944 lines
74 KiB
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944 lines
74 KiB
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<title>Contemporary epistemological philosophy</title>
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<meta name="author" content="Amr Gharbeia">
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">C<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="TtsOtkCRS10_12" align="right" hspace="5" width="250" height="23" border="0">ontemporary
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epistemological philosophy. </font>As modern philosophy was exploring
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its crippling tribulations during the seventeenth, eighteenth and
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nineteenth centuries, modern science (sponsored by capitalism, the
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other offspring besides modern philosophy of ancient and medieval
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epistemological philosophy) was advancing, probing ever deeper
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beneath the perceptual appearance of the natural world, discovering
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the smaller and stranger bits of matter that help (along with space)
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constitute what is found in nature. The manifest success of natural
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science made it difficult to take absolute idealism seriously in the
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end. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Even
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epistemologists turned away from Descartes’ starting point. Instead
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of taking the natural world to be something whose existence had to be
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inferred on the basis of ideas in the mind, they reverted to common
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sense and took the existence of a public world for granted. But that
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did not mean that epistemological philosophy had to be abandoned,
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because there was another way for philosophers to deploy the same
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elements that reflective understanding makes present to rational
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subjects as a theory about the nature of reason. And even if the
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deeper rational cause it would use to explain the validity of first
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level arguments did not add any new kinds of substances to be
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realists about, analogous to the Forms (or God) of the
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ancient/medieval era or the external world of the modern era, it
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could hope to avoid the embarrassing excesses of past metaphysics and
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yet root the arguments of rational culture in a firm, epistemological
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foundation. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Language
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is the object of reflection that had been overlooked by earlier forms
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of epistemological philosophy. Plato had simply assumed that words
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are simply a way of referring to the Forms that everyone could
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rationally intuit, making it possible to describe the visible objects
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by the Forms they imitate. Descartes had recognized that the Forms
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were just clear and distinct ideas of rational imagination in the
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mind, but since the same ideas were supposed to be in every rational
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mind, he could also assume that words are just ways of communicating
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which abstract ideas speakers were talking about. In both cases,
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language played a decidedly secondary role to the main objects of
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reflection by which reason was supposed to know about the world. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Words,
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and the sentences that they make up, are nonetheless objects that
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rational subjects are aware of, and they are different from the
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objects that were central to the ancient and modern theories of
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reason. Words are perceptible, like other objects in space, when they
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are spoken or written. But they are unlike other objects in space,
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because they have meanings and they can refer to objects or
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properties in the world. To be sure, their meanings had been
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explained in ancient and modern philosophy by Forms or ideas in the
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mind. But the words were nonetheless different from them, because
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they could exist as perceptible objects, and that somehow made it
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possible for rational subjects to communicate with one another
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through their animal bodies in a world of objects in space. Thus, to
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those how accepted natural science, it was plausible to suppose that
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the analysis of language would provide an explanation of the nature
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of reason that would explain the validity of all the (valid)
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arguments of rational level culture (including arguments about
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natural and social science, practical as well as theoretical
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arguments, and about what is moral as well as what is in one’s self
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interest). And it would avoid the pitfall of modern philosophy, for
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it would not depend on anything that can be known only privately, if
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the analysis of language rested on a kind of knowledge about language
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that is inherently intersubjective. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Developments
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in logic would make language analysis all but irresistible. Given how
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important mathematics is to the advance of natural science, problems
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encountered in the evolution of mathematical arguments was bound to
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focus attention on the nature of formal proofs and logic. As we have
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seen (in <font face="Arial, sans-serif">Relations</font>), such
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developments took place in the nineteenth and early twentieth
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century, giving rise to symbolic logic and the logical analysis of
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language (notably, in the work of the early Russell and Frege). Thus,
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much as natural science was prospering by making use of developments
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in mathematics, it would inevitably occur to some philosophers that
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philosophy might prosper by making use of the new developments in
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logic. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">When
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natural science makes modern epistemological philosophy incredible,
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therefore, there is another way of doing epistemological philosophy.
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Hence, our ontological explanation of the nature of reason and
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consciousness leads us to expect some philosophers to make use of it
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during a late phase of evolution during the philosophical spiritual
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stage. That would explain what became known as “analytic
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philosophy” in Anglo-American philosophy, as we shall see. Much the
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same explanation might also be given of contemporary Continental and
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its trajectory toward deconstuctionism, though it will not be pursued
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here. By the same token, however, ontological philosophy implies that
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analytic philosophy (and Continental philosophy) are doomed to fail
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for much the same reason as earlier forms of epistemological
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philosophy. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Like
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all forms of epistemological philosophy, analytic philosophy is the
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attempt to found a theory about the nature of reason on what is known
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about how we know by reflection (that is, reflective understanding).
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It may not seem that public language is an object of reflection.
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Words (and sentences) may seem to be objects of perception, because
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they occur as material objects in the natural world when they are
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spoken or written. Indeed, they can be objects of perception along
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with other objects in space. But that is not how they are seen from
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the point of view of the rational subject — unless she is a
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critical realist and recognizes the difference between the immediate,
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phenomenal appearance of the world in perception and the natural
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world to which it corresponds. But critical realism is an insight
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into the nature of perception (and, thus, reason) that had to be
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abandoned in order to avoid the problems of modern philosophy. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Abandoning
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the problems of modern philosophy meant giving up the notion that the
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natural world is something beyond the world in which rational beings
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find themselves. This did not necessarily mean explicitly embracing
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naïve realism about perception. But it did preclude making
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philosophical hay out of the difference between the perceptual
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appearance of the world and what exists independently of it. Thus,
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though analytic philosophy did not embrace naïve realism about
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perception explicitly, most analytic philosophers did take naïve
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realism for granted in practice, because that is the inevitable
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effect of abandoning the distinction between the appearance of the
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world in perception and the world being perceived. Naïve realism is
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our natural attitude. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Thus,
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contemporary epistemologists were (or eventually became) naturalists
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in the minimal sense of believing in the existence of the world
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disclosed by perception, a world that seemed, at least, to be made up
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of material objects in space that move and interact over time.
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Naturalism in this sense is not only the view of natural science, but
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also the common sense view of the world, the vantage from which the
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arguments of rational level culture were made.</font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">It was also
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Plato’s view of the natural world. But unlike Plato, analytic
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philosophers recognized that concepts are subjective, that is, parts
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of psychological states on which rational subjects could reflect,
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using reflective understanding. But they had to avoid making use of
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such private objects in their theory about the nature of reason. </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Naïve
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realism, however, takes what is actually an object of reflection to
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be the natural world, and thus, even the public language that is
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analyzed by contemporary epistemological philosophy is also an object
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of reflection. To be sure, analytic philosophy thinks of words and
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sentences as public objects, along with the natural world in which
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they occur. But since it takes the words to be meaningful, they are
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actually objects of reflection, and their meanings connect the words
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to certain objects (or kind of objects) in the world (as their
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referents). That is the simplest way that reflective understanding
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can use language as theory about the nature of reason. Once the
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meanings of words are projected onto the world and appear as public
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references, it is possible to explain intersubjectively how sentences
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correspond to the world and to consider the validity of arguments for
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them.</font></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">As a result
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of naïve realism about perception, images in the brain representing
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words that are generated by overt verbal behavior are not
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distinguished from the words that exist as material objects
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independently of the brain. The images are confused with the material
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objects themselves, just like the perception of other objects in
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space. But since the perceptual images of the words are connected
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with images in the faculty of imagination as their meanings, it is
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natural to take their meanings to be public as well. That is, the
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word seems to be related to an object or objects of some kind, as if
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the semantic relation were a direct, public relationship between the
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word and object. </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="HistPhiloCont" align="bottom" width="400" height="250" border="0"></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This is a
|
||
theory about the nature of reason based on intuition, for it assumes,
|
||
in effect, that users of language can intuit their meanings and
|
||
references. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">From
|
||
our ontological perspective, however, both the words and their
|
||
meanings are parts of the linguistic structure that is the structure
|
||
of the spiritual animal under the cultural aspect. As such, they are
|
||
properties of a material object, albeit a complex material object
|
||
with a spiritual nature (that is, a organism in which the use of
|
||
language entails both a social and a cultural structure as a whole).
|
||
The linguistic structure is a structure of the spiritual animal as a
|
||
whole, because it is, in principle, contained completely in every
|
||
member’s brain, as well as in the overt verb behavior by which the
|
||
use of language coordinates behavior, like the leader’s plan of
|
||
social level behavior at the primitive spiritual stage. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">What are
|
||
called “abstract objects” are, therefore, just parts of a
|
||
property of the spiritual animal (or an aspect of an aspect of a
|
||
spiritual material object), and that gives words (and their meanings)
|
||
a physical relationship to objects (or kinds of objects), because
|
||
culture is part of the behavior guidance system by which the
|
||
spiritual animal acts on other objects in space. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This is not
|
||
how it appears, however, to contemporary epistemological
|
||
philosophers, for they do not recognize the existence of spiritual
|
||
animals. They cannot, because as practicing naïve realists, they do
|
||
not recognize the existence of a faculty or rational imagination by
|
||
which words as public, overt verbal behavior (spoken or written) is
|
||
related to objects (or kinds of objects) in the world. To them it
|
||
appears that words have a direct, public relationship to objects (or
|
||
kinds of object), at least, at first.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Analytic
|
||
philosophy is not always as naïve, however, as it was at first. In
|
||
thinking about words as public objects, naturalists were forced to
|
||
recognize that they are just sounds or marks made by speakers, which
|
||
have only physical properties. But they do have meanings and
|
||
referents, and if they are not physical properties of words as
|
||
material objects, they must be explained in some other way. And since
|
||
there is another way that meaning and reference can be just as public
|
||
as the words themselves, it was still possible to do epistemological
|
||
philosophy in the contemporary style. There must be a public way of
|
||
determining meaning and reference, for otherwise children would be
|
||
unable to learn a natural language and it would not be possible to
|
||
translate one natural language into another for the first time.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">A less
|
||
naïve way of analyzing the meanings and references of words
|
||
recognizes that any images that may be associated with the words are
|
||
private and that only the words as material objects are public. But
|
||
it still conflates the perceptual images of the words with the
|
||
physical tokens themselves, and since the relationship between word
|
||
and object (and its meaning, whatever that is) must be one that can
|
||
be established in terms of what is publicly perceived, it assumes
|
||
that language is governed by public rules. The public rules explain
|
||
how everyone learns it as they grow up and how it is possible to
|
||
translate from one language to another. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This is
|
||
also a theory about the nature of reason that is based on intuition,
|
||
though it is indirect. The intuition that users of language have is
|
||
that the meanings and references of words must be determined by
|
||
public behavior in relation to public objects, if it is not the
|
||
public rules themselves. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">In
|
||
either case, whether meaning and reference are taken to be inherent
|
||
in the public words (and sentences) or they are explained by the
|
||
learning of public rules, analytic philosophy is still basically
|
||
reflection on language from the point of view of the users of
|
||
language, and such a reflective explanation makes the analysis of
|
||
language inadequate as a theory about the nature of reason. The
|
||
relationship between word and object is not just a relationship of
|
||
the kind that can appear to the user of language as she reflects an
|
||
language and how it is used, but one that depends on the nature of
|
||
the faculties of perception and imagination in the brain and how
|
||
those brains are coordinated as parts of a spiritual animal. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">In either
|
||
case, meaning and reference are taken to be something intersubjective
|
||
in the sense that it either is or can be explained in terms of what
|
||
is public to users of language as practicing naïve realists. That
|
||
way of analyzing language is the foundation for the theory about the
|
||
nature of reason used in analytic philosophy. And what dooms it, like
|
||
other forms of epistemological philosophy, is that it is trying to
|
||
explain reason by objects that have an appearance to the subject who
|
||
reflects on how she knows, in this case, the world as it appears in
|
||
perception to naïve realists and the way that language appears to be
|
||
public to its users. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">What it
|
||
overlooks is how the relationship between word and object is mediated
|
||
by a faculty of perception and imagination located in the brain of
|
||
each user of language. Words have meanings that are images in a
|
||
faculty of imagination, and their references to objects in the world
|
||
depend how its representations correspond to aspect of the world —
|
||
where the latter is explained, as we have seen, by an isomorphism
|
||
between sequences of images that are called up in the brain over time
|
||
and the effects of locomotion, manipulation and the like. But the use
|
||
of reflection (reflective understanding) to think about language as
|
||
something public makes language appear to have a public relationship
|
||
to what it represents in the world that does not depend on a faculty
|
||
of imagination in the brain, but only on intersubjectively
|
||
correctable rules. It makes the semantic relation appear to be public
|
||
or determinable by pubic rules. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This is not
|
||
to deny that there are public rules of language. The analytic
|
||
philosopher’s talk of such public rules is, in effect, a reference
|
||
to the spiritual animal. What gives such organisms a “spiritual”
|
||
natural is the use of language to coordinate the behavior of its
|
||
parts, and that social level behavior guidance system does depend on
|
||
representations in the brain that have both a possibly overt verbal
|
||
side and a necessarily covert nonverbal side. On the covert nonverbal
|
||
side, images in the faculty of imagination are the meanings of words,
|
||
and since those images have a geometrically structured relationship
|
||
to objects in space by way of the animal system of representation,
|
||
words are made to refer to objects by the connections established in
|
||
Wernicke’s area between such images and words as verbal behavior.
|
||
Grammatical markers indicating the kind of activity in the faculty of
|
||
rational imagination are likewise established in Wernicke’s area,
|
||
as we have seen. In other words, what is called learning the rules of
|
||
language is actually just the neurological development of the
|
||
reflective brain, during which linguistic behavior schemata evolve by
|
||
reinforcement selection to give the subject the capacity to speak and
|
||
understand a natural language. It is more basic than rule following.
|
||
That is, it would be more accurate to say that learning to use
|
||
language is to acquire the capacity to learn to follow public rules,
|
||
because rule following, in the sense that is distinctive of human
|
||
beings, for example, in playing games, is, as we have seen, something
|
||
that requires the language-based ability to see into one another’s
|
||
minds (that is, reflective understanding). On our ontological view,
|
||
public rules are mutually accepted arguments about how one should
|
||
behave in certain situations of the kind that generate institutions
|
||
as social level behavior. But none of this is evident to analytic
|
||
philosophers, because their approach to philosophy is
|
||
epistemological, with a theory about the nature of reason that comes
|
||
from reflective understanding. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Analytic
|
||
philosophy was doomed, therefore, to suffer the same fate as earlier
|
||
forms of epistemological philosophy, because the relationship between
|
||
language and the world cannot be explained as a public relationship
|
||
in that world. Language and the world is a dualism of much the same
|
||
kind that Plato faced between Forms and visible objects and that
|
||
Descartes faced between mind and body, because the relationships that
|
||
appear to hold between these objects in reflection from the point of
|
||
view of the subject makes it impossible to explain adequately how
|
||
they are related at all when both sides are taken to be parts of the
|
||
same, independently existing world. That is, as I have pointed out
|
||
from time to time, the problem of dualism that epistemological
|
||
philosophy inevitably causes. Words (and sentences) as linguistic
|
||
representations, that is, with meanings and references, are not
|
||
public objects, but representations in the brain of each language
|
||
user who considers them, and when they are projected onto the natural
|
||
world, there is no adequate way to explain how they are even parts of
|
||
the same world. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Analytic
|
||
philosophy would take various forms, for there are various ways of
|
||
explaining the nature of language intersubjectively, and different
|
||
ways of using it as a theory about the nature of reason to explain
|
||
the validity of the first level arguments of rational culture. But
|
||
they are all different from earlier forms of epistemological
|
||
philosophy, because using the analysis of public language as a theory
|
||
about the nature of reason does not lend itself to any form of
|
||
realism. It is not obvious that there are any entities beyond those
|
||
that are immediately present to the subject whose existence and
|
||
nature could be demonstrated by what is known about language and its
|
||
relationship to the world, as the external world was for Descartes
|
||
and the Forms were for Plato. The contemporary form of
|
||
epistemological philosophy turns out, therefore, to be mostly a
|
||
foundation for anti-realism, for there are entities and properties
|
||
that it is possible to be skeptical about. The history of analytic
|
||
philosophy is, therefore, another story about the discovery of the
|
||
failure of another kind of epistemological philosophy. And in this
|
||
case, the inability to construct an argument with a higher level of
|
||
forensic organization that would explain the validity of the
|
||
arguments of rational culture. Let us consider some of the main forms
|
||
that analytic philosophy would take. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Logical
|
||
positivism.</i> The most obvious way to use the new form of
|
||
epistemological philosophy is to explain the validity of the
|
||
arguments of natural science, for even though they may depend on
|
||
mathematics, they are basically arguments of rational level culture,
|
||
which use perception and already established beliefs to justify new
|
||
beliefs. This higher level argument was undertaken by the logical
|
||
positivists as one of the earliest forms analytic philosophy. They
|
||
took the most naïve view of language as a public objects, thinking
|
||
of words and sentences as having meanings that are public, and that
|
||
seemed to afford a way of explaining the validity of scientific
|
||
arguments, because both the theories of natural science and the
|
||
evidence on which such arguments were based were formulated in
|
||
language. Thus, the logical positivists distinguished between
|
||
theoretical statements and observational statements. Observational
|
||
statements were sentences whose truth could be known by perceiving
|
||
the objects and their properties, while theoretical statements were
|
||
sentences used to formulate the theories that explained what could be
|
||
observed. It seemed natural to assume that theoretical statements had
|
||
to be based on observational statements, given traditional empiricism
|
||
and its attempt to defend natural science in modern philosophy. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">It was
|
||
hoped that analyzing the arguments of natural science in this way
|
||
would not only unify the arguments of natural science (the “unity
|
||
of science” movement), but also explain why they were true in a way
|
||
that would make clear which beliefs are, and which are not,
|
||
scientific truths. Moreover, this was a theory about the nature of
|
||
reason that promised to settle issues in traditional philosophy, for
|
||
any statements about the world (that is, synthetic, as opposed to
|
||
analytic statement) that could not be shown to be based on
|
||
observational statements would be rejected as metaphysics, that is,
|
||
as meaningless propositions. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Thus,
|
||
logical positivism used a theory about the nature of language to
|
||
claim, in effect, that a basically empiricist analysis of the method
|
||
of natural science explained the nature of reason itself. Less
|
||
sympathetic critics would dismiss it as “scientism,” because it
|
||
rejected all the other arguments of rational culture as invalid. That
|
||
was how they explained the validity of practical arguments: value
|
||
judgments were cognitively meaningless (though logical positivists
|
||
did not deny that they were nonetheless useful to express emotions
|
||
and affect behavior by arousing similar feelings in others). But what
|
||
brought logical positivism into disfavor among philosophers of
|
||
science were its implications about natural science. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Theories
|
||
in natural science commonly refer to entities that are not directly
|
||
observable, such as electrons, force fields, quarks, and the like in
|
||
physics. But since they are not observable, the meanings of such
|
||
theoretical terms could not be analyzed in the same naïve way as
|
||
observational terms. Only the meanings of observational terms could
|
||
be explained by the kind of direct, public relationship that seems to
|
||
hold between word and object that was taken for granted. Thus, the
|
||
project was to show how theoretical statements are based on
|
||
observational statements. But since it turned out that theoretical
|
||
statements are not entailed by observational statements, it led to
|
||
skepticism about the existence of unobservable theoretical entities. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Since
|
||
physicists take it for granted that such theoretical entities exist,
|
||
philosophical defenders of natural science were also inclined to be
|
||
realists about theoretical entities. Thus, recognizing that they
|
||
could not <i>derive </i>theoretical from observational statements,
|
||
they might, as “scientific realists,” still be able to articulate
|
||
the criterion by which science based them on observational
|
||
statements. But to make a long story short, any criterion that would
|
||
include the theoretical entities of science would also include
|
||
metaphysical entities, unless the criterion was so specific that it
|
||
was obviously contrived and ad hoc. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Even if a
|
||
criterion for inferring to unobservable entities could be formulated,
|
||
however, it was eventually recognized that it would be
|
||
question-begging. The mere formulation of criterion would not provide
|
||
any reason believing that scientific arguments for the existence of
|
||
unobservable entities are valid. What they needed was an explanation
|
||
of theoretical arguments that would explain why they are valid. A
|
||
criterion for accepting them as scientific would be merely a
|
||
principle to be used as a premise in first level arguments of natural
|
||
science, where the validity of appealing to such principles is what
|
||
is at issue, at least, judging by traditional philosophy.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
|
||
validity of arguments that entail the existence of unobservable
|
||
theoretical entities cannot be shown by the success of such arguments
|
||
in the history of science, because that would be circular. It would
|
||
be using the very principle whose validity is at issue to justify its
|
||
validity. At best, the history of science can be used to show that
|
||
science is moving in a certain direction, perhaps, toward a unique
|
||
outcome (as Kitcher 1992 argues). But even that would not show that
|
||
what is believed at that ideal end of inquiry is true. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Finally, in
|
||
the course of such philosophical disputes, the very distinction
|
||
between theoretical and observational statements began to seem
|
||
suspect. Since they had abandoned the starting point of modern
|
||
philosophy, they could not explain the difference between
|
||
observational an theoretical statements as the difference between
|
||
ideas of perception and what they represent from the point of view of
|
||
the subject (that is, parts of the external world). They had to
|
||
define observational statements as what a normal observer could
|
||
report from her perception in a given situation. But then it became
|
||
clear that what normal observers would report depends heavily on
|
||
their beliefs, and well informed observers would report observing
|
||
theoretical entities in experimental situations where they were
|
||
detected. This led to a form of “holism” about meaning, for as
|
||
Quine would argue, what confronts experience is not individual
|
||
sentences, but entire theories, worldviews, and even including logic
|
||
itself. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Logical
|
||
positivists had also expected to explain the validity of arguments in
|
||
the science of subjects by showing that they were simply another form
|
||
of the same empirical methods. The conclusions of a science of
|
||
subjects are typically formulated as psychological sentences, but the
|
||
attempt to base them on observational statements led to behaviorism
|
||
in psychology (thereby justifying Skinner’s operant conditioning).
|
||
But for those who believe that psychological states are real, it was
|
||
another form of anti-realism. For similar reasons, logical
|
||
positivists sided with methodological individualists in their battle
|
||
with social holists, leading to anti-realism about spiritual animals.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Ordinary
|
||
language philosophy.</i> There was, however, another way that
|
||
analytic philosophy would lead to anti-realism about psychological
|
||
states and spiritual animals, because there was another way of
|
||
analyzing public language that would account for the use of
|
||
psychological sentences. Instead of analyzing the logical structure
|
||
of language and explaining how it corresponds to the world, as
|
||
logical positivism did, it was possible to analyze the use of
|
||
language as a practice governed by public rules that children learn
|
||
as they grow up and by which the use of language can be corrected.
|
||
This way of using contemporary epistemological philosophy was
|
||
introduced by the “latter” Wittgenstein in a development that was
|
||
called “ordinary language philosophy.” The various game-like
|
||
interactions making up the public phenomenon of language use were
|
||
“forms of life,” and as Wittgenstein intended, this theory about
|
||
the nature of reason was mainly negative, a critique of how the first
|
||
level arguments of the science of subjects are understood even in
|
||
rational culture. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Wittgenstein’s
|
||
analysis of ordinary language revealed that language is used for many
|
||
reasons, not just describing the world. In particular, he saw the use
|
||
of psychological sentences, not as descriptions of psychological
|
||
states that are somehow private to each individual, but rather as
|
||
sentences with behavioral criteria for attributing psychological
|
||
states to others (or, in the case of first person uses, expressing
|
||
feelings). They were moves in a game, or part of a form of life that
|
||
we share. His goal was to show that the problems of modern philosophy
|
||
had been based on illusion, and thus, that its many problems could be
|
||
dismissed as mere pseudo-problems. He argued from the nature of
|
||
language as governed by public rules that there could not be a
|
||
private language, that is, a language whose terms referred to objects
|
||
or states that are essentially private, such as ideas in the mind. In
|
||
the end, therefore, his ordinary language philosophy led to a form of
|
||
behaviorism, which is called “philosophical behaviorism,” in
|
||
order to distinguish it from scientific behaviorism, such as
|
||
Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning, which is supported by
|
||
logical positivism. Thus, just as logical positivism led to
|
||
anti-realism, rather than realism, about theoretical entities, so
|
||
both ordinary language philosophy and logical positivism led to
|
||
anti-realism, rather than realism, about psychological states. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Ordinary
|
||
language philosophy lent itself to explaining the arguments of social
|
||
science, as well as those of a science of individual subjects. After
|
||
all, it explained language as an interaction among individuals
|
||
governed by public rules, and if that was an explanation of the
|
||
nature of reason, it showed the validity of our ordinary way of
|
||
understanding of institutions and, thus, the reflective science of
|
||
the social world, which is an inevitable part of the culture of
|
||
rational spiritual animals. See Peter Winch, <i>The Idea of a Social
|
||
Science.</i> </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Skepticism
|
||
about metaphysical realism.</i> Logical positivism led to skepticism
|
||
about the existence of theoretical entities, but as we have seen,
|
||
logical positivism led to problems that made it possible for
|
||
defenders of natural science to continue to accept scientific
|
||
realism. But more recently, analytic philosophy’s theory about the
|
||
nature of reason has been found to lead to another kind of
|
||
skepticism, this time, about the <i>nature </i>of the entities
|
||
described by its theories. Thus, analytic philosophers could concede
|
||
that theoretical entities exist and still have grounds for more
|
||
subtle skepticism about natural science, for they could doubt
|
||
metaphysical realism, rather than scientific realism. (Putnam calls
|
||
them “internal realists.”) And these doubts could not be
|
||
dismissed so easily.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Their way
|
||
of analyzing language also gave analytic philosophers reason to doubt
|
||
that natural science, even if it was right about the <i>existence </i>of
|
||
theoretical entities, is correct about their real <i>nature</i>. That
|
||
is, while the theories of science may not be mistaken by failing to
|
||
refer to entities of kinds (unobservable or observable) mentioned by
|
||
them, those theories could still be mistaken in the properties
|
||
predicated of such entities, including the dispositional properties
|
||
(described by laws of nature) that are involved in the
|
||
efficient-cause explanations given by natural science. That means
|
||
that science might even be mistaken in the causal explanations it
|
||
gives of what happens in the world. The kind of realism that would be
|
||
denied in this second way is sometime called “metaphysical
|
||
realism,” to distinguish it from realism about the existence of the
|
||
entities mentioned by scientific theories, or mere “scientific
|
||
realism.” Metaphysical realism holds that science discovers not
|
||
only the <i>existence</i>, but also the real <i>nature </i>of what
|
||
exists in the world. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Skepticism
|
||
about metaphysical realism is justified by a certain looseness in the
|
||
relationship between language and the world that appears when
|
||
language is explained in the way that analytic philosophy does. As
|
||
Quine has argued, analytic philosophers cannot admit that words have
|
||
meanings that are private to each subject. The meanings of words must
|
||
be determined by the references they make as public objects to public
|
||
parts of the world. But when the role of the faculties of perception
|
||
and imagination in the brain in the semantic relation is ignored,
|
||
different relationships between word and object (or language and the
|
||
world) seem possible. Two forms of looseness can be distinguished, an
|
||
indeterminacy about what words refer to in the world, and an
|
||
inability to determine which of different possible properties they
|
||
actually have. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Quine
|
||
showed the indeterminacy of reference, or ontological indeterminacy,
|
||
in a famous series of arguments that showed that there are different
|
||
ways of translating a foreign language using as evidence only the
|
||
behavior of speakers of the language in certain situations. For
|
||
example, he showed that “gavagai” in such a language might refer
|
||
to rabbits, rabbit-parts, or time-slices of rabbits, depending on how
|
||
other words in the language were translated. That there are always
|
||
different possible translation manuals based on such observational
|
||
evidence shows that we are unable, in principle, to tell what another
|
||
subject is referring to. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Putnam
|
||
suggests the universality of this kind of argument by appealing to
|
||
the Lowenheim-Skolem theory. It holds, as we have seen (in
|
||
<font face="Arial, sans-serif">Relations</font>), that, for any
|
||
formal system as complex as set theory or arithmetic, there is an
|
||
interpretation of all its sentences that makes them true in the realm
|
||
of natural numbers. Thus, Putnam argues that even if a formal system
|
||
were constructed that conjoined all the theories of science,
|
||
including all the observational statements on which they rest, it
|
||
would still not make its own references to the world determinate. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The other
|
||
kind of looseness in the relationship between language and the world
|
||
is the underdetermination of scientific theories by the evidence for
|
||
them. Putnam makes this argument concretely by pointing to the
|
||
existence of equivalent theories, or actual theories with different
|
||
principles that are equally able to predict all the same phenomena.
|
||
He mentions different forms of geometry (one postulating points and
|
||
the other spheres shrinking indefinitely), different forms of quantum
|
||
mechanics (Heisenberg matrix mechanics and Schroedinger’s
|
||
wavefunction), and different views of the dates and locations of
|
||
events by observers on different inertial frames (though he
|
||
recognizes that Einstein’s special theory of relativity provides a
|
||
single description for them all). But the arguments are all typified
|
||
by a dispute between Carnap and the Polish logician about how many
|
||
objects there are in a universe that contains nothing but x1, x2, and
|
||
x3. Carnap would hold that there are three objects, but the Polish
|
||
logician would hold that there are seven (or eight, if he counted the
|
||
empty set as an object). (See Putnam (1987, p. 18ff; 1988, p. 109ff.)
|
||
Putnam argues that there is no principled way of choosing between
|
||
such theories and, thus, that there is no truth of the matter about
|
||
which is true. (Putnam defends a Kantian view that holds that the
|
||
conclusions of natural science are inevitably determined as much by
|
||
the nature of the scientists as by the nature of the world they would
|
||
describe.)</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Analytic
|
||
philosophy supports, therefore, a kind of anti-realism with respect
|
||
to metaphysical realism. As long as the relationship between language
|
||
and the world is indeterminate or loose in this way, there is reason
|
||
to doubt that science discovers the truth about the world, where that
|
||
means the way that things really are in themselves. Thus, Putnam can
|
||
taunt defenders of science as foolish believers in “The One True
|
||
Theory” or a “God’s Eye View of the World.” </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Though
|
||
defenders of natural science may not like to think of themselves as
|
||
metaphysical realists, neither do they want to accept the “internal
|
||
realism” that Putnam would saddle them with, for that is to admit
|
||
that natural science, even at the ideal end of inquiry, may not have
|
||
described the real nature of what exists. They need a defense against
|
||
the more recent skepticism founded in analytic philosophy. But the
|
||
obvious way of defending science from its attacks does not work. A
|
||
brief account of one more step in the dialectic of contemporary
|
||
epistemological philosophy will put us in a position to see why
|
||
philosophical culture inevitably evolves from epistemological
|
||
philosophy to ontological philosophy.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Since the
|
||
analytic philosophy’s skepticism about metaphysical realism depends
|
||
on its way of analyzing language, that is, taking words and sentences
|
||
to be public objects whose (meanings and) references are determined
|
||
by the public process in which animals use them in a mutually
|
||
understood way, defenders of natural science can insist that there is
|
||
a deeper, naturalistic explanation of the semantic relation. Though
|
||
they do not have such a so-called “causal theory of reference”
|
||
worked out in detail, they argue that when it is used to explain the
|
||
relationship between language and the world, there will no longer be
|
||
any indeterminacy about reference or uncertainty about which of
|
||
equivalent theories is true, because science will know what each word
|
||
and sentence refers to. This is called the “naturalistic”
|
||
approach to language, and disputes currently rage about how to
|
||
formulate such a theory.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Such
|
||
naturalistic theories about language are vulnerable, however, to a
|
||
rebuttal. The vulnerability comes from the way that even scientists
|
||
understand the empirical method of natural science (though it can,
|
||
perhaps, be traced in part to the alliance between science and
|
||
empiricism in modern philosophy). They assume that the goal of
|
||
natural science is to discover laws of nature, or more broadly, that
|
||
it is the attempt to discover the best efficient-cause explanation of
|
||
what happens in the world. That is why the naturalistic explanation
|
||
of language is called a “causal” theory of reference. Regardless
|
||
how science may explain the semantic relation, it will presumably be
|
||
a causal relation of some kind. It will involve a regularity of some
|
||
kind that can be described by a law of nature. This leaves defenders
|
||
of science vulnerable to Putnam’s refutation.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Putnam
|
||
argues that no such causal theory of reference can possibly eliminate
|
||
the looseness that analytic philosophy has found in the relationship
|
||
between language and the world because it will itself by subject to
|
||
that same looseness. The terms used by a causal theory of reference
|
||
will admit of different interpretations, which connect them to
|
||
different objects or different properties, and thus, the
|
||
indeterminacy about reference will merely be promoted to the level of
|
||
the causal theory about language. Thus, the dispute about
|
||
metaphysical realism is a standoff. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
argument between analytic philosophy and defenders of natural science
|
||
is unresolved, because defenders of natural science do not have an
|
||
explanation of the nature of reference that would show that Putnam is
|
||
wrong. Nor do they understand natural science in a way that can show
|
||
how their theories would escape indeterminacy about their own
|
||
references. And though scientific realism is generally taken for
|
||
granted, there is still no justification of inferences to the
|
||
existence of unobservable entities mentioned by scientific theories.
|
||
Ontological philosophy, however, would supply all three. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Ontological
|
||
philosophy recognizes that, because of the reflective foundation of
|
||
its epistemological argument, analytic philosophy’s explanation of
|
||
the nature of the relationship between language and the world
|
||
overlooks the role of the faculties of perception and rational
|
||
imagination that are part of the brain of each user of language. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">If
|
||
naturalists recognized that brain mechanisms like these mediated the
|
||
relationship between word and object (or sentence and state of
|
||
affairs), they would see that reference is not a mere <i>causal
|
||
relation</i>, but a <i>geometrical isomorphism </i>in space and time
|
||
between states and processes in the brain, on the one hand, and
|
||
states in the world. The structure of that correspondence between
|
||
brain states and the world makes if clear that there is nothing
|
||
indeterminate about a semantic relation that is mediated by it. It
|
||
would be clear, for example, that “gavagai” refers to whole
|
||
rabbits, because the basic structure of the faculty of spatial
|
||
imagination represents the spatial relations among such objects. (And
|
||
they would see that language is public because it is a mechanism that
|
||
coordinates the behavior of individuals in generating social level
|
||
behavior by coordinating the activity in their faculties of rational
|
||
imagination.) </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Nor is it
|
||
plausible for analytic philosophers to argue that this isomorphism is
|
||
itself infected by the same indeterminacy, for it involves not only a
|
||
spatial isomorphism at each moment, but also a correspondence between
|
||
sequences of images <i>over time </i>and the structure of space and
|
||
the geometrical structures of objects. It is sequences of images of
|
||
the kind that can represent change in the world that represent the
|
||
possible against which the actual is seen in a faculty of
|
||
imagination. And though that is a correspondence between images in
|
||
imagination and the world, it is one that must, by the nature of the
|
||
mechanism, correspond to what actually happens when the covert
|
||
behavior operating imagination is overt. There can be no
|
||
indeterminacy about references mediated by it, once the neurological
|
||
mechanisms of imagination are understood.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Even
|
||
without its theory about the nature of language, however, ontological
|
||
philosophy would enable naturalists to show that scientific theories
|
||
in general are not subject to any indeterminacy about reference,
|
||
because it gives an ontological explanation of the validity of the
|
||
arguments used in natural science (that is, of why efficient-cause
|
||
explanations are true) that does not admit any indeterminacy. Instead
|
||
of postulating the substances mentioned by scientific theories
|
||
(matter, or matter and spacetime), it postulates space and matter,
|
||
and by recognizing space itself as an ontological cause of their
|
||
validity, ontological philosophy can show the determinacy of
|
||
reference, because they all come down to references to particular
|
||
objects located in a single three dimensional space. Moreover,
|
||
scientific terms referring to properties will be determinate, because
|
||
those properties are all explained as aspects of the basic substances
|
||
constituting the world and how they exist together. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">We have
|
||
already seen (n <font face="Arial, sans-serif">Relations</font>) how
|
||
this resolves the problem posed by the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem in
|
||
mathematics. It also works for the formal theory that includes all
|
||
the theories and observations of science which Putnam uses. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Nor are
|
||
there any equivalent theories in science, once the truth of its laws
|
||
and efficient-cause explanations are explained ontologically by
|
||
spatiomaterialism. We have seen how both Heisenberg’s matrix
|
||
mechanics and Schroedinger’s wavefunction can be incomplete
|
||
representations of bits of matter that really move continuously
|
||
across space as time passes and that interact in determinate ways. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">We have
|
||
also see how a spatiomaterialist explanation of the truth of
|
||
Einstein’s special theory of relativity denies that the dates and
|
||
times assigned to events by observers on different inertial are
|
||
equally true. One of them is correct and the others false, though it
|
||
is not possible to tell which one has the truth. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
|
||
different ways of formulating geometry all turn out to be true when
|
||
the truth of geometry is explained as a correspondence to the
|
||
structure among the parts of space and, thus, among the bits of
|
||
matter that coincide with them. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Finally,
|
||
even the dispute between Carnap and the Polish logician is resolved
|
||
by ontological philosophy, because it turns out that both of them are
|
||
mistaken. In a spatiomaterial world with three material objects, x1,
|
||
x2 and x3, there would be four objects: space and the three material
|
||
objects. (Space can be counted as a single object because its parts
|
||
cannot exist without one another.) In holding that there are only
|
||
three, Carnap would be overlooking space, and in holding that there
|
||
are seven (or eight, if the null class is counted), the Polish
|
||
logician would be overlooking how space explains all the sets that
|
||
can possibly be formed of material objects in space. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Even
|
||
without its explanation of the truth of mathematics and the basic
|
||
laws of physics, ontological philosophy makes it possible to justify
|
||
scientific realism. There is a real difference between observational
|
||
and theoretical statements, because there is a difference between the
|
||
objects represented in images of perception and those that are not.
|
||
Some objects to which scientific theories refer are too small, too
|
||
transient, move too fast, or just not the right kind to be
|
||
represented in the animal system of representation (such a force
|
||
fields and photons). But spatiomaterialism justifies inferences to
|
||
the existence of such unobservable entities, because it explains the
|
||
truth of the efficient-cause explanations that mention them.
|
||
Efficient causation is just what happens as a result of the motion
|
||
and interaction of bits of matter in space as time passes. The
|
||
observable evidence is the occurrence of certain kinds of events in
|
||
well understood experimental situations (such as the vapor trail in a
|
||
Wilson cloud chamber), and given how those events are located in
|
||
space at that time, there is no other way they could be caused than
|
||
by the existence of the entities postulated. If some other entity
|
||
were responsible for what happen, there would be a violation of
|
||
either the principle of local motion or the principle of local
|
||
action, because it would have to act from outside the experimental
|
||
apparatus. Thus, scientific realism has an ontological justification.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This is not
|
||
a justification of the empirical method as such. It cannot be, since
|
||
spatiomaterialism is itself the conclusion of an empirical argument,
|
||
an inference to the best ontological-cause explanation. But it is
|
||
still a justification of inferences to the best efficient-cause
|
||
explanations of what happens in the world as a way of discovering
|
||
basic laws of physics, because such basic laws are descriptions of
|
||
the behavior of the substances that constitute what is being observed
|
||
in nature. There is no reason to doubt inductive inferences from
|
||
particular cases to general laws, because what is being described in
|
||
the particular case are substances of certain kinds that endure
|
||
through time and, as substances, they have essential natures that do
|
||
not change over time. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Naturalized
|
||
epistemology.</i> The response of most defenders of science to
|
||
analytic philosophy’s skepticism about metaphysical realism has
|
||
been simply to walk away from such disputes and simply side with
|
||
science. This now includes most philosophers of science (according to
|
||
Kitcher, 1992, and Rosenberg, 1996). They are naturalists who
|
||
recognize that what they are doing is rejecting philosophy, which
|
||
they see as the belief that there is a “foundation” or “first
|
||
principle” that would make it possible for a second order argument
|
||
to so explain the first level arguments of science in a way that
|
||
shows their validity. They admit that there is no non-circular way to
|
||
defend the method of science against alternative methods of knowing,
|
||
such as religion, new age mysticism, dogmatism, poetry, or literary
|
||
criticism. For them, it is enough simply to affirm the validity of
|
||
the empirical method of science and accept the conclusions that it
|
||
draws about the nature of the world. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">This
|
||
does not mean that they are not concerned with the method of science.
|
||
They do believe that it ought to be clarified and improved. But they
|
||
expect to use the conclusions of science itself (discoveries about
|
||
instruments, about psychological and social processes, and the like)
|
||
to improve the methods of science. What they deny is that there is
|
||
any standpoint outside of science from which its method can be judged
|
||
or justified. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Those
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who describe and defend this attitude toward analytic philosophy
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(Kitcher) call themselves “naturalized epistemologists”
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(following Quine), because they are giving up philosophy and trying
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to give a naturalistic explanation of all cognitive capacities, not
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just language.</font></font></font></p>
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</body>
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