That it is a “false” narrative does not explain why Plato, Descartes, Kant, Positivism, etc. got sucked into it (belief or opinion vs knowledge; appearance vs reality; the thing-in-itself; only either true or false). That is what Witt is investigating. — Antony Nickles
This is a tough one, because it’s easy to dismiss Descartes as delusional or paranoid. The particular instance is not as important as the fabrications that create it, which is not the automaton, but turning our human limitations into a problem, here, only seeing “appearance” because we want to have the certainty of “reality”, when the desire is in reaction to the fear that, in fact, sometimes we don’t know whether someone is lying; that their judgments, their decisions, etc. can exist but be unexpressed; that we may be wrong about them, to trust them, to give our love to them. — Antony Nickles
Finding yourself in the grip of skepticism is also tricky (even accepting its truth) because we don’t see that: imagining we live without it (as part of the human condition) or have solved it, is to still be in its snare. — Antony Nickles
Or it's because the sensation I have when I stab myself in the arm is unlike the sensation you have when you stab yourself in the arm, and so our pains are not the same and we don't know one another's pain. — Michael
The way I see those, is they are all different and often self-referential and contained frameworks that don't all have to do with exactly "certainty" in the same way say, that a scientific experiment or a math problem is "certain". — schopenhauer1
What they have in common is a construction or positive idea about reality. — schopenhauer1
I'm not sure what this is saying either. Indeed it is good to be skeptical and try to figure out the world or not I suppose. — schopenhauer1
They share the desire and thus create and impose a criteria or standard that is like the idea they have of science or math. Thus why Plato discusses math first in the Theatetus, and Descartes wants to be beyond doubt, and Kant requires the imperative. — Antony Nickles
Maybe the way to put this is that equating our pains is not how pain is important to us. If this situation actually did happen, what would matter to us about comparing pains would be attending to one or other of us. Philosophy abstracts this discussion to a place of equating pains, and then creates “sensation” as a kind of object, rather than just me expressing how I feel (which is too vague), so that knowledge might stand in the place of our having to react to someone in pain. What it wants is to be sure of the other person (and what to do), and not have to make the leap of faith of treating them as a person in pain. — Antony Nickles
Descartes is taking a pretty common sense position that I cannot LITERALLY know what the other person is thinking inside, but I can judge them to be feeling similar to me. So I don't see the big deal about certainty you (Witt?) is making there. — schopenhauer1
One point I think Witt is making is that taking our world as, say, mitigated by “appearance” or “belief” is to exactly take a negative view of our ordinary means of seeing and communicating and judging. As if we are never connected to the world, instead of only sometimes not knowing our way about. They in a sense kill the world to save it in the vision they want: the thing-in-itself (which we can’t know directly), or the forms (which we only remember), or God’s knowledge, or only true/false propositions. — Antony Nickles
I’m referring to the radical skepticism that is generalized and creates a gap between us and the world that philosophy turns into an intellectual problem. Not just questioning the status quo. — Antony Nickles
yes, the other is ultimately hidden from us (despite our being able to guess at thoughts or anticipating, etc), but the framework Descartes is using treats them as inhuman, as it were, unless we can “judge” they are people, as if it is a matter of proof rather than taking them to be human, accepting them, acting towards them as if they were. — Antony Nickles
When we're discussing something like the hard problem of consciousness and the ontology of sensations then it very much matters to us if our pains are the same or not. — Michael
Witt would be showing how this “problem” and ontology are manufactured by our human desires. — Antony Nickles
Kant had the categorical imperative indeed, but that was faulty from the outset, not because he wanted certainty, but because (in my opinion) it assumes various things and ignores others to get what it wants regarding ethical dilemmas. — schopenhauer1
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