The Problem with Philosophy (qua Discipline)

The problem of philosophy as a historical practice, or discipline, handed down through institution is that it has a great tendency to lose its problems.  It loses them to such an extent that there are often concerns of whether there are any problems at all in philosophy.  The institution may preserve the name 'philosophy' but no philosophy (as an activity) is guaranteed to be present in it.

The history of philosophy contains plenty of problems (in proposition form), and these seem to be the things that are most easily discoverable.  A beginning course in philosophy always attempts to raise some metaphysical doubts, questioning what we can know to be true, or if there are external things, or if we exist, &c.  But, for those that first posed these problems, the problems only found their expression in propositions after struggling with an anxiety that had to be wrestled into place.  These problems, encoded into propositions, are handed down as the problems of philosophy, however this is insufficient: the proposition does not preserve the subjective state of affection required for the problems: the propositions do not preserve the anxiety that is required to grasp their scope, and the real conditions for their solution (the resolution of the anxiety).

(I do not here make philosophical problems into mental disturbances, but simply note that we cannot notice our problems, or their resolution, without a more intuitive standard.)

Once inheriting these propositions, we seem to find it sufficient to deal with them in logical terms that are only suited to evaluate the consistency of statements, and not help recover the problem (the anxiety) any more.  Those that participate in philosophy have their own anxiety, however, and not connecting their anxieties with those of others, and guided by this personal anxiety, formulate their own resolutions to these problems to their own satisfaction.  Often because the language of the objective world is borrowed (since this language often feels required to relieve our anxiety), these solutions conflict with those of the past.  Dogmatic metaphysics emerges in this manner.

Philosophy will never find its center until it begins to recover those basic problems that run through it, and preserve its real order and continuity, and contain direction for its real truth, that would otherwise pass unnoticed on the surface in the presence of continual debate.  Much of the importance of Kant is exclusively in an attempt at providing future philosophy an understanding of its own problems, and the possibility of its problems (the possibility of the natural disposition to metaphysics).  (Heidegger seems to have taken up this challenge more exclusively.)

Rather than restating philosophical problems from the history of philosophy as if it was obvious that they are problems, beginning philosophy courses should strive to induce the real anxiety required for entering into these problems, and generating the sort of statements off these problems originally that would be required to understand past statements of them.  This way the history of philosophical thought will not just be a wasteland where thoughts are criticized in a quite superficial manner.

(There is a certain concern I have with religious traditions: that the wisdom of the past generation provides formulas that actually prevent the future generations from admitting the problems required for understanding religious feeling.  I believe that this sort of phenomena was treated by Kierkegaard in the Concept of Anxiety with a special concern for hereditary sin, and how this has us overlook how each of us - and not just Adam - bring sin into the world ourselves.)

Philosophy is not the only place where this problem exists, but it may be the only discipline that can't get off the ground and take its proper place as a result.  For example, mathematics has direction for its problems, and has advanced consistently.  However, education in mathematics does not produce mathematicians (who are truly very few), since it doesn't provide a real understanding of the problems of mathematics, and only provides a guide for correctness of results from computation (until one proceeds far enough).  This leads to revealing humor, such as the joke about doctors in math being unable to calculate their share of a bill.  This humor is revealing because the actual problems of mathematics do not start or end with computation.  The joke is on us for not realizing that this humor reveals that what we teach under the name of mathematics is no such thing.

In physics as well we find steady and regular progress, however, students of physics are left to standards of correctness of computations, and application of principles.  Physics is not principally concerned with computation: computation is merely a means for physics for testing and reforming theory.  

The genuine problems of a discipline, which always manifest in anxiety originally, should be a much larger matter of concern to educators that are interested in opening up a field to a student, and not merely running them through the algorithms of correctness.  Correctness is something we demand, but it is not itself a primary goal.

Regarding Conflicts Between Science and Forms of Experience

   By 'forms of experience' (or forms of unity, forms of cognition, forms of order, or, simply, form) I understand the basic power (unities, orders, cognitions) we can speak of that make up our considerations of anything.  By 'forms of experience' I understand only primitive forms, not forms of things only knowable empirically; forms of experience concern only forms that are necessary, that is, where their possibility is sufficient to show their existence - things we cannot learn from experience, yet are required for experience.

   Because sciences are higher level organizations of what is given through our forms of experience, it is clear that all sciences are governed by forms of experience.  By being drawn from only some forms of experience, a science excludes consideration of other forms, or brackets them from consideration, which excludes concern with sciences grounded through other forms of experience.  Additionally, no science can undermine a form of experience, nor should it be considered rightful in any science to reject a form of experience.  This is because either a science has bracketed forms of experience, and so has no dealings with them,  or the science is developed out of those forms of experience, and so depends upon them.  (It is true that science first begin without a clear determining ground, but this does not mean that they do not depend upon this ground.)

   In spit of the relationship between forms of experience and sciences, confusion about this relationship leads forms of experience to be challenged by arguments drawn from the vantage point of certain sciences.  More often than not, these challenges really arise from conflicts between two sciences which are each grounded on different forms of experience, and seem to have incompatible concepts.  Compounding these difficulties is the apparent fact that many conceptions of a science are given the same name, and so different things are sometimes spoken of as equal.  The summation of all this is that many disputes that proceed along the lines of these perceived difficulties are chaotic and undisciplined (they  have no clear grounding principles).  In time I would love to address all of these difficulties, but for now I will restrict myself to clarifying the supposed conflicts between forms of experience and sciences, so far as these forms of experience lead to sciences that appear to compete.

   When someone is drawing from a science in order to reject a form of experience they are either:

a) demanding that the analysis we have carried out for some form of experience be clarified, since we have excluded possible experiences, or including impossible experiences, within the forms we have accounted for.  Or,

b) that the science is itself concerning forms of human experience.

In the former case there is no conflict of science, but if there is something excluded (or superadded) by our account of the forms of experience, then we have an excellent opportunity to improve our account of the forms of experience.  In the latter case, there will be a conflict of metaphysics (systems of forms of experience), and we can work to see if the basic principle of our forms of experience are compatible or not with the others suggested.  When comparing different systems of metaphysics we must decide if there are real conflicts, or if the conflict is ultimately over terminology and the structure of terms - a procedure that is beyond the scope of this essay.

   In my experience of philosophical disputes, a conflict between forms of experience is rarely acknowledged, and usually  a distinction between forms of experience and sciences is needful.  In order to illustrate this more common scenario, I will select an example that, I hope, will be familiar.

   Physics draws its basic concepts from some forms of experience of objects (of a possible experience), while excluding other forms of experience.  It is often supposed that freewill is in conflict with laws of physics.  I do not intend to resolve this debate here explicitly, but merely to show the landscape of the debate from the vantage point of the distinctions I have been articulating.

   If we grant that the science of freewill, which I will call praxology, is derived from forms of experience excluded by physics, then physics and praxology are not themselves in conflict; instead, we have a question concerning our understanding of forms of experience.  As we already noted, if a science has a concern with the accuracy of our articulation of the forms of experience, this conflict is to be understood as a demand to clarify, and once more explicate, our forms of experience - a practice that is always needful.  However, the debate rarely becomes this productive since the following circumstances are often in play:  someone thinking vaguely along the lines of physics - a science which is not, by its nature, interested in freewill - does not recognize that they have bracketed certain forms of experience which praxology depends upon, and concludes the absurdity of praxology.  At the same time, a praxologist who also does not see this bracketing will be unable to understand how their own manner of thinking is able to be rejected, but is also unable to justify it.  By ignoring the difference between forms of experience, and sciences, this arrangement will never lead to a productive discussion, but only confusion.  

   Praxology, understood along the lines of Kant's practical philosophy, depends upon a different conception of cause than physics does, namely the notion of a self-cause.   Cause and self-cause both form foundations for different manners of organizing knowledge, and their is no need to suppose that the discussion of either comes in to determine what the state of the other is.  I hope to face this particular example in greater detail soon in order to clarify the notion of a self-cause, but there is no room in the current essay for this.

   The arrangement above is not an attempt to describe disputes between sciences as empty, but as typically in a chaotic state.  There is a lot to be gained by coming to terms.  I hope that all of this suggest that when sciences come into conflict, and particularly when they come into conflict with forms of experience, there is a lot to consider in order to make sure that those who argue do not make a spectacle of themselves.  Unfortunately, the crowd who may recognize such a spectacle for what it is seems to be small, since it is far more common that these sorts of conflicts tend to divide people into factions immediately, and before any investigation into the origin of the dispute has been made.

Reflections on Philosophical Interpretation - I

   In order to help me to write more I have decided to start writing some reflections on Philosophical Interpretation.  I hope that these can be helpful for generating some talk on the blog about our engagements with text and each other.

   My study of Kant has afforded many benefits; one of the earliest I can remember was concerning the interpretation of earlier philosophers.  As a young undergraduate it was very easy for me to scoff as soon as ‘God’ appeared in an argument.  While studying the modern period in a history course I found that I had this reaction consistently in regards to Rationalists, whereas I found the Empiricists much more agreeable.  At this point in my work I have had a complete about face.  It isn’t that I have started to doubt the Empiricists (hereafter referred to as Quitters) but I have found that their project does not have the same depth as the Rationalists (hereafter referred to as Crazies).
   At the same time I was taking this history class I was also taking my first course on Kant, and was quite impressed with what I was finding.  The Quitters were certainly more agreeable to me, but I found that they were not quite working as hard as Kant who was not happy to simply stop at habit as Hume was.  What I see now is that this extra struggle that Kant put himself through ultimately relates him much closer to the Crazies – not in their method or conclusions, but in their concerns.  
   My first study of the Critique of Pure Reason had a profound impact on which concerns are proper to examine in philosophy, and which concerns are an embarrassment.  Kant had shown that there was real substance to the discussion of soul, world, immortality, freedom and even God.  Of course, these terms had come to have an entirely different meaning for me, as well as a rich context in which their consideration thrived.  The former usage and context remained, but I was less interested in my old concern with them.  Once I had mulled this over, and with the addition of another course on Kant just concerning his Practical Philosophy, I had found looking back at the Crazies and wondering if they were on to something, if they really did have the same concerns as Kant but poorly represented themselves.  Over the years, I continue to go back to Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz to find inspiration in their enthusiasm and unique struggles with these concerns.
   The lesson learned here can be expressed as becoming interested in what matters to people; only after knowing what matters to a person does it make sense to engage arguments that attempt to pursue those concerns. And if my interpretation finds a problem in an argument, I often find that such problems are resolved by once again attending to what the concerns are.  Often that means that arguments are nothing but a way of trying to divine what matters.
   This component of my technique in philosophizing has been greatly helpful for furthering discussions that would otherwise have been impossible, and for keeping in mind my own concerns so that I can properly express myself according to what matters and not just some clever argument.  In practice, this has also been easy for others I know to adopt and benefit from.