Proclus and Relativism

In my last post, I argued that relativism may actually entail objectivity. In trying to think through what sort of objectivity would be entailed and how it comes about, I found myself thinking back to Neoplatonic models. So my purposes here are twofold: (1) to analyze the case of spatio-temporal relativity and show in what since space-time exists, and (2) to attempt to rehabilitate Neoplatonic modes of expression to show that they do in fact have sense and are not merely outdated linguistic games.

In Proclus' system, there are triads consisting of Unparticipated-Participated-Participant, or, perhaps better, Unpossessed-Possessed-Possessor. There is some Form, say of human being. It may be helpful to spell out what this Form is not. It is not a human being itself (and so escapes Aristotle's "third man" argument). It is not the universal "human being", which is a concept derived from our abstracting from individual human beings. The Form of human being is called by the name "human being" because it is their (formal) cause, and not because of what it itself is. It is not some abstract Form that could exist without concrete human beings, floating ethereally up in some Platonic heaven. It always exists along with participants; what is at question is the formal priority.

However, this Form itself is Unparticipated/Unpossessed. This is not the humanity of any particular human being; it is the formal cause of humanity as a particular reality. The humanity of any particular human being is the participated/possessed form. Every human being has their own humanity. The concrete human being is then the participant/possessor of the individual form.

How does this relate to spatio-temporal relativism? Let's start backwards. There are concrete physical entities inhabiting what we call time and space. These are the participants/possessors. Now, we can talk about their particular locations in time and space, which are the possessed/participated spatio-temporal frameworks. All actual spatio-temporal frameworks are (a) relative, and (b) based on concrete beings. (In addition, there are spatio-temporal frameworks which are purely formal and mathematical, which correspond to other features in Proclus' system which I will not explain here). There is no space-time existing apart from these frameworks, but rather, space-time is always a specific space-time for each being.

However, it is not as if we were purely equivocating on space-time for each individual. There is some reality there which allows for them all to join together in a spato-temporal reality, even though they participate in different frameworks. This would be the unparticipated/unpossessed Form. It itself is not space-time, or spatio-temporal; whatever involves space and time must exist in some given perspective. In other words, space and time are realities that we experience as located in given perspectives and make no sense without being perspectival. Space-time is always space-time as experienced by some entity.

However, there is something which allows all of the different perspectives to be. It cannot be space-time in general (which is merely an abstraction, since real space-time is always in a given perspective), nor can it be the space-time of any individual perspective (since this would only exist for that perspective). Instead, it is the formal cause of the space-time for all perspectives, as a particular formal reality which is not itself space-time. It is that ground upon which relative spatio-temporal frameworks can take place.

Why posit this ground, then? Why not just stop at the different relative positions and be done with it? The different relative positions (as determined by concrete, actually existing entities, and not first and foremost as mathematical forms) are still the only fully concrete realities in the Proclean model. However, they do not explain themselves. There is a community amongst them that needs to be explained, and if we stop at mere individuality, it is difficult to see how we do this. By positing an unparticipated Form of space-time, we can explain the spatio-temporal openness of one entity to another even though space and time can only exist and be described according to individual frameworks.

Relativism vs. Subjectivism

Concerning ethics, I think that there are lot of people who have a knee-jerk reaction to relativism. As far as I can tell, this is because they think that this reduces morality to something subjective, and hence something arbitrary. But this need not be the cause, and perhaps is actually something incompatible with relativism. For an analogy, let us take the case of space-time relativism in physics. This does not mean that there is no space or time; on the contrary, Einstein thought that by showing the relativity of space and time to individual perspectives, he had proven their objectivity. If they truly were subjective, then a single individual perspective should account for them (such as Euclidean mathematics in Kant's system). But the fact that space and time can only be viewed within given perspectives, and yet these perspectives hang together, show that space and time are something real outside of any one given perspective.

Similarly, why is there a problem in saying that moral claims are relative to a given perspective? This is not to say that they are merely individual, but rather that we can only know claims from a given standpoint. Or, to put it another way, we can only be virtuous within our given contexts. For an example, the virtue of generosity requires some sort of wealth to give away. It only makes sense within a certain context of having something to give away. Other contexts demand different virtues. If you don't have any wealth, you can't engage in the same activities as those who are independently wealthy. So in the same way the practices involved in living in a Chinese society may differ from those involved in living in an American society, based on what is available, how things will affect the persons around oneself, etc. It is not clear that there need be general moral rules guiding these practices for them all to be the best ethical practices, other than some basic sense of "the good". (Edit: where "the good" would seem to entail some knowledge of the natures of whatever we are talking about; the good for human beings is what lets human beings be most human, and so on. This may be relative to whatever is talked about, or there may be some general sense of goodness/aesthetic sense applicable to different cases with practice and insight.)

Further, it is not clear that there need to be extrinsic moral principles to say that some systems of ethical behavior are inferior. The Nazi regime doesn't seem to be self-sustaining. What happens when all of the current "others" are sent off to concentration camps? Either a fundamental shift in ethics must take place (which should have existed in the first place), or there will be a need for a new superior race and hence inferior differences. The cycle must continue, and there cannot be a stable society. So the system falls apart internally. Now, psychology and sociology may be able to supply a better story for why this would happen than the naive one I present here, but the point remains the same. A society that exists by setting itself from others cannot exist apart from some sort of others.

If all of this is correct, then relativism is a form of moral realism; in fact, it may be a better form than moral absolutism. Why? Because absolutism (saying that there are these specific moral absolutes) still feels the need to posit the absolutes; there would not be morality unless we take an active stance in making morality exist. Relativism lets things be what they are, and trusts (hopefully rationally and empirically) that morality will really arise from the natures of things. And if it cannot arise from the natures of things, in what sense could it possibly be objective?

Thoughts from Preparing Class Readings

In preparing readings for my Intro to Philosophy course which I am teaching, I noticed that there seem to be two points running through every single thinker, no matter how diverse their views are on other topics. One is that we ultimately need to understand things on our own, and that explanations and teaching can only point us in the right direction; we must utilize our own power to see the truth for ourselves. The other is that the things we encounter in our daily lives are only means and must be treated as such, without attachment. Plato, Aristotle (albeit to a lesser degree), Augustine, the Confucians, the Daoists, and the Buddhists all hold these things. What points does anyone consider to be important, and pretty universal despite different narratives legitimating them? To what extent do the stories we tell surrounding these basic points matter (asked as a legitimate question and not merely as a dismissal of detailed thinking)?

Are there Atoms?

Or, alternatively, what does it mean for something to be false, or explanatory, etc.? Parmenides holds that what is, is, and what is not, is in no way at all. Which seems to be pretty straightforward, and I've been thinking that there is something right on and profound here. It has sometimes been applied to the problem of evil: evil is a privation of being (what "is not") and so does not actually exist. It is like the hole in an umbrella: you feel the rain falling on you, but not because of what is there. Put in another way, any reality evil has is relative, and not absolute. Even a dictator is still pursuing some good in oppressing subjects; pursuing evil purely for its own sake would be nonsensical on this view.

But I don't wish to discuss traditional accounts of the problem of evil; the relation between goodness and being is not straightforward. I am bringing this illustration up for the sake of another issue: what is truth? What does it mean for something to correspond to reality? A statement is true if it says of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not. But what is not, is in no way at all; so how does it even make sense to talk of what is absolutely false?

In order to try to understand the problem here, let us take scientific theories: specifically, are there atoms? On a simple view, we say that atoms exist and make up the world. There are carbon atoms and oxygen atoms and gold and hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, etc. But then we turn around and see that these are constructs, models we make in our understanding to navigate the world, and so do not actually exist in the world, but are merely tools for us in our thinking, arising out of specific historical circumstances.

I am proposing that we take another step, which I've suggested before on this blog. The problem is that both of these views assume that there must be some sort of correspondence for there to be truth. What is explained and the explaining are two distinct things which must match up. But why not say that the explaining, the unifying of experience, is itself the explanation? Insofar as atoms unify our view of the world, they exist. They do not exist because they unify our worldview; this unification is their existence, where this sort of explanation and unification takes place in our ongoing interaction with the world and not with us on one side and the world on another.

If this is right, then falsity is relative as well as non-being. Statements come from a context and speak to that context; some better than others, to be sure, but there is also some explanatory power of statements and so some way in which they have truth, since a contextless and therefore non-unifying statement is meaningless. Even a con artist or conspiracy theorist needs to make statements that resemble the truth, and so to that extent cannot be purely false; it's just that closer examination would find much better explanations (that is, ones that unify experience more and that unify more experiences; namely, the experience that you will lose your money to the con artist and sanity to the conspiracy theorist).

What about fictional characters? They would exist as well, but only in their own fashion. Santa Claus must exist, as a fictional character; the notion of "Santa Claus" pulls together various social narratives and practices and children's games, and so is real precisely insofar as it does this. It is not real insofar as we would expect to come upon a sleigh with flying reindeer on Christmas Eve. Insofar as the notion would include this, it would create disunity with our experience.

Non-conceptual Religious Experience?

I was getting into a conversation the other day about religious experience, and in particular about whether anyone could have a non-conceptual, direct experience of the Trinity (or, if you prefer, God in general, Brahman, Thusness, etc.). I held that it is always an experiencing-as, an experience that also has an interpretation (not that the experience and the interpretation are two different realities), and the response I got back was that this was a result of a Western split between reason and faith/theology/the non-rational, and doesn't come up elsewhere.

But this doesn't seem to work. Just because another group believes in square circles doesn't mean that they exist, and I am holding that a non-conceptual experience that nevertheless legitimates a particular view is similarly nonsensical. If the experience itself is non-conceptual, it does not provide intrinsic evidence for anything articulable. If it could, it would have to already have some conceptual structure to it.

So does it provide any evidence at all? It seems that it could provide extrinsic evidence, by which I mean this: I join up with a group, the group tells me that I will attain a certain experience by following certain steps, and lo-and-behold I have that experience. Considering that the group has been right about this, I have some prima facie evidence for accepting their interpretation of the experience. The experience itself may be non-conceptual, and so there would still be nothing within the experience to give evidence in itself, but there could still some reality that actually occurred during the experience which is articulable about which the group is right.

So my experience of God may itself be non-conceptual, the experience itself not giving me grounds for saying that it is of God as opposed to of a tree, but it could still be that I had actually experienced God rather than a tree and I would now have some extrinsic evidence of this because of the methods of practice and interpretation of the group at hand.

However, different groups have their own non-conceptual experiences, and offer different interpretations. An interpretation of the experience as one of the Triniarian life is not the same as a recognition of divine Tawhiid (unity/unification) or of ultimate Shunyata (emptiness). The experience doesn't validate the group; the group simply helps to give an interpretation to the experience (although, this is not something separate from the experience and is part of the prerequisites for experiencing it at all).

So, to what extent could religious experience actually give evidence that a given religious group is right? It appears that the only thing that it can do is to suggest that a group with its traditions, etc. has a sort of efficacy. It says absolutely nothing about whether that group is right compared to other groups. Experience can tell us that a given path is worthwhile, but says nothing about whether there are other paths. In fact, if we take other people's experiences seriously and not be ad hoc about our own, religious experience would seem to entail the positive conclusion that there are multiple worthwhile paths.

How to Stay Excited about Pointless Stuff

Continuing from the last post, how is it that we hold excitement for any given idea, culture, or whatever? I remember starting off in philosophy, thinking about all the grand ideas and the exoticness of it all. I was enthralled. But I gradually started losing that fervor when I saw it in perspective. Maybe we can't actually get metaphysical knowledge, and maybe it isn't really all that important anyhow. And maybe we need to be concerned with the little things and not always with the big questions.

This perspective is good, I think, but I also became pretty apathetic about what I do. I started churning out work because it was what I do, not because I had any love left for it; after all, what in the material actually made it worth that love? Beauty always seems to be something which exceeds that which we call beautiful; there is no explanation for it in the subject matter (or the pretty face) itself.

But I think that view is wrong as well. We can realize that our favorite subjects aren't really as important as we make them out to be. However, why shouldn't we get excited about what we can? There may be absolutely nothing objective about this excitement, but who cares? Let someone get excited about it, so that someone may devote their time and attention to making that portion of our discourse better.

How is it that we can hold to our own ideas, to make our own philosophical arguments? We hold our positions in order to give them their dues. Think of a sports game: two teams are playing, and what really matters is that there is a good game. But there cannot be a good game unless each team is trying their best to win, even though the goodness of the game is not dependent on any specific team winning. We can attach ourselves to our philosophical theories in a like spirit. We could be wrong; what really matters at the end of the day, though, is that the truth is found, and perhaps the "team" for which we are rooting will lose. Nevertheless, if there are no advocates of a given position, or no advocates who sincerely argue for it, it cannot be be given its due, it cannot put up a fair fight. So we hold to what portion of reality we can see and we articulate it as well as possible so that on the whole the truth may be discovered. We attach ourselves to the position for the sake of the whole and not for the sake of the part.

To some extent, I think this is what the mystics mean who say that love/the good/the beautiful is beyond being and reason. Now, they are considering some absolute beauty/goodness, but an absolute that must of necessity shine through in every individual thing. Reason itself, and pragmatism itself, gives no ultimate basis. We must take a step and simply want something for its own sake before we have anything about which to reason or be practical. Without something pulling us forward, there would be no world in which we could work.

One issue that remains: this is all well and good, but it is still the musings of a priveleged white male with the leisure to write a philosophy blog. Maybe some of us can devote our time to pursuits such as metaphysics, but what about those starving on the streets or fighting for basic rights? And this is a terrible situation, one which we must not make light of. If we are caught up in our ecstatic visions and someone needs a cup of water, give them the water. But there is also the respect in which we feed people and secure rights for them not as ends in themselves, but so that we can shore up the deficiencies of our society and procure for all of its inhabitants the most authentic human life possible, one which can be concerned with the matters I'm talking about here and not with worrying about basic needs. So we must take care of those who need care, but without some final goal in sight for why we are doing such, we will dissolve into aimlessness and bickering.