I think it is widely assumed that the de facto philosophy of secular culture is some form of materialism or at least scientific naturalism functioning as normative view. One of the reactions to Nagel's book was by Jerry Coyne, who said 'The view that all sciences are in principle reducible to the laws of physics must be true unless you’re religious”. That was certainly the view of most of Nagel's critics.

I think you and I agree that Coyne's view, and that of many others like him, is simplistic, dogmatic and unimaginative. It is the view of adherents of Scientism, a type of adherent for which I have yet to find a satisfactory individual noun, since Scientist is already taken and denotes something good. I've toyed with Scientismist, but lately I am more drawn to Science Worshipper. My view as a science enthusiast (but definitely not worshipper) is that Science Worshippers are the worst enemies science has, as they provide validation to idiots like global warming denialists that want to reject science entirely.

Where we differ is in our assessment of how dominant the malaise of Science Worship is. I am less pessimistic than you or Nagel. While there are plenty of SWs around, and they do tend to congregate in certain places, and it may well be the most commonly held worldview in educated, secular society, I think it is a long way short of being a consensus. I seem to constantly encounter educated, science-literate people with all sorts of different approaches to mysticism, spirituality and the ineffable.

What concerns me about Nagel's writing is that he directs his criticism at secular culture, rather than at the prevalence of Scientism within that culture. Hence he implies that Scientism is an irrevocable consequence of secular culture. That creates a great risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Unless we want to turn the ship back towards theocracy and religious intolerance, what is needed is to combat the influence and popularity of Scientism within secular culture, rather than anathematise secularism itself.

If the non-Australians will forgive me for a very parochial diversion, it's a bit like the Liberal party. While my philosophy leans more towards the equality and compassion values that drive the Labor party than the freedom value that drives Liberal, I believe the two-party system is very valuable and wish to see the Liberal party survive, even though I despise the politics of most of its current members, who are really either heartless, reactionary conservatives or heartless, Randian neo-liberals. What I would like to see is the pushback of those influences in the Liberal party - a return to something more like what Malcolm Fraser, Andrew Peacock and John Hewson stood for, rather than the demise of the Liberal party itself. IMHO to seek the demise of the Liberal party is, arguably to threaten democracy while to seek to reduce the influence of the above noxious groups is to strengthen democracy. Substitute secularism for the Liberal Party and Science Worshippers for the conservatives and Randians, and you have my view on scientism in secular culture.

Well, I did mention in the OP that I wasn't considering imaginative characters, but sure - Hamlet is real, in that we all know what the term means - but did Hamlet exist? Well, no, he exists as a dramatic character. — Wayfarer

I didn't say Hamlet is real, though; under the scheme I proposed Hamlet exists, but is imaginary; that is, not real. Hamlet exists because he satisfies the condition of "standing apart" of being distinct. You appear to contradict yourself here: you ask, 'Did Hamlet exist'? and you answer 'No, he exists as a dramatic character'. My answer would be that he did exist after Shakespeare created him.

As regards whether things exist 'in different ways' - this is just the point at issue. You see, I think that the current consensus is that things either exist, or they don't and that the term is univocal - which is the very reason why 'what exists' and 'what is real' are commonly thought to be identical. — Wayfarer

Yes, and you, puzzlingly, appear to be disagreeing with me at the very point I am making this distinction. See above.

I think that's technically incorrect - whether you believe in God or not. In the classical theistic tradition, God doesn't 'have' being, but is Being. Individuals are only real because they're instantiations of being - their being is bestowed by, or borrowed from, the sole source of being. — Wayfarer

I disagree with this, because 'being' can be used as either a noun or a verb, and it makes sense to say that any entity is being, when using 'being' as a verb. When used as a noun being is an attribute, and in that context it makes perfect sense to say that God (if God is conceived of as an entity), or any other entity, has being. To say that God is being; in the sense of substance would be to objectify God in a kind of pantheistic way. I think of God as spirit, and I think of spirit as the life immanent to being, a life which manifests more or less in different types of being.

It is the view of adherents of Scientism, a type of adherent for which I have yet to find a satisfactory individual noun, since Scientist is already taken and denotes something good. — andrewk

I have proposed before in relation to this terminological problem that those we now call 'scientists' should be called sciencers, and the term 'scientist' should be reserved for those ideologues who militate against all other forms of human discourse and understanding and/ or claim that they can all be subsumed by science.

As I said my approach is heuristic, not systematic. I'm trying to sketch out some of the ways in which the terms have different dimensions of meaning. — Wayfarer

Alright.

It seems like one result of your distinction would be that something could be real and not exist or could be and not exist, which is surely absurd. Am I wrong? I want to say that the statement "the chair is" is equivalent to saying that "the chair exists."

It is the view of adherents of Scientism, a type of adherent for which I have yet to find a satisfactory individual noun, since Scientist is already taken and denotes something good. — andrewk

I would call them positivists.

I would call them positivists. — Thorongil

Scientistic claims are more comprehensive than those made by mere positivism. So all scientists (in my preferred sense of the word) are positivists, but not all positivist are scientists.

Perhaps. Maybe we should go for "scientisticists." Bit of a mouthful, though.

LOL, reminds me of Peirce's 'pragmaticists'; although to be accurate that would be 'scienticists'. The simple solution would be the one I proposed first, but the difficulty would be getting everybody to stop using 'scientist' as the general term, and start using 'sciencer' instead. I don't think most people see scientism as being that big of a problem.

What if we returned to the pre-nineteenth century label of 'Natural Philosopher' for people that Do science, and left 'Scientist' for those that worship it.

I quite like the idea of science practitioners being called Natural Philosophers again, like Newton was. Do you think philosophers would object? Would we have a demarcation dispute? Possible strikes? [Hoary old joke looms in memory about the world's philosophers going on strike and nobody noticing. Was that in H2G2?]

Or scientisticisticians — Thorongil

I quite like the idea of science practitioners being called Natural Philosophers again, like Newton was. Do you think philosophers would object? — andrewk

They might ask what the alternative term for philosophers would then be. Unnatural Philosophers? Supernatural Philosophers? Subnatural Philosophers?

What concerns me about Nagel's writing is that he directs his criticism at secular culture, rather than at the prevalence of Scientism within that culture. Hence he implies that Scientism is an irrevocable consequence of secular culture. That creates a great risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Unless we want to turn the ship back towards theocracy and religious intolerance, what is needed is to combat the influence and popularity of Scientism within secular culture, rather than anathematise secularism itself. — andrewk

The meaning of 'secular' is strictly speaking, simply a system of governance that provides a framework without making any judgement about matters spiritual. But in practice it has often come to mean a belief-system in its own right - that 'secular values' are those which are ostensibly NOT grounded in anything beyond the scope of naturalism. So on the one hand, secularism pretends to be 'value free', to present a picture of the world shorn of superstitious beliefs and religious ideas: but then it becomes a de facto religious view in it's own right, namely, one that is based on physicalism, evolutionary biology, and so on, as if these are sufficient sources for normative beliefs. (Sam Harris is the most 'positive' advocate of such views, in that he wishes to create a scientifically-grounded ethics, although really it is basically a modernised utilitarianism. But there are other such efforts, 'Good without God', atheist associations, and so on.)

So - I don't think Nagel is criticizing liberalism per se, but he's criticizing the (often implicit) philosophy which he describes as 'evolutionary materialism', which is assumed by many secular philosophers to underwrite modern liberal culture. And after all, evolutionary biology wears 'the white lab coat of authority'. So I have nothing but respect for Nagel, and thank heavens he's a tenured philosopher who wasn't brought down by the Darwinist mob.

It seems like one result of your distinction would be that something could be real and not exist or could be and not exist, which is surely absurd. — Thorongil

I am talking more in Platonist terms - that numbers, universals, and so on, are real, but that they're not existent as phenomena. Whenever you look at a number, what you're looking at is a symbol. But the number itself is a value which can only be 'seen' by a mind; it's an 'intelligible object', in traditional parlance. (That is why I keep harking back to the passage on Augustine and Intelligible Objects. )

And that Platonistic understanding was the consequence of a very long critical tradition of philosophical analysis, which has been mostly abandoned since the Middle Ages. That is because nominalists were practically victorious over the scholastic realists, and this has had many consequences. It affects the way that culture itself understands the nature of reality; it tends to make us instinctive scientific realists, even if not consciously.

This is because scientific (as distinct from scholastic) realism is founded on the basis of 'mind-independent entities' - that what is real, exists independently of anything humans do or believe. Scientific realism presents a picture of the 'vast universe in space and time' within which humans are a recent, emergent phenomenon - the so-called 'mere blip'. But I'm arguing that even those tropes are grounded in judgements and perspectives which are ultimately intellectual in nature, which are products of the mind. Then we 'forget' where those judgements originate - we see from inside that perspective, without seeing that it is a perspective. I don't want to go down the rabbit-hole of Nietzschean 'perspectivism' - that everything is simply a matter of perspective; I agree that there are more and less objectively true statements and genuine scientific discovery. But I also can't accept the 'already-out-there' attitude of scientific realism, because the world is in some vital sense a construct - Schopenhauer's 'vorstellung', Buddhism's 'vikalpa'. 'Scientism' proceeds by pretending that this 'constructed world' exists entirely independently of the mind that constructs it. That is where the problem lies.

It seems like one result of your distinction would be that something could be real and not exist or could be and not exist, which is surely absurd. Am I wrong? I want to say that the statement "the chair is" is equivalent to saying that "the chair exists." — Thorongil

But are possibilities real? Do possibilities exist? How do you answer there?

They seem real in that they are there, just not yet substantially expressed. They don't exist as being, but do we need to stretch "exist" to include the post-hoc fact of a potential to become?

And was a possibility is substantially expressed, it no longer exists. Being is the end of becoming. (Or is it the birth of fresh becomings and so no more than all part of the real flow?)

I think the point is that people jump to familiar positions on what is a far more complex issue. The terminology speaks for a metaphysical point of view. So you can't actually examine the definitions to find the proper answers. The terminology is instead attempting to stabilise some particular metaphysical view ... which itself ought to be the thing in play.

What if we returned to the pre-nineteenth century label of 'Natural Philosopher' for people that Do science, and left 'Scientist' for those that worship it. — andrewk

Scientists who work at the systems science end of things - who take an Aristotelean and holistic view - do self-consciously call themselves natural philosophers.

For example, Stan Salthe:

Natural Philosophy (or the philosophy of nature), is a developmental view of evolutionary processes, from cosmic evolution to organic (biological) and cultural evolution (see "Natural Philosophy: Developmental Systems in the Thermodynamic Perspective" [here]), now including, e.g., MEP (see "The Natural Philosophy of Ecology" [here]). Its antecedents lie in the Nineteenth Century -- with Comte, Goethe, Peirce, Schelling, Spencer, etc. It is a perspective that constructs a science-based story of where we came from and what we are doing here (see text, Becoming, Being and Passing). It is sometimes known as General Evolution, and encompasses cosmic, organic and cultural evolutions. Its goal is an intelligible creation myth (using "myth", not as a pejorative term, but as it is used in ethnography).

http://www.nbi.dk/natphil/salthe/

So this is a holist vs a reductionist distinction, from the working scientist point of view.

If 'Natural Philosopher' is to indicate an acknowledgement of the entanglement of fact and value on the part of scientists , what name should philosophers give themselves in the age of the end of metaphysics?

Well, as I said previously, numbers are in some sense only identity. It's not that they have an identity - '7' can't be anything other than '7'. And '7' says all there is to know about it - you can carve the symbol in stone, draw it, or represent it in binary code, but at the end of all that, 7=7. So perhaps what I meant by 'having an identity' is 'being an individual existent'. But I admit, it's blurry. — Wayfarer

That seems more like identity than anything with this temporal existence for which you are reaching. 7=7 is pretty pure. But OK, you using 'exists' to describe I guess 'objects' within this universe, despite their having questionable identity. A piece breaks off a rock. Is it still the same rock? 7, having a more solid identity, seems more immune to that sort of questioning.

I would say 7 exists, but not in an ontological Platonic sort of way, but rather more like existential quantification. You are using the word differently, that's all.

The domain of natural numbers is real - but where does it exist? Only 'in the mind'? — Wayfarer

The domain of this universe is also real, but similarly has no 'where' to its existence. North of the next universe on God's shelf? (the natural numbers are kept in his box of playing cards)

If 'Natural Philosopher' is to indicate an acknowledgement of the entanglement of fact and value on the part of scientists , what name should philosophers give themselves in the age of the end of metaphysics?

It is not intended to indicate that, but rather to just distinguish those that practice science from those that make a gilded idol of it.

People currently called philosophers would then need a prefix or suffix to indicate the type of philosopher they are, eg 'ethical philosopher, 'philosopher of language', etc. In a sense it would be philosophy re-absorbing the activity that is currently labelled science.

I'm interested that you think metaphysics is at an end. Why do you think that? There's certainly a lot of metaphysical discussion and debate goes on here.

I was thinking of Heidegger, who argued that Nietzsche was the last metaphysician, and didn't consider his own philosophy a metaphysics. Derrida, on the other hand , said that Heidegger, despite his claim, was the culmination of a kind of Western metaphysics. Derrida didn't think one could simply transcend metaphysics, calling deconstruction 'quasi-transcendental'. Derrida did think that any claim to be doing philosophy proper would have to be problematized, and considered what he was doing to be writing 'on the margins of' philosophy.

Heh, ever since Heiddeger it's been a game of pin-the-metaphysics-on-the-philosopher as though a pejorative. There's something incredibly stifling and opressive about the one-upmanship involved in all of it, and with any luck, we're seeing the end of the 'end of metaphysics'.

Wanna talk about psychoanalysis( my previous post)?

Ah, yes I suppose I'll get around to it. I'm on holiday rite now actually so let me find some time to give it a deserving reponse.

ok. Sometimes you just want to b*+ch-slap Derrida, with all his preciousness. Do you remember how he refused to have his picture taken for many years because it would suggest the metaphysics of presence or something? You wanted to say 'get over yourself'.

but that they're not existent as phenomena — Wayfarer

I take your use of the word "as" here to indicate that they do still exist, but in a manner different from other things. That seems obvious to me. My concern was that you might say that such things, because they are not what you take to be "phenomena," do not exist at all.

And that Platonistic understanding was the consequence of a very long critical tradition of philosophical analysis, which has been mostly abandoned since the Middle Ages. That is because nominalists were practically victorious over the scholastic realists, and this has had many consequences. It affects the way that culture itself understands the nature of reality; it tends to make us instinctive scientific realists, even if not consciously. — Wayfarer

Yes, this is one bit of reverse Whig history that you and I agree on. The nominalists haven't won the argument, however, merely the battle for adherents among professional philosophers. I might make a point about this, though, which is that it's strange to see a Buddhist in opposition to nominalism. One of the reasons that holds me back from Buddhism is its hyper-nominalism. Perhaps you have another take, but I've never encountered a Buddhist who isn't a nominalist, either in the primary literature or in person, besides apparently yourself. I think idealism is compatible with Buddhism, and in fact regard the Yogacara school as idealist, but idealism, in itself, is not necessarily opposed to nominalism.

They were all suffering from Blanchot worship, who actually did manage to almost never appear in any photos. Foucault expressed a similar desire ("I dreamt of being Blanchot", he once said).

My concern was that you might say that such things, because they are not what you take to be "phenomena," do not exist at all. — Thorongil

The point I am grappling with is that there are ‘degrees of reality’, which I don’t think is recognised in modern philosophy. The only place I see it explicitly acknowledged is in the Thomists, for example, Maritain’s Degrees of Knowledge (which is a daunting read.) There’s also a mention of the idea still persisting in 17th C philosophy in this article.

I might make a point about this, though, which is that it's strange to see a Buddhist in opposition to nominalism. — Thorongil

I know! I’ve become acutely aware of that. I actually created a thread on Dharma Wheel on this very topic.

One point I made in that thread is the rather mischievous suggestion that Buddhists must accept the reality of Universals - because that’s exactly what ‘the Buddha’ is! After all, the historical person of Gotama is in some respects only a vehicle or precursor for ‘the Tathagatha’, which (or who) periodically manifests ‘for the benefit of all sentient beings’ - which is why Mahāyāna Buddhism always talks in terms of ‘the Buddhas’. So if the Buddha is not ‘a supreme archetype’, then I’m not sure what is. But I didn’t want to push that line of argument.

After some debate the conclusion I came to was:

my interest in universals actually came out of my debates on Philosophy forums, about Western philosophy in particular. In that context [as distinct from within Buddhism] the question has a different meaning. There, the eclipse of Platonism and the rise of nominalism is one of the principle factors underlying the origins of scientific materialism. So there's no grasp of an ineffable light at the end of the tunnel - neither any moon nor finger pointing to it - but simply the endless accumulation of empirical facts against the background of an intrinsically meaningless physicalism. So in that context, the question has a different import.

So - I guess I could reconcile all this by saying that from the Buddhist perspective, such questions as the nature of universals are indeed irrelevant or tangential. But from a modern Western perspective, some insight into the thinking associated with Platonism needs to be understood, to see how we got to the barren materialism that now dominates the Western mindset - in other words, to realise what the West has lost, of what had to be jettisoned for materialism to become ascendant.

Still a lot ‘up in the air’, though.

So if the Buddha is not ‘a supreme archetype’, then I’m not sure what is. But I didn’t want to push that line of argument. — Wayfarer

Buddha, apparently suggested that this should not be, which is possibly why he wrote nothing down. But, people being people need someone to worship and went ahead and did it any way. With that said, the basic philosophy of Buddha (for what it's worth since he's didn't write anything down) are the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path, which is just a plain good insight and advice. Beyond this, you just get your normal every day groups of people seeking Enlightenment and pretty much ignoring the sound advice of Buddha. Go figure. BTW, universalism and nominalism its just one of those add-ons which one can gets for free for joining one of the Buddhist sects.

The point I am grappling with is that there are ‘degrees of reality’, which I don’t think is recognised in modern philosophy. The only place I see it explicitly acknowledged is in the Thomists, for example, Maritain’s Degrees of Knowledge (which is a daunting read.) — Wayfarer

There may be degrees of reality, yes. I'm inclined to think so. But each of those degrees will exist in some manner or another. That's my point. A real but non-existent thing is a contradiction in terms, for a real thing is that which actually exists, as opposed to what is only imagined or potential.

One point I made in that thread is the rather mischievous suggestion that Buddhists must accept the reality of Universals - because that’s exactly what ‘the Buddha’ is! After all, the historical person of Gotama is in some respects only a vehicle or precursor for ‘the Tathagatha’, which (or who) periodically manifests ‘for the benefit of all sentient beings’ - which is why Mahāyāna Buddhism always talks in terms of ‘the Buddhas’. So if the Buddha is not ‘a supreme archetype’, then I’m not sure what is. But I didn’t want to push that line of argument. — Wayfarer

Interesting take. I suspected you would go down something like this route. I read this as an inconsistency within Buddhist thought. The classic way to resolve it, I gather, is the notion of the Two Truths, whereby the ultimate truth that the Buddha has access to and represents may contradict the truth of ordinary perceptual reality, but I'm wary of this idea. In the medieval West, it was Siger Brabant who introduced (or was accused of introducing) the notion of "double truth," which is to say that there could be truths of reason and truths of faith that mutually contradict. But as Aquinas says, "only the false is opposed to the true, as is clearly evident from an examination of their definitions, it is impossible that the truth of faith should be opposed to those principles that the human reason knows naturally." Truth cannot contradict truth definitionally, in other words.

The point I am grappling with is that there are ‘degrees of reality’, which I don’t think is recognised in modern philosophy. The only place I see it explicitly acknowledged is in the Thomists, for example, Maritain’s Degrees of Knowledge (which is a daunting read.) There’s also a mention of the idea still persisting in 17th C philosophy in this article. — Wayfarer

This idea of "degrees of reality" is probably best formulated by the Neo-Platonists. Plotinus describes an "emanation", and Proclus a "procession". Simply stated it is a philosophy of how the One is related to the Many. It's very interesting stuff if you can get beyond the appearance of mysticism. I agree that this is a metaphysics which has totally slipped the grasp of modern philosophy. Nevertheless, it is perhaps the most important metaphysics because its subject is the validation of intelligible objects (such as mathematical principles), (as Forms), in relation to the eternal. In modern, western society, we tend to simply assume that if it's mathematical then it's valid and therefore an eternal truth.

But are possibilities real? Do possibilities exist? How do you answer there? — apokrisis

I don't think they are real by definition, but they certainly exist, just as impossible things don't and can't exist.

Being is the end of becoming. — apokrisis

I don't think that what becomes doesn't exist. The contrast between being and becoming is between the kind of existence under consideration. To say of a thing that it becomes is to say that it changes over and within time, while to say of a thing that it is is to say that it exists immutably either eternally or outside of time. To use my example, the chair as concept is, while the chair as percept becomes. A concept doesn't exist in time, but physical objects like chairs do.

I have long believed that there is a meaningful difference between the terms ‘reality’, ‘being’ and ‘existence’ which is often overlooked in current philosophical discourse. This is because distinguishing 'reality', 'being', and 'existence' is practically impossible in the current English philosophical lexicon, as they are usually considered synonyms. But there are fundamental differences between these terms. — Wayfarer

What occurs to me right away is the context dependence of these words. Any of them standing alone is utterly worthless, it seems to me. Yet any of them could be put use by a skillful writer in a way that brings them to life.

I must say that I think they are synonyms. It also seems to me that any fundamental differences would be the result of a text imposing such differences (as yours does here). Of course you are free to build a system of distinctions from ordinary language (other philosophers have), but I wonder if it's worth the trouble.

Typically, in our extroverted and objectively-oriented culture, we accept that ‘what is real’ is what is 'out there'; compare Sagan 'cosmos is all there is'. But Being is prior to knowing, in the sense that if we were not beings, the cosmos would be nothing to us, we would simply react to stimuli, as animals do. Our grasp of rational principles, logic, and scientific and natural laws mediates our knowledge of the Cosmos, that comprise the basis of ‘scientia’. However what has become very confused in current culture, is that the mind, which in some sense must precede science, is now believed to be a mere consequence or output of fundamentally physical processes - even though what is ‘fundamentally physical’ is still such an open question. — Wayfarer

What comes to my mind is a child learning the word 'real.' As I remember and project it, the real is 'out there' in the sense of being shared by others. The child learns that no one else can experience her dream first hand. She has to use words to paint a picture. The people in her dream (her parents perhaps) weren't really there. If they were really there, they would remember it.

I still think that's the best way to think of 'reality' or objectivity. It is shared.

As far as 'mind' goes, that seems to be a synonym of experience. At the same time, because perhaps we see 'through' the lens of a particular brain and body, it is understood also as the condition for the possibility of experience. It is a vessel 'in' which or 'through' which experience pours and is shaped. It is the dancer and the dance, but in a way that's confusing. Nevertheless, we successfully use 'mind' when we're not trying to find a context/purpose independent definition of mind and its implied other. Sometimes metaphysics seems be exactly this thrust against particular context and purpose. This is sometimes great, since the result is less context and purpose dependent. [But the dove that flies faster in thin air doesn't fly at all in a vacuum.]