post-Kantian metaphysics in general, in order to accommodate advances in the hard sciences)
So the question, at least from one point of view, attempts to misuse our cognitive faculties, which leads to self-contradictions. Throw in “absolute” as a quality of presupposition, and it makes that idea not even contained in cognitive faculties, from which arises the ground of the contradiction, re: the absolute is the unconditioned, for which no object is possible in human experience. In addition, with respect to Collingwood, to further qualify absolute presuppositions as, A.) that of “to any question it is never an answer” (Def. 6), and B.) “never verifiable” (pg 32), in that absolute presuppositions are in and of themselves not contained in, are indeed never even subjected to, the faculty of cognition at all. And that which is never cognized can never be a belief.
Problem is, of course, neither Kant nor Collingwood venture an altogether satisfactory origin of the categories in the former, nor absolute presuppositions in the latter. They each arrive at his own version of some irreducible metaphysical necessity, and each recognize they’ve tacitly boxed themselves in.
Same as it ever was......
Why should we construe belief so narrowly? Beliefs apply to things like cultural norms and habitual practices and for the vast majority of people take the form of presuppositions. This overly-formalized academic construal specifically misses the sense in which these core beliefs determine the course of thinking, both scientific and everyday.
Agreed, and sustained in Prop. 5, “absolute presuppositions are not propositions”, and if not a proposition, cannot be considered in propositional form, which weighing and choosing would seem to require.
If they are presuppositions, then they are "pre-supposed". I would be interested to learn what kind of psychological mechanism "pre-supposing" is that does not involve choice. Unless you consider it a more primitive kind of choosing. They are "fundamental hypotheses" about the nature of reality, not expressible in propositional form directly but consonant with some set of relative propositions, which are taken for granted and acted upon as if they were real, in consequence of which is engendered all actual behaviours, including scientific theorization.
One could almost call this a natural "direction" of one's thought, I think that Bergson uses this metaphor.
Because metaphysics is the science of thought, and any science is grounded by basic principles, axioms or conditions.
The best answer is the reduction to the the capacity to distinguish belief from knowledge. And if certainty is one of two fundamental human interests, the other being some moral disposition, it is all the more metaphysically pertinent to disseminate the conditions for its possibility scientifically, as opposed to the contingency of mere belief.
Quoting Pantagruel
These are at best in the purview of psychology, which, according to Collingwood, is “anti-metaphysics”, probably because those applications are in the public domain. Besides, “Beliefs apply to.....”, while correct from the view of practical reason, still makes no allowance for that which justifies both the content and the applicability of belief in general, which only arises from pure reason. One must, after all, think a belief before applying it.
Yes, but these are relative presuppositions, and according to Collingwood, may serve as answers to previous question, re: Prop 5. Answers must be subjected to rational predication, which permits them propositional form, which in turn allows them to be supposed antecedent to the question they are intended to answer.
Quoting Pantagruel
And these are the absolute presuppositions. Although, while certainly fundamental, I’d hesitate to call them hypotheses, which implies the very propositional form denied to them.
There is no reason to believe that absolute presuppositions are not presupposed.
And I qualified the sense in which they were 'functional hypotheses'.
Hey.....no fair confusing me, dammit!!! I had to go back through all my comments to see if I indicated absolute presuppositions were not presupposed, and I couldn’t find where I gave that indication. I’m arguing contrary to your claim that presuppositions are beliefs, which I emphatically reject on purely metaphysical grounds. So, no, there is no reason to think absolute presuppositions are not presupposed. In fact, it is no other way possible for them to be logically viable, then to be presupposed.
Ok. Well, as I said, it amounts to a clarification of what constitutes belief.
Beliefs are more fundamental than knowledge in the sense that you can have belief without knowledge, but not knowledge without belief. Not only that, but you can have true beliefs without knowledge. So is there something more fundamental than believing? I don't think so. Any thetic (positional) consciousness must be coming from some kind of position, which can be described as its "functional beliefs" (because otherwise, what else is it? If it is anything, it is the nexus of all of its most likely reactions.
In what sense is a "presupposition" not a kind of belief?
I didn't particularly like the clothesline analogy, but I don't know why it would be troubling. It isn't central to his argument.
I don't understand the analogy at all. Believing is the most you can do. You react to something as if it were true. That is exactly what a presupposition is. You do not presuppose in the mode of dis-belief, or even non-belief.
Yes. Trigger happy and tired last night.
The more I read, the more I realized that I needed to study this paper in order to better understand.
More fundamental only as in less rigorous. Ehhh....not going to get into the speculative subtleties explicit therein. Too long, too deep and not relevant to the topic.
Quoting Pantagruel
In ordinary linguistics, they may be, from which arises the relative presupposition, according to Collingwood. In metaphysics, on the other hand, where I stake my epistemological tentpoles, presuppositions are taken as necessary conditions, re: absolute presuppositions, and beliefs, at best, are merely contingent judgements. Only here does it become apparent that the negation of a judgement does not falsify the presupposition that supported it. “Elvis is not dead”, a possible belief, has no affect on the presupposition of Elvis, the condition necessary for the belief. We don’t need to analyze the proposition to grant the necessity of the presupposition contained in it, even while analyzing the truth of the proposition itself.
Also according to Collingwood.....beware customary jargon from “desultory and casual thinking of our unscientific consciousness”.
Well thought through, by which I mean I agree.
Not according to ordinary usage, and what better determines the meaning of terms? Dictionaries are good to consult because the business of lexicographers is to present concise definitions based on studying common usage.
From the Cambridge English Dictionary:
supposition
noun [ C or U ]
uk
/?s?p.??z??.?n/ us
/?s?p.??z??.?n/
the fact of believing something is true without any proof or something that you believe to be true without any proof:
That article was based on pure supposition.
presupposition
noun [ C or U ]
uk
/?pri?.s?p.??z??.?n/ us
/?pri?.s?p.??z??.?n/
something that you believe is true without having any proof:
Your actions are based on some false presuppositions.
This is all presupposition - we must wait until we have some hard evidence.
I would say that, according to ordinary parlance, there is little difference between the two terms, although a presupposition might be considered more basic. So suppositions and presuppositions are species of belief, but not all beliefs are suppositions in this strict sense, of course ( that is some beliefs are founded on evidence).
Now, Collingwood uses a term,"absolute presupposition" to denote those presuppositions which are bedrock for all metaphysical and physical inquiry. I see no reason to think that he could not equally well have used the term "absolute supposition" or "absolute belief" to denote the same thing. Wittgenstein used the term 'bedrock proposition' to denote very much the same thing.
Also consider this:
Quoting tim wood
"Some events have causes", " All events have causes", "No events have causes": of course these are, whatever else they might be, beliefs. They are also suppositions or presuppositions. If they count as absolute presuppositions, then they count also as absolute suppositions or absolute beliefs; as I said before, the logic is inexorable. (Personally I don't think the "absolute" works very well, 'foundational' or 'bedrock' would have been better in my view).
The point is that if he had used the alternative terms I have suggested it would not change his argument in any way that I can see.
Quoting Janus
The business of language is to express or explain; if language cannot explain itself, nothing else can explain it.
R.G. Collingwood, Essay on Philosophical Method
Quoting Pantagruel
Indeed! The litmus test is action.
Pretty much, yeah. Kant bottom up construction, Collingwood top down analysis.
————-
Quoting tim wood
As far as physics is concerned, and the notion that his presuppositions were sufficient for future physics, this is true. But Kant didn’t base his philosophy on physics, but on mathematics, which far antecedes both Voltaire and Greek physical science. He does this to demonstrate why physics as a science didn’t advance as far and as surely as mathematics, because the Greeks didn’t apply the same apodeitically certain a priori principles of mathematics to physical science. Enter Copernicus, whom Kant supposed, did.
Good stuff, Maynard.
Little difference in ordinary parlance, yes. But what difference there is, speaks volumes: the first says “the fact of believing....” and the second says “something believed....”. The first makes explicit an object that is a rational cognition, the second is a rational cognition in which an object is implied. The first presupposes believing, the second presupposes something. The first, iff it is a fact, stands as an absolute presupposition, the second can only be a relative presupposition because some question can be answered by it, what the something may actually be.
But even aside from that, the definitions are so close, virtually using the same words, they practically define the same conception. Except the conceptions are not the same.
————-
Quoting Janus
Agreed; my sole raison d’etre for getting involved in the first place, to demonstrate how that is actually the case.
Cool. Thanks.
Quoting Janus
Except that, as I noted previously, it is at the heart of Collingwood's formulation that absolute presuppositions are not true. You are ignoring the most important part.
Absolute presuppositions have no truth value. Have you read the Collingswood essay? If so, you clearly misunderstood it. I'd let this argument go, but it's a wonderful essay. It means a lot to me. I don't want others to to be mislead.
Perhaps it will help to straighten out your thinking about what I've been saying if you look at this again:
Quoting Janus
Also Tim apparently disagrees with you and or seems to be contradicting himself, so one (or both) of you has misunderstood Collingwood or else he also contradicts himself:
Quoting creativesoul
Anyway all this is an aside and is relevant neither to what I've been saying nor to Pantagruel's OP.
But how can we know what a person truly believes?
If we ask them point blank, how can we be sure they won't lie or otherwise give a deceptive answer?
We somehow need to account for strategizing and cunning, on the level of verbal expressions and on the level of actions.
I've discussed this with timmy before, and I've come to the conclusion that the idea of "absolute presuppositions" as proposed by Collingwood, is itself contradictory. This is what happens when someone pushes the boundaries in proposing a concept, trying to assign to the concept, a function which is impossible.
I don't see how this works in practice.
I don't see how one could see through a person's strategizing and cunning.
I am assuming that, empirically and socially, the actions of a person that are directed by a genuine belief must be measurably different from those of a person promulgating a false belief. Presumably things like long-term consistency, cogency of presentation, tendency to evoke comprehension in others. I am assuming that "the truth will out" in some sense, or more precisely, "the false will out," and reveal its own falsity. It is an hypothesis.
If you are dissimulating, you are intentionally mis-communicating. If you are practicing authenticity, then the possibility of understanding is greatest. That would have significance for coordinated group planning and action, for example.
No, but they relate to a set of propositions which do or can have truth values.
This is exactly the error that Collingwood says results in the suicide of positivistic metaphysics, trying to justify the presuppositions of natural science. It is unlikely that he is making the error that you suggest as his whole intention is not to make that error.
Tim didn’t quote absolute presuppositions; they were explicitly stated by the author as metaphysical propositions, and as such, can have truth value. You are justified in asserting truth values are possible for them as propositions, but cancel yourself by calling them absolute presuppositions.
On pg 52, the author says these proposition express an AP, albeit under three different configurations, which is very different than saying they are AP’s, in and of themselves. It is in the underlaying conception expressed, taken for granted, by the proposition, to which a truth value assignment is tantamount to “nonsense”, because that which the proposition takes for granted, assumed as immediately given, is nothing but a single, solitary, unconditioned conception, re: causality.
For all intends and purposes, pursuant to the reference literature, AP’s are just single words, which is sustained by the author asserting that AP’s are not propositions. Linguistics attributes truth value to propositions alone, which includes beliefs, but single words are not propositions not are they beliefs, hence, as such, can not have the truth value of a proposition, re: is “yes” true or false? Metaphysics can ask if AP’s are logically valid, and if answered that they are, then to ask if they are true or false, is utterly irrelevant. Or.....in the author’s vocabulary......nonsense.
————-
I would consider it a great success if I could get you to see that AP’s are not beliefs, I shall smooth potentially ruffled feathers beforehand, by reminding you that while your ordinary language use is all fine and dandy, the reference material for this thread is predicated on critical thinking, for which, one must admit, ordinary language use lacks sufficient authority.
————
Once more, into the breach........
Quoting Janus
DANGER, WILL ROBINSON. DANGER!!!!
“...Now it may be taken as a safe and useful warning, that general logic, considered as an organon, must always be a logic of illusion, for, as it teaches us nothing whatever respecting the content of our cognitions, but merely the formal conditions of their accordance with the understanding, which do not relate to and are quite indifferent in respect of objects, any attempt to employ it as an instrument (organon) in order to extend and enlarge the range of our knowledge must end in mere prating; anyone being able to maintain or oppose, with some appearance of truth, any single assertion whatever. Such instruction is quite unbecoming the dignity of philosophy....”
Nothing wrong using the logical form supposition/belief; presupposition/belief; absolute presupposition/absolute belief. They’re just words thrown together. But try to substitute reasonable arguments against the words, and you find that the relationship the words imply were, shall we say, unbecoming.
Now for the success. Maybe. Logical consistency maintains that if suppositions are beliefs, which could be true, then presuppositions should be pre-beliefs, which is a logical illusion, for we have no idea what is contained in a pre-belief. And then we have what should be.....absolute pre-beliefs. You can easily get from supposition to belief and do so rationally, but you cannot get so easily from presupposition to pre-belief. And it is quite irrational indeed, to attempt to get to absolute pre-belief from absolute presupposition. Parsimony suggests the better illusory reconciliation to be, therefore, that suppositions can be beliefs, but presuppositions and absolute presuppositions, cannot.
TA-DAAAA!!!! (Mic drop, exit stage left)
One man’s pedantry is another man’s precision.
This is pretty presumptuous of you. You already stated that you were "not an authority" on RGC.
The truth value of absolute presuppositions is at the heart of Collingwood's understanding. You can't toss that out without tossing out his whole argument.
Quoting Janus
You set me thinking. It's a really good question whether these statements are APs. Are they true or false? I think I can make a good argument they are neither. But that would be a different thread. Maybe I'll start one - Is there such a thing as causation?
Quoting Janus
I recognize the difference. That doesn't change my assertion that a good argument can be made that the idea of cause may be useful or not in specific situations but is not true or false.
Hey @tim wood, are we allowed to call you "Timmy." At least I capitalized it.
Have you made that argument elsewhere in this thread. If so, I've missed it. I'd be interested in taking a look.
I'm a bit behind and am catching up on some older posts. This is a good summary of all the things I've been trying to say.
Quoting tim wood
I like this too.
Now you're just trying to piss people off. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
The essay is very nuanced. I'm impressed by much of it, and find myself refraining from critiquing it yet, although there are a few problems within it.
Yeah, there's a lot going on there. It's probably time for me to go back and reread the whole thing.
No, I had a lengthy discussion with tim wood (to spell the name properly) before on this subject, and I'm just not interested any more. I concluded that Collingwood simply misunderstands the grounding of epistemology, trying to assign to it something (absolute presuppositions) which just cannot serve the purpose. This is why there is so much disagreement amongst readers of the work in this thread, as to what exactly the term refers to. It is just a fictional thing made up by Collingwood, which he believes must exist in order for knowledge to exist. I find it's quite similar to Wittgenstein's epistemology.
When we start to look around at existing knowledge, and try to identify these absolute presuppositions, we find that it really can't be done. For one reason or another, any proposed example can be rejected. So we must conclude that people like Collingwood and Wittgenstein really didn't understand what supports our knowledge, and their proposed epistemologies are misguided.
I'm in the middle of cutting and pasting from the essay as a means to provide an acceptable and accurate portrayal of RGC's notion of absolute presupposition. hasn't done a bad job here, from what I can see thus far, but I think there's much more going on with RGC than first meets the eye.
I understand that you're not interested in getting into this discussion, but I can't resist responding to this. Yes - any proposed example can be rejected. That's the whole point. It's not a matter of fact, it's a matter of choice.
When you're done with your cut and paste, please send it out to the rest of us.
I've no choice given the sheer complexity of the essay...
:wink:
I'm still just beginning to grasp his framework, and am currently still studying the chapters regarding presuppositions...
For those interested in or also drawing this comparison...
It makes a connection between RGC's absolute presuppositions and Witt's hinge propositions. While there may be some similarity between them, Collingwood clearly stipulates that the former are not stated(not propounded) and that only that which is stated can be true or false. He draws an equivalence of sorts between that which is true or false(that which is stated) with propositions, and calls the act of stating "propounding". He also admits the arbitrariness of his use of the term "proposition" here.
So, on RGC's view...
Absolute presuppositions are not propositions. Their function as a basis is what's important. So, the similarity is the function of being a basis or foundation of sorts, but that's where it ends. Witt was attempting to answer the problem of justificatory regress, but Collingwood is attempting to offer an acceptable universal scientific account of human thought, or so it seems that way to me based upon the first few chapters. I could be wrong about that...
Only that you seem to comment upon interesting aspects of the text with fall squarely in the sights of my reading.
This comment
Quoting tim wood
for example, for me leads naturally into the question posed by several philosophers, as to the relative in-excavatability of background assumptions. Which Habermas for example describes when he talks about communicative action being "embedded in lifeworld contexts that provide the backing of a massive background consensus" which is especially interesting because of its "peculiar pre-predicative and pre-categorial character, which already drew Husserl's attention in his investigations of this "forgotten" foundation of meaning inhabiting everyday practice and experience." (Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 1.2.3)
So perhaps this pre-categorial and pre-predicative character could explain the apparent lack of fit between my description and yours. You do not believe that the pre-predicative committment is tantamount to belief. I do. I think that the primitive hunter who can nail a rodent with a long, loping throw can be said to "believe" the theory of gravity, and maybe in some sense even to "know" it better than Newton (I'm not sure how adept Newton was tossing a stone).
So perhaps look more for the possibility that what is being said actually agrees with your own point of view, rather than disagrees with it?
It's a long time since I've read the work, and Tim did present those as absolute presuppositions and I assumed that he was following Collingwood in doing so. Without going back to the text, I'll take your word for it that Collingwood "says these propositions express an AP, albeit under three different configurations"; so the question then becomes, since these three presuppositions or propositions are contradictory or incompatible, what is the absolute presupposition they express?
You say it is causality; but what could it mean to presuppose causality if you were proposing its absence? If causality is "taken for granted, assumed as immediately given" then its actual existence, in some form or other, is being proposed, and the history of ideas, where causality had always been asserted as real, up until the advent of QM bears this out.
What you seem to be proposing is unintelligible, incoherent, unless all you are saying is that human (and animal) experience itself inevitably leads to causal thinking. But if that is what you are saying, then the term "absolute presupposition" understood as being beyond truth aptitude, seems itself simply wrong, because causality is being proposed, even if not explicitly.
Once the concept of causality is formed, then the idea that it either obtains or does not obtain logically follows. Presupposition has nothing to do with this; it is the only way we are able to think. which reflects the inherently binary, "yes or no", "true or false" nature of all our analytic conceptual thought. It is then not a matter of presupposition, absolute or otherwise, but of constitution.
First off, the idea that causation is not necessary to understand the universe has been around for a long time. It is close to, maybe equivalent to, claims that induction is impossible. I'm not sure about that. I'll have to think some more.
Some questions:
I'm not aware of that, but I'm open to the possibility; can you provide an example? (I have to go to work pretty much immediately so I probably won't be able to respond or attempt to address your other questions until later this afternoon).
That's exactly the reason why "absolute presuppositions" cannot serve the purpose of underlying any field of study, or any knowledge in general. If they can simply be accepted or rejected at will, they have no capacity for creating the coherence which we actually find within knowledge. To adequately account for the existence of knowledge we need to understand the power which logic may have over will. And the idea of "absolute presuppositions" essentially denies the role of logic in producing the fundamental metaphysical principles which serve as the basis for epistemology. In reality the fundamental principles are produced by reason, and we adhere to them because we have faith in the capacity of reason.
Now you've got it. That's exactly right. There is no logic in the fundamental metaphysical principles which serve as the basis of epistemology. Only human preference. Maybe preference isn't the right word. Intuition? Bias? Habits of mind? Convention?
Yes.
This presupposes that RGC claims otherwise. He doesn't. Absolute presuppositions are but one part in the field of study.
Read the paper.
This presupposes that logic precedes thought.
This is the general groundwork for the book/essay.
So, that there is causation, if counted as an absolute presupposition, need not be actually believed but may be merely provisionally entertained to see where it might lead an investigation; but to say it is merely provisionally entertained doesn't only entail that it is not believed, but that strictly speaking it means that it is not even presupposed, it is merely entertained for the sake of investigation, so to speak.
Having said all that is it is hard to see how there really could be any investigation without the notion of causation when it comes to most fields of inquiry. So, causation looks more like a constitutive element of human thinking than it looks like a mere presupposition, absolute or otherwise. This leans more towards Kant than it does Collingwood, as far as I can tell.
That's nonsense Janus. The paper is proving interesting enough for me to set aside my position on human thought and belief as a means to understand it. There's good stuff in it.
I strongly suggest that you take the time to read it. I'm still studying it myself, and suspect that I will be for some time to come. I do not agree with everything, nor do I need to. I am suspending judgment and for the sake of argument, seeing where his line of thinking goes.
I will. It's proven to be necessary...
It doesn't show here.
So, here we can see that for Collingwood, presuppositions are kinds of thought not expressed in one's statement. However, to get a good understanding of what species and/or kind they are, it requires a bit of study. I'm off again to do exactly that...
I can't be responsible for your lack of insight.
Squabbling over the whether the terms "belief" and "presupposition" pick out the same thing is rather dull, especially when we're talking about RGC's use of "presupposition". Not interested in personal jabs.
Quoting creativesoul
That's laughable considering how you have approached me in this thread.
Take, for example, Christians and their professed belief in the Ten Commandments, or their professed belief in "love thy neighbor". How would you go about measuring, assessing any of that, based on their words and actions?
To discover the nature of the shared presuppositions that underlie our various analytical inquiries. If we are doing metaphysics, at any rate.
I'm not trying to prove this proposition empirically except by way of experiment. If I adopt this as
motivating hypothesis, I assume that my actions will be efficacious in a way that those motivated by an hypothesis of deceit cannot be.
I like the term '"idden assumption". It's better than "belief" imo because these are not really positive beliefs, that we adhere to consciously and defend. They are more like unconscious ideas that shape our examinations but are not themselves examined. To me a belief is something more explicit and stated.
Quoting creativesoul
This is why I have no inclination toward reading the paper. It appears to inspire all sorts of nonsense like this, which I would simply reject and have no part of. Therefore it would just be a waste of my time.
:up:
Yes, but, they can be and are subject to indirect modification, insofar as they govern and determine both scientific and ordinary thinking. As is clear when Collingwood describes the various scenarios in which metaphysical and scientific thinking can be 'out of step' with each other. This misrepresentation of metaphysics (via pseudo-metaphysics, irrationalism, etc) represents a breaking down of the mechanisms around one set of absolute presuppositions in favour of another.
Which is why we're so thankful that you deigned to comment on it.
I agree with the idea that even the most rabid anti-metaphysician is doing some metaphysics. 0 is a number. Bald is an air style.
The primitive hunter in my example may not consciously be aware that "massive objects appear to fall a certain way in the earth's gravity field" but still base his actions upon that principle. For me, it is this "commitment to act in a certain way" which constitutes the fundamental aspect of "true belief". I think that the point at which beliefs begin to be explicitly outlined is the point at which bad faith can begin to be introduced. I would trust what people's actions reveal about their beliefs more than what they report their own beliefs to be.
Okay, point well taken. True that. Roger. My mistake.
I emphasize “metaphysically speaking”, for none of the following has any affect on Everydayman, who doesn’t know, and cares even less, about any of it. Speculative epistemology is intellectual entertainment, not a solution to existential difficulties.
Metaphysically speaking, humans presupposes causes, which we question and answer for ourselves in propositions; we absolutely presuppose causality, which we never talk about because without causality, there wouldn’t even be any cause questions to ask. We reason to instances of cause; we grant causality, which is the point of departure for reason to come up with causes.
Much like...when we go to the store for a thing, we presuppose the thing to be there, because of experience (milk, eggs, butter) or it’s just the kind of store that has that thing (granite, lawnmowers, Chinese silk), but before all that we always absolutely presuppose the reality of the thing, because if we’ve presupposed it being in the store, we must have absolutely granted that the thing exists.
Furthermore, after granting its existence, we still presuppose the possibility of the particular thing being in the store we’re going to (because it is impossible to know it’s actually there), then it must be the case that we’ve already absolutely granted the general notion of possibility itself, because without it, whether the thing was in the store or not would never have become a question, a concern or a satisfaction/disappointment, for us. This is the possibility in relation to space, because we’ve already granted the possibility of the thing in relation to time, from the mere fact it exists.
—————-
Quoting Janus
This is part of RGC’s thesis, in that once the concept of causality is formed, whether or not it either obtains or does not obtain, is a nonsense implication. Once it forms, it has obtained, hence the logic of it is irrelevant. Which is not quite the right way to express it, but the point remains. The reason for this is given in Kant, but not so much in Collingwood, so I’ll refrain from it.
Don’t mean to speak for you, but perhaps your sentence would have been better stated as...once the concept of a cause is formed, whether it obtains or does not obtain, logically follows (that is to say, whether or not the necessarily conjoined effect follows from it).
————-
Quoting Janus
Agreed, it is confusing, and seemingly self-refuting. Collingwood covers this confusion by stipulating that absolute presuppositions are not “propounded”, which we take to mean not proposed. Thus, if the conception of causality is not proposed, it is immediately removing from susceptibility to truth aptitude, and, rather, it is tacitly understood a priori, antecedent to our conscious construction of empirical propositions.
Remember....all our conceptions arise from something. It is easy to see conceptions of objects arise from sensibility, but it is not so easy to see from whence abstract concepts arise. It is irrefutable that we have them, re: time, beauty, justice, etc., but they cannot arise from sensibility, so....wherefrom?
I’ll leave you with....(gulp)......spontaneity.
Your very welcome, the gratitude is much appreciated.
To insist that one must start from a presupposition of some sort is simply counterproductive, an attempt to justify not making the effort to free oneself from the influence of bias, and do everything possible to approach with an open mind. And to argue that the assumption that one has rid oneself of such biases, is itself a presupposition, is a failure, because we all know that we cannot completely rid ourselves of them, so we do not presuppose such perfection.
The point to a good philosophy is to make any such presuppositions (biases) as irrelevant as possible, having as minimal as possible influence on the philosophy. So any philosophy which sees presuppositions as playing a significant role in philosophy is simply a misguided philosophy.
This is a misconstrual of the sense of these presuppositions. These presuppositions are accumulated with respect to a complete context of being in the world, underlying practical as well as theoretical activities. They are more like transcendental conditions, if anything. Nothing in this thread ever purports to rise to the discussion of knowledge. This is more basic than knowledge, it is belief.
My apologies then. No offense meant. seems to be explaining the notion fairly well... if by that I mean in line with RGC.
Knowledge must be true. Presuppositions need not be. Assumptions are sometimes different than presuppositions. Again, this is clearly laid out in the book. The link to the download was given earlier...
Thanks
The obvious question is "Then why are you participating in this discussion?" If you don't like the rules of this particular game, don't play.
Since you haven't read the paper, it doesn't make sense for you to jump in and decide we should be using different words than we are. It's disruptive and inconsiderate.
I think maybe convention, consensus, is the primary reason, although I think spontaneity is part of it too.
Yeah.....(chuckles to self).....I’m trying really hard to stay in the proper lane.
I guess I’d first have to ask what you mean convention, consensus, to be the primary reasons for. Spontaneity and those are very far apart, so just wondering what they might have in common.
Why do we assume the presuppositions that, often unconsciously, underlie our understanding of the world. Some thoughts. I'm brainstorming - just throwing out ideas:
Convention and spontaneity may be really different, but they can both contribute. How much of what you call "spontaneity" is just internalized convention? Harder than this question is "What are the APs underlying our beliefs." @tim woods and I have been talking about opening another thread to discuss that.
The above has been copied and pasted from the essay up to page 31. I think that the above part could use some considered discussion as a means to grasp what RGC is saying.
It seems to me that key to his position is Prop. 2.
How presuppositions relate to inquiry. While I immediately recoiled at Prop. 1., I have since been content to not pursue that objection for it seems rather inconsequential to the rest. Well, I've edited this now as a result of having read further. Prop. 1. seems to be key to his position as well. He returns to it shortly...
... Do you have any issue with delving into the above for the purpose of better understanding what RGC is doing here?
To the intention of the OP, I found another essay on this subject by Paul Trainor; the conclusion fairly sums up what I think are the most interesting features of Absolute Presuppositions consistent with Collingwood's work:
Perhaps one of the most valuable suggestions found in Collingwood is that the kinds of persons we are, the kinds of values we embody and express, may in some elusive but nonetheless real sense, serve to test our metaphysical beliefs. They may not enable us to judge other peoples, peoples who have and do regulate their lives by other sets of absolute presuppositions, but Collingwood's work surely suggests that if we are to truly know ourselves, if we are to truly create ourselves, then the values we embody and express may serve to indirectly validate or invalidate our metaphysical beliefs.
https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/uram.7.4.270
Cool. Perhaps another thread is best for getting into the paper itself as a means for better understanding RGC. For myself, at least, I couldn't possibly have a clue whether or not another author's take on Collingwood is accurate, for I have not yet understood the paper myself. So, as a means for even being the least bit knowledgable about what others say about RGC, I find myself with the imperative of first having understood him myself.
Interested in a reading group, or another thread?
Ahhhhh....Ok, gotcha. Reasons for assuming presuppositions. All those are sufficient reasons for assuming presuppositions, experience being my personal favorite, probably. At least the most obvious. Only nit worth picking is, intuitions are not representative of “spontaneity” as I used it.
Of course around here it is usually - "I say there is an objective reality." Everyone says, "What are you an idiot?"
I think people accept their presuppositions because they fit emotional needs. But that doesn't mean they are necessarily wrong.
The other reason is the considered absence of a viable alternative. Which may fit with what you have called Experience.
Perhaps where we've been misunderstanding one another is that I also see that basic presupposition as a kind of foundational belief, not consciously chosen of course.
I guess the point for me is that rather than saying we presuppose causation, which seems to suggest our consciously presupposing or believing in causation, which we also indeed do (mostly) I think it is less potentially confusing to say that the idea of causation is constitutive of our whole process of thought; the very water in which we swim, so to speak.
I'm pretty much Collingwooded out for now.
I think you're being intentionally disruptive, so I flagged your post. Let's see what @fdrake thinks.
Ordinary parlance, yes.
Quoting Janus
Presuppositions, yes.
Quoting Janus
I’m sure you wouldn’t contradict yourself as obviously as this last seems to contradict the first, so I’ll just assume I’m not getting what you’re saying.
I’m non-committal, but I might eavesdrop from behind the fake rubber tree.
Because all I am seeing is a wall of text that changes nothing at the end of the day.
Sure, I'm interested. Grateful for being introduced to Collingwood, had never heard of him but I like what I read so far. He is very readable.
No worries, my friend.
Looks like we're the only ones who want to read this...
:razz:
I'm only on page 56, and I'll not be able to spend much more than an hour or so, maybe two, a day reading and/or discussing it. However, I'd be happy to begin a new thread on the paper itself, because this thread is not about that. We could discuss it as we read... as needed. Maybe start the discussion by summarizing the first four chapters? That looks like it's though page 33. Or, perhaps do it chapter by chapter?
Nice. Interesting parallels drawn between RGC and Witt's notion of forms of life, with both emphasizing the importance of language. The difference between them is RGC's focus upon thought.
Thank you very much for this. The Philosopher's Zone is a great show. And they all have those funny accents.
Yes, it was well made. Balanced, inquisitive but sympathetic, and with some pace and flow in providing a broad overview.
The first being:
Quoting Janus
What I has in mind there was how in common parlance presuppositions can be referred to as being implicit, taken for granted, in questions, or investigations, without the questioners being consciously aware of those presuppositions.
With the comment you refer to as "last" I had in mind that these basic presuppositions (or beliefs) that people may or may not be conscious of as being implicit in their questions and investigations, are constitutive of the processes of thought that lead to the questions and investigations, that they actually are ineliminable because without them the questions and investigations would lose their sense.
The point was also that it seems less likely that foundational presuppositions or beliefs were, in their origins, consciously adopted. So, as I see it the two comments support one another rather than they contradict one another.
I certainly agree with that, so....good enough. Thanks.
Lately I've begun to realize and understand that we are our beliefs. Our beliefs are the entirety of our being. One can understand this completely, and yet, trying to elaborate what these are, find them either trite and mundane, or nebulous and elusive, hard to pin down or specify.
And so they should be. Heidegger says "the more comprehensive a concept is in its scope...the more indeterminate and empty is its content" (Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 43) So, in fact, knowing that beliefs are the basis of being, we reach the point of the pure indetermination of content. I know that I am both the product and the author of my beliefs. I know that I exist. Cogito ergo sum.
Relative to another thread, for example, this would explain why people need religious beliefs; they need religious beliefs to found their being when they themselves are incapable of doing so. Either you assume responsibility for your own being, or you accept a whole lot of doctrinal gibberish that does nothing to fill in the gaps between obeyances.
Glory, for the Greeks, is the highest manner of being....Glory means doxa [which is "belief"]....I show myself, I appear, I step into the light. (Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 108)
The being of believing, the being of believers, the being of belief.