Skip to main content

Doubts and determinations

It was nice to visit Cris (Borgoni) and her new department at Graz. I gave a talk on the ontology of doubts as I am beginning to work on chapter 4 of my book which approaches contingency not to facticity but to the absence of facts (see slides in the last post). Mariam David has brought up precisely the issue of the two ways to understand the absence of fact: i. the Quine/Hartry Field sense in which there are no facts but the snow is white, the grass is green, 4 is the smallest non-prime etc and ii. my sense in which the quarrel is not really with the ontological status of things like snow is white, I'm happy to consider that they would be facts if they were true, but none of them are. To be sure, there are two strengths of ontology of doubts. The one that takes facts to be non-existent (hinge propositions could then be a façon de parler, or a useful fiction so that they don't have to be true to be good. This is the strong one, anti-realist about facts. It is, by contrast, realist about indeterminations (the non-determinate content-cum-attitude that I associate to doubts). The weaker version is realist about both doubts and facts, both determinations and indeterminations. Both versions can be formulated in terms of a possible ontological content to doubts - as beliefs are sometimes thought to have a possible ontological content as they can reach all the way to facts in the world, as identity theories of truth are prone to point out. Both versions are argued for using the traditional skeptic arguments and I take the tension between Aenesidemus and Sextus to be exemplary of the kind of dispute that takes place in the confrontation. The ontologist of doubt plagues on skeptical arguments. It is the counterpart of Neopyrronism, as of all related positions, in the same way that one could ascribe not only skepticism but also a metaphysics to Hume. The skeptic hits back claiming that such ontology is dogma. The ontologist of doubt counters that the skeptic has been dogmatic about the existence of determinations - or facts - in the world. Realism about determinations is a substantial thesis and, as such, it should command suspension of belief.

Some of the discussion turned around the way I characterize doubts (and determinations). I used the expression "attitude-cum-content" above and it is really flimsy. In the talk I had troubles committing to either the thesis that beliefs and doubts differ in attitude but can share the same content (a simple application of the idea of propositional attitude) and the contrasting one that contents differ. Almost surely, I can embrace the first less controversial thesis. However, I want to be able to draw on things like the identity theory of truth to say that doubts have the content of indeterminations in the world. My flimsy expression, "attitude-cum-content" means something like: a content (that could be the same of the one in a belief) that commands an attitude. That is, a content associated to some unsettled state that is out there. It is not simply an attitude for if it is realism about doubt could be understood merely as realism about the content of a doubt. I don't really know the way out. I rehearsed the idea that doubts have different contents because they at least implicitly deal in disjunction ("the snow is white or the snow is not white", say). This is a way to make clear that it is the indetermination that the ontologist of doubt is realist about , and not the determinate proposition one doubts.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hunky, Gunky and Junky - all Funky Metaphysics

Been reading Bohn's recent papers on the possibility of junky worlds (and therefore of hunky worlds as hunky worlds are those that are gunky and junky - quite funky, as I said in the other post). He cites Whitehead (process philosophy tends to go hunky) but also Leibniz in his company - he wouldn't take up gunk as he believed in monads but would accept junky worlds (where everything that exists is a part of something). Bohn quotes Leibniz in On Nature Itself «For, although there are atoms of substance, namely monads, which lack parts, there are no atoms of bulk, that is, atoms of the least possible extension, nor are there any ultimate elements, since a continuum cannot be composed out of points. In just the same way, there is nothing greatest in bulk nor infinite in extension, even if there is always something bigger than anything else, though there is a being greatest in the intensity of its perfection, that is, a being infinite in power.» And New Essays: ... for there is nev...
1 comment
Read more

Talk on ultrametaphysics

 This is the text of my seminar on ultrametaphysics on Friday here in Albuquerque. An attempt at a history of ultrametaphysics in five chapters Hilan Bensusan I begin with some of the words in the title. First, ‘ultrametaphysics’, then ‘history’ and ‘chapters’. ‘Ultrametaphysics’, which I discovered that in my mouth could sound like ‘ autre metaphysics’, intends to address what comes after metaphysics assuming that metaphysics is an endeavor – or an epoch, or a project, or an activity – that reaches an end, perhaps because it is consolidated, perhaps because it has reached its own limits, perhaps because it is accomplished, perhaps because it is misconceived. In this sense, other names could apply, first of all, ‘meta-metaphysics’ – that alludes to metaphysics coming after physics, the books of Aristotle that came after Physics , or the task that follows the attention to φύσις, or still what can be reached only if the nature of things is considered. ‘Me...
Post a Comment
Read more

Memory assemblages

My talk here at Burque last winter I want to start by thanking you all and acknowledging the department of philosophy, the University of New Mexico and this land, as a visitor coming from the south of the border and from the land of many Macroje peoples who themselves live in a way that is constantly informed by memory, immortality and their ancestors, I strive to learn more about the Tiwas, the Sandia peoples and other indigenous communities of the area. I keep finding myself trying to find their marks around – and they seem quite well hidden. For reasons to do with this very talk, I welcome the gesture of directing our thoughts to the land where we are; both as an indication of our situated character and as an archive of the past which carries a proliferation of promises for the future. In this talk, I will try to elaborate and recommend the idea of memory assemblage, a central notion in my current project around specters and addition. I begin by saying that I ...
Post a Comment
Read more