O.T.H.E.R. ([info]other) wrote,
@ 2009-06-29 04:22:00
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The Three Big Questions
Whenever I go all philosophical, I almost always go to the three big questions: how do we understand? How do we live well? How should we restructure life? Other commonly given big questions seem either uninteresting to me or unintelligible: What is the meaning of life? Why is there something rather than nothing? What are the good, the beautiful, and the truth? How can I be moral? What is my purpose? In a word, these questions are looking for external ‘metaphysical’ answers that I do not believe exist.

Philosophy fully abandons the metaphysical perspective of external things for a psychological perspective looking outwards. It’s deeply concerned with biology and physical reality and what we can know about it.

Philosophy is then a survey course of three different subfields. The first is methodology: A look at neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, scholarship, empirical study, and statistics. Metaphysics is also covered, but only to show us what not to do. We are concerned with understanding, not with something called ‘truth’. The second is well being and socialization: A look at neuropsychology again, neurochemistry, physiology, motivational psychology, behavioural psychology, social psychology, and microeconomics. The roles of drugs, food, music, art, social interactions, meditation/spirituality, and physical activities on individuals and groups are looked at. Morality is covered only insofar as it does not dip into the metaphysics of the good. The third is utopian studies: A look at macroeconomics, sociology, political philosophy, education, and technological innovation.


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[info]selfishgene
2009-06-29 04:50 pm UTC (link)
Yes

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[info]radtea
2009-06-29 06:30 pm UTC (link)
I think there is something that looks like the residue of traditional metaphysics in some of the ontological questions implicit in "how do we understand?" When we look at the distinction between classical things and quantum things, and ask, "what can we meaningfully say about quantum things and how to we best understand the difference between them and classical things?" we are doing something that sounds a lot like an ontological investigation, although strictly speaking it isn't.

So while I broadly agree with what you're saying, I would argue that there are some bits of metaphysics that may be worth continued positive study because some of the questions and approaches are still valuable, even though it has to be put entirely in terms of our understanding rather than "the way the world is" to make sense.

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[info]other
2009-06-29 08:07 pm UTC (link)
Yeah. I had a hard time writing that question down as I kept wanting to finish it: "how do we understand.... [the world/the universe/anything and everything/stuff]?" 'Meaningfully talk about' sounds a bit better than 'understand', but I still want to add some nouns at the end.

I also had a hard time adding in the sentence about biology and physical reality because I didn't want to either sounds like a metaphysicist on one hand and a rationalist on the other. I am genuinely concerned with the understanding the phenomenal world and not just being in my head.

I don't think we ever figured out a way to talk about this at the Enlightenment conference. I think the closest we got was 'intentional objects', but no one seemed happy with that either. I'm not sure if intentional objects fall into ontology or epistemology.

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[info]radtea
2009-06-30 02:06 am UTC (link)
I think Carolyn Ray's thing on propositions addresses this point to some extent, with the language of "modes", which is sufficiently non-commital to get at the idea of "reality is some way" without saying anything too substantive about how un-apprehended reality is: http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/essays/text/carolynray/propositions.html

This was presented at the second and last Enlightenment meeting, which I don't think you were at.

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[info]other
2009-06-30 09:46 am UTC (link)
I think this is where I come out sounding even more radical. I've given up on propositions. That is, I don't think sentences are things that can be true or false. I don't even think we particularly think in sentences. Well, we can, but it's more of a translating into sentences than actually thinking in them. I definitely disagree with Barbara Branden who says we can only thinking in sentences.

I think believing in propositions is what gets us into trouble. Without believing in propositions, I'm not particularly concerned with facts, truth, and correspondence theories. I do want something like entities, but I'm not sure I need those either. Maybe 'intentional phenomenal object' or 'focus point' is enough. I still think intentionally is part of thinking.

What I want to do doesn't end up sounding like logic or even philosophy anymore without propositions though.

'Modes of existence' sounds like a pretty non-committal way of talking about the noumenal je ne sais quoi, if noumenon or things-in-themselves sounds too ontological. On the other hand, the noumenal world always seemed to be brought up in a negative fashion to oppose it from the phenomenal world, whereas Carolyn seems to be talking about existence in a positive sense. So maybe it only a trade off.

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[info]radtea
2009-06-30 09:24 pm UTC (link)
I've been arguing against the idea that sentences can be true for false for more than a decade, so I'm with you on that! If you have any of my old MDOP stuff on Godel's Theorem, I argued there that truth and falsity are properties of meaning, not sentences. Meaning is a verb, and insofar as it is a noun it refers to an intentional state, although I never pinned down what true or false meant, except that they had a significant pragmatic, operational component.

I have no clue what "correspondence" theories of truth mean, because I have no idea what "correspondence" can mean in a non-realist epistemology except that "true" meanings allow us to operate on the world effectively, in which case you have a pragmatic or operational theory rather than a correspondence theory.

I was explaining this to my soon-to-be-ex gf a few days ago, as she is going into a department where post-modernism looms large. Although I'm not committed to the idea that there is nothing but operational significance to meaning, I think that anything that has meaning must have an operational component to that meaning. So when I say, "the cat is on the mat" and am using the words in an ordinary way and am not insane, it is part of the meaning that if I give the mat a jerk the cat is going to go flying.

Propositions that we can't mean anything by that has operational significance are meaningless (much of Foucault is like this: full of propositions that do not have any operational component to anything one can reasonably mean by them.)

Dunno if any of that makes sense, but I think you're on the right track, although I think propositions as a vehicle for expression are pretty much indispensable, so you should have something to say about them.

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