The Surpassing Strangeness of (Believing in) Sense-Data

November 15, 2013 By in Albritton, Cavell, Philosophy Tags: , , 5 Comments

A confession (although my regular readers will likely be unsurprised):  For me, many of the most perplexing philosophical problems relate to philosophers themselves.  Here’s one thing I mean by that.  I find the arguments for sense-data unmoving–they are few in number and they radiate only a meager glory.  But I find the fact that philosophers have come to believe (in some at least professional sense of that term) that there are sense-data deeply fascinating.  How can that be?  It staggers credulity.  Surely no one, not Russell, not Moore, especially not Moore, really believes that there are sense-data?

When you look closely at supposed arguments for sense-data, you actually find little argumentation.  Conjuration is what you find instead.  Sense-data are made to appear (usually hands are waved, even while they are perhaps waived) via an open sesame–‘illusion’, ‘dream’, ‘error’, ‘double-vision”, ‘after-image’.

In his “Moore’s Theory of Sense-Data”, O. K. Bouwsma masterfully reveals how hard it is to succeed–or, how easy it is to fail–to get the conjuration right.  Moore takes himself to have supplied instructions that will allow the reader to “pick out” a sense-datum.  (Look at your hand and do as follows….)  Bouwsma tries repeatedly to follow Moore’s instructions, but never manages to pick out a sense-datum–he keeps slipping, seeing his hand and failing to see the sense-datum.  Bouwsma ends the essay by noting that he has not refuted Moore:  and that is surely right.  But we should also remember that a set of instructions is neither valid nor sound.  It is either helpful or not.  Bouwmsa has shown that Moore’s instructions are not helpful.  They didn’t help Moore.  Moore took himself to have picked out a sense-datum (he seems to have had one handy) and then asked himself how he had gone about it, assuming, we might say, that since he had succeeded (however he did, if he did), anyone following his instructions would succeed.  Moore as reverse-engineer.  How much help are Moore’s instructions for someone who does not (yet) believe in sense-data and is waiting for one to appear, waiting to succeed in picking one out, before believing in them?  (I’m from Missouri; show me!)

Teaching Russell

November 14, 2013 By in education, teaching 2 Comments

My Intro to Phil class is reading Russell’s Problems with me.  This is my first time to teach out of Problems in an extended way; although I have taught the first few pages a number of times when working on arguments for sense-data in other classes.

We read the first part of Plato’s Theaetetus (through the ‘knowledge’ =df perception sections) and then we read Descartes’ Meditations (all of it).  In previous versions of the class, I moved from Descartes to Wittgenstein’s Blue Book or into Kant’s Prolegomena.  I eventually gave up on the Wittgenstein, mainly because the dialectic (its crisscrossing of the landscape, to borrow a PI image) is so complicated that I found the students really couldn’t keep up.  Of course, the Plato is dialectically complicated too, but it is better signposted, and falls into clearer large sections, even if the intra-sectional arguments are sometimes formidable.  (Does Socrates acccept or reject the Heraclitean Fluxiness that he introduces when he discusses knowledge-as-perception or not? etc.)

I eventually gave up on the Kant because there is too much distance, as it were, between Descartes and Kant for the students to really understand what Kant is doing.  I also found that it is hard to motivate the students to sympathize with Kant if they have not felt the milking-the-he-goat-into-a-sieve pointlessness that often attends philosophical argumentation.  (Let me be clear:  I have in mind feeling that in a way that earns the feeling, by having been burned by philosophical argumentation in the past, burned while–and because–you were inwardly, actively and sympathetically trusting in philosophical argumentation.  Students sometimes–too often–feel that philosophical argumentation is pointless; but they haven’t earned that feeling.  That kind of cheap felt pointlessness does not serve to motivate sympathy with Kant.)  So the students lack the background both of understanding and of earned affective response needed for the Prolegomena to do its simultaneous ending-and-beginning work.  Giving up on Wittgenstein and Kant has led me to Russell.  So far, so ok.  Moving from the Meditation to the Problems, while not seamless, is reasonably straightforward:  “Is there any knowledge so certain that no reasonable person could doubt it?”–the beginning of Problems strikes the students as quite familiar.  We will see how it goes the final couple of weeks.  I will report back.

Returning to Work

November 11, 2013 By in meta-blog Leave a comment

Teaching has preoccupied me lately, as well as welcome visitors and travelling.  My son is playing Tom in Gatsby; I travelled to see him in it this weekend.  Good show.  Wonderful to see my son’s continued growth as an actor.  He works hard at it.

But I haven’t been working hard around here lately.  I simply have too much writing to do off-site to spend much time on the blog.  I am going to try to budget my time better in the next few weeks.  Thanks as always for reading and especially for your comments.

Enlightenment and Thinking (Kant)

October 27, 2013 By in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Great stuff from Kant.

Time's Flow Stemmed

This morning I reread Kant’s well-known What is Enlightenment? [PDF], an essay that I’ve reflected on many times over the years.

Much more interesting (a recent reading, thanks to a friend’s deeper knowledge of Kant) though is Kant’s lesser-known (to me anyway) development on enlightenment and thinking, which is perhaps more reasonable and realistic. I quote below from SS40 of The Critique of Judgement. This piece, with extended footnote, emphasises the difficulty of thinking, and of the removal of superstition/prejudice. Enlightenment, like anything of worth, does not come easily.

While the following maxims of common human understanding do not properly come in here as constituent parts of the critique of taste, they may still serve to elucidate its fundamental propositions. They are these: (I) to think for oneself; (2) to think from the standpoint of everyone else; (3) always to think consistently. The first is the maxim of…

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Cicero on Inconsistency with Yesterday

October 21, 2013 By in education, Emerson, virtue and vice, writing Tags: , , 1 Comment

You appeal to my writings, and testify to what I may at some time have said or written. You may deal in this way with others, who in their discussions follow prescribed rules. We live for the passing day ; we say whatever strikes our minds as probable ; and so we alone are free.

Opening Speech: Socrates, A Tragedy in Five Acts (Francis Foster Barham)

October 21, 2013 By in Socrates, writing Tags: , , 1 Comment

SOCRATES.

ACT I. Scene I.— Athens.

Socrates solus, basking in the sunshine.

Philosophers have many a pleasure — known–
Felt — by themselves — which to the vulgar world
They rarely express : and when they do, how seldom
Do the hearts of men respond ! — Ay, at this moment
There is a rapture in this sunshine — spreading
Its hot o’erwhelming lustre over Athens,
Which they conceive not ; —
Unto me it is Symbolic of the incommunicable flame
Of Deity ! It seems to embrace me, like
The beatific vision of Olympus,
Transforming what it shines on, to its likeness ;
It enters into my very soul, and makes
A summer of my conscience! — I rejoice
To anticipate the eternity when I
Likewise shall be as a sunbeam.

Johnson, recall, complained of Milton’s great poem that no one ever wished it longer.  I doubt Johnson believed such a wish was rejected as early as the first few of Milton’s lines.  Here, however…

Socrates, the sunbeam!