Desire, Coherence

We experience all sorts of passing and possibly conflicting impulses or wishes upon which we don’t necessarily act, and to which we never commit ourselves. It would not be appropriate to call these things that we “really” want.

Really wanting something implies what Aristotle would call a choice. This does involve a kind of ethical commitment. As Aristotle and Brandom might jointly remind us, to choose something is also inherently to choose whatever the realization of that thing requires; to choose what follows from the realization of that thing; and not to choose anything else that is incompatible with any of these. That is why Aristotle associates choice with deliberation. Just as emotion and reason interpenetrate in feeling, really wanting something implicitly has a rational and normative component as well as a desiring component.

Of course the possibility remains open that in particular cases, we may be unclear on what we want. In this case, we are back in the territory of wish and impulse. There is still some responsibility even here, but it is shared with others, and generally also matter for forgiveness. But as talking animals, if we explicitly say to someone that we want something, we are in the realm of choice and commitment, and we are responsible to be able to explain ourselves. Our participation in the universal community of ethical reason lifts organic desire into a defeasible rational desire. (See also Unity of Apperception; Dialogue; Scorekeeping.)

Objectivity of Objects

Things like objectivity (see also Ethics; Reason; Semantics; Historiography; Philosophy of Math etc.) and subjectivity are potent, ultra-high-level abstractions that remain highly ambiguous until meanings are made more explicit in particular contexts of application. Objectivity and subjectivity are constituted through very involved processes, and their real meaning is about the detailed working out of particular cases.

Objects generically are abstract referential placeholders at which we can figuratively “point”. What is really of interest with objects, though, is not this susceptibility to being pointed at, but their implicit content, which can be elicited in particular cases by developing the context in which the pointing occurs (see Substance; Material Inference). The implicit content of objects is made progressively more objective through such development.

Such a development of the objectivity of objects eventually entails not only a movement toward unity of apperception, but (since objectivity with regard to content concerns shareable content), engagement with a larger, ongoing movement of mutual recognition among talking animals across history. (See also Truth, Beauty.)

Monism, Pluralism, Dualism?

I’d like to return to the question of keeping space open for the harmonious coexistence of a kind of monism, a kind of pluralism, and a kind of dualism at different levels of interpretation in the development pursued here.

At the level of the whole field of potential attributions of agency and responsibility, I’d like to foster the normative monism or monism of expression that I have attributed to Brandom. This seems to have the resources to translate any given empirical, factual content into the expressive terms of a transcendental normative evaluation. Here, everything that is expressible in any way whatsoever becomes expressible in ethical terms. The meaning of the monism in question has to do mainly with a kind of completeness of coverage in overcoming the subject-object dichotomy, not a lack of differentiation. Also, the complete field will include many overlapping attributions, so we should not expect it to have a univocal interpretation. So, in these ways, this monism is not incompatible with a pluralism after all.

At the level of detailed actual processes of evaluation of what is right and true, “monism” — or, more properly, unity of apperception — is only a guiding end that must be applied to a constantly moving target, so a unity that is momentarily achieved may partially unravel again. (See Error.) Also, there may be more than one sound interpretation of the “same” content under evaluation, and multiple explanations may yield complementary insight. The aimed-at “monism” here has to do mainly with a kind of coherence subject to all these caveats, so it is even more pluralistic.

At the level of an adequate account of the many aspects of subjectivity and experience, I want to be careful to preserve a broadly Kantian distinction between empirical and transcendental elements, while modeling their relation on the broadly Aristotelian relation of “first nature” to second nature. In Kant’s own presentation, the empirical/transcendental distinction has a dualistic appearance, but the first-nature/second-nature distinction I want to map it to involves a kind of emergence of second nature from first nature, rather than a dualism.

Previously, I resorted to programming language metaphors of compilation and “lifting” — and a distinction between operational and expressive equivalence — to help describe the relations between first and second nature in a way that would resolve the tension between my monistic claim and the distinction I want to maintain. (See Bookkeeping; Layers.) I’m still pondering the implications of such a metaphorical application of concepts from a formal domain to things that are after all not formal. While I still find that interesting, I think the above sketch might be sufficient to assuage concerns of overall consistency without it.

The Ambiguity of “Self”

To put it mildly, “self” is said in many ways. To begin with, is it used as a noun, as an adjective, or as an adverb? As a noun, it may refer to an empirical “me”. As an adjective, it may name an abstract, pure reflexivity. It may also be used to adverbially describe something that has recursive structure that depends on details. I’ve always thought adverbs were the part of speech closest to reality.

The contrast between “self” in something like Hegelian self-consciousness and the “self” figuring in my recent Ego post could not be more extreme. Hegel’s use is definitely adverbial; as I have said several times, self-consciousness is anything but direct consciousness of a (noun) “self”. It has more to do with ethical awareness of limitations, and awareness of others. (See also Self, Infinity; Individuation.)

Values in Technical Pursuits

As a working software engineer with a strong liberal arts orientation, I stress the role of rational value judgment in engineering. Some engineers or managers may want to prematurely reduce “tradeoffs” to numerical computation. The problem with that is, interesting design and policy questions typically involve somehow trying to weigh different dimensions against one another when they have no natural common measure. The only way out of this involves making implicit or explicit value judgments about the relative importance of different things.

To a trusted few, with thoughts like this in mind I have quipped that Plato and Aristotle taught me more about designing software than all my computer science courses. Some people are not very open-minded about things like this. I still vividly recall how one senior guy got positively angry at the “waste of time” induced by one line of PowerPoint mentioning Aristotelian syllogism as an easy way to understand the logical meaning of function composition in code for data-driven reasoning.

Engineering education should more explicitly address general reasoning, and for that we need liberal arts.

Assumptions

No one gets through life without making countless assumptions about things we cannot properly know. In routine cases, this is usually harmless. That does not remove our obligation to give someone a fair hearing if they initiate dialogue asking about our reasons for feeling committed to the assumption. Except in immediate emergencies, we should always be open to such questions, and on our own initiative we should raise such questions to ourselves in ambiguous situations. This means we also need to learn to be good at recognizing ambiguous situations, which involves lifelong care and active practice at doing it. (See also Epistemic Conscientiousness.)

Ego

Literally since childhood, I’ve been concerned about ethical issues involving ego or egoism in a plain ordinary dictionary sense. This involves a number of related aspects. At the grossest level, there is selfishness and arrogance. Beyond that, there are many kinds and degrees of self-centeredness. At the subtle end of the spectrum, there are various kinds of self-involvement that impair our attention to the concerns of others. What these all have in common is that with varying degrees of seriousness, they result in failures of reciprocity in social relationships, failures to apply the golden rule. As a young person, this led me to investigate various spiritual teachings about ego and self and what to do with them. This still stands as a backdrop to my philosophical interest in questions related to subjectivity, and in related questions of historical interpretation.

Philosophically, ego in the ordinary sense is not at all the same thing as a Subject, but the two are commonly confounded. Both are problematic, and require careful handling. Modern common-sense views of such things most often implicitly reflect a very specific historical “mentalist” philosophical view shared by Descartes and Locke, which tends to simply identify the two. In my view, this identification of ego-self-subject-mind as one simple thing is utterly wrong, and makes it impossible to adequately address the serious issues with each separate concept.

Historically, the rise of Cartesian-Lockean mentalism was closely tied to the rise of possessive individualism, of which Locke, along with Hobbes, was one of the main theorists (see Rights). This gave egoism in the ordinary sense a new kind of respectability that it did not have in premodern society. On this theory, people could claim ethical justification for egoistic behavior, and claim additional support from theories like Adam Smith’s invisible hand. This created a further slippery slope, leading to all manner of extensions and abuses of these principles that Locke or Smith would not have condoned. (See also Desire of the Master; Freedom Without Sovereignty.)

In sound ethics, reciprocity comes before self. This does not imply any extreme self-denial, just appropriate consideration of others, who should give the same consideration to us. (See also The Ambiguity of “Self”; Individuation; What Is “I”?)

Inferentialism vs Mentalism

Brandom’s “inferentialism” or emphasis on material inference effectively makes what I call ethical reason the most important thing in the constitution of subjectivity — not psychology, and not some putative immediate mental presence, or universal transparent representational medium, or supposedly perfect reflexivity.

This is not to deny that there is such a thing as immediacy; it is rather to specify that immediacy is not foundational, and has nothing to do with certainty. Immediacy has a very different role to play, in showing us the world’s “stubborn recalcitrance to mastery and agency” and providing occasions for learning. (See also Mind Without Mentalism; Psyche, Subjectivity.)

Augustinian Interiority

Among the hallmarks of historiographical seriousness is a concern to avoid over-generalization. In that spirit, since I have made quasi-polemical references to Augustine and Augustinianism in broad-brush sketches of the history of notions of subjectivity, it seems right to pause for a few caveats.

Augustine is the main early source in the Western tradition for a specific notion of mental interiority. However, at the very beginning there is a surprising twist. At least, it is surprising for us moderns conditioned by Descartes and Locke. For it turns out that for Augustine, when one looks within to the inner man, what one finds is the opposite of something private.

For Augustine, the inner man participates in a community of the spirit, and interiority opens out into universality. The inner man is a source of a kind of integrity more than individuality. It is rather our view of the external world that is the locus of what we might call subjective particularity. The idea that what is inner is universal puts Augustine much closer to Plotinus than to Descartes in this way. The inner man is not a modern ego. Augustine fused notions of mind and personality, but again, his variant of the notion of personality had more to do with trinitarian theology than with individuality. Even the meaning of his early strong voluntarism is modified by this.

Among the early Christian fathers, Augustine was among the most philosophical. According to his own testimony in the Confessions, his reading of Plotinus was a spiritual event second only to his conversion to Christianity, and remained important after his conversion. As much as he emphasized faith, he also emphasized seeking understanding. He clearly acknowledged a degree of bilateral accommodation of faith and reason, for instance in his writings on the interpretation of scripture.

It should also be noted that many of the later theologians I broadly characterize as Augustinian developed sophisticated hybrid positions on various philosophical issues, however much I might criticize, e.g., their voluntarism or their anti-Aristotelianism couched in Aristotelian vocabulary. (See also Ricoeur on Augustine on Time; Nature and Justice in Augustine; Mind Without Mentalism; Subject; Freedom and Free Will; God and the Soul.)

Mind Without Mentalism

In spite of the excellent work of many philosophers, socially dominant views of mind today remain in the thrall of narrow mentalist, representationalist conceptions originally promoted by Descartes and Locke. What are implicitly Cartesian and British empiricist views of this sort largely inform what passes for common sense. Our minds are in here, and things are out there. What seems to be immediately present to the mind has special, privileged status, mostly sheltered from the doubts that may be entertained about things out there.

This notion of special privileged status traces back historically to the Latin medieval notion of an intellectual soul, which has an Augustinian heritage, and gained favor as a perceived solution to historically specific theological concerns that emerged from the late reincorporation of Aristotelian learning into the Western tradition in the 12th and 13th centuries CE.

While a degree of support for something like an intellectual soul can be extrapolated from Plato, it was counterbalanced by his strong emphasis on discursively articulable form as the basis of intelligibility. Plotinus added an alternate emphasis on immediate presence in the soul, about which Plato had been much more circumspect. Building on Plotinus as well as Christian doctrine, Augustine further accentuated this tendency, fusing previously separate notions of intellect and personality.

Earlier, Aristotle had moved in the opposite direction, anticipating something like Hegel’s emphasis on mediation. In the immense scholastic florescence of the later Latin middle ages, many complex hybrids developed that are still little known and understood. But all this was abruptly discarded in the transition to printed books and modern languages. Printed books in modern languages promoted one-line dismissals of scholasticism, and also failed to distinguish it from the historical Aristotle. (See Aristotle: General Interpretation; Aristotle: Core Concepts; Languages, Books, Curricula.)

Although Spinoza and Leibniz were great philosophers and partial exceptions to the mentalist trend, it was not until Kant and Hegel that a new, major alternative to Cartesian/Lockean mentalism clearly emerged. This was such a big event that it has taken until recently for this aspect of Kant and Hegel to be adequately understood and foregrounded. Numerous independent nonmentalist developments after Hegel can now be seen in this added light. (See also Intentionality; Inferentialism vs Mentalism; Ego; Subject; Matter, Mind; Radical Empiricism?; Primacy of Perception?; Structuralism; Imaginary, Symbolic, Real; Archaeology of Knowledge.)