Worlds without Explanations

Student: “Why is there so much suffering?”

Shunryu Suzuki: “No reason”.

That there has to be a reason for everything is an appealing thought. It is hard for us to accept the notion of something just happening, or just being there, for no reason. And, when we are thinking along these lines, “reason” is usually short for “reasoned explanation”. Can we imagine a world in which this kind of thinking has no application? This is not easy. Imagine a world in which there are no intelligent beings: our world, if things had gone differently. Isn’t this a reasonless world? In one sense, perhaps, yes. But, we will still want to ask of that world why it is like it is – why it is reasonless, for instance. All worlds seems to invite such questions, as does their absense.

          Will the quest for reasons run out of steam at some point? Not because we are intellectually exhausted (although we can imagine that happening), but rather because it comes up against a natural boundary beyond which such a quest makes no sense?  Some think that this world, our world, constitutes just such a boundary. We can ask of things in it “Why this?” or “Why that?” - “Why is the sun so hot at its core?”, “Why do earthquakes occur in some places and not others?” And so on. But, when we start to ask certain questions of that world considered as whole, then, or so some people believe, these questions implode. We don’t know how to press them further because no answer seems possible even as we begin to raise and reflect on them. “Why does this world exist?” and “How is it possible for this, or any, world to exist?” are examples of these questions.

          Of course there are standard answers to such questions which are liable to satisfy many people. “Because God made it” is one. And, “As a consequence of the big bang” is another. But, anyone inclined to take the thrust of the initial questions seriously will not be so easily satisfied. 
        They will want to ask these questions of the very phenomena invoked in the answers: "Why does God exist?", “How is the existence of God possible?”, "Why did the big bang occur?", and “How was the existence of the big bang possible?”
More on this some other time.

Succinct Summary: Surprising Source

"The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything."
                                                            Charles Moore (Margaret Thatcher's official biographer, former editor of The Telegraph, etc.)

A bit more on visual goings on in Wittgenstein's later work

Actually, this is just a bit more about some of the philosophical consequences of the ubiquity of linguistic awareness thesis (ULA) that propped up the previous post.
Consider, for example, Eugen Fischer's Wittgensteinian claim "Pictures rather than propositions determine most of our philosophical convictions" (Philosophical Delusion and its Therapy: Outline of a Philosophical Revolution, p.21). ULA implies that this cannot be right (so it also looks (sic) as if the envisaged revolution can only be an abortive one). For only a linguistic interpretation of a picture can do the work of forming convictions by interacting with our stock of beliefs. And, a picture in itself cannot determine such an interpretation (something that Wittgenstein seems to be committed to anyway). Here, of course, we will want to say that pictures have some causal role. But, it appears that we cannot define it non-arbitrarily at any useful level of generality. This holds for the general relationship between our beliefs and the world if we think of that relationship as being primarily non-linguistic.
Fischer tends to explain 'pictures' in terms of what might best be called linguistic models - so the visual aspect turns out to be redundant and the relations that are important are inferential.
My main concern here, I guess, is that, frequently, the philosophical use of visual language might itself be the product of thinking that requires therapeutic intervention - something Rorty cottoned on to in Philosophy and the mirror of nature (though he also slipped into pictorial mode all too often).

Visual goings on in Wittgenstein

In PI 122, Wittgenstein famously says that "A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of our use of our words". He goes on to claim that "our grammar is lacking in this sort of perspicuity" and that "a perspicuous representation produces just that understanding which consists in 'seeing connections'".
But, what does 'commanding a clear view', one that enables us to see connections, involve? It has always concerned me that the visual analogies relied on here cannot do the work required of them. For what, when it comes to language, do we see it with? Just our eyes? Surely not. For these can
reveal nothing philosophically interesting without embodying an element of linguistic interpretation. And, when we rely on eyes that are linguistically enhanced, so to speak, then what we see is already infected with the confusions we wish to allay. The assumption here, of course, is that all visual awareness that tells us anything interesting is linguistically saturated.

Bob Dylan, Wisdom, trivial coincidence, ... or not

Bob Dylan gave a puzzling  introduction to a new song at the Albert Hall in 1966: "I would like to dedicate this song to the Taj Mahal. It's called 'I see you've got your brand new Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat'". I was there, bunking off school. I heard him say it.

Going over some very old philosophical ground recently, I thought I might have finally found a solution to the puzzle: "Suppose someone is trying on a hat. She is studying it in a mirror. There's a pause and then a friend says 'My dear, the Taj Mahal'. .... To call a hat the Taj Mahal is not to inform someone that it has mice in it or will cost a fortune." ('Philosophy, Metaphysics and Psychoanalysis', John Wisdom, 1953).

Coincidence? Probably. But, I know Dylan has eclectic reading habits, and like to think that Wisdom's eccentric remarks would have appealed to his quirky imagination which was, after all, working overtime in those days.

Insidious realism: some backtracking

Looking back over what I have said about it, it seems that I have not yet nailed down what I call insidious realism. So let me say a bit more. Often when philosophers try to get clear about something, they assume, tacitly or otherwise, that the something in question is there, complete in itself, waiting to be properly explored and subsequently described. But in the interesting cases, this is rarely true  - if it were, philosophy would be much easier or redundant (think about it).
How often do we find philosophers discussing something like, say, desire as if the term "desire" designates something independent and complete in itself that accounts of it can either match or fail to match? Moreover, when a philosopher evinces some views about desire that are later worked up into a conception of desire by other philosophers working from an historical perspective, then the same assumptions about that conception often come into play. This generates two thick layers of fog.
In the latter cases, it is usually best to try to untangle what is there, so to speak, from what can be added, where the constraints on the additive process involve considerations such as consistency, utility, elegance and economy. Some times a degree of charity concerning one or more of these should come into play.

Unlocking the mysterious attraction of metaphysics

Metaphysics has once again become a key subject in philosophy. Indeed, it could well be attracting more sustained attention from the philosophical community than anything else. I must confess that I didn't even notice this until relatively recently. And then, I was simply left wondering "How did all this happen behind my back?". It's not that I believe the positivists succeeded in cutting off metaphysical thinking (i.e. the vestiges of it that survived Hume's critique and Kant's abortive 'purified by reason' version) at its roots long ago. It's rather that, since hanging out with pragmatists, I have had little practical use for the term "metaphysics". Whenever I see it deployed, either it seems to constitute the equivalent of a blank space in the relevant sentence or there seem to be better plainer speaking terms readily available - so it usually cries out to be replaced by one of them.
Consider Eric Olson's otherwise rather nifty book What Are We? Here are the opening sentences: "This is a book about a question: What are we? That is, what are we, metaphysically speaking? What are our most general and fundamental features? What is our most basic metaphysical nature?" Olson goes on to say that he is not going to try to define "the daunting phrases here" (e.g. 'our most basic metaphysical nature'), but will instead "give their meaning by example". However, it strikes me that the rest of the book can be made good sense of without referring back to these phrases or invoking their components. "Metaphysics" and "metaphysical", in particular,seem to be redundant throughout.
I guess I will say more about why I am suspicious of the current metaphysics growth industry in other posts (clue: it is far too often linked with insidious realism). For the moment, I just want to speculate that metaphysics has become so attractive again because it is such an effective enabler of philosophical fantasies - especially those that conjure up special powers of discernment regarding matters of ultimate concern and correspondingly special areas of inquiry (e.g. fundamental ontology). Yesterday, for example, I was reading Kit Fine's 'What is metaphysics?' and even though that paper seems to deal with the question in the clear-cut, reasonable way one expects given the author, it struck me that it can be read as one long philosophical fantasy (more about that later as well, perhaps).