Month: August 2020

entry 31

Philosophical training as the taming/tempering of the feeling of being convinced* by an argument:

Through a long process of repeatedly studying arguments, feeling convinced by them and then each time realising that there is an equally convincing (and rational) counter-argument, the threshold for being convinced gradually rises and one feels less and less convinced by rational arguments. At the end, only a perfect argument [, which has the character of direct, visual understanding,] elicits the feeling of being convinced.

That is maybe the central training/disciplining of rational thinking, and the central learning technique of philosophical training. It disciplines rationality in that it teaches one the limitations and pitfalls of rationality – of analysis by [logical] argumentation – it balances the radical ambitions of abstract analysis, instilling humility into the thinker who wants to attempt abstraction of the world – especially by means of argumentative analysis of ideas.

This practice leads to a gradual increase of the degree to which one is intuitively careful, skeptical and critical toward the tools of logical/abstract/rational analysis/argumentation themselves – a kind of meta-criticism or meta-criticalness. And, importantly, this resulting reflective skeptical stance toward rationalistic, abstract criticism somewhat ironically has the effect of gradually opening the mind, as it makes one slower to dismiss an idea that one has counter-arguments to! This is maybe the dialectic extreme/final limit/end of rationality.

– [Paranoid/simplistic] conspiracy theorists lack this training & ability, whilst also being very open-minded [by natural pre-disposition], and thus their open minds are too easily and quickly filled/satisfied by [non-perfect] argumentation (maybe argumentation that is critical of some mainstream position and that suggests some non-mainstream idea) – their minds are quickly, suddenly filled by a huge, un-tempered feeling of convincedness – a feeling they aren’t trained to handle and have no reason to question.


*re. ‘the feeling of being convinced’: To me this is one of the most useful concepts and most important phenomenal/experiential elements of the practice of philosophy. In more detail, what I mean by this: I mean a feeling in the sense of the sort of phenomenon/experience that one also calls an intuition. And I mean a feeling that appears/happens at some point while one is studying/receiving an argument/line of reasoning: at some point, while studying an argument, one starts to feel convinced, or notices that one feels convinced. I’m suggesting a non-rational or irrational, intuitive component to the practice of studying, reading and judging arguments – which is of course at-odds with the normal view of the study and judgement of arguments being an entirely rational process that entirely corresponds to philosophical, abstract theories of logic/of the structure of arguments. Supporting this view that there is always a non-rational, intuitive component to the enterprise of logical analysis is a matter for a later entry.

entry 30

The following analysis attempts to explain a very broad trend among philosophers [and in philosophy-related discussion] of using ‘idealism’ slightly negatively – tending to identify certain naive & absurd worldviews and associate them with idealism – and tending to then, as a theoretical/rational consequence of their opposition to such worldviews, label themselves as materialists or realists:

on how, paradoxically, philosophers on both [main] sides of the question of the status of reality see the other side as idealistic

 

From one perspective, which could be called the perspective of a [naive-]realist,

When someone claims that one’s reality, and in particular familiar, every-day, macroscopic things/objects, is/are a product of mind/theory, then this claim seems idealist. Firstly, it amounts to the claim that reality is not independent of the subject, i.e. is subjective. Furthermore, due to the fact that to a realist, reality is necessarily co-extensional with the totality of the cosmos and nature, it seems to also amount to idealism, i.e. to the view that the whole cosmos – everything that exists or is or will be true or factual – somehow consists of ideas and is determined by consciousness/mind. (- which seems absurd)

Meanwhile, from another perspective, which could be called the perspective of a philosophical realist/dialectic realist/non-realist,

The realist’s belief that their reality is objective and ultimate – when in truth it is a structure of experiences that is/are contingent on a particular set of ideologies/theories/worldviews interacting, through the person, with nature – is naive and idealistic: It amounts to a failure to make a conceptual or ontological distinction between a) our ideas’ manifestations/consequences and b) the [as-yet-unknown] totality/fabric/structure/truth of nature/cosmos.

 

 

To a non-realist/dialectical realist, anyone’s reality is, at all levels of interpretation and observation, inextricable from that person’s ideas, theory, ideology, mind.

We don’t know that the entities we posit in our realities truly correspond to anything [in absolute reality/nature]. Much rather, we know that the entities we posit are preliminary results of an evolutionary, dialectic process of humanity’s (and in general life’s) reciprocal interaction with environment. And we don’t know whether there may be whole areas/dimensions that cannot [yet] be encompassed by our current reality’s languages, worldviews, mindsets, theories, concepts and natural interpretations/perceptions.

Furthermore, no person’s reality* can reach the numinous Ding-an-Sich (Kant), nor reach its ineffable Real (Lacan).

A realist doesn’t notice the conceptual difference between a) [the concept of] reality, or more specifically the realist’s own world (which is the world that the person sees/believes in, as mediated through abstractions that fit observation), and b) [the concept of] whatever may lie outside, behind, beyond or under what we call or think of as reality. This distinction is simply not made. Even if the difference is noticed, it is ignored due to impracticality, and [thus] doesn’t affect the realist’s worldview. Or in other words, a realist doesn’t take into account their own mind’s fallibility and incompleteness: the realist at the same time a) takes reality to be total/absolute and b) calls their own [incomplete and fallible] world ‘reality’…

  • This idea – this prima-facie balance of two opposing ways of relating to ‘idealism’ or two ways of integrating the concept of idealism into one’s conceptual structure – forms/constitutes a philosophically central dialectic, or at least its starting position.
  • This idealism paradox is related to the subject-object paradox: That any object is, ironically, necessarily dependent on a subject, as every object is an object to or of a subject. Without such a subject in whose world the object is posited and thus exists, the object would just be whatever it is apart from being some subject’s object…which is ineffable! And so, objects are, one could say, subjective… and thus it is again (to me/to a dialectical anti-realist) idealistic to treat objects, or things, as being independent of ourselves.
  • The impracticality of distinguishing between reality and whatever lies beyond reality starts right at the most theoretical, abstract level: One side of the distinction is, ultimately, ineffable [at any point in time]. And, under rationalism, one avoids discussing the ineffable… And thus the practice of rationalism leads to, or at least strongly suggests, realism. Or, to put it in a way that may seem problematic to a rationalist and to a realist: Rationalism, in practice, has ontological consequences! Namely, through eschewing the ineffable, one automatically only allows a subset of all [conceptually/philosophically] possible ontologies: those that are narrowed around that which is currently speakable, and thus narrowed around that which is part of currently mainstream/dominant ideology/language, ontologies that conform to [current] reality.

*note: I am using ‘reality’ as a particular.  For the reasons listed in this note, I primarily see reality as a particular, but, to be complete, and to already move towards a next step in this dialectic, I am open to there being 2 types of reality: particular and total. I.e. maybe totality is itself a reality, the extreme/limit case of reality.

entry 29

note from 2019

astrology* – astronomy as an example for a (general) relationship between pseudoscience and science:

The 2 always go hand-in-hand: A science is naturally accompanied by and followed by [development of] a corresponding pseudo-science. Such a pseudo-science is the natural attempt of all people (which includes people less  literate in the science) to expand and re-interpret a theory [in such a way as] to include theorems in domains of [personal] interest/import.

*contemporary

edit sept 2022: I now realise that this note was wrong in a very obvious way – it’s incompatible with the history of astrology and astronomy. But I’ll leave it here to show that I stand by the right to make stupid mistakes – which maybe follows from the realisation of the infinite fallibility one has as someone who of course doesn’t have total understanding – the thought I have now as someone looking back on past stupidity may oneday itself be looked back on in this way, I have no [epistemic] way of judging that at this moment, as I am not judging my ideas against the totality, as, again, I don’t understand the totality. So I just keep thinking.

Anyway, more recently I had thought something like this about pseudo-science or things like modern astrology: Modern pseudo-sciences may arise by a 2 phase process of which the first phase is normal modern science, which includes both an empirical aspect and an abstract-mathematical aspect, and the second phase is someone taking the theory produced by the first phase and exploiting its inevitable incompleteness by expanding the theory in directions that ones intuitions.

entry 28

meta-philosophical suspicion/hypothesis:

When philosophers (such as Richard Rorty and Paul Feyerabend) criticize contemporary philosophy through radical questioning of the legitimacy/foundations of epistemology (Erkenntnistheorie) – epistemology being right at the heart of philosophy – I think what they are truly attacking isn’t exactly epistemology in general, but instead specifically rationalist epistemology. And thus, despite providing cogent critiques of contemporary philosophical tradition, the negative conclusions that they draw on philosophy in general are too broad/general.

There is a trend of self-abasement in philosophy: of philosophers arguing that philosophy itself is a misguided, counter-productive and over-valued tradition/under-taking. In particular philosophy as an abstract tradition and philosophy as essentially epistemology. In this context, both Feyerabend and Rorty regularly draw connections to rationalism, e.g. to trends originating with Descartes or with pre-Socratics – their criticisms are made largely within contexts of identifying historical & theoretical consequences of various forms of rationalism. But they fail to reach the conclusion that this rationalistic form of philosophy which they criticize is of course contingent on whether philosophers operate within rationalism.The contents of their criticisms suggest that the epistemologies/philosophies they criticize are not the only possible/potential forms of philosophy…

And while I agree with their criticisms, I think that their criticisms are in fact themselves epistemology: they are epistemological, or meta-epistemological*, discussions and criticisms of rationalistic epistemologies! Their detailed, philosophical, critical exploration of the flaws of certain contemporary theories of and assumptions about knowledge are exactly what epistemology truly is! And indeed, this is philosophy.

*To me, it is relevant that a meta-level is involved, that the writings I have in mind are philosophy of epistemology. And, at the same time, I think a philosophical epistemology is one that includes – or rather appears only together with an attempt at – the next meta-level… And this goes for any topic or discipline… And this maybe a key distinction to rationalistic epistemology: that rationalistic epistemology is without the meta-level, presenting itself as an abstraction that is simply true in a vacuum. And this is anti-philosophical.

entry 27

from the 2nd quarter of 2019, a new metaphor for mind that needs some further work

Consciousness/experience* (and/or thought) produced by a brain/mind is a liquid pooling on a surface, first forming in tiny droplets like condensation, and continuously spreading if left unchecked by sober/rational mechanisms that stop the pool’s growth. If unchecked, the pooling consciousness eventually touches and joins a surrounding ocean… An island in an ocean, the island’s shores keeping the ocean out and the island a dry, safe, enduring haven and platform, and somewhere on or in the island is a freshwater spring. The spring continuously produces water, and this water gives rise to its own biology and micro-climate, while the geology of the island insulates the spring water from the ocean. A normal human’s mind is, whilst sober, isolated from the outside, from other consciousness, but with the ability and potential to modulate and expand consciousness, intentionally or unintentionally, and to unforeseeable extent with unknown outcomes. Right now I prefer the simpler form/level of the metaphor – the liquid appearing on a surface and merging – despite being more abstract and less thorough than the idea/picture of the island in the ocean.

A related metaphor was introduced somewhat famously by Aldous Huxley: that the brain is a ”reducing valve”*. I’m suggesting that the individual brain/mind isn’t itself purely eliminative of consciousness – instead the brain/mind produces consciousness – it is one source of consciousness – while processes of sobriety/rationality perform the function of a reducing valve on the material produced by the brain/mind.

Both the metaphor of Huxley and its logical relationship to mine maybe unclear for the reader at this point. Before I go into more detail on Huxley’s writing, I suggest the difference between our two views maybe manifests in this difference on the level of the island metaphor: for me, the brain/mind is identified with something complex that is made out of and/or fed by the freshwater spring, while the insulating shore of the island that keeps the ocean away is external to the brain/mind, whereas to Huxley, the brain/mind directly receives the ocean, and the insulating shore of the island is identified with the sober/rational brain/mind processes.

Huxley writes that he tends to agree that ”[…]the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of […] perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain […] is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that […] selection which is likely […] useful.”*** And that each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. […] Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain […]. What comes out […] is a measly trickle[…]. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has […] those symbol systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. ****

Based on these passages I think it’s clear that Huxley thinks the source of our consciousness/experience is the universal mind, i.e. the universal Mind at Large is provided to the individual brain as material to shape/work with – and with our individual brain/mind performing a function of reduction/elimination on this received universal consciousness. So our brain/mind’s function is first passive reception of mind and then [negative/critical] reduction of mind.

Meanwhile, I think the individual brain/mind starts not with received universal consciousness/Mind at Large, but with much less: maybe just a tiny spark of consciousness that may be produced entirely by the brain itself or may be the brain’s permanent – albeit tenuous and astonishing – connection to universal consciousness. And that the evolved body/mind performs operations on this spark that shape it into all the forms of consciousness that biological life has and experiences, potentially growing and expanding until it [re-]connects to other or universal consciousness. (stated more directly in terms of a kind of spiritual cosmology)

 

*In this context, ‘consciousness’ and ‘experience’ are synonymous.

**see Huxley’s short book The Doors of Perception (1954)

***Italics indicate me quoting the book, and within the quoted passages Huxley was quoting and agreeing with a passage attributed to a Dr. C. D. Broad of Cambridge.

****from p.8 of the 2011 edition by Thinking Ink. Huxley connects the quoted sections to succinct critical epistemological comments that I recommend and think fit perfectly with Feyerabend’s philosophy – especially criticism of what I would currently call rationalist epistemology.

entry 26

This concerns philosophical discussions of the mind-body distinction and of the nature, concept and definition of consciousness & mind:

It maybe noteworthy that when more rationalistic philosophers, e.g. Karl Popper, are trying to define or explicate a notion of consciousness/mind for the purposes of a discussion/argumentation, they tend to emphasize sense-of-self as the defining or essential feature of consciousness/mind & de-emphasize actual qualia. (Which means they de-emphasize/ignore the concept that most directly and simply refers to subjective experience and the contents of consciousness in general – in favour of something more abstract.)

This maybe a consequence of the rationalistically stunted/inhibited introspection/vision of such thinkers: They fail to notice that one doesn’t actually see* a self – that self is a less concrete, more abstract entity, and that a sense of self is a very complicated basis for definition, as it is just an intuition/feeling of something that is already abstract and complex – unlike the more direct contents/constituents of consciousness, such as colours in a dream, which one does see. And the stunting of this kind of introspection or of introspective visual intuition occurs as follow:

Rationalists systematically ignore, neglect, devalue, inhibit, repress, and dismantle their intuition;**

then they destroy their understanding/idea of intuition;

then, in this new world where intuition is a broken and thus useless tool, they use just-based-on-an-intuition as an argumentative/rhetorical tool against opposing ideas, especially ones that clash with a rationalistic worldview.

*this can, theoretically, be generalized beyond the visual, but seeing suffices for the purposes of these points, and generalizing to something like perception in general to includes things like smells and tastes is counter-productively difficult because the notion of perceiving/perception is, in current philosophical discourse, too broken and confused.

**Taking intuition seriously/sincerely is antithetical to rational method/thinking, and intuitions are treated as something irrational and primitive that should be handled from the outside and treated with suspicion.