I agree. 'Qualitative' is nice. For me semantic holism is a key insight at the moment. Or in folksier terms, we don't see the forest by staring at individual trees. And as we look out on the forest(s), we ourselves are 'forests' with both a history and a future that exists as possibility. We aren't passive truth-detectors, though this is a role that we can include in a wider itself-non-passive project. — macrosoft

Not that I've payed much attention to the discussion, but this seemed nice to reply to. Underlying this (and @Wayfarer's post to which it responds) is a belief that scientific inquiry is necessarily reductive. To be sure, we can point at some reductive points in science; eg intelligence = IQ, mental health = absence of DSM category, but on the whole it need not be. Linguistics can and often does take a holistic approach, behavioural economics does too, even something as 'component driven' as climatology (in terms of focusing on spatiotemporal gradients of weather indicators) still runs aggregate simulations with full knowledge that results of any specific model are unlikely to represent the manifest behaviour of the climate.

The thing to look for is inappropriate reduction, as it is usually an oversimplification. Oversimplification isn't a necessary constituent of science, it produces bad science. To a good approximation the Earth is flat, to a better one it's a sphere, to a better one it's an oblate spheroid, to a better one it's very close to an oblate spheroid with randomised and fractal topographic development on and near its surface. Similarly, ecologists need not look at an ecosystem as an interacting system of components alone, they can look at the effect integration of one component into the aggregate of the others produces.

Even the study of evolutionary development, regularly accused of being reductive on the forum, is a myriad of interacting forces. Genes, contexts of gene expression, developmental landscapes. Evolutionary development raises questions like 'will the wolves of Yellowstone Park reduce the selection pressure for increased root-soil interaction surface area on riverside plants?', in which you have a larger ecosystem (Yellowstone) manifesting in several smaller ones - the ecology of wolves, the ecology of riverside plants, the erosion brought about by increased herbivorous population - then asking a question of their interaction (wolves decreasing herbivore numbers, decreasing plant consumption at riversides, perhaps influencing root behaviour) and then as a result of that interaction trying to figure out how it would influence the phenotypes and genotypes of riverside plant species found there.

The important thing to look at here is a non-reductive account of causal structure. We have 'fundamental units' at all levels interacting with 'fundamental units' - which is to say speaking of those fundamental units at all is somewhat of a category error. So, ecosystems shouldn't be analysed with such a reductive notion of causality, evolutionary development shouldn't be analysed with it either. And goodness knows, they usually are not.

The myth that science is necessarily reductionist needs to be put to rest, it's well past its bed time.

That's what it's like when people keep obsessing on epistemology... — Terrapin Station

Sign on the door says 'philosophy forum'. :smile:

The myth that science is necessarily reductionist needs to be put to rest... — fdrake

Except that science still does frequently don the (lab) coat of moral authority.

Sign on the door says 'philosophy forum'. — Wayfarer

Sign up for an ontology course.

Some realists do deny this, at least when it comes to perception. — Marchesk

I'm one of them.

Done that. ‘Philosophy of Matter, Keith Campbell, University of Sydney. HD for essay on Lucretius.

Except that science still does frequently don the (lab) coat of moral authority. — Wayfarer

I don't really know what you're talking about. How does moral authority come into asking questions about nature, social systems etc?

Ecology question: 'Has the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone Park reduced the number of their prey species?' Where does moral authority come in in answering that question rigorously?

The context is a thread about idealism, and then about idealism as opposed to scientific realism. It wasn’t really about reductionism as such, so how or why ecology is relevant to the discussion might be a better question.

As for the ‘lab coat of authority’ - that was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the role science plays in secular culture as the ‘arbiter of truth’ or ‘umpire of reality’ - i.e. as the final court of appeal for what ought to be considered real - a stance which Terrapin Station advocates.

the role science plays in secular culture as the ‘arbiter of truth’ or ‘umpire of reality’ - i.e. as the final court of appeal for what ought to be considered real - a stance which Terrapin Station advocates. — Wayfarer

That's actually not at all true. I'm actually skeptical or outright reject a lot of claims that are fairly well-accepted in the sciences.

I'm just not an idealist. And I certainly don't buy any religion.

OK, I’ll re-phrase - ‘a stance which a great many people advocate’.

Yes, idealism is refutable.

It requires recognising the question at stake is not whether the table exists when we look away from it. That's just an empirical situation which cannot be subject to observation.

Idealism (of this form) is actually a metaphysical position which cites presence of experience as logically entailing other entities that might appear in experience. The claim is actually stronger than just saying things of our experiences only exist when experienced. It goes a step further to conclude without experiences, the presence of anything must be logically impossible.

This is easily refeuted by pointing out the logical independent of things. Just because I see a tree, it doesn't make me (including my experiences), the tree. The tree is its own object which may or may not exist without the presence of my experience. It is not logically reliant on my experience to be.

Eh, seems I was hasty in my skim-reading, I thought we were currently having the 'science is reductionist' debate rather than the other one we have, 'observer in science'. Second time's the charm.

'Cant's see the forest for the trees' usually connotes the need for part-whole aspect shift. The connotation in @macrosoft's post was that the observer and their theories should be seen as part of a corpuscle with the rest of reality and its behaviour; observer/'the rest' and theories/behaviour sharing a structural symmetry. If you'll permit a metaphor, the structural symmetry reflects reality along the axis of the observer producing theories, perceptions, intuitions. It also reflects the observer along the axis of reality highlighting that theories, perceptions and intuitions are themselves only insofar as they are indexed to an observer; what nature displays depends on what we ask and how we ask. It's easy to forget that theories, perceptions and intuitions aim at the real through the first reflection simply because the second one when taken alone displays theories, perceptions and intuitions as human productions.

Scientific inquiry exhibits the first, targeting the real with well posed questions, whenever it deals with its topic with sufficient finesse and relevance of content; a well posed question is a conceptual opening for nature to fill. Scientific inquiry exhibits the second when dealing with how theories produced through targeting the real operationalise; checking if the question is well posed or whether the data relevant for that question it is sufficiently strong and precise. Need both, and every competent researcher does both.

Some realists do deny this, at least when it comes to perception. Direct realism denies that there is an idea or sense impression in the mind mediating the thing itself. As such, you're aware of seeing the tree, not a mental image of the tree. — Marchesk

I like direct realism, actually. 'I see the tree.' That captures it well enough for me. But I know what others mean by other expressions. The pragmatic way to cut through the noise is to just look at how or how not various theories affect the way we behave. And a charitable or sincerely curious listener or maybe just a good sport tries to look beyond individually objectionable words to what their conversational partner is really getting at and why.

No disagreements on your post except its misunderstanding of the themes I'm exploring. The opposite of holism as I understand it is taking a piece of what is being examined out of its living context as an initial approach, without first getting a sense of what is going on. This is often a word from a sentence or a paragraph from a book. But it can also be an entire language game ripped out of the larger context of lots of language games.

Here's how you scanned me before approaching:

Not that I've payed much attention to the discussion, but this seemed nice to reply to. — fdrake

And (no big deal) but right away you read me out of context and lumped me into a group of your 'bad guys,' the 'bad guys' who think scientists are the 'bad guys.' I think we both agree that it's boring to be and see such cartoons. I am striving to avoid one-sided perspectives (such a striving is a decent description of philosophy itself.) There are plenty of old moves that only need to be seen once or twice. And I'll even confess to rehashing old moves, just not exactly the one you accused me of (my concerns lately are those of late Witt. and early Heid., to sketch them briefly.) Your defense of science (with which I agree) is probably itself an old move. We learn them, make them our own, and then try to share them. Probably we have to master quite a few old moves to make a new move possible. I'll settle for a nice paraphrase here and there, a fresh metaphor.

the role science plays in secular culture as the ‘arbiter of truth’ or ‘umpire of reality’ - i.e. as the final court of appeal for what ought to be considered real — Wayfarer

This is closer to my concern, and it doesn't only concern science. One of the things that IMO philosophy works against is an unsophisticated sense of how 'real' and its synonyms are used. If someone just tells me that matter or God or ideas or whatever is the really real, they have told me almost nothing. Hegel critiqued this kind of bare result approach pretty well in the PoS.

Among the many consequences that follow from what has been said, it is of importance to emphasis this, that knowledge is only real and can only be set forth fully in the form of science, in the form of system; and further, that a so-called fundamental proposition or first principle of philosophy, even if it is true, is yet none the less false just because and in so far as it is merely a fundamental proposition, merely a first principle. It is for that reason easily refuted. The refutation consists in bringing out its defective character, and it is defective because it is merely the universal, merely a principle, the beginning. — Hegel

That is quoted for its eloquence and not as if Hegel is some authority. I interpret 'system' in terms of a whole. This 'whole' is not only the 'concept system' as a whole, but embodied existence as a whole, though I have the sense that for Hegel it was more strictly conceptual. For me the 'system' is less crystalline and includes the know-how we can't make explicit, such as our ability to write and understand paragraphs like the one quoted. This ability is in some sense the actual beginning of philosphy --batteries included, mysteriously able to operate with 'global' linguistic knowhow that we never quite get 'behind,' since we depend on this knowhow to try.

The atomic approach is like a cat, lovely and complex, trying to understand its own existence in terms of paper airplanes. Somehow the paper airplanes (little snapped together sentences) are supposed to 'dominate' their source and fold paper into a leaping torty.

Cant's see the forest for the trees' usually connotes the need for part-whole aspect shift. The connotation in macrosoft's post was that the observer and their theories should be seen as part of a corpuscle with the rest of reality and its behaviour; — fdrake

Thanks. Yes, this is closer. But more specifically I mean that individual words have very little signifying power. Nevertheless it seems fairly common to get hung up on words, arguing about whether something exists without making sense of whatever it is that is supposed to exist or not. We can make sense of 'making sense of whatever' is in terms of clarifying 'how' it exists, which (among other things) is to clarify its relevance to those talking.

IMV, we need only look at our own reading and writing to see that words don't fit together like legos. They exist in a kind of 'existential' time. As I read a sentence, I am already ahead of myself in expectation of what will follow. And what I have already read 'hangs' over my scanning of the 'present' word. In short, meaning is not instantaneous. The time of language (human time or the human as this kind of time) does not seem to be well modeled by some segment of R, and the often-implicit idea that meaning is snapped together from bricks of instantaneous meaning becomes especially questionable.

This is easily refeuted by pointing out the logical independent of things. — TheWillowOfDarkness

That doesn't refute anything. Not that I'm an idealist of course, but that doesn't refute it. Neither idealism nor realism are refutable. It's just a matter of whether we have good reasons to buy one framework or the other.

What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar”. When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something valid, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. Apprehending and proving consist similarly in seeing whether every one finds what is said corresponding to his idea too, whether it is familiar and seems to him so and so or not.
— Hegel

I am recontextualizing some nice passages from Hegel for my own purpose (not the best way to understand Hegel the person, but a nice way to read the old man in the light of 20th century linguistic concerns.) This 'flitting between secure points' and going 'merely along the surface' is roughly the kind of thing that I notice and want to point out. And it stems from ignoring the issue of the right approach for the 'object' being investigated. For instance, an atomic theory of meaning can function as a kind of default background, trapping us on the surface.

Dogmatism as a way of thinking, whether in ordinary knowledge or in the study of philosophy, is nothing else but the view that truth consists in a proposition, which is a fixed and final result, or again which is directly known. — Hegel

For me this is a criticism of yes/no questions like 'Is Idealism Irrefutable'? We decide a proposition with our logic machines is the idea. Argument is foregrounded and disclosure of the entities in question is backgrounded, so that we don't know what we are arguing about --or not as well as we could. I don't think we can ever become completely clear on the atomic level of meaning. 'Idealism means exactly this.' 'Being refutable means exactly this.' Meanings are caught in 'living time' with other meanings. Timeless propositions are nets for sand. <---And that proposition 'knows' that it is not really timeless. It expects to be caught up in a living contemplation to be developed and recontextualized.

Where could the inmost truth of a philosophical work be found better expressed than in its purposes and results? and in what way could these be more definitely known than through their distinction from what is produced during the same period by others working in the same field? If, however, such procedure is to pass for more than the beginning of knowledge, if it is to pass for actually knowing, then we must, in point of fact, look on it as a device for avoiding the real business at issue, an attempt to combine the appearance of being in earnest and taking trouble about the subject with an actual neglect of the subject altogether. For the real subject-matter is not exhausted in its purpose, but in working the matter out; nor is the mere result attained the concrete whole itself, but the result along with the process of arriving at it. The purpose of itself is a lifeless universal, just as the general drift is a mere activity in a certain direction, which is still without its concrete realization; and the naked result is the corpse of the system which has left its guiding tendency behind it. — Hegel

For me this is a good sketch of the futility of taking categories like 'realist' or 'idealist' seriously. Their quasi-timeless content offers only a bare suggestion. I need to scan quite a few paragraphs of a poster on this forum, for instance, to even begin to learn his/her somewhat-private language as a 'system' or whole --the only way science/knowledge does (and not merely 'ought' to) exist. In the real world we do this all the time. We meet personalities as personalities, 'systems' grokking 'systems' as systems in order to make sense of this or that emission against a background understanding which is crucial. The naked result is almost nothing without its history/context. It cannot trap all the meaning that led up to a pithy summary. The summary is enjoyed (and meaning-rich) only after its engendering is repeated in the listener's mind (approximately repeated, since 'perfect' clarity is a ghost too quick for us.)

:up:

And (no big deal) but right away you read me out of context and lumped me into a group of your 'bad guys,' the 'bad guys' who think scientists are the 'bad guys.' I think we both agree that it's boring to be and see such cartoons. I am striving to avoid one-sided perspectives (such a striving is a decent description of philosophy itself.) — macrosoft

I'm still quite sure that there is an anti-'scientific metaphysics', through the opposition of scientific reductionism to some kind of ontological holism, operating in the response you had to Wayfarer. I had two choices really, one was to focus on that theme I saw, the other was to go through my usual response to this kind of thing, rehearsing the arche-fossil argument from Meillassoux; which you should look up if you are unfamiliar, it's an attack on Hegel (afaik) as much as it is an attack on Heidegger. I have no interest in going through it for the umpteenth time though. The book it's in is 'After Finitude'.

So yeah, apologies for a hasty reading of you.

rehearsing the arche-fossil argument from Meillassoux; which you should look up if you are unfamiliar, — fdrake

A beautiful book, but hardly the last word. I think Meillassoux is subject to some of the criticisms above. Have you looked into his other work? He insists on the possibility of a resurrection of the dead. I refer to Harman's critical anthology, Philosophy in the Making. He seems like a strange theologian after all. I don't mind this. I say bring on the creative thinking. But he might not be your ideal go-to retort here in light of that.

We have seen that the experimental sciences are unable to give an account of the qualitative excess of life beyond its material understanding, and clearly this is not their goal. They do not even aim at such an explanation, which is simply meaningless with respect to their procedures. We have none the less shown that the incapacity of experimental science to touch remotely on this problem does not doom every rational approach to it, as long as we accept the disjunction between reason and real necessity.
...
What we call divine ethics rests on the real possibility of immortality, a possibility guaranteed by factial ontology. ...Since the rebirth of bodies is not illogical it must also be possible; it cannot even be deemed either probable or improbable. For if rebirth suddenly occurs, it ought to occur suddenly in the very fashion in which a new Universe of cases suddenly appears in the midst of the non-Whole. Rebirth can thus be assimilated to the improbabilizable advent of a new constancy in the same manner in which life suddenly arises from matter...

Following the three Worlds of matter, life, and thought, the rebirth of humans ought to be distinguished as a fourth World: if a World were to arise beyond the three preceding ones, this World could only be that of the rebirth of humans.
...
The core of factial ethics thus consists in the immanent binding of philosophical astonishment and messianic hope...

Divine inexistence fulfills, for the first time, a condition of hope for the resurrection of the dead.
— Meillassoux

excerpts from The Divine Inexistence

I'm still quite sure that there is an anti-'scientific metaphysics', through the opposition of scientific reductionism to some kind of ontological holism, operating in the response you had to Wayfarer. — fdrake

I'd say it was more like holism versus anti -scientistic metaphysics, but even this 'scientistic' too specific. I'm working from a perception/understanding of language (formally indicated by others but to some degree just grasped directly by really looking and caring) that inspires me to apply it to old debates in a way that opens up mutual understanding (synthesizes them) or reveals them as trivial disagreements. The value in this is primarily personal, but it's just fun to work this out in conversation with others. That makes sense, since bridging gulfs between jargons should be what it's good at, or at least trying to be good at.

So yeah, apologies for a hasty reading of you. — fdrake

Thanks.

Thanks!

I am recontextualizing some nice passages from Hegel — macrosoft

Maybe read a philosopher who isnt just a big mishmash of gobbledygook instead. :joke:

Staying away from the continentalists is a good idea in general. :yum:

A beautiful book, but hardly the last word. I think Meillassoux is subject to some of the criticisms above. Have you looked into his other work? He insists on the possibility of a resurrection of the dead. I refer to Harman's critical anthology, Philosophy in the Making. He seems like a strange theologian after all. I don't mind this. I say bring on the creative thinking. But he might not be your ideal go-to retort here in light of that. — macrosoft

Yeah, I've not read his other works, just secondary literature on them. Even in After Finitude things get exceptionally chaotic. I dislike that in untethering time from experiential temporality through the arche-fossil argument he also untethers becoming from forming stable structures. But I think the arche-fossil stands alone as an excellent argument against a strict dependence of being upon an observer situated within it.

So the claim he's attacking with that argument is what he sees as a phenomenological undermining of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Soil can be damp to the touch, dry, dense, lightly packed, and these depend somewhat on how the soil is interacted with; making them secondary qualities. But it has pH, a certain profile of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorous in it, it traps a given amount of air; chemical composition and the like are primary qualities of the soil.

A more sophisticated reading of pH and chemical composition will reveal that pH and chemical composition only manifest as a property in relation to our mental models of the soil; even the primary qualities require a particular mode of apprehension of the soil in order to show up. In this sense, the exhibition of the soil's mind-independent properties are still undermined on a meta level by the mind-dependence of their model upon human conduct. In the discussion between @macrosoft and @Wayfarer, 'human conduct' is 'the observer' which needs to be seen as part of the mental models; the observer takes the role of a containing and conditioning unit upon their observations, which is contrasted to the supposedly passive role the observer plays in scientific measurement (ignore QM for now, that discussion's largely irrelevant to the arche-fossil).

These sophisticated readers, those who know the true nature of primary qualities; that while they appear as mind-independent they are still counterfactually conditioned by the interaction of thought with their object, are called correlationists by Meillassoux. They are called this because they make being reciprocally depend on the subject in all senses relevant to interaction between the two, and the subject reciprocally depend on being in all senses relevant to the interaction between the two.

At this point, imagine that one of these sophisticated readers is a hobbyist digging for dinosaur fossils and they find one! Great luck! Unfortunately, things which predate the coupling of subject and being are not good for an ontology which necessitates their coupling. In one sense, the correlationist says, the dinosaur fossil predates humanity - in another, more profound sense, it does not; all interactions with it generate interpretations which are derivative of our phenomenological condition. The fossil appears as prior to the suture between the subject and being only because it is already within that suture as one of its interactions.

Which is rather strange, is it not? Something which predates the very coupling of human subjects and our world is nevertheless denied expression of its being until we come along and save the day; allowing the universe to 'talk to itself' in the only register fit to recognise its dynamics, the thoughts, speech and words of humanity. The creature which produced the fossil still died, it still obtained sustenance during its life, it was still a process of evolutionary development coupled to ecological constraints, and it was such prior to anything we had to do with it. Which is to say, the creature did not depend in any sense upon the reciprocal relation of subject and world in humans; it predated them.

The effects of this move, locating the reciprocity of being and subject within history are quite profound. This move transforms the transcendental coupling of subject and world into an event which occurs in history; the transcendental (like the ideality of space and time) becomes a transcendental for-humans, and the novel ability to use this 'for-humans' is also an invitation to think being as ultimately indifferent to any of our comportments; even the transcendental structures underlying reasoning and apprehension. The distinction between primary and secondary qualities now makes sense again.

Staying away from the continentalists is a good idea in general. :yum: — Terrapin Station

It's not a hard argument. Maybe if you studied who you're having trouble with more generously, and used more secondary literature, you'd have an easier time. Ask yourself, is it really likely that they are all saying nothing of worth simply because you do not understand them?

Ask yourself, is it really likely that they are all saying nothing of worth simply because you do not understand them? — fdrake

Well, and likewise, "Are they really saying something of worth/are they really worth studying just because they're well-entrenched in the field, where generation after generation studies them just because the generations before did?" And it's also important to note that you only have limited time to spend on anything. Where is your time best spent?

Well, and likewise, "Are they really saying something of worth/are they really worth studying just becasue they're well-entrenched in the field, where generation after generation studies them just because the generations before did?" — Terrapin Station

Hah. The only reason they're respected is that they're entrenched in the field! You can reject literally any scientific discourse with this. You can do the same thing with the analytics and the ancients. Is the only reason we still study Plato because his ideas are entrenched in the field? Is the only reason we still study Frege because his ideas are entrenched in the field? Come on, this is lazy argumentation and you know it.

Hah. The only reason they're respected is that they're entrenched in the field! You can reject literally any scientific discourse with this. You can do the same thing with the analytics and the ancients. Is the only reason we still study Plato because his ideas are entrenched in the field? Is the only reason we still study Frege because his ideas are entrenched in the field? Come on, this is lazy argumentation and you know it. — fdrake

What's lazy is assuming that they're worth studying just because you like them. Philosophically they're crap and they'll lead you in countless wrong directions. Just look at the balderdash that fans on this board post. They're not being well served by reading bad philosophy.

Quote me where I said that they're worth studying because I like them. Stop putting words in my mouth. This in group/out group bollocks you're doing with analytic and continental philosophy is complete bollocks, and has been bollocks since it started. Pathetic.

Quote me where I said that they're worth studying because I like them. — fdrake

See how much good reading that nonsense is doing you? You think that I'm thinking that I'm quoting you.

Oh no, I was asking for textual evidence for your attribution of 'I study them because I like them and that's the only reason anyone ever studies continental philosophers' to me. We should stop this exchange now before it becomes even more of a pissing contest.

Oh no, I was asking for textual evidence — fdrake

Then why would you write "quote me"? And why would you assume that I'm making a comment based on textual evidence rather than other possibilities?