Survey
I think it's time for an informal survey. How many people think the following quotation is true?
"The modern period of our intellectual history begins with the discovery that the world text is (at least partly) written by ourselves."
(Adapted from Sabina Lovibond, "Realism and Imagination in Ethics", p. 113)
Note: what I'm wondering is if you think that it is true to say that the world text is (at least partly) written by ourselves. I'm not interested in any sort of historical claim. And, I take it, Lovibond does NOT mean to be drawing attention to obvious senses in which how the world is depends upon us: e.g., that things we build, etc., change how the world is. Lovibond's comment, in context, is clearly meant to imply that how the world is depends, in part, on how we understand it.
"The modern period of our intellectual history begins with the discovery that the world text is (at least partly) written by ourselves."
(Adapted from Sabina Lovibond, "Realism and Imagination in Ethics", p. 113)
Note: what I'm wondering is if you think that it is true to say that the world text is (at least partly) written by ourselves. I'm not interested in any sort of historical claim. And, I take it, Lovibond does NOT mean to be drawing attention to obvious senses in which how the world is depends upon us: e.g., that things we build, etc., change how the world is. Lovibond's comment, in context, is clearly meant to imply that how the world is depends, in part, on how we understand it.
posted by Charles P. Everitt at 12:52 AM
9 Comments:
I think Lovibond's claim is false.
Sorry to fail to provide the requisite contrary contention, but I too think Lovibond's claim is false.
I take Lovibond's remark to be a version of phenomenalism: how things are is how we take them to be. (A slightly different version claims: *that* things are depends on whether we take them to be.)
However, I admit that I have a soft spot for what Brandom has called "normative phenomenalism", which is roughly the view that how things are is a matter of how it is appropriate to take them to be. It is of course much disputed how and whether this idea can be adequately and informatively cashed out. (It might be worth adding, for the sake of example, that Brandom is a normative phenomenalist about norms, particularly linguistic norms.)
I can see why you would call it a kind of phenomenalism, but that's not how advocates of this claim would describe it.
As Lovibond understands it, prime proponents of this claim include Kant, Wittgenstein, and McDowell.
I am on the fence -- do actions count as part of Lovibond's claim? Of course, there's a trivial way in which our actions depend on how we understand them, since we intention is part of what individuates them, but I think there might be slightly more exotic ways in which the nature of our actions depend on, for example, how they are understood by others far removed from the time and place that action (e.g. what's the significance of recognizing the Turkish slaughter of Armenians as a genocide w/r/t the nature of the slaughter itself) -- perhaps this is just a matter of actions having lots of relational properties that are not clearly marked as such (e.g. being offensive?) in which case it is again seems trivial...
I think the gist of the claim is not that there are some things in the world whose nature partly depends on us; the gist is supposed to be that everything partly depends on us.
Think of Rorty and the world well lost. The point is supposed to be that we've now realized that the idea of a world that is the way it is independent of how our particular form of understanding takes it to be is an illusion.
I don't think it's an illusion, because I think the world we understand, when we understand it correctly, is the world as it is independent of our understanding of it. (I think the use of the word "particular" in the last paragraph cheats.)
Think of Putnam's internal realism. It agrees with Lovibond, but it's only one way to try and justify her claim. I think Lovibond's claim captures the spirit of the positions of a whole host of recent thinkers.
I think a primary challenge since Hume and Kant is to articulate the sense in which the world is independent. (This stands in contrast to resting content with a naive view or a quietist view.)
This requires telling a story about why it is important that it be independent. This is, I think, where much of the difficulty lies since there are people who are leery of the epistemological problems introduced by taking seriously the idea of a mind-independent world.
Those who think that the world is not (at all) independent or who are happy to say so have, in an important sense, given up the game. (Rorty would, of course, be fine with that allegation, since he thinks we should give up the game.)
Chuck E.'s point points the way. Is it too strong to say that constitutive of our understanding of the world is the idea that it is independent of us?
(Chuck, why do you think the use of "particular" cheats?)
I think "particular" cheats, because the only sensible use of it is in a context in which we're comparing at least two ways of understanding something, and (a) that's not every context, and (b) in those contexts, talk of two ways of understanding something presupposes that they're both ways of understanding one and the same thing.
Two ways = one particular way vs. another particular way
Here's someone who probably agrees with Lovibond:
The South Asia Seminar Series is pleased to present:
"How many realities are there? Jainas and Buddhists on the
complexity of what there is."
Professor Piotr Balcerowicz
Department of South Asian Studies
Institute of Oriental Studies
Warsaw University
Tuesday, October 17th 2006
Foster 103 at 4.30 pm.
Post a Comment
<< Home