July 2020 – A philosopher's notes and thoughts

entry 25

2 very different interpretations/versions of dualism, i.e. of distinctions between the extended, material reality/objects and the mental reality/objects and of questions of the type:

Why should it be that how something feels cannot be identified with any physical property?(*, **)

To an analytic philosopher, this is a problem of how to [correctly] connect/relate certain symbols/words/terms (‘feel’, ‘experience’, ‘physical property’, ‘material object’, etc.) to a domain of reference, which is the pre-existing domain of external, objective reality.

Whereas, alternatively, it is instead an analysis of the concept of experience vs the concept of physical property – and an analysis of the relation between these 2 concepts.

In other words, the prior is an analysis of relations between symbols and a pre-defined domain of reference, i.e. pre-supposing a certain reality –

while the latter is an analysis of relations between two sets of ideas/concepts, entirely independently of domain of reference, i.e. before defining the properties of the reality to which the ideas are applied…

Or, put even more radically or critically: the prior is simply a question of how to define words to make them fit a given worldview – which is a technical, not a philosophical endeavour,

whereas the latter approach tries to discover and see the full idea under each of the two terms/words, because it leaves open the possibility that these ideas – which each are positive result of a long historical development and are each extremely important and central to many (different) people and traditions – may, if treated respectfully, be impetus/fuel/tools for doubting and developing our worldview/reality. That is philosophy.

*In this particular wording, the question and dualism is discussed in Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979 Princeton University Press)

** put differently: Are terms/words/ideas regarding subjective experience necessary, or can one fully cover/capture subjective experience with the terms/concepts that are called ‘physical’ in the cosmology/language of adherents to mainstream science/reality.

entry 24

a key concept/lesson in [philosophical] ethics

the catastrophic confusion between 2 types of *should*:

type I: as in expressing an ideal

type II: as in expressing a concrete duty or prescription in a concrete, practical situation of action/decision

A person’s actual behaviour and decisions can only theoretically conform to the ideal, because in reality, they are restricted – by reality, i.e. by the constraints imposed both by the nature of the individual person and of the reality in which the person is acting.

When actions and ideals don’t fit each other, which they practically never do, then confusing these two types of *should* leads to disappointment on the level of personal morality, judgement and psychology, and to systemic error on the level of inter-personal judgement and abstract ethical theory.

Ideals are something to strive or long towards, guiding practical action, not precisely determining and judging it.* Ideals are something to think about speculatively or abstractly. Ideals can be as general as basic deontological principles such as a principle of dignity or human rights. They can also be less theoretical and pertain to specific behaviour or action, permitting or prohibiting a general action or inaction of more or less specificity, such as don’t do anything that causes harm to other lifeforms, or, even more specifically, something like never resort to physical violence in a moment of anger.

And on the other hand, there is actual action, which is always a particular external and internal behaviour, and always exists in a unique practical situation. Factors that restrict an agent’s ability to match action to ideal: awareness of facts and relations relavant to a behaviour/action; the actor’s physical, mental and personal faculties in the precise moment; the person’s economic, material, social means; the person’s position within structures and systems of culture, society, reality, etc….

– In German, some philosophers utilize the difference between the two verb forms ‘soll’ and ‘sollte’: one can use ‘soll’ to indicate a concrete duty/prescription and ‘sollte’ to indicate expression of an ideal. This can be helpful, but doesn’t stop the confusion, as it is systemic:

The confusion is a systemic and often over-looked feature of rationalistic ethics, and by ‘rationalistic’ ethics I mean abstracting and generalizing actions out from their real-world, practical, particular context to the degree where one can consider the action in a vacuum** to enable manageable analysis/discussion. In other words, the unfathomable complexity of a real human acting and behaving within the constraints of themself and the real world are systematically ignored to enable analysis.

And all this makes the relevance of analysis to practical life and morality very questionable. And indeed, when philosophers are discussing ethics, speculating about what one *should* do, they often fall into over-looking this difference and taking their abstract speculations as exactly relevant to practical life. And not just philosophers, but also normal people who live under mainstream rationalist ideology that says that one’s actions should be in line with rational principles of action and that cool-headed, rational calculation/speculation should ultimately judge action.

* In a moment of reflection, one can remind oneself of an ideal, calling it into mind or imagining it whilst questioning how ones concrete actions and decisions align with this ideal, and then trying to re-align ones concrete plans and judgements with the ideal. (This is of course an endlessly difficult practical aspect of life, not something for a philosopher to solve – although many so-called philosophers think they can)

** with a much reduced number of relata of the predicate, logically speaking

entry 23

More precisely than saying that [the goal of] philosophy is correct simplification:

[The goal of] Philosophy is simplification without [any] loss of meaning.

This is uncompromising, as opposed to abstraction/thought that is performed in the service of practical goals, which accepts some loss of meaning in exchange for expedience, i.e. to be useful for the purposes of ordinary science problems* or practical problems, abstract thought has to fit both into time-constraints and into the worldview/reality/ideology in which the problems exist/are formulated.

*as opposed to revolutionary phases of science in the sense of Kuhn and co.