….philosophy is “larger” than science…. — Antony Nickles
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
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
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
the Cartesian anxiety: the fear that unless we can affirm an absolute with certainty, we’re condemned to relativism. — Wayfarer
philosophical reflection can meaningfully trace the limits of conditioned knowledge without pretending to stand outside of it. — Wayfarer
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
But don't we want to say more? Or can the "more" only happen from some version of an absolute conception? — J
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
(* the claim is: "as long as I don't claim knowledge about what the [absolute] conception is, my talk about it can remain "local.")That is philosophy’s claim*, but it neither claims it “absolutely”, nor “locally”, as these are predetermined, created standards. — Antony Nickles
all the while allowing us the knowledge that we don’t know how it works. — Mww
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
Scientific objectivity is methodological - it's about designing studies, collecting data, and interpreting results in ways that minimize bias and personal influence. — Wayfarer
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
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
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. — T Clark
do you say that science involves knowledge? — Leontiskos
is your knowledge of this philosophical? — Leontiskos
Can "philosophy" know that science involves knowledge? — Leontiskos
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." — Leontiskos
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
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.
(* 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
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
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
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?If we are talking about a conception of absolutely everything, then we’d describe justice and rocks the same way. — Antony Nickles
this kind of philosophy. — J
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
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
. . . 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
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
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
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
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
Is it a good thing to have that kind, when it comes to deciding what to assert as true? — J
I'm assuming you mean balls of the testicular variety? — J
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
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
Is it the same sort of discourse that allows phil to speak about a discipline outside itself, such as science? — J
What form does that acknowledgement take? — J
philosophy is like science with no balls. — Fire Ologist
Meanwhile philosophers can talk quietly amongst themselves at conferences and publish learned papers for each other. — Wayfarer
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
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
That this does not ensure agreement is philosophy’s (and morality’s) lack of power — Antony Nickles
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
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
This is not “local”, so much as, specific. Not based on the individual, but the particular (criteria and context of a practice). — Antony Nickles
[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
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
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
[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
How are you understanding "power" here ? — J
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
"Why have so many philosophers, beginning with Descartes, tried to locate genuine philosophy within an Absolute Conception?" — J
The philosophical assessment of philosophy is presumably based on philosophy's own criteria. You don't see a problem there? — J
Science’s power is, among other things, it is predictable and verifiable as an independent authority — Antony Nickles
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
There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical. — 6522
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