The Domain of The Wiz

The Domain of the Wiz:
Metaphilosophical Epistemology
Ross Campbell Barham, 57399
Postgraduate Philosophy Colloquium
The University of Melbourne
05.09.2006

ABSTRACT

In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak, but for that you must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks, and those to whom they are spoken should be big and tall of stature.
…
I no longer feel as you do: this cloud which I see under me, this blackness and heaviness at which I laugh - precisely this is your thunder-cloud.
You look up when you desire to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.
…
I have learnt to walk: since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to move.
Now I am nimble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances within me.
Friedrich Nietzsche
‘Of Reading and Writing’
Thus Spoke Zarathustra

INTRODUCTION

The central thesis of this paper is that much of the so-called wisdom gained by philosophising consists in the ability to more freely shift between various frames of perspective or reference. The subsidiary thesis to this – although perhaps the more interesting one – is that, by virtue of this first insight, we can thereby better appreciate the value of many of the great philosophical insights that have been advanced and championed over the years.

This position shall be explicated, firstly, by examining particular epistemological aspects of a handful of canonical philosophies. Then, having retrospectively identified the characteristics shared by these examples, I shall endeavour to establish my primary metaphilosophical thesis, and to subsequently suggest some possible pedagogical consequences of this view.

PRELIMINARY REMARK

Before I begin in earnest, however, I should like to first stress what I consider to be the significance of this concept of ‘perspective’ as opposed to more mundane notions like ‘point of view’ or ‘opinion’.
Starting with an analogy of visual perspective: objects x and y look to person A as though x is in front of y and is larger; whereas to B, y looks as through it is in front of x, looks bigger. These two alternatives are merely different points of view, and both parties can happily accede to their differences. That is, while the details can be seen to differ, they do so, coherently, according to a shared understanding of visual perspectives. We can take the objects of one point of view and transfer them across to another. But, if the fundamental perspectives differ, then it might be that the objects seen from one perspective are not commensurable with another. For example, while two classical painters might be able to depict, say, Athena either front-on or in profile, when a Cubist depicts Athena it is an object of an entirely different nature.
Extrapolating from the visual, then, we can better appreciate how, while on the one hand, a scientist might understand this glass as an amorphous solid compound of silicon dioxide, if it was a Communion Cup, then the pious Christian might view it as a consecrated artefact used to achieve union with Jesus Christ. These two perspectives, rather than points of view, just might not be in anyway commensurable with one another.

The reason why this thought interests me and my present work, is that I’m trying to give an account of rhetoric, not as mere ornamentation or emotional trickery, but as essential to bridging the gaps between different perspectives.

THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL NATURE of PARTICULAR PHILOSOPHIES

1. The Socratic Maxim: doing wrong is worse than suffering wrong

When Socrates’ announces his maxim to his youthful interlocutor, Polus, the latter is stupefied.
“What you say is monstrous and outrageous, Socrates”, exclaims Polus.
Such a reaction, however, is essentially the result of a conceptual confusion on Polus’ part; a confusion, moreover, that Socrates does his best to capitalise on. You see, Polus understands the concepts of ‘worse’ and ‘wrong’ only in terms of harm; specifically that of physical and material harms. So, when Socrates claims that doing wrong (i.e. inflicting harm) is worse (i.e. causes more harm to the agent) than suffering wrong (or harm), Polus cannot help but think that he is mistaken. That is, unless a person is completely inept, to inflict harm upon another (i.e. to do wrong by them) should not result in the perpetrator also being physically or materially harmed (i.e. suffering wrong).
[Certainly, Polus admits that where right and wrong are concerned the authorities will attempt to punish the wrong doer by inflicting physical and/or material harm(s) upon him. However, if one can indefinitely avoid punishment and yet gain by inflicting harm upon others, then, to Polus’ thinking, this is surely an enviable state of affairs in which to find oneself. Indeed, such a state of affairs Polus considers as ‘power’.]
Of course, Socrates disagrees. This is because, although he also thinks of the concepts of ‘worse’, ‘wrong’ and the like in terms of harm, he does so moreover in terms of harms extending beyond the merely physical and material varieties; in addition to the physical and the material, Socrates includes moral or spiritual harms.
Over the course of their dialogue, Socrates introduces these other forms of harm to Polus’ thinking. Thus equipped, Polus is led to agree that, while with respect to their physical and/or material well-being, the sufferer of wrong typically suffers more physical harm than the wrongdoer, morally speaking, the wrongdoer is likely to suffer more moral harm than their victim. That is, if A does wrong by B, that doesn’t make B a bad person, it makes A the bad person; i.e. it harms A’s moral standing.

But this is not the end of the story. Socrates goes on to argue, with Polus’ tentative accession that, in relation to physical and material states of harm, “wickedness and excess and other kinds of badness of soul are the greatest evil that exists.” Thereby, Socrates establishes an overarching evaluative hierarchy by which the concepts of ‘worse’, ‘wrong’ and the like are seen to apply to all the various senses of harm. From this, then, Socrates’ maxim that doing wrong is worse than suffering wrong becomes coherent insofar as the wrongdoer inevitably suffers a greater (moral) harm than the victim.

2. René Descartes’ meditative process of doubt

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes - seated by a fire, and attired in his dressing gown (the very archetype of an armchair philosopher) - sets out to discover what, if anything, cannot possibly be doubted.
Thinking it more expedient to not bother trying to systematically consider each individual aspect of reality one after the other, Descartes instead opts to treat matters according to more general categories of knowledge. He therefore starts with the a posteriori (i.e. that which is understood via experience), which he claims that, up until now, he had assumed to be the most true and certain source of all he knew. And yet, on more careful reflection, he points out that the senses can at times be unreliable. From this he decides that “it is wiser not to trust entirely to any thing by which we have once been deceived,” and so the veracity of the senses must be generally doubted.
Descartes then moves on to consider the a priori (i.e. that which is given universally via abstraction) - the truth of which, he suggests, can hardly be doubted in its own right, although our own individual comprehension of such knowledge may at times be obscured by error, misjudgement, or bewitchment. The objects of reason, then, must be also generally doubted.
What remains following this meditative process of doubting is, as Descartes most famously claimed, the cogito … the thinking mind. For, while the senses and reason are doubted, it seems that the only thing that cannot be consistently doubted is doubting itself, and as doubt is a cognitive process, we may therefore say with confidence, Cogito ergo sum. Thought therefore exists. Or, more properly: there is thought, therefore there is being.

3) Immanuel Kant’s negative conception of the noumenal

Whereas Descartes attempted to metaphysically throw-off all the outer layers of reality, leaving only the cogitating core, Kant’s noumena (or ‘thing-in-itself’) moved in almost the opposite direction.
At the beginning of his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant acknowledges that the possibility of knowledge is given only in experience, a posteriori. However, this reality that our senses provide us access to, Kant claims, can only ever be empirically accessed via our senses. That is, we cannot get outside ourselves and our experiences so as to get a glimpse of what the world might be like in itself. So, while scientists try to obtain objective data by measuring the objects of the world with other objects, when they come along to check the results, they will only be able to comprehend it according to the necessary categories of their thinking. That is to say, while we all too often misguidedly assume that characteristics of the world, such as space and time, apply to the world in itself, such assumptions go too far. Instead, Kant believes, we must concede that, as far as we can ever hope to know, such characteristics arise essentially from the categorical structure of our minds. We can only ever hope to know how the world appears to us phenomenally. The way the world is in itself (or noumenally) is inevitably beyond our comprehension.

4) Friedrich Nietzsche’s doctrine of The Eternal Recurrence

Occasionally, people will say to a person who they think is unappreciative of the significance of their life: ‘you only live once; make the most of it!’ Friedrich Nietzsche, however, thought that such a phrase was not only utterly ineffective, but that it also lent itself towards encouraging an attitude of flippancy. As an alternative, he proposed the complete opposite thought: ‘You only live once, but that one time must be lived over and over again, infinitely many times!’

The greatest weight. What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will return to you, all in the same succession and sequence … The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?… The question in each and every thing, “Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (s.341)

This idea or ‘doctrine’, Nietzsche called ‘The Eternal Recurrence’. I mention it here, not for what he hoped to be its ethical consequences for the lives of those who might adopt it as their view, but because of how, metaphysically speaking, it is able to suggest itself in the first place, though it is so contrary to common sense.
In our everyday lives we may confidently check our calendars and clocks to see what time it is. However, when one thinks deeply about it, there is absolutely nothing that is intrinsically characteristic to the phenomenon of time itself that might allow us to differentiate one moment from another. Each ‘now’ is as ‘now’ as the last or next can be.
Contrast this with Bishop Berkeley’s insights from his New Theory of Vision: As Thomas Reid summarises it: “[Berkeley] shews that distance, of itself and immediately, is not seen; but that we learn to judge of it by certain sensations and perceptions which are connected with it.” That is, there is nothing intrinsic to visual stimuli that indicates the relative distance of perceived objects. Rather, we learn to gauge distance via other means such as: the relative appearance of size; the tactile awareness of focusing our eyes to differing degrees; the correspondence of our ability to tactilely sense the seen object; and even the distance-relative appearance of 3-dimensionality enabled by our bi-optic sense organs, are all to be interpreted in order to learn of distance.
Similarly, the passage of time as a chronologically linear phenomenon seems to require the interpretation and learning of numerous other capacities (such as memory) and conventions (such as the days of the week) in order to be intelligible.
Nietzsche, however, was not the first or the last person to make use of this peculiar characteristic of time. Other so-called ‘great philosophers’ who ran similar lines include Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote:

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the same way our visual field has no limits.

How this serves Nietzsche doctrine in particular, however, is best illustrated by considering a more contemporary thought (one that Nietzsche himself was not privy to): The Big Crunch.
Most will have heard of The Big Bang theory: the explosion that was the birth of our universe. Well, The Big Crunch is, as its name suggests, the opposite of this. The theory goes: if the gravitational attraction of the matter in the universe is strong enough to counteract the inertia of the presently expanding universe, then, the process might be reversed and the universe will collapse in on itself.
Regardless of whether or not The Big Crunch might occur, what is of interest to us here is the corresponding hypothesis that, if the universe were to reverse its current expansion, everything that had happened, would happen again, only except backwards, thereby reversing the arrow of time itself. Although, this hypothesis seems unlikely, it illustrates the essence of Nietzsche’s thinking: if time were reversed we would be none the wiser. The Universe could expand and collapse and Bang and Crunch over and over again, and we would be none the wiser, as there is nothing intrinsic to the phenomenon of time itself, that can differentiate one moment from another.

5) A Zen story entitled, ‘The Moon Cannot Be Stolen’

Finally, I would like to relate a brief story, taken from a (literally) little book called Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:

Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at he foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal.
Ryokan returned and caught him. “You may have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.”
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”

The moral of this story, I believe, is not (as has been suggested to me over the years): that Ryokan was so generous that he felt bad he didn’t have any more possessions to give to the thief, and so would have liked to have also been able to have literally given the thief the moon (perhaps because he also felt guilty about enjoying himself); nor that Ryokan was sad that the thief was so concerned with stealing the possessions of a lowly monk that he couldn’t possibly appreciate the beauty of the moon (although this is getting closer to the point). What I understand to be the moral of the story is if Ryokan could have ‘given’ the thief the moon, it would have been to have enlightened him … it would have been for the thief to have realised the intrinsic unity of the universe, and that notions of yours or mine are utterly destitute.
To better illustrate this notion, I shall borrow a sentiment from Deep Ecology.
Imagine Mars, the fourth planet from our sun: it has seasonal cycles; it has the highest mountain in the solar system; and the largest canyon; it has polar ice caps; it has a relatively thin atmosphere of mainly carbon dioxide; it has volcanoes; dust storms; an iron sulphide core and a basalt surface. Conceptually, it is easy to think of all these characteristics simply as ‘Mars’.
Now, imagine Earth, the third planet from our sun: it too has seasonal cycles, mountains, canyons, ice caps, and atmosphere of mainly nitrogen, volcanoes, dust storms, an iron core and a surface consisting mainly of salt water. In addition to these natural features, we typically conceptualise life as being somehow metaphysically distinct from Earth. That is to say, it conceptually very difficult to think of Earth holistically as including forests, wildlife, human beings, and all that we’ve created. But, in the same we think of the other planets, it is true to say of the Earth that it lights up at night with millions of globes; like mountains, it forms skyscrapers, houses and football stadiums; like rivers, it form trains tracks, asphalt roads, trains, trams and cars; and like storms, it has wars where bits of its explosive materials fly through its atmosphere, destroying its other formations. Obviously, it is also true that such phenomena are the work of humans. But, holistically speaking, these are to be understood as nothing more or less than natural processes of the planet, Earth.
Zen stories are riddled with this type of conceptual shift in perspective. So, you’ll get a monk who suddenly realises he’s carrying the moon in his bucket of water, or the student who realises that, if the moon exists only in his mind, his head should be very heavy to carry around.
So too, I believe, it is with the story ‘The Moon Cannot be Stolen’. For Ryokan to have given the thief the moon, would have been to have enlightened the thief, not only to the real value of things, nor merely that such notions as mine and yours are utterly destitute, but moreover to the fact that all of this is so only because of the metaphysical unity of all things.

SUMMARY of PRECEDING SECTION

It is generally believed that each of the so-called ‘great philosophers’ contributed something new and unique to the discipline of Philosophy. The preceding accounts sought to inductively demonstrate (in accordance with the audience’s own personal knowledge of various other philosophies) that a shift in conceptual perspective is essential to its uniquely philosophical epistemological nature. So, thinking back, we can better appreciate:
1) Socrates conceptually broadened the ethically evaluative concepts of ‘wrong’ and ‘worse’ to encompass not merely physical harms, nor physical and moral harms taken separately, but the entire realm of ethics understood hierarchically;
2) René Descartes, by a systematic process of doubt, reduced the realm of indubitable certainty to the cogito.
3) Immanuel Kant, in contrast, circumscribed the outmost limits of all degrees of possible knowledge, thereby establishing the noumena (the world in itself) as an essentially negative concept; that is, one we have no way of knowing about.
4) Nietzsche capitalised on the metaphysically dislocated phenomenon of time, in order to propose The Doctrine of The Eternal Recurrence.
5) And Ryokan subtly suggested a holistic or universalistic metaphysical view of the world.

While I acknowledge that the majority of these examined philosophies are primarily metaphysical in their import, I hold that the same characteristic conceptual shifts in perspective are true of all ‘great’ philosophies. Unfortunately, I haven’t here the time or the capacity to demonstrate this thesis by either an exhaustive case-by-case examination, nor by some specially constructed deductive argument.
[Furthermore, even if the above is acceded, I have still yet to demonstrate my central thesis. That is, while I believe I have adequately supported the claim that a shift in conceptual perspective is characteristic of all ‘great’ philosophies, I have yet to explicate (let alone demonstrate) how this claim leads to the thought that philosophical wisdom consists primarily in the ability to more freely shift between different conceptual perspectives. Such then is the aim of the following section.]

METAPHILOSOPHICAL EPISTEMOLOGY

Each great philosopher pioneers new ground. Modifying the metaphor invoked by earlier the Nietzsche quotation, then, we may say that, while a mountain range may have many well-established base-camps and routes, a great mountaineer need not depend upon such crutches. And yet, if the great philosophers were so free and nimble, how can we possibly know this? Is it not because they themselves established base-camps and routes? That is, while my explicit thesis is that philosophical wisdom consists in the ability to shift more freely between conceptual perspectives, it appears that it is equally the task of philosophy to work to establish fixed perspectives. The foundation of fixed perspectives, however, seems antithetical to my stated characterisation of wisdom.
Can we reconcile the two?
Ultimately, I don’t think that one can accommodate both ideals … at least not in their purer forms. If one seeks after wisdom with wanton abandon, at best you might end up as some kind of Desconstructivist sage; and at worst, a schizophrenic madman. As Nietzsche (who incidentally went mad) wrote:

“To live alone one must be an animal or a god – says Aristotle. There is yet a third case: one must be both – a philosopher.”

On the other hand, if one works merely to establish a fixed conceptual perspective, then, while the focus may be philosophical, without the wisdom I have characterised, one’s thinking can hardly hope to be ‘great’; at least not as the canon understands it.
Again, as Nietzsche wrote:

Legislators of the future.- After having tried in vain for a long time to attach a definite concept to the word “[P]hilosopher” - for I found many contradictory characteristics - I recognized at last that there are two distinct kinds of philosopher:
1. [The Philosophical Workers -] those who want to ascertain a complex fact of evaluations (logical or moral);
2. [The True Philosophers -] those who are legislators of such evaluations.

(The former kind characterises philosophy without wisdom).

But perhaps we should aim at a more moderate compromise. That is, in order to be a great philosopher one must have the capacity both for wisdom and reason suited to the needs of the time and context, for surely there have been truly great philosophers that were either ‘philosophical workers’ or ‘true philosophers’. But if that’s all there is to it, then why the need for this paper? Surely, such a balance between creativity and conformity is commonsense?

CONCLUSION

Well, the answer is, I think, that, for the most part, metaphilosophical accounts emphasise the fixed, rigid, rational search for The answer, over the ability to more freely shift between different perspectives as I have characterised it. Take, for instance, our own beloved department’s brochure, ‘Studying First Year Philosophy’, where it says: “Philosophy deals with the most fundamental aspects of reality … Despite the abstract nature of many of its questions, Philosophy looks for answers which can be justified by good answers.” The emphasis here is clearly on ‘answers that can be justified by good arguments’ – i.e. finding solid ground on which to set up camp. What remains underemphasized, however, is the process of ‘looking’ for such answers – the ability to break new ground.
The possible reasons as to why this has been the trend in Metaphilosophical accounts are numerous: first there’s the difficultly of pinning down such a dynamic phenomenon (again, as Nietzsche wrote: It is difficult to learn what a [P]hilosopher is, because it cannot be taught: one must “know” it by experience - or one should have the pride not to know it”); then there’s the fact that Philosophy has been humbled by the veritable conceptual cities that have been erected by Science (although certainly founded by Philosophy); or, again, the fact that most students indulge in philosophising only fleetingly has resulted in our marketing ourselves as providing what the other areas of life explicitly want: i.e. solid reasoning skills, and not so much freethinking wisdom.
But I think that this trend is a shame, and has not only skewed Philosophies own self-image for the worst, but, consequently, it has also inhibited our potential Philosophical progress generally. Too many students learn philosophy as though it were nothing more than a conceptual museum of past thinkers. There is a tendency to teach Philosophy as though it were something of a hall of fame, to be learnt by rote. Now, don’t get me wrong: I think it is important that students learn the philosophies of others as accurate and detailed as is possible. However, I do so, not so much because I think that it’s important in itself to keep these ideas alive in the Historical sense, rather, it is because learning philosophies as accurate and detailed as is possible, is the best way to ensure that the student is thoroughly undergoing the type of shift in perspective that I’ve been talking about tonight. All of you, as postgraduate philosophers, should have had this experience: studying Philosophy is not like studying other disciplines; in other disciplines you learn what you need to know at school and can go home relatively unaffected. Thinking deeply about a philosophical matter, however, effects one’s entire outlook on things … it literally alters your perspective on the world; working to free you from the ideological stupor which we can only recognise that we are in, once shift have been freed from it. But as to the final truth of these alternate philosophies and perspectives – while we certainly may have our pet favourites - I don’t think that anyone would claim that any particular philosophy has given us The answer (and if they had, it surely would no longer be considered Philosophy; it would become Religion). Plato, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Davidson, Rawls, etc. all provide only limited perspectives on the world. Their philosophies are conceptual base-camps, that we visit, not only for their spectacular views, but to train ourselves so we may more ably traverse the mountainous ranges of thought. That we might occasionally find solid ground for us to set up resting places, this should not obscure our appreciation of the more dynamic character of wisdom.