Wait, I've missed something. Why is God necessary for rationalism again?
God ensures regularity, coherence, and intelligibility. The Rationalist thought is that one can know all things through reason. For this to be the case:
- One requires Reason.
- Reality need be in accord with reason.
- Reality need be regulated, coherent, intelligible, predictable.
God ensures these things.
That is not to say that, for a rationalist, God is some big invisible man in the sky. For Spinoza, for example, God is Nature; God is the collective entirety of all things. For Leibniz, God is the guy who created all monads and built into them the pre-established harmony of all things.
So, in terms of Rationalism, think of God as an over-arching regulatory process and not some invisible jackass floating in the sky.
Initially I was confounded by the stark polarity between rationalism and empiricism, but then I realized that you guys chose to ignore the last 200 years of philosophical evolution (see what I did there?), so now all is well again.
Please continue.
The reason to ignore the past 200 years is that we get to the past 200 years one of two ways:
1) We become Kantians.
2) We ignore the Modern problem.
To 1: Kant is wrong.
To 2: Ignoring a problem is not solving a problem.
So while one could just read Plato, Aristotle, and then skip to Quine this is not a philosophically compelling manner of doing philosophy. To understand why Quine rejects the analytic-synthetic distinction one need know why there ever was an analytic-synthetic distinction. To do that one need engage the Modern Problem. Upon engaging the Modern Problem, Quine no longer functions. Because his solution to the problem is to deny the assumption of the problem.
And, as we learned in Philosophy 101, "I deny your premises" is the manner of argumentation utilized by silly geese.
CptH: This is why, again, I feel it is an error of historicism to see Rationalism as an epistemological question. Rationalism did not come about because people all of a sudden wanted clarity. Rationalism was the logical development of the new ontology of the modern world. The peripatetic worldview of the scholastics was being shattered, specifically by Copernicus. If the universe was heliocentric rather than geocentric then Aristotelianism was, for lack of a better term, fucked. You could no longer posit that all beings were a combination of composite matter and immaterial form, because philosophers were having a hell of a time explaining how a rock fell to the ground if the earth was not an absolute location. Copernicus advocated that the book of nature was written in mathematics, and that math was alone was needed to understand the physical world. Descartes picked this idea up by doing away with substantial forms and arguing that matter was known not by any "internal" concept but by extension, figure, and motion alone.
However, this itself was quite problematic. Surely the soul was not extended in any way! And what about chiliagons and God? These things, sometimes by defintion, could not take up space or be set in motion. (How would you move God?) The answer is obvious -- well these things are something categorically different than the material world which is beholden to the laws of logic and math. The Rationalists, though, wanted to apply the same rigor that they applied to the material world that they applied to the non-material world, and were not content to just say "God works in mysterious ways" and leave it at that. Thus, they needed to advance the concept of substance to make sure that the non-material existed in the same way as the material.
I take the notion of "substance' to be the central question of Rationalism. A substance is anything which can exist independently of anything else. Descartes kind of screwed himself on this one -- he says that substance is either corporeal or rational, but both of these exist only with the will of God, so only God then is the real substance. He kind of brushes it aside and says "but forget that lol" and Spinoza gets great mileage out of this, saying that matter is a mode of God under the attribute "extension" and that the mind is a mode of God under the attribute "thought.". Leibniz, sagaciously so, pointed out that "extension" alone was not enough for the discussion of matter, because then we get into the problem of infinite divisibility (Cartesion mechanics was a sort of ur-String Theory) and the problems of active and passive energy (Cartesian mechanics couldn't really explain things like a billiard ball striking another one and transferring its kinetic energy). Thus, he said that the only substance which could truly exist per se would be a simple, non-divisible, substance -- which he later came to term the monads.
Now, how we come to know these things were extremely important questions for the Rationalists, but I do not think that they were the most important questions. And the great mathematical and scientific achievements of the Rationalists -- the calculus, the groundwork for mechanics and astronomy -- were likewise not a result of their epistemic quest, but of their ontological questioning "what exists?"
That is a very interesting story, but for this to be the case one must posit into the philosophical texts a wealth of material which is not in the texts themselves. If you read The Ethics, you do not find a "zomg Copernicus" passage. Rather, Spinoza is articulating the way things are through rational deduction.
So, yes, you can posit a wealth of material into philosophical texts which are not there. But to do this one must focus upon the historical context, rather than the philosophy itself. And since we are concerned with philosophy, not history, there is no need to posit history into the text.
In the same way that you can claim "Spinoza was REALLY JUST attempting to address the problem of Copernicus because bla bla bla history" I can claim "Being and Time is simply a Nazi Manifesto, because Heidegger was a Nazi because bla bla history".
So, either we read philosophical texts as philosophical texts and ignore history, or we read philosophical texts as historical documents, beholden to their historical context.
And I'm pretty sure you of all people do not want the latter, because Heidegger was a fucking Nazi.
Wait, I've missed something. Why is God necessary for rationalism again?
God ensures regularity, coherence, and intelligibility. The Rationalist thought is that one can know all things through reason. For this to be the case:
- One requires Reason.
- Reality need be in accord with reason.
- Reality need be regulated, coherent, intelligible, predictable.
God ensures these things.
That is not to say that, for a rationalist, God is some big invisible man in the sky. For Spinoza, for example, God is Nature; God is the collective entirety of all things. For Leibniz, God is the guy who created all monads and built into them the pre-established harmony of all things.
So, in terms of Rationalism, think of God as an over-arching regulatory process and not some invisible jackass floating in the sky.
MONK #2: He speaks out of love for his friend. Perhaps that love in his heart is God!
MONK #1: Oh how convenient. A theory about God that doesn't require looking through a telescope. Get back to work!
So while one could just read Plato, Aristotle, and then skip to Quine this is not a philosophically compelling manner of doing philosophy.
Of course skipping to Quine would be a terrible idea: after all, Quine's naturalized epistemology is very silly. But fortunately Quine is not the only philosophically significant writer since Descartes. For instance, one could also read Anil Gupta's excellent "Empiricism and Experience," copywrite 2006.
And as far as I know, no one currently thinks that Spinoza's ethics is deductively sound. This is what is bizarre: you are presenting arguments from hundreds of years ago, which no one believes, as if they were a defensible position in the current philosophical landscape. It is roughly as if a person were to start a thread by explaining and defending the witches-as-human-brides-of-satan view against the witches-as-otherworldly-imps view. Look: no one thinks that witches are either way.
And, as we learned in Philosophy 101, "I deny your premises" is the manner of argumentation utilized by silly geese.
o_O
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
And as far as I know, no one currently thinks that Spinoza's ethics is deductively sound. This is what is bizarre: you are presenting arguments from hundreds of years ago, which no one believes, as if they were a defensible position in the current philosophical landscape.
I think "no one" may be too bold of a claim given the wealth of Spinoza scholarship out there.
I think the current philosophical landscape is beholden to the Modern Problem insofar as the historical development of Western philosophy (from beginning of time to present) runs through the Modern Problem. So to read Quine or Sellars absent an understanding of the Moderns would be absurd.
While "no one" may believe these arguments, contemporary philosophical discourse is beholden to them. For example, the entirety of the field of phenomenology is beholden to Kant; Kant is how the phenomenological project starts. Kant is replying to Hume, who was influenced by Locke, on whom we have commentary by Leibniz.
If we assess the assumptions upon which contemporary issues are founded, we can trace these assumptions back to the Modern project. Once we do that, we can assess these assumptions in terms of the Modern project and so discern the merits of the arguments upon which the assumptions are based.
Which is why, for example, one can refute phenomenology by stating "Hume" and walking away.
If we're going to try to update our discussion to something closer to the current state of philosophy, there's something in particular I'd like to look at. What's the current view on treating thought as merely another empirical, potentially flawed or deceptive process, instead of somehow being somehow perfect? I don't see why drawing a conclusion with your brain is somehow fundamentally different than forming an image with your eyes, and one would be significantly more reliable than the other. What's the general consensus on this?
If we're going to try to update our discussion to something closer to the current state of philosophy, there's something in particular I'd like to look at. What's the current view on treating thought as merely another empirical, potentially flawed or deceptive process, instead of somehow being somehow perfect? I don't see why drawing a conclusion with your brain is somehow fundamentally different than forming an image with your eyes, and one would be significantly more reliable than the other. What's the general consensus on this?
I would like to see the response to this, too.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
If we're going to try to update our discussion to something closer to the current state of philosophy, there's something in particular I'd like to look at. What's the current view on treating thought as merely another empirical, potentially flawed or deceptive process, instead of somehow being somehow perfect? I don't see why drawing a conclusion with your brain is somehow fundamentally different than forming an image with your eyes, and one would be significantly more reliable than the other. What's the general consensus on this?
It really depends on what you mean. I don't know anyone who thinks that you can't have confused or nonsensical thoughts, such as when you make a mathematical mistake, or have delusions and hallucinations during a high fever. So, thought is clearly imperfect and flawed insofar as that is the case. It's popular now to accept the fallibility of introspective access, which also renders your mental states empirical insofar as you can sometimes be confused about them. Nonetheless, thoughts usually aren't thought of as empirically observed, possibly because it potentially leads to an infinite regress problem: if knowing that I have a thought requires that I observe it, and my observational act is itself a thought, then doesn't that also need to be observed before I can know I've done it? And etc. to infinity.
If the questioned is aimed at drawing a perceptual analogy between the external world (which we perceive with the eyes) and logical truths (which we perceive with the brain) then it's going to get extremely controversial extremely quickly. Even if we accept a faculty of rational intuition (perception by the brain of logical truths) then there's still a basic point of disanalogy: namely, that the logical truths are all necessary truths, whereas the truths about the external world are clearly not. For instance, this tree could have grown in a different direction, but p->p could not have been false. So even if we have some faulty perceptual access to the truths, they are still of an essentially different nature.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
And as far as I know, no one currently thinks that Spinoza's ethics is deductively sound. This is what is bizarre: you are presenting arguments from hundreds of years ago, which no one believes, as if they were a defensible position in the current philosophical landscape.
I think "no one" may be too bold of a claim given the wealth of Spinoza scholarship out there.
Being a Spinoza scholar doesn't imply accepting the ethics as deductively sound.
I think the current philosophical landscape is beholden to the Modern Problem insofar as the historical development of Western philosophy (from beginning of time to present) runs through the Modern Problem.
Sure, history lessons can help you understand the modern debate. I am just asking for a clear delineation between historical claims that are being given for educational purpose and actual arguments that are meant to hold weight in the contemporary context. They are, after all, very different things.
Nonetheless, thoughts usually aren't thought of as empirically observed, possibly because it potentially leads to an infinite regress problem: if knowing that I have a thought requires that I observe it, and my observational act is itself a thought, then doesn't that also need to be observed before I can know I've done it? And etc. to infinity.
Is a observation really a form of thought? I can easily imagine a creature that can perceive the world, but not think - its perceptions trigger reflex actions, but there is no self-awareness or potential for decision-making.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
If we're going to try to update our discussion to something closer to the current state of philosophy, there's something in particular I'd like to look at. What's the current view on treating thought as merely another empirical, potentially flawed or deceptive process, instead of somehow being somehow perfect? I don't see why drawing a conclusion with your brain is somehow fundamentally different than forming an image with your eyes, and one would be significantly more reliable than the other. What's the general consensus on this?
It really depends on what you mean. I don't know anyone who thinks that you can't have confused or nonsensical thoughts, such as when you make a mathematical mistake, or have delusions and hallucinations during a high fever. So, thought is clearly imperfect and flawed insofar as that is the case. It's popular now to accept the fallibility of introspective access, which also renders your mental states empirical insofar as you can sometimes be confused about them. Nonetheless, thoughts usually aren't thought of as empirically observed, possibly because it potentially leads to an infinite regress problem: if knowing that I have a thought requires that I observe it, and my observational act is itself a thought, then doesn't that also need to be observed before I can know I've done it? And etc. to infinity.
That seems to me to be more of a sign that our standard models of thought and knowledge are fundamentally flawed. Can we really 'know' a 'fact', or are we just conjuring up signal patterns that don't have that sort of atomicity?
the questioned is aimed at drawing a perceptual analogy between the external world (which we perceive with the eyes) and logical truths (which we perceive with the brain) then it's going to get extremely controversial extremely quickly. Even if we accept a faculty of rational intuition (perception by the brain of logical truths) then there's still a basic point of disanalogy: namely, that the logical truths are all necessary truths, whereas the truths about the external world are clearly not. For instance, this tree could have grown in a different direction, but p->p could not have been false. So even if we have some faulty perceptual access to the truths, they are still of an essentially different nature.
That's something that I object to as well, it seems like you have the two backwards. Trees obey the laws of physics, and thus could never have grown any differently than they did. p->p only exists within our minds, and is only true because we say that it is true. Of course, our minds also obey the laws of physics so maybe p->p is a necessary consequence of the universe as well, but not in the sense that you intended it.
jothki on
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Nonetheless, thoughts usually aren't thought of as empirically observed, possibly because it potentially leads to an infinite regress problem: if knowing that I have a thought requires that I observe it, and my observational act is itself a thought, then doesn't that also need to be observed before I can know I've done it? And etc. to infinity.
Is a observation really a form of thought? I can easily imagine a creature that can perceive the world, but not think - its perceptions trigger reflex actions, but there is no self-awareness or potential for decision-making.
It's going to absolutely depend on how you wind up defining thought, observation, self-awareness, and so on, which is why it can be kind of hard to discuss at a high level of abstraction. There's a classic Cartesian conception, however, on which introspective access is infallible, immediate, and complete. On this conception, there is no perception without awareness, and the creature you describe would be like a slightly more animate plant. Modern philosophers tend to find this conception unpalatable, although I think in some cases unfairly so.
But in any case, the answer is probably going to heavily depend on a larger conception of the mind.
To elaborate a little on the potential regress: on the Cartesian conception, observation required the existence of a representation of the observed object in the mind. This representation, merely by virtue of being in the mind, was necessarily clear and present to you. If it weren't, and if the representation itself needed to be observed, then its observation would require another representation, whose observation would require another representation, and so on into bizzaro-land.
MrMister on
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
That's something that I object to as well, it seems like you have the two backwards. Trees obey the laws of physics, and thus could never have grown any differently than they did.
Physical necessity is standardly treated as different from logical necessity.
p->p only exists within our minds, and is only true because we say that it is true.
If you mean by those words what I mean by them, then it follows that p->p is true. But, of course, this is true whenever we use words. So it is unclear in what sense it is true "only because we say that it is true."
the questioned is aimed at drawing a perceptual analogy between the external world (which we perceive with the eyes) and logical truths (which we perceive with the brain) then it's going to get extremely controversial extremely quickly. Even if we accept a faculty of rational intuition (perception by the brain of logical truths) then there's still a basic point of disanalogy: namely, that the logical truths are all necessary truths, whereas the truths about the external world are clearly not. For instance, this tree could have grown in a different direction, but p->p could not have been false. So even if we have some faulty perceptual access to the truths, they are still of an essentially different nature.
That's something that I object to as well, it seems like you have the two backwards. Trees obey the laws of physics, and thus could never have grown any differently than they did. p->p only exists within our minds, and is only true because we say that it is true. Of course, our minds also obey the laws of physics so maybe p->p is a necessary consequence of the universe as well, but not in the sense that you intended it.
Are these laws of physics something more than a useful generalization for a group of collected phenomenon? It can be imagined that a tree, or the laws of physics themselves, behave differently. Why must the universe develop under immutable laws?
I mean, what specific instance is a "logical rule" being broken?
'Everything I say is a lie.'
Math and logic are constructs we, as thinking beings, use to try to make sense of the universe around us. Math helps us describe patterns in reality, but is not reality itself. In fact there are many places where our mathematical models break down and produce gibberish. These are know as singularities.
Reality is under no obligation to make sense to us. Luckily, what we've observed so far seems to make sense. Most of the time. Except where it doesn't.
Math is beautiful. As is logic. I can understand the temptation to ascribe mystical qualities to them.(1) In the end however, they are simply forms of language.
(1) Generally this takes the form I described above. 'Math (logic) is the universe', rather than a really useful means of describing it.
the questioned is aimed at drawing a perceptual analogy between the external world (which we perceive with the eyes) and logical truths (which we perceive with the brain) then it's going to get extremely controversial extremely quickly. Even if we accept a faculty of rational intuition (perception by the brain of logical truths) then there's still a basic point of disanalogy: namely, that the logical truths are all necessary truths, whereas the truths about the external world are clearly not. For instance, this tree could have grown in a different direction, but p->p could not have been false. So even if we have some faulty perceptual access to the truths, they are still of an essentially different nature.
That's something that I object to as well, it seems like you have the two backwards. Trees obey the laws of physics, and thus could never have grown any differently than they did. p->p only exists within our minds, and is only true because we say that it is true. Of course, our minds also obey the laws of physics so maybe p->p is a necessary consequence of the universe as well, but not in the sense that you intended it.
You've made a modal error here.
The laws of physics aren't necessary in the sense that they must be the same in all possible worlds (at the risk of Lewising all up ins). Something like ~(P&~P) is.
If you don't accept modal talk, then I would simply have to ask what you're guideline for using the words "possible" and "necessary" are
LoserForHireX on
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
What's the current view on treating thought as merely another empirical, potentially flawed or deceptive process, instead of somehow being somehow perfect? I don't see why drawing a conclusion with your brain is somehow fundamentally different than forming an image with your eyes, and one would be significantly more reliable than the other. What's the general consensus on this?
The distinction to make between rational factulties and sensory faculties regards the clarity and distinctness of that with which each faculty deals.
Take the Cartesian articulation of the manner by which sense data is obtained:
Note the "gap" between the arrow, the points on the arrow, and the pineal gland. That "gap" poses a problem regarding how it can be KNOWN that the thing perceived is TRULY mirrored in the mind. So, say you have occular sense data of a dog. Ok, cool. How do you know there is truly a dog OUT THERE which serves as a referrent for the sense data?
The reason for which reason cannot be flawed is that there is no gap between what one is and one's reasoning faculties; one is one's reasoning faculties. So, there is no epistemic gap between myself and "A is A". That which I am is that which knows "A is A".
You seem to want to construe thought and rationality to be akin to sense data. Wherein we have this system:
Empirical Data:
I
Senses
Dog
Rational Ideas:
I
Rational Faculties
Concept of Dog
That is not the articulation of being with which the rationalists deal.
Some would offer a picture like this:
I/Rational Faculties
Senses
Dog
or
I----Intuition
Ideal Forms
Wherein the continuity from I to the Ideal Form is ensured via God.
To elaborate a little on the potential regress: on the Cartesian conception, observation required the existence of a representation of the observed object in the mind. This representation, merely by virtue of being in the mind, was necessarily clear and present to you. If it weren't, and if the representation itself needed to be observed, then its observation would require another representation, whose observation would require another representation, and so on into bizzaro-land.
Right.
Which is another reason why, as Podly noted, the Rationalists are concerned with Substance. Substance prevents an infinite regress to being.
It's going to absolutely depend on how you wind up defining thought, observation, self-awareness, and so on, which is why it can be kind of hard to discuss at a high level of abstraction. There's a classic Cartesian conception, however, on which introspective access is infallible, immediate, and complete.
There definitely appears to be a "gap," as _J_ puts it above, between thought and perception. We seem to perceive our own thoughts - thoughts can arise out of nowhere ("why did I think that?") or we can have thoughts that we can't control (as in suicidal thoughts or OCD) or we can have perception without thought (as during certain forms of meditation). The idea that the self can be defined as "that which thinks" has always seemed prima facie absurd to me; it is far more accurate to define the self as "that which perceives" and thought is a process that is distinguishable from perception.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
It's going to absolutely depend on how you wind up defining thought, observation, self-awareness, and so on, which is why it can be kind of hard to discuss at a high level of abstraction. There's a classic Cartesian conception, however, on which introspective access is infallible, immediate, and complete.
There definitely appears to be a "gap," as _J_ puts it above, between thought and perception. We seem to perceive our own thoughts - thoughts can arise out of nowhere ("why did I think that?") or we can have thoughts that we can't control (as in suicidal thoughts or OCD) or we can have perception without thought (as during certain forms of meditation). The idea that the self can be defined as "that which thinks" has always seemed prima facie absurd to me; it is far more accurate to define the self as "that which perceives" and thought is a process that is distinguishable from perception.
You get into a problem of volition / will if "I" is simply that which perceives thoughts and actions. There needs to be an attachment between the "I" and thoughts, at the very least.
You seem to be relying upon pop-psychology with the "thoughts that we can't control" notion of OCD or suicide. I think the issue may be that you are equivocating "thought" and "reason" and "OCD" as all one thing. My guess is that a rationalist ontology of self, to account for OCD, would be that OCD is something which acts upon reason and so alters it.
So one is a reasoning being, one is one's capacity to reason, and OCD sort of pokes at the (I/Reason) bundle.
You're getting into articulations of ontology of self. That's fine. But you need to be far more precise in your articulations or else it's going to get hella unintelligible very quickly.
I do not want this thread to get into a "What is I" argument of numbskullery, but you seem to be going towards there by not granting the rationalist articulation of self. That's fine. But you need to give a coherent account of self rather than just say "the rationalists are silly geese".
You seem to be working off the scientifically outdated idea that consciousness is a unified thing, _J_. The brain is a variety of neurons spread over an area that communicate at a finite rate, meaning that it's impossible for the brain to be thinking about a single thing. You claim that there is no gap between ideas and consciousness, but there's necessarily a gap between consciousness and itself. How are ideas supposed to somehow transcend that gap, without ignoring everything that we consider true about physics and biology?
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
The brain is a variety of neurons spread over an area that communicate at a finite rate, meaning that it's impossible for the brain to be thinking about a single thing.
This is a non-sequitor.
And I'm unsure what "a gap between consciousness and itself" is supposed to be.
Wait, I've missed something. Why is God necessary for rationalism again?
God ensures regularity, coherence, and intelligibility. The Rationalist thought is that one can know all things through reason. For this to be the case:
- One requires Reason.
- Reality need be in accord with reason.
- Reality need be regulated, coherent, intelligible, predictable.
God ensures these things.
That is not to say that, for a rationalist, God is some big invisible man in the sky. For Spinoza, for example, God is Nature; God is the collective entirety of all things. For Leibniz, God is the guy who created all monads and built into them the pre-established harmony of all things.
So, in terms of Rationalism, think of God as an over-arching regulatory process and not some invisible jackass floating in the sky.
Okay, so for rationalism to work then regularity, coherence, and intelligibility are required. To gain this many rationalists postulate the existence of something to guarantee these three things. It appears it doesn't really matter what this thing actually is, so long as it suits the individual rationalist's belief that it can guarantee these things. I have several other issues with this:
1. The term "God" already has meanings. If you mean Nature, say Nature. If you mean "The collective entirety of all things" say "The collective entirety of all things". If you mean "A supernatural deity that answers prayers" then use "God".
2. I still don't see how the concept of "God" is rationally acquired. I will assume that you are correct and that it is necessary for rationalism to work, but is it being rationally deduced or is it simply being assumed to exist because it is believed to be required for this particularly philosophy to function?
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
There definitely appears to be a "gap," as _J_ puts it above, between thought and perception. We seem to perceive our own thoughts - thoughts can arise out of nowhere ("why did I think that?") or we can have thoughts that we can't control (as in suicidal thoughts or OCD) or we can have perception without thought (as during certain forms of meditation). The idea that the self can be defined as "that which thinks" has always seemed prima facie absurd to me; it is far more accurate to define the self as "that which perceives" and thought is a process that is distinguishable from perception.
I don't think that these are necessarily objections to infallible, immediate, and complete first-personal access. For the first-personal access to one's own mental state to be infallible, immediate, and complete, all that's required is that one always knows everything that is in one's mind. It does not require that one know why something is in one's mind ("why did I think that?"), that one can control what's in one's mind (OCD and depression), or that one's self-knowledge be explicitly verbalized (a-linguistic perception during meditation).
It's briefly worth noting, however, that in the philosophy of perception there is much debate about the correct thing to say about meditation. Namely, some philosophers (Sellars, McDowell) want to claim that perception has conceptual content always, and they have a particular story to tell about meditation, animal thought, and so on. I don't go in for this myself: I only bring it up to illustrate that there are many different ways to interpret the basic empirical phenomena (it feels funny to meditate).
Back to the original point--Descartes had some ideas about the necessity of language to thought, and those ideas probably influenced his lack of distinguishing between linguistic thought and thought more generally. But regardless, I don't think the plausibility of the Cartesian picture hinges on fudging that distinction. We can characterize the self as "that which perceives" while still insisting that our perceptions are immediately, infallibly, and completely accessible to us. So the point of the Cartesian characterization is maintained.
This is not to say that there are no other objections to this position. There are many, and, as I said, the Cartesian conception of mind is out of favor among modern philosophers. They actually tend to use it as an insult more than anything else, accusing one another of being secret Cartesians. This is not my area of specialty, but I find myself more sympathetic to the Cartesians than most (I am something of a secret Cartesian).
Reality is under no obligation to make sense to us.
How do you know this?
because there is no reason to believe that it must make sense to us
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
edited March 2010
Oh god, another philosophy thread... and it's about rationalism. How you torture me.
I'll be contributing to this after I get some sleep, thank you.
Also, quickly, Reality came to be randomly from an explosion at the beginning of time, theory wise. It came to be under no assumption that sentient life like us would arise to attempt to categorize it and try to understand it. It therefore has no obligation to prove or disprove any of our queries and will simply be.
You may now dissect.
Okay, so for rationalism to work then regularity, coherence, and intelligibility are required. To gain this many rationalists postulate the existence of something to guarantee these three things. It appears it doesn't really matter what this thing actually is, so long as it suits the individual rationalist's belief that it can guarantee these things.
"Posit" in that they recognize a rational requirement for its being, sure. And it is not as if every rationalist just makes something up to serve their purpose; they rationally thinking about that which must necessarily be.
1. The term "God" already has meanings. If you mean Nature, say Nature. If you mean "The collective entirety of all things" say "The collective entirety of all things". If you mean "A supernatural deity that answers prayers" then use "God".
Wittgenstein.
If you are operating under an absolutist notion of language such that all words have definite, discrete meanings from the beginning of time to present? You may be a bit sad when you realize that language does not work this way.
If you are at all interested in philosophy you need to recognize that philosophers use different words at different times to mean different things. Spinoza saying "God is Nature" is one of the least offensive examples of this.
2. I still don't see how the concept of "God" is rationally acquired. I will assume that you are correct and that it is necessary for rationalism to work, but is it being rationally deduced or is it simply being assumed to exist because it is believed to be required for this particularly philosophy to function?
For rationalism to work that which exists must cohere with rational thought; that which exists must be intelligible; that which exists must follow rational rules. The way rationalists ensured this was to recognize god's existence as necessary.
The question of rational deduction vs assumption is a very good one. For my part, I tend to not think they are being disingenuous assholes who simply say "zomg there is a god, fuck you" just to move on with their system. I tend to think they are genuinely engaged in these issues. So, when Descartes comes to understand the existence of God as a result of his having an idea of infinity? I tend to think that he genuinely believes that, or at least philosophically recognizes its truth.
Of course you can read any philosopher as "this fuckhead is just saying fuckheaded things for fuckheaded reasons", but that makes the whole enterprise quite...lame.
Long story short, they each have reasons for why they discern God as being what they understand God to be. And while some people hate the god word, I do not think it at all problematic once one understands that "God", in these terms, is mostly just an over-arching regulatory process to reality.
Reality is under no obligation to make sense to us.
How do you know this?
because there is no reason to believe that it must make sense to us
I am trying to think of a compelling argument to provide you. But, to me, it is so obvious that reality must be rationally intelligible that I do not know how to argue to that. It is simply a priori; shit be intelligible.
Also, quickly, Reality came to be randomly from an explosion at the beginning of time, theory wise. It came to be under no assumption that sentient life like us would arise to attempt to categorize it and try to understand it. It therefore has no obligation to prove or disprove any of our queries and will simply be.
That is, of course, one theory. It is not, however, necessarily true.
So, couple things.
1) If you are not going to grant the premises of your interlocutor, I wonder why you engage with that interlocutor.
2) If your theory of reality is not necessarily true, it seems silly to maintain that it is necessarily true or the only possible story.
Reality is under no obligation to make sense to us.
How do you know this?
because there is no reason to believe that it must make sense to us
I am trying to think of a compelling argument to provide you. But, to me, it is so obvious that reality must be rationally intelligible that I do not know how to argue to that. It is simply a priori; shit be intelligible.
I'll have to think about that.
this is an interesting crux of discussion.
i think it is overwhelmingly likely that reality is not rationally intelligible, in one of two ways:
1) we can penetrate to some depth of understanding, but never to its depths, with reason
2) we can only approximate the nature of reality with reason
there is also a third option, which is that reality, being non-rational, is irrational in a way that i cannot conceive of, because i am constrained by the limits of reason.
pods and i have discussed before how the human mind is necessarily and perhaps biologically logocentric - that is, it thinks of specific entities, of distinct beings - and that this logocentrism is in turn necessarily approximate, as can be demonstrated when it is turned against itself (which is what we see in the work of poststructuralism, to me). Reason is, i think, necessarily logocentric.
Not to pooh-pooh the thread, of course, but many of the underlying assumptions and worries are handled rather nicely in the first and second chapters of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. The middle road beyond rationalism and empiricism is known as pragmatism; there are no self-evident truths (only particularly central elements of the dominant language game), and we have experience of the world, not of ideas before the mind (Cartesian theater and all that). When a straight stick bends when we stick it into water, this does not impugn our sensory apparatus and send us into absolute skepticism; rather, it gives us a fine opportunity to discuss the refractory properties of water.
If you are at all interested in philosophy you need to recognize that philosophers use different words at different times to mean different things. Spinoza saying "God is Nature" is one of the least offensive examples of this.
"God" being a philosophical construct that is both abstract and impersonal is basically him wanting to co-opt the word "God" connotations of importance and apply it to his own definition. I still don't agree with this tactic. If he walked out of his house after doing this, and suddenly started talking about "God" like this without first giving his own definition (and assuming people would accept that definition), everyone would have been wondering what the hell he was talking about.
I understand that the meaning of words change, but usually this is a non-deliberate morphing of meaning caused by various cultural influences. Taking a word in common parlance and intentionally and deliberately giving it your own almost completely unrelated meaning is just obfuscatory.
edit: Took out the part where I said Nature doesn't mean the entirety of the universe. I can't back up what the definition of Nature was in the 1600s. However, saying "God is Nature", while maintaining that God is a philosophical abstract construct is even sillier in my eyes, because then by substitution of the words it becomes "A philosophical abstract construct is the entirety of the universe".
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God ensures regularity, coherence, and intelligibility. The Rationalist thought is that one can know all things through reason. For this to be the case:
- One requires Reason.
- Reality need be in accord with reason.
- Reality need be regulated, coherent, intelligible, predictable.
God ensures these things.
That is not to say that, for a rationalist, God is some big invisible man in the sky. For Spinoza, for example, God is Nature; God is the collective entirety of all things. For Leibniz, God is the guy who created all monads and built into them the pre-established harmony of all things.
So, in terms of Rationalism, think of God as an over-arching regulatory process and not some invisible jackass floating in the sky.
The reason to ignore the past 200 years is that we get to the past 200 years one of two ways:
1) We become Kantians.
2) We ignore the Modern problem.
To 1: Kant is wrong.
To 2: Ignoring a problem is not solving a problem.
So while one could just read Plato, Aristotle, and then skip to Quine this is not a philosophically compelling manner of doing philosophy. To understand why Quine rejects the analytic-synthetic distinction one need know why there ever was an analytic-synthetic distinction. To do that one need engage the Modern Problem. Upon engaging the Modern Problem, Quine no longer functions. Because his solution to the problem is to deny the assumption of the problem.
And, as we learned in Philosophy 101, "I deny your premises" is the manner of argumentation utilized by silly geese.
That is a very interesting story, but for this to be the case one must posit into the philosophical texts a wealth of material which is not in the texts themselves. If you read The Ethics, you do not find a "zomg Copernicus" passage. Rather, Spinoza is articulating the way things are through rational deduction.
So, yes, you can posit a wealth of material into philosophical texts which are not there. But to do this one must focus upon the historical context, rather than the philosophy itself. And since we are concerned with philosophy, not history, there is no need to posit history into the text.
In the same way that you can claim "Spinoza was REALLY JUST attempting to address the problem of Copernicus because bla bla bla history" I can claim "Being and Time is simply a Nazi Manifesto, because Heidegger was a Nazi because bla bla history".
So, either we read philosophical texts as philosophical texts and ignore history, or we read philosophical texts as historical documents, beholden to their historical context.
And I'm pretty sure you of all people do not want the latter, because Heidegger was a fucking Nazi.
But how do you know this?
MONK #2: He speaks out of love for his friend. Perhaps that love in his heart is God!
MONK #1: Oh how convenient. A theory about God that doesn't require looking through a telescope. Get back to work!
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Of course skipping to Quine would be a terrible idea: after all, Quine's naturalized epistemology is very silly. But fortunately Quine is not the only philosophically significant writer since Descartes. For instance, one could also read Anil Gupta's excellent "Empiricism and Experience," copywrite 2006.
And as far as I know, no one currently thinks that Spinoza's ethics is deductively sound. This is what is bizarre: you are presenting arguments from hundreds of years ago, which no one believes, as if they were a defensible position in the current philosophical landscape. It is roughly as if a person were to start a thread by explaining and defending the witches-as-human-brides-of-satan view against the witches-as-otherworldly-imps view. Look: no one thinks that witches are either way.
o_O
Searching the SEP, it returns 0 results for "logix," 3 results for "logices," and 140 results for "logics."
As it turns out, English doesn't always follow the pluralization rules of classical languages.
I think "no one" may be too bold of a claim given the wealth of Spinoza scholarship out there.
I think the current philosophical landscape is beholden to the Modern Problem insofar as the historical development of Western philosophy (from beginning of time to present) runs through the Modern Problem. So to read Quine or Sellars absent an understanding of the Moderns would be absurd.
While "no one" may believe these arguments, contemporary philosophical discourse is beholden to them. For example, the entirety of the field of phenomenology is beholden to Kant; Kant is how the phenomenological project starts. Kant is replying to Hume, who was influenced by Locke, on whom we have commentary by Leibniz.
If we assess the assumptions upon which contemporary issues are founded, we can trace these assumptions back to the Modern project. Once we do that, we can assess these assumptions in terms of the Modern project and so discern the merits of the arguments upon which the assumptions are based.
Which is why, for example, one can refute phenomenology by stating "Hume" and walking away.
You type that as if it were a bad thing.
I would like to see the response to this, too.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
It really depends on what you mean. I don't know anyone who thinks that you can't have confused or nonsensical thoughts, such as when you make a mathematical mistake, or have delusions and hallucinations during a high fever. So, thought is clearly imperfect and flawed insofar as that is the case. It's popular now to accept the fallibility of introspective access, which also renders your mental states empirical insofar as you can sometimes be confused about them. Nonetheless, thoughts usually aren't thought of as empirically observed, possibly because it potentially leads to an infinite regress problem: if knowing that I have a thought requires that I observe it, and my observational act is itself a thought, then doesn't that also need to be observed before I can know I've done it? And etc. to infinity.
If the questioned is aimed at drawing a perceptual analogy between the external world (which we perceive with the eyes) and logical truths (which we perceive with the brain) then it's going to get extremely controversial extremely quickly. Even if we accept a faculty of rational intuition (perception by the brain of logical truths) then there's still a basic point of disanalogy: namely, that the logical truths are all necessary truths, whereas the truths about the external world are clearly not. For instance, this tree could have grown in a different direction, but p->p could not have been false. So even if we have some faulty perceptual access to the truths, they are still of an essentially different nature.
Being a Spinoza scholar doesn't imply accepting the ethics as deductively sound.
Sure, history lessons can help you understand the modern debate. I am just asking for a clear delineation between historical claims that are being given for educational purpose and actual arguments that are meant to hold weight in the contemporary context. They are, after all, very different things.
Is a observation really a form of thought? I can easily imagine a creature that can perceive the world, but not think - its perceptions trigger reflex actions, but there is no self-awareness or potential for decision-making.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
That seems to me to be more of a sign that our standard models of thought and knowledge are fundamentally flawed. Can we really 'know' a 'fact', or are we just conjuring up signal patterns that don't have that sort of atomicity?
That's something that I object to as well, it seems like you have the two backwards. Trees obey the laws of physics, and thus could never have grown any differently than they did. p->p only exists within our minds, and is only true because we say that it is true. Of course, our minds also obey the laws of physics so maybe p->p is a necessary consequence of the universe as well, but not in the sense that you intended it.
It's going to absolutely depend on how you wind up defining thought, observation, self-awareness, and so on, which is why it can be kind of hard to discuss at a high level of abstraction. There's a classic Cartesian conception, however, on which introspective access is infallible, immediate, and complete. On this conception, there is no perception without awareness, and the creature you describe would be like a slightly more animate plant. Modern philosophers tend to find this conception unpalatable, although I think in some cases unfairly so.
But in any case, the answer is probably going to heavily depend on a larger conception of the mind.
To elaborate a little on the potential regress: on the Cartesian conception, observation required the existence of a representation of the observed object in the mind. This representation, merely by virtue of being in the mind, was necessarily clear and present to you. If it weren't, and if the representation itself needed to be observed, then its observation would require another representation, whose observation would require another representation, and so on into bizzaro-land.
Physical necessity is standardly treated as different from logical necessity.
If you mean by those words what I mean by them, then it follows that p->p is true. But, of course, this is true whenever we use words. So it is unclear in what sense it is true "only because we say that it is true."
Are these laws of physics something more than a useful generalization for a group of collected phenomenon? It can be imagined that a tree, or the laws of physics themselves, behave differently. Why must the universe develop under immutable laws?
'Everything I say is a lie.'
Math and logic are constructs we, as thinking beings, use to try to make sense of the universe around us. Math helps us describe patterns in reality, but is not reality itself. In fact there are many places where our mathematical models break down and produce gibberish. These are know as singularities.
Reality is under no obligation to make sense to us. Luckily, what we've observed so far seems to make sense. Most of the time. Except where it doesn't.
Math is beautiful. As is logic. I can understand the temptation to ascribe mystical qualities to them.(1) In the end however, they are simply forms of language.
(1) Generally this takes the form I described above. 'Math (logic) is the universe', rather than a really useful means of describing it.
You've made a modal error here.
The laws of physics aren't necessary in the sense that they must be the same in all possible worlds (at the risk of Lewising all up ins). Something like ~(P&~P) is.
If you don't accept modal talk, then I would simply have to ask what you're guideline for using the words "possible" and "necessary" are
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
The distinction to make between rational factulties and sensory faculties regards the clarity and distinctness of that with which each faculty deals.
Take the Cartesian articulation of the manner by which sense data is obtained:
Note the "gap" between the arrow, the points on the arrow, and the pineal gland. That "gap" poses a problem regarding how it can be KNOWN that the thing perceived is TRULY mirrored in the mind. So, say you have occular sense data of a dog. Ok, cool. How do you know there is truly a dog OUT THERE which serves as a referrent for the sense data?
The reason for which reason cannot be flawed is that there is no gap between what one is and one's reasoning faculties; one is one's reasoning faculties. So, there is no epistemic gap between myself and "A is A". That which I am is that which knows "A is A".
You seem to want to construe thought and rationality to be akin to sense data. Wherein we have this system:
Empirical Data:
I
Senses
Dog
Rational Ideas:
I
Rational Faculties
Concept of Dog
That is not the articulation of being with which the rationalists deal.
Some would offer a picture like this:
I/Rational Faculties
Senses
Dog
or
I----Intuition
Ideal Forms
Wherein the continuity from I to the Ideal Form is ensured via God.
How do you know this?
Right.
Which is another reason why, as Podly noted, the Rationalists are concerned with Substance. Substance prevents an infinite regress to being.
There definitely appears to be a "gap," as _J_ puts it above, between thought and perception. We seem to perceive our own thoughts - thoughts can arise out of nowhere ("why did I think that?") or we can have thoughts that we can't control (as in suicidal thoughts or OCD) or we can have perception without thought (as during certain forms of meditation). The idea that the self can be defined as "that which thinks" has always seemed prima facie absurd to me; it is far more accurate to define the self as "that which perceives" and thought is a process that is distinguishable from perception.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
You get into a problem of volition / will if "I" is simply that which perceives thoughts and actions. There needs to be an attachment between the "I" and thoughts, at the very least.
You seem to be relying upon pop-psychology with the "thoughts that we can't control" notion of OCD or suicide. I think the issue may be that you are equivocating "thought" and "reason" and "OCD" as all one thing. My guess is that a rationalist ontology of self, to account for OCD, would be that OCD is something which acts upon reason and so alters it.
So one is a reasoning being, one is one's capacity to reason, and OCD sort of pokes at the (I/Reason) bundle.
You're getting into articulations of ontology of self. That's fine. But you need to be far more precise in your articulations or else it's going to get hella unintelligible very quickly.
I do not want this thread to get into a "What is I" argument of numbskullery, but you seem to be going towards there by not granting the rationalist articulation of self. That's fine. But you need to give a coherent account of self rather than just say "the rationalists are silly geese".
I don't have enough empirical data yet.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Please forgive me: it was a terrible joke.
Love,
Podly
Dearest Poldy,
Your letter finds me well. I can only hope that your good spirits continue as well as they have thus far.
Yours always & etc.,
MrMister
This is a non-sequitor.
And I'm unsure what "a gap between consciousness and itself" is supposed to be.
1. The term "God" already has meanings. If you mean Nature, say Nature. If you mean "The collective entirety of all things" say "The collective entirety of all things". If you mean "A supernatural deity that answers prayers" then use "God".
2. I still don't see how the concept of "God" is rationally acquired. I will assume that you are correct and that it is necessary for rationalism to work, but is it being rationally deduced or is it simply being assumed to exist because it is believed to be required for this particularly philosophy to function?
I don't think that these are necessarily objections to infallible, immediate, and complete first-personal access. For the first-personal access to one's own mental state to be infallible, immediate, and complete, all that's required is that one always knows everything that is in one's mind. It does not require that one know why something is in one's mind ("why did I think that?"), that one can control what's in one's mind (OCD and depression), or that one's self-knowledge be explicitly verbalized (a-linguistic perception during meditation).
It's briefly worth noting, however, that in the philosophy of perception there is much debate about the correct thing to say about meditation. Namely, some philosophers (Sellars, McDowell) want to claim that perception has conceptual content always, and they have a particular story to tell about meditation, animal thought, and so on. I don't go in for this myself: I only bring it up to illustrate that there are many different ways to interpret the basic empirical phenomena (it feels funny to meditate).
Back to the original point--Descartes had some ideas about the necessity of language to thought, and those ideas probably influenced his lack of distinguishing between linguistic thought and thought more generally. But regardless, I don't think the plausibility of the Cartesian picture hinges on fudging that distinction. We can characterize the self as "that which perceives" while still insisting that our perceptions are immediately, infallibly, and completely accessible to us. So the point of the Cartesian characterization is maintained.
This is not to say that there are no other objections to this position. There are many, and, as I said, the Cartesian conception of mind is out of favor among modern philosophers. They actually tend to use it as an insult more than anything else, accusing one another of being secret Cartesians. This is not my area of specialty, but I find myself more sympathetic to the Cartesians than most (I am something of a secret Cartesian).
because there is no reason to believe that it must make sense to us
I'll be contributing to this after I get some sleep, thank you.
Also, quickly, Reality came to be randomly from an explosion at the beginning of time, theory wise. It came to be under no assumption that sentient life like us would arise to attempt to categorize it and try to understand it. It therefore has no obligation to prove or disprove any of our queries and will simply be.
You may now dissect.
"Posit" in that they recognize a rational requirement for its being, sure. And it is not as if every rationalist just makes something up to serve their purpose; they rationally thinking about that which must necessarily be.
Wittgenstein.
If you are operating under an absolutist notion of language such that all words have definite, discrete meanings from the beginning of time to present? You may be a bit sad when you realize that language does not work this way.
If you are at all interested in philosophy you need to recognize that philosophers use different words at different times to mean different things. Spinoza saying "God is Nature" is one of the least offensive examples of this.
For rationalism to work that which exists must cohere with rational thought; that which exists must be intelligible; that which exists must follow rational rules. The way rationalists ensured this was to recognize god's existence as necessary.
The question of rational deduction vs assumption is a very good one. For my part, I tend to not think they are being disingenuous assholes who simply say "zomg there is a god, fuck you" just to move on with their system. I tend to think they are genuinely engaged in these issues. So, when Descartes comes to understand the existence of God as a result of his having an idea of infinity? I tend to think that he genuinely believes that, or at least philosophically recognizes its truth.
Of course you can read any philosopher as "this fuckhead is just saying fuckheaded things for fuckheaded reasons", but that makes the whole enterprise quite...lame.
Long story short, they each have reasons for why they discern God as being what they understand God to be. And while some people hate the god word, I do not think it at all problematic once one understands that "God", in these terms, is mostly just an over-arching regulatory process to reality.
I am trying to think of a compelling argument to provide you. But, to me, it is so obvious that reality must be rationally intelligible that I do not know how to argue to that. It is simply a priori; shit be intelligible.
I'll have to think about that.
That is, of course, one theory. It is not, however, necessarily true.
So, couple things.
1) If you are not going to grant the premises of your interlocutor, I wonder why you engage with that interlocutor.
2) If your theory of reality is not necessarily true, it seems silly to maintain that it is necessarily true or the only possible story.
3) Sense data is uncertain.
this is an interesting crux of discussion.
i think it is overwhelmingly likely that reality is not rationally intelligible, in one of two ways:
1) we can penetrate to some depth of understanding, but never to its depths, with reason
2) we can only approximate the nature of reality with reason
there is also a third option, which is that reality, being non-rational, is irrational in a way that i cannot conceive of, because i am constrained by the limits of reason.
pods and i have discussed before how the human mind is necessarily and perhaps biologically logocentric - that is, it thinks of specific entities, of distinct beings - and that this logocentrism is in turn necessarily approximate, as can be demonstrated when it is turned against itself (which is what we see in the work of poststructuralism, to me). Reason is, i think, necessarily logocentric.
I understand that the meaning of words change, but usually this is a non-deliberate morphing of meaning caused by various cultural influences. Taking a word in common parlance and intentionally and deliberately giving it your own almost completely unrelated meaning is just obfuscatory.
edit: Took out the part where I said Nature doesn't mean the entirety of the universe. I can't back up what the definition of Nature was in the 1600s. However, saying "God is Nature", while maintaining that God is a philosophical abstract construct is even sillier in my eyes, because then by substitution of the words it becomes "A philosophical abstract construct is the entirety of the universe".