G.K. Chesterton: Reason and Madness
“Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess players do... Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine... He was damned by John Calvin... Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion... The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits... The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason... Materialists and madmen never have doubts... Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have the mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity.”
? G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
1. Radical skepticism will make you question everything: I don't know that I even know nothing about nothing.
2. We lose the ability to take the world for granted and stop believing in those common sense truisms we all agree on NOT QUESTIONING, for discussion sake - to avoid falling into a maddening relativism.
3. But does Reason really make you mad as you become too REASONABLE? i.e. the mathematical genius who's deeply in touch with the uncertainty principle, or any other mathematical principle that describes reality as unpredictable and chaotic? Butterfly effect, etc.
3.1 Belief systems have the ability to reduce uncertainty, to make the world look less chaotic, help us regulate our stress and anxiety levels;
3.1.1. BUT is knowledge about the uncertainty and unpredictability of the world enough to make you Mad? I don't think so. We need to understand madness in all levels of analysis too(cellular, muticellular, organism, multiorganism), not just an epistomological perspective of mental illness, even though it can contribute to it or maybe the consequence of a certain neurological condition? - as a consequence or epiphenomenon of a neurological disorder, not the cause of a neurological disorder.
4. There's an idea of the crazy mathematician, but these are rare instances of madness perpetuated by popular culture: most mathematicians possess (in different degrees) a negative capability to deal with uncertainty. Most mathematicians who do research, work with a sense of resignation because they are trying to solve "impossible problems", knowing they'll probably never find an answer to those questions.
4.1 I think Chesterton was trying to criticize a naive reductionist view of science. The science/logician who gets mad because he's trying to reduce reality to an equation but the task is so great the he becomes mad: but modern science is not 100% reductionist,i.e. butterfly effect - where a small change in initial conditions can have great consequences in a posterior state within a system. A small oscillation in air pressure in Brazil could give rise to a storm in Tahiti.
"Conclusion": I think Chesterton is wrong, making a faulty generalization. Both mathematicians, philosophers and artists have to deal with high level abstractions and uncertainty, mystery is part of their day-to-day lives.
Do you agree or disagree with my view? If you think I'm wrong, I would appreciate you could help me see things more clearly. Thank you for reading.
? G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
1. Radical skepticism will make you question everything: I don't know that I even know nothing about nothing.
2. We lose the ability to take the world for granted and stop believing in those common sense truisms we all agree on NOT QUESTIONING, for discussion sake - to avoid falling into a maddening relativism.
3. But does Reason really make you mad as you become too REASONABLE? i.e. the mathematical genius who's deeply in touch with the uncertainty principle, or any other mathematical principle that describes reality as unpredictable and chaotic? Butterfly effect, etc.
3.1 Belief systems have the ability to reduce uncertainty, to make the world look less chaotic, help us regulate our stress and anxiety levels;
3.1.1. BUT is knowledge about the uncertainty and unpredictability of the world enough to make you Mad? I don't think so. We need to understand madness in all levels of analysis too(cellular, muticellular, organism, multiorganism), not just an epistomological perspective of mental illness, even though it can contribute to it or maybe the consequence of a certain neurological condition? - as a consequence or epiphenomenon of a neurological disorder, not the cause of a neurological disorder.
4. There's an idea of the crazy mathematician, but these are rare instances of madness perpetuated by popular culture: most mathematicians possess (in different degrees) a negative capability to deal with uncertainty. Most mathematicians who do research, work with a sense of resignation because they are trying to solve "impossible problems", knowing they'll probably never find an answer to those questions.
4.1 I think Chesterton was trying to criticize a naive reductionist view of science. The science/logician who gets mad because he's trying to reduce reality to an equation but the task is so great the he becomes mad: but modern science is not 100% reductionist,i.e. butterfly effect - where a small change in initial conditions can have great consequences in a posterior state within a system. A small oscillation in air pressure in Brazil could give rise to a storm in Tahiti.
"Conclusion": I think Chesterton is wrong, making a faulty generalization. Both mathematicians, philosophers and artists have to deal with high level abstractions and uncertainty, mystery is part of their day-to-day lives.
Do you agree or disagree with my view? If you think I'm wrong, I would appreciate you could help me see things more clearly. Thank you for reading.
Comments (54)
Examples of which common sense we (supposedly) all are agree?Quoting WaterLungs
I think you will like check this article in relation of your questions and debate: http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html
First of all, thank you taking the time to answer. I'll read the article very carefully.
Examples of which common sense we (supposedly) all are agree?
to avoid falling into a maddening relativism. — WaterLungs
Answer: When we stop thinking about the ultimate nature of reality and grab a cup of coffee, accepting it's real enough from a pragmatic point-of-view. This acceptance is not an epistemological agreement between everyone... but a common sense acceptance that we need to suspend disbelief temporarily, to continue living life without questioning everything. Otherwise we couldn't leave our beds, because we would be trying to rationally justify/find a reason or a purpose to every single action we take. Here nature is important, were alive because breathing is automatic and doesn't depend on rational deliberations: a radical skeptic would die if breathing depended on his epistemological certainties.
- I think Hume describes this much better than me:
“Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? ... I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.
Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.”
Is G. K. Chesterton mad? How did he chance upon this sparkling nugget of exquisite wisdom? Poetry or Reason?
Interesting point of view. So you think basically that common and custom things we do all day shouldn’t be questioned because they are already accepted. Yes. It is true that David Hume explained this situation better but I guess his intention was literally the opposite. When Hume wrote the next example: if I put my hand in a hot pot I will burn my hand all the times I do so but this is reason is something the custom of doing it gave to me I guess he was still questioning everything despite can be mad as you say.
Not questioning everything around us could make us being simple
Why do I live?
Why do I dream?
Why do some people die younger than others?
Why do I debate?
Etc...
- To make a coffee you have to act as someone who believes that coffee is real, not real in the ultimate metaphysical/epistemological sense, but real ENOUGH in the sense that:
"Ok, it could be a dream and this cup of coffee might not be real but it's nice to have a coffee in the morning - thought Waterlungs, taking a sip from a warm cup of coffee, as he contemplates the sunshine with a profound gaze, while he listens to some pretentious obscure jazz album, which gives him a sense of moral superiority, feeling that life is worth living."
- I probably misread Hume because I lack a philosophical education, I only know some out of context citations. So he might not agree with my view and I probably misused his views for my argument sake.
- When I mean we take some things for granted for discussion sake is that, when we have a discussion, we believe that we can be understood by others and that we can understand what they mean. Otherwise, it would be absurd to have a conversation if we thought no one would understand what we mean.
Given this is what the lowly human brain is faced with, it needs to be, what's the word, feminine/receptive in order to take it all in an stay sane rather than masculine/projective like when we demand that the world obey every single rigid rule of reason and when that fails and failure is certain, the inevitable happens...we lose our minds.
Chesterton is an amusing writer, but never careful in thought or analysis. He is, for the most part, glib. His writing is breezy and superficial, and sometimes witty. He would have been great fun as a conversationalist, particularly after a few drinks. He is first and foremost an apologist, and apologists very rarely engage in more than special pleading.
Poetry or Reason? Maybe reason because people with a certain temperament, more prone to madness, are attracted to mathematics? - this is pure speculation.
I understand your point and what are you trying to explain. I guess when I am making a coffee I believe in it in a tangible aspect. The colour, the smell, the taste, etc... of the coffee. Nevertheless, despite it could be so twisted, that coffee and all of the characteristics can drive to me to a metaphysical behaviour. For example: While I am drinking this coffee it gives me memories of when I was in Chicago summer holidays. Nostalgia. so they are sometimes so connected.
I guess the important fact here is try to put a division between the reality as it is (enough believe) and then all the metaphysical/epistemological experience.
It's possible that he's doing special pleading but, if we took his claim seriously, not as a superficial or merely glib, do you think there's some truth to what he says? And if there's no truth to it, why is it wrong to consider reason the path to madness? What do you think he chooses consciously to ignore?
I'm going against my instincts not to generalize but it seems exceptions don't imply the absence of a dependable generalization. I mean by focusing on Vincent Van Gogh, an exception, you're wilfully and dangerously ignoring the vast majority of artists who are mentally healthier than the lot of mathematicians.
- So in that sense its useful to separate the social inter-subjective reality we live in (not reality as it is, but as we experience it) from the metaphysical/epistemological realm? But if they are continuous, should we artificially separate them? Why? I don't know, maybe we should live in harmony with both?
- I think my view about taking things for granted is trying to unify the metaphysical realm we probably can't understand with the not so "common day-to-day experience".
Thank you for the feedback, it's helping me make some new interesting connections.
What you said reminds of me of the Survivorship bias: we only focus on the winners, forgetting how many people have to lose to "produce" one winner:
- Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to some false conclusions in several different ways. It is a form of selection bias.
The truth is I haven't checked medical records/statistics to see the the number of cases of madness in this two "different" groups, namely, mathematicians and artists:
- First Problem: Define what madness is, I don't believe it's merely a social construct, there's a biological reality to it, but still it's very difficult to define, since in psychological/medical literature a disease is defined by it's symptoms and it's possible cures - a functional definition. This goes against my belief that it's not a social construct, but it's very hard to define what "madness" is.
- Second Problem: What makes an artist or a mathematician? Someone with an artistic or mathematical inclination is not an artist or mathematician? They have to be professionals? To have a relevant impact in knowledge creation to be a "true" mathematician?
- Third Problem: What's the difference between an artist and a mathematician? Can we be both at the same time? Da Vinci was, to a certain extent. Is he the exception or the rule? Maybe most people share both traits, but since they weren't as good as Da Vinci, they were forgotten.
Well I think this happens because we are making our brain to work/act faster than actually it does. If we see the colours more vividly is due to a distorted perception of reality. I even think taking drugs or whatever stimulation don’t provide us the fact of living metaphysical experiences. Keep in mind that there are people who take a lot of drugs but do not perceive this dilemma we are talking about.
This context depends in every human knowledge and their development. If we say there is a metaphysical world we previously think about it. It is an effort to go farther than tangible reality.
Colours are there and will be there. The different spectrums of experience will depend about our behaviour.
Chesterton as a writer was a witty polemicist and not someone I would go to to learn psychological truths about human beings. His comments sound like good, old fashioned bullshit and fits into C's whole shtick of making impactful, paradoxical statements that seem like insights. But in the end there is no evidence, no attempt at precision or definitions (as has already been said), so pretty much worthless. How would we even test such a claim? I think it's the kind of opinion that often undergirds a romantic view of truth - that poetic insights are deeper and somehow more authentic and grounding than those acquired by reason, which lead us to banal tautologies and rob the world of the numinous. The New Age movement used to be constipated by views like these.
Well, being glib, he provides no definitions, no explanations and no evidence. Neither does he make an argument. He proclaims, declares. It's not clear what he means by "reason" or, for that matter, "imagination." Why would reason, by ordinary definition the power to think, understand and form judgments rationally, lead to insanity? Why would imagination do so?
He seems to mistake "reason" for "logic." The "logic" he refers to seems to be merely the process of selecting a premise, however unreasonable, and inferring the unreasonable from it. We can only guess from his dismissive and conclusory claims that he has fabricated a parody of reason.
I know of no basis on which to maintain reason leads to insanity, and he provides no basis.
This is the best definition I found of a romantic view of reason:
[i]"Human lives take place in the same intimate unconsciousness as the lives of animals. The same profound laws, which govern the instincts of animals from the outside, also govern the intelligence of man from the outside, which seems to be nothing more than an instinct in formation, an unconscious dog like every instinct, less perfect because it has not yet been formed.
«Everything comes from reasonless», it is said in Greek Anthology. And, in fact, everything comes from reasonless. Outside of mathematics that has nothing to do with nothing but dead numbers and empty formulas, and so it can be perfectly logical, science is nothing but a children's game at dusk, wanting to catch bird shadows and stop grass shadows in the wind."[/i]
- Bernardo Soares, The Book of Disquiet [Used Google Translator to translate from Portuguese, english is not my first language]
According to this view, reason is nothing but an instinct yet to be fully formed. I don't agree, but I can see why it's so appealing to many people, mostly artists. Modern society is obsessed with authenticity and self-fulfillment, to fulfill one's potential is seen as the highest value. To fail in life is to fail to fulfill your own potential by not finding who you truly are - to avoid this, you need to listen your passions, to your heart, not to reason. In this way of life, the romantic artist became the paradigm of the life that should be modeled, a search for aesthetic differentiation, one's own originality, "that which makes me different from you". An empty lifestyle if you ask me, it can lead to moral relativism and isolation. How can one reach one's potential without being inserted in a community? I don't see how. Sorry for this pseudo-intellectual rant.
Neither do I but they are often positioned in this way. The great battle between Enlightenment and Romanticism.
Quoting WaterLungs
Very true. Is this what happens when religion fades?
Quoting WaterLungs
Community is not very popular with some people who prefer individualism. Reaching 'one's potential' is a meaningless notion. 'Reaching some potential' might be more accurate but downbeat. We are potentially many people - opportunity, effort, luck, all play a role.
Quoting WaterLungs
Why should you be the only one here to apologize for this? :wink:
I never heard about him until this moment. The podcasts look so interesting. Also I see he has books with striking titles. I will check it out deeper in the following days.
I agree that Chesterton is wrong, but then he's also fooling around.
Radical skepticism is something like a pose, IMO. Genuine doubt is paralyzing. Theoretical (facetious, insincere) doubt is a clever game.
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/peirce/peirce_print.pdf
Firstly, I didn't claim anything at all. It was G. K. Chesterton who thought "poets do not go mad; chess players do" or something along those lines and his take on it isn't based on statistics, a necessity if your allegation that he's guilty of survivorship bias is to make sense.
G. K. Chesterton formed his opinion from an analysis of the mindset of poets and chess players and the categories of people they stand for and I'm simply following his lead. G. K. Chesterton did not come to the conclusion that "poets do not go mad; chess players do" based on a statistical analysis of poets and chess players. Ergo, no way survivorship bias has any relevance to G. K. Chesterton's views on this issue.
That said, you probably thought of survivorship bias because of the direction our conversation took with my comment on "exceptions" and "generalizations".
Survivorship bias is about how "survivors" (those who make it big) give us the wrong picture as regards the perils inherent in the activity the "survivors" participate in and madness is one. Many "poets" and "chess players" may have fallen to insanity and that wouldn't show up in our investigation if we only focus on the successful.
Yet, comparing the "survivors" of two categories, as is the case when we study successful "poets" and "chess players" together, has its own story to tell. My hunch is that more eminent "chess players" have mental issues than great "poets" and this fact serves as the basis of a cogent statistical argument.
Plus, if there's a survivorship bias, it applies to both categories - the crème de la crème of "poets" and "chess players" are the subgroups we've decided to concentrate on. You know, of course, that when a certain factor is present in equal measure in both categories that we're doing a comparative study on, it no longer matters or doesn't skew the results or simply put the bias doesn't lead to erroneous conclusions.
Quoting WaterLungs
Indeed, definitions are always a problem but we can avoid that pitfall of confusion by sticking to psychiatric definitions for they probably were the ones G.K. Chesterton himself used when he made the comparison between "poets" and "chess players" and how the latter class of people were more likely to go cuckoo.
Quoting WaterLungs
There can be no doubt on that front. "Chess players" depend on logic, thinking inside a box, not crossing boundaries that logic sets up - that's where their daily bread comes from. "Poets" are more about unrestricted creativty, thinking outside the box. crossing boundaries wherever they happen to encounter one.
Quoting WaterLungs
There can be "poetic chess players" and such people would be mighty interesting to follow on twitter I suppose. How do they manage two opposing forces inside them? The "chess player" in them would want to follow rules, adopt a formulaic approach to life and so on while the "poet" in them would be happy to break rules, try out the novel, the unorthodox, the radical.
Hume is neither glib, nor an apologist. And Chesterton is right in his observation that it is the logician more so than the artist that is vulnerable to madness. It is one who tries to make reason the master and eliminate passion, that ends up in trouble. And this is no off-hand remark of Chesterton's, but the direction of much of his writing. He is not anti-rational at all, but anti rationalism, the folly that makes rationality its passion, and thereby undermines itself.
Interesting quote from David Hume. Probably I accidentally enter in a tangent but this quote reminds me the Goya’s painting called The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.
It is free interpretation but probably this painting shows how dangerous could be our world if our reason is sleeping?
True. I didn’t even realise that. Sometimes reason can be as dangerous as nightmares. At least a poet or another kind of artist just speaks about those nightmares in their works. We even can find beautiful pieces of art. Not only about nightmares but all stuff that we cannot explain with reason like darkness, sadness, nostalgia, etc...
So as you said, it is exactly a commonplace
Quoting TheMadFool
I think they are. For example: someone, one day, thought about the creation of a nuke bomb. Then, this dream/idea put it on reality. This is could be one of the worst things created by humans. They are genius for creating such complex arm but evil too. I don’t want to underrate them as scientists because somehoe we have to understand the context but I rather see a poet or an artist showing their nightmares than a scientific put in practice the reason.
"Very true. Is this what happens when religion fades?"
Those who agree with Max Weber's View of the Disenchanted World, agree that the loss of religious values brought about the decay of society, turning a society based on judeo-christian values into a "sick" individualistic, moral relativistic and atomised society where people are too focused on authenticity and self-realization. I believe Charles Taylor is right when he says this is an inauthentic form of "authenticity", because it doesn't recognize the necessity for community and recognition in identity formation. All I'm doing is echoing Taylor's arguments. If you have time, please watch this very interesting lesson - full of self-evident truths I didn't see because they were too close to my lived experience:smile: : The Malaise of Modernity (1/5) - Charles Taylor
Community is not very popular with some people who prefer individualism. Reaching 'one's potential' is a meaningless notion. 'Reaching some potential' might be more accurate but downbeat. We are potentially many people - opportunity, effort, luck, all play a role.
I see alot of people being unaware of the role of influence in their lives, "they" seem to live in a vaccum, not knowing that when they say "Jessica" they are citing Shakeaspeare, the one who discovered the name for the first time. This goes for everything we take for granted. We can't live in a vaccum, believing we invented this language, these philosophical problems, etc. I don't think it goes against individualism, because individualism can only survive in a very specific democratic eco-chamber, that's why we need to preserve it and community is fundamental.
But then we have medicine. It looks like the case is sure to give any judge worth faer salt a pounding headache. I have a suspicion that we've derailed the thread.
PS: I'm not a budhist btw.
Hope you find it interesting :)
It looks like interesting sure. But I am atheist :rofl: so I guess it will be a hard pill to swallow when he literally face atheism form a Buddhist point of view.
As a connection that was related to the topic but doesn't imply causality, I think your right.
There can be no doubt on that front. "Chess players" depend on logic, thinking inside a box, not crossing boundaries that logic sets up - that's where their daily bread comes from. "Poets" are more about unrestricted creativty, thinking outside the box. crossing boundaries wherever they happen to encounter one.
Both "chess players" and "poets" are playing games of creativity, either in literature or chess. Think of the great masters of creativity, they are those who reinvented the wheel without breaking the rules of the game, by making us aware of rules we didn't know existed. Shakespeare discovery of the modern man through Hamlet's soliloquies or Casanova's groundbreaking chess tactics. Both played by the rules of language or mathematics, and tried to express their creativity within that game. They both played creative games by following the same principles of disruption: reinvent the wheel without breaking the rules - this sounds a lot like Wittgenstein. Robert Mckee expresses this idea very well:
“Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.”
Not reason itself, but the supression of emotions/passions in search of pure objectivity. Maybe this is the key to madness, when you try to live your day to day life through the lens of Bacon's "sub speciae aeternitatis": it will lead you to an illusion of objectivity, when you pretend to live life only from a third person rational and detached perspective? Maybe this is the source of the madness?
Indeed it is, one I’m playing right now, in attempting to reconcile the appearance of a contradiction in an otherwise respectable philosopher. From your link:
“....To satisfy our doubts, therefore, it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency -- by something upon which our thinking has no effect. (.....) Such is the method of science. (.....) We can ascertain by reasoning how things really and truly are; and any man, if he have sufficient experience and he reason enough about it, will be led to the one True conclusion....”
What a belief may be about, may be nothing human, but the determining of the belief, which relates its subjective form to its objective content, must be entirely human, a priori. Therefore, “...a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by (...) some external permanency....”, is self-contradictory. It is possible to satisfy doubt (knowledge), and it is possible the method of science is the proper methodology for it (experiment), and external permanency is possible (the “Real”), but that “by which our beliefs are determined”, is certainly not “nothing human”.
Bottom line....young Charles tried so hard to rebut Kant, as this early 1877 article shows, but mature Charles discovered it couldn’t be done, as the later 1905 articles show. So he compromised, yet maintained his independence, as all good philosophers are wont to do, by labeling Kant “a somewhat confused pragmatist”. Which would be just short of hilarious, damned with faint praise nonetheless, if Charles weren’t such an intellect in his own right.
Rhetorically speaking......
Which would make it an off-hand conclusion on his part, absent any thoughtful consideration and evidence. He was an unabashed apologist.
Note his statement that "The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason." He delighted in this kind of rhetorical device, and used it frequently. And, it may be expected that as an apologist for Christianity, (Pope Pius XI, Pontifex Maximus, made him a Knight of the Order St. Gregory), Chesterton would take such a position--reason simply could not be tolerated if it somehow conflicted with doctrine. He wrote in defense of belief in miracles, as well. He have been a good lawyer, poor fellow, and represented his client and its doctrine very ably.
:100:
(To quote like above, simply select some text from a post, and click the quote button that pops up.)
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Yet he agrees with Hume, a philosopher so unapologetic he is still seemingly ahead of the times.
Yes, when it suited his purpose. I doubt he would have agreed with this statement by Hume, though:
“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”
Hume sounds like one of Chesterton's madmen, here.
It doesn't suit my purpose to agree with that either. Or with you, a lot of the time. So it goes, as Mr Vonnegut used to say.
But in particular, the argument from character is a very weak one. The guy was fat, ignore everything he says.
You put your finger right on a nice issue. I think it would have been better if Peirce had said nothing individual (or individually human). The goal is something true for us and not just me, so perhaps it's more accurate to talk of checking with others and not with some paradoxical non-human stuff.
What I especially like is the portrait of doubt as a paralyzing, unpleasant state.
[quote=C S P]
But it will only do so by creating a doubt in the place of that belief. With the doubt, therefore, the struggle begins, and with the cessation of doubt it ends...
Some philosophers have imagined that to start an inquiry it was only necessary to utter a question whether orally or by setting it down upon paper, and have even recommended us to begin our studies with questioning everything! But the mere putting of a proposition into the interrogative form does not stimulate the mind to any struggle after belief. There must be a real and living doubt, and without this all discussion is idle.
It is a very common idea that a demonstration must rest on some ultimate and absolutely indubitable propositions. These, according to one school, are first principles of a general nature; according to another, are first sensations. But, in point of fact, an inquiry, to have that completely satisfactory result called demonstration, has only to start with propositions perfectly free from all actual doubt. If the premisses are not in fact doubted at all, they cannot be more satisfactory than they are.
[/quote]
This explains why a certain style of philosophy (popular on forums) leaves more practically minded people cold. They have no living or actual doubt about (for instance) the 'external world' or the 'wrongness' of various crimes. This is not to say that a whole, complacent culture can't be proven wrong or forced to change their beliefs at some point.
That was my favorite quote perhaps! I'm glad you gave it a look and found the same focal point.
This quote also reminds me of the idea that philosophers solve public problems as a byproduct of solving personal problems. If I am genuinely troubled by an issue, I can't help but dwell on it, think about it, try to resolve it. When I do (if I do), then the solution will often work for others who are sufficiently similar to me. Does that sound reasonable to you?
http://www.bocc.ubi.pt/pag/peirce-charles-fixation-belief.html
[quote = C S P ]
We are, doubtless, in the main logical animals, but we are not perfectly so. Most of us, for example, are naturally more sanguine and hopeful than logic would justify. We seem to be so constituted that in the absence of any facts to go upon we are happy and self-satisfied; so that the effect of experience is continually to contract our hopes and aspirations. Yet a lifetime of the application of this corrective does not usually eradicate our sanguine disposition. Where hope is unchecked by any experience, it is likely that our optimism is extravagant. Logicality in regard to practical matters is the most useful quality an animal can possess, and might, therefore, result from the action of natural selection; but outside of these it is probably of more advantage to the animal to have his mind filled with pleasing and encouraging visions, independently of their truth; and thus, upon unpractical subjects, natural selection might occasion a fallacious tendency of thought.
[/quote]
Perhaps this quote explains why so much philosophy and religion is irrational. The farther we are from practical matter, the farther we are from any checks on the madness that is always with us. In defense of this madness (following C S P), we credit imagination as crucial for science. Is reason just madness tamed rather than extinguished?
Agreed, in principle. Not just here, but practically-minded folks in general, usually consider the objects of their inquiries to be given, re: Peirce’s “first sensations”, hence propositions with respect to such inquiries are considered “perfectly free from all actual doubt”.
On the other hand, that which leaves the practically-minded cold, so to speak, becomes moot for them, from sheer disregard. When presented with these conditions, with respect to Peirce’s “first principles”......
“....Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind. It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same time, insured by experience. With these principles it rises, in obedience to the laws of its own nature, to ever higher and more remote conditions. But it quickly discovers that, in this way, its labours must remain ever incomplete, because new questions never cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to have recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience, while they are regarded by common sense without distrust. It thus falls into confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested by that criterion....”
.....leaves them to simply not bother inquiring into those kinds of questions predicated on some doubt or other. So, no, this is not reason as madness tamed, but reason as madness denied**, madness herein indicating irreconcilable doubt. With this view, of course, your “doubt as a paralyzing, unpleasant state”, doesn’t exist in the practically-minded domain, but instead manifest as mere complacency, but runs amok, that is to say, “....has fallen into confusion, obscurity, and disuse from ill directed effort....” in the theoretically-minded domain, called pure metaphysics.
** not so much extinguished, as you say, for I think to extinguish presupposes the reality of madness extant beforehand, whereas to deny merely presupposes the possibility.
Anyway.....fun, this philosophy stuff, where good/bad is the proper standard, over right/wrong.
You mention his girth. I haven't. But you're right, of course--it was impressive, like that of his hero, Thomas Aquinas. George Bernard Shaw used to mention it as well, with some frequency. So I suppose that you're in good company.
I, on the other hand, have only addressed his tendencies in argument and in coming to conclusions. And I've even said he would have made a good lawyer. What higher compliment could I pay him, or anyone?
Interesting topic! You give me even more reasons to check him out then :up:
For whatever reason, the free will issue has never bothered me.I guess I'm a soft determinist. I think we can't help but enact our training. At the same time, I think we are too complex to predict in detail.
What I like most about pragmatism is the way it points out the smoke in what people say as they wander away from practical matters. For instance, wtf is free will, really? What do people mean? As far as I can make out, it involves something unpredictable in principle. This is like a ideal fair coin except that it can take responsibility, perhaps eternal responsibility, for its actions. Away from the religious baggage, I think it would just be easier to fallibly discuss difficult cases of assigning praise and blame.
:up:
Quoting T H E
There's an interesting article on the subject of Moral Luck:Moral Luck (Stanford Encyclopedia)