"Meta-philosophical eliminativism"
Been thinking about this for a while now, and I'm looking for input.
The case I present as a possibility is what I would call meta-philosophical eliminativism, or the idea that philosophy does not have hegemony over some area of inquiry, and that the goal of philosophy is to develop a system for its own demise, similar to Russell's idea that philosophy should aim to create scientific fields. According to meta-philosophical eliminativism, things like "positions", "theories", "doubt", "principles", etc. are "human constructs" in the sense that they are merely methods of organizing data and can be eliminated naturalistically in the same way the eliminativist materialist believes that "belief" and "desire" can be eliminated, including the belief in eliminativist materialism as well.
This makes philosophical questions not metaphysically necessarily philosophical but rather contingently philosophical, i.e. philosophical only insofar as we have no other more precise method of understanding the matter. In this eliminativist approach, which is naturalistic and scientistic, nothing is inherently impossible to study scientifically; the only constraint is that we have no current method of doing so.
Thus philosophy is not so much a discipline with a subject matter as it is simply a necessary pre-requisite to the formulation of a scientific field. The meta-philosophical eliminativist understands that their position is philosophical, but also a contingent and volatile position in that they believe that eliminativism will eventually be shown to be correct by scientific development. Thus it is eliminativist in that it attempts to eliminate philosophical positions entirely, including eliminativism itself, i.e. eliminativism is a temporary tool, a stepping-stone, needed to understand why these tools aren't actually needed, similar to a trust fall or a leap of faith. Once the leap is done, the philosophical position is no longer needed, as there will be no need for positions anyway, since the very nature of knowledge will be elucidated by a perfect science.
This leads to the almost soteriological conception of inquiry; by embracing meta-philosophical eliminativism, our crude theories and positions will eventually be left behind as we transcend "that kind" of knowledge and approach a singularity, fully self-contained and self-justifying in its own right.
Would like to hear input on this. I highly suspect it is wrong and I don't particularly believe it, but only because I doubt that such a truly holistic scientism would even be possible to attain (the idea of achieving such a feat would be literally supra-human). However it does raise the question as to what makes something "philosophical" and what does not, and asks us to consider the nature of and relationship between science and philosophy.
The case I present as a possibility is what I would call meta-philosophical eliminativism, or the idea that philosophy does not have hegemony over some area of inquiry, and that the goal of philosophy is to develop a system for its own demise, similar to Russell's idea that philosophy should aim to create scientific fields. According to meta-philosophical eliminativism, things like "positions", "theories", "doubt", "principles", etc. are "human constructs" in the sense that they are merely methods of organizing data and can be eliminated naturalistically in the same way the eliminativist materialist believes that "belief" and "desire" can be eliminated, including the belief in eliminativist materialism as well.
This makes philosophical questions not metaphysically necessarily philosophical but rather contingently philosophical, i.e. philosophical only insofar as we have no other more precise method of understanding the matter. In this eliminativist approach, which is naturalistic and scientistic, nothing is inherently impossible to study scientifically; the only constraint is that we have no current method of doing so.
Thus philosophy is not so much a discipline with a subject matter as it is simply a necessary pre-requisite to the formulation of a scientific field. The meta-philosophical eliminativist understands that their position is philosophical, but also a contingent and volatile position in that they believe that eliminativism will eventually be shown to be correct by scientific development. Thus it is eliminativist in that it attempts to eliminate philosophical positions entirely, including eliminativism itself, i.e. eliminativism is a temporary tool, a stepping-stone, needed to understand why these tools aren't actually needed, similar to a trust fall or a leap of faith. Once the leap is done, the philosophical position is no longer needed, as there will be no need for positions anyway, since the very nature of knowledge will be elucidated by a perfect science.
This leads to the almost soteriological conception of inquiry; by embracing meta-philosophical eliminativism, our crude theories and positions will eventually be left behind as we transcend "that kind" of knowledge and approach a singularity, fully self-contained and self-justifying in its own right.
Would like to hear input on this. I highly suspect it is wrong and I don't particularly believe it, but only because I doubt that such a truly holistic scientism would even be possible to attain (the idea of achieving such a feat would be literally supra-human). However it does raise the question as to what makes something "philosophical" and what does not, and asks us to consider the nature of and relationship between science and philosophy.
Comments (89)
At the core of philosophy is the assumption that nature is intelligible. Rational inquiry can thus produce some kind of answer.
But from there, you get a major divergence. The very position that nature is intelligible leads "philosophically" - by the same dialectic method - to the counter position that existence is fundamentally irrational. Or contingent. Or whatever else is the rationally contradictory position that could be thus put forward as the stark alternative.
So I think the accurate way to understand philosophy is as a pragmatic core - the broadly scientific method of reasoning described by Peirce - surrounded by its flotilla of splinter projects, the various "reactions" that the stately advance of that core engenders.
So yes. The core can aim at its "truly holistic scientism". And all the reactions to that core can remain part of philosophy to the extent which they are properly engaged as reactions. In that way, philosophy can be both a broad church and a productive trajectory of inquiry.
I think you want a more mechanistic definition - one that rules the wrong stuff out. But I would prefer an organic approach that only cares about the general "growth of reasonableness" in human models of existence.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I don't see why this wasn't included in eliminative materialism to begin with:
"Eliminativism about a class of entities is the view that that class of entities does not exist.[4] For example, materialism tends to be eliminativist about the soul; modern chemists are eliminativist about phlogiston; and modern physicists are eliminativist about the existence of luminiferous aether. Eliminative materialism is the relatively new (1960s-1970s) idea that certain classes of mental entities that common sense takes for granted, such as beliefs, desires, and the subjective sensation of pain, do not exist.[5][6] The most common versions are eliminativism about propositional attitudes, as expressed by Paul and Patricia Churchland,[7]and eliminativism about qualia (subjective experience), as expressed by Daniel Dennett and Georges Rey.[2] These philosophers often appeal to an introspection illusion."
A belief or desire is relatively close to being a theory, principle or attitude except that they usually pertain to something concrete in the world that is objectively measurable. Desires and Beliefs however are more subjective and prone to fault.
"Many problematic situations in real life arise from the circumstance that many different propositions in many different modalities are in the air at once. In order to compare propositions of different colours and flavours, as it were, we have no basis for comparison but to examine the underlying propositions themselves. Thus we are brought back to matters of language and logic. Despite the name, propositional attitudes are not regarded as psychological attitudes proper, since the formal disciplines of linguistics and logic are concerned with nothing more concrete than what can be said in general about their formal properties and their patterns of interaction. One topic of central concern is the relation between the modalities of assertion and belief, perhaps with intention thrown in for good measure. For example, we frequently find ourselves faced with the question of whether or not a person's assertions conform to his or her beliefs. Discrepancies here can occur for many reasons, but when the departure of assertion from belief is intentional, we usually call that a lie."
Quoting darthbarracuda
But how can you have science without positions of any kind? Do you mean scientific fact will make positions redundant? Isn't fact just a kind of position on something given what the factual data is?
Quoting darthbarracuda
It sounds like you think we will eventually come towards knowing absolute truth. knowledge that would be self-justifying in it's own right. I thought knowledge and truth was always relative?
Thanks db, I am interested in this too, though from a different point of view: why it is that so much analytic philosophy seems to me, a latecomer to philosophy, as if it aspires to be a philosophy of science, rather than philosophy proper.
One can also have a non-eliminativist view that scientific method can be applied to anything. The question is, what will the outcomes tell us? Is the discourse that issues from applying such methods to 'data' somehow a complete account? Or is there a remainder on which science is necessarily silent?
There seem to me many areas of human life in which scientific discourse would always remain incomplete, and sometimes feels impoverished when it tries to address them. The arts; ethics; politics; spirituality; the deeper meaning of what science has to take for granted - all these seem to me to have their own discourses which are poorly susceptible to scientising.
Quoting apokrisis
At the core of my philosophy is intelligibility, but while I admire your complex and subtle understanding of 'nature', which is far from eliminativist, it still seems to me to want to encompass areas of human life and talk which are beyond 'nature'.
Some of this relates to the 'I' and 'you', the encounters between people and what they involve. As an old arty-fart and writer/amateur singer/musician, I don't think a scientific approach has much of interest to say about many of these encounters. The science of jokes, for instance, would be a poor guide to the skill of joke-telling, and to the nature of jokes and comedy. But a philosophical inquiry might well be more fruitful. (I once tried to incorporate jokes Freud uses in 'Jokes and...Unconscious' in a play and discovered how hard it was to migrate his theory into humorous practice :) )
As a general example, analytic philosophy about aesthetics often seems risible to me, trying to utilise pseudo-scientific or quasi-logical concepts to describe facets of human life that need a different broader faculty of understanding. In what way can a scientising philosophy march on into these areas? Say what you like about those Continentals, but quite a few of them know how to talk about poetry and symphonies.
Philosophy can't somehow "become science." What makes the two different is that they have different methodologies. That's how you can have a philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, philosophy of biology, etc. In those fields, we're looking at the subject matter of science/physics/biology/etc. from a philosophical perspective, with philosophical methodology, philosophical aims, etc.
Philosophical methodology includes things like analysis of concepts where we're not simply making empirical observations and reporting them, it includes examination of assumptions, logical analysis, etc. You could say something like, "Well, we could do those things under the rubric of the sciences." You could, and you could call it "science" if you like, but insofar as you're doing those things you're actually doing philosophy.
Likewise, if you were to come up with hypotheses, complete with empirical predictions, and proceed to empirically test them by setting up experiments, recording data, etc., then you'd be doing science, regardless of whether you choose to call it "philosophy" or not.
There's no subject matter, at least broadly construed, that's off-limits to either methodology, but they're not the same methodology and there's no way to make them the same.
There are things that are off-limits to both science and philosophy, including methodological approaches, because as above, you're simply not engaging in the activity in question any longer with certain methodological approaches.
But also, the sciences rest on assumptions such as uniformity, replicability in the wake of uniformity, causality, etc.--experimentation would make no sense if we didn't make those assumptions. That doesn't mean that there are no one-off phenomena that can't in any way be replicated. It just means that science is not constructed to be able to deal with that possibility. It's part of philosophy's job to examine these assumptions, by the way.
Science also can't really address anything from other than a third-person perspective.
And obviously you can't get rid of beliefs, views, etc. Eliminative materialism isn't exactly a good model for anything, because as it is, in philosophy of mind, it's a ridiculous view.
But doesn't the "scientific" or "analytic" approach to nature have the advantage of being suitably modest? At least under the pragmatic or modelling relations approach to intelligibility, there is a clear demarcation between what the models can and can't achieve by way of "explaining things".
So it is understood, for example, that explanatory ambitions must be limited by the exhaustion of counterfactuality. You can't explain the ineffable redness of red, or the fundamental absurdity of existence, if there is no counterfactual observation to justify some theory.
And theory, on the whole, relies on the informality of acts of measurement. So the model can be completely formalised - the world can be described in terms of a closed tale of causal entailment. But measuring the values to plug into the equations always involves a free choice by the observer. Quantum mechanics merely illustrates how real this issue is in general for science.
Likewise pragmatism in particular stresses that modelling also includes the modeller's purpose. So that is another active limitation on "explanatory completeness".
Thus being a "scientist" involves great epistemic humility. It means understanding the limits of knowledge and developing a method of inquiry accordingly.
And it is because pragmatism doesn't fudge things that it can then inquire into any natural phenomenon with great confidence.
Quoting mcdoodle
It might be useful to consider the standard tropes by which continentalism operates.
A primary one is an attempt to use the principle tool of intelligible analysis - the dialectic - against itself. So the continental strives to show that dichotomies are paradoxes and such reasonings are circular.
Metaphysical analysis aims to discover nature's dichotomous limits. Pure possibility is separated into its "otherness". So if flux is one extreme of possibility, then stasis is its other. And so on through all the familiar categories of nature.
And then dichotomies give rise to hierarchies as the divided then mix. So the logic of nature is hierarchical - not circular, chasing its tail on a single scale of being, but itself dichotomised into the whole and the part, the global and the local, the constraints and the freedoms.
So proper scientific naturalism (which recognises all four Aristotelean causes) has its ur-model of intelligibility. Dialectical reasoning works because existence is shaped by the self-organising logic of dichotomies and hierarchies.
And then along comes Continentalism which attempts to establish itself by twisting this naturalism to say its very opposite.
So now every dichotomy must be turned into a paradox. The continentalist says look, we have two contradictory things - like flux vs stasis. Well which is it going to be? And if it must be both, well then nature is fundamentally "unintelligible".
Likewise the continentalist seeks to make a muddle out of the hierarchical outcomes that result from dichotomies reaching equilibrium balances (that is, the broken symmetries being equilibrated by being fully broken over all possible scales of being).
The continentalist - citing Marxism or political correctness - wants to reject hierarchy as a political choice. It is just not right that power structures could be natural. It is only democratic that all existence is on the same level. Fluid networks of relations are fine, but concrete hierarchical order is coercive and abhorrent.
So there is no coincidence that continentalism chooses the play of paradox and the virtue of relativism as two principle tools of argument. If the pragmatic/analytic approach is managing to explain the world in terms of the rational inevitability of dichotomies and hierarchies, continentalism has to define itself as the unintelligible "other" to that.
So in Bizarro world fashion, continentalism exists in a way that simply only confirms what it seeks to deny. Dichotomies and hierarchies are what make rational sense of nature. Paradox and relativism then become the natural tools when mounting Romanticism's inevitable riposte to the triumph of Enlightenment reasoning.
If you are not onboard the pragmatic/analytic juggernaut, it is essential to create the fiction that dialectical metaphysics leads to mystification rather than intelligibility. It is the only way to seize back cultural control of the conversation.
My remark about Continentals was brief and light-hearted, though with a serious intent: that some of them have found a philosophical language in which to talk about the arts, in a way which analytics have not. I stand by that. I think the rest of your riff against 'continentalism' is about something else that I don't feel this thread is concerned with, so I'm not going to respond to.
I would be glad to know how a naturalist approach might enable philosophy to deal with subjects for which the scientific method seems to me wide of the mark like aesthetics, ethics, politics and meta-science.
Quoting apokrisis
It may involve inward humility. The scientistic approach, however, sometimes involves outward epistemic arrogance and rather large claims to 'know' . Fair enough with a range including dna, testable or verifiable physics and their ilk. But db's question is about philosophy doing itself out of a job by accreting more and more sciences. I'm claiming there are limits beyond which the language of scientific discourse just doesn't provide illumination, and indeed provokes obscurantism. I am thinking say of 'possible worlds' applied to literature or 'objectivity' applied to ethics, for instance. I am thinking say of speculative physics which tries to claim the same mantle of truth as experimental physics. 'The limits of knowledge' are not something to be decided by scientists alone. I just came here from listening to some (bracing !) Schoenberg: there is a kind of knowledge, for example, in the way those notes are constructed and sung played. Perhaps there is in the spirituality Wayfarer is interested in too, or in love between people.
In keeping with the OP, I am dealing with the meta-theoretic level issues. And you don't seem "glad" at all. ;)
So it should be clear that I am talking about the "scientific method" from the perspective of a Peircean semiotician and systems thinker. I am sure that you are thinking of scientific inquiry in terms of analytic or reductionist traditions where a full "four causes" approach is normally rejected.
Reductionism only wants to concern itself with the modelling of material and efficient cause (as formal and final cause is "naturally" eschewed, being what self-interested human modellers want to freely bring to the table themselves). But pragmatism - in treating formal and final cause as real, fully part of nature - has a way of putting human modellers in their proper place.
So there is not a lot of point attacking me for the sins of reductionist Scientism when I am in fact a natural philosopher in the four causes Aristotelean tradition.
Quoting mcdoodle
The usual move - trying to suggest the "scientist" is somehow deficient in spirit, unable to enjoy life like a regular person.
The tropes of Romanticism are perfectly familiar. The issue is getting folk like yourself to actually question the grounds of such beliefs.
But of course rejecting analysis absolves one of the need to ever respond to a demand for actual intelligibility. Catch 22, or the escape via mystical paradox.
Yes, I suppose I agree with this. You have to be able to conceive of something in order to reject it.
Quoting apokrisis
Well, I was attempting to construct a view that captures the modern scientistic views of many of the average Joes, which resembles a foundationalist approach (science is the bread and butter of everything). The idea that science can answer everything is simplistic, but I don't think it's problematic at the metaphysical sense, rather, simply the pragmatic sense. "Do not block the road of inquiry" as Peirce said. If we are serious about inquiry, then philosophy is something that is needed, not as a field with a subject matter itself but as a field that engenders subject matters and clarifies the notions of other fields.
Or, alternatively, we could just go the Deleuzean route and call philosophy the study and assimilation of concepts.
The problem with this is that even concepts make no real sense except when defined in ways that permit acts of measurement. Or in Peircean terms, you can't have habits of interpretance if you can't recognise the signs that are the subject of interpretation.
So it all keeps coming back to the "scientific method of reasoning". Or the modelling relation. We conceive of qualities. But that only makes sense if we are able to carry out acts of quantification. There is no such thing as a quality that can't be quantified. And so empiricism - for some reason much derided - is basic to philosophical thought. You can't talk intelligibly about the general if you can't successfully point to its proper instances.
There is a new book out by Aaron Bruce Wilson, Peirce's Empiricism: Its Roots and Its Originality. I have only been able to read snippets via Google Books - it is too recent to borrow via interlibrary loan - but it looks pretty good.
If I am understanding correctly, you are saying that when I conceive of the color "red", I am not only conceiving of "red" but also a single (one) instance of "red"? That as soon as any concept reaches my sphere of awareness, there is already a number attached to it?
At any rate, there's the separate issue of how scientism fails to account for the poor ability of science to study certain things, at least at the current moment. It's one thing to say "science" (however we're describing it as) can "study everything", and another thing to say that it's actually recommended that we use this "science" to do this. To postpone inquiry simply because it's not able to be studied scientifically is an instance of unwarranted dogmatism and short-sightedness.
If we're talking about ethics, say, there doesn't seem to be a clear way of coming to terms with ethical answers that isn't suspiciously similar to how it's already being done in philosophy. Adding a brain scan to the mix is only going to supplement the process, not finish the process. The only test we know of for normativity is how we ourselves react to certain things in a normative way. Thus a "science of ethics" could only study how ethics is done, i.e. what conclusions ethicists produce (ethics as an anthropological phenomenon), but this is still not normative ethics. Only a kind of meta-ethics (re: moral psychology is on the rise in meta-ethics).
Or say we want to study the aesthetic under scientific means. In order to even study the aesthetic, we have to know what the hell the aesthetic even is. Thus ontology is fundamentally necessary to any other mode of inquiry. Attempting to do ontology purely by empirical means would be an exercise in wastefulness and tedium - surely it's conceivably possible, but practically impossible.
But really, you make my point. We don't know what the aesthetic is unless we have some concept that seems measurable. It is airy fairy meaningless talk until we can at least do something as primitively quantitative as point at a Picasso and exclaim that's what I'm talking about.
So the ontic commitment is to counterfactual definiteness in fact. One has to be able to say that this is a particular instance of that general idea.
Thus conception is inherently empirical. Unless an idea can be cashed out in an act of measurement, we would have to ascribe to it the dismal status of being an idea that is "not even wrong".
And of course there's also the potential that natural observations of the world will lead us to believe in something "more" to the natural order of things, something commonly seen as supernatural. Natural theology and even atheological metaphysics thus stems from general empirical observations and modality and creates a metaphysical order of things that is implicitly outside the order of the ontic and presentable; being qua being. Yet this goes against what a meta-philosophical eliminativist would believe. What makes it the case that such matters are outside of "direct" empirical study?
I am not sure how pointing at something qualifies as "primitively quantitative" or "an act of measurement." It is certainly an index in Peirce's terminology, and it is the necessity of those that he upheld as the indispensable connection between cognition and existing objects. Even the pragmatic maxim does not require quantitative measurement as such, just experiential consequences so that we can ascertain whether our predictions are borne out.
Well remember that Peircean pragmatism is distinguished by the fact that it does indeed generalise the notion of the perceived. So existence itself becomes a modelling relation - a kind of pansemiotic state of mind.
So pansemiosis is the ontic argument that there is no such thing as "unperceived existence". And thus it fits with quantum physics and it's demand for "someone" to collapse the wavefunction.
So your natural presumption - the standard reductionist position - is that reality could be observer independent. Acts of measurement don't disturb what they claim to exist.
But Peircean metaphysics says all that can happen is a separation of indeterminate possibility towards the complementary poles of the observer and the observables - the interpretation and its sign. It is a very different ontology.
And the proof of which ontology is right is in how fundamental science is turning out. Observeless worlds don't make much sense.
In referent to this and to other previous comments concerning quantity and quality:
I agree that quantity and quality co-occur with domains of space and time—by which I here intend realms of distance and duration. And what you say of aesthetics to me makes sense; otherwise we’d be lost in opinions of faith where anything goes.
I would first like to be clear by emphasizing the aforementioned: imo, quality and quantity is not an either-or dichotomy but a necessary conjunction of anything that holds duration and closeness/furtherance. This in some ways can be comparable to the dyad of up and down.
Yet there remains for me the issue of metaphysical priority. I’d like to import into the conversation what you’ve termed the apeiron. If the apeiron is perfect symmetry, then it—in and of itself--would by definition be a non-quantity. It would thereby also be immeasurable. Despite this, it would yet be qualitatively different than anything non-symmetrical. As I understand it, to the extent that symmetry occurs within space and time, this same non-quantitative quality would also be present within realms of existence.
There may be disagreements with the aforementioned. If, however, there’s general agreement:
There then occur some aspects of existence that remain immeasurable. At the very least, the proposed finale which you term the apeiron would itself be something which holds presence (not to be confused with the presence held by physical objects) while not being quantifiable in and of itself.
I address all this in my belief that quality holds metaphysical priority over quantity--and therefore that some quality is immeasurable. But, as I’ve previously emphasized, this is not arguing that quantity’s importance is diminished within realms of space and time. It’s akin to arguing that meaning is primary to language, though its due to language that we can entertain the meanings which we entertain.
Yep. A Metaphysical dichotomy like quantity~quality is not an either/or story but about mutually dependent origination. They would be the two complementary faces of a process of symmetry breaking or coming to be.
But then logically, as the grounding symmetry that could beget such a division, the Apeiron, or a state of vagueness, would have to lack both quality and quantity in any definite or actual sense. The Apeiron is the potential for both those things, but cant be considered as iteself one of those things in any determinate fashion.
So on the one hand we want to characterise vagueness in a way that is useful for reasoning. And the maths of symmetry is the obvious way to get started. So we can say the Apeiron has the quality of perfect symmetry ... and hey, the maths of symmetry and symmetry breaking then allows us to talk about the degrees of any departure from that symmetry state. So in fact by talking of the quality of perfect symmetry, we also bring with that the tools to make justifiable measurements.
It's a negative space or constraints based argument. We define perfection in terms of the observable absence of imperfection. But it does mean that we can treat the Apeiron as a quality which we know how to quantify.
This is not very coherent to me, unfortunately. By saying existence is x, someone is inherently advocating a kind of monism. I know you call the relation irreducibly complex and triadic, but this means that existence is not basic, that there is "something more", "below" existence, that makes up the relation. A relation without parts makes no sense.
Similarly, let's say I argue the world is a giant cobweb. That is at least coherent, as I am saying that the world as a whole is structured so that it is a cobweb. The same thing applies to theories that make the universe an expanding sphere, or a tube, or whatever.
But when I say that existence itself is a giant cobweb, that is when things are not coherent. A giant cobweb is still an ontic substance that I can visualize. But I can't "visualize" existence. I can't predicate anything about it. This is exactly why Heidegger, when read charitably, can be seen as using difficult and obscure words simply because he was struggling to explain something that normally cannot be explained using language.
So when you say that existence itself is a modelling relation, this is using an ontic phenomenon to explain all ontic phenomenons. It's just ontic all the way down. That doesn't make sense.
Quoting apokrisis
Quoting apokrisis
You have a lot more in common with speculative realism than you might think. The idea of ancestrality, ontic communication, metaphysical architecture, etc is all very important in it, and I believe some of them even take from Peirce as well.
Quoting apokrisis
I’m for now presuming we’re on the same page in this regard: It’s there because we can point to it as abstraction via use of our reasoning as a pointing instrument. It’s that, and not other than that which it is. It therefore holds discernable identity. To us.
The apparent disagreement resides in this:
You seem to want to say it is known because some of its properties are known. Among these being that quality and quantity emerge from it.
I disagree by upholding that what the Apeiron is can only be unknowable, even when specified mathematically by the system of metaphysics you uphold. Again, within your system, the Apeiron is utterly other than what we are as existent beings. This though we are all, in some way, aspects of the Apeiron. It is, and is for the reasons given qualitatively different from any quality we can be aware of. Because it is non-quantity, however, no quantitative resemblance between it and that which is resultant of it can be made.
These conclusion, again, makes quality metaphysically prior to quantity.
But that is just immediately denying the irreducible triadicity that you just cited.
To start searching for the monism that is "beneath"', or to start trying to decompose a relation into parts, is simply to go at a holistic answer in usual pig headed reductionist fashion.
Your complaint is that it is not coherent with your own ontic commitments. And we already know that.
Quoting darthbarracuda
It doesn't make reductionist sense you mean. So ... great!
Quoting darthbarracuda
Well if Aristotle, Peirce, systems science, etc, hadn't already figured it out in far more complete fashion, then I guess I might be impressed by speculative realism.
Not really. It makes possibility prior to actuality. And if you then give pure possibility a name like Apeiron, you seem to be pointing to a quality - and saying I count just one of these.
That's why Plotinus did call his version "the one". The quality was named after its quantity, as it seemed it's most essential characteristic to him - the undivided that logically must stand at the end of a trail of divisions.
But now we’re addressing different species of thought, regardless of how analogous they might be in their structures.
The One is termed so due to being a perfect unity of being. You know, here we could revel in labels all we want. A rose is still a rose by any other name. The One, as clearly presented by Plotinus, was unlimited quality. Being unlimited, it was non-quantity. For instance, a different label for “The One” was “The Good”. This qualitative property, however, currently doesn’t seem to fit into you’re system’s modeling of the Apeiron.
Trust me, I’d really like to discover that I’m wrong about this just affirmed belief of mine—such that the Apeiron can also be equated with “the good”.
And if the job is to reduce complexity to something, surely it is simplicity. And the triadic modelling relation is the simplest possible story. Less than three things makes no sense in an ontology founded on dynamical relations.
And while you say the one was talking about a oneness of quality, that quality was still being quantified in a way that justified it as special.
If everything else is counted in terms of "many", then being counted as "one" is clearly an argument for how the one is to be measurably distinguished.
Again, it is simply a requirement of intelligibility that we form ideas of qualities in terms of quantities we might measure. The two aspects of epistemology go together automatically. The question then becomes, is this also the way we find reality to be organised?
So as you say, a relation must have three parts. Are these parts themselves also triadic relations? If not, then what are they, exactly? How can we know what they are?
Sure you can count three things. But none of these things are the same thing, nor can exist without the other two. So your reply is pretty flippant.
Yet clearly since they are not the same thing, this means they have a different nature. And their nature cannot be completely dependent upon the relations between the three, since this would lead to an empty regress of relations: A's nature is dependent on B and C's, but B's nature is dependent on A and C's and C's nature is dependent on A and B's, but A's nature is dependent on B and C's so A's nature really is dependent on the relations between itself and B and C, but we don't know what A, B, or C even are to even begin to sort out anything.
I don't pretend to know what the big theory of everything is, so don't expect me to come up with a replacement theory. I just think your confidence is unwarranted as your theory isn't sufficient.
Again, just show how a relation can be reduced to less than three parts even under reductionism. So far you have failed to make your case.
A modest metaphysics would have in mind the limitations of thought and logic. That they are both merely a product of an intellect, a computation of conceptual representations of the experience of that mind.
Through the acknowledgement of this humility, a mature metaphysics would endeavour to address the real*, to embrace the logic of solipsisms, regressions and the necessity for relations and realise the need for some kind of creatively inspired bridge to span the void between the products of mind and the real. This would surely be a necessity, otherwise metaphysics would fall into solipsism, regression, or a dogma of the necessity of relations.
*by real I mean that which is independent of this mind, while hosting its existence.
Shome mishtake shurely?
It's not difficult, solipsim, regressions, the necessity of relations(indeed all the artefacts of thought) are products of intellectualisation.
So how do we account for our existence, with more intellectualisation? Or do we look elsewhere?
So epistemology is ontology. The triadic sign relation explains the development of the Cosmos as well as accounting for the human observer.
The triadic sign relation may only be an aspect of the kind of manifestation in which we as humans find ourselves, in terms of existence it might be insignificant. I realise you accept such limitations. But how do we progress beyond them?
Did you have some other criteria in mind?
Yes, I've no issue with pragmatism, but metaphysics presumably is looking to what we can say about existence. In which case there is no workability, because we can't presume that "what works" in our eyes is anything more than an intellectualisation of a reflection of the predicament(existing as humans with all the consequential physical reality that goes along with that) that we are presented with upon birth and throughout our lives. A kind of navel gazing, or solipsism.
As I said before surely a mature metaphysics acknowledges the extent to which we are both in ignorance of the nature of our predicament(it's foundations) and potentially polarised (two dimensional) in our attempts to understand it intellectually.
Well the trouble is there is no established school in the development of metaphysical ideas apart from academic philosophy that I can think of. Other than what is handed us from religion and mystical/spiritual traditions. There is a lot of creative activity in our culture, but not much creativity aproaching the issue of metaphysics that I have come across. Personally I have found following a creative mysticism beneficial and enlightening, but in terms of rational argument or logic, it would appear to require a lot of work to encapsulate it.
Counting the relation as a thing, you mean? (I'm not disagreeing with that, just clarifying that that's what you had in mind.)
It seems to me you think I'm attacking you when I'm not. You're a believer in metaphysical naturalism, and your naturalism is of an unusually complex and non-reductive kind. I'm not denigrating that at all. I'm not a believer in metaphysical naturalism, though, so I disagree with your saying 'At the core of philosophy is the assumption that nature is intelligible.' I think my kind of (analytic) philosophy will inquire into what we mean by 'nature', not take it as the core concept whose intelligibility we are inquiring into. But this is metaphysics, and metaphysics is an area in which all is speculation and belief.
I'm a strong supporter, in the old Landru terms, of methodological naturalism. I'm questioning whether that method has the tools to understand ethics, the arts, politics and spirituality in a philosophical manner, a manner that expresses love of wisdom. I'm nevertheless interested enough in the analytic method of philosophy to be back at Uni studying it in what is very nearly my old age. It has its limits, is all I was saying in this thread: and I think its limits are exemplified in there being a limit to whether the multiplication of sciences - db's original proposal in the op - and the supposed gradual self-slaughter of philosophy as these sciences replace it, are really on the right mental tracks.
In my life-experience many scientists are artistic morons, and many are much more artistically informed than is the average arty-fart about science. My debate is about linguistic tools and methods, not people. (If you think Schoenberg is about the tropes of Romanticism I'm game to disagree with you: I'd argue that that's where he began but he ended in a totally different intellectual place: but that belongs on another thread and probably in another forum)
Meanwhile scientific reasoning - as defined by Peirce - started producing extraordinarily powerful insights from the moment the ancient Greeks first got going with it.
So no surprise that the "two dimensional polarity" of Metaphysical dialectics and hierarchical organisation are what folk stick with. It's success has been "unreasonably" spectacular. We know how and when the Universe began, how and when it will die.
But demonstrably, historically metaphysics is founded on the assumption that nature is intelligible, rational, logical, organised by mathematical patterns.
It is then a speculative turn - only possible given this positive central thesis - that nature might be other.
Only to point out that the irreducible triadicity of relations doesn't mean relations themselves are irreducible. One can pick apart an engine without worrying about keeping the engine intact. And we can pick apart a relation without worrying about keeping the relation intact.
A clue: machines are designed to operate only by efficient/material cause. Formal and final cause is engineered out of them so that these facets of reality are made a matter of human free choice.
So try again with my earlier example of scooping a vortex out of a flow in a bucket.
Yet clearly the vortex is a vortex of something - a flow of water. It's not just a vortex, it's a vortex of something else.
As explained, a constraints based view of materiality sees matter being produced via the limitation on possibility. So solidity arises as freedoms of actions are removed.
This is why Peirce notoriously described matter as effete mind. When spontaneity is deadened by the accretion of constraints, you wind up with what we call matter.
So what is material/efficient cause made of? Top down constraints on possibility.
It's alright, in terms of that second question, but, maybe ironically, feels like the classical account of Hegelianism (ideas that had to flourish in order to bring about that which supersedes them.) (Hegel's better than that, of course, but that's how ppl talk about him.)
Cheryl Misak is good for a summary that puts him in context. She's done a new book as well as papers.
Peirce's populist articles for The Monist are a good introduction in that they clearly written.
But because Peirce never summarised his mature ideas in book form, only left a heap of notes that went unread for decades, there just isn't a canonical text that everyone can focus on.
I think one can (pragmatically) get by with methodological naturalism. Nature is only intelligible to the extent that it is intelligible, and whereof one cannot make sense, thereof don't bullshit.
I must say I like Piercean triad as a way of seeing or a way of understanding, but if one notes that it is itself a model, then I think the way is opened to answering your question/objection in some interesting ways.
The observer cannot be left out of the model but the observer is, to some degree made of the model. I think this means that with regard to ethics and aesthetics, and other matters near the centre of human understanding, there is a necessary gap of vagueness that cannot be filled in by observation, and a necessary distortion that cannot be straightened out.
The way I have put this in the past is that the 'science' of psychology has a deep problem that the science of cosmology does not except at the quantum limits, and even there not to the same extent. This is that the atoms of psychology have the property of having a psychological theory, and what theory they have changes their fundamental properties. Thus when Freud was theorising, sexual repression ruled and women had hysteria. People have changed as a result of his theories, to such an extent that the theories have become false. This happens in psychology on a regular basis about every 20 years, as each theory becomes known and accepted.
There are interesting things to be said about human nature, human understanding, and so on, but it is a mistake to think there is completeness.
Quoting apokrisis
I go back to your example of a vortex in water. You can't just scoop out a vortex. Similarly I have a hard time visualizing what a constraint is supposed to be independent of a material basis.
Yes, this is probably the biggest issue at play here. Re-defining what "science" is, is exactly how charlatans like Sam Harris get away with murder and trick the average person into believing that science can actually answer philosophical questions like morality.
And of course I am sympathetic of philosophers of science like Feyerabend who argue for a more "anarchic" version of science. Where there's no "one-single method" to getting something done. The Scientific Method is a general guideline for ideal circumstances but can also be a hindrance in some cases.
The unifying piece that makes science what it is, I think, is the empirical nature of its approach. The use of data acquired from observation or instruments of reliability, which is used to model reality and produce theories that can accurately predict future outcomes. I suppose this is a primary reason why science is so seductive; it allows us to control nature. Not only are we diving into its quantum depths but we're harnessing the very stuff reality is made of. To engineers like myself this can make me salivate. (also being an engineer tends to make me focus more on material and efficient causes than formal or final, to the apparent dismay of )
So the question, then, is this: is there anything that can't be studied empirically? Put under a microscope, modeled, placed within mathematical structures, etc? The first things that come to mind are the various things we take for granted when we study the ontic, the empirical. And, if these cannot be studied empirically, then it looks like we might actually have to go through some sort of negative dialectic, i.e. figuring out what's not the case, and narrowing down the possibilities (similar to negative theology).
When I first started getting acquainted with Peirce's thought, several people warned me that it would take a while - and I have found that to be very much the case. If you would like to read his own words, I think that the best place to start is with the two volumes of The Essential Peirce. If you prefer a fairly comprehensive introduction written by someone else, I suggest The Continuity of Peirce's Thought by Kelly Parker and/or Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism by Paul Forster. If you are looking for something shorter that focuses primarily on metaphysics, I recommend Charles Peirce's Guess at the Riddle by John K. Sheriff.
I've been reading and thinking lately about placebos, because they are at the cusp of medical science where the most physicalist of scientists has to consider the role of 'belief' and 'expectations'. In these areas 'science' could expand its realm by expanding its attempt to understand the first person position. After all, testimony is perfectly reasonably evidence (indeed I sometimes think even facts are only testimony, just very well-supported). Varela in 'The Embodied Mind' made an impassioned plea for scientists to open themselves up to first-person narrative, but it seems to have fallen on stony ground so far.
And then the David Deutsch stuff advocated by Tom intrigued me lately, because one of its rationales was built up from 'decision theory', which I've tended to regard as pseudo-scientific game-playing, claiming as it does to be able to second-guess rational choice, but which I perhaps ought to have taken more seriously. (I don't mean the Deutsch stuff depends on this, it's just one line of support for it) Ah me, so much to misunderstand, so little time.
So are solitons and electron holes material things in your book? We can use them for computing. They obey the quantum rules of particles.
And for the millionth time now, this is not about imagining reality independent of a "material basis". Why do you find a hylomorphic understanding of substance so difficult?
The difference is in the view one takes of the material side of the deal. For you, the material basis is itself substantial. Matter is already matter - which begs every important metaphysical question.
But my view explains materiality as emergent from contextual constraints - formal and final cause. It is the limitation on possibility that crystallises substance as something "physically actual".
Protons and electrons exist because the cooling/expanding Cosmic context freezes them out as expressions of broken gauge symmetries. They have actual mass and move about at less than the speed of light because the further global Goldstone symmetry is broken by the Higgs mechanism.
So modern particle physics says the basic substance of existence - quarks and leptons - are made substantial by material possibility (pure radiation) being trapped into formal regularities (broken symmetries) which they can no longer escape (because the Big Bang has removed that freedom with its cooling and expanding).
If you want to "visualise" a constraint, just think of the symmetries that underlie the standard model of particle physics. As forms, they have a logical necessity.
You can't get simpler than the U(1) symmetry of electromagnetic charge - the symmetry of a circle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_group
So that puts an irreducible limit under Cosmic existence. If you have a reduction of degrees of freedom going on of the kind that produces particles as the minimal possible states of excitation, then EM winds up being the bottom level particle property for the very good reason that nothing could be simpler.
And yet even that simplicity still has a structural complexity - exactly as Peirce's triadic view of relations argues.
So in any form of existence which involves the kind of constraint on action which produces an organised dimensionality (ie: a universe), the realist thing is the fact of mathematical form. Matter can try to do whatever the heck it wants. At the Big Bang, matter fields could fluctuate in ways to contain every kind of symmetry-breaking particle. But as a context develops - as the Universe expands and cools - then only the simplest modes of being can actually survive. And so everything reduces down to whatever mathematical form says is the simplest kind of ... mathematical form.
If I sound frustrated, its only because the first time we corresponded, it was about ontic structural realism. You seemed to love the idea - yet clearly reading the Ladyman/Ross book has left zero impression on your thinking.
You can blame the scientists. But it is the scientists who actually investigate and support the idea of a placebo effect. Its a huge area of research.
Who you really ought to blame are the public who are so susceptible to woolly mystic beliefs - like that antibiotics can fix their viral infections. Or SSRIs can take away their depression.
You could also give big pharma a kicking. It is in their financial interest to foster a mechanistic view of pharmacueticals.
So your fingering of "science" as the problem could hardly be wider of the mark. Science actually pays regards to the evidence in forming its views. You would never have heard of the placebo effect unless it had come to light as a result of research.
mhm, guess we agree on something.
Well, I don't have much use for faith, it is a rational inquiry. Also the method can be explained, but cannot be demonstrated as of any use, other, perhaps, than in creative insight. Something which goes presumably beyond the scope of the demonstrable, or the reliable.
Yes, I wouldn't be without it, but it is not actually conducting metaphysics as far as I can see. All it is doing is looking at what we are presented with upon birth( I will label this y) and concluding, or declaring, that that is all there is, if not physically, then in terms of existence as a whole.
There can't reasonably be considered anything else ( I will label this x ) other than y, because we can't perceive or detect it, or our rational analysis of y doesn't dictate it. And if one were to consider x as anything other than by definition that which is not y, then you are engaged in some kind of wishful thinking, or worse.
Again, you are describing y, I'm happy with the explanation, it's very pragmatic, why would we conclude anything else? Well apart from the bit about us actually knowing how the universe began and how it will "die". How anything came to exist, how the existence of anything is sustained. Is this existence "y" some kind of projection of, or from myself, or some other self. How do we deal with the philosophical conundrum of regression in cause? How come it seems not to be a problem in things coming to an end equally as in them coming to be? You know, the questions provided by philosophy. I don't see them being addressed.
When I realised this I turned my attention to x and to any other philosophical viewpoint which took an interest in x. It was then that I began to see the limitations of just focussing on the y and the human conditioned interpretations of y. It was all a bit jaded.
I keep saying, I'm not fingering science as the problem, I'm only trying to propose a limit to the purview of the scientific view.
All cultures have healers and to me it's common sense knowledge that visits to the healer, with the culture's beliefs and expectations built into the encounter, sometimes make people feel better even if the healer's potions are made of sugar or wood pulp. Science hasn't discovered or revealed this knowledge to anyone. What science does is take such common sense knowledge and systematise the study of it, which I completely agree, is excellent work, and sweeps away many myths.
Medical science for a long time had a physical, physiological bias, and resisted scrutiny of what have become known as placebo effects. Clifton K Meador wrote a lovely book 'Symptoms of unknown origin' detailing his life's journey - from medical trainee ridiculing how older practitioners would give patients vitamins or prescribe a dose of brandy - through an intensive 'physicalist' phase of medical research - to his own later mellow understanding that the nature and mood of the medical encounter was and is profoundly important, especially because so many 'presenting' purported medical problems are seemingly intractable. In his and my lifetime placebo studies have mushroomed, and I'm very glad. Indeed there seems to a new phase of bright young researcher-practitioners who are trying to bring first-person accounts into the frame.
But what is the source of this "commonsense" understanding of magical thinking? It can only be that you are benefiting from a tradition of scientific rationality.
So you are talking about a sense that was decidedly uncommon outside of a scientific metaphysics.
Quoting mcdoodle
You invert the causality for reason of polemics. It was the systematic study of nature that has resulted in naturalism (rather than supernaturalism) becoming widespread commonsense in modern society.
Quoting mcdoodle
Doctors are the most mechanical of thinkers. I found it quite horrifying as a biologist to start doing neuroscience and be exposed to what seemed the most primitive thinking about natural causality.
So yes, medical science does have a particular problem. It is after all a discipline that earns it keep by "fixing things". And treating the body or brain like a broken machine is the simple place to start on when you don't really understand the complexity from a deep biological point of view.
However again, even medical science is science in that in the long run it will be pragmatically self-correcting. So paradigm shifts are possible, and will happen if they deliver better outcomes.
Quoting mcdoodle
Yep. A good doctor in the front line knows it is about dealing with people holistically. And modern medical training gets that too.
So your argument boils down to there being a problem with Scientism and an overly-reductionist, overly-mechanical, approach to understanding nature. And it is easy to agree that that mindset has become widespread - especially in popular culture.
But actual scientists are rarely that dogmatic. Even that arch-reductionist, Francis Crick, replied that he pushed his more wacky hypotheses about the neural basis of consciousness simply in the spirit of putting up ideas that others could actually knock down.
And my position remains that all phenomena - including ethics and aesthetics - are expressions of natural principles, hence comprehensible by the methods of scientfic reason. Which to be precise, is the triadic cycle of abductive creative guessing, deductive theorising, and inductive confirmation, as outlined in Peircean pragmatist epistemology.
So indeed, one method to rule them all. :)
Apo, I would enjoy debating things with you more if you gave some sign of being the slightest bit interested in learning from other people here. I'm an old git who's learnt a great deal from this forum and the old one, including from many people I've disagreed with, and now I've gone back to grad school in the hope of learning some more. Your constant disparagement of arguments not your own is very wearing. Every point on which you agree with me is immediately balanced by another disparaging remark. Our metaphysics are different: so be it, that's the way it is with metaphysics. Where you have something evidentially to demonstrate to me, I am happy for you to tell me. But your point-by-point remarks above are rhetorical, merely assertive. I don't see what they demonstrate except the differences in our personalities and points of view.
You made the assertion that science just systematises commonsense. I provided a counterargument. Now apparently I'm guilty of not just sitting here nodding in encouraging agreement???
Says the guy who's never put his neck out and started a discussion here. >:O
I'm basically so lazy I need to be made to justify my views by plunging back into the literature to make sure I actually understood what I thought I knew.
So there is a method here - even if it grates on some.
I make dangerously bold statements knowing that I'll really look stupid if I get the basic facts wrong. I make the stakes very high for myself so as to give myself no choice but to go do the homework and make sure I'm right.
But that's enough explaining. Everyone knows this is the internet and that naturally polarises people so they either excessively agree or disagree - and take it all completely personally either way.
My personality is not conducive to being quite that "reckless," so to speak; but I do see this as a place where I can try out new ideas as working hypotheses, figure out how well I can articulate them, and see whether they hold up to scrutiny.
I do the same thing, although clearly from the other side of the "isle".
(To recap, I have categorised what we are presented with upon birth as "y". And whatever exists, but we are not presented with at birth as "x").
So in dividing knowledge this way - into y and not-y - you remain completely in the ambit of scientific reasoning as practiced by Peirce.
I have done this because there is an implication that the whole of nature is within the purview of people, in scientism, or materials based philosophies.
Yes it could be said that the "unknown unknowns constitutes the pragmatic beginnings of knowledge". But that is not saying much, because those unknown unknowns appear to be an entirely undefined and unconsidered region, reality, of existence.
I have not divided knowledge into y and not y, this is my charge, that scientism etc, does just this and then ignores the not y.
I am dividing what exists (comes to pass), into what we are aware of and what we are not. I'm not commenting on knowledge in this division, that is concerned with the intellectualisation of y and x.
Anyway, presumably metaphysics as a philosophical inquiry is concerned with what exists, rather than knowledge. This being the case, presumably it makes the same distinction that I am making.
If it claims that epistemology is ontology as you do, then it is, as I say, susceptible to solipsism and appears to be making an assumption about the actual ontology we are sustained by, subject to our minds. Something which we cannot do due to our limitations
Metaphysics includes both epistemology and ontology usually.
Quoting Punshhh
Yeah. But ever since Kant....
Quoting Punshhh
So your beef is against Scientism and not science. Cool.
For example in a world in which there is a fascination with the moustache, all might to viewed as intrinsic and contingent on moustaches. It might all make perfect sense even mathematically. But those people would be wrong if they said the universe began as a moustache and will become a moustache again at the end of time.
Likewise the bacteria living on the surface of your eye, might not be aware of what information passes by, indeed it might say, if told, how absurd it would be to suggest such a thing.
It is silly to claim we have "no idea" when patently we have very a clear and empirically supported set of ideas. There are many things we can speak with definiteness about because they have been established by counterfactual inquiry.
And yes, there are always the unknown unknowns. We even know that too - if you accept Kant and Peirce's approach to knowledge. Inquiry is epistemically open ended and can only indeed target nature in light of actual concerns.
It is not just that there is no complete knowledge of the thing in itself. We don't even really care. What matters is the intellectual relation we form with the world - which itself is a two-way street in that discovering what matters to "us" is how "we" are formed.
So the epistemology of Kant and Peirce is extremely sophisticated. We construct ourselves via our concerns - our modelling relation with reality.
I'm not here to defend the naive realism of Scientism or Reductionism any more that I'm here to defend the naive idealism of Romanticism or Theism.
It would be nice if you finally realised that.
The problem with the appeal us not really knowing anything is its intent. What are we aiming for in making such an argument? Some sort of perfect knowledge which gives us all the answers. The limited scope of any instance of knowledge is considered a problem we must get past if we want to understand existence-- it's still aiming for an account of everything, the impossible one, given the uncertainty of the world.
Knowledge is still understood to be some exhaustive account we are meant to obtain, rather than being realised as necessarily limited and incapable of giving a full account. If we are making the demand of an exaustive account, we have failed to understand stand the limit of knowledge and what that means.
Apo's argument doesn't specifically point out a metaphysicsl point, but there is plenty going on. The understanding that knowledge is necessarily limited is a metaphysical point.
To set aside the question of an exaustive account, as it's realised as impossible, and point out that knowledge is only ever limited, is a metaphysical culling-- any postion which appeals to an exaustive account is revealed to be incohrent. Logically, we can only have limited knowledge. Not only is our knowledge limited, but there's no exaustive account to aim for.
Actually its more about a realisation of our limitations, if it is then found that knowing nothing is the consequence, this is a side issue, to be considered separately.
To realise our position.
No, as I pointed out, I am not discussing knowledge, this is because knowledge is an intellectual abstraction, taking the form of a linguistic (in the broadest sense) concept. As such it is only an interpretation, an interpretation in and of my category "y". So my point in making these categories is to consider "x", rather than y( I know that intellect and knowledge are required to perform this task, but this can be achieved, by putting epistemology to side for the purposes of the enquiry).
As I said above, I am not refering to or appealing to an exhaustive account at all. But rather considering both x and our limited understanding, of our metaphysical, or ontological predicament.
Yes I agree on both points. However I am specifically considering Ontology and as I said, I would expect x to be considered equally as y in such an inquiry.
I don't see that we can say that an exhaustive account is impossible, please explain? Yes I agree that human knowledge is only ever limited, but this does not mean that an exhaustive account cannot be considered, if required. Also you will have to provide an explanation of why you say that there is no exhaustive account out there?