I was fairly lucky in the start of my philosophical studies because I studied Social Ethics in Lancaster, and it covered many different areas of philosophy, — Jack Cummins
When I was moving last year one of my flatmates suggested I should throw my books in the bin. But, I am glad that I moved a significant portion of them because that was just before I found this site. — Jack Cummins
I think it we live in a society which values cars, houses and is extremely materialistic. But, I do believe that there are many people who do not really hold on to materialistic values, but often they are probably isolated. I believe that we live in a very fragmented culture. — Jack Cummins
What you are saying, and Hadot's book does sound interesting because I think that we probably do need some kind of exercising of our minds or consciousness to understand reality. I am sure that this goes beyond all reading, even though it is worth reading books to see how others have found answers. However, the answers about the ultimates of reality are not actually in the books themselves, but have to be found in our consciousness — Jack Cummins
Elaborate on this. 'Speculation and concept-(re)creating/problematizing', while at best grounded in sciences and lived experiences, already extend further than these grounds. What else do you have in mind?My own view is that philosophy needs expanding ... in order to embrace the whole dimension of living experience. — Jack Cummins
1. Reality
If you ask me, 'How do you know it's a real stick?' 'How do you know it's really bent?' ('Are you sure he's really angry?'), then you are querying my credentials or my facts (it's often uncertain which) in a certain special way. In various special, recognised ways, depending essentially upon the nature of the matter which I have announced myself to know, either my current experiencing or the item currently under consideration (or uncertain which) may be abnormal, phoney. Either I myself may be dreaming, or in delirium, or under the Influence of mescal, &c.: or else the item may be stuffed, painted, dummy, artificial, trick, freak, toy, assumed, feigned, &c.: or else again there's an uncertainty (it's left open) whether I am to blame or it is-mirages, mirror images, odd lighting effects, &c.
These doubts are all to be allayed by means of recognised procedures (more or less roughly recognised, of course), appropriate to the particular type of case. There are recognised ways of distinguishing between dreaming and waking (how otherwise should we know how to use and to contrast the words?), and of deciding whether a thing is stuffed or live, and so forth. The doubt or question 'But is it a real one?' has always (must have) a special basis, there must be some 'reason for suggesting' that it isn't real, in the sense of some specific way, or limited number of specific ways, in which it is suggested that this experience or item may be phoney. Sometimes (usually) the context makes it clear what the suggestion is : the goldfinch might be stuffed but there's no suggestion that it's a mirage, the oasis might be a mirage but there's no suggestion it might be stuffed. If the context doesn't make it clear, then I am entitled to ask 'How do you mean? Do you mean it may be stuffed or
what? What are you suggesting?' The wile of the metaphysician consists in asking 'Is it a real table?' (a kind of object which has no obvious way of being phoney) and not specifying or limiting what may be wrong with it, so that I feel at a loss 'how to prove' it is a real one.' It is the use of the word 'real' in this manner that leads us on to the supposition that 'real' has a single meaning ('the real world' 'material objects'), and that a highly profound and puzzling one. Instead, we should insist always on specifying with what 'real' is being contrasted - 'not what' I shall have to show it is, in order to show it is 'real': and then usually we shall find some specific, less fatal, word, appropriate to the particular case, to substitute for 'real'.
Knowing it's a 'real' goldfinch isn't in question in the ordinary case when I say I know it's a goldfinch: reasonable precautions only are taken. But when it is called in question, in special cases, then I make sure it's a real goldfinch in ways essentially similar to those in which I made sure it was a goldfinch, though corroboration by other witnesses plays a specially important part in some cases. Once again the precautions cannot be more than reasonable, relative to current intents and purposes. And once again, in the special cases just as in the ordinary cases, two further conditions hold good:
(a) I don't by any means always know whether it's one or not. It may fly away before I have a chance of testing it, or of inspecting it thoroughly enough. This is simple enough: yet some are prone to argue that because I sometimes don't know or can't discover, I never can.
(b) 'Being sure it's real' is no more proof against miracles or outrages bf nature than anything else is or, sub specie humanitatis, can be. If we have made sure it's a goldfinch, and a real goldfinch, and then in the future it does something outrageous (explodes, quotes Mrs. Woolf, or what not), we don't say we were wrong to say it was a goldfinch, we don't know what to say. Words literally fail us: 'What would you have said?' 'What are we to say now?' 'What would you say?' When I have made sure it's a real (not stuffed, corroborated by the disinterested, &c.) then I am not 'predicting' in saying it's a real goldfinch, and in a very good sense I can't be proved wrong whatever happens. It seems a serious mistake to suppose that language (or most language, language about real things) is 'predictive' in such a way that the future can always prove it wrong. What the future can always do, is to make us revise our ideas about goldfinches or real goldfinches or anything else.
Perhaps the normal procedure of language could be schematized as follows. First, it is arranged that, on experiencing a complex of features C, then we are to say 'This is C' or 'This is a C'. Then subsequently, the occurrence either of the whole of C or of a significant and characteristic part of it is, on one or many occasions, accompanied or followed in definite circumstances by another special and distinctive feature or complex of features, which maces it seem desirable to revise our ideas: so that we draw a distinction between 'This looks like a C, but in fact is only a dummy, &c.' and 'This is a real C (live, genuine, &c.)'. Henceforward,we can only ascertain that it's a real C by ascertaining that the special feature or complex of features is present in the appropriate circumstances. he old expression
'This is a C' will tend as heretofore to fail to draw any distinction between 'real, live, &c.' and 'dummy, stuffed, &c.' If the special distinctive feature is one which does not have to manifest itself in any definite circumstances (on application of some specific test, after some limited lapse of time, &c.) then it is not a suitable feature on whch to base a distinction between 'real' and 'dummy, imaginary, &c.' All we can then do is to say 'Some Cs are and-some aren't, some do and some don't: aid it may be very interesting or important whether they are or aren't, whether they do or don't, but they're all Cs, real Cs, just the same'.' Now if the special feature is one which must appear in (more or less) definite circumstances, then 'This is a real C' is not necessarily predictive: we can, in favourable cases, make sure of it. — J. L. Austin
So it's really information , and not a chair? But at the same time it is a chair?
Can't it really be a chair, and (assuming your comments about CERN are correct...) really be information and energy? — Banno
48. Let us apply the method of §2 to the account in the Theaetetus. Consider a language-game for which this account is really valid. The language serves to represent combinations of coloured squares on a surface. The squares form a chessboard-like complex. There are red, green, white and black squares. The words of the language are (correspondingly) “R”, “G”, “W”, “B”, and a sentence is a sequence of these words. Such sequences describe an arrangement of squares in the order
[three-by-three grid numbered one to nine]
And so, for instance, the sentence “RRBGGGRWW” describes an arrangement of this sort:
Here the sentence is a complex of names, to which a complex of elements corresponds. The primary elements are the coloured squares. “But are these simple?” a I wouldn’t know what I could more naturally call a ‘simple’ in this language-game. But under other circumstances, I’d call a monochrome square, consisting perhaps of two rectangles or of the elements colour and shape, “composite”. But the concept of compositeness might also be extended so that a smaller area was said to be ‘composed’ of a greater area and another one subtracted from it. Compare the ‘composition’ of |24| forces, the ‘division’ of a line by a point outside it; these expressions show that we are sometimes even inclined to conceive the smaller as the result of a composition of greater parts, and the greater as the result of a division of the smaller.
But I do not know whether to say that the figure described by our sentence consists of four or of nine elements! Well, does the sentence consist of four letters or of nine? a And which are its elements, the types of letter, or the letters? Does it matter which we say, so long as we avoid misunderstandings in any particular case?
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