….philosophy is “larger” than science…. — Antony Nickles

No science, besides the accidental, is ever done that isn’t first thought, but even accidental science makes necessary thought relative to purpose.
—————-

Bernard Williams offers some of his own thoughts about the nature of philosophical inquiry. He points to a familiar problem: We would like some sort of absolute knowledge…. — J

Yeah, humans, huh? If they want something badly enough, they’ll change the conditions under which it was formerly impossible, in order to satisfy themselves that it isn’t. First glance, absolute knowledge is unintelligible; second glance, absolute knowledge is at least conceivably transcendent relative to human intelligence; third glance, absolute knowledge as a valid conception, the attainment of which remains nonetheless logically impossible; at some future glance, absolute knowledge may be provided by empirical science. They’ll talk it to death, thereby losing sight of what set the stage in the first place.

A true brain teaser, given from and determinable only by that which refuses access to its works, all the while allowing us the knowledge that we don’t know how it works.

So if it’s a philosophical claim, then how is it to be adjudicated? Surely that would require some framework within which the expression “philosophical absolute” is meaningful. I suppose when Williams asks whether, if we were to possess such an insight, we must know we possess it, he’s invoking the Cartesian expectation that a genuine absolute insight would be, as Descartes claimed of the cogito, apodictic — self-certifying by virtue of its subject matter. — Wayfarer

This may be helpful:

There are two demands which the absolute conception of reality seemed to make: that we should at least show the possibility of explanations of the place in the world of psychological phenomena such as the perception of secondary qualities, and, further, of cultural phenomena such as the local non-absolute conceptions of the world; and of the absolute conception itself . . . No one is yet in a position to meet those demands. — Williams, 300-1

So yes, this is spinning off from Descartes' project, and we see this particularly when Williams first names "secondary qualities" as needing explanation (something Descartes understood) and then links this with "local non-absolute conceptions," which probably would have been meaningless to Descartes but is very much of concern to us.

I'm not sure if Williams' framing of "absolute knowledge" requires that it be apodictic. This is one of the puzzles about what absolute knowledge, should such exist, would look like. Does math count as absolute knowledge? It is arguably self-certifying.

As for certainty:

the Cartesian anxiety: the fear that unless we can affirm an absolute with certainty, we’re condemned to relativism. — Wayfarer

Yes. One of the hallmarks of the absolute conception, as opposed to a local or relativized conception, would be a type of certainty. But we have to spell this out carefully: The certainty is meant to guarantee that whatever is being asserted is framework-independent, pre-interpretation, true no matter who is asserting it, in no matter what context. This has understandably been questioned as either impossible or incoherent.

But is it the kind of certainty that says, "This very statement [about the grounds and limitations of the absolute conception] is certainly true"? That goes to the heart of my discomfort with Williams' "move."

philosophical reflection can meaningfully trace the limits of conditioned knowledge without pretending to stand outside of it. — Wayfarer

Agreed, and I think Williams is trying to show a way for this to be legitimate.

But if we never say more than “here’s what an absolute would be like if there were one,” have we said anything of consequence? Or would it have been better not to have asked the question? — Wayfarer

Good statement of what I meant by

But don't we want to say more? Or can the "more" only happen from some version of an absolute conception? — J

Do you have an opinion about this "more"? How would you answer your own question? I'm guessing you would point to a wisdom-tradition response that "gestures beyond" this kind of philosophy. . . ? (as suggested by your subsequent post, from which I quote below) My own answers would be similar.

Maybe what’s needed isn’t absolute knowledge but an orientation toward the limits of conditioned thought—a recognition that philosophy, at its best, gestures beyond what it can fully capture. — Wayfarer

That is philosophy’s claim*, but it neither claims it “absolutely”, nor “locally”, as these are predetermined, created standards. — Antony Nickles

(* the claim is: "as long as I don't claim knowledge about what the [absolute] conception is, my talk about it can remain "local.")

I was with you all the way, until this. Maybe I'm not understanding you. Let's grant that both "absolute" and "local" are predetermined, created standards. How does this exempt philosophy from nonetheless speaking from one or the other? What would be the third alternative?

all the while allowing us the knowledge that we don’t know how it works. — Mww

Snake swallows tail again . . . but you're right.

I went back and reread the OP and your response to my comment, as well as all the other posts on this thread. But I don’t get it. — T Clark

I feel bad about this, and will try to think of other ways to clarify what we're talking about. For now, please do keep following along, maybe someone else will do better than I.

*

There are a number of other interesting points that people have raised, thanks. I look forward to responding, but I'll be out of cyberworld all day and evening. Carry on!

I feel bad about this, — J

Don’t feel bad. Getting lost in philosophy is nothing new for me.

Scientific objectivity is methodological - it's about designing studies, collecting data, and interpreting results in ways that minimize bias and personal influence. — Wayfarer

You’re right, in science, objectivity is methodological, but that’s not all it is. The existence of objective reality is the foundation of orthodox science, at least historically. That’s an ontological, not methodological, claim.

I can’t help think it must be something like gnosis or one of its cognates - subject of that rather arcane term 'gnoseology' which is comparable to 'epistemology' but with rather more gnostic overtones. In any case, it is knowledge of the kind which conveys a kind of apodictic sense, although that is a good deal easier to write about than to actually attain. — Wayfarer

Yes, good. And the presupposition is that the certitude in question must be justifiable, and therefore disagreements must be adjudicable. Science is thought to be adjudicable because it is thought to have clear objects and criteria.

-

That is philosophy’s claim*, but it neither claims it “absolutely”, nor “locally”, as these are predetermined, created standards. — Antony Nickles

(* the claim is: "as long as I don't claim knowledge about what the [absolute] conception is, my talk about it can remain "local.")

I was with you all the way, until this. Maybe I'm not understanding you. Let's grant that both "absolute" and "local" are predetermined, created standards. How does this exempt philosophy from nonetheless speaking from one or the other? What would be the third alternative? — J

I see that point of @Antony Nickles as crucial. A truth-claim is neither "absolute" nor "local." These are contrived categories which tend to break down as soon as an explication is requested.

So the idea is that philosophers can't have knowledge, — Leontiskos

I think this is an argument I could probably make. Not so much that philosophers don’t have knowledge, but that philosophy does not involve knowledge. Certainly metaphysics doesn’t. Neither do aesthetics or morals.

I think this is an argument I could probably make. Not so much that philosophers don’t have knowledge, but that philosophy does not involve knowledge. Certainly metaphysics doesn’t. Neither do aesthetics or morals. — T Clark

Okay, and do you say that science involves knowledge? And if you know that scientists have knowledge, then is your knowledge of this philosophical? Can "philosophy" know that science involves knowledge?

do you say that science involves knowledge? — Leontiskos

Sure.

is your knowledge of this philosophical? — Leontiskos

No. It’s just regular old everyday knowledge.

Can "philosophy" know that science involves knowledge? — Leontiskos

Philosophy can’t even figure out what “knowledge” means.

No. It’s just regular old everyday knowledge. — T Clark

Okay, so it looks like on your view there is "scientific knowledge" and there is "everyday knowledge," but there is no such thing as "philosophical knowledge."

Okay, so it looks like on your view there is "scientific knowledge" and there is "everyday knowledge," but there is no such thing as "philosophical knowledge." — Leontiskos

Well, there’s certainly is knowledge about philosophy, for example Aristotle was born on a certain date and died on a certain date. He wrote certain things. But as I said, philosophy doesn’t involve knowledge. It doesn’t work with knowledge.

I’ll admit, I’m just playing around with this idea. As I said in my previous post, I think I can make this argument. That doesn’t necessarily mean I believe it. I’ll think about it some more.

Do you have an opinion about this "more"? How would you answer your own question? I'm guessing you would point to a wisdom-tradition response that "gestures beyond" this kind of philosophy. . . ? (as suggested by your subsequent post, from which I quote below) My own answers would be similar. — J

Quite right. But Greek philosophy was also animated by just that ideal. See Becoming God: Pure Reason in Early Greek Philosophy, Patrick Lee Miller:

Becoming god was an ideal of many ancient Greek philosophers, as was the life of reason, which they equated with divinity. This book argues that their rival accounts of this equation depended on their divergent attitudes toward time. Affirming it, Heraclitus developed a paradoxical style of reasoning-chiasmus-that was the activity of his becoming god. Denying it as contradictory, Parmenides sought to purify thinking of all contradiction, offering eternity to those who would follow him. Plato did, fusing this pure style of reasoning-consistency-with a Pythagorean program of purification and divinization that would then influence philosophers from Aristotle to Kant. Those interested in Greek philosophical and religious thought will find fresh interpretations of its early figures, as well as a lucid presentation of the first and most influential attempts to link together divinity, rationality, and selfhood.

Plainly, 'reason' had a very different meaning in that context than it does for us. Not the tidy propositional format of 'justified true belief' but the basis of an all-encompassing way of life. Of course there's been much water under the bridge, there's no way to re-inhabit the ancient mind, but at least the lexicon of ancient philosophy provides a better vocabulary than does modern.

In Neoplatonism:

• The One is absolutely simple — beyond all predication, even being itself (beyond existence, as Plotinus puts it).
• So cannot be known in the discursive or propositional sense.
• But because all things emanate from the One, and because the soul is ultimately a trace of it, we can become united with it by a kind of reversion or return (epistrophe).
• This is not knowledge about the One, but an ascent — what Plotinus described as the “flight of the alone to the Alone.”

There are similes in Buddhism and Vedanta. In Vedānta, Brahman is not an object of knowledge — it is the ground of the knower. The jñāni (knower) realizes his/her identity as “I am Brahman.” In Buddhism, ultimate truth (paramārtha-satya) cannot be framed in conceptual thought. It requires a transformative mode of knowing that is not reducible to cognition, but is existential or participatory, knowing by being. This is what Pierre Hadot called philosophy as a way of life — and what the early Greek philosophers likely meant by "know thyself”.

(* the claim is: "as long as I don't claim knowledge about what the [absolute] conception is, my talk about it can remain "local.") — J

I think we are pushing a few things together maybe. I took the “view from nowhere” as the requirement of a criteria of certainty (which I take Descartes to be desiring, even in bringing up “God”). But if we are talking about a conception of the “absolute”, then we’ve reached the cliff @Banno was worried about, as that would be theology’s discussion with science. If we are talking about a conception of absolutely everything, then we’d describe justice and rocks the same way.

Let's grant that both "absolute" and "local" are predetermined, created standards. How does this exempt philosophy from nonetheless speaking from one or the other? What would be the third alternative? — J

Above I said “Thus knowledge of something is uncovering the particular criteria for judgment of identity, completion, correctness, etc. to itself (a practice).” As Wittgenstein was trying to point out, different practices have different criteria, different standards (not just certainty)—what matters as that counting as such-and-such (pointing, apologies, a moral stance, a fact); as it were, being true to itself.

But is it the kind of certainty that says, "This very statement [about the grounds and limitations of the absolute conception] is certainly true"? That goes to the heart of my discomfort with Williams' "move." — J

When I said here that “A philosophical claim has its power only in as much as you see it for yourself”, the kind (sense/use) of “knowledge” I am talking about is acceptance, acknowledgment (in contrast to other senses of knowledge: as awareness, or a promise that I have authority). Our reflection on our (shared) interests in the things we do is recognized in our ability to articulate. More may be dreamt of than in our philosophy, but that’s not to say we can’t acknowledge, say, how science is important to us, or paraphrase a poem, or even discuss the unknowable (@Wayfarer).

To throw another couple monkeys in, Cavell (from Wittgenstein) would say that our relation to the world is not only through knowledge, which is not to say it is opinion or faith, but that part of what it is to take action is not knowing what to do, but in doing it, being the one who does it, is held responsible for having done it. There is also our own growth; e.g., changing how we think, rather than just what we think (even more than wisdom).

If we are talking about a conception of absolutely everything, then we’d describe justice and rocks the same way. — Antony Nickles

I like that - a simple argument. There's benefit in having different ways to describe different things, hence collapsing everything into one description is leaving things out?

Good stuff. We can't box up "philosophy" and say either that it was only done one way, or that it should be. Thus, what I meant by

this kind of philosophy. — J

wasn't the entire Western practice, but a particular analytic conception which is often quite severe about what counts as good philosophical discourse.

I took the “view from nowhere” as the requirement of a criteria of certainty (which I take Descartes to be desiring, even in bringing up “God”) — Antony Nickles

As I said to @Wayfarer, above:

One of the hallmarks of the absolute conception [or the View from Nowhere], as opposed to a local or relativized conception, would be a type of certainty. But we have to spell this out carefully: The certainty is meant to guarantee that whatever is being asserted is framework-independent, pre-interpretation, true no matter who is asserting it, in no matter what context. This has understandably been questioned as either impossible or incoherent. — J

Is this the same thing, the same flavor of certainty, as the kind Descartes sought? I don't think so. This sort of certainty is more like an argument which goes: "Well, if what I claim to know is framework-independent, true no matter who asserts it, etc., et al., then surely it must be certain. What more could I require, in the way of certainty?"

. . . a conception of the “absolute”, then we’ve reached the cliff @Banno was worried about, as that would be theology’s discussion with science. — Antony Nickles

And here's yet another way to construe certainty: Certainty is what we get when we discover we are viewing the world from an absolute point of view. This, I wouldn't hesitate to call apodictic. It is self-verifying in much the same way that Descartes' God cannot be a deceiver. Interesting question: Can this version of certainty ever attach itself to something that isn't God? There are those who believe that scientific realism is self-verifying, on pain of contradiction.

If we are talking about a conception of absolutely everything, then we’d describe justice and rocks the same way. — Antony Nickles

There's benefit in having different ways to describe different things, hence collapsing everything into one description is leaving things out? — Banno

What Banno says, would indeed be the problem if speaking from within some absolute conception implied only one type or level of description. But does that follow? Perhaps you could say more about why we'd have to describe abstracta and physical items the same way.

As Wittgenstein was trying to point out, different practices have different criteria, different standards (not just certainty)—what matters as that counting as such-and-such (pointing, apologies, a moral stance, a fact); as it were, being true to itself. — Antony Nickles

OK, but . . . does this answer my question about absolute vs. local? Sorry if I'm not seeing it. To put it another way: Is what Witt says coming from an absolute, a local, or neither viewpoint?

More may be dreamt of than in our philosophy, but that’s not to say we can’t acknowledge, say, how science is important to us — Antony Nickles

I think Williams' problem, and mine, would be: "More may dreamt of than in our philosophy, but that's not to say we can't acknowledge how philosophy is important to us." -- is that true, W and I are asking? What form does that acknowledgement take? Is it the same sort of discourse that allows phil to speak about a discipline outside itself, such as science?

The things phil says about these absolute conceptions are not put forward as true beyond the historical or cultural context of the philosopher -- they are not "known to be true" in the same way that the absolute conception knows things to be true. — J

Or, philosophy is like science with no balls.

Interesting metaphor. I'm assuming you mean balls of the testicular variety? Is it a good thing to have that kind, when it comes to deciding what to assert as true? Just asking . . . And if I'm taking you more seriously than you intended, sorry, it's hard to judge tone in a post!

Is it a good thing to have that kind, when it comes to deciding what to assert as true? — J

Does philosophy ever assert what is true about the world?

ADDED:

I'm assuming you mean balls of the testicular variety? — J

Correct assumption. Which makes it true - out in the world, apart from your own models and modeling, I actually was thinking balls equal a testicular variety of material. Absolutely correct.

@Banno @Wayfarer

Well, if what I claim to know is framework-independent, true no matter who asserts it, etc., et al., then surely it must be certain. What more could I require, in the way of certainty?"…. There are those who believe that scientific realism is self-verifying, on pain of contradiction. — J

Additional criteria would be completeness (encompassing all variables and outcomes); infallibility or predictability; being right without being responsible; ensuring agreement, being only either true or false, etc. It seems we are taking abstraction from context or an individual (or human fallibility, limitation) as the criteria for “certainty”. I’m trying to point out how forced this is by differentiating topics and claiming that their individual criteria and their appropriate contexts are necessary and sufficient for being accepted (that we can all assert intelligible and rational claims about their “framework”). That this does not ensure agreement is philosophy’s (and morality’s) lack of power (which @Fire Ologistpoints out correctly) which science claims (though as easily ignored it appears). But this a categorical difference (it works differently) not a relegation to individual persuasion, opinion, belief, rhetoric (“locality”).

What Banno says, would indeed be the problem if speaking from within some absolute conception implied only one type or level of description. But does that follow? Perhaps you could say more about why we'd have to describe abstracta and physical items the same way. — J

If we insist on removing a topic from its context and specific criteria, then we lose the ability to judge a thing based on its own standards.

Is it the same sort of discourse that allows phil to speak about a discipline outside itself, such as science? — J

Yes. Philosophy is the unearthing of the criteria for a practice, such as why we value, and how we judge, science. The philosophical assessment of science is not based on science’s own criteria.

What form does that acknowledgement take? — J

As I said earlier: “Our reflection on our (shared) interests in the things we do is recognized in our ability to articulate.”… in order for you to see it for yourself; to provide your own proof.

To simplify, if I claim (describe sufficiently) how a mistake is different from an accident, or what constitutes a correct and sufficient apology or excuse (or scientific study), you may agree with those criteria. You may claim others more important. You may assert other distinctions are necessary. We may need to discuss examples in order to resolve the issues. This conversation is intelligible and rational because we share these practices (over the course of human history) and the evidence (and our standing to make claims) is available to all of us. This is not “local”, so much as, specific. Not based on the individual, but the particular (criteria and context of a practice). Abstraction makes philosophy impossible; thus, ironically, our desire to want everything to be like science is the death of rational discourse.

philosophy is like science with no balls. — Fire Ologist

It’s more that most of the intellectual resources of Western philosophy became concentrated on science (‘natural philosophy’) to the extent that the other aspects of it withered away. Banno has referred to surveys which show that a very small percentage of the academic philosophy profession defend philosophical idealism. Most seem to align with some form of physicalism, such as non-reductive physicalism (Davidson et el). So the lexicon for alternative philosophical conceptions has dried up been deprecated - the presumption is that the word is physical (whatever that means) and science is the way to investigate it (wherever that leads). Meanwhile philosophers can talk quietly amongst themselves at conferences and publish learned papers for each other.

Regarding frameworks, I certainly accept that there are meaningful frameworks, or rather, domains of discourse, but again, the implicit presumption will generally be that these will be subsumed under the heading of natural science (or ‘naturalism’ in philosophy). But that is why I will call out to Indian and current idealist philosophy from time to time, as their philosophies have not on the whole been subsumed under naturalism, to the degree that Anglo philosophy has.

Appreciate these thoughts. I'm outta here for now but will definitely reply.

Meanwhile philosophers can talk quietly amongst themselves at conferences and publish learned papers for each other. — Wayfarer

:up:

Or loudly, in the basement of the internet. Amongst themselves.

I will call out to Indian and current idealist philosophy from time to time, as their philosophies have not on the whole been subsumed under naturalism… — Wayfarer

Not yet subsumed, but I suspect only because it still feels impolite.

More that they’re outside the electric fence.

Yes. Partly because of their cleverness. Untouchable, one might say with admiration.

It seems we are taking abstraction from context or an individual (or human fallibility, limitation) as the criteria for “certainty”. I’m trying to point out how forced this is by differentiating topics and claiming that their individual criteria and their appropriate contexts are necessary and sufficient for being accepted (that we can all assert intelligible and rational claims about their “framework”). — Antony Nickles

The "we" here is understood as referring to those within Williams' hypothesis -- the proponents of the "absolute conception" who might be understood as claiming that such a conception would provide certainty. I, and I think Williams, would agree that this is forced, or at least unnecessary. There remains, though, the question of whether "being accepted" is the right way to look at it. The problem is that while "we all" can indeed make intelligible and rational claims in support of a given framework, another group of "us all" can dispute them, with equal rationality.

That this does not ensure agreement is philosophy’s (and morality’s) lack of power — Antony Nickles

How are you understanding "power" here?

If we insist on removing a topic from its context and specific criteria, then we lose the ability to judge a thing based on its own standards. — Antony Nickles

Agreed, but why would speaking from an absolute conception have to involve this kind of removal? Wouldn't a genuine View from Nowhere provide, along with many other things, an account of those standards, and why they can serve as a basis for judgment? What would be questioned, from this view, would be the absolute nature of such judgment -- only the Absolute Conception gets to say absolute things.

Is it the same sort of discourse that allows phil to speak about a discipline outside itself, such as science?
— J

Yes. Philosophy is the unearthing of the criteria for a practice, such as why we value, and how we judge, science. The philosophical assessment of science is not based on science’s own criteria. — Antony Nickles

Right, but that wasn't quite my question. The philosophical assessment of philosophy is presumably based on philosophy's own criteria. You don't see a problem there?

This is not “local”, so much as, specific. Not based on the individual, but the particular (criteria and context of a practice). — Antony Nickles

An important question. I looked back at Williams to clarify how he was using "local":

[A philosophy which doesn't claim to speak from an Absolute Conception] hardly transcends the local interpretative predispositions of various cultural communities on earth, [so] there is not much reason to think it could transcend the peculiarities of humanity as a whole. . . . Descartes' aspiration [was] for an absolute conception which abstracts from local or distorted representations of the world. — Williams, 302-3

So I'm pretty sure Williams means what you mean by "specific to a context of a practice." Such a context would require the "interpretative predispositions" Williams speaks of. But he's obviously uncomfortable with leaving it at that. Notice how he pairs "local" with "distorted". Again, I don't know to what extent Williams shares this view; I read him as trying to make the best case he can for why we ought to be concerned with this question, in much the way Descartes was. He would change your statement, "Abstraction makes philosophy impossible," to a question: "Does abstraction (of the V-from-N sort) make philosophy impossible? Why have so many philosophers, beginning with Descartes, tried to locate genuine philosophy within an Absolute Conception?"

Which brings us full circle around to Williams' "move" that I quoted and discussed in the OP. I think this is his way of dissolving the problem.

Additional criteria would be completeness (encompassing all variables and outcomes); infallibility or predictability; being right without being responsible; ensuring agreement, being only either true or false, etc. It seems we are taking abstraction from context or an individual (or human fallibility, limitation) as the criteria for “certainty”. I’m trying to point out how forced this is by differentiating topics and claiming that their individual criteria and their appropriate contexts are necessary and sufficient for being accepted (that we can all assert intelligible and rational claims about their “framework”). That this does not ensure agreement is philosophy’s (and morality’s) lack of power (which Fire Ologistpoints out correctly) which science claims (though as easily ignored it appears). But this a categorical difference (it works differently) not a relegation to individual persuasion, opinion, belief, rhetoric (“locality”). — Antony Nickles

:up:

Flub

@Banno @Wayfarer @Leontiskos

The problem is that while "we all" can indeed make intelligible and rational claims in support of a given framework, another group of "us all" can dispute them, with equal rationality. — J

This seems to be generalizing a sense there is relativism in any practice where the requirement for certainty (authority) does not apply. Philosophy is describing the workings of practices in which we already share interests (in the practice; thus their normativity) so it’s just a matter on agreeing on the explication of the criteria. To say you can speak intelligibly and have reasons doesn’t mean you can say anything you want (intelligibly) in claiming, say, how an apology works (or how knowing does). Again, we might not end up agreeing, nor circumscribe every case or condition, but it’s not as if anything goes.

[Specific criteria] hardly transcends the local interpretative predispositions of various cultural communities on earth, [so] there is not much reason to think it could transcend the peculiarities of humanity as a whole — Williams, 302-3

Some practices are human, some are just people who throw cabers. But making how they are judged explicit is not an “interpretation” nor does it rely on “predispositions” (I can only imagine the assumption is that since we don’t usually speak of them they are some natural, individual inclination.) Plus, if we have different but related practices, that does not make either any less accountable, reconcilable, nor necessarily destroys the criteria for identity of the practice itself. In different things this matters more or less. Doing science, more, making tea, less (or not).

How are you understanding "power" here ? — J

Science’s power is, among other things, it is predictable and verifiable as an independent authority (though I may still “disagree”, take its findings as not important).

Wouldn't a genuine View from Nowhere provide, along with many other things, an account of those standards, and why they can serve as a basis for judgment? What would be questioned, from this view, would be the absolute nature of such judgment -- only the Absolute Conception gets to say absolute things. — J

We can’t measure everything with the same spoon. I just did “account for those standards, and why they can serve as a basis for judgment.” We can’t with one hand give that there are a multitude of criteria and with the other require that the judgment of each thing requires the same “basis”. It depends on the thing whether the judgment is “absolute” or not. Judging a good shoe and what is considered a planet are different in kind, not hierarchy, or scope. The more we restrict our criteria, the less meets the standard, so the less we actually notice, can understand, and so get to say anything about.

"Why have so many philosophers, beginning with Descartes, tried to locate genuine philosophy within an Absolute Conception?" — J

This is a good question which requires a lot to explain, but Descartes’ fear of making mistakes created the desire to never make one again. If Plato could use knowledge to be certain of everything, we would have control prior to doing anything (life as physics by math in space). Wittgenstein called this the requirement for crystalline purity of logic, that we want prior to a moral act. If we turn our doubt into a problem, we require a particular answer (knowledge), one that meets preset criteria (certainty).

The philosophical assessment of philosophy is presumably based on philosophy's own criteria. You don't see a problem there? — J

But how philosophy is done, and what even counts as philosophy is always an internal struggle of the discipline; it’s self-guidance and lack of external adjudication makes it harder to reconcile, but not impossible (there is no better/other). This is the benefit of looking at the tradition as a set of texts, and not necessarily a set of problems.

Science’s power is, among other things, it is predictable and verifiable as an independent authority — Antony Nickles

But aren’t the limits of science also the limits of empiricism? That is: science deals with contingent facts — with what happens to be the case. It excels in explicating the conditioned and the observable, but it brackets questions about the unconditioned or the unconditional — questions that point toward what must be the case if anything is to appear at all, or what cannot not be the case. These are, in an older register, questions about the Absolute. Just the kinds of questions which positivism eschews.

That’s why I introduced the notion of the unconditioned. There’s a conceptual kinship between the unconditioned and what philosophers have called the unconditional — the necessary, the absolute, the ground that is not itself grounded. But empirical science, by its own design, isn’t structured to accomodate that. It works within a domain of contingencies, not ultimates. That’s not a criticism — it’s part of its power — but it is a limit. And as I said before, that limit has become like an unspoken barrier in many ways.

Wittgenstein, at the end of the Tractatus, makes a similar point:

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.

If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.

It must lie outside the world. — TLP 6.41–6.522

Which raises the key question: what lies outside the world — not as a factual object or hidden variable, but as the condition for intelligibility itself? It’s not a thing, not an empirical entity. And yet philosophy (in its reflective capacity) can’t help but trace the contours of what it cannot fully name — whether it’s called the unconditioned, the transcendental, the One, or the Ground. Not a thing, but not nothing.

This isn’t a claim to “absolute knowledge,” but an acknowledgment that some form of orientation toward the unconditioned may be a necessary feature of any philosophical reflection that seeks to account for intelligibility, normativity, or value without falling into relativism. So, his 'that of which we cannot speak' is not the 'taboo on metaphysics' that the Vienna Circle took it to be - as Wittgenstein himself said:

There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical. — 6522

(See also Wittgenstein, Tolstoy and the Folly of Logical Positivism, Stuart Greenstreet, originally published by the British Wittgenstein Society.)