John Greco is a Reliabilist. Like other Reliabilists, he claims* that one cannot have knowledge through “strange and fleeting processes.” As an example of such a phenomenon, he points to an illustration in which one’s eyesight works only intermittently. Since it works only intermittently it is “strange and fleeting” and therefore unreliable.
Stewart Cohen** disagrees with Greco’s conclusions based on the case of intermittent eyesight and uses two scenarios to illustrate his point of disagreement. Assuming that eyesight is part of our cognitive equipment which is responsible for the formation of our visual beliefs, consider my slightly modified versions of those illustrations.
The first scenario is one in which an agent’s eyesight works (i.e. it is “turned on”) but produces an equal number of false beliefs as it does true beliefs. The second scenario is one in which 90% of the time, the agent’s eyesight doesn’t work (i.e.it is “turned off”). For example, 90% of the time, the agent forms no visual beliefs at all. However, when the agent’s eyesight is “turned on”, it almost always leads to the production of true visual beliefs. Cohen believes that we should credit the agent in the second scenario with knowledge but not the first. However, he seems to chalk this judgment up to intuition. He says, “By my lights, these visual beliefs could still be instances of knowledge despite the fact that the process is not not stable in the relevant sense, i.e., it operates in an irregular (intermittent) fashion.” While I agree with Cohen, I think more can (and should) be said.
At this point a principled account of things seems appropriate. I tentatively propose the following principle.
[P]: Knowledge-relevant luck can supervene on cognitive processes that have the potential to produce beliefs; it cannot supervene on cognitive processes that lack this potential.
If [P] is right, we don’t, for obvious reasons, have to worry about knowledge-relevatn luck in the second scenario. Or do we? In order to consider this, let’s go back to our scenarios.
Now I agree that the first agent does not have visual knowledge. This is motivated by the fact that the agent’s true visual beliefs are largely the product of luck; she could have easily had a false belief. However, in the second scenario, things aren’t so simple. As I have already stated, when the agent’s eyesight is “turned on” it regularly produces true beliefs; it is a reliable process/mechanism. However, this fact doesn’t entail that it isn’t a matter of luck when exactly the process/mechanism gets turned on or off. So, in this this case, it is still possible that the agent’s true visual beliefs involve some type of luck.
But it isn’t obvious to me that the luck involved in the second scenario is such that it undermines knowledge. At this point one might begin to distinguish various types of luck and consider how each intervenes on the knowledge-relevant features of agents and their environments. Duncan Pritchard and John Greco have made steps in this direction. If you’re interested, I recommend you Google their names and start reading.
Best,
MLN
* “Agent Reliabilism” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Vol. LXVI, No. 2, March 2003
** “Greco’s Agent Reliabilism” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Vol. LXVI, No. 2, March 2003
Michael
Fraiser
Kameron
OFelixCulpa
Noah
mcgoo298
josiahtwain
can you actually define true visual beliefs, as in v:”it almost always leads to the production of true visual beliefs.”
from my pov{ p} is correct.
therefore, “knowledge” is not a function of the object, but of the perceiver, and therefore isn’t “true” un;ess the definition of “true” is the rule “it works.”
j&b dances,
By “visual beliefs”, I mean, roughly, beliefs that necessarily involve eyesight for their production.
You say, “therefore, ‘knowledge’ is not a function of the object, but of the perceiver, and therefore isn’t ‘true’ un;ess the definition of ‘true’ is the rule ‘it works.’”
It seems to me that many instances of knowledge (whatever exactly it is) are a function of certain features of both agents and their environments. I take this to be one of the important lessons we can draw from Gettier cases.
I have no idea what you mean by, “…isn’t ‘true’ unless the definition of ‘true’ is the rule ‘it works’.”
Best,
MLN
michael,
thanx for the clarification: “necessarily involve eyesight ”
i can now read your thought on true visual beliefs with true limiting visual, rather than beliefs.
my own construct might be more towards “solely” visual beliefs, but of course, styles differ…:-)
:”are a function of certain features of both agents and their environments.”
yup. thus, with “visual” a 3-body problem emerges, since the sensitivities of the observer, the properties of the object, and the nature of the light source all interplay.
specifically, “colour” is not a property of an object at all, but rather of the brain and its narrative and structure interpreting light, surround, and object.
(which btw, offers an example of “it works” as a definition for “true.” “black” cotton is specifically different than “black” silk, and from this one can observe a difference between silk and cotton, while all the while, neither is actually “black.”)
Epistemology? Nay, statistics.
He does right to dismiss the 50/50 first case due to a “uniform cancellation” or “noise”. Ie, we can assume that their value is identical since we consider that any intervening luck would just as well happen on the watch of the accurate production of belief or the erroneous production of belief, since luck and good/bad productions are here coextensive in times of randomness. The first is obviously not a weighted scenario.
The second is. In the second case, we have a weighted 10 which has significantly greater value than the “off” 90, and so, hardly need intuition to tell us that the case is altogether qualitatively different. We need only statistics to solve the comparison, or do we? “Cognitive processes that have the potential to produce beliefs” is obviously a vacuous constraint since even “off 99″ and “on 1%” has the potential to produce beliefs. As a matter of fact, in visual processes “0% on” still has the potential to produce belief, therefore this is a sophistic condition on the scenarios’ viabilities! To contravene it with “knowledge-relevant luck” is easy enough since any perceptual data will be considered ever in the light of its relevance to belief, ie, weighted information versus uniform information, is worth its weight in gold (because compared to “off” data). In the end, we neither need to set up conditions that seem to make valuable distinctions, but upon a slightly different context these prove we need a subtler statistical method, and finally not even this required if one familiarizes oneself the frequency of “uncaused stimuli” in visually impaired subjects.
Hope I cleared that up.
As a skeptic of “Reliabilist” frameworks, I’d have to say that this is just another case of “justifying some analysis (and the underlying leap into the fray) by building some narrative and metanarrative and using the assumptions inherent in the second to show how complex the first can be – when in fact both are ghosts.” (is that an apt use of scare quotes?)
A Reliabilist needs me to believe that intellectual virtues can be analyzed after simplifying and parsing them into various domains such as perception, intuition, memory, and character traits. I don’t believe each can be contained in a “nice” domain, nor their express form mitigated to how they can be captured in the various methods of the analytic’s formalizing of language, nor do I think that setting up language sediments amount to more than circular litmus tests, comparisons. The Reliabilists has to convince me that if they don’t restrict themselves to cognitive psychology, they must provide grounds for how they found their process of analyzing what is “reasonable to believe”, as if this could be done. I would go further and say that, not only can this NOT be done, but cognitive psychology is also bereft of giving more than piece-meal clues to epistemological claims, though this is more for reasons more akin to the unjustified primacy on language in their general formulation and specific justification of beliefs – since the Quinean impulse to source how perception gives us knowledge narrows itself to only this scope, it limits itself to the limited when asking questions about the unlimited. Contrast this to Merleau-Ponty’s primacy on the body. Body primacy opens up the debate outside of conventionalist approaches to cracking open specific scenarios only to simply them in codifying a semiotic only to analyze them by sufficiently narrow constraints in parameters that find validity only in the degree of detail invested in them, though not beyond the bounds defined, which are always more restrictive than the actual truth would allow. Reliabilism’s ‘parametrization unreliability’ is the hallmark of its sour instincts in epistemology, in the same vein that Rawl’s pluralistic equilibrium in liberal democracies works only if the woman degrades her maternal instincts in the workplace under her boss, the African American, who she gets along with great since he’s forced to wear her corset, who goes home to see his roof was replaced ahead of schedule since the Mexicans were moved out of their rural trailer and into his ghetto. Yo.
:”A Reliabilist needs me to believe that “…
is a specific case of
“a (xyz)ist needs (me) to believe that those 4 pillars are there de naturis, and not de facto.
either way, micchael’s entry points to the constant value of “have eyes to see” as a truth statement.
as a simple beast of the fields i have a de natura fondness for the bahaviourly concrete.
thus, towards a discussion of whether “knowledge” is a function of the putatively known object, the environment or the means by which the phantasmagoria of sensory input and y/n is fitted into” a story being told by telling itself”—
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110214/ap_on_hi_te/eu_med_artificial_retina
:”" a story being told by telling itself”—” being an eminently workable modern translation for “pneuma.”
j&b dances and Zak,
I simply have to labor too much in order to understand your respective comments. Obviously, I won’t be responding to either of you unless you change the way you communicate your ideas. I don’t have the time, nor the energy, to put into interpreting and responding to you.
Best,
MLN
Good try anyway. If you read any of the responses you provoked then kudos to you!
Greco is seeking to experiment with the criteria we use for validating the knowledge we have. How we obtain knowledge is an important question in biology. How we validate it is an important issue in epistemology. Mixing the two together often conflates the issue. It is important, nonetheless, to try it from different angles.
In other words: there is a basic approach to skeptical thought since Descartes which attempts to validate types of knowing. The “linguist turn” in philosophy happens with Heidegger. Yet the questions are still the same. As j&b dances points out, a philosophy of action (eg. Reid) attempts to open up the same questions from another angle. As I pointed out, conventionalism can be conflating. These are all different viewpoints. Reliabilism is contextual. It fits into an era and style of thinking and writing about epistemology. Our responses can be read as differing Points of View as to how this questioning proceeds.
J&B,
You are nearly impossible to understand. Is this some sort of agenda? If you want people to be able to interact with you, then you might have to assimilate to some linguistic norms with which the community holds.
cparizzoi,
i am never more amused across the frontiers of theology or financial manipulation than when someone attacks my syntax and holds themselves as the standard–and then says something like
:”to some linguistic norms with which the community holds.”
:”Is this some sort of agenda?” what ____ possible ______ relevance would that have to the points under examination?
Sola Scriptura, wherefrom derives your authority to enquire?
right out of the chute, in terms of particularities of linguistic norms and courtesy, it’s j&b, not J&B…
directly to the post header, the statement :”You are nearly impossible to understand” fails a truth test except in the field in which you stand.
moving forward to the self-contradicting grammar
of :”might have to assimilate to some linguistic norms”
i am going to guess a rewrite to “your terms might have to be subsumed or be assimilated __by__ the linguistic norms”, which would at least make sense.
It has one problem: by the concrete outcome of the ontology/de-ontology post, that’s just another way of saying “my implicit agenda is de naturis superior to yours.”.
J&B,
I suppose I remain defiant. Not too much difference if I dog a v. It’s a C…..as the kettle goes c. like Corn…chip…1st c(C)at+ Laughable is what: I can’t read what you write; you can read my mind. Theology/money/ontology…I sm=p=elled nothing. A moon of daisiager I footed the dancer, yet Freud is what returned. Irony, huh, your correction of assimilate? Eureka! I discovered to whom I am interacting: Shakesp-f-eare himself! Dramatic. Irony. [a]Irenic(al).
Testy, testy, testy! ?de naturestyi inferior“never entered my mind. Glad you could load them into my words. Assinulated with the sin-tax=insulted/psychosexual analysistic fibrosis times 5= a simpleton asking a simple question regarding one’s preference of glassing. Shoot…glossing; they’ll understand. Nothing like flossing.
Ahhh. the price tag to “atleast [sic.] make sense.” I prefer cents.
Cparizzoi:
Do you mean “assimilate the linguistic terminology” or perhaps “conform to some linguistic norms”? I’m having trouble understanding you, “assimilate to” is an incompatible verb-preposition combination and so… unintelligible. Please be clear.
Also, what “community” are you referring to? The internet – the location of this open blog? or something else? Btw, the internet is a pretty broad community and it may be healthy for you to consider investing in some other “linguistic norms”. Because people do risk bringing others into the conversation that do indeed communicate differently.
O, and by the way. You mentioned “nearly”. Now did that mean that some of what j&b dances has posted is actually intelligible to you? I didn’t catch which parts were intelligible for you nor what your contribution/response happened to be. Also, if there were “most” parts which were unintelligible, did you ever think to ask a question about any of them to gain clarification?
The points I raised were apparently unintelligible too. I thought it a clear analysis of deontological conventionalism in postmodern ethics. I evaluated the reasons it lacks grounding. I demonstrated that it claims to generate valid investigations and verifiable value judgments in ethics – yet utterly fails to either clarify its parameters, or convince of internal coherence.
Stylistic differences aside…. you’re right. There really is not much of a conversation going on here.
O. In highlighting my points with references to other philosophers (Descartes… Merleau-Ponty) I provided contextual clues to rid ambiguities. I can more generously outline it with a greatly enhanced historical sketch in order to “orient” people, but unless they do their own reading, it may be that much more exhausting to “decode” my tiresome story-telling. Investing in others is, sometimes, worth the effort though.
(For you, I venture to comment here that the utter privation of non-linear, analogical methods of reasoning in “contemporary philosophy” these days is so endemic that it seems a forceful enough poverty to provide near infinite air to the cacophony of false logical constructs and large wastes of time. Thus I speak. These dime-store writers sold as expensive philosophy paperbacks pervaded with new phantoms, such as “Reliablism”, merely prop up whole university faculties. And I see syllabuses which force students to pay attention to this stuff – or worse, go pay good money for these trifles. No one questions the parameters of conventionalist logic nor their motives in American circles. Nearly all educational institutions are fervently steeped in this. The most fervent gets chairperson. Why? Because people can engage in semiotic entertainment over real logical fulfillment. And can sit behind a desk, write a short book, or stand in front of a class. And get paid. (Plus it gives the veneer of clout, to virgins in logic.) Type-theory is a perversity – unless understood in the constraints of say, C.S.Peirce, G.Bateson, N.Weiner (but certainly NOT in the vein of Russell, Quine, etc) – and it lies at the heart of this absurd situation which Europe and Russia have already proceeded beyond. Why do people pay good money to hear it? If people here do not question the parameters of conventionalism they will find fulfillment only in mundane contests. Why do I have to demonstrate some obvious vacuity in Greco’s frame?
There’s better than this. Question the frame itself, explore the history, trace the lineage, and discover that there is something much more radical at work in, say, even Kant’s deontology – which goes far above and beyond the paradigm shift due the so-called “Analytics”. In which most of these blog authors are – probably unbeknownst to themselves – deeply situated; not the imaginary Kant they’ve invented. Going beyond this impasse can truly enliven your Protestantism. But it takes reading, say, Jean-Luc Marion, Levinas, Badiou. It takes leaving the progeny of the Analytic tradition in the dust and off the map.)
just my humble advice. (intended only as a challenge for us all; no spite nor mocking.) merely a sign-post beyond a very subtle but salient intellectual impasse. btw – in order to orient you to Others: “spacious but striking non-linearity” in writing style is a much-adored virtue in Europe especially since Deleuze’s mastery of it. j&b dances is quite intelligible but it takes investing in a bag of metaphors which direct and re-scope into other stories and disciplines. i’m just saying, it IS actually possible to understand. but no, not “easy”. but what is? People before Wittgenstein, Russell, Whitehead… built bigger systems than the Tractatus and they kept sacred and intact that honest need to show the relation to Truth in a complex manner. to leave this sensibility behind is a mistake. (As an interesting sidenote which Protestants might find interesting: Russell’s own “Why I’m not a Christian” is the incipit “dime-store” philosophy now standard to which i’m referring. It takes aim at Christianity in the guise of logic and is rife with utterly obnoxiously loose opinion without any resort to anything beyond being clever. But he touts himself the victor of logic. This is the sort of lineage that Greco can claim. But does he even know it? Does MacIntyre? It is likely they don’t. But to speak of “common linguistic” habits, these two belong in Wittgenstein’s bed. Literally too. If you wanna speak that language. Go right ahead.)
“The ethic of truth is the complete opposite of an ‘ethics of communication’. It is an ethic of the Real… The ethic of truth is absolutely opposed to [commonly held] opinion, and to ethics in general.”
-Badiou
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/alain-badiou/quotes/
thAnKZ,
bees clear? black and yellow black and yellow black and yellow black and yellow. Ahhhh, not bees but sytaggyuichvich. I see to please khalifa, what a w-h:izard. werd.
hahahaha….iRony…Gates opened with books; big mac opposed to windy whizards number 23! Let’s shake the pickle spears! blahblahan incompatible verb-preposition combinationblahblah by what community? I go for Rusasia. Maybe you answered your answer for commUNOity.
the treas tell me it’s thair faultline for not understanding me; I suppose the mirror never crax? No crux and mortar hear mortuary.
thAnKZ for the addvice. I is a simpleounce and so naive…or native…ot my ecnarongi. I suppose an interjection for rejection is on sintax is not who’;;s the visitual you used…ah ?><clarification.</ ha.
If there were a pen to play house…the doc ket tle would include Freud and the Tales of the Cr[[at]]yp-t-ical.
A simple uterifgical: nearly ::LK a cat a pillar in the sun day? from iWince didst thou conjure the yurtes juy mostlyjuy. Communoity aloss.gain.pain.
Let Zak be true and every man a liar.
Such wisdom you’ve shared with everyone. We’re all fooled and we’ve never read history. Further, whatever difficulty people have when reading what you (or j&b) write is due to some kind of intellectual or educational deficiency on their part. You’ve got it all figured out.
I’m tired of your conspiracy theories and I’m not interested in hearing your wisdom. I don’t want to play your game and you dont want to play mine. It would be nice if you left me to my imaginary philosophers and stopped littering my posts with your, in my estimation, malfeasant comments.
Best,
MLN
Dear Michael. In all my comments I’ve not once implicated you in any attack, insult, aggression but have consistently deconstructed and judged postmodern deontology and not at all, nor ever, you yourself. I’m sorry you confuse the objects that I critique with yourself. This must be unfortunate for you, emotionally. Hopefully you can find assurance by seeing that every single reference has never touched upon you nor implicated you. But continue? I will. As I feel the “holy mission” is obliged and whether you misconstrue it as caustic toward yourself or as an annoying display upon your threads or their purpose, I must attempt to contextualize Greco and others for you, and all Protestants alike. Possibly, you will not change your mind about what you ingest, affiliate yourself with, engage in, etc – but that I tried is what concerns me. That I cared. Possibly you will not change your mind about my intentions or my fairness to you. But hopefully you can see beyond your emotions.
Not all deontologists are conventionalists. Anyone before 1908, in the field of philosophy, did not argue ethics in terms of a completely insulated conventionalism. We have Bertrand Russell and others (Vienna circle, etc) to thank for the paradigm shift, outlined in my previous post. Let’s go back a bit before though. Kant is a deontologist because his formulation holds that one ought to hold one’s prudential (private foresight into subjective matters) maxims [1] (stipulations for self, generated out of the Self) as high as universalizing them across grand scales would mandate [2] for …whatever obvious functionality’s sake. That is, Say a man thinks it okay to always deceive others about the contents of his emotions by consistently demonstrating one’s he is not actually having: if all were to do such what would the world look like? how would it function? Perhaps communication would be unnecessarily protracted and frustrating to the point of obsolescence. Lieing and stealing across broad scales?? (How would this play out, would humans want to abide in such a state of affairs? What would holding property be if all stole? What would speaking entail if all lied?) This somewhat pragmatist or utilitarian reasoning transpires only in order to mediate …private subjective vitalism (virtue ethics in its original sense as defined in a metaphysical paradigm ala Aristotle, et al) with public objective certainties (legalities of nature, such as gravity, elasticity, inertia – laws or deonts which have a deeply ontological and metaphysical significance). The inner metaphysic (lowry’s the giver; dostoevsky’s the holy idiot) is always right; the outer metaphysic is always right (moira, fixed orbits, Shakespearean star-crossedness). Each finds their respective roots in utterly different sorts of methodologies, evidences, etc. One springs from the spirit mediating the world in our perceptions, the other is given to our beings brutally when whenever we participate at all in the real world and bump against it hard enough for it to force us to discover it. Mediating the two without a metaphysic was a bold step Kant felt mandated by the various gaps (Hume) and proofs (Aquinas, Augustine, Descartes, etc) which seemed to plague the literature on ethics, and not kindly so. (Kant’s project remained/s unfinished.) Thus the “categorical imperative” is a clean provisional way to mediate the two and results in a deontology which itself is displaced by its positing mechanism of rigidly and statically becoming the new primacy over and above the inner (loose subjective justifications… “reasons”) and outer (metaphysical law and necessity). It is an objective, logical criteria that may be viewed as the first sort of conventionalism, which is prior to the induction of problems in semantics and the philosophy of language which then allows the deontology to become even further regulated by conventionalist mediations (usually heuristic, as Pritchard in Edinburgh, Cohen in Tucson, or Greco in St Louis: all of whom learn heuristic devices from the philosophy of language). Kant would see law as high above and far off from these earthly layers of man, but since, afterall, he was trained in the legal system, he would still see them tentatively mediatable, just not with the flexibility of Russell, or Greco. Thus conventionalism could be considered more properly a true “DE ONTOLOGY” as it is insulated from top or bottom (heavenly, aetheric; subjective, solipsistic) metaphysical struggles. This is not the original sense of DEONT OLOGY which could or could not be Ontologically rooted, depending on the mechanism of grounding, substantiating. This is ever-suspended in Kant’s case. He hoped for a solid Transcendental Aesthetic saved by an extremely miraculous transcendental schema, neither of which came before his death. (Nietzsche takes Kant as Kant had left himself in the matter and scrutinizes and predicts what the effects will be after its blossoming/infectiousness in Protestant theology. And his prophetic lens is extremely accurate. (Though also, very disconcerting and potentially virulent to Protestants and Protestant theology.) Claiming that the effective legalism would cause Christendom in Europe to implode. This is due, in part, because of the implications of “floating” ethics in this mediative realm – while though it is surely there that we ever find ourselves ensnared in the most ambiguous of problems – it is degenerate to allow the realm itself to float there without either top or bottom means of rooting. The domain of Ethics ought to ultimately relate to spirituality or nature, Hobbesian or Cartesian. Skepticism being healthy, yet necessary to mature. Invoking the categorical imperatives form as the prime facie deontology would allow, as he saw it, for the most radical forms of nationalistic intervention on the realm of ethics, since these are, bar none, the most developed form of conventionalisms (prior to the prevailing one today, which ought to be dubbed de.ontology, or relativism in terms of the reticence to root by virtue of the fatalism which emerged from Frege’s/Kant’s unfinished projects). Ie, Nietzsche saw that Christendom would lose its mystic grounding, only admitting mystic components dogmatically and/or as corollaries).
hopefully, if Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic is taken to heart, then some of the terminology and classifications can be reconciled and clarified a bit: reasons, rules, maxims, etc. one hint: you’ll never hear conventionalists (deontologists who may claim deont.ology on legal grounds but are effectively de.ontologists on historical grounds, though there may be exceptions i’m unaware of) talk positively about metaphysics. Kant is the primary reason for this. this is unfortunate because Kant changed the direction of previous idealisms he was so familiar with in hopes to take it in the direction of … probably Husserl or possibly (tentative) ‘modern philosophy of mind coupled with neurobiology’ and address Cartesian struggles. Husserl’s own Cartesian Meditations is an excellent place to start for such a deontology paradigm (ie, an objectivism in logic anyway) which actually still seeks some grounding force, mechanism. Kant had attempted deont.ology, which in itself is ungrounding, in hopes to reground it after epistemology has, hopefully, been rid of some unsettling uncertainty about its relation to where it finds its grounding. Frege had attempted to formalize/objectivize logic (by making use of syllogistic substitution in the most radical form: Function-theoretic constructions, in hopes to bring Leibniz’s universal characteric and calculus rationcinator together, though lean on the u.c. side of it) but with hopes that it could truly instantiate Existential claims without bottoming out in the circularity of the language somewhere.
Logical grounding came into its peak when Frege wrote his Foundations of Arithmetic, long before Peano’s axioms or ZF Set theory came into dominance. But unless one familiarizes oneself with Kant’s Prolegomena as well as Frege’s work, and the historical aftermath of both, the intentions, heuristics, goals, and geneaology of deontology might remain obscure. At least, if you read Frege’s short work on On Function and Concept, you can see where the conversation afterward derives almost all of its original inspiration, that is, before Russell and Wittgenstein take it into an avowedly defeatist direction, isolating the thread into purely conventionalist contexts with new constraints. Good luck!
Also, knowing the entire school of analytic philosophy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy or look at Russell’s wiki page and expand the section under “influenced”) gives an overview of why coherentism, compatibilism, contextualism, deflationism, direct realism, epiphenomenalism, incompatibalism, externalism, functionalism, internalism, logical atomism, naturalism, neopragmatism, noncognitivism, particularism, property dualism, reliabilism, scientific (anti-)realism, verificationism, virtue ethics… 1) are all heuristic devices, not whole schools of thought as the creation of an entire nomenclature might suggest and 2) all dramatically increase the connotative ambiguity of the terms involved to the point of inversely corroborating the claims of “ordinary language philosophy” which contends that “traditional philosophical problems are rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by forgetting what words actually mean in a language”, such as the “analytic/synthetic” distinction criticized by Quine – and, like he, introduced an entire vacuum of terminology in the philosophy of language, and to the field of Logic generally – and to a whole generation in their logical thinking. One could “shortcut” alot of research if one read Quine’s wiki page and then Derrida’s and see which philosopher’s style tends to excite you more. Or look at the intellectual progeny of Russell, say all the way down to Rorty/Putnum/Chomsky… and that of Husserl, all the way down to Jean Luc Marion or Alain Badiou – and source books to see which prove to be the most interesting or of most value to you.
I would offer that The Entire Analytic Tradition in philosophy amounts to siding firmly against Fregean/Kantian projects of grounding either logic, logical thinking, justification, explanations of one’s perceptions and for their sources, justification of one’s knowledge, justification of one’s ethics, justification of one’s entire world view or way of behaving; and that Most of The Continental Tradition in philosophy is either agnostic about it or still holds a candle of hope that some good progress can be made.
by the way
are intelligent responses to Greco and/or his paradigm still considered littering here?
Zak,
You certainly did directly implicate me in your comments and you did so in two basic ways. First, in your comment on 2/19/11 at 2:23AM, you begin your second paragraph with “For you”. Second, in the rest of that paragraph, you go on to demonize the entire analytic tradition by suggesting that those involved in it (and this obviously includes me) don’t, “Question the frame itself…” You then claim that most of us (i.e., again, those of us involved in the analytic tradition) are unknowingly “deeply situated”. You basically accuse all of us of various types of ignorance that you, somehow, have transcended. All of this sounds like a conspiracy theory to me (and maybe one akin to the fed’s fear of the Black Panthers). I’m not personally offended by your comments. However, I think your comments are an offense to reason. From what I can make of your comments, you just seem to be saying, “Those who don’t believe like me are guilty of not tracing the lineage of the ideas they discuss. They are intellectually or educationally sub par. They are guilty of conjuring up imaginary philosophers and ideas about the world (e.g. I am here thinking about your comment, “…the imaginary Kant they’ve invented…”). Well, my response is simple: saying so, doesn’t make it so. These are the kinds of things you need to demonstrate. Further, these comments stink of arrogance. It doesn’t seem to be a humble position to assume that some very very educated men are lacking in the respects you imply. If your claim is that they are lacking in this way, you’re, in my estimation, clearly bordering a conspiracy theory about their intentions, intellect, etc.
About j&b’s “clarity”. You suggest that his comments are intelligible so long as one invests “in a bag of metaphors which direct and re-scope into other stories and disciplines.” You rightly admit that this isn’t an easy task. But then you seem to suggest that not much is easy. But that is the very point in question. I do find it much easier to understand Fraizer’s comments than I do j&b’s comments.
After this, you go on to make a claim about an “honest need to show the relation to Truth in a complex way.” I’m assuming you’re at least referring back to j&b’s (very exhausting) use of metaphor. However, this is not a claim you defend. In fact, I’m not really sure what you mean by it.
I’ve read a little Derrida, a little about the iterability of texts, etc. I find myself sympathetic to a lot of what he (and others) have said about these things. In fact, I agree with postmodernism’s critique of a “faith in science” and certain ideas of “progress through industrialization”, etc. But for all of that, I think that conversations about Reliabilism, Evidentialism, Subject-sensitive Invariantism and a host of other topics being discussed in analytic philosophy can, and do, take place in a meaningful way. My posts aren’t meant to call all of those things into question. I assume a certain reader and background for them. If you don’t like that, you don’t have to read them. More than this, you don’t have to comment on them and attempt to proselytize others in the name of Truth, the Real, or whatever you mean by such words.
Best,
MLN
I began to speak about the role of “nonlinearity” in thought-patterns and communication styles – both of which have a bearing on how people “use logic” in philosophy as well as what “they demand” of others in philosophical dialogue. This was a response to Cparrizoi and then was redirected back into the substance of the dialogue again, which then suddenly included my assertion about ‘reasons why the common generation today might think the way it thinks today’ or some such trifle, relating to the dominance of the paradigms I outlined and attacked again. Anyhow, it was, admittedly written out of frustration with the mindset that had been displayed, which was precisely: do it this way or not at all.
I gave reasons why I thought the Analytic tradition should be “demonized” or, rightfully disparaged, and I whole-heartedly stick to them. And, no, it’s not conspiratorial. It’s addressing what Silverstein and others refer to as “language ideologies” and making out my own designs on unveiling them however I choose, and there are a slew of reasons mixed in there and easily locatable without specific enumeration, and… preferably, without the presumption of “deductive rigor”. Perhaps “to implicate” you is an accurate description, but only if it is by your own initial claims through which you have “folded up” yourself into the fold of Analytics before anyone had posted at all, making thus any attack upon the Analytics, possibly construable as an attack upon you. Regardless, I don’t know you. All my remarks are confined to Analytic philosophy and were meant to remain there. I think it obvious you are “deeply situated” there. Apparently, too obvious to even say. But just as I am “deeply situated” in American foreign policy. Does that make you responsible for the oeuvres of attitudes and claims or even the foundations? Am I responsible for deaths in Pakistan if I pay taxes and still have a US Passport? Situated does not disclose the level of involvement or complicitness in the “crime” itself. It merely say: their relationship to X is complex, folded.
You’re right, though. Some things are easy. Deconstructing the parameters of Greco’s work is fairly easy after you’ve been “very, very highly educated” under logicians twice my age in Berkeley for four years… listening to them go on and on with the selfsame sort of argumentation. Not that I was educated. Since I couldn’t swallow Analytic philosophy even at the school where Tarski helped give it the firmest foothold in this country, or the world for that matter. Anyhow, there are other academics in America finally speaking out against the veritable hegemony (…perhaps even “conspiratorial” if Russell stole from Carnap and Kripke stole from Marcus, but even if these probable events didn’t happen you could read Badiou’s work on Wittgenstein’s Antiphilosophy to gain a perspective on how philosophical movements may really in fact have (im-)moral underpinnings…). Perhaps they taught me Analytic thought, method, etc too well, since now I can look at recent talks by a former chair (http://logic.berkeley.edu/eventsSpring2010.html … the last one: oh, wow, and it turns out to be vacuous…) and just laugh. I see right through it. Arrogant? No. Sober now, though, unfortunately, after a great loss of time.
Perhaps I was only the first to disturb you, but I surely won’t be the last. And if “meaningfulness” is all you want to get out of Analytic philosophy then enjoy; there’s meaningfulness even in what turns out to be nonsense. Such as Greco’s meaningfulness, which was, demonstrably, nonsense. Or MacIntyre, whom I can also deflate. And I do proselytize, just as you reinforce the “language ideology” of those already proselyzed. But I will be there as an impasse. Get used to the annoyance. It’s of an entirely different sort than the type that Cparizzoi likes to engage in; has HE ever attempted to engage constructively in any of your threads? Or just troll about? Something to think about anyway.
Try taking some of what I say positively though. In being hurtful (to Greco, MacIntyre) have I not been helpful too? Here’s a peace-offering of impeccable reading: Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy by Alain Badiou is translated and pretty available. It will make you remember what you already know. And then there’s the extremely cutting edge, which may actually be too intense for me… http://www.re-press.org/content/view/64/38/
As someone who’s experienced the frenzy of the Analytics.
michael,
:It would be nice if you left me to my imaginary philosophers and stopped littering my posts with your, in my estimation, malfeasant comments.”
where daisy (gettier case) the cow is the philosopher,
and random vectors of shading hanging in the tree
are the “truth statement” of “she’s in the field”
then the determinant is:
__what is the source of the farmer’s certainty??__
and, indeed, what is the source of the farmer’s doubt?
in both cases, it is his internal organisation that drives the “action”…not the _truth_.
“littering” ??? amusing value judgment. littoral perhaps, yes.
directly to the header, knowledge/process; on/off,
if i hold that you are better than i see, and you say that such a proposition is malfeasant, theodically where have you made the cut?