The Good of Metaphysics and the Sophists

November 1, 2011 7 Comments

Aristotle's Masterful "Metaphysics"

By: Jay

For Aristotle, the starting point of Wisdom, or philosophy, was metaphysics.  Modernity has more or less rejected metaphysics in its quest for self-destruction.  But metaphysics will never go away, because metaphysics is reality itself – the study of the totality of what is.  Metaphysics is the starting point in terms of actual foundations of knowledge and presupposition, yet comes at the end of the process of pedagogy, as it is the highest science.   Nowadays, aside from some continental philosophers who follow in the train of genius writers like Husserl, theoria and metaphysics have been jettisoned for pragmatism, post-modernism and other forms of nonsense that Ayn Rand aptly describes as the self-destruction of philosophy.  There is a long train of contributors to this gradual decline.

Unfortunately, certain basic flaws in Aristotle’s own position led to the decline, particularly his adoption of empiricism.  Aristotle cut the world off from the possibility of any other world or reality or dimension, and while it took a millennia or two, this ultimately resulted in materialism, positivism and then, the tossing out of all meaning and purpose.  In fact, that last notion was crucial for early moderns like Bacon who did have legitimate scruples with Aristotle.  Aristotle had adopted several ideas about the natural world from tradition, such as that the heavens are perfectly unchanged, static realities, or that rocks have an essential quality of “going downward.”   Bacon rightly laughed at this, but Bacon didn’t foresee that tossing out Aristotle’s final cause, or telos, would result in the total collapse of philosophy.

The place of Thomas Aquinas can also not be forgotten in this chain.  Aquinas followed suit with an Aristotelian-Platonic synthesis (so he thought), which placed human reasoning on an independent basis that never touched the divine, since the absolutely simple divine essence, within which the divine archetypes upon which even “natural” reasoning was based, were never accessed by the mind of man in this life.  He held this because of his idea of simplicity, which was such that the divinity, which is also the ground of human knowledge, never interacts with or connects to the abstracted phantasms in man’s mind, since the exemplars themselves are “in the divine essence” is a “First Cause” that is always only able to “reveal” itself by created effects in this life.  Bacon departed from these ideas, and turned to a more consistent (so he thought) empiricism.  Read more of this post

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Some Problems for the Ontological Argument: Metaphysical, Epistemic and Theological

May 7, 2011 5 Comments

 

The great chain of being.

By: Jay

(c) copyright 

The ontological argument of Anselm of Canterbury has long since captivated the minds of many philosophers and apologists. Not long after Anselm published his Proslogion, his devotional apologetic was criticized by Gaunilo, yet Anselm’s argument was taken up by many of the West’s most prominent thinkers, such as Descartes and Leibniz, both giving their own versions. One of the strongest arguments against Anselm would be Immanuel Kant’s, who centered his objection around the notion that “being” is not a predicate.1 The purpose of this paper will be to analyze other problems, particularly theological, metaphysical and epistemological problems in the classical Anselmian formulation.

Anselm’s argument simply stated is as follows:

And certainly this being so truly exists that it cannot even be thought not to exist. For something can be thought to exist that cannot be thought not to exist, and this is greater than that which cannot be thought not to exist. Hence, if that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought can be thought not to exist, then that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought is not the same as that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought, which is absurd. Something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought exists so truly then, that it cannot be even thought not to exist. And you, Lord our God, are this being.2

 

Plantinga gives the form of the argument as follows, arguing it is best formulated as a reductio ad absurdum argument:

 

  1. God exists in the understanding, but not in reality. (assumption for reductio)

  2. Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone. (premise)

  3. A being having all of God’s properties plus existence in reality can be conceived. (premise)

  4. A being having all of God’s properties plus existence in reality is greater than God. (from 1 and 2)

  5. A being greater than God cannot be conceived. (3,4)

  6. It is false that a being greater than God can be conceived. (by definition of ‘God.’)

  7. Hence it is false that God exists in the understanding but not in reality. (1-6 reductio ad absurdum).3 Read more of this post

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Strawson’s Idea of Perception as Theory-Laden for the Philosopher, Alva Noe’s Action in Perception, and the Larger Transcendental Preconditions

November 25, 2010 21 Comments

Noe's "Action in Perception"

By: Jay

(c) copyright, all rights reserved.

A.J. Ayer and other logical positivists have contended that the problem of perception is a central issue in modern epistemology and metaphysics. Ayer himself argued from a position of phenomenalism to what he termed “sophisticated realism.” Ayer represented more or less the end of the “psychologistic” approach to perception, even with later defenses of realism, and P.F. Strawson gives a biting critique of Ayer in his article “Perception and Its Objects.” Likewise, Alva Noe has argued for what he terms an “enactive approach” to perception, outlined in his Action in Perception. In this paper, I will compare the criticisms of both, in regard to the empiricist and psychologistic approach, as well as arguing that Strawson’s view of theory-laden approaches and common sense realism are also crucial for Noe’s thesis.

In order to understand Strawson’s criticisms of Ayer, it is necessary to first understand Locke’s view of perception and then move from this to the application of Strawson’s insights, to Noe, and then my argument for the necessity of a larger context as a precondition resulting from where both are correct.  John Locke argued that human perception is akin to pictures of objects, received from sense impressions that in some form exist in the mind as concepts, or ideas. Locke is, of course, a seminal thinker, along with Hume and Berkeley, in British Empiricism. In this view, the human mind is conceived of as a tabula rasa, or blank slate, which passively receives impressions from the external world, which are then stamped upon the mind, as a kind of seal in wax, or picture in the mind. There are no innate ideas.

In this view, perception is thus not direct, but indirect, or mediated by sensuous qualities or “accidents” (in the classical terminology) we perceive of the object. Objects in the world possess primary and secondary qualities, and these qualities we receive as impressions through sensation are then the only data we pick up from experience. The mind is viewed here, though anachronistic, as a blank tape in a camcorder, which records the impressions. The self or subject then views them, as if there were a “little man,” or homunculus inside the mind of the subject. For Locke, the mind can never penetrate to the substratum, or reach beyond the veil of the senses. Hence, it is an indirect or mediated realism. The objects of the external world are indeed objects with a real ontological status; they have being. However, the mind of the subject can never penetrate to the world in itself, and this ends up being the chief problem for classical empiricism. The Lockian view, what Strawson calls “scientific realism,” ends up presenting us with systematic illusion.[1]

  Read more of this post

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Husserl’s Synthetic A Priori Argument From Mereology

April 6, 2010 Leave a comment

A Response to Kant’s Metaphysical Challenge

By: Jay Dyer

Modern philosophy since Immanuel Kant has tended to deny the possibility of making a synthetic a priori claim about experience. An analytic statement is one in which the concept of the predicate is contained in the subject. Synthetic statements are not this way; here, the predicate is not contained in the meaning or definition of the subject and additional information may be added, based upon experience. Such was Kant’s argument in his Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. Thus, Kant thought, no necessary, a priori laws of experience could be posited—which are themselves the foundations of metaphysical claims, and, without these, he proclaimed, metaphysics was no longer possible. The purpose of this paper is to present Husserl’s argument from mereology for synthetic a priori truths of experience.

Mereology is the logic of the relationship of parts to wholes. In Husserl’s 1901 Logical Investigations, Volume II, “Investigation III” takes up the topic of mereology, following Brentano’s lead. Here, Husserl thinks, necessary a priori truths about experience may be given. A “part,” Husserl argues, is anything which can be distinguished in an object, such as color, shape, or extension, in contrast to the intentional object as a whole. However, an important distinction must be made: some parts are independent, while others are dependent. A dependent part is defined according to “its inability to exist by itself.” That is, “non-independent objects are objects belonging to such pure Species as are governed by a law of essence to the effect that they only exist, if at all, as parts of more inclusive wholes of a certain appropriate Species.” Read more of this post

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