When I start responding to a comment on a previous post and find that my answer is getting longer than a paragraph, that means it's time to either stop or to make a proper blog post out of it. This morning a newish (I guess) listener named Lewis posted a comment on a post I wrote last summer on "reason" as used by Ayn Rand and others. We'll be covering Rand in episode #78, which we'll be recording in less than two weeks. By that point, I should have my thoughts together; this is just some initial spitballing that I wouldn't mind hearing some of your reactions to.
Objectivism identifies three "conceptually irreducible primaries" that are the stopping point of inquiry. They are supposed to be epistemically basic and sufficient to found (and they're the only possible basis for founding) the rest of Rand's system. This idea of unavoidable, basic starting points and a Descartes-like justification of a system runs directly counter to the picture that Deleuze gives of a multiplicity of possible planes of immanence each of which encourages a set of philosophical concepts. I say "encourages" because it doesn't logically entail them, but is compatible with them and does contain the problems that the concepts are then designed by the philosopher to address. The analytic philosopher in me has trouble really understanding Deleuze's picture, and it sure would be nice if instead something more like Rand's (or Descartes's, or Russell's) picture with experientially and logically undeniable starting points were instead correct.
Rand's three basic axioms are:
1. Existence exists (there is something rather than nothing).
2. To exist is to be something (the law of idenitity or A = A).
3. Consciousness exists (any assertion about reality implies that some conscious entity is making the assertion).
These seem obvious enough; how or why would one attack them? (I will ignore here the snide Randian answer to the why question that would sound something like "because one is corrupt.")
Well, you can either argue that these aren't in fact basic, or that they are empty enough that you can't use them to found a whole system in the way that Rand thinks. Let me take each premise briefly in turn.
1. "Existence exists." When Rand says this, she means that skepticism is false: that the material world is more or less as we experience it, and so science is (not in an particular case, where there could always be a methodological error, but in general) justified. But really, all we're given is that there is some object of consciousness, and this is totally compatible with Berkeley (the classic idealist who said that objects are all just ideas in the mind of God that we share), Kant (the transcendental idealist who says we construct objects through common human faculties but don't really have much idea how this happens or what raw materials, if any, we're actually connecting up to in order to make such judgments, Husserl (who puts the entire ontological question on hold but nonetheless finds it perfectly sensible to talk about existence as an object of consciousness), or a pragmatist (who regards "existence" in this sense as an operational term, meaning that we can do things with it, so let's call it existent, whereas if we reached out to the alleged object and our hand went right through it, we'd have to call it something else). In all these cases, the philosopher admits that the object has objectivity, in that we can sense and manipulate it, and others can too. This is enough to justify the validity (i.e. the applicability) of science. So saying that existence exists, or that objects are objective, is not sufficient to establish an ontology.
This means that it is sensible to ask what "existence" means philosophically; it's not irreducible. Is it material existence? And what, underlyingly, is that? Rand, like a logical positivist, wants to deny any sense to these kind of inquiries, and apparently didn't understand Kant's picture, which affirms science, and affirms that objects are "material" insofar as science categorizes them as matter (as opposed to energy or my thoughts), yet Kant still thought that there was still a metaphysical question remaining after this was done. Now, the irony is that Kant was actually trying to banish past metaphysics as a load of unjustified nonsense, just like Rand, but among those positions banished would be a naive materialism, which mistakes nitty-gritty science for a metaphysical theory. (Per my most recent post, Deleuze gives one formulation for how these differ.)
It still may be that "existence" as a term is irreducible. Heidegger, for one, spent his whole career trying to "ask the question of Being" that doesn't just take existing for granted, but he's in the minority. And Rand is right in saying that "existence" is not a property that existing things have; that was Kant's response to the ontological argument for the existence of God and a point made formally in mathematics by Russell.
2. "To be is to be something." Rand, following Aristotle, thinks that things have essences, and she claims that this is not the case in any mysterious way. I think this is problematic, but want to wait for the podcast to get into it. We have already spent quite a lot of time on the podcast trying to figure out how we "distinguish this from that" (as Dylan my fellow podcaster often puts it), and the persistent answer has been that it's for pragmatic reasons. Why is the book in front of me an object but not the book along with the bit of desk it's sitting on? Because of the way it hangs together physically; for most purposes, I need to consider the book a unit. However, if I'm pointing a flamethrower at that area and am thinking "do I want to fire this?" it would do just as well to consider, as a unit the entirety of mass in its wake. If we had flamethrowers for arms (like Daleks?), then we might pick out objects differently.
Now, Rand actually acknowledges that for epistemic purposes, how we pick things out does depend on the fact that we're human, but then, since of course that fact doesn't change, she discounts its importance and takes #2 here to be a metaphysical and not just an epistemic principle. She uses it to bludgeon people she thinks are trying to escape reality by denying the identity of things. She's denying the practical importance of multiple perspectives. Now, this may work OK with books and things, but she uses this most centrally to claim that human nature is fixed, determinate. There are certain things that fulfill us and certain things that just don't.
This is difficult to discuss without hashing through a lot of examples, which I don't wish to do here, but here's an important one: she claims that an essential part of human nature is free will. To me, this is a prime example of one of those facts that is true (or to put it better, applicable) for some purposes and not for others. We should all by now be familiar with the classic free will-determinism debate. We usually feel pretty free, and seem to be able to distinguish our choice, which feel free, from feelings or physical incapacities that seem to fight our choices on some occasions, as when you're drunk or tired or on edge. So as a way to psych yourself up, it's generally useful to consider yourself free, and if you make excuses, you're in bad faith, or as Rand calls it, evasion. However, knowing the physiological facts, which support either determinism or if you're into quantum theory determinism plus some randomness (which is not the same as freedom), you can likely admit that if you pump someone full of chemicals, they'll make decisions that seem free to them, but which they would not otherwise have made. Freedom is not a matter of self-evident human nature, but something that needs investigating neuroscientifically, and we (and Rand) are making a mistake if we think we can straightforwardly apply traditional modes of praise and blame without considering what else there is to know on the matter.
Again, this free will discussion is just supposed to counter the abuse of "a=a," as Rand often puts it. The statement is totally uninformative, yet she uses it to say "in most cases it accords with our experience to say we are free, therefore we are free beings with total responsibility for our choices no matter our brain chemistry or the circumstances that may have fed into our current physiological state." My argument here does not hinge on whether or not Rand's view of freedom (which is Sartre's too, incidentally) is correct, but only whether it follows from basic observation and the law of identity. It doesn't; it's a substantial philosophical theory.
3. "Consciousness exists." As with #1, this is highly ambiguous. If it implies, following Descartes, that the knower here is fundamentally different than the known, then that's going considerably beyond what the experience actually tells us. Consciousness for Sartre, for Pirsig, for Hegel, and many others is not best described as a subject meeting an object. Instead, these are abstractions we impose upon experience. Experience just is objects, or more precisely a flow which we then (per my discussion of #2) somehow break into objects to make it comprehensible. So yes, as a human coping mechanism, there are subjects and objects, but this doesn't actually address the question of what metaphysically is really going on. (The argument here would be similar to my points re. #1 above.) This statement is only conceptually basic if you're particularly incurious.
-Mark Linsenmayer
for a Sellars-ian look @ Deleuze see: http://deontologistics.wordpress.com/
Mark, you mentioned that the axioms might be empty enough that they couldn’t found a whole system.
Dawson Bethrick discusses all of this in tremendous detail on his blog. He is interacting primarily with a certain brand of Calvinist Christianity known as Van-Tillian presuppositionalism. It’s Bethrick’s project to use the axioms to establish that existence holds metaphysical primacy over consciousness. As Rand puts it “consciousness is consciousness of something.”
Bethrick attacks the presuppositionalist stance that a supreme consciousness – God – is primary to existence. Now I don’t necessarily like Bethrick’s attitude sometimes, but his writing prowess is pretty undeniable. I don’t agree with all of his arguments, but they are worth examining.
I’m still making my way trying to figure out my positions on all of these philosophical questions. I don’t like everything on offer when it comes to Ojbectivism, but I think writing Objectivism off without delving into it more deeply is a mistake. There is fertile ground to till here. I’m excited to hear you guys cover this topic. Thanks, Mark.
Just to clarify: Rand’s objectivism is not the only breed of metaphysical realism. The latter is a common philosophical position (Wes recommended this book to me: Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism
.) The former is held largely by students and those dedicated to free-market capitalism who feel they need justification for their life choices.
Thanks for the link, though. I find Van Til-based Christianity maddening in much the same way that I find objectivism; I had brush with it in listening a bunch to a Christianity podcast: http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/11/25/theologians-on-quine/.
Daniel, I understand your point.
People have been doing philosophy for a very long time, and any thoughts we have are likely to have already been thought by someone else before us. Acknowledging this fact requires just a little humility.
As I said before, I don’t care for certain aspects of Objectivism. I do find myself being drawn to the three axioms, however. I’m not saying it’s unique in doing so, but I do like that Objectivism tries to cut right to the heart of a very important metaphysical question.
Is existence primary to consciousness, or is consciousness primary to existence?
I don’t have any experience of reality conforming to my wishes themselves; I have to take some sort of actual action in the world. My conscious activity in and of itself doesn’t result in anything being done to the objects around me. I have to interact with them through some mechanism to affect any sort of change outside my own mind.
As Mark paraphrased J.L. Mackie in episode 43, “we don’t have any experience of just willing something and it happens with no mechanism involved.”
Whatever it is that exists seems to come first, then the consciousness of those existing entities follows. Even if we were to say that we are constructing the world with our human cognitive apparatus, we have some sort of raw materials with which we are doing so. The raw materials seem to come first.
This raises the question as to whether “consciousness” is identical to “thoughts/desires/wishes.” From a Buddhist perspective, consciousness is seen to embrace those things, but is more properly identified with bare perception as such, prior to thoughts/desires/wishes. Far from being identical with consciousness, they are regarded as those elements of it which remove one from its deeper nature of mind, which would be regarded, not as “primary to existence,” but neither as other than existence.
Hi Lewis,
A tiny point, but one that might help explain at least some of the disdain often shown toward Ayn Rand:
It was Sartre, not Rand, who first coined the phrase “all consciousness is consciousness of something,” in Being and Nothingness (1943): http://bit.ly/Z5Etq1
And Sartre didn’t first devise this concept (“intentionality”); he learned it from Husserl, who in turn developed it from Brentano, who in turn revived a concept from the old medieval Scholastics.
That Rand was either unaware of the intellectual history behind many of her propositions, or simply chose not to acknowledge it, I think helps explain a bit of the contempt in which some hold her.
I didn’t know this and find it very interesting. I do think this is very common re the Scholastics who had access to Aristotle preserved by scholars in the Middle East who spoke Aramaic. It this correct, Daniel?
Hi Tammy,
Sorry, but I couldn’t say for sure. My knowledge of the subject comes largely from the back of Snapple caps and this book: http://amzn.com/B000OI0ILY
But I think the traditional narrative has it that “intentionality” was a discovery (or invention) of the Scholastics. I welcome correction from anyone better informed!
It’s a minor point, really. I just like to lob pot shots at Rand where and when I can.
OK. Thanks, Daniel.
From SEP on Intentionality: “The word itself, which is of medieval Scholastic origin, was rehabilitated by the philosopher Franz Brentano towards the end of the nineteenth century.” Good call Daniel
Hello, Daniel. I thought I was replying to you with my post up above, but it looks like I accidentally replied to Mark.
I take your point on Satre, Husserl, Brentano, and the Scholastics. In any case, I think Rand actually said the following:
“If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms.”
She also said something to this effect:
“A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something.”
I’m not saying she’s the only one to come to that conclusion, but that is how she felt about consciousness.
I’m not even pretending to be anything like an expert on consciousness, but the two statements above seem very compelling to me.
If these statements are indeed true, it would seem to indicate that existence comes before consciousness. This would appear to rule out the possibility of a supreme consciousness coming prior to – indeed causing – all of existence.
Daniel, I’m open to any thoughts you have on this.
Hi Lewis,
Quick response, as this isn’t really my field of expertise, but here are some quick comments:
There’s a lot packed in to your phrase “If these statements are indeed true…” Well, are they true? And how could we ever come to agreement on what constitutes “true”? (Don’t answer that, it’s a rhetorical question!)
And even if we were to grant that “existence precedes consciousness,” and even if we felt confident that we all meant the same thing by that statement, exactly how would we demonstrate that these premises lead inexorably to the conclusion that no supreme consciousness came prior to all of existence? (Don’t answer that — rhetorical question!)
For example, we could just say that the Supreme Consciousness necessarily came into existence before it become supremely conscious of its own Supremitude. I’m not saying this is a good or bad proposition; I’m simply saying that you can find multiple camps on multiple sides of this issue, and there’s no way to prove one side right or wrong, so why bother? This very kind of “a priori” argumentation for or against God or God-like entities has been going on for millennia. We won’t hash them out in this comments section. You may disagree, but there we are!
I like how you consider this point settled, and take it for granted: “And Rand is right in saying that “existence” is not a property that existing things have; that was Kant’s response to the ontological argument for the existence of God and a point made formally in mathematics by Russell.”
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant uses money as an example:
“A hundred real dollars contain no more than a hundred possible dollars. For, as the latter indicate the conception, and the former the object, on the supposition that the content of the former was greater than that of the latter, my conception would not be an expression of the whole object, and would consequently be an inadequate conception of it.”
This is absurd- of course his conception of the hundred possible dollars is an inadequate conception of the hundred real dollars, because it leaves out the crucial predicate “real”, otherwise known as “existent”. He goes on:
“But in reckoning my wealth there may be said to be more in a hundred real dollars than in a hundred possible dollars—that is, in the mere conception of them. For the real object—the dollars—is not analytically contained in my conception, but forms a synthetical addition to my conception (which is merely a determination of my mental state), although this objective reality—this existence—apart from my conceptions, does not in the least degree increase the aforesaid hundred dollars.”
But that “synthetical addition”, the real dollars’ objective existence is the distinction which designates the dollars as existent. The property they have over and above the possible dollars is their objective existence, which absolutely does increase the “aforesaid hundred dollars”, not in number, but in ontological status. Why don’t you go to the bank and cash in your 400 possible quarters for 100 real dollars, and send it to me, if you want to change my mind. The infallibility of the Critique is concretely established enough to do so, right?
Adam,
Thanks for pulling that argument out; we discussed that on the Russell ep but didn’t actually I think look at that passage in Kant. That argument is obviously not the one that Russell or Rand is going to draw on, so there are evidently multiple ways to argue this.
The simplest would be to say there is no potential entity; potential entities are not part of the ontology. One could say “potentially there could be X entity here,” but that’s not making a definite ontological claim, because it could mean that there are conditions that could cause such an entity to appear or that there may be such an entity here or may not but I just don’t know, or conditions are such that nothing would physically prevent such an entity from being here even though it’s definitely not. So avoiding potential entities is a matter of ontological parsimony, which per the Quine episode is not exactly a knock-down argument if you have some particularly motivating counter-argument in favor of such entities. Though it still seems like, even you admit them, that it’s not that you’re adding a property to make such a potential real but that you’re swapping out one entity for another of a fundamentally different type.
From what I remember of Russell’s account, it was just a matter of “here’s a formulation that will avoid obviously absurd consequences like the ontological argument.”
From reading through the Stanford Encyclopedia account of Russell’s position (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/#FreRusExiNotProInd), I find it perplexing that such contortions are made to avoid conferring “existence” predicate status. If it really is simply a struggle to banish the ontological argument, it seems like a very circuitous and unnecessary route, as I’ll get to in a moment. Russell’s stance seems to ignore both the seeming fact that there is a difference between something which is imaginable and something which is objectively instantiated, and the fact that this difference is conventionally and pragmatically communicated using the predicates ‘existent’ and ‘nonexistent’.
In that entry, a component of Russell’s argument is described thusly: “‘Spider Man does not exist’ does not involve ascribing the predicate ‘is nonexistent’ to the subject ‘Spider Man’.” (The entry uses Ronald McDonald, but I don’t have a good concept of what Ronald McDonald is… burger clown? With what properties beyond his familiar appearance? Let’s use a character with a more well-known identity, Spider Man.)
This seems to me perfectly incorrect. Spider Man certainly is nonexistent in the usual sense; the cumulative idea represented by the features of Spider Man and called by that name is not instantiated. It is well known that Spider Man is fictional; to say “Spider Man does not exist” is to say that the cumulative properties making up the idea ‘Spider Man’ are only imaginary, and that there is no objective feature of the world that we could find with those qualities. For example, central to the idea of Spider Man is that he is a man; men are instantiated, yet Spider Man is not instantiated, therefore it is not true that Spider Man is a man– Spider Man is only an idea, and it a definite component of that idea that he is only a man in concept.
The concept of ‘Spider Man’ certainly exists, and you could ask most anyone on the street to describe Spider Man and you would get a fitting description, but of course, just because abstract properties can be brought together into an idea and referenced by a title does not mean the idea referenced by that title is part of or can be brought into physical reality.
The conventional logical predicate “nonexistent” is perfectly suitable as a way of saying “uninstantiated”, but there is a further, harder definition, which is convenient when discussing things which are logically impossible, and are not only uninstantiated in the physical world but unrealizable in the abstract. For example, a square circle is not only impossible to bring into physical being, it is impossible to construct logically. A square circle could perhaps be considered Nonexistent; truly and permanently absent from existence. Our concept “square circle” only points to a paradoxical intersection of two abstract ideas which cannot be reconciled one with the other.
On the other hand, the conventional logical predicate “existent” is perfectly suitable for something which is instantiated. It can be used in the past tense for something which once existed, like Napoleon, or can be used in the future tense, e.g. “Tomorrow will exist.” Again, there is a harder definition available, which would include all things which only exist in the abstract, or in the realm of the possible given the fundamental rules of logic (why not use “Existent”?). Spider Man certainly Exists, because the cumulative idea represented by that label certainly exists, however the idea itself does not point to something which exists.
This brings me back to the ontological argument. As I see it, the problem with the ontological argument is not in its conclusion, but in its premise that humans can conceive of a being than which no greater can be conceived. This idea of greatness is not at all well defined (and it is in this fact that the argument’s sleight of hand is hidden); do we believe that humans can conceive of a number greater than which no number can be conceived? Of course not, and in this case we simply point to the fact that we certainly cannot; there is an infinite spectrum of greatness in numerousness. Are we really prepared to conclude based on a concept we cannot define that we can conceive of the absolute outer bounds of that concept? I think anyone who believes they can conceive of a being than which no greater can be conceived is deceived; it sounds like a simple concept, but it is no more conceivable than a number than which no greater can be conceived.
As a side note to your reference to ontological parsimony, I think it clear that the concrete reality we inhabit arises on the basis of abstract possibility (with some realms of abstract possibility more apparent than others, such as the abstract nature of geometry founding the existence of spatiality and extension), so I think an ontology that leaves out abstract possibility for simplicity’s sake is utterly and irredeemably erroneous, and will never successfully describe reality.
I was listening to episode 43 of the PEL earlier today – the one that deals with arguments (including the ontological argument) for the existence of God.
In that episode, the PEL crew examined J.L. Mackie’s book, The Miracle of Theism. Adam, your post reminded me of Mackie’s approach to dealing with the issue of existence as a predicate. Mackie agreed that existence can certainly be included in our concept of an entity. He then pointed out that whether or not the entity in question is actually instantiated is another story, though.
Wes quoted Mackie at about 35 minutes into the episode, Wes quotes Mackie.
“We must still go outside of the concept in order to ascribe existence to the object, even if the concept contains the idea of existence.”
One could also suggest that Spider-Man does in fact exist, but existence or nonexistence are not contained in the concept of his essence, which does include such things as that he is a comic book character, created by Stan Lee and jack Kirby in 1962, who has appeared as well in television shows, films, and toy boxes, and that in various media this fictional character is portrayed as having such and such powers… and that those details are all a part of the essence “Spider-Man.”
If one submits to the fact that those traits which inhere in his being as a fictional character belong to his concept, we could admit that “Spider-Man” “exists” without claiming that existence or nonexistence belongs to his concept. But at this point, we are perhaps using “exists” in a sense differently that you had intended, which was “corporeal entity.” However, I would suggest most peoples concept of “Spider-Man” would be rich enough to include “fictional character” and would not include even the possibility of corporeality for Spider-Man.
Whereas the claims made about God as “ens realissimum” in traditional ontology are much stronger than those made for Spider-Man, and part of God’s concept would be that he serves, among other things, as the ground of being. This belongs to his concept whether or not he actually exists and serves as such. Even if you could claim that he exists in the same way as Spider-Man, as a fictional character or philosophical concept, the concept “God” as presented by Descartes et al did not include those qualities, though perhaps the concept “God” as held by Joseph Campbell does.
This whole conversation centering on what a concept contains assumes a certain phenomenological standpoint, and there are two concepts of me, one containing the trait pragmatist, the other the trait phenomenologist, and they alternate in and out of existence, so I’m uncertain as to whether it is even meaningful to speak of what traits “a” concept “contains.”
As you mentioned, a basic component of Spider-Man’s essence is the property of being a fictional character, but this is the component of his essence which concerns existence and nonexistence, or if you’d like, ‘realness’ and ‘non-realness’. This is the distinction between “objectively instantiated entity” and “merely conceptual union of abstract qualities”.
I would contend that this distinction is essential to any idea, sensation or object. If a thing’s essence comprises the essential qualities which together define that thing, then certainly whether or not a thing is corporeal is contained in those essential qualities.
Let’s try an experiment. Consider my coffee cup, with essential features such as the porcelain material which makes up its form, its green color with a white grid overlaid, its location in space relative to me, and my table, and the blades of grass waving in the breeze over there, its steaming contents. Based on these features, could you tell me whether or not my cup exists, that is, whether or not it is corporeal?
Adam, I would answer “yes” to that, though with the caveat that Spider-Man and your coffee cup are both empirically experienceable things, whereas Descartes’s God is not. That’s the problem with that God–it is entirely conceptual, and not in a testable way like, for instance, math is.
It’s also worth noting that we are using “essence” here in such a way that it includes an entity’s history/relations, which the Whiteheadian in me finds valid but which most essentialists, including, I’m sure, Kant, would not want to go along with. But this is why the traditional doctrine of essential and inessential qualities/accidents is so hard to defend: how does one decide what’s essential? Is the cup’s greenness essential? What about the chemicals and processes used to make it green? The way the sunlight has faded that green? ect…
Ultimately, Kant’s retort to the ontological proof is a bizarrely tortuous argument, yet beautiful in its way. I’m not necessarily trying to defend it, as much as to suggest I don’t think the Spider-Man example refutes it.
I guess this is where “Plane of Immanence” becomes useful as a concept. Kant’s refutation of the ontological proof is completely batshit, but logically compelling and even necessary within that Plane.
Or, to speak Kant:
The concepts “Spider-Man” and “the cup” are products of the Understanding.
The concept God is comes about through the Pure Reason.
Thus, they must be handled differently as the former two involve the Sensuous Intuition whereas the latter does not.
(It’s been a few years since I read the Critique of Pure Reason and I don’t have a copy handy, but I think I’ve got the distinctions properly stated here. Correct me if I’m wrong.)
This reminds me of Russell vs. Meinong. I’m a little torn in that debate, but Adam, when you say “Based on these features, could you tell me whether or not my cup exists, that is, whether or not it is corporeal?”, do you really think the quality of corporeality (res extensa) implies the “quality” of existence? When I imagine a unicorn, I imagine a physically extended thing; but surely unicorns don’t exist?
Of course Unicorns include the abstract concept of extension, yet they do not exist because they do not have the quality of physical extension. This really is the central point here- qualities can be brought together into one idea in the abstract without applying to any actual object in physical existence, and there is a distinction between these things which are merely conceptual and things which have physical instantiation, like horses.
(To digress, I think it’s funny that Unicorns are the prototypical example of a fantastical creature when they are just white horses with a horn stuck on their heads… not the most imaginative mystical creature, but certainly ever-prevalent.)
The logical predicate “existent”, or “real” is conventionally used to make this distinction, and it’s extremely odd and nonsensical that philosophers try to deny the logical utility and applicability of this predicate. As I explained in the really long post, it is definitely the case that abstract ideas without extension exist in their own right, but that they represent a synthesis of concepts which are not drawn directly from the properties of an extended object.
The point in the case of the cup’s existence is that without the use of the “existent/nonexistent” predicate, I haven’t given you the whole story about my cup, and its existence/nonexistence cannot be determined from its essence when this predicate is left out, though Matt claimed it could be.
Some of this will be a repetition of what’s above, but I posted that before seeing that the conversation had continued somewhat, here below.
I’m fine with the statement “Spider-Man does not exist” as used in a pragmatic way. It’s pretty straightforward and I don’t think most people would be confused by it. I think moving from that to a refutation of Kant as presented above is problematic, because it presumes that the concept “Spider-Man” does contain everything he is portrayed as doing in various media, but not the mediation itself; we are restricted to the same concept of Spider-Man as would be held by, for example, Mary Jane. But if the concept “Spider-Man” is allowed to include the material conditions and meditations which are inseparable from Spider-Man’s this-worldly actuality, then it’s hard to claim “Spider-Man does not exist” in a rigorously philosophical way, though one could claim “There is no man that exists such that he has the abilities Spider-Man is portrayed as having.” And if we are operating with this latter concept, the example of Spider-Man does not refute Kant.
I’m not trying to say Kant is “right,” merely that I don’t think this argument takes him down.
His argument remains, to me, rather beautiful within the context of his time and place, the tradition he inherited, and the metaphysics he puts forth. Though someone putting forth either that argument or Descartes’s earlier proof today would have to do some amazing metaphysical gymnastics to not appear immediately absurd.
Matt- In reference to my cup, when you say: “Adam, I would answer “yes” to that, though with the caveat that Spider-Man and your coffee cup are both empirically experienceable things”, it turns out you are wrong, not through any fault of your own, but because I didn’t qualify whether the cup exists or not. In fact, I do not have a green porcelain coffee cup, and the features I described were purely imaginary (so of course, it is not empirically experienceable). That’s the main point of this debate on whether or not “exist” is a property which existing things have; it definitely is.
For a final example, I’m sitting outside looking at a few existent trees around a lawn. I can imagine the lawn being planted with hundreds of trees, and could describe what that looks like. However, of course those trees do not have the property of existence; the idea of those trees has the property of existence, but the imaginary trees do not. These imaginary trees themselves have the property of “nonexistent”, though the idea of these imaginary trees itself has the property of “existent”.
I agree that Kant’s ideas were beautiful and defensible in his time, but I strongly believe that we shouldn’t take them for granted, or consider the only valid philosophical understanding a “post-Kantian” one, as if he really was as infallible as he believed.
Also, when you say, “But this is why the traditional doctrine of essential and inessential qualities/accidents is so hard to defend: how does one decide what’s essential? Is the cup’s greenness essential? What about the chemicals and processes used to make it green? The way the sunlight has faded that green? ect…”, I disagree that the idea of essential qualities is hard to defend (whether or not this jives with the traditional doctrine): a thing’s essential qualities are all the distinctions which make that thing what it is, so the cup’s physical history (all the questions you posed) are essential to it, as is the cup’s spatiotemporal relationship with all things, and all logical qualities which denote the cup on the one hand and the full entirety of non-cup existence on the other hand. Existence is an infinitely complex and perfectly interwoven place. This idea is based on the ontology given in “The Fates Unwind Infinity”, which we had a reading group for in Not School. Check out chapters 3 and 4: http://www.scribd.com/doc/87848420/The-Fates-Unwind-Infinity#page=16
So the cup does not exist. This doesn’t change the argument. The fact remains that the existence or not of Adam’s green coffee cup is empirically verifiable. Not so with God. That’s the difference between him (Him?) and Spider-Man, the cup, ect.
Also, I’d agree with your definition of “essential qualities,” but that use of it strays quite far from traditional uses of that term, thus rendering it not the best term to be used here; by that older logic, anything relational would be accidental, and the problem then becomes differentiating between that which comes about though an entity’s relations with other entities, and that which belongs to that entity itself. I, holist that I am, would argue that to be an entity means precisely to relate to other entities, to change and be changed by them, such that there is a blending (which is not a non-differentiation) which makes it impossible to pin such things down precisely. This is why Whitehead will refer to “actual occasions” and their “prehensions” rather than substances with essential and inessential qualities, or why buddhists will say that all beings are without an abiding self.
Also. in response to your remark:
‘I agree that Kant’s ideas were beautiful and defensible in his time, but I strongly believe that we shouldn’t take them for granted, or consider the only valid philosophical understanding a “post-Kantian” one, as if he really was as infallible as he believed.’
I agree! I’m an avid reader of Whitehead, Deleuze, and the new ‘Speculative Realists,’ all of whom make open assaults on certain claims of Kantianism that have been more or less taken for granted by the last two centuries of (at least continental) philosophy. I highly recommend Quentin Meillassoux’s “After Finitude” for more on this. I was merely trying to say, at the risk of sounding repetitious, that I don’t think this particular argument refutes Kant, even if I agree that, outside of its context, Kant’s argument is absurd.
What’s called for is, perhaps, not a refutation of Kant’s refutation, but a refutation of at least parts of Kant’s whole system, the underpinnings belonging to which are the only things that can prop up his rejoinder to Descartes.
I actually think you and I agree as it relates to the metaphysics of the issue. Where we differ is in our assessment of the merits of arguments for and against a particular proposition of Kant’s, one which is relevant more for historical reasons than it is for any contemporary discussions of God. Though, to the extent people still try to proved God with the ontological argument, as here and there they do, some grounding in Kant can be helpful.
Put perhaps most simply, it’s wrong to say that unicorns exist, but correct to say that the idea of unicorns exists (because, indeed, it is not the unicorn which exists but the concept describing unicorns). On the other hand, it is correct to say both that horses exist, and to say that the idea of horses exists.