An Experiment

I am finally going to get around to an idea I wanted to put into action over a week ago. As I've mentioned to some of you I'm currently taking three courses here (with a Modal Logic study group as an informal fourth): Ethical Theory, Theory of Concepts, and an independent study on Philosophy with Children. Each class represents one of my main philosophical passions; how values are relevant to our lives, what is going on with the mind's connection with reality, and finally, the prospects for non-professional philosophy (and all I mean by this is the philosophy done by people who are not professionals).

This last interest is very near and dear to me, because it speaks of the value of philosophy itself. There is a tacit question on what is philosophy good for? What are we hoping to accomplish? What has been achieved by all the trees that have been made to give up their lives for our bemused ignorance? If the insights that professionals find compelling have no access point outside of the professional preoccupations then our answers to those questions will be painfully modest.

But if we are able to say to the contrary that yes, philosophy is pursuing questions that matter to everyone (whether it is recognized by them or not), then we have a case for the practical usefulness of deep study of philosophic problems. Thus, as I'm sure everyone of you knows, I try (to differing degrees at different times) to bring a philosophic approach or insight into play in my life all over the place - including interacting with people around me. I believe that philosophic activity is by definition the activities that bring us into greater friction with our experience and reality. Thus, I would be willing to call a wide variety of activities 'philosophical' that nevertheless are usually regarded as well beyond the scope of the term. But I see no problem with that.

Especially in America and Britain philosophy stands for a rigor of thought, an unyielding type of skepticism, that 'only accepts the facts' and is wary of anything that either does too much beyond them or that is not willing to accept the full force of such authorities. This is to say I think Western philosophy very preoccupied with empiricism - which it is. But this Mr. Spock type persona is an injustice done to Lady Philosophy (as Boethius would characterize her), and a rape of truth (as Nietzsche would put so delicately). And if we philosophers deserve the comparison, we do an injustice to ourselves.

(as a side note: I use Mr. Spock as example as he is used for this purpose in places elsewhere - but in his defense I don't think it is worthy of him either!)

SO.
This brings me to my little suggestion. I would love to try to take the philosophic questions I encounter in my studies and present them here in this forum as an opportunity to elicit intuitional reactions on the part of people firmly (or fuzzily) outside the tradition. If you're saying to yourself when you read the questions, "this is a stupid question that doesn't get us anywhere" then just put that (maybe with some reasons). But if on the other hand you are saying to yourself, "well, I've just got no clue. I must not know enough/think that deeply/whatever other bullshit" well, in that case I would just want to say "you're wrong." Maybe not having thought about it before is fair - that happens to me almost everyday here. But all I am asking would be to see how the options strike you; what feels more plausible. Reasons aren't even necessary here (they're great to have but...). In fact, there's really no requirement at all here. I'm not even sure how many responses I can hope to get. I'd just be curious in your opinions/reactions (you, the person who I told how to get to this blog), and create a little place where these questions can come up.

So let's throw some questions out there...

I've got a lot of contenders to start with (can't believe it's already been almost a month), but there's one that is just screaming for attention...

I have come to see this questionable conflict of intuitions as THE ISSUE for epistemology - it's there, staring me in the face every time I get into some talk about ANYTHING related to knowledge, truth, evidence, empiricism, realism, idealism, phenomenal experience, justified belief, sense-data, the list just mounts fast. It's the pink elephant that is looming right behind people's backs who can't see it but surely must feel the heat of it's breath.

Here's the deal:
Person A has a deep-seated intuition about reality and his experience. For them, properties of objects can "only be that" namely, real properties that are possessed by objects which exist independently of the mind. A piece of paper can be white, but an idea can't. Properties could only be the things possessed by objects. Now, this formulation seems just that, formal, but I'm trying to identify a distinctive feeling here - the feeling that our experience acquaints us directly with objects themselves possessing their own reality. The 'solidness' of our experience is that trait of it that permits us holding expectations for it, because experience has taught us to trust it to have unchanging laws. Moreover, we can therefore be justified in saying things like "I know the paper is white. Look at it. Tell me I'm wrong. Do you not see a white paper?"

Contrast this with Person B

Person B has another, just as deeply-seated intuition. They see the phenomenon of experience as something that "only" they could possess. How is the image of the paper something in the paper itself? Whiteness can only be something in my head. Color is a favorite example for people like Person B, since whiteness in the world is supposed to be just a frequency of the waves of light whereas the quality of our experience of that frequency is something distinctly recognizable but wholly distinct from a description of light rays. This type of thing is sometimes called qualia to refer to the phenomenal 'feel' of something as it is experienced by us. Person B is hesitant to say that they know anything about the world independent of our experience of it because it is their perspective that everything we can know is restrained by experience - how do we know something beyond experience when experiencing is how we know. I can know that I see a puddle-image right now, I can't know that there is a puddle that exists in front of me. So, generally, for Person B we can know qualia but not know objects. Person B might say, "yeah, of course there's a reality outside my head, but I can't tell you about it, I can only describe how it seems to me."

Not to encourage an unfair comparison, but from my recent readings with kids discussing philosophy, I don't think an appeal to the experience of children helps us in deciding which intuition is more foundational to our natural thought. Perhaps one of the intuitions underlies the other, but in the absence of something like that happening, we seem to have two directly opposed intuitions that don't permit of each other, like they were two people trying to do two different things with the same object. Now, as one last observation before I let this go, I don't think that most adults come down hard on one side or the other (some CERTAINLY do, but they are the exceptions I think), I think most people use both intuitions, just one at a time. When error or the possibility of error arises we jump to Person B, but when it is absent we easily forget and ride along as Person A. With an absence of bumps in the road, Person A becomes more entrenched. This is just my psychological reading of the situation, but I don't want it to unduly color your responses - I mostly am just trying to head off the response that the issue is not a black and white issue (but is it then schizophrenic?).
;)

more experiments later, as I think this one is juicy enough for now.

I'm looking forward to hear what you have to say!