Neoteronous
A Modern Man Standing in the Tradition of Catholic Platonism
A Modern Man Standing in the Tradition of Catholic Platonism
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
As was pointed out to me by some kind soul, I typed the wrong address for my new blog. It is actually demiurge.unzilla.com, with a g in demiurge. Thanks.
comments()
Msgr. Sokolowski, the famous Catholic phenomenologist, is fond of saying that philosophy is mainly or entirely concerned with making distinctions. This seemed both idiosyncratic and false at first. When asked about it in class today, he elaborated a bit, by distinguishing making distinctions from intuition. Intuition connotes a direct vision into a single object, a simple grasping of a unitary object. Making distinctions, however, involves seeing one thing by seeing it as not another thing, that which it is distinguished from. It is thus an indirect grasp of a thing, one that involves a vision of more than one object.
I've begun to see that there is something to Sokolowski's doctrine. Here's my train of thought:
There has been a traditional, and I think good, distinction arising out of Aristotle's organon between the three acts of the mind: the grasping of concepts, the forming of judgments by combining concepts, and the forming of syllogisms by combining judgments. It is quite clear from this distinction that everything depends on the first act. Syllogisms make no sense if the judgments they contain are not understood, whereas if they are, syllogisms are easy to make and undisputable. If philosophy was mainly concerned with syllogising, all disputes would have ended long ago.
Judgments, on their part, are clearly meaningless unless the concepts, the terms involved, are understood. In fact, judgments are born from their terms. Given the meaning of the terms 'man' and 'mortal', it follows immediately that all men are mortal. Nor can the meaning of the terms be identified with their definition, another judgment. There may be some cases where the meaning of complex words are identical with their definitions, but if the meaning of all words were identical with their definitions, we would have an infinite regress of definitions, and thus no word would truly have an understandable definition. For a definition containing words that themselves have to be defined would define nothing, unless those words were replaced with their definitions to form a single more complex definition. This cannot go on forever. Judgments, therefore, are reducible to terms which are grasped by a simple act, the first act of the mind, and not the reverse (i.e., it is not the case that terms are reducible to judgments, the first act to the second act of the mind, as it would be if the meaning of terms were their definition, a judgment.) Definitions only serve to indicate the meaning, to point it out, and are not themselves the meanings of terms.
The main business of philosophy, then, is the first act of the mind, the grasping of irreducible concepts. Once these are truly grasped, judgments and syllogisms follow automatically. It may not be easy to work them out (though it wouldn't be too hard) but once they have been found out they would be indisputable. There is an ever-present and formidable problem, however, connected with the grasping of terms. The grasp of a term cannot be directly communicated. A concept can only be expressed by a word, and a word can only communicate anything if the hearer both knows that which the word expresses, and knows the word expresses it. It would be difficult for me to communicate anything about snow to a Chinese man, because, although he knows what snow is, he does not know that the word 'snow' is connected to that thing. It would be even more difficult, however to communicate anything about snow to an Amazonian savage who has never seen it before, not even in pictures. He not only has no knowledge of the word 'snow', he has no knowledge of the thing itself which the word names. How then, when one obtains some new grasp of a concept through reflection, can that grasp be communicated to some other thinker? If he does not already have that grasp, any word I use to communicate it would not signify it to him, but only to me.
The grasping of terms, the first act of the mind, can only be communicated indirectly, by drawing on terms of which two people have some common grasp, and trying to dance around and point at the new concept that the one is trying to communicate to the other. The same process would be used to try to communicate a deeper grasp of some concept that both already had some grasp of in the past. I believe there are many methods of indirectly communicating the first act of the mind, including dialectic and definitions. However, perhaps the most potent is the making of distinctions. By showing that the concept we are trying to communicate is not some other concept, confusion is done away with, the field of vision is cleared, so to speak, of obstacles. The mind of the other person was looking in the right direction, which is how he got confused by the similar concept, the one closest to the one in question, and when the source of confusion is removed, he can see it. Perhaps experience teaches this best. Distinctions seem to convince people more than anything else.
I'm not sure that Sokolowski thinks like this. Maybe not. But I know what I think. Making distinctions cannot be the prime business of philosophy in the deepest sense, because distinguishing one thing from another involves seeing each thing, otherwise, how could one see that the one was unlike the other? Therefore, making distinctions is itself based upon intuition, the direct grasp of simple concepts. Making distinctions is really a second act of the mind, a compounding of concepts to form judgments, in this case, negations. However, making distinctions is the type of second act which lies closest, perhaps, to the first act. Although arising out of the first act itself, it is the greatest helper in the further cultivation of the first act.
comments()
Thursday, August 03, 2006
I have a new blog, built almost entirely from scratch. It's still under construction, but its nearly fully functional. It can be found at demiure dot unzilla dot com. Thanks to Donzilla for hosting me. I have no immediate plans to take this one out of operation, and may still post to it.
BTW, it looks right in Firefox, but not in IE.
comments()
Friday, June 09, 2006
Any community, from the smallest to the largest, must be ordered in such a way as to respect the dignity of each of its members. This implies that each member is able to effectively take up the attitude of opposition, as JPG describes in the previous post, when he or she honestly has a problem with some aspect of the life of the community. (This does not imply that he or she need be correct, but only sincere.) All members of a human commuity have a radical equality due to their shared human nature. It is appropriate to the nature of a rational being that he or she provides an order to things. A community is composed of equal, rational beings, and therefore a community ought to provide each member with a share in the ordering or governance of such community. This principle applies in different ways to diverse communities, in one way to a family, in another to a college, and in yet another way to a government, but it nevertheless does apply to each of them. An example of a government so constructed would be a republic built around the conviction that 'small is beautiful.'
Simply having the right to vote in huge elections does not give a person the ability to exercise his right to have a hand in the ordering of things in a truly fulfilling way. In the past, when not so much states as counties and towns had meaningful and significant functions, a person's vote was meaningful and significant as well. It was an expression of his person, and not just some vote indistinguishable in the vast sea of votes. More importantly than this, the person was able to engage in meaningful dialogue, to have his concerns and thoughts respected and effective in a personal way. A vote is just 'yes' or 'no', and alone it has nothing more than numerical significance. People are not binary, they have a varied and complex richness.
I do not in any way intend to suggest that people should not care about voting in America because of the centralization of the federal government. Although politics in America (while staying way ahead of Europe and the rest of the world) fall short of according to each citizen their full civic dignity, the right to vote does contribute towards recognizing such dignity, and the act of voting helps each person to fulfill his dignity. It is also the only way things could ever get better.
comments()
Thursday, June 08, 2006
From JPG:
"Of course, different interpretations of opposition are possible, but we have here adopted the one that sees it as essentially an attitude of solidarity; . . . Those who stand up in opposition do not intend thereby to cut themselves off from their community. On the contrary, they seek their own place within the community, they seek for that participation and that attitude to the common good which would allow them a better, a fuller, and a more effective share in the community.
"The attitude of opposition is a function, on the one hand, of the particular view one takes of the community and of what is good for it, and on the other, of the strong need to participate in the common existing and even more so in the common acting. There can be no doubt that this kind of opposition is essentially constructive; it is a condition of the correct structure of communitites and of the correct functioning of their inner system. This condition, however, must be defined precisely: the structure, the system of communities, must be such as to allow the opposition that grows out of the soil of solidarity not only to express itself within the framework of the community but also to operate for the benefit of the community-to be constructive. The structure of a human community is correct only if it admits not just the presence of a justified opposition but also that effectiveness of opposition which is required by the common good and the right of participation.
"We thus see that the common good has to be conceived of dynamically and not statically-a fact that has been briefly noted earlier. Essentially it must liberate and support the attitude of solidarity but never so as to stifle and shut itself off from opposition. It seems that the principle of dialogue is very aptly suited to that structure of human communities and participation which satisfies these needs. . . . Admittedly opposition may make the coexistence and cooperation of men more difficult, but it should never damage or prevent them. The principle of dialogue seems to be best suited to select and bring out what in controversial situations is right and true, and to eliminate any partial, preconceived, or subjective views and attitudes. . . . All this confirms the value of the principle of dialogue, which without evading the strains, the conflicts, or the strife manifest in the life of various human communities takes up what is right and true in these differences, what may become a source of a good for men."
-Person and Act, pp. 342-344
comments()
Friday, June 02, 2006
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Who knew that I would turn into a geek this summer? I've been a nerd for quite some time, but now I'm a geek too. I've learned html, css, a lot of php, and some basic mysql. Now I'm set to start building websites. Quite an unexpected summer job, but very welcome.
Bonaventure, who was a term paper producing machine all school year, has turned into a web development machine, with apache, php, mysql, and phpmyadmin on it. Wow! I didn't even know what any of those were 2 weeks ago. God is full of surprises.
I am also excited to have LiLosSoljr and SomethingInMyEye here in DC for the summer. HT should be here soon as well. God is good.
comments()
Monday, May 22, 2006
My favorite line from The White Stripe's Seven Nation Army: "All the words are gonna bleed from me and I will think no more."
Who knew that Jack White knew Greek philosophy? Verbal speech is just the outer logos which is the sign of the inner logos. Thinking requires inner logoi, inner words.
comments()
As was pointed out to me by some kind soul, I typed the wrong address for my new blog. It is actually demiurge.unzilla.com, with a g in demiurge. Thanks.
comments()
Msgr. Sokolowski, the famous Catholic phenomenologist, is fond of saying that philosophy is mainly or entirely concerned with making distinctions. This seemed both idiosyncratic and false at first. When asked about it in class today, he elaborated a bit, by distinguishing making distinctions from intuition. Intuition connotes a direct vision into a single object, a simple grasping of a unitary object. Making distinctions, however, involves seeing one thing by seeing it as not another thing, that which it is distinguished from. It is thus an indirect grasp of a thing, one that involves a vision of more than one object.
I've begun to see that there is something to Sokolowski's doctrine. Here's my train of thought:
There has been a traditional, and I think good, distinction arising out of Aristotle's organon between the three acts of the mind: the grasping of concepts, the forming of judgments by combining concepts, and the forming of syllogisms by combining judgments. It is quite clear from this distinction that everything depends on the first act. Syllogisms make no sense if the judgments they contain are not understood, whereas if they are, syllogisms are easy to make and undisputable. If philosophy was mainly concerned with syllogising, all disputes would have ended long ago.
Judgments, on their part, are clearly meaningless unless the concepts, the terms involved, are understood. In fact, judgments are born from their terms. Given the meaning of the terms 'man' and 'mortal', it follows immediately that all men are mortal. Nor can the meaning of the terms be identified with their definition, another judgment. There may be some cases where the meaning of complex words are identical with their definitions, but if the meaning of all words were identical with their definitions, we would have an infinite regress of definitions, and thus no word would truly have an understandable definition. For a definition containing words that themselves have to be defined would define nothing, unless those words were replaced with their definitions to form a single more complex definition. This cannot go on forever. Judgments, therefore, are reducible to terms which are grasped by a simple act, the first act of the mind, and not the reverse (i.e., it is not the case that terms are reducible to judgments, the first act to the second act of the mind, as it would be if the meaning of terms were their definition, a judgment.) Definitions only serve to indicate the meaning, to point it out, and are not themselves the meanings of terms.
The main business of philosophy, then, is the first act of the mind, the grasping of irreducible concepts. Once these are truly grasped, judgments and syllogisms follow automatically. It may not be easy to work them out (though it wouldn't be too hard) but once they have been found out they would be indisputable. There is an ever-present and formidable problem, however, connected with the grasping of terms. The grasp of a term cannot be directly communicated. A concept can only be expressed by a word, and a word can only communicate anything if the hearer both knows that which the word expresses, and knows the word expresses it. It would be difficult for me to communicate anything about snow to a Chinese man, because, although he knows what snow is, he does not know that the word 'snow' is connected to that thing. It would be even more difficult, however to communicate anything about snow to an Amazonian savage who has never seen it before, not even in pictures. He not only has no knowledge of the word 'snow', he has no knowledge of the thing itself which the word names. How then, when one obtains some new grasp of a concept through reflection, can that grasp be communicated to some other thinker? If he does not already have that grasp, any word I use to communicate it would not signify it to him, but only to me.
The grasping of terms, the first act of the mind, can only be communicated indirectly, by drawing on terms of which two people have some common grasp, and trying to dance around and point at the new concept that the one is trying to communicate to the other. The same process would be used to try to communicate a deeper grasp of some concept that both already had some grasp of in the past. I believe there are many methods of indirectly communicating the first act of the mind, including dialectic and definitions. However, perhaps the most potent is the making of distinctions. By showing that the concept we are trying to communicate is not some other concept, confusion is done away with, the field of vision is cleared, so to speak, of obstacles. The mind of the other person was looking in the right direction, which is how he got confused by the similar concept, the one closest to the one in question, and when the source of confusion is removed, he can see it. Perhaps experience teaches this best. Distinctions seem to convince people more than anything else.
I'm not sure that Sokolowski thinks like this. Maybe not. But I know what I think. Making distinctions cannot be the prime business of philosophy in the deepest sense, because distinguishing one thing from another involves seeing each thing, otherwise, how could one see that the one was unlike the other? Therefore, making distinctions is itself based upon intuition, the direct grasp of simple concepts. Making distinctions is really a second act of the mind, a compounding of concepts to form judgments, in this case, negations. However, making distinctions is the type of second act which lies closest, perhaps, to the first act. Although arising out of the first act itself, it is the greatest helper in the further cultivation of the first act.
comments()
I have a new blog, built almost entirely from scratch. It's still under construction, but its nearly fully functional. It can be found at demiure dot unzilla dot com. Thanks to Donzilla for hosting me. I have no immediate plans to take this one out of operation, and may still post to it.
BTW, it looks right in Firefox, but not in IE.
comments()
Any community, from the smallest to the largest, must be ordered in such a way as to respect the dignity of each of its members. This implies that each member is able to effectively take up the attitude of opposition, as JPG describes in the previous post, when he or she honestly has a problem with some aspect of the life of the community. (This does not imply that he or she need be correct, but only sincere.) All members of a human commuity have a radical equality due to their shared human nature. It is appropriate to the nature of a rational being that he or she provides an order to things. A community is composed of equal, rational beings, and therefore a community ought to provide each member with a share in the ordering or governance of such community. This principle applies in different ways to diverse communities, in one way to a family, in another to a college, and in yet another way to a government, but it nevertheless does apply to each of them. An example of a government so constructed would be a republic built around the conviction that 'small is beautiful.'
Simply having the right to vote in huge elections does not give a person the ability to exercise his right to have a hand in the ordering of things in a truly fulfilling way. In the past, when not so much states as counties and towns had meaningful and significant functions, a person's vote was meaningful and significant as well. It was an expression of his person, and not just some vote indistinguishable in the vast sea of votes. More importantly than this, the person was able to engage in meaningful dialogue, to have his concerns and thoughts respected and effective in a personal way. A vote is just 'yes' or 'no', and alone it has nothing more than numerical significance. People are not binary, they have a varied and complex richness.
I do not in any way intend to suggest that people should not care about voting in America because of the centralization of the federal government. Although politics in America (while staying way ahead of Europe and the rest of the world) fall short of according to each citizen their full civic dignity, the right to vote does contribute towards recognizing such dignity, and the act of voting helps each person to fulfill his dignity. It is also the only way things could ever get better.
comments()
From JPG:
"Of course, different interpretations of opposition are possible, but we have here adopted the one that sees it as essentially an attitude of solidarity; . . . Those who stand up in opposition do not intend thereby to cut themselves off from their community. On the contrary, they seek their own place within the community, they seek for that participation and that attitude to the common good which would allow them a better, a fuller, and a more effective share in the community.
"The attitude of opposition is a function, on the one hand, of the particular view one takes of the community and of what is good for it, and on the other, of the strong need to participate in the common existing and even more so in the common acting. There can be no doubt that this kind of opposition is essentially constructive; it is a condition of the correct structure of communitites and of the correct functioning of their inner system. This condition, however, must be defined precisely: the structure, the system of communities, must be such as to allow the opposition that grows out of the soil of solidarity not only to express itself within the framework of the community but also to operate for the benefit of the community-to be constructive. The structure of a human community is correct only if it admits not just the presence of a justified opposition but also that effectiveness of opposition which is required by the common good and the right of participation.
"We thus see that the common good has to be conceived of dynamically and not statically-a fact that has been briefly noted earlier. Essentially it must liberate and support the attitude of solidarity but never so as to stifle and shut itself off from opposition. It seems that the principle of dialogue is very aptly suited to that structure of human communities and participation which satisfies these needs. . . . Admittedly opposition may make the coexistence and cooperation of men more difficult, but it should never damage or prevent them. The principle of dialogue seems to be best suited to select and bring out what in controversial situations is right and true, and to eliminate any partial, preconceived, or subjective views and attitudes. . . . All this confirms the value of the principle of dialogue, which without evading the strains, the conflicts, or the strife manifest in the life of various human communities takes up what is right and true in these differences, what may become a source of a good for men."
-Person and Act, pp. 342-344
comments()
Who knew that I would turn into a geek this summer? I've been a nerd for quite some time, but now I'm a geek too. I've learned html, css, a lot of php, and some basic mysql. Now I'm set to start building websites. Quite an unexpected summer job, but very welcome.
Bonaventure, who was a term paper producing machine all school year, has turned into a web development machine, with apache, php, mysql, and phpmyadmin on it. Wow! I didn't even know what any of those were 2 weeks ago. God is full of surprises.
I am also excited to have LiLosSoljr and SomethingInMyEye here in DC for the summer. HT should be here soon as well. God is good.
comments()
My favorite line from The White Stripe's Seven Nation Army: "All the words are gonna bleed from me and I will think no more."
Who knew that Jack White knew Greek philosophy? Verbal speech is just the outer logos which is the sign of the inner logos. Thinking requires inner logoi, inner words.
comments()
