Originally written June of 2022
*The following is another old writing, one I created in inspiration when studying the Pre-Kantian yet modern philosophy, enamored as I was with the epoch that was rapidly becoming more critical of itself and its past. I dedicated this to David Hume, as achieving an excellent summary of DOUBT. At that time for me, he created a listerine to wash out the worse, the more subtle, irritations of doubt. It was by no means the end of my thinking on this subject.*
A Document concerning the achievement of David Hume
As my being on the stages on life’s way renders reality through Thought, as I participate in the existential-phenomenological experience of feeling the heat of the light on my skin, watching the dawning and dusking clouds, hearing the sublime music of Wagner and Katy Perry, stopping to smell the flowers, tasting a weak tea with jam on toast, learning lessons through errors and gaining experience as each new door to another chamber of Knowing is explored—As I make my advent in the tradition of this ceaseless wonder that is the great ladder of Thought, I express my gratitude to these centuries of thinkers who trudged on through, what quicker minds in their age recognized as the dogmatism and stagnancies of their respective epochs, lamenting in their inability to fully elucidate this fact (hence why Heraclitus wept so profoundly). Why could they not elucidate this fact?
As I have read each thinker, as I live each new day, I see the shape of the mind’s Understanding progress, the Understanding beckons to Understand more. When I was a child all was so dreamlike, the shapes so shifting and unstable, because my Thought, my very consciousness had not the furnishings and development of adolescence which provide for me a stability, a grip with which to turn around the leverage that the world enforces on us. This world which engulfs us like a pinpoint, yet through Thought we may grasp it! Find the Archimedean point with which to lift up the whole world!
The furnishing is language! Not just verbal language but the very substance and content by which both thinking and instinct carries itself! To know how to ride a bicycle, to loop a ping-pong ball, it is the language of the physical that finds no means in pure verbiage to univocally make itself known. The sunset on the ocean finds no univocal conveying power in one describing it for hearing is not sight. To speak of the sun shining over a blue sea, to explain the intricacies of the blue of the sky and the blue sea to one who has never seen the sunset is to only so little make determinate the mark, infinitely greater than saying nothing, yet infinitely less than showing them their with their eyes.
My gratitude should not belong only to these centuries of thinkers, but to those primitive peoples who, in families and for want of increasingly complex communication, through an infinite labor (Rosseau claims it was the primitive children trying to communicate with their mothers that initiated verbal communication), began the first languages and mediations of consciousness. It is miraculous what the young mind in its great elasticity will slog through especially when spurred on by the necessity of survival. And it is telling that with the genesis of language itself being born in the seeds of interaction with others, it is this key and crucial motif, indeed, the cardinal point of reality that constitutes our progression. I shall highlight a seemingly boring yet infinite advancement, with having interaction with others who speak a common language— it is that, a word shall mean what it means, and if i use a word incorrectly, say: I employ the word for tree in place for house, I shall find myself corrected and a stability gained. ACCOUNTABILITY is the name of the game. So when I make a claim like, “Well I think knowledge is solely sense-perception!” (Theaetetus) and I am held accountable to this claim by an Other, saying “Yet can we not know posterior to sense-perception via principles that tautologically follow? (like geometry lol)”.
It is this conflict of ideas that forces man, honest in his inquiry, to ever strive more critically, encountering each new contradiction. This is why Heraclitus calls war the father of all things, for out of the chaos of conflict prevails an order, tried and tested. If my friend calls copper an insulator, by mistake in understanding or by mistaking the names copper and rubber, it is my duty to aid his understanding, and his duty to do likewise unto me. A reciprocal Spirit of Trust. Without any accountability or strife concerning the stable use of language, we see no determinate language, and therefore no determinate existence. This I am hinging on Wittgenstein’s famous “The limits of your language are the limits of your world”, or as I may translate: “the borders of your language justify the borders of your world”. The language Plato was working with to try and elucidate the concept of Nothing in his Parmenides, in a very confused style can be succinctly put by Heidegger, working with nearly 2200 years of advancement: ~When we think, the object of our thought must be something, and therefore to have as the object of our thought be [the idea of] Nothing, may appear precarious…~
Part II– Brief buildup to Hume:
Surveying the many conflicts and the unfolding of Human Understanding, we first see the Greeks with their metaphysical theories, trying to understand the world around them and the fundamental reality concerning it. In the wake of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, we see the whole middle ages inundated with arguments over the particularities concerning species and genera, different metaphysical “proofs” for God and playing around with the concept of Substance (οὐσία). It is not until the start of the modern era in Descartes that we finally see a massive advent in Human Understanding, where we reach the incredible epiphany that there may be such a distinction to be made as:
(German rendered by Kant’s later formalization)
- For such [Für sich] — What IT IS mediated via the mind
- In itself [An sich] — What IT IS as it is
(when we ask what it is, we are concerned with the question of what Being is, which Aristotle brilliantly renders as, what Substance (οὐσία) is, (also: ousia can also be translated as reality)
Brief note:
Rationalists: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz
Empiricists: Berkeley, Locke, Hume <^– (reconciler into transcendental logik– Kant)
Descartes (1641), being the first to fully implement the normative scope of the idea that the mind mediates reality, this distinction of Substance as rendered for us, and rendered as it is in itself, he noticed, as a jesuit scientist, that just as no longer was the age-old theory of the church believing that the sun revolves around the earth was an accurate theory, but rather it was so that the earth revolved around the sun—- and so this prior ‘resemblance’ model of epistemology must go away. We are no longer perfect intakers and parsers of sense-data, and Descartes goes as far to say that there may even be an evil demon that is tricking us, but he later uses the ontological proof of God to displace this. Anyway, he comes up with an alternative method for truth, which is Representation (Vorstellung), for which appearance is a primitive model! (this is what he built his mathematics career on, when he solved age-old algebra problems by mapping them onto geometry!).
He uses his representationalism to differentiate between his mind, which sustains thinking and therefore apparently must exist, and the world around him (including his own body), which is transient and is open to a greater possibility of doubt (This is Cartesian dualism). Through his method of methodic doubt he seeks to start from axiomatic means (reflecting the advancements of mathematics in his time) as the foundation for sustaining his certainty. The epiphany that we take for granted (just as we take for granted the safety of walking and an infinite amount of other boons), is that appearance and being are differentiated between.
Spinoza (1677) takes Descartes’ geometric method, the idea that we can know the nature of the world a priori, and looking a little closer at one of Descartes’ propositions: God is strictly speaking the only independent substance, takes it to its absolute conclusion— Spinoza posits a monism of there being only One Substance, prior to all affection which is God aka Nature, which is mediated through Modes. Following the Scholastic tradition, the predicate of existence is essential to this one substance. All substance is necessarily infinite unless it is bounded by another, but if God is all there, if there is only one substance, there is no limitation on this substance. That there is a series of causes that necessitate other causes. All these causes & effects being an extension of God as they all infinitely regress back to God, that we have no practical free will with our every action necessitated by whatever precedes us. That traditional miracles contradict nature (God), and the true miracle is the order with which Nature upholds its laws. With all of this he consummates the Aristotelian-Scholastic Latin tradition in its own language by scrutinizing hitherto uncritical concepts. See: the Pantheism controversy (Pantheismusstreit).
But Spinoza’s true achievement is the isomorphism that haunted the whole of Philosophy onward, the isomorphism of Body (extension, material), and Mind (Thought, consciousness), that they are the same substance of God expressed in two different Modes! The only freedom we have is understanding the necessity we are trapped in 😦 .
Locke (1690) comes onto the scene and partially makes the brilliant observation that Hume will fully advance, that the notion of Substance itself is very unclear and obscure, and much of the “Science” of metaphysics is everyone just playing around with this ambiguous concept of Substance. There is a lack of critical element! He also notes that we have no innate ideas and all our ideas start as simple ones from sense-perception, (attributing the word blue to the experience of seeing blue) cementing his place as an empiricist. He also notes the “Twilight of probability” involved in much certainty which Hume takes to its brilliant conclusion.
Leibniz (1714), responding to Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke, attempts various different and disparate attempts to get beyond all three men. In his youth he attempted to create a universal mathematical language (ars combinatoria), to resolve ambiguities. His idea on free will is that if we say that something is only necessary if the alternative is a contradiction, then in the progression of reality, God may *select* between an infinite amount of possibilities to take place (compossibility), the one that is chosen ending up being the best possible one, supporting his view that we live in the best of all possible worlds. – “Sufficient reason for an act preceded by infinitely divisible shapes & motions must lie outside of this series of multiplicity, i.e. lying in necessary God.” “The past is always pregnant with the future”
Responding to Spinoza’s idea on miracles, he says that God upholds the ordinary (laws) and the extraordinary (traditional miracles), and that miracles do not contradict nature, but rather are extraordinary acts of Nature (God). As a physicist and the most well-read and widely read man of his time (whom only Hegel may share a similar title), he also expresses that physics and metaphysics rest in each other, and how the very principles of physics need metaphysics. The efficient cause (mechanistic) and the teleological cause (mentalistic) must be united! Inspiring much of Kant’s later transcendental logic, he outlines Necessary truth where the alternative is a contradiction (God and geometry), and contingent truth, where there are more or greater reasons for x’s taking place than y’s (I exist). That infallible certainty is different from absolute necessity, as imperfection existed before sin in the form of limitation, and sin just made it a positive evil.
He posits a “pre-established harmony” of substances to resolve the mind/body dualism, which synchronizes all things with each other. Finally his last major work outlines a system of an infinite number of Monads which are simple substances that compose reality. He contests Locke’s idea of Substance being unclear and ambiguous by claiming that Substance is clear but not distinct as well as saying that there are truths that depend on experience but not all of them do (such as mathematics). He uses the analogy of Hercules encased in a block of marble, which must be chiseled with the a posteriori to reach the a priori. Hercules is innate in the marble!
Part III – David Hume
“Where much light abounds, is a stronger shadow” – Goethe
O happy fault, yes!
What many days did man of honest inquiry ride so far, that higher scruples did not descend?
What anarchy of metaphysics do we see! Finally with the enlightenment, with the undermining of the authority of Aristotle, with the ptolemaic model ousted, the new authority becomes Ratio! I make a bombastic and obscure claim against yours! O pitiful mess of a “science”. So much of metaphysics is brilliant, yet uncritical, and therefore can be undermined with the smallest point.
Finally, with Hume (1748) (one of the first open atheists) fully implementing the key insights of Locke, do we see doubt and the first instances of drawing up lines of what it is even possible for Man to know. Too long has the philosopher been guilty of overly optimistic claims for knowing and exaggerated powers of human reason. The philosopher has written thus as if so much is obvious, and written poetic engagements that have excited our sentiments but not approached Truth. Hume was aware of his undertaking, “My principles would produce a total alteration in philosophy…”
Deadly consequences to the application of this philosophy in practical life, and for this reason he states, to be a man before a philosopher is necessary– Hume inverts the Socratic ideal of living one’s idea.
The catalyst of most faith in God comes from these robbers and highwaymen flooding the mind with a most poisonous fear that fears self-criticality lest it open and expose itself to the possibility for doubt, lest they lose faith and confer unto themselves an eternity of suffering. Feedback loop of a bad perpetuity, a never-ending limitation on human thought. In the epoch led by Hume, man FINALLY gains the courage to critically doubt God (unlike the weak doubts raised by Descartes).
The task then becomes clear, that Hume outlines yet does not undertake, in surveying Human Knowing and its bounds, if it may achieve certainty, or if we can with certainty reject that we can Know. With utmost care must we decipher this!
The bleak declarations:
All ideas have their basis in perception, and all ideas are simply just less lively perceptions.
All thoughts are reducible to simple ideas from precedent sentiment; perceptions precede and form (at least initial) materials for thought. (We cannot imagine new colors).
All ideas are faint and obscure, all are memory of impressions, augmented in whatever way.
“The creative power of the mind amounts to nothing more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing”.
What bleaker outlook than that the organ of the mind has no truth, yet is the organ evolved to accentuate one’s chances of survival through a higher capacity for induction from uniform patterns? That there is no truth, but we conjecture aimlessly, applying this organ borne for survival toward the meaningless and chimerical fantasies conjured up in our imagination. Our imagination: another tool for survival that Man in his advent of consciousness again, has subverted for the purpose of augmenting these lively perceptions, that we visualize and calcify as “ideas”, comparing them to each other and most hilariously, ordering them up along further contrived lines of “Truth” as if some reign in reality and others don’t. There is no God on this barren Earth.
The three laws for which this augmentation operates is by I. Resemblance, II. Contiguity, and III. Cause & Effect. There is no a priori justification for cause and effect having any necessary connexion. We only imagine them connected because our experience witnessing a uniform pattern of certain repetitions. Why does a billiard ball move another one when struck, instead of them both moving up, or sinking? Because experience has taught us so. Arbitrary the cause from the effect. Why does snow make me feel freezing and fire pain me immensely? Why not snow make me feel hot and fire make me feel cold? Pure reason cannot elucidate for us the why… yet my sense of touch will clearly let me know… and then my path of finding out becomes equal to the beasts, those fellow empiricists… only my capacity in memory, in learning, in applying induction far exceeds them.
The links and bonds of sight, memory, custom. Certainty only found in approaching higher probability through greater variety of experience. We are situated to feel love at gifts and flattery, and hatred at injury— belief is nothing more than conception attended by a certain sentiment. Mind as he renders reality has belief to weigh more in thought, affording a greater influence on the passion and imagination. Belief consists in (favorable) manner of conceiving– it is merely a more trying activity of the fibres. All Thought is an evolutionary trait linking custom and habit from memories, exploiting the ability for infinite augmentation to feign any idea of truth. Man has no dignity but is a clever animalistic machine. Fallible induction needed to survive, yet now we are stuck on this animal plane.
“The concurrence of these several views or glimpses imprints the idea more strongly on the imagination; gives it superior force and vigor; renders its influence on the passions and affections more sensible; and in a word, begets that reliance or security, which constitutes the nature of belief and opinion”. – even that (rule) without exception is still a probability albeit the highest we have. Without an a priori justification for them all they will ever be are probabilities.
That unavoidable twilight of probability of all, even that right behind us as our gaze leaves it! It is not necessarily there, therefore it is almost utterly certain that it is there.
“There is not, in any single particular instance of cause and effect, any thing which can suggest the idea of a power or necessary connexion” – “They seem conjoined but never connected” – “.. that we have no idea of connexion or power at all, and that these words are absolutely without any meaning…” (undermining aquinas’ “proof”)
“But when one particular species of event has always, in all instances, been conjoined with another, we make no longer any scruple of foretelling one upon the appearance of the other, and of employing that reasoning, which can alone assure us of any matter or fact or existence”.
Only because of the uniformity do we pretend some necessary connextion!
We all have the same faculties, there is just ambiguity in the expression – clearing these ambiguities will put an end to the whole controversy. Without uniformity we would have no idea of necessity – memory and sense as only canals of truth. I. uniform conjoined appearance (custom) II. Inferential power.
Experience is just inducing rules of uniformity. Men hinge most if not all of their lives on induction
DO NOT believe this religion, their miraculous claims, unless not believing would be more absurd. Many believe the miraculous claims as they confer a psycho-sensual beneficence, not as they reach any valid criterion for its truth! Man is ever inclined to his passions and feelings, reason follows behind, justifying posterior. Those poor ignorant barbarian peoples where these miraculous claims took off, they knew not criticality!
We know well the ways of man through history and experience, yet God is apparently only known through his creation, we do not know the Him that is infinitely removed. If I see a building under construction I can surely presume men working on it, it being built to some end— yet the progress of the world of which God is the governor? What have I to know God’s ways with certainty? I have none except the bombastic dogmas. The criterion is not met. I am alone on this barren earth.
O and morality… well it is apparent! That the groups that were altruistic survived and the selfish ones died out… morality is again beget by the Earth. There is no eternal moral law inscribed in the human heart by a creator, other than Nature herself. Could God have used these material means for us to be this way? That is plausible…
If he is unpredicated even on Being and Nothing. If he transcends logic, in a romantic leap, we must believe.
Threshing Floor 