Bryan asked:

Is there such thing as darkness?

Answer by Nathan Sinclair

This question reflects one of the earliest and most divisive disputes in philosophy: the existence of universals. When we conduct an inventory of the things in the universe we will find red things, tall things, just things(/people), courageous things(/people), but will we find in addition to those things also redness, tallness, justice, and courage.

Plato and Aristotle are the best known proponents of each side of this dispute, with Plato taking the side of those who believe in universals (also known as platonic forms), and Aristotle taking the side of those who deny the existence of universals.

Plato’s main argument (though he doesn’t seem to feel the need for much of one) is that we could not perceive things as having any common characteristics unless we were acquainted with the relevant universal.

Aristotle’s bets known argument is the third man argument. If two things are both men, and resemble each other in this respect only because they both instantiate the universal MAN, then what of the universal itself? It would seem that it could only resemble particular men if there was another universal (a third man) which they all instantiated. If not and the universal and the particular men can resemble each other without participating in higher universal, then surely the original individuals can resemble each other (and all be men) without the need of a universal MAN at all.

In Aristotle’s argument he relies on the assumption that universals are true of themselves: that the TALL will itslef be tall, that COURAGE will itself be courageous and so on. To modern eyes this seems ridiculous, but it was accepted by the vast majority of Ancient Greek philosophers. Still, the relationship of instantiation itself seems to need a universal (if any relationship does at all) and so some form of the argument still seems good.

In modern times the dispute turns on two problems:

On the skeptical side no one has a workable account of when two universals are the same. Merely being true of the same things isn’t enough (consider creature with a heart, and creature with a kidney, these two properties are surely different, everything with a heart has kidneys and vice versa).

On the positive side there seem to be some statements (such as “Humility is a virtue”) that seem to unavoidably rely upon the existence of universals. Those against universlas must either give a plausible re-interpretation of such claims which doesn’t rely upon universals, or abandon such statements altogether.

Putting aside the general issue of universals and looking at darkness are there any reason to suppose DARKNESS is particularly implausible?

Yes, it is both subjective and seemingly inessential to our claims about the world. Not only is darkness relative to particular visual equipment (what is dark to you ro I is not dark to an owl or a frog), and hence it would seem not a key feature of the worlds functioning. Moreover it would seem we could replace talk of DARKNESS with talk of ‘receiving insufficient light to form a visual image’. This might still leave us with a universal to deal with but it wouldn’t be DARKNESS. More generally we seem to have perfectly adequate and successful theories of the world which don’f use the term darkness at all. We could surely paraphrase claims about darkness in terms of average number of photons being received per square meter per second.

For my part I find (a modern version of) Aristotle’s argument pretty convincing, and I don’t believe in universals at all.

Nathan Sinclair recently joined the Board of the ISFP. He has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Sydney.

 

Diana asked:

Descartes gives a list of things he had previously believed. What are these?

Answer by Craig Skinner

Short answer: his method entails his suspending belief about absolutely everything except one thing, namely,

* because he is doubting, he is thinking, and therefore must exist (‘I think therefore I am’, or, in Latin, ‘cogito ergo sum’).

He hopes to argue his way back to most of his former beliefs by sound reasoning from this single, clear and distinct, indubitable belief, thereby establishing a ‘firm and permanent structure in the sciences’.

Although he makes mention of his method of doubt in Rules for the Direction of the Mind and in Discourse on Method, the definitive account is in his Meditations, specifically Meditation 1 subtitled ‘Of the things which may be brought within the sphere of the doubtful’.

First, he says he must doubt everything learned through the senses (all empirical or a posteriori knowledge as we would say). For the senses can deceive, and also, at any given moment, he can’t be certain he is not dreaming, or that his mind is nor controlled by an ‘evil genius’ which deceives him about everything.

Secondly, he must doubt all truths of reason (rational or a priori knowledge). He feels that, even if dreaming, he knows that 2+3 = 5, but he considers that an evil genius could deceive him about mathematical truths, interfering in his thought every time he adds 2 and 3 so that he is sure (wrongly) that the sum is 5.

The nearest he gets to a list is towards the end of this Meditation, when he says:

‘I shall consider that the heavens, the earth, colours, figures, sound, and all other external things are nought but… illusions and dreams… I shall consider myself as having no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, nor any senses, yet falsely believing myself to possess all these things.’

Having done all this doubting, the only certainty remaining, the Archimedean fixed point as he calls it, was ‘I think therefore I am’ (this exact wording is actually given in his Discourse on Method, but formulations in Meditations are equivalent)

Of course, he didn’t really doubt that there is a world out there, or that he had a body. His scepticism was a ploy (methodological scepticism) to try to put his views on a rational footing. However his arguments back from the cogito to belief in the physical world of concrete things, other people and his own body (with God as the bridge, so to speak), are widely considered unsound or invalid. So the upshot is that one of his main legacies is scepticism rather than its resolution, and strong philosophical scepticism (about matter, the external world, causation and selves) later emerges, for example in the views of Berkeley and Hume.

Craig Skinner at PhiloSophos.com

 

Ruth asked:

‘Nothing can be known.’ What is a powerful objection to this claim?

Answer by Helier Robinson

It is self-refuting. If it is true then you cannot know about it. Any self-refuting statement must be false.

Helier Robinson is Emeritus Professor in Philosophy, University of Guelph. His books are available from http://SharebooksPublishing.com.

 

Answer by Tony Fahey

The most obvious objection to the old nihilist credo ‘nothing can be known’ is that if it can be shown that the statement ‘nothing can be known’ is valid, then it follows that the statement itself is something that can be known.  Paradoxically, rendering the statement invalid.

http://www.tonyfahey.com

 

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

Why can’t the sceptic just say, ‘Only one thing can be known, that nothing (else) can be known’?

On the face of it, the qualification, ‘only one thing’ saves the assertion from self-contradiction or being self-refuting. However, the next question would be, ‘What makes this one proposition special?’

Here is one move that the sceptic could make. It is similar to the argument Russell gives about naive realism: ‘Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false. Therefore, naive realism is false.’

So, similarly:

Belief that something can be known leads to epistemology, and epistemology leads to scepticism. So either you’re a sceptic to start with (you don’t believe anything, don’t utter any statement, but just wag your finger) or you are led to scepticism by your assumption that it is possible to know something. Whether you reject the possibility of knowledge without offering any argument, or offer an argument, the conclusion is the same.

Here’s another way of putting the same point, using the logical rule of or-elimination:

1. Either I know something or I know nothing.

2. If I know something, then I know that the proof of scepticism is valid, therefore I know nothing.

3. If I know nothing, then I know nothing.

4. Either way, I know nothing.

http://www.philosophypathways.com/vita.html

 

Barbette asked:

Is it possible to achieve fellowship with the divine (Dionysus) and if so how?

Answer by Stuart Burns

Barbette, I cannot begin to answer your question without first establishing just what you are asking. Please explain just what you mean by ‘fellowship with the divine’, and why you specifically reference Dionysus — the Roman god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, or in Greek mythology, of ritual madness and ecstasy.

I am giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming that you mean this in some figurative/ poetic sense, since the Gods (none of them) do not really exist. It is therefore not possible to have ‘fellowship with the divine’ in the sense of friendship and companionship (or any relationship at all) with non-existent divine entities (Gods).

http://www3.sympatico.ca/saburns/pg00cv.htm

 

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

One way would be to get together with some friends, drink lots of wine, and dance around naked. That’s what the Greeks did. For all our much vaunted freedoms, the Greeks were way ahead of us. You and I would just get arrested if we tried to emulate the Greeks. It’s not quite the same, dancing around your living room with the curtains tightly closed.

The Dionysian is something Nietzsche thought deeply about. Wagner’s operas embody the spirit of Dionysus. Arguably, all true art has something of this spirit, divine madness, lack of control. But to be art rather than just a mess, there has to be control in there too somewhere. Hence, the opposite element, the ‘Apollonian’ aspect of order and measure.

Rock music is, or would be, the nearest equivalent to the Dionysian were it not so formulaic and hidebound. The time for a god like Wagner has passed. Contemporary art is mostly petty and effete, ‘art’ only in name. That’s what Nietzsche would have said. Will the true spirit of Dionysus ever return? Until it does, I’ll stick to wine, lots of wine.

http://www.philosophypathways.com/vita.html

 

Kirby asked:

Does knowledge that something exists prove its causal efficacy?

Does mere existence imply causal efficacy?

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

Why would anyone ask these questions? Without a context, it is hard to see the point. But I’m guessing that this is about a version of mind-body dualism known as ‘epiphenomenalism’.

Epiphenomenalism is a theory about the nature of the inner, a theory for which the philosopher who holds the theory claims to offer proof. What is odd about this view, however, is that it implies that we know that something exists — non-physical thoughts, feelings, experiences, consciousness — which according to the theory have no causal effect on anything physical.

Physical states of the brain cause these non-physical mental states, but the mental states are themselves causally inert. They just exist. They do not possess ‘causal efficacy’.

This would be an very interesting discovery, if it were true, because it would imply that we can know of the existence of items of a certain kind, in the absence of any causal connection between those items and our knowledge.

There is another class of objects for which this claim has been made: numbers. A natural number, according to set theory, is a pure abstract object, made up of sets, which are themselves made up of sets, etc. etc., while the only set which is not made up of sets is the null set. We know that numbers exist, because we know that arithmetical statements such as 2+2=4 are true.

There has been much debate on this question in the Philosophy of Mathematics. (See Putnam and Benacerraf Readings in the Philosophy of Mathematics Cambridge University Press, for a classic survey.) It is difficult to see, however, how these considerations can help with the mind-body problem.

The key difference is in the argument for epiphenomenalism (epiphenomenal dualism) which is allegedly based on direct experience, not an inference as in the case of numbers, where we argue from the truth of mathematical statements to the existence of mathematical objects.

The argument goes like this. I can imagine a being who is my perfect physical double. No-one else can tell us apart. The only difference between me and my perfect physical double, however, is that my double has no mental states, only physical states. I know I have mental states because I can ‘see’ them directly, by looking inside myself. But for my zombie double, all is darkness inside.

The problem with this argument is that, by hypothesis, my zombie double is also writing this answer (on twin earth), utters the words, ‘for my zombie double, all is darkness inside’ with the same tone of sincerity as I utter those words, because he is, like me, an ‘epiphenomenalist’.

— There’s something not quite right about the argument I have just given, in effect, a reductio ad absurdum of epiphenomenal dualism, but what exactly? Is it because I am simply begging the question? Can it not be the case that when I say, ‘For my zombie double all is darkness inside,’ I am really saying something, uttering English words with a meaning, while when my double on twin earth utters the words, ‘For my zombie double all is darkness inside,’ those are just meaningless sounds which a (non-zombie) hearer mistakenly takes to have meaning?

http://www.philosophypathways.com/vita.html

 

Gelay asked:

What is the nature of the universe? Where does it come from? Of what is it made? How did it come to exist? What is its purpose? By what process does it change? Is it evolving or devolving? Does it function by itself or would it degenerate to chaos without some kind of intelligent control?

Answer by Shaun Williamson

You are asking some very complex questions which cannot be answered in an email. You need to start studying science and cosmology.

You can make a start by reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Since your questions are complex you need to understand that the answers to them are also complex and will require some effort on your part so that you are in a position to understand them.

Shaun Williamson developed the Ask a Philosopher cgi script question.pl. He did his postgraduate studies on the philosophy of Wittgenstein.

 

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

For millennia, human beings have rebounded between the alternatives, ‘The universe has a purpose,’ ‘The Universe has no purpose.’ It’s got to be one or the other, hasn’t it?

Either alternative is a recipe for despair. It doesn’t matter if the universe is being driven somewhere, or careering away off the road, whether it is holding together or gradually falling apart. Either way, we are stuck here, inside the universe and we have no control at all over what happens.

The runaway universe is not our universe. It is not our home. We don’t belong here.

Say to yourself, ‘The universe is just some theory in a physics book, random spots of light in the sky, a word, a story.’ Repeat that every day, until you believe it.

The real solution — the solution you can take to heart and live with — isn’t in some clever answer to the question, but in the disappearance of the question. How you go about doing that, making the question disappear, well, that’s up to you.

http://www.philosophypathways.com/vita.html