THE POSSIBILITIES OF PHILOSOPHY
A preliminary problem of intellectual understanding is the relation between “object” and concept. “Object” is to be understood in a general way and may refer also to “process” or “relationship” and other general metaphysical [ontic] structurings of the world. The problem referred to is presaged by the placement of quotes: “object.” We name an object, and that does not mean that there is an object or kind of object that exists as in our understanding or concept.
Surely, when I refer to an electron
there is something there but in no sense is an electron an absolute object.
Even science, today after five centuries of reification and revolution, is
achieving the self-consciousness to appreciate the pragmatic nature of its “objects.”
Is the world a continuum? In science, a continuous description is often used
and is thought of in this or that era as paradigmatic. Within that framework,
there may be isolated discontinuities – surfaces between different media and so
on. A particle is the extreme of discontinuity, a finite mass in a point. The
particle mode of description becomes a paradigm partly because of the positive
predictions and partly because of the difficulty of the relativistic
formulation of elementary particles as continuous distributions. This is before
string or M theory which, now, permits consistent descriptions of the
elementary particles as distributions. We may assert: continuous and discrete
modeling, even at the fundamental level, have something of a hypothetical
character and the choice depends on what permits the greatest amount of
positive contributions, including unifications while providing consistency of
explanation
There is a tradition in philosophy
that does not want to contemplate the theoretical component of thought. This
characterizes both rationalism and empiricism. Rationalism attempts to avoid
the theoretical component through forms and universals; empiricism attempts to reduce
knowledge to sense data. As noted above a resolution is to eschew the
foundationalism of rationalism and empiricism; these foundationalisms are,
after all, reductions – and, from history likely untenable and unnecessary.
They stem from a desire for security which is based partly in the “desires” of
the ego and after the fact reflection on “scientific certainty.” However, an
ultimate security is to be in the flux of the world that contains, here and
there, islands of stability
What approaches may we enlist in the
search for ultimate understanding in philosophy? There are more complete though
still tentative formulations in On Mind and Metaphysics and other writings.
The formulation, here, is guided by the reflections, above, on object and
concept
Ways of
Philosophical Understanding
Abandon the reduction /
foundationalism of the tradition of rationalism / empiricism. Instead:
Appeal to the whole mind – especially
sensation or perception and thought; thought includes iconic and symbolic
thought. Although philosophy will emphasize symbolic thought [“…language is the
instrument of philosophy,” A.N. Whitehead,] it is informed in various ways –
some tacit, some based in the intrinsic nature of [human] being – by “pictures.”
Other functions are not at all excluded; these include the traditional
functions of emotion and will. Engagement of the whole being; e.g., regardless
of whether art is knowledge, art engages the whole being in relationship and
centering and that is knowledge
Analysis of language, concepts
The nature and content of philosophy
and its ways of understanding follow from the idea that philosophy is about the
whole universe, all of being and understanding, knowledge of all being.
Immediately the whole implies understanding of the noumenon; and so the
criticism of knowledge. Therefore, metaphysics, logic, epistemology; and from
conduct in the world, ethics
The connection between concept and
object was discussed above. There is no one to one relation; the relation is
not even static. As a process it is not deterministic. It is rather,
dialectical in nature. This includes the Socratic approach. Wittgenstein’s
lateral approach is also dialectical in kind
Mind and its functions – perception
and thought, symbols and language, memory, will and emotion; and its “essences”
– sentience, reference [intension], presence [awareness, conscious] are part of
the world and so also part of what is to be understood. These functions and “essences”
are, in the spirit of this section – below, part of the play; i.e. perception,
thought, emotion are received but not regarded as given. Emotion is more
obviously based in the whole being and so one road to Journey in Being,
below
More generally the categories of the
world: Being, relationship and action [process]; being and its hierarchies –
nature, society, mind and spirit, the realm of the ultimate are part of the
object; and are received but not given, are part of the play
The method of science is a form of
Socratic dialog between mind and nature. But what is called the method of
science is somewhat a fiction; the method is formulated after the fact. All
method is received not given, is part of the play. The method of science is
commonly and usefully conceived of as 1. Hypothesis, 2. Test [, and repeat.]
Hypothesis includes imagination as to the possible nature of the world in this
or that more or less special case; test includes experiment and various kinds
or levels of test for logical, conceptual consistency. But, to label
hypothesis-test, to call it the “method of science,” which it is, is to
specialize something universal, to make complex what is simple. For, without
being analyzed or named, hypothesis-test is universal – though I do not
say it forms the entire range of “method.” Hypothesis-test is the way of myth
and magic of early human – I am using that word over “man,” “human being,” or “humankind;”
it is recognized in philosophy as the speculative and the critical approaches;
it is the variation-selection process that is at the heart of biological, and
now from the work of Lee Smolin The Life of the Cosmos, 1997, physical
evolution
This approach or these approaches can
and have been used in philosophy where they are referred to as speculative and
critical philosophy. But there is no criticism without something to criticize –
speculation provides this data; and without criticism, speculation is mere
fantasy. Often, speculation has built in criticism – the form of ideas, the
experience of the thinker, the basis in various traditions; this does not
eliminate, at all, needs for independent criticism. Speculation and criticism
remain in dialectic relation. It is not as though there is a dialectic method;
rather, dialectic is, perhaps, the best name for the relation which is not one
to one, not deterministic. Now there will be various reactions to this concept
of method. Rationalism cries out for thought that is timeless; but, rationalism
alone is defunct; and, dialectic is an approach to thought that is as timeless
as we can have it; and, it is an approach not an ad hoc specification of
systems or other collections of thought. It is not only the method of science;
it is a method of all knowledge, including common and cumulative tradition; it
is a way of all being – including life and the universe. It is necessitated by
an essential tenuousness in the relation between word and object. It is refined
in a science that fathoms the depths – in time and being – of the universe.
There is no electron as an absolute object; the concept always falls short of
what is out there; and it is the most successful, empirically and conceptually
– in terms of prediction and understanding that is selected; and, perhaps,
after a period, reification sets in. Speculative-critical philosophy is an
amalgam of the major streams of philosophy. What of the anti-realist
trends, above? These may be seen as ultimate against a background
where one is demanding truth and so anxious when it is not given; or, they may
be seen as patches of understanding on the way
Ways that are unique to philosophy
Are there any ways that are unique to
philosophy? Below, some possibilities are described. The motive behind a true
method of philosophy is, sometimes, a return to timeless, certain thought.
These are sometimes referred to as “truly” or “originally” philosophical. Kant’s
transcendental method has been referred to as the first true method in philosophy;
so, sometimes, has the Socratic Dialectic. We expect, however, that these are
rather more universal and what is found in philosophy is a tailored
formalization. As an example, there is a strong similarity between the
transcendental method and what, in physics, has been called the Anthropic
Principle. Argument from effects to causes, which lies at the heart of the
scientific “method” of theory formulation, is a form of hypothesis-test, is
also similar to the Kantian transcendental analytic
I will list two candidate approaches
to timeless, certain thought. The first seeks the ideal by balancing loss of
information in generalization by abstraction; the second, the Kantian analytic,
seeks the ideal by seeking the given in the immediate and asking what this must
imply for any depth explanation, rather than seeking the given in the depth
which is the preferred ideal of science. These two approaches are “point and
counterpoint,” they balance each other; in many areas of thought they occur in
tandem. An example is
Generalization and abstraction: In formulating and criticizing a
systematic metaphysics, generalization may be balanced by abstraction to avoid
loss of certainty. Further, abstraction may introduce certainty. Consider, for
example, the assertion that the world is equivalent to nothing[ness.] If that
were true, we could deduce that there must be indeterministic processes. This
question of the fundamental problem of metaphysics has been discussed in On Mind and Metaphysics and related essays
The transcendental doctrine of method
of Kant – especially the aesthetic and the analytic of Kant: Kant asked, “What are the necessary
conditions of the very possibility of an experience [including perception,
knowledge, certainty] the formal features of which are space, time and the
categories?” Kant’s reply was, “Experience is possible only on the assumption
that the formal features formed in experience are a priori conditions
of existence.” From this point, Kant was able to answer the challenge of
Hume – to show how knowledge was possible and to give an analysis of the forms
of perception and knowledge. See Immanuel Kant, above
Wittgenstein employed this idea in
Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus. Wittgenstein argued that language must have an
atomic form and from that to an atomic formulation of the nature of the world.
Wittgenstein later abandoned this argument not as result of a deficiency of the
method but because he abandoned the independence of atomic sentences
Related to the transcendental
analytic is a delineation and study of the forms of experience: space, time,
causation, objecthood [which implies object constancy,] categoreality
The transcendental method of
Heidegger or the
second transcendental method: see Martin Heidegger
The third transcendental method or transcendental logic
Further considerations
The data of philosophy includes: the
world; that includes being and human being and its layers of being; the
civilizations and cultures of the world, and their systems of knowledge; the
Western systems: the academic disciplines as data points in themselves and for
their content
A concept of
philosophy
Above, I asked, “Can philosophy free itself
of the limitations imposed by the crisis…?”
The idea of philosophy instructing
the other disciplines with authority of being separate, foundational, and
infallible seems wrong. There is a point to the democracy of the disciplines –
it is that pure reason is not “the answer,” experience must be at least an
equal partner. But, what is philosophy? Under the sway of the traditional
academic disciplines as influenced by the culture of the individual it would
seem that philosophy is a separate discipline. That is one view of philosophy
and it is one that informs the entire debate on the nature of philosophy in the
recent period including the views of Wittgenstein, Passmore, Rorty, Nozick and
others… Under such a view it is inevitable that any attempt of philosophy to
instruct is bound to failure. And this failure, though influenced by external
factors, is necessary on grounds of limited rationality. Following is a view of
philosophy that is close to the core of [human] being. In preliminary it
accepts all foundational exercises. It locates identities and redundancies –
mere variations in expressions. It sets the exercises in opposition and where
there is conflict, it resolves and, if necessary, eliminates. It synthesizes.
It abstracts but retains the concrete in hierarchic communication with the
abstract. It expands to embrace all being in its rest and its motion
The preliminary conception is, as
stated earlier, the intellectual endeavor that seeks ultimate understanding
and knowledge
Consider, now, the intellectual [and
in what follows this will be understood to include the academic] enterprise as
a whole: in its rational and experiential modes, its imaginative and its
critical approaches. It includes what I called, above, the communal endeavor
that labors or plays under the ideal of truth. For those who have lost faith in
truth the labor is under an ideal of the full potential of human knowledge. Can
we attach a name to this? But more, we must go on beyond the sphere of the
intellectual and reflect upon the interaction between the domain of mind as
partially and imperfectly expressed in the intellectual sphere and the forward
movement of civilization and of being. That ultimate realm of being will
include basal levels at which knowledge and action are not merely interactive
but not conceptually or essentially distinct – these levels include the
organismic and the social; and it will include the level of, say, the sciences
where knowledge predicts and is confirmed by experience within the laboratory.
Knowledge – thought – is an active phase of experience; even in these non-basal
domains thought and action or knowledge and being are not merely necessarily
interactive but they do not exist without the other. Action is a tool of,
essential to all thought and philosophy – either indirectly through appeal to
experience or directly by seeking out a course or path of action in interaction
with thought
In The View From Nowhere
[1986], Thomas Nagel criticizes evolutionary epistemology as follows. The
concern of philosophy is with the ultimate, the eternal, the timeless… and
therefore an epistemology based on the history of knowledge is an
unsatisfactory epistemology
This seems to be a misreading of how
evolution and history might inform or be part of the “timeless discourse”
Compare “timeless discourse” to the “absolute
space and time” of
Earlier, I noted the obligations of
intellectual pursuit, of philosophy and of the academic tradition. In various
ways an obligation has been, de facto, the justification or founding of the
social order. Two approaches to this are as follows. An approach that may be
labeled dogmatic is to regard the social order as definite and given and
to seek its justification. An alternative approach is to seek to place the
social order within the universal. This approach would be neutral to the
distinction between criticism and justification. Further, in order to place the
movement of society within the universal stream, this alternative will require
the imaginative or speculative element, in interaction with selection through
experience and reflection, that is necessary in the absence of complete
rationality. The social order is placed in within the ultimate realm that is
revealed in-process. Such placement is a form of criticism. Such criticism
applies to all contexts including societies, individuals, disciplines, and
thought being presented here. Radical criticism by definition avoids
self-criticism and therefore is defunct [paradoxical] as a program but is a
spur to real criticism and advance. This is why I subscribe at times to a
radical criticism – especially in phases of learning and when I seek to
overcome old and established modes of thought. However, the radical criticism
is balanced by phases of speculation and construction. The constructive element
is placed in context
I referred to “That ultimate realm of
being” – it is ultimate in that it plays under the ideal of the realization of
the full potential and possibilities of the world and being. There are
obligations to or continuities with the local culture; but these are not
limitations – there is a balance between immediate and ultimate “needs.” This
ultimate realm that I have labeled [ Journey in Being | home ] can
be thought of as true philosophy
The
education of the philosopher
It may be too much to ask that a
philosopher be trained in all the disciplines – sciences, arts and humanities
and the professions – law, engineering and medicine
However, much of the disaffection
between science and philosophy and much of the self-doubt within philosophy is
due to the inability of philosophers to reflect and talk comfortably on science
– and due to the lack of appreciation of philosophical issues among scientists.
I emphasize science because it is with science that philosophy has the greatest
disaffection. It is true that there are distinctions among the disciplines and
that the distinctions are good and valid. However, those distinctions are not absolute.
There is a level at which the disciplines merge – even if the practitioners can
see only difference and detail. Similarly there is a role for those who are
comfortable with philosophy and, at least, a representative range of
disciplines. I believe, and this is brought out and argued in [ Journey in Being | home ],
that an “over-approach” is essential for real knowledge and being, will further
both science, arts and philosophy – will improve communication among the
disciplines. I believe that this should be true for any open system; it follows
essentially from [ Journey in Being | home ]
How will the requisite education
occur? The seeds must be laid at least as early as the first stages of higher
education. A number of approaches exist: dual degree programs, minor programs,
elective course content. Problems with implementation include lack of serious
content, and lack of serious intent – these, of course, are related. A
beginning might be with a small number of programs with select teachers in
selected universities. All of this would be encouraged by a different social
climate. All change in education is experimental. One cannot say with complete
honesty that such and such an approach will be a general improvement or even
achieve such and such a result. That is because of the limited powers of
rationality – whether human or divine. But one can say, “This, I tentatively
believe; and I submit the following reason.” As far as action is concerned, one
can choose between action or passivity. Action includes thought, speech, and
changes. Passivity is waiting for desired change to come about by natural
processes in the absence of human intervention
Thus the seeds to be sewn are: the
value – theoretical and practical – of an over-approach, a fully first-class
education in philosophy, and sufficient exposure and experience in a range of
disciplines. This begins in the undergraduate programs. It is something that
continues through a lifetime. This, no doubt, is why Plato suggested that
philosophy should be undertaken at the age of 50 as part of a life that
integrated academia and service. “But,” someone responds, “Plato lived about
2400 years ago, the nature of philosophy, the academic context, society was
quite different then.”
According to the American
Philosophical Organization, 8300 people in the United States held philosophy
Ph.D.’s in 1995 and 5900 of those Ph.D.’s were academically employed. From 1950
to 1994, 8076 [301 in 1994] doctoral degrees and 135739 [4691 in 1994] bachelor’s
degrees were awarded in philosophy in the
Journey in Being
Journey in Being | Home page
continues the synthesis described above and begun in A Concept of
Philosophy. The points from above include:
Appeal to
the whole mind: modes of understanding – intuition or thought and sensing or
perception
And continues to synthesize with an
appeal to the whole being
Thought
and knowledge as continuous with action – as requiring action for confirmation
and completion and as being conceptually only partially distinct from action:
repeatable experiment is not enough, living out is essential and this leads to
a systematic exploration of modes of perception and knowing; and to a system of
experiments including the life and choices of an individual and a society
I will repeat the essence of the
conclusion of A
Concept of Philosophy:
True
Philosophy
Consider the intellectual enterprise
as a whole, the sphere of intellect: rational and experiential, imaginative and
critical. It includes the communal endeavor that plays under the ideal of truth
and the full potential of knowledge. Can we attach a name to this? But more –
this is crucial, we must go on beyond intellect and reflect upon its interaction
with the forward movements of civilization and of being. That ultimate realm of
being will include primal levels at which knowledge and action are not merely
interactive but not conceptually or essentially distinct – these levels include
the organismic and the social; and it will include the levels of, say, the
sciences where knowledge predicts and is confirmed by experience within the
laboratory. Knowledge – thought – is an active phase of experience; even in
these non-basal domains thought and action or knowledge and being are not
merely necessarily interactive but they do not exist without the other. I
referred to “That ultimate realm of being” – it is ultimate in that it plays
under the ideal of the realization of the full potential and possibilities of
the world and being. There are obligations to or continuities with the local
culture; but these are not limitations – there is a balance between immediate
and ultimate “needs.” This ultimate realm [ Journey in Being | home ] can
be thought of as true philosophy
TRANSCENDENTAL
AND REAL LOGIC
I call transcendental logic the third
transcendental method because I earlier identified two others, the first
or Kant’s and the second or Heidegger’s
transcendental methods
Note that I have not here referred to
Husserl’s
Transcendental Phenomenology as a transcendental method
The third transcendental method is
transcendental logic i.e. the possibility of derivation of synthetic /
empirical proposotions by pure logic; it arose initially in Metaphysics and in Journey in Being and has been consolidated
in Journey in Being: Foundation
The foundation of this method is in
the propositions
The
only universal law is the law of contradiction: what is conceivable, thinkable,
describable without internal or external contradiction is possible
All
things may interact [a consequence of the law of contradiction;] and therefore
there is exactly one universe
What is
actual is possible [a consequence of the law of contradiction]
What is
possible is realized [law of necessity i.e. what is possible is necessary;] and
realized over and over without count [recurrence;] [all consequences of the law
of contradiction.] Consequences include: being [existence] and presence
[sentience, consciousness…] are necessary [extended fundamental problem of
metaphysics;] and there is a being whose sentience spans the separate instances
of localized being
Some consequences [see Metaphysics, Journey in Being and Journey in Being: Foundation for details]
The
void i.e. what remains when all things are removed is equivalent to every being
and to all being [laws, patterns are also things and therefore in the void
there are no laws of physics i.e. the laws of physics of the present
phase-epoch of the one universe are contingent to that phase.] There is no
possibility that is not potential within the void. The void [concept] is the
foundation of a metaphysics that is complete, has no substance as foundation,
is foundation without foundation, regresses to the void but not
Every
being is equivalent to all being [realization of this within the present
phase-epoch, unless some catalyst be identified, has abysmally low likelihood;
realization as such is certain]
Mind,
matter, becoming are at root identical; ethics is real.
The third method may be regarded as
an a way to generate an axiomatic system from a single axiom and the laws of
logic. Various systems may result from additional axioms that purport to model
the nature of our world; these would include the first and second methods. Also
included would be the variety of logics. A question that arises is “Do the laws
of logic have synthetic foundation?” or “What is the nature of the world such
that logic is possible?” This may be a starting point for the development of
theories of logic. By varying both the axioms of the third method and the
systems of logic, various axiomatic systems may result
In Journey in Being, transcendental logic is
applied to the metaphysics of being; cosmology; the nature of existence, of
categories, the problem of substance and of spirit; the nature of mind and
matter and the classical mind-matter problem
Real
Logic
It is found, in the end, in Foundation and in ‘Whereof one cannot speak…’ that simplicity reigns. The distinction between the abstract and the particular may be made in our understanding but the same understanging restores them to a common ground. We refer the reader to the referenced documents. There is one logic, one mode of being…
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