104 Truth as argumentation

The philosopher Kant made a distinction between the realm of knowledge and truth concerning the world and the realm of ethics. This corresponds with the distinction between causes, which operate in the world, and reasons, which belong to ethics. As part of the physical world, the self is constituted by causes, as part of the ethical world by reasons. 

This brings Kant into great problems. One problem concerns the issue of free will, which I discussed in item 5 of this blog, and I will not repeat my position here. In viewing the self as part of the world Kant sees its actions as governed deterministically by causes (in the brain). In the view of the self as a moral agent, however, the self (the transcendental subject) is free and fully responsible for its actions. This separation of realms, I think, is not very helpful, and I don’t see how it can be tenable.

According to Kant, and I agree, in our knowledge of the world there can be no certainty in any correspondence theory of truth, according to which elements of knowledge, either rationalist Cartesian a-priori ideas, or empiricist elementary sense data correspond, somehow, with elements of reality. We cannot know the world as it is in itself, or rather, we cannot know whether or in what way we do. We cannot do other than apply categories that are part of language and cognition, right or wrong, to form perception and understanding.

In item 28 I adopted an evolutionary perspective. There I accept that reality exists even if we cannot objectively know it. Then there is realism in our conceptualization of objects and agents in time and space: If it were not in some sense adequate to reality we would not have survived in evolution.

According to Kant, in the ethical realm, outside the realm of causality in the world, we can achieve certainty, in rational ethical judgement, as in the categorical imperative. Earlier in this blog, in items 17 and 95, I accepted that imperative as a guideline, but subject to conditions, not as an absolute universal.

In my discussion of forms of truth (item 25) and pragmatism (item 26) I proposed to use the notion of truth as warranted assertability. This is wider than pragmatism in its traditional form: an assertion is adequate if it ‘works’ in practical application including debate, i.e. stands up to logic and facts.

I now propose that it applies to both knowledge of the world and ethics. We can never be sure about either. I add that while the distinction between causes and reasons makes sense, in our cognition reasons are causes that we are aware of, in contrast with drives that operate outside our consciousness.

In knowledge of the world the warrant for assertions lies in both logic (and mathematics) and empirical observations. With Kant I accept that observations are constituted cognitively, so that facts are theory laden. However, they still form a basis, albeit not an absolute and sometimes a somewhat shaky one, in that facts are more intersubjectively and temporally stable than the theories they are used for to test. Warranted assertability is never certain and always provisional, as pragmatism claims.

Morality is based on warranted assertability in arguments concerning the good life and ways to promote it. I can say this because I follow Aristotelian virtue ethics, not Kant’s rationalistic, universalistic, deontological duty ethics.   

103 The task of philosophy

 I once asked my granddaughter, at age 11, to define philosophy, and she said: ‘dealing with questions that cannot be answered’.

Philosophy starts where science ends, and has shrunk while science expanded, but questions that science cannot (yet) answer remain to pound our minds. To give an example: neuroscience has not yet replaced philosophical discussion on the true, the good and the beautiful, and perhaps it never will. When we think of a mathematical formula there are certainly things going on in the neurons in our brain, but that does not tell us about the formula.  

Philosophy does not have reliable answers either, but questions force themselves on thought, even if final answers seem illusory. Philosophy entails wonder without end. There are many ways to look at the world and none of them are perfect, fixed or final. Partial and temporary anwers may still be useful, in what I have called imperfection on the move.

Philosophy had the pretense to impose a complete and rigorous logic on thought and language, but those attempts stranded.

Philosophy of science had the pretense to prescribe how science is to be done, but one attempt after the other was shown to fail. Yet, I think there is still something useful to be said on this. I tried to say it in this blog, in my presentation of pragmatist philosophy, and a discussion of problems of objectivity, universals, and meaning (in items 23-37). That yields a critical view of science but no strict rules of how to conduct it.

Some philosophers claim that philosophy cannot and should not try to offer answers or practical solutions or guidelines. I consider that a cop-out. If philosophy has nothing useful to say it should remain silent. What it has to say, however, is not in the nature of indubitable laws or rules. It may be paradoxical, tentative, preliminary, or even quizzical.

Philosophy is not entirely unscientific, in the sense that it does, or should, try to test itself on the basis of observation. Often, however, the phenomena are those of human nature, conduct, cognition, culture and society, which cannot all be caught in measurement.

Exploring beyond the boundaries of knowledge and meaning one inevitably moves beyond facts because one is questioning the frames in which facts are caught. The point is, however, not to ignore facts when they are pertinent. While facts do not yield rock-bottom truth, we can often reasonably agree on them. Philosophy of mind goes beyond neural science but what it says should not be impossible in the light of what we know about how neuronal networks operate.

Furthermore, as I argued earlier in this blog (in item 98), science inevitably harbours the partiality of discipline. Policy making and political debate need to bridge scientific disciplines, patchworking partialities. They must deal with the incommensurable.

Philosophy should use scientific insights as its material to build ideas from. This is also what we mean by ‘wisdom’: combining bits of heterogeneous insights into a vision on the good life. That is what I have been trying to do in this blog, discussing perennial philosophical issues while taking into account insights from evolutionary theory, psychology, social psychology, brain science, sociology, and economics.

102 How to proceed with this blog?

With this blog I will continue to address a wide range of old and new themes in philosophy, viewed from the perspective of my philosophy, according to the two central themes of self and other and imperfection on the move. My perspective is inspired by, among other things, embodied cognition, pragmatism, constructivism, interactionism, evolutionary thought, and virtue ethics.

The overall aim is to put humanism on a new footing, other than Enlightenment ideas of a rational, autonomous self and the Cartesian view of a spectator subject, looking at the world from outside. Instead, I look at the self as having limited rationality and limited free will, being constituted by actions in the world, needing others to develop itself and to correct its prejudice (the theme of self and other), with limited rationality also in social structures.

I take a dynamic view, a perspective of change, of identities, knowledge, universals, meanings, morality, cultures and social structures, with room and respect for variety and individuality, in opposition to the sway of universals. Those are all temporary and subject to improvement but remain imperfect (the theme of imperfection on the move). The world can be looked at in many ways, and no view is perfect or final. This does not mean that any interpretation or view is as good as any other. Arguments matter and some are better than others. Absolute truth is replaced by warranted assertability.

Sources of inspiration are, among others, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, the American pragmatists, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Piaget, Vygotsky, Foucault, Levinas, Derrida, Charles Taylor and Nussbaum.

To proceed, one possibility is to expand and elaborate on earlier items, and to make connections between them.

I have argued that the self needs the other to develop itself. But where does this lead, in the present development of society under the influence of technology and internet, social media, virtual reality, genetic engineering, and bionics? What is happening to the self, culture and society? Here I will look at Baudrillard, among others.

I will also bring in new themes. I intend to post a series on ‘Markets, what to make of them’. This is derived from a book with that title that I recently finished. There, I offer a philosophical slant on markets, considering where market ideology comes from, what markets are, how economic science fails, how markets work and fail, and what alternatives there are.

Another new theme that I envisage is a comparison between western and eastern philosophy. For the latter I will be looking at Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, and attempts to combine them. I am finding out that what I have been saying in my books and in this blog may have more points of contact with eastern than with western philosophy. Without knowing it I have been conducting eastern philosophy.

Further ideas will no doubt come up. However, I would like to invite my readers to give criticism, ask questions and give suggestions. They can do so on the blog, in the opportunity provided there to post comments. That requires some steps of entry, specified on the blog, and I hope that readers will be willing to cross that threshold.

101. Survey of contents of this blog

In the year that I am now running this blog I placed 100 items. On this occasion, an interview was posted on YouTube. It is time, I think, to give a survey of contents.

In this blog I have widely traversed the field of philosophy, with its traditional issues of religion, the true (knowledge and truth), the good (ethics and morality) and the beautiful (art), plus language and meaning, identity, freedom, power, trust, culture, and causality. I look at these from two connected perspectives: Self and Other, and Imperfection on the Move. Those have been discussed more at length in two books (Beyond humanism; The flourishing of life, self and other’ published in 2012, and ‘Beyond nihilism: Imperfection on the move’, under review).

The overall gist of the blog can be put as follows. Humanism can no longer rest on unrealistic ideals of the rational, autonomous self, and should get away from the obsession with self. Universals should be taken lightly, respecting the variety and change of contexts, which cause universals to shift. Humanity and society entail variety and change rather than fixed universals. Self and society are shot through with irrationality. The self needs the other, also to be free from its own prejudice. There is no afterlife except what one leaves behind after one’s death. Human endeavour is imperfect but one try to make the best of it, and flourish in doing so, in ‘imperfection on the move’.   

Contents of the blog (numbers and topics in bold indicate items read at least 20 times, numbers that bold and underlined have been read at least 50 times)

 Items               content

1,2,3,4             Introduction: what philosophy, questions, background and credentials

5                      Free will? We have no control over our will, but we do have ifluence on it
6                      Love: eros and philia
7                      Geometry and Finesse (derived from Pascal)
8,9,10,11,12    Identity. Personal and cultural; how fixed and exclusive are they?
13,14,15, 94    Religion. The human condition, God, religion without a god
16,17,18,19     Universals: universalism, change, imperfection on the move
20,21,22          Enlightenment and Romanticism
23,24,25,26,27Knowledge and truth; our thought is constructed but still realistic, in
28,29,30,31     a sense. Philosophy on the move: Pragmatism, evolution, invention
32,33,34,35,36Language and meaning. The meaning of meaning, prototypes, linguistic
 37                   bias, hermeneutics, meaning change
38,39,40,42,42Ethics and morality. Aristotelian virtue ethics, the good life, justice,
43,44,45,46,47nationalism, (in)tolerance, integration, altruism, populism, immorality of
48                    the group.
49,50,51          Freedom. Positive freedom, levels of freedom, freedom from the self, power
52,53,54,55,56Self and other. History of the self, narcissism, self-interst, humanism,
57,58,59          the value of difference, interaction, flexibility
60,61,62,63,64Nietzsche and Levinas.Nietzsches error, Levinas, Nietzsche and
65                    Levinas, otherhumanism
66,67               Collaboration. Value, problems
68,69,70,71,72 Trust and control. Meaning, sources, identification, judgement of
73,74,75,76     good and bad, openness, exit and voice, psychology, community
77,78,79          Beyond Enlightenment and Romanticism. Incommensurability
80,81,82,83,84Art. Forms, serenity or excitement, evolution, nature, universal and
85,87,88,89,90 specific, subjective and objective, music, wabi-sabi, aesthetic
91,92,93          judgement, art and ethics, education, change, a new culture?
86                    What market?
94                    From fear to faith
95                    Conditional imperatives
96,97,98,99,    Multiple causality. Goal achievement, science and policy, role models,
100                  explaining history                 

So far, the blog has had 5.700 page views in 56 countries: 24 in Europe (including Turkey), 19  in the near and far East (including Russia, Ukraine and Australia), 9 in the Americas, and 4 in Africa. The top ten countries of readership were: The Netherlands, Rumania, the US, Germany, Russia, France, the UK, Switzerland, the Ukraine and Italy.

The first 60 items have been read much less, with a few exceptions, than the following 40. Of the items below 60 only 9 were read at least 20 times, and only two at least 50 times. Of the last 40 items 39 were read at least 20 times, and 23 at least 50 times. Perhaps this difference is due to new readers coming in later, who do not easily trace early items. I would like to encourage them to browse back, and the survey given here may help.

It strikes me that three of the traditional ‘big subjects’ of religion, the true (knowledge), and the good (ethics) draw little attention, but the traditional subject of the beautiful (art) does draw attention. However, trust is related to ethics and it does draw much attention. Trust and art arose in the last 40 items, and perhaps that is why they drew more attention.

In the following item in this blog I will reflect on how to proceed. Suggestions are welcome, and can be posted as a comment on the blog.

100. Explaining history: The case of the United East India Company

This is the last item in a series on multiple, Aristotelian causality.

This is also the 100^th item on this blog, and to celebrate that, an interview has been posted on YouTube (In the search bar, type: bart nooteboom). In the next item, 101, I will give a survey of the contents and the readership of the blog so far.

Multiple, Aristotelian causality can help to explain history. Here I consider the example of the Dutch United East India Company in the 16t/17th century.

It all began when for some unknown reason the herring shifted their spawning grounds from the Baltic to the North Sea, which borders Holland. That left an unsatisfied demand for herring in the Baltic, as a commercial opportunity. This is an example of Aristotle’s conditional cause. Entrepreneurs (the efficient cause) jumped at this opportunity, for the sake of profit (the final cause). The herring provided the material cause.

 In triangular trade, herring caught in the North Sea could in the Baltic be traded for wood and grain, which could be shipped to Portugal and Spain to be traded for wine and spices that the Portuguese brought from the East. The Dutch had the advantage that their harbours thawed earlier, in the extreme cold of that epoch, called ‘the little ice age’, than those in the Baltic, which allowed them to go to the Baltic, arriving when the harbours thawed there, go to Portugal and return just before the harbours at home froze again, while for Baltic traders departure would be later and return would have to be earlier, precluding the round trip in a single season. That fluke of geography was another conditional cause. 

Several innovations were required. One was the curing of herring to preserve it for the voyage. Another was the issue of shares to spread risks across multiple sailings. These are examples of the formal cause: how things are done.

Trade from Holland, from the North sea, had to compete with the Hanze cartel, entrenched since the 14th century, of cities along the river Ijsel in the East of what now is the Netherlands together with traders in the Baltic. This was another conditional cause.

The Hanze cartel controlled inland transport to the Baltic, as well as the sea passage around the North of Denmark. They exacted toll in proportion to the deck surface of passing ships. This provided an incentive for the Dutch to build ships with a narrow deck in combination with a spacious hold, which led to the innovation of the ‘Flute’ ship. The design and the wood technologies involved were derived from the technology of building dikes and sawing wood in windmills. That is all part of the formal cause.

The triangular trade was so profitable, to both the Dutch and the Spanish and Portuguese, that it was kept up even during the eighty-years war of rebellion of the protestant Dutch against the Catholic Spanish who then ruled the Netherlands.

Portuguese trade with the East started to fail due to internal political failure and strife. That provided an incentive for Holland to find a route of its own to the East. They first tried to go along the North, but the attempt stranded on polar ice, in Nova Zembla. Then they went south and found their way around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, where they built settlements for replenishment of stocks. That led to the development of the Dutch-speaking South-African community of the ‘Boers’ (Dutch for ‘farmers’). Coming around the Cape to seek access to the East, the Dutch were first shipwrecked on the wild Australian West Coast, and subsequently chanced upon the isles of what now is Indonesia, where they settled trading posts and from there developed a colony.

In sum, the development was a largely coincidental confluence of opportunity, geographical location, and obstacles to be overcome (conditional cause), the supply of herring (material cause), entrepreneurship (efficient cause), in the profit seeking of an emerging protestant society (final cause), and technology and innovation (formal cause).