Isn’t the experience of space just seeing a large container? Philosopher Kant said no, and that there is wonder when we look up at the starry skies at night. Why? Think about it! We know that the stars we see are just randomly scattered lights in the sky. But, do we see randomness when we look at them? No, we see order: eg., the constellations.
QUESTION: What is our mind doing to what we sense so that we see constellations rather than just randomly scattered lights?
When we say the word “nature,” sometimes we mean it in the sense of “It’s not in his nature to sit around watching tv,” but we also mean “nature” like streams and trees etc.
Given this, what is “nature?”
What does philosopher Heraclitus mean when he says “physis kryptesthai philei”= “nature loves to hide” ?
A long time ago in Germany, which was always an important place for ideas, the thinkers made a distinction between the natural sciences and the human sciences. The natural sciences were thought to produce the most exact knowledge (like physics), while the human sciences like the study of literature were more about interpretation. Since then the human sciences have been jealous of the respect the natural sciences get.
So, the human sciences became jealous of the natural sciences and wanted to become more like them. They focused on what was “math like” in them. Some historians thought that they could show Jesus “probably (math)” didn’t exist, with ideas like this: If we put all the names of figures who were as heavily mythologized as Jesus into a hat, the likelihood of pulling the name of a historical figure out of the hat is 1/3.” So, such historians said based on these kinds of ideas there is only a 1/3 chance Jesus existed. So who was Jesus? These mythicist historians say Jesus was originally thought to be a mythological figure who was never on earth, but was later put in earthly stories like Hercules. Jesus was thought to be a space being crucified in outer space by sky demons. So, are they right? Did Jesus Exist?
In doing history, we are mainly doing hermeneutics, which means strategies for interpretation. Some of our earliest New Testament bible documents are the letters of Paul, which inspired the first gospel: the gospel of Mark. What was Paul most known for? His success at spreading the message of the cross of Christ to the pagans. And in fact, we see a tribute to this success with the pagans of Paul in Mark when the soldier looks up at the crucified Jesus and says “Truly this is the son of God,” and similarly in the Gospel of Luke the soldier says “Truly this is an innocent man.” What is going on here? The New Testament writers are saying when a society wrongfully puts a good person to death, it uncovers our hidden faults and is an opportunity for ethical growth. Sound familiar? This is how Plato interpreted the death of Socrates. And it worked, because society no longer executes people like Socrates for being a what Plato called a gadfly/nuisance. In other words, we can conclude Jesus existed on earth because how does an outer space Jesus who was never on earth and killed by sky demons un-cover my guilt and inspire repentance?!
Where did these mythicist Jesus mathematic historians go wrong? While there is math (quantitative) in history (finding out what “probably” happened), the main task is a hermeneutic/interpretive (qualitative) one. In the mathematical example I gave earlier in support of the outer space Jesus model, this is actually a type of hermeneutic reasoning mistake called a “type fallacy,” and is very common in interpreting literature and history. Why? While the “hat” thought experiment tells us the likelihood that Jesus existed is 1/3, if we look at it a different way and say the lens of looking at Jesus is figures around that time who claimed to be the messiah, all of those were 100% historical figures. So, doing historical thinking in this “type fallacy” way is an error, or what we would call a “typology fallacy” if we want to sound impressive!
Question: How would you demonstrate King Arthur probably did, or didn’t, exist?
So, last time I was talking about how causality ( eg. The irreversibility of the cooked egg) is not simply the mind, nor the world, but a MIDDLE between the two. Let’s think about this middle. In the history of philosophy, especially with philosophers Brentano and Husserl, we have the idea that the basic truth is consciousness (intentio in Latin) is always consciousness of something (intentum in Latin). We put these 2 Latin words together to call the issue “Intentionality.” So, for instance, I see (intentio) the house (intentum).
This position of the basic-ness of intentionality in philosophy later changed when philosopher Husserl’s greatest student philosopher Heidegger looked at the work of the poet Holderlin and philosopher Nietzsche. Heidegger said our “being-in-the- world” is more basic than the separation between intentio and intentum, and makes the two possible. For example, I experience boringness to be a characteristic of the book, like plot and setting and characters, even though we know it isn’t because the next person may not experience to book as boring at all. Just the same, boringness isn’t just simply in my mind, because there are specific things about just this book that are causing me to find it boring. So, this unity of being-in-the-world as (i) the boringness of the book and (ii) my being bored emotion is a middle something that is more original and shapes my being bored (intentio) and the boring book (intentum).
The philosopher Kant raised this problem of the middle without properly solving it when looking at causality and so tried to fix the difficulty by saying along with the Mind and World, there is also a third thing he called The Imagination which allows the 2 to work together.
One of the important topics for Philosophy is cause and effect. For instance, if we heat water to 100 degrees Celsius, this will cause the water to boil. Philosopher Immanuel Kant pointed out the mind plays a trick here. As a middle “something” between the mind and the boiling water, we experience the cause and effect as different kinds of “irreversible.” For example, cause and effect is the (i) least irreversible when a ball hits another ball, (ii) more irreversible when there is a temporary change of form when water boils (the steam going back to liquid when the heat is removed), and (iii) permanently irreversible in cases like cooking an egg, because the egg can’t be uncooked.
So, since we don’t see irreversibility, just this, then this, then this, the mind is doing something to create the experience of cause and effect! It’s not just the mind being creative, since it depends on the object (only the cooked egg in the three example is permanently irreversible), so cause and effect is not purely mind nor purely object, but in the middle.
Note: Cause and effect works differently in humans, because while heat always causes water to boil, a difficult childhood may or may not cause problems when the child grows up. Nietzsche famously said “From the military school of life: That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”
We know philosophers quest for truth, but what is truth? There are many different ways for something to be true. Here are the most popular
Truth:
(1) Genuine
Genuine or true gold, instead of false gold
(2) Correct
The agreement of the judgement with the thing. Eg the table is brown or 2+3 =5
(3) Certain
From Thomas to Luther and finally Descartes, truth as correctness slowly changed from correct to certain, because the most important truth had to be certain in the sense of free from doubt, in particular having no doubt about the salvation of the soul. Certainty is seen as the highest form of truth to this day.
(4) Un-cover from hiddenness (“a-letheia” or truth in ancient Greek)
When I tear a sock, unity is no longer hidden but made obvious in the tearing, precisely as a lost unity. Philosopher Hegel, in his inaugural address, Heidelberg, 1816, says “The Being of the universe, at first hidden and concealed, has no power which can offer resistance to the search for knowledge; it has to lay itself open before the seeker — to set before his eyes and give for his enjoyment, its riches and its depths.” Philosopher Heidegger says “Both scientific and prescientific comportments are a knowing in the sense of uncovering what is previously concealed, of revealing what was previously covered up, of disclosing what so far was closed off.” Eg, the first time a child has 2+2 = 4 modeled for them with blocks.
(5) Exemplary
True Friend, instead of an average friend or a fake friend. Or a mansion (Now that’s a house), instead of an average house or a broken down shack. It refers to the different ways “hosueness” shines through the house
(6) Truths
The great truths of what it means to be human
QUESTION:
If these are all related, since they are all truths, can you define truth? What is truth?
The philosopher Immanuel Kant said we have a part of our mind, REASON, that deals with rules. For example, to fully and properly encounter/experience a triangle, my mind needs to be able to apply a rule to the thing I see or think to experience it as a triangle. So, if I can apply the rule that the shape I am considering is a enclosed figure with 3 straight side whose angles are either equilateral, right, scalene, or isosceles, then I can properly encounter the entity as the triangle it is. Having this definition or rule before my mind’s eye allows me to see this “something” as an equilateral triangle. Similarly, the rule of either beautiful mansion, average house, or tiny shack sketches out the possible ways house-ness can appear or present itself to us. Of course the cottage can be beautiful and quaint too!
Math was very important to Plato and he had a sign at his school that students needed to be good at math to enter. This didn’t mean to study philosophy you had to be good at geometry and multiplication, but rather students needed to understand what made something learnable, mathematics like geometry being a great example of the learnable. We mean “learnable” in speaking of math when we use the word “polymath:” a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning.
For example, you may have come to Plato to learn what justice is, the definition/rule that allows us to experience behaviors as just/unjust. Coming up with such a definition/rule, we do not invent something new, but try to un-cover what justice is and always was. Similarly, when our sense of justice is offended, such as when we see the traditional definition of marriage trampling on LGBTQ+ rights, we redefine marriage to reflect what Justice is and always was. Plato said thinking is re-collection, so repeated failed attempts at defining justice are attempts to get closer and closer to what Justice is and always was. Similarly, defining “triangle” doesn’t mean being a creative artist and creating a definition out of nothing, but being a miner trying to unearth the essence or rule or definition of “triangleness.”
Can you come up with a rule for what dog-ness is that would make possible encountering something as a dog?
What is Metaphysics? Oxford Languages defines it this way:
This definition and those like it are both common and incorrect. The initial conditions of the universe would be physics, not metaphysics, which as the word suggests is what makes physics possible: The famous philosopher Immanuel Kant thought about metaphysics in this way, and for instance did a metaphysics of morals, asking what made moral experiences and judgments possible, which means what must the mind’s eye always already have in view that makes moral experiences and judgements possible?
The philosopher Leibniz said the basic question of metaphysics is “Why is there something rather than nothing?” If we look at the words of this question, we see that it is saying “TO BE means to have a Why.” This is the basic starting point of metaphysical questioning. But what does it mean for an entity to have a why?
So, how does it work? The philosopher Martin Heidegger gives this example:
But, more basically, what does it mean to say “TO BE means to have a WHY?” This comes from Plato’s Sophist where Plato criticizes Antisthenes and says the idea of a non-metaphysical philosophy is “the most laughable (kategolastotata)” because we could not even encounter an entity unless we did so with the mind’s eye having Being in front of it: experiencing the entity in the light of Being. What does this mean. Plato gives the example in the Sophist that the dog is not just a “this here,” but is already being made intelligible by an understanding of Einai, Being, choris, separate from, ton allown, the others, and kath auto, in itself. I encounter the dog as a “not me,” for example, and “a unity,” and “not the house,” etc.
So, can you do a metaphysics of Friendship, asking what makes the experience of Friendship possible?
(1) Do you pick the American 100 dollar bill, or the Canadian 100 dollar bill?
(2) Can you spot the key difference between the American National Anthem and the Canadian National Anthem?
(A) The Star Spangled Banner Lyrics
by Francis Scott Key (1814)
Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all of us command.*
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North, strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
(Activity) Design your own secular hundred dollar bill or write your own secular national anthem
A member of the House of Representatives is taking their oath on a classic Superman comic book:
Next time you need to swear an oath, swear an oath to Superman!