[MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[Blodgett, Nikolas]

david said:

*"We don't need Truth to be Objective, Fixed, Absolute, or Eternal and we
can't have that kind of truth anyway. But we do need truth to be vigorous
enough and strong enough to kill lies, bullshit, fanaticism, propaganda,
honest mistakes and good old fashioned stupidity. We need excellence in
thought and speech and ideas that actually work when they're put into
practice.*
&

*"Royce's notion is truth is so highly idealized and elevated that it might
as well be god. That's the essence of vicious intellectualism, the
denigration of actual experience and the deification of abstract concepts.
Reification is the error of granting existential status to the products of
human reflection, of mistaking thoughts for ontological realities.
Idealists and theists aren't the only ones who commit this error, of
course, but they're far more obvious about it.*

ron replies:



*"In the marketplace of ideas end goalsAnd ultimate truths are an easy sell
itProvides simple powerful tools to navigate life. But, having said that it
must be asked how honest it is to sell an idea like that knowing it isn't
what it says it is.*

John replied (to ron as well as dave):
quoting Royce
*"For one finds what it is that one must construct even if one denies that,*












*in the ideal world of free construction which one is seeking to
define,that construction has a place. In brief, all such researches
illustrate thefact that while the truth which we acknowledge is indeed
relative to thewill  which acknowledges that truth, still what one may call
the pure formof willing is an absolute form, a form which sustains itself
in the veryeffort to violate its own laws. We thus find out absolute truth,
but it isabsolute truth about the nature of the creative will in terms of
which weconceive all truths.  Now it is perfectly true that such absolute
truth isnot accessible to the empirical world, in so far as we deal with
individualphenomena. But it is also true that we all of us conceive the
unity of theworld of experience — the meaning, the sense, the connection of
its facts —in terms of those categories which express precisely this very
form of ourcreative activity.*
&
*"The sum of them all is that ontology, what I mean any positive theory of
an*






*external reality as such, is of necessity myth-making; that however,
suchontology may have enough moral worth to make it a proper object of
effortso long as people know what they mean by it. … the ideal of
thetruth-seeker is not the attainment of any agreement with an
externalreality  but the attainment of a perfect agreement among all
truth-seekingbeings;  that the ethical philosophy is the highest
philosophy.*

I reply:
I have a little trouble keeping up, but I wanted to contribute my thoughts
humbly. If, as I've believed recently, that the human processes of Logic
and Creativity are equal (and have to do with the two hemispheres as well
as the inwards to outwards growth we evolved) that we have a resulting
situation that is at once Static AND Dynamic. If our current evolutionary
form is fairly uniform, and all truth-seekers are in general agreement,
then the current form of Static truth can be a capitalized 'Truth'.
However, with the equal creative-will Rorty mentioned we can adjust that
truth as needed, as Dan pointed out - which I believe is a feature of
science of which dogma is not capable. As humans continue to evolve, then
so will the Truth as seekers see it, too. So science, unlike dogma, is
capable of changing with the Dynamic flow of the Universe - just as we are
capable of evolving, and thus there is an Absolute and a Relative element
of Truth .... just as we are built upon complimentary dichotomous functions
of our nervous system, through which we attain empirical experience upon
which our generally agreed upon 'knowledge' is built. I offer up my
thoughts for dissection .....

On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 3:11 PM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:

> dmb,
>
> I disagree with your conclusion about Royce, of course, but I'm glad to see
> you taking him on somewhat rationally.
>
> On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 12:16 PM, david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Charlene Seigfried, paraphrasing William James,
> > says intellectualism “became vicious already with Socrates and Plato, who
> > deified conceptualization and denigrated the ever-changing flow of
> > experience, thus forgetting and falsifying the origin of concepts as
> > humanly constructed extracts from the temporal flux.”
> >
>
> Jc:  Royce agrees.
>
> "the modern assault upon mere intellectualism is well founded. The truth of
> our assertions is indeed definable only by taking account of the meaning of
> our own individual attitudes of will, and the truth, whatever else it is,
> is at least instrumental in helping us towards the goal of all human
> volition. The only question is whether the will I really mean, aims at
> doing something that • has a final and eternal meaning."
>
> I believe this is somewhat akin to the quandry Pirsig expressed in his
> "defining Quality" soliloquy - that is, a metaphysics of Quality is
> essentially a definition of Quality and since Quality is indefinable, a
> "degenerate activity" that somehow we are drawn into by our impulse to
> define metaphysically.
>
> But Royce states quite clearly that  "all logic is the logic of the will.
> There is no pure intellect. Thought is a mode of action, a mode of action
> distinguished from other modes mainly by its internal clearness of
> self-consciousness, by its relatively free control of its own procedure,
> and by the universality, the impersonal fairness and obviousness of its
> aims and of its motives.
>
> An idea in the consciousness of a thinker is simply a present consciousness
> of some expression of purpose, — a plan of action. A judgment is an act of
> a reflective and self-conscious character, an act whereby one accepts or
> rejects an idea as a sufficient expression of the very purpose that is each
> time in question. Our whole objective world is meanwhile defined for each
> of us in terms of our ideas.
>
> General assertions about the meaning of our ideas are reflective acts
> whereby we acknowledge and accept certain ruling principles of action. And
> in respect of all these aspects of doctrine I find myself at one with
> recent voluntarism, whether the latter takes the form of instrumentalism,
> or insists upon some more individualistic theory of truth.
>
> But for my part, in spite, or in fact because of this my voluntarism, I
> cannot rest in any mere relativism. Individualism is right in saying, "I
> will to credit this or that opinion." But individualism is wrong in
> supposing that I can ever be content with my own will in as far as it is
> merely an individual will. The will to my mind is to all of us nothing but
> a thirst for complete and conscious self-possession, for fullness of life.
> And in terms of this its central motive, the will defines the truth that it
> endlessly seeks as a truth that possesses completeness, totality,
> self-possession, and therefore absoluteness."
>
>
>
> > dmb says: "Royce is defending himself against James' criticism of what
> the
> > latter called "vicious abstractionism" or "vicious intellectualism".
> Royce
> > is trying to deny the contrast between intellectualism and pragmatism by
> > reframeing it as "a contrast between the will that is loyal to truth as
> an
> > universal ideal, and the will that is concerned with its own passing
> > caprices". "The only question is whether the will really means to aim at
> > doing something that has a final and eternal meaning," Royce says.
>  Please
> > notice two things here. Royce has construed pragmatism as concerned with
> > passing caprices, which is incorrect if not slanderous. The second thing
> to
> > notice is that Royce wants to distance himself from intellectualism but
> the
> > claims he makes are exactly what James meant by "vicious abstractionism".
> > Truth that is "loyal to a universal ideal" and truth that has a "final
> and
> > eternal meaning" is also a pretty good way to describe the views that
> > Pirsig rejects in Plato and Hegel.
> >
> >
> Jc:  Royce's point above  is that we aim at (thirst for) final and eternal
> meanings, even while our grasping of that truth is relative.
>
>  dmb:
>
>
> > It's also interesting to see that Royce's view is centrally motivated by
> > his personal wishes and yet his personal wish is that reality was far
> more
> > than just personal wishes. He says, "individualism is wrong in supposing
> > that I can ever be content with my own will in as far as it is merely an
> > individual will." Royce is contrasting that with a different will, one
> that
> > "defines the truth that it endlessly seeks as a truth that possesses
> > completeness, totality, self-possession, and therefore absoluteness."
> > (Sounds like Schopenhauer.)
>
>
> Jc:  It is true that Royce admits he was heavily influenced by
> Schopenhauer.   He was also heavily influenced by James, but the main
> thrust of his thought was toward synthesis -
>
>
> "The result appears in our ethical search for absolute standards, and in
> our metaphysical thirst for an absolute interpretation of the universe, — a
> thirst as unquenchable as the over-individual will that expresses itself
> through all our individual activities is itself world-wide, active, and in
> its essence absolute.
>
> In recognizing that all truth is relative to the will, the three motives of
> the modern theories of truth are at one. To my mind they, therefore, need
> not remain opposed motives. Let us observe their deeper harmony, and  bring
> them into synthesis. And then what I have called the trivialities of mere
> instrumentalism will appear' as what they are, — fragmentary hints, and
> transient expressions, of that will whose life is universal, whose form is
> absolute, and whose laws are at once those of logic, of ethics, of the
> unity of experience, and of whatever gives sense to life."
>
>
> dmb:
>
> It's very seductive language and just about anyone can understand, at least
> > to some extent, Royce's desire for complete, total, and absolute truth.
> But
> > there are two major problems here. 1) Epistemologically speaking, we just
> > cannot have that kind of truth and so Royce is literally asking for the
> > impossible.
>
>
> Jc:  I reiterate, isn't that much the same as Pirsig's "metaphysics,
> drinking and bar ladies"?  A metaphysics of Quality is impossible, but we
> do it anyway, no?
>
>
> dmb:
>
>
> > 2) Holding beliefs contrary to the relevant evidence or unsupported by
> the
> > relevant evidence is unethical. It's dishonest. It's intellectually
> sleazy,
> > so to speak. (And endorsing that basic ethical standard is one more
> reason
> > to reject the notion that pragmatic truth is just about individual
> caprice.)
> >
> >
> >
>
> Royce's notion is truth is so highly idealized and elevated that it might
> > as well be god. That's the essence of vicious intellectualism, the
> > denigration of actual experience and the deification of abstract
> concepts.
> > Reification is the error of granting existential status to the products
> of
> > human reflection, of mistaking thoughts for ontological realities.
> > Idealists and theists aren't the only ones who commit this error, of
> > course, but they're far more obvious about it.
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > dmb
>
>
>
>
> while the fragment of actual experience we call the present seems concrete,
> while the act of thought by which it is apprehended seems abstract, the
> situation is in truth the reverse.  The fragmentary experience is abstract
> and the generalization about it is the genuine act.  If this sounds like
> Hegel to you,  it should.  Royce was not a follower of Hegel, but the
> lesson of concrete universals was not lost on him; it became in Royce’s
> hands the reality of concrete generals.  Royce avoided nominalism without
> giving way to Hegelian or Bradleyan Absolutism, but gave the Hegelians
> their due by allowing that philosophy does and must trade in these kinds
> of  universals.  But contrary to Hegel and Bradley, Royce does not accord
> to philosophy any kind of overall authority when it comes to acts of
> knowing.
>
> In a letter written to William James at the same times he was writing these
> articles he said:
>
> The sum of them all is that ontology, what I mean any positive theory of an
> external reality as such, is of necessity myth-making; that however, such
> ontology may have enough moral worth to make it a proper object of effort
> so long as people know what they mean by it. … the ideal of the
> truth-seeker is not the attainment of any agreement with an external
> reality  but the attainment of a perfect agreement among all truth-seeking
> beings;  that the ethical philosophy is the highest philosophy.
>
> Thanks,
>
> John C
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