Philosophy Lounge

February 28, 2013

Opposing views on issues of knowledge, truth, and reality

Filed under: metaphysics,the mind-body problem,theory of knowledge — Tags: , — jbernal @ 12:17 pm

Juan Bernal

Recently an email correspondence  stimulated interest in an old epistemological-metaphysical  issues.

This fellow traveler (in philosophy) wrote:

“Given that mind-body dualism was given such bad reviews in the 20th century, it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine that the distinction between the subjective and the objective has no metaphysical significance. Instead, it is an artifice and a convention. It is useful within limits, but not useful for metaphysical purposes. What we have instead is “pure experience” as in the philosophies of the pragmatists (i.e. James and Dewey). All the elements of pure experience are potentially useful in framing a metaphysical philosophy. Thus those elements that are rejected from the point of view of objective thought can be considered important from the point of view of an up-to-date monism like that of James (see his 1904 essay, “Does Consciousness Exist?”).  Feelings may be considered to be as much an indication of what is real as perceptions.”

My reply:

In the modern age it may not be “hard to imagine” that the subjective/objective distinction has no “metaphysical significance,” but it surely does not follow from a philosophical rejection of the mind-body dualism.   Rejecting mind-body dualism, with its implication of mind as entity apart from body, does have metaphysical implications; but this is distinct from questions regarding the significance of the distinction between subjective experience and objective reality.  I don’t see any reason for dropping that distinction as important and significant, especially with regard to epistemological issues.  It is as simple as saying that what you feel about something (an event, a person) must be kept distinct from an honest, scientific-like assessment of that event or person.  For example, I feel very strongly that OJ Simpson killed his wife; but I realize that I cannot prove it (in a legal sense).  My strong feelings (even passion) about the event does not establish the nature of the event.  If you drop such a distinction as significant, then you open the gates to chaos based on subjective feelings and opinions.

I also question your comments about “pure experience” in the philosophy of a pragmatist like John Dewey.  Did Dewey propose that “elements of pure experience are potentially useful in framing a metaphysical philosophy”?  Your remarks suggest this. However, as far as I recall, Dewey (like Darwin, Reid, L. Wittgenstein, G. Ryle, and DW Hamlyn) reject the Cartesian notion (do we throw Husserl in here too?) that we start with purely subjective experience and frame a metaphysical knowledge of the world.   Let me add that recently I have expressed great skepticism of this notion of pure experience, questioning just what exactly the purity of experience is supposed to be.  My view is that it is another notion that some people throw around without ever having examined what exactly they’re saying.

You state that part of the issue is whether or not feelings are real.  Of course people have feelings or feel strongly about things.  But this surely does not imply what you seem to think is implied when you state:  “Feelings may be considered to be as much an indication of what is real as perceptions.”  You state that “feelings are an indication of what is real.”  Surely you’re just playing with words here.  An indication of what is real is a public matter (like a knowledge claim) in the sense that if you claim that S indicates the reality of R, you’re obligated to show others that this is so.  You cannot simply say “I feel that it is so.”  Our (another friend in the discussion) was surely right to point out that your feeling that X is R merely indicates something about you, and most likely nothing about  X.

———————–

To which the fellow traveler replied:  

You wanted to make the point that the distinction remains useful even for people who reject mind-body dualism. I agree. However, when we use those terms it’s hard to avoid dualistic connotations. It’s hard to avoid thinking in terms of “what goes on in my mind” and what goes on in a “world out there.” Once we drop dualism, we have some options. We can become radical empiricists, believing that the distinction between subject and object arises within experience. Or we can drop one of the two categories, becoming either pure subjectivists or pure objectivists depending on which one we drop.

I intended my denial that the subjective/objective distinction has metaphysical significance to entail a claim that neither the combination of them nor either of them taken separately names an independent reality. If they exist at all, they exist only as properties of an underlying reality.

 In support of the view that the subjective/objective distinction is still useful for non-dualists, you wrote, “One’s strong feeling that something is true does not make it true.”

 But now the non-dualist faces the problem of determining what makes something true. For dualists truth is a matter of correspondence between what’s in one’s mind and what’s out there in objective reality. If the non-dualist wants to retain a correspondence theory of truth, how does he adapt it to a non-dualist theory?

 If you can figure out how to do it, let us know. If you can’t, then what do you mean when you say, “One’s strong feeling that something is true does not make it true.” How do you know what makes a statement true?

You asked whether Dewey proposed that elements of pure experience are potentially useful in framing a metaphysical philosophy. In the preface to “Experience and Nature” he says his aim throughout the book is to replace “the traditional separation of nature and experience” with the idea of continuity. If nature and experience are separated, they are two different things/substances. If there is a continuity between them, they are both real, but they are not two different things/substances. They are distinguishable properties or aspects of one thing/substance. What is that one thing/substance?

On the issue of whether feelings can be as much an indication of what is real as perceptions, it all depends on how we look at it. If we bring one set of assumptions, we get one answer. If we bring another set of assumptions, we get another answer. For example, if we reason from the perspective of dualism, we can understand sensation as information from the external world, we can base perception on sensation, and we can explain feelings as purely internal responses that tell us nothing about what is “out there.” This line of thinking leads us to the conclusion that empirical science, based on information received through our senses about the external world, is our most reliable, indeed our only source of knowledge about the real (i.e. external) world. And that leads to the conclusion, as you put it, that “an indication of what is real is a public matter.” But, if we assume with Dewey that experience and nature are related to each other like right and left or up and down, then anything that belongs to that one reality of which experience and nature are aspects can tell us something about the fundamental nature of that reality. An indication of reality would not have to be a public matter.
——————-

In reply I stated the following:

Human beings (persons, which I assume we are) are biological beings capable of thought and feelings.

Sometimes when we think or feel that something is the case, our thought and/or feelings are reliable; other times they are not.  This is a simple fact, a truism about our ordinary experience. [It is hard to imagine anyone disputing this.]

Whether our thoughts are reliable or not can be determined by experience and inter-personal confirmation.  [E.G., I'm lost in the woods and come to a fork in the path, path A and path B.  I have reason for thinking that path A will lead me out of the woods.  I take path A and find that it does take me to safety.  My thought was reliable in that case; and its reliability was confirmed by experience.  There is absolutely no need to become puzzled by the notion of a correspondence between my thought and the objective fact!]

None of this requires that we implicitly assume any kind of dualism between mind and matter, or any philosopher’s dualism between experience and the object experienced.  Any talk of mind or thoughts or feelings can be restated as talk about the person (biological being with big brain and conditioned by culture) thinking or feeling in a particular way.  There is no need to become mystified by the notion of mind existing as an entity in its own right or even as a mysterious attachment to the biological organism (which is all we are).

None of this requires that we assume (or explain) any correspondence ( lack of it) between our thoughts and material reality, or between experience and the world.

When I say (or think) that X is A, my statement that “X is A” is true if and only if X in fact is A.   There is no mention of correspondence here.
That X is A in fact can be confirmed by scientific means or by ordinary empirical investigation (I confirm that X is A by checking and double-checking; and by having others confirm that X is A.)

When Dewey proposes that we replace “the traditional separation of nature and experience” with the idea of continuity, his proposal goes along the lines outlined above.  He surely was not proposing a metaphysics in which nature and experience are “distinguishable properties or aspects of one thing/substance.”  He is merely pointing out that our experience is continuous with nature, both our nature and objective nature (i.e., the world, our environment). The question “What is that substance?” is  the wrong question.  Asking that question attempts to get us into a metaphysical mode which a good pragmatist like Dewey would surely (and appropriately) avoid.  Avoiding or ignoring any assumptions that gets us into that mode is likely a very good way to go in philosophy today.

 

January 17, 2012

An Ancient, Rational, “Scientific,” Perspective on Reality

Filed under: critique of religion,metaphysics,philosophy history — Tags: , — jbernal @ 12:54 pm

By Juan Bernal

Over two thousand years ago the Roman poet and philosopher, Lucretious (99-55 BCE), expressed a surprisingly modern philosophy, one which he got from a more ancient philosopher, the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE).

A recent book, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt, recounts how the text of Lucretious’ great poem, “On the Nature of Things,” was discovered at the dawn of the Renaissance (1400s).   In this poem, Lucretious developed an atomistic, materialistic view of reality, one which offers a naturalistic explanation of the world and humanity, and which denies the relevance of the gods and attacks all religions for their superstition and exploitation of fear.

The book recounts the story in which the philosophy of Lucretious was rejected and condemned by the Christian world, but also admired and valued by a few courageous early humanists.  Greenblatt’s work is worth reading and has much to teach us regarding the discovery and reclamation of ancient works by scholars and humanists in the 14th and 15th centuries AD, and the extent to which Christian authorities and their ‘scholars’ repressed the philosophy of Epicurus/Lucretious.

Here I will limit myself to a summary of some of the main ideas that the poem advances.

To those not familiar with the philosophy of Epicurus (341-270 BCE), we can summarize some of it by stating that he  advocated rational living,  pleasure and happiness as the natural ends of life.  His view of ‘pleasure’ was that it should be consistent with intelligence and moderation; he emphasized the joys of the mind over corporeal, material pleasure.   Since, he accepted the atomism of Democritus, he denied the reality of gods, ghosts, and disembodied beings that survived death of the body; and he added the elements of chance, theorizing that atoms swerve into each other to combine into composite things and explain human free will.

This is the philosophy that Lucretious expresses in his poem.  Some of the main points of that philosophy are summarized by Greenblatt in chapter 8, “The Way Things Are.”  Here he writes that

 “a charge frequently leveled against him [Lucretious], when his poem began once again to be read—is atheism. But Lucretius was not in fact an atheist. He believed that the gods existed. But he also believed that, by virtue of being gods, they could not possibly be concerned with human beings or with anything that we do.” 

In short, Lucretious held that the gods were irrelevant to natural and human reality.  They did not explain how the world began nor did they intervene in history and human affairs. Greenblatt also notes that

“…much of what “On the Nature of Things” claims about the universe seems deeply familiar, at least among the circle of people who are likely to be reading these words. After all, many of the work’s core arguments are among the foundations on which modern life has been constructed.”

. The point here is the astonishing extent to which the philosophy of Epicurus and Lucretious anticipates significant aspects of modern science.  Consider some of the elements that constituted the Lucretian challenge (taken from Ch 8 of Greenblatt’s book, The Swerve – How the world became modern):

Everything is made of invisible particles.

The elementary particles of matter—“the seeds of the things”—are eternal. Time is not limited—a discrete substance with a beginning and an end—but infinite. The invisible particles from which the entire universe is made, from the stars to the lowliest insect, are indestructible and immortal, though any particular object in the universe is transitory.

Neither creation nor destruction ever has the upper hand; the sum total of matter remains the same, and the balance between the living and the dead is always restored:

The elementary particles are infinite in number but limited in shape and size.

 All particles are in motion in an infinite void.

Space, like time, is unbounded. There are no fixed points, no beginnings, middles, or ends, and no limits. Matter is not packed together in a solid mass. There is a void in things, allowing the constitutive particles to move, collide, combine, and move apart.  .  .  .

The universe consists then of matter—the primary particles and all those particles come together to form—and space, intangible and empty. Nothing else exists.

The universe has no creator or designer.  The patterns of order and disorder in the world are not the product of any divine scheme. Providence is a fantasy. What exists is not the manifestation of any overarching plan or any intelligent design inherent in matter itself. No supreme choreographer planned their movements, and the seeds of things did not have a meeting in which they decided what would go where.

There is no end or purpose to existence, only ceaseless creation and destruction, governed entirely by chance.

Nature ceaselessly experiments. There is no single moment of origin, no mythic scene of creation. All living beings, from plants and insects to the higher mammals and man, have evolved through a long, complex process of trial and error. The process involves many false starts and dead ends, monsters, prodigies, mistakes, creatures that were not endowed with all the features that they needed to compete for resources and to create offspring. Creatures whose combination of organs enables them to adapt and to reproduce will succeed in establishing themselves, until changing circumstances make it impossible for them any longer to survive. The successful adaptations, like the failures, are the result of a fantastic number of combinations that are constantly being generated (and reproduced or discarded) over an unlimited expanse of time.

The universe was not created for or about humans. The earth—with its seas and deserts, harsh climate, wild beasts, diseases—was obviously not purpose-built to make our species feel at home.

. . . The fate of the entire species (let alone that of any individual) is not the pole around which everything revolves. Indeed, there is no reason to believe that human beings as a species will last forever. On the contrary, it is clear that, over the infinite expanses of time, some species grow, others disappear, generated and destroyed in the ceaseless process of change. There were other forms of life before us, which no longer exist; there will be other forms of life after us, when our kind has vanished.

Humans are not unique. They are part of a much larger material process that links them not only to all other life forms but to inorganic matter as well. The invisible particles out of which living things, including humans, are composed are not sentient nor do they come from some mysterious source. We are made of the same stuff that everything else is made of. Humans do not occupy the privileged place in existence they imagine for themselves…

Human society began not in a Golden Age of tranquility and plenty, but in a primitive battle for survival. There was no original paradaisal time of plenty, as some have dreamed, in which happy, peaceful men and women, living in security and leisure, enjoyed the fruits of nature’s abundance. Early humans, lacking fire, agriculture, and other means to soften a brutally hard existence, struggled to eat and to avoid being eaten.

There may always have been some rudimentary capacity for social cooperation in the interest of survival, but the ability to form bonds and to live in communities governed by settled customs developed slowly. . .  The idea that language was somehow given to humans, as a miraculous invention, is absurd. Instead, Lucretius wrote, humans, who like other animals used inarticulate cries and gestures in various situations, slowly arrived at shared sounds to designate the same things.  .  .  . . The arts of civilization—not given to man by some divine lawmaker but painstakingly fashioned by the shared talents and mental power of the species—are accomplishments worth celebrating, but they are not unmixed blessings. They arose in tandem with the fear of the gods, the desire for wealth, the pursuit of fame and power. All of these originated in a craving for security, a craving that reaches back the earliest experiences of the human species struggling to master its natural enemies. That violent struggle—against the wild beasts that threatened human survival—was largely successful, but the anxious, acquisitive, aggressive impulses have metastasized. In consequence, human beings characteristically develop weapons that turn against themselves.

The soul dies. The human soul is made of the same material as the human body.

There is no afterlife. Humans have both consoled and tormented themselves with the thought that something awaits them after they have died. … But once you grasp that your soul dies along with your body, you also grasp that there can be no posthumous punishments or rewards. Life on this earth is all that human beings have.

 

Death is nothing to us. When you are dead—when the particles that have been linked together, to create and sustain you, have come apart—there will be neither pleasure nor pain, neither longing nor fear.

All organized religions are superstitious delusions. The delusions are based on deeply rooted longings, fears, and ignorance. Humans project images of the power and beauty and perfect security that they would like to possess. Fashioning their gods accordingly, they become enslaved to their own dreams.

Religions are invariably cruel. Religions always promise hope and love, but their deep, underlying structure is cruelty. This is why they are drawn to fantasies of retribution and why they inevitably stir up anxiety among their adherents. The quintessential emblem of religion—and the clearest manifestation of the perversity that lies its core—is the sacrifice of a child by a parent.

There are no angels, demons, or ghosts. Immaterial spirits of any kind do not exist.

The highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain. Life should be organized to serve the pursuit of happiness. There is no ethical purpose higher than facilitating this pursuit for oneself and one’s fellow creatures.

The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion. The principal enemies of human happiness are inordinate desire—the fantasy of attaining something that exceeds what the finite mortal world allows—and gnawing fear.  .  .  .  Why are humans so unhappy? The answer, Lucretius thought, had to do with the power of the imagination. Though they are finite and mortal, humans are gripped by illusions of the infinite—infinite pleasure and infinite pain. The fantasy of infinite pain helps to account for their proneness to religion: in the misguided belief that their souls are immortal and hence potentially subject to an eternity of suffering, humans imagine that they can somehow negotiate with the gods for a better outcome, an eternity of pleasure in paradise. The fantasy of infinite pleasure helps to account for their proneness to romantic love: in the misguided belief that their happiness depends upon the absolute possession of some single object of limitless desire, humans are seized by a feverish, unappeasable hunger and thirst that can only bring anguish instead of happiness.

Understanding the nature of things generates deep wonder. The realization that the universe consists of atoms and void and nothing else, that the world was not made for us by a providential creator, that we are not the center of the universe, that our emotional lives are no more distinct than our physical lives from those of all other creatures, that our souls are as material and as mortal as our bodies—all these things are not the cause for despair. On the contrary, grasping the way things really are is the crucial step toward the possibility of happiness. Human insignificance—the fact that it is not all about us and our fate—is, Lucretius insisted, the good news. It is possible for human beings to live happy lives, but not because they think that they are the center of the universe or because they the gods or because they nobly sacrifice themselves for values that purport to transcend their mortal existence. Unappeasable desire and the fear of death are the principal obstacles to human happiness, but the obstacles can be surmounted through the exercise of reason..  .  .  . What is needed is to refuse the lies proffered by priests and other fantasymongers and to look squarely and calmly at the true nature of things. All speculation—all science, all morality, all attempts to fashion a life worth living—must start and end with a comprehension of the invisible seeds of things: atoms and the void and nothing else.

Obviously, there is much here that anticipates modern thought:  atomic physics, a natural cosmology, biological evolution, a naturalistic, physical explanation of the earth, life, and human culture, anthropological theory, secular humanism and a rejectionl of religious superstition (denial an after-life, denial of the relevance and reality of supernatural beings.)  It is small wonder that Christian authorities did all they could to repress and stop publication of the poem.      As Greenblatt states it:

“On the Nature of Things” is that rarest of accomplishments: a great work of philosophy that is also a great poem.  .  .  .  .  .   Human beings, Lucretius thought, must not drink in the poisonous belief that their souls are only part of the world temporarily and that they are heading somewhere else. That belief will only spawn in them a destructive relation to the environment in which they live the only lives that they have. These lives, like all other existing forms in the universe, are contingent and vulnerable; all things, including the earth itself, will eventually disintegrate and return to the constituent atoms from which they were composed and out of which other things will form in the perpetual dance of matter. But while we are alive, we should be filled with the deepest pleasure, for we are a small part of a vast process of world-making that Lucretius celebrated as essentially erotic.”

 

August 28, 2011

Some confusion on the structure of language.

Filed under: linguistic philosophy,metaphysics — Tags: , — jbernal @ 12:07 pm

Not too long ago I engaged a philosophical acquaintance in a rather confusing discussion. I had objected to some philosophers’ tendency to bring up the notion of “incommensurable languages” when referring to our very different forms of expression when we talk about physical objects and when we talk about mental life. Accordingly, these two incommensurable forms of “language” allegedly suggest two distinct orders of existence, namely physical reality and mental reality: the discredited Cartesian dualism.

My interlocutor, Spanos, then restated things by substituting differing perspectives on reality for a dualistic metaphysics.

“It is a significant piece of evidence in metaphysics if we assume that the structures of language follow the structures of reality. Then the existence of incommensurable languages suggest that there are incommensurable orders of reality. In other words, it suggests dualism. But if we reject dualism, then we can distinguish between reality as it is in itself, and reality as it is in our experience. Then we can hypothesize that the incommensurability stems from the nature of reality as it is in our experience and not from the nature of reality as it is in itself.”

To which I replied:

Now you choose to talk about orders (plural “orders”) of reality. I thought that you had taken the position that there is only one reality of which there are two manifestations, physical and mental? But now it is a plurality of orders of reality. This might permit you to avoid a Cartesian dualism, but this surely brings up its own set of problems. The point at issue is your presupposition regarding the nature of descriptive language. I have grave problems with that.

Isn’t it a type of metaphysical confusion to speak of the “structures of language” reflecting (you say “follow”) the structures of reality? A good deal of any language (English, French, German , Spanish) has nothing to do with “following the structures of reality.” Language is used for many things other than describing reality. When I use language to make a request, to issue a command or to express my surprise, I am not describing the structures of reality. Moreover, I’m not sure that any part of descriptive language and scientific language can reasonably be described as one in which “the structures of the language follow the structures of reality.” The metaphysical claim regarding parallel structures is suspect, if not downright false. It is not as if a proposition (expressed as a statement in a language) is a picture of reality, which might or might not be commensurable with it.

For example, let’s take the declarative sentence: “The cat is on the mat” — uttered when in fact a cat is on the mat. Does it describe the structure of reality, and hence can be commensurable with reality? It seems to me that all it does is accurately state a fact: the cat on the mat. There is no attempt to state the structure of anything here; nor is the statement one that could pass as a picture of reality. If I needed to show the structure of the situation — cat on the mat — I would take a photograph or construct a model of the room-cat-mat. If I tell you that the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range is southwest from Pueblo, Colorado. I have accurately reported a geographic fact. I have not given a piece of language whose structure reflects the structure of reality (at best a good model of south-central Colorado might do that). Why would anyone think that language does that? I don’t have the vaguest idea what language would have to be to do that. Language does not function that way.

But I suppose this misses the metaphysical point about the function of language that you have in mind. However, surely the metaphysical position at issue (structure of language reflects the structure of reality) is not one held by many philosophers and scientists today.

Spanos then amended his position:

“I am not so sure that the structure of language follows the structure of reality. Maybe it only follows the structure of reality as we experience reality. That, in fact, is what the double aspect theory implies. So the dualism may be more apparent than real.

“Maybe the structures of language impact causally on the way we experience reality, as many philosophers have suggested. But if statements did not follow something, how could they be true? If a pragmatist says that they are true only because they work, the realist asks how they could possibly work if they did not at least reflect reality as we experience it. If someone says, “the cat is on the mat,” then he suggests a certain relation between the cat and the mat. If I take a look and find that the cat is in fact on the mat, then I would say that the relation represented in the sentence is verified by the relation found in experience. The whole of science seems to depend on this kind of relationship between idea and experience.”

To which I replied:

Your statement that maybe ” the structure of language…”only follows the structure of reality as we experience reality” strikes me as just another way of saying that in some cases we use language which is descriptive of the situation we perceive as fact. If we see a cat on the mat and in fact a cat is on the mat and I describe this by saying “a cat is on the mat,” my affirmation of the entities: cat and mat, and statement of their interrelation — cat is on the map – describes what is factually true. But I would claim nothing about ‘structures’ in general, either about language and certain not about reality, even reality as experienced. A description of a simple empirical fact (cat presently on the mat) does not involve a commitment (not even a suggestion) to a metaphysics regarding structures of language, reality, or reality-as-experienced-by-us. It is just a simple description of empirical fact.

Contrary to what the young Wittgenstein tried to show in his book, Tractatus, the syntax of language and patterns of logic do not parallel the ‘structure’ of the world. Languages function in varieties of ways which are not exposed by any particular patterns or syntax. And whatever “structures’ of the real world are exposed by the natural sciences (not by philosophy, which discovers nothing!) are varied and complex, and hardly such as to be “followed” by the structure of language. Not even the language of mathematics can be fully descriptive of the rich variety of “structures” found in nature. Maybe fractal geometry comes close; but surely the structures of fractal geometry are not found in our natural languages.

In short, I doubt that the parallel between language and reality which you assume as a metaphysical truth is really there at all.

Another acquaintance, Pablo, interjects:

“Well, yes, Spanos, I agree that language does reflect the structures of reality. I argued for this position long ago. Our notions of space, time, causality, and the subject/object nature of language reflect a world that is actually composed of space, time, causes, and a subect/object manner of looking at the world.”

At this point, I could only utter some bewilderment in closing the discussion:

“Language reflects the structures of reality”(?) “Our notions of space, time, causality” reflect “…a world composed of space, time, causes (?) And “and the subject-object nature of language” reflects “a subject-object manner of looking at the world” (??)

HELP! Some wooly-minded metaphysician has captured both Spanos’ and Pablo’s philosophical minds!

July 16, 2011

Do Materialists Commit a Blatant Contradiction?

Filed under: freedom of will,metaphysics — Tags: — jbernal @ 11:23 am

Recently a respectable fellow argued that materialists blatantly contradict themselves when they take a materialist view of reality and yet affirm that free, independent action is possible.

The argument presented relied on three premises:

1) Materialism affirms that reality in nothing but matter-in-motion.
2) Materialism implies affirmation of determinism, the metaphysical idea that all physical reality is causally determined.
3) Free, independent action requires action free of determinism.

To draw the conclusion:

4) Hence, when materialists affirm that human freedom is possible they contradict themselves. (They affirm that all reality is determined and affirm that some reality (human free action) is not determined.)
—————————————————————

The argument fails because it relies on very questionable, if not downright false, premises with regard to (1) ‘materialism,’ (2) ‘determinism,’ and (3) ‘free action.’

Materialism: Defining “materialism” as the view that the only reality is matter-in-motion is not at all consistent with the materialist philosophy held by scientific materialists. At best the idea that materialism is the metaphysics which claims nothing exists but matter-in-motion is the philosophy of the ancient Greek atomists such as Democritus and Epicurus.

One plausible version of modern materialism is one that proposes that everything real ultimately has a physical base. For example, the living entities of biology and the thinking entities of psychology, sociology, and culture are entities that exist at such a level of complexity that calling them mere matter-in-motion amounts to a caricature of that level of reality. Yet, the materialist claims that ultimately each of these has a physical base. This is a viable form of realism and far removed from the simplistic notion that only matter-in-motion is real.

It would be a gross distortion to claim that the sub-atomic reality studied by quantum physics and the atomic reality studied by atomic and nuclear physics is a study of matter-in-motion, as the sub-atomic particle-waves and the atoms are the basis for matter. It would be a gross distortion to say that electro-magnetic band, which includes visible light, radio waves, ultra-violet waves and other forms of energy, is just matter-in-motion. No knowledgeable scientific materialist would ever claim that such physical realities as electrical and magnetic energy is simply matter-in-motion.

To claim that the realities of living organisms, of beings with a complex central nervous system, and of persons with culture (language, science, art, mathematics) are nothing but matter-in-motion is to commit a gross reductionism, one which scientific realists (materialists) do not commit. To say that all living organism have a physical-chemical basis is not to say that the reality of living organisms is nothing but the sub-atomic particles, the atoms, and molecules which make up that living organism. Likewise to say that all beings with a complex central nervous system and those with complex, large brains have a physical-chemical basis is not to say that the reality of such beings reduces to a set of sub-atomic particles, atoms, and molecules which make up those beings. In short, the complexity of existence at the biological and psychological levels is not reducible to mere matter-in-motion.

Determinism: The claim that all materialists must accept the truth of determinism is a false claim.

Universal determinism is a metaphysical philosophy that is not held by many scientific materialists. There is no compelling reason for holding that all physical reality is held together by a universal net of causal determinism. This view of a universal determinism is an old metaphysical philosophy that modern scientific thinkers have mostly abandoned because a number of factors that question that universal determinism; e.g., the indeterminism of quantum physics, the randomness that is found in physical and social reality, the chaotic aspects of much of physical reality and the complexity the characterizes much of physical reality, making claims of causal determinism to be claims of academic philosophy at best.

The fact that many of the sciences utilize a from of causal explanation, i.e., explain phenomena in terms of the conditions and processes that caused the phenomenon in question, does not imply that those sciences entail a metaphysics of universal determinism. When we consider human reality (action, behavior) at the cultural-sociological-historical level, claims of universal determinism governing human behavior are not at all tenable, since the ability to predict human behavior is very limited at best.

Freedom (“free will”): The statement that a materialist philosophy implies the impossibility of free, independent action by human beings is a false statement.

The belief that materialism negates the possibility of free, purposive, and autonomous human behavior is a belief that rests on a particular, philosophical notion of ‘freedom,’ one which identifies free action with free will, and sees freedom and free will as being independent of all conditioning factors. Accordingly, if human behavior can be causally explained as arising from neurological factors, psychological conditioning, and such, it is held that such behavior is not free behavior. Only action that would take place in absolute independence of any determining factor would be considered free action or action indicative of free will.

There are good reasons for rejecting that notion of ‘freedom,’ which turns out to be a concept of metaphysical freedom held by many traditional philosophers, but one which has nothing to do with our ordinary, effective concept of freedom. A rough statement of our ordinary, effective notion of freedom is that one acts freely when one acts in accordance with one’s desires and self-interest. In other words, one is not coerced or compelled to act by some determining force, external or internal. A modern materialist does not have any trouble accounting for the fact that humans make ‘free’ choices and rational decisions which are not just the outcome of factors beyond their control.

Even if one accepts some version of metaphysical determinism (and there are many reasons for rejecting such), many philosophers have developed views of human ‘freedom’ which are compatible with determinism. In other words, it does not follow that if one accepts determinism, the implication is one that denies human free, ‘independent’ action.

February 18, 2011

Reflections on our “Soul” talk

Filed under: All,language and culture,metaphysics — Tags: — jbernal @ 2:51 pm

From our religious, literary or poetic sources we get a picture of human reality that places the soul as an essential part of being human . This is also the view of our various religious cultures in the West: all persons have a soul.

This traditional belief holds that there is more to human existence than the functioning of a biological organism, that a person alive is more than a body alive. This something “more” is expressed in terms of a soul, or spirit, “alma,” “ánima,” “psyche” or life force. In line with this, many religious traditions assume that the ultimate nature of human existence is spiritual rather than corporeal, thus implying that our soul, not our body, comprises our essential being. This was also the teaching of the ancient Greeks, Socrates and Plato.

Early in people’s attempts to understand human reality, this view might have simply been a way of answering the question ‘What moves the body?’ Here the assumption was that a body could not move itself. (Thus people posited “the ghost in the machine,” as the 20th century British philosopher, Gilbert Ryle, expressed it.)

After this, we can speculate that the human tendency to place high value on human existence reinforced the assumption of a soul, that “higher” aspect of human existence.

Being humans we assign very high value to human existence, which leads some to the belief that only the soul (or something like the soul) can express this high value. (This is analogous to a similar view of theism. People cannot understand how our existence can have any meaning unless we assume that there is a God who gives it meaning.)

The result is that many people in our traditional culture find it very difficult to imagine human existence without a soul, just as many of the same people find it most difficult to imagine our world devoid of a deity. Accordingly, then, many people reject the scientific view that humans are essentially physical, biological beings —naturally evolved animals. Traditionally we tend to presuppose that humans are essentially spiritual beings, created in the image of God. In some cases this is a religious, metaphysical assumption; in other cases, it is simply a way of expressing the high value we ascribe to human existence.

It is not surprising, then, that those who promote religions have a receptive audience when they claim that possession of an eternal soul and our status as God’s special creatures show that we are categorically distinct from the natural animal order. In this context, it is easy to see why many of the fundamentalist religions feel so threatened by atheism, evolutionary naturalism and philosophical materialism.

* * * * * * * * * * * *
As a rational skeptic I tend to dismiss all this ‘soul’ and ‘god’ talk as cultural myth and religious fantasy. But maybe we should not hastily dismiss all this as childish fantasy; for what we see here could be a deep-seated tendency of the human psyche, a primitive need for a meaningful ‘picture’ of reality, the positing of value and the need for reassurance.

The concepts of ‘mind’ and ‘soul’ are similar in some ways, but also markedly different. People usually use the term ‘soul’ in a religious, poetic fashion, and assume that the soul is immortal. Normally we do not think of our mind as immortal, unless mind is identified with the soul. Both terms are vague or ambiguous. We know in a general, loose sense what people mean by them, but would have difficulty giving good definitions of either.

It may be that “soul” and “god” are just ways that we tend to talk, reflecting ways we think about human existence and the world. Neither term is a scientific term. Meanings that people attach to them vary so much that any careful discourse in which they are used should be preceded by a stipulated, working definition of the terms.

Suppose that someone claims that as a matter of fact people do possess souls. What evidence could he give to support his claim? On the other hand, generally we accept the claim that people have minds, although there are no grounds for claiming that the mind can exist independently of the brain functions.

“Soul” lingo is the talk of those who cannot accept the idea that human beings are (merely) biological entities, the result of natural evolutionary processes. Like all life, human life is based on physical and chemical processes. However, many people cannot give up the idea that humans are more than biological, physical entities, and cling to the idea that humans have an essential spiritual or non-material aspect. (This is different from but analogous to the Cartesian dualism which assumes a ‘mental’ nature distinct from our corporeal nature.)

“Soul” can also be seen as a term belonging to a family of terms, e.g., spirit, mind, free-will-as-a-faculty, and such. These terms express a dualistic view of human existence. Accordingly, humans are seen as having dual natures, corporeal and spiritual. This is compatible with the religious idea that humans are connected to the higher, spiritual realm associated with God and eternal life.

Those looking on from the orientation of the natural sciences and critical philosophy will find (in soul talk) very little that is grounded in fact or anything that is terribly, rationally compelling. But maybe that is not the point of “soul” talk.

February 6, 2011

Notes on difficult subjects: Confusing our concepts, experiences, and reality

Filed under: metaphysics,philosophy and psychology,theory of knowledge — Tags: , — jbernal @ 11:36 am

It is true that we must presuppose the spatial-temporal dimensions to make sense of our experience of the physical world. But this does not logically imply that the spatial-temporal dimensions are not objective features of the physical world. The objectivity of space and time is consistent with the notion that our analysis of experience discloses that experience of the world cannot happen devoid of spatial-temporal ordering. That our experience is ordered temporally and spatially by our cognitive faculty is consistent with the proposition that time and space are properties of the objective order of reality.
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Our epistemological models do not have to posit the subjective starting point, i.e., a conscious subject (an “homunculous”) inside the head, isolated from physical and social reality. The subjective starting point is common to Descartes, Locke, Hume, and in part to Kant, and sets up the epistemological problem the task of showing how the subject can achieve knowledge of the objective world.

Ultimately, the notion of an isolated, conscious subject who can reflect on his own ideas and impressions and speculate about to their external causes (viz., use language and concepts) is an incoherent notion. But this incoherent notion is required for the epistemological model presupposed by Cartesians, Locke, Hume, and Kant.

The epistemological model of realism starts with a conscious, perceiving, acting organism (e.g. a human being) existing in a natural and social environment, experiencing that object world, causally interacting with it and with other organisms who co-exist in those worlds. This more desirable model is one found in the work of Thomas Reid and can be seen as presupposed by a Darwinian evolutionary biology, and the scientific pragmatism of John Dewey.
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Intuitively it strikes me as correct to say that the world of phenomena (objects, processes, forces, etc.) is a spatio-temporal world, i.e., one existing in space and time.

According to Kant our cognitive faculties (of the experiencing subject) provide the spatio-temporal template by which our phenomenal world (the world experienced) is ordered. Any phenomenal object (the tree and its lemons that occupy my backyard) must be described in terms of the intuition of space and time and the categories of the understanding. These intuitions and categories are imposed on experience by the subject’s cognitive faculties. But world behind the phenomena, the world separate and independent of the ordering activity of the cognitive mind, is one outside our knowledge and comprehension. This is Kant’s world-in-itself, or noumena. Presumably the real tree-in-itself and lemons-in-themselves are neither knowable nor conceivable by me. I cannot even claim that they’re found in my backyard!
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Something has gone terribly awry when we assert that any answer to the question ‘What is the real object?’ must be given in terms of the obscure notion of thing-in-itself, i.e., in terms of some object which we cannot know, experience, or even conceive.
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There’s nothing whatsoever that we can say about this putative world-in-itself. We cannot legitimately say that it is the real world, or that it is the partial cause of our phenomenal world.
At best, the notion of thing-in-itself or noumena is a limiting concept (See Strawson’s book, The Bounds of Sense).

To hold that noumena is the world as it really is, rather than world as it appears to human cognition, is erroneously to take a limiting concept as have metaphysical, ontological import.
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Insofar as our coherent language and thought allows, the so-called “phenomenal world” is the real world, i.e., the world in which we exist, the one we experience and one accessible to human understanding. Of course, our concept of this reality can be refined through analysis, mathematical modeling, scientific theorizing and investigation. The resulting picture or model, a refined one when compared to our untrained intuitions, will be a picture or model of the world of experience. It does not point to a “world-in-itself.”
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The real world is one that humans and other creatures inhabit, experience, and one with which they continually interact. Existence and experience can be characterized as transactions between the subject and the world. When humans think about or conceptualize physical aspects of this world they do so in terms of spatial extensions and a temporal dimension; and apply basic categories like object-hood, substance, cause-effect, force, and such. Conceptualization of the world presupposes application of these basic categories and intuitions. It is because the real world has the properties it has, i.e., a spatial, temporal, physical nature, that this application is an apt one.

(Yes, I know that modern physical theory — relativity physics, quantum physics, and the latest theories of particle physics — raise many questions about the ‘objective’ nature of the real world. But I’m not prepared to accept the paradoxes of particle physics as determining what we can and cannot say about the world we inhabit.)
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Our “Kantian problem” is rooted in the tendency to confuse conceptual analysis with psychology, i.e. to confuse the analysis of basic elements in our concept of experience with the scientific work of describing our cognitive faculties. Both David Hume and Immanuel Kant fall into this confusion.

With Kant it is his tendency to proceed as if he were exposing the structure of our cognitive faculties, rather than exposing the basic ideas in our concept of experience. This leads (or misleads) him to claim that the world of experience is a world of appearances only (a phenomenal world), not reality independent of the ordering activity of our cognitive faculties.
According to Robert P. Wolff, Kant offers a “theory of mental activity.” See his book, Kant’s Theory of Mental Activity.

Does Kant carry out an exploration of the conditions of experience? Alternatively, does he carry out a conceptual inquiry regarding our concepts of objective experience?

To think of an object (e.g. a tree) we must presuppose that the object is a spatial-temporal object. We cannot think of the object except as existing in time and space, having spatial extension and duration. This is a claim about our conceptual scheme. It is not a description of our cognitive faculties. It is not the work of psychology.
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We should keep these two areas of work separate from one another:
• Logic-Epistemology-Conceptual Analysis
• Empirical Psychology – theory of mental activity – description of experience.

———————–
See Richard Rorty’s The Mirror of Nature for a sustained critique of the epistemological project from Descartes through Locke and Hume and culminating in Kant’s First Critique.
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Too many philosophers confuse their talk and thinking about the world with the world itself. Too many confuse talk about experience (e.g. perception) with a psychological account of the mental processes underlying experience.
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What would a metaphysician basing himself on Kantian philosophy say? Maybe he would assert that the California Redwood forests of the northern California coast only represent phenomena conditioned by the subject who experiences them. (?) In truth, the rugged coast and the California Redwoods are a reality independent and prior to any human experience of them.
[If certain tribes of philosophers refer to this position as naïve realism, so be it.]

Yesterday Virginia called me out to the backyard to pick lemons from our tree. What would a metaphysically inclined Kantian say? Would he assert that those lemons were not real lemons, since the lemons that I experienced (picked) were partly conditioned by my cognitive faculties? Would he declare that the real lemons, viz. the lemons-in-themselves, were unknowable and outside any possibility of my experience (I could not possibly pick them)?
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A Kantian view: The world that we experience is mere phenomena (appearance only?). The real world — the noumena is forever hidden from us. Reality lies behind the stage of phenomenal objects, processes, and actions. [Does this make any sense?]
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When we argue that the perception of X presupposes fundamental concepts of X, our argument takes place in the area of conceptual analysis; we are not doing a psychological study of the mental processes underlying perception.

When we attempt to sort and clarify perceptual concepts, and attempt to say how people can coherently speak about (and think about) perceptual experience, we do not attempt to conduct scientific (psychological) investigation into the mental processes underlying perception.
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(Caveat: Yet these two lines of inquiry, conceptual and scientific, may relate to each other. The scientific results of a psychological-neurological study of perception may significantly influence our conceptual efforts. Conversely, philosophical analysis of relevant concepts may influence how scientists approach their investigation of the mental processes related to perception, although scientist are not restricted by our ordinary ways of thinking and talking about perception. {* see note below.})

(2nd Caveat: Philosophers engaged in epistemological work have a great difficulty keeping these two forms of inquiry separated.)

* The cognitive scientist, Steven Pinker (psycho-linguist), makes use of Kantian ideas in his study of human nature via our fundamental ideas and language. See his work The Stuff of Thought.

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Scientific study of mental activity, e.g. psychology, neurology, is distinct from the work of conceptual analysis (e.g. epistemological philosophy) in which one attempts to sort and clarify such concepts as knowledge, belief, perception, truth, memory, doubt and such.

December 20, 2010

Space Aliens and Moral Truth – 4

Filed under: ethics,metaphysics — Tags: — jbernal @ 5:10 pm

John – 4: John requests that I explain more my earlier refusal to concede that Kant discovered a moral law which an intelligent space alien would recognize:

I would be interested in some additional comments about your view (“Space Aliens and Moral Truth – 3”) that you “doubt that this alien from outer space would appeal to Kant’s moral law” and that you “have good reasons for this doubt.”
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My reply-4:

John, I will try to elaborate my skepticism of the possibility that an alien society could appeal to Kant’s moral law. But I’m not sure that by doing so I’m referring to the same thing that you have in mind, since you never spelled out in detail the moral law which you think is an objective feature of the world and something that Kant discovered.

I suppose there are aspects of our moral life which can be said to be things that we discover. For example, I can imagine a society of people, maybe a hunting-and-gathering tribe, coming to ‘discover’ after decades of trial and error that cooperation among members of the tribe works better than aggression and hostile competition. So they come to ‘discover’ the value of cooperation, which eventually might lead to ‘moral rules’ like one that requires that one respect the rights of neighbors instead of stalking them and clubbing them to a bloody death. Eventually these might evolve into moral principles like the Golden Rule. So, in a sense, an anthropologist could say that they indirectly ‘discovered’ the Golden Rule.

Given that human cultures — no matter how widespread — share some similarities, we can imagine a number of different cultures ‘discovering’ the utility of cooperation, and imagine further, that this utility of cooperation evolves into a moral principle. So different cultures ‘discover’ the same type of moral principle. Could an alien, intelligent culture of a remote galaxy also discover similar rules? I suppose we could say that, if the alien culture is made up of creatures who gain by cooperating with each other, can learn to cooperate, and — hence — recognize the utility for the culture and for individuals of such cooperation, then we could imagine that under those conditions that culture would ‘discover’ something akin to our Golden Rule. (But is a just-so-story; I would not stake too much on it.)

But (and this is a big “BUT”) generally discovery is not something that happens in philosophy or is accomplished by philosophers as they work out their philosophical systems. Discovery is something done by real explorers, by scientists, by workers and tinkerers; discovery implies that there is something out there in the world to be discovered, such as a new passage to the Pacific, or a new way of powering a machine to grind grain, or the DNA molecule, or galaxies beyond the Milky Way, or the cause of a disease like Cholera, etc. Generally, artists and literary writers don’t discover things; they create imaginative works. Shakespeare did not discover Hamlet; he wrote it. Likewise with Cervantes and his Don Quijote, Mozart and his 39th Symphony, Michelangelo and his David. An alien, intelligent far-off in another Galaxy might have artists and writers equal or better than those of Earth; but it the chances of an alien Shakespeare (with the works of Shakespeare) or an alien ‘twin’ to any of our great artists, poets, composers — are so remote as to make it a virtual impossibility. However, their scientists (natural sciences) and mathematicians would probably make the same discoveries that ours have made, although a Galileo, Newton, Niels Bohr, or Einstein would not be found, as such, in that alien world.

What can we say about a philosopher like Immanuel Kant (or Plato)? If you would not be surprised to find that the alien culture, in-a-remote-galaxy society might ‘discover’ the moral laws which Kant wrote about, you must assume that these laws were things that could be discovered (here by Kant and in the alien society by some individual who happened upon them in some way — probably not the same way that Kant discovered them).

So I ask, does it really make sense to say that moral law was discovered by Kant? I have never thought so. Kant’s work, like the work of most philosophers, is more akin to the work of creative artists than it is to the inquiry and discovery of scientists, explorers, inventors (who discover new ways of doing things). Yes some philosophers carry out types of inquiry in their work; this is especially true with modern philosophers. But generally traditional philosophers developed systems and imaginative perspectives (on any number of topics) which they offered as answers or solutions to certain questions and problems. In the area of ethics and moral philosophy, it is fairly obvious that — except for analytical philosophy and meta-ethics — philosophers develop certain ‘theories’ on matters of value, not fact, which they elaborate and defend. But there is no discovery taking place in the sense of discovering objective moral truth. I have never found reason for thinking that Plato or Kant discovered those famous features of their philosophies; they created them. Was Kant’s categorical imperative sitting out there somewhere waiting to be discovered? Were the forms subsisting somewhere in the realm of the eternal waiting for Plato to discover them? I hardly think so.

I’m not sure what exactly you would advance as that moral law which Kant discovered; but I’ll assume for now that you mean the categorical imperative.

One version of the Categorical Imperative reminds us of the Golden Rule: Act so that you treat everyone as an end in themselves, and never as a means only. This could be a version of those rules calling for cooperation and recognition of the rights/dignity of fellow humans, which I said can be said to be ‘discovered’ by a society in certain circumstances. But the problem with arguing that Kant may have discovered the categorical imperative in this version is that a rule like that in important respects was ‘discovered’ by different peoples long before Kant developed his philosophy. Can the other version of the Categorical Imperative, ‘universalizability’ (Act so that the maxim of your action could be a universal law) be the moral law that Kant discovered? And would it be something that an alien other-galaxy civilization also discover it? Here I am very doubtful that this is tenable, even in a thought experiment. This is not much of a moral law. As many basic texts in ethical philosophy point out, this law does little or nothing to help us distinguish moral action from that which is not. It is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for morally good action; and many actions which are clearly absent of moral good can satisfy the imperative. I hardly think that this categorical imperative would be an example of a moral rule that diverse people ‘discover,’ even the weak sense of “discovery” used above.

Hence, because it is not plausible that an alien society would discover Kant’s moral law, it is not tenable that such a culture would appeal to them. Should that marvelous thing really turn out to be the case, I would be stunned beyond anything words could express!

(I’m not sure this clarifies anything. Maybe I’m just adding to the confusion. If so, I consider myself as working the grand tradition of much of philosophy.)

Space Aliens and Moral Truth – 3

Filed under: ethics,metaphysics — Tags: — jbernal @ 4:55 pm

John sets the scene for his argument for objective Moral Truth – 3

Juan, indulge me in a brief fantasy requiring that you imagine the following:

(1) The Nazis won the war, used atomic weapons to conquer the rest of the world, and imposed a rigid set of laws which included the death penalty for Jews, homosexuals, outspoken philosophers, and a few other pesky groups.

(2) A highly intelligent space visitor (not human, but very evolved) observed the Earth and these quaint traits. In his report to his superiors he must check off the level of moral development of the Earth’s culture. The scale was an advanced variation of Kohlberg’s scale, ranking from low, to various degrees of medium, high, or Ideal. What would be an intelligent basis for that highest level of evaluation? Is there a rational foundation for a trans-cultural or even a trans-species moral code? Does Kant’s Moral Law qualify for that role?

I propose that there is a correct point of view about ideal conduct, and that Plato was a bold explorer who showed the path to later thinkers like Kant who discovered (NB, not invented) the Moral Law. Yes, we find the Golden Rule present in some early human cultures, and as an ideal it was a remarkable advance for civilization, but it was not formulated with the depth of thought given to it by Kant. My imagination allows me to think that there will be advances and developments in the future on some of Kant’s insights, but he had the correct idea of the Moral Law. What I read (and perhaps it is an inaccurate understanding) in your words is that there isn’t much sense in saying that there is a correct point of view independent of human critters. Would you continue to maintain that position if we do discover and have contact with more advanced species in the future, in a galaxy not too far away? Would it surprise you if the most advanced species held a belief in Kant’s Moral Law?
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My reply-3:

John, you pose a number questions some of which I may not be able to answer (you really have me up against the wall, right?); but I’ll try to deal with them. I might just reject some of them as based on faulty assumptions, but let’s see what we can do with them.

I don’t have any way of knowing what the intelligent space visitor would say about the situation you outline, since I have no idea what kind of morality his kind would have evolved. Maybe he would not see any moral implication in rigid Nazi laws imposed on minorities. But you assume that he would have some moral beliefs similar to ours and would rank cultures in terms of moral development. Given this assumption and allowing that our alien visitor recognized moral values similar to ours, I imagine that he would rank the moral situation as a very bad one; but I haven’t the least idea how to answer your questions (What would be an intelligent basis for that highest level of evaluation? Is there a rational foundation for a trans-cultural or even a trans-species moral code?). Our space visitor might have some intelligent basis and a rational foundation for his moral judgments; but how can I say? I doubt that this alien space would appeal to Kant’s moral law. (I have good reasons for this doubt, but that would take us too far afield at this time.)

A real world situation similar to the imagined one you present actually can be found in our history: Western Nations’ treatment of the new world natives. Their cultures, religions, moral beliefs and practices were destroyed by the European invaders. Then the European invaders justified this murder and destruction on the basis of a perceived moral-religious superiority. The survivors were treated badly, their needs and interests ignored or even rejected; and this was quite acceptable from the Western point of view, some of which was supported and defended by Western philosophers as morally acceptable. How would an intelligent, morally developed visitor rate that moral situation? I submit that he would give Western humans a very low rating. And he would probably have an intelligent, rational basis for his judgment — not Kant’s moral law and surely not a vision of Plato’s form of the good! Maybe it would simply be a judgment rooted in what experience teaches regarding the optimum development of sentient, intelligent creatures: respect for the lives and dignity of other sentient, intelligent creatures. Who knows?

Since I’m not as impressed by Kant’s moral theory as you are (there are many problems when one tries to apply his “moral law” to real world moral situations), I don’t accept your statement as the Golden Rule was not developed with the “depth of thought” that Kant’s moral law enjoys. How can you say what “depth of thought” went into the development and application of the Golden Rule? In terms of an expression of the value of human justice, the Golden Rule (stated in negative terms) is a far better statement than Kant’s law, especially when we consider his claim that violation of the law implies a contradiction, and thus implies that immorality always involves a contradiction. We have no reason for holding that morality and rationality always work together this way.

The notion that there’s a “correct point of view (regarding morality) independent of all critters” strikes me as a hangover from the idea that God is the ground for moral good and the idea of moral knowledge as that which would be manifested in God’s eye-view of the Truth. This is that age-old hunger for a transcendent basis for morality. There are many problems with this perspective of which I’ll mention only two:
1) we have absolutely no basis for thinking that there really is any such thing (neither Kant’s moral law nor Plato’s form of the good will do).
2) Even if you found such transcendent reality, it is hard to see what relevance it would have on human moral beliefs, moral judgment, and moral behavior.

Moral good is not a form of knowledge, not even a putative knowledge of a transcendent moral reality. A good part of what we understand by “moral good” is manifested in the certain behavior and the development of certain character; and the expression of certain values and judgment. It is manifested in the context of not knowing some putative transcendent truth. There are a number (probably a large number) of morally good people in many places; but there is no evidence that anyone really has knowledge of some transcendent moral truth. Some people (including some philosophers) believe they have this type of knowledge and claim they do; but this is just what they claim; it is not anything they can make good.

Speculation as to the possibility that a morally superior culture of a remote galaxy would have discovered Kant’s moral law might have some value as a thought experiment. Yes, I would be shocked if that were so; since I don’t think that Kant’s law is something that can ever be discovered. I seriously doubt that Kant discovered anything. He came up with a ‘theory’ of morality or a way of thinking about morality. This has been given a place of honor in Western philosophy; he had some good insights on a few aspects of morality. But I don’t agree with your characterization of him or of Plato as bold explorers and the implied suggestion that they discovered something of high importance. They were just humans trying to work out some problems and coming up with their ‘solutions.’ But in both cases, their so-called solutions have limited value.

Genocide, Nazi ‘morality’ and Moral Truth 1-2

Filed under: ethics,metaphysics — Tags: — jbernal @ 4:36 pm

Recently I had an interesting three-part correspondence with a philosopher (call him “John”) who argues that morality, as developed by Kantian ethics, is an objective reality. Here I present the first set of correspondence. Parts 2 and 3 are titled “Space Aliens and Moral Truth – 2″ and “Space Aliens and Moral Truth – 3.”

John started things rolling by posing three questions, which I tried to answer as well as I could.

John – 1: his request:

A few questions for our group to consider, as we ponder if there is a correct point of view about ethical matters. The answers given may help us understand each other.

(1) Is genocide morally wrong?

(2) If so, why?

(3) What makes you think so?
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My first reply:

John, I’m not sure what type of answers you seek. “A correct point of view” about ethical matters is somewhat vague. Are you suggesting that we have moral knowledge? Are you suggesting that there’s a correct theory of ethics? Or are you merely suggesting that we hold certain moral beliefs and apply certain moral values which we hold unconditionally? Depending on what we understand by “correct point of view,” my pondering would adjust accordingly.

Your questions:
(1) Is genocide morally wrong? –

Yes, of course. If genocide were not morally wrong, what would be morally wrong?

(2) If so, why? –

What are my reasons? Well, try these: the Golden Rule: Don’t do to others (or other groups) what you would not want done to you (or to your group). In addition, try this one: As a conscientious human being I recognize that others are human much like me, with similar needs, interests, desires, and right to live. Given this working ‘principle,’ I find the mass killing of other humans to be not just morally wrong, but a criminally monstrous thing to do.

(3) What makes you think so?

Do you mean, what causes me to take such a position? What sources and path led me to this type of thinking? – Obviously, for most of us it would be our training and education. Parents, family, teachers, friends, our church, synagogue or mosque, our experiences etc. etc. brought us to have such believes and behave accordingly. In some very rare cases, reading or study of philosophy. In less rare cases, reading and study of literature, history, and maybe even works in the sciences.
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John -2

Your answers give me the impression that you do at present think that genocide is morally wrong, but the reasons for your belief indicate that if your training had been different you can imagine not holding that view. This position might be supported by the evidence that many Germans were willing to practice genocide during WW II. Do you believe that their view was just as correct as your present view about this issue, or is there no correct point of view? Let me put this in a different form: Is genocide REALLY wrong, or is that just the opinion you presently hold because of your training? If it is not just the result of conditioning, then what other source can you find to support the notion that genocide is
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My second reply:

John, what are the limits when we start playing the game of imagining what one would think or how one would behave had he been raised in a completely different environment and with completely different training-conditioning? You asked how I came to believe that genocide is immoral and I tried to give an honest answer. When we discuss the road we took to where we are, are we also discussing the reasons for an against our being there? I don’t think so. My answer to your second question should have indicated that if anything is morally wrong without qualification, it is genocide. I think the same about torture and abuse of children. Can I imagine being raised in a culture in which ‘I’ would think otherwise? Well, I suppose we can imagine many things. But I don’t know what the implications for ethics are. I’m not even sure you can say that the individual raised in a completely different culture and under completely different conditions would be the same individual. What are the limits of our imagination?

I’m not sure how much you’re pinning on the proposition: Genocide is really wrong. I surely think that genocide is wrong without qualification. The rule against genocide would seem to be one of those moral absolutes that philosophers talk about.

No, I don’t believe that those Germans (mostly Nazi) who believed that genocide was acceptable, even commendable, were correct. Simply stated, they denied that the victims of genocide (mainly the Jews) had a right to life. Their actions were a complete rejection of moral values and principles that I try to uphold. One could also build Utilitarian arguments for the claim that they were wrong. The fact that their training and conditioning led them to think as they did, different from the way my training and conditioning led me, does not imply that we must become extreme relativists and admit that —- under certain circumstances —- genocide would be morally acceptable. At least this is true if we’re still talking about “human circumstances.” But I don’t know the rules of the game which asks that we imagine how the world would have differed under a completely different set of conditions.

You also suggest a false dichotomy when you ask ” Is genocide REALLY wrong, or is that just the opinion you presently hold because of your training?” If you’re suggesting that the meaning of “really wrong” requires something like Kant’s categorical imperative or one of Plato’s forms and the philosophical idea that there are points of moral reality (independent of what any human society might hold) and unquestionable moral knowledge, then I would reject your notion of something being “really wrong in moral terms.” But this would not imply that I hold to a subjectivist, extreme relativism that one’s rejection of genocide as morally acceptable is just the opinion I happen to hold because of my training.

My history, conditioning, and training may explain how I came to my moral beliefs. There are no alternative “sources.” But the issue of justification of those beliefs turns our attention to the moral values and the principles (e.g. The Golden Rule) I try to apply. Here we talk about ethics, moral philosophy and the reasoning (arguments) that one can bring to bear.

I see absolutely no problem with the judgment that genocide is really wrong and the naturalist view that our morality is human-based in every respect; i.e., with the view that one can hold to some unconditional moral imperatives (e.g. contra genocide, contra child torture) and yet hold that our moral values emerge from our nature as evolved beings who invented culture, including moral culture. But saying more on this would take us into another story.

December 17, 2010

Do we perceive real things, or just our representations of them?

Filed under: Critique of philosophy,metaphysics,theory of knowledge — Tags: — jbernal @ 12:10 pm

First Part: Spanos presents his case challenging the naïve view that we perceive real things as they really are.

I’ll put my questions in the context of a story told by Leonard Mlodinow and Stephen Hawking in “The Grand Design“:

A FEW YEARS AGO the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved goldfish bowls. The measure’s sponsor explained the measure in part by saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality.

This raises an interesting question. Do the curved sides of the bowl distort the fishes’ view of reality? Would they, under normal circumstances, have an undistorted view of reality? The Mlodinow/Hawking response to this is equally interesting. They chide the sponsors of the measure for assuming that our own view of reality is undistorted.

But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality? Might not we ourselves also be inside some big goldfish bowl and have our vision distorted by an enormous lens? The goldfish’s picture of reality is different from ours, but can we be sure it is less real?

The point made by Mlodinow and Hawking is that it doesn’t make any practical difference to the fish whether the bowl is curved or straight. In either case they adapt their responses to appearances. What does make a difference is whether their responses work. In order to make their responses work, they do not need a true, undistorted picture of reality. All they need is a reliably consistent picture of reality. And evolution has given them the ability to produce such a picture. Evolution has even given them the ability to adapt their responses to changes in appearances such as would be caused by putting them in a fish bowl with curved sides.

In the light of such considerations, I’m not sure how to interpret what some people claim: namely that there is no distortion of reality taking place. For example, a colleague argued that

“if we (or other creatures) didn’t actually perceive objects (‘things’ to use your term) as they really are, we would not have survived this long in the evolutionary process. Yes, misperceptions (faulty interpretations) often occur but rarely as often as you seem to imply in the above quote. Our perceptions rarely lie to us.”

Spanos continues: Must we assume that we wouldn’t be able to survive without a true, undistorted picture of reality? If fish can survive without it, why can’t we? It’s true that our perceptions rarely lie to us. But what do they tell us? Do they tell us what reality really is, or do they only tell us whether the current situation is one that requires a particular kind of response? Perhaps the lie, if there really is one, is the lie we tell ourselves when we assume that we have a true, undistorted picture of reality.

But it’s not a lie if we only mean that we have a generally true, undistorted picture of empirical reality. (By “empirical reality” I mean “the way things appear to us.”) It’s only a lie if we mean that we have a true, undistorted picture of transcendental reality. Here is Kant’s definition of “transcendental.”

“certain of our cognitions rise completely above the sphere of all possible experience, and by means of conceptions to which there exists in the whole of experience no corresponding object, seem to extend the range of our judgments beyond its bounds. And just in this transcendental or supersensible sphere, where experience affords us neither instruction nor guidance, lie the investigations of reason, which on account of their importance, we consider far preferable to, and as having a far more elevated aim, than all that the understanding can achieve within the realm of sensuous phenomena.”

Prominent among these cognitions that “rise completely above all possible experience” are the concepts of reality and truth. We feel the pressure of these cognitions whenever we are aware of our own fallibility. I don’t think fish have these cognitions, and it is a mystery why we have them.

————————————————–
Second Part: My slightly annoyed reply:

You want for us to accept the proposition that we can talk about a “true, undistorted picture of transcendental reality,” which is different from “empirical reality” and which we don’t experience at all? The true, objective reality is not something we perceive or with which we can interact with it. But is this really what Kant holds? With Kant it is never clear, for he seems to say that “transcendental reality” is the “investigation of reason.” Assuming this is human reason, does he allow that humans have “rational access” to this “transcendental realm?

Moreover, there’s ambiguity in the description of “empirical reality.” On the one hand, Kant seems to admit that reality that we ordinarily, naturally experience (the reality explored by the sciences); we are told that this is “reality as it appears to us.” But reality as it appears to me does not imply that my perception fails to inform me about the real world. For although reality-as-it-appears-to-me might differ a bit from things-as-they- really-are, it can be corrected by scientific investigation, by careful analysis and relevant investigations, by corrective lenses (i.e., eyeglasses), etc.; this gives us a distinction between “reality as it appears to us” and “a corrected version (or reality at a different level of analysis) of reality.” Both are accessible to human experience, insofar as we allow that experience to be ‘extended’ by the instruments of science, rational inquiry and analysis, technology, and so on. This common-sense distinction has nothing to do with the distinction between the world accessible to human inquiry and a ‘transcendental reality.’

At any rate, all this talk of “transcendental reality” distinct from “empirical reality” (the reality investigated by science and experienced by humans) is suspect, to say the least, unless you happen to be a Kantian or believer in transcendence of some kind.

Here’s what Richard Rorty writes concerning this distinction between “empirical reality” and “transcendental reality.”

The antirepresentationalism common to Putnam and Davidson insists, by contrast, that the notion of “theory-independent and language-independent matter-of-factual relationships” begs all the questions at issue. For this notion brings back the very representationalist picture from which we need to escape. With William James, both philosophers refuse to contrast the world with what the world is known as, since such a contrast suggests that we have somehow done what Nagel calls “climbing out of our own minds.” They do not accept the Cartesian-Kantian picture presupposed by the idea of “our minds” or “our language” as an “inside” which can be contrasted to something (perhaps something very different) “outside.” From a Darwinian point of view, there is simply no way to give sense to the idea of our minds or language as systematically out of phase with what lies beyond our skins.

I also have great trouble accepting the claim by some people that they can “climb out of their minds” to the realm of the transcendent (whether this is a philosophical, metaphysical, or mystical claim); hence, I stand with the thinking of Richard Rorty, John Dewey, William James, Hilary Putnam and Donald Davidson on this issue.

The fish-bowl analogy cited by Spanos (gotten from Hawking-Mlodinow book) is interesting, but misleading insofar as it perpetuates the inside-outside model of human experience: we are ‘inside’ looking through a lense (or window, as Spanos suggested in a previous discussion) which distorts the real nature of the ‘outside.’ There is not much of a compelling argument for this model. And the fish-bowl analogy does not offer much of a new insight to this age-old issue.

(But maybe I’m just blind and need those corrective lenses that Dr. Kant provides.)

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