Autumn, come this week, is the deepest of seasons for me.
Seasons have feelings. Winter is sleep and death. Spring joyous new life. Summer has the thrumming beat of our lives.
And Autumn is melancholy.
We revel in Autumn's sublime defeat into winter not because we find the same melancholy in ourselves as we also collapse after a summer of life, but in that we find that which in ourselves that could be destroyed, slowly, by decay, and find ourselves continuing through it, in spite of it, so that we pass through the season not as participators, but as observers.
It is the transition from life to death, if we take the seasons Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter to be Birth, Life, Dying, and Death. We experience Birth too quickly, and Life is rarely participated in fully by most people. Reflection leads to inevitabilities, to death. And so we experience our future by proxy in Autumn, preparing, and living out, the one long decline that we are all participating in.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Diebenkorn on Diebenkorn
Notes to myself on beginning a painting
1. attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.
2. The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued-except as a stimulus for further moves.
3. Do search. But in order to find other than what is searched for.
4. Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.
5. Don't "discover" a subject-of any kind.
6. Somehow don't be bored-but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.
7. Mistakes can't be erased but they move you from your present position.
8. Keep thinking about Polyanna.
9. Tolerate chaos.
10. Be careful only in a perverse way.
1. attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.
2. The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued-except as a stimulus for further moves.
3. Do search. But in order to find other than what is searched for.
4. Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.
5. Don't "discover" a subject-of any kind.
6. Somehow don't be bored-but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.
7. Mistakes can't be erased but they move you from your present position.
8. Keep thinking about Polyanna.
9. Tolerate chaos.
10. Be careful only in a perverse way.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Monograph on Skepticism
Not edited or refined, just a thought:
This however seems drastically different from the case that we experience with other absolute terms. In the example of "flat", we can go back to our pool table. We can roll the cue ball back and forth, looking for any large deformations, but even finding none, still encounter the objection, "That table is not perfectly flat, it only, perhaps closely, approximates flat." While we may have slight hesitation or annoyance at having to acquiesce to this out of context definition of flat, we will still concede the point that the pool table is not perfectly flat. However, we would certainly have to try our hardest not to laugh in the face of someone who claimed that the table was "not flat at all".
Similarly with the punchbowl. We will easily concede that, "Yes, there are air molecules in the bowl," and thus the bowl is not empty, however, this still impedes in no way within our context of just needing to pour punch into the bowl. Furthermore, it's a technical, and if unaware, then unnoticeable, objection to the bowl being empty.
What would be noticeable differences would be if the pool table were obviously warped, or smashed in half, or the punch bowl was filled with peanuts. But since these are easily seen to not be the case (when they are, in fact, not the case) then we don't meet with any contextual objections to the pool table being flat or the punch bowl being empty.
Allow me to focus more closely on the pool table for a moment. There are quick, obvious, and true(!), objections to calling the pool table flat. We can observe its lack of flatness, we just don't find it to be an obstacle in the pool table fulfilling its purposes.
This is not the case with the skeptics arguments. At first, we find similar objections (perhaps your car was recently stolen), but these quickly give way to outrageous worldview-warping possibilities, the likes of which we do not find with other absolute terms, such as flat or empty. While the pool table may not actually be flat, even observable imperfections do not disrupt the balls path on it significantly. We are never taken by surprise to find after we've racked the balls that the table was split in two all this time. Even if there is a bothersome imperfection in the slate beneath the felt that does interrupt play, it is obviously not so gross as to have been immediately noticeable, and so the table still falls under the category of 'flat', just perhaps less closely approximate to. But any claims that the pool table does not possess even a functional flatness quickly runs out of steam when we can just look at the pool table, run a few balls across it, and show that it is indeed flat, certainly within working parameters of what our context calls for.
The skeptic's denial of our knowledge however, does not operate in this same fashion. It does initially of course start with somewhat reasonable objections. But once those are overturned, the skeptic calls not just our situation into question, but the very nature of knowledge, and to win the argument must say that no one can ever have any knowledge. This would be akin to the pool table skeptic saying that nothing is flat.
There is a sense in which they are both right, if being technically absolute. However, in the pool table's case, it is still flat enough to play pool on. The objections, while true, do not effect the game. The skeptic however, cannot prove the truth of their objections, and must really on the unfalsifiability of their claims to even get us to believe them, even with mere intellectual assent, if not full belief.
And so the skeptic plays a different game with knowledge and its absolute sense than can be done with other terms. Objections with flatness or emptiness can only be made on a certain scale. It is obvious that they cannot exceed this scale for it would be immediately noticeable. It would follow that the same could be the case with knowledge, but the skeptic hasn't been awakened to the ludicrous sense of their objection yet.
Knowledge has been described by Peter Unger as an "absolute term". And hence, this is why we cannot, or rarely can, posses it. However, other terms used to show the analogy of an absolute term are flat, and empty.
When someone says of something that it is flat, they are of course including the caveat that it is not perfectly flat, that there are imperfections of a certain sort and that if you looked close enough you would find them yourself. An example given is a pool table. It behaves as if it were flat, and in fact, given the context of it's use, a "flat" piece of slat covered in felt, might not even be distinguishable from the behavior one would find from using a truly flat surface (if also covered in felt).
We have a similar experience when talk of things being empty. Certainly we recognize that a punch bowl is not actually a vacuum before we pour punch into it, but given the contextual framework of holding punch or not, there's nothing in the way of us pouring it full of punch. In that sense, it actually is "empty".
The thought occurred to me that given these contextual frameworks, perhaps we have a similar way of thinking about knowledge. When someone tells me that they "know" something, it is my general intuition to believe that they believe it, that it is true, and that they have at least a moderate amount of justification for this belief.
This is where the skeptic comes in and ruins our day. He raises his finger and says, "Aha! But you don't 'know' it, do you? There could all manner of things that contradict your knowledge, allow me to list a few...", at which point we are subjected to Cartesian dreams and demons, mad scientists and their toy vats, hallucinatory drugs, holograms, among other imaginative concepts. In short, what we are presented with are gross digressions from the knowledge we claim to have.
Take for example, my car. It is sitting in the driveway, right outside the room in which I am currently writing. I can't see it from the window, but I popped the screen door open, just to make sure it was there. Sure enough, it was. This isn't really the part of town (or even the town, really) to be expecting rampant car theft, and besides, it'd be hard for me to not notice my own car pull backwards out past the window next to me. But it is possible, so I checked. I can't see my car when I sit at my desk, so I cannot verify with my senses that it is there right now. But it was there ten seconds ago when I checked, and it doesn't seem to me that I have any less reason to believe that it is still there.
So I return to the skeptical claim that my car had perhaps been stolen and find that it does not hold. So the skeptic takes more drastic moves.
"Perhaps that's not your car, but only one that looks very similar to it," he says. This could be, logically, of course, but would be very strange. In fact, I've never heard of anything like that happening before. But I could very easily defeat this argument as well, perhaps by checking the license plate, or if that were insufficient, the VIN. At this refutation the skeptic could continue even more outlandishly...
"Maybe it's a perfect hologram, projected onto your driveway!" While this would be exceedingly impressive, it would also seem contrary to human nature. As far as I know, technology of this sort does not exist, or at the very least not in an easily obtainable and affordable form. So, to imagine that for any reason at all someone would steal my car, and then project a perfect holographic image in its place so as to deceive me seems ludicrous. Possible? Possibly. But ludicrous all the same. Furthermore, it's again easy for me to check that this is not the case by attempting to touch the car and see if my hand passes through.
At this point, the skeptic chooses to leave reality (if I can say that without begging to question too jarringly).
Perhaps someone built a perfect replica?
At this point we've left the realm of reality completely. No longer is the change in what I perceive that is required for me to not possess knowledge minor, but quite the opposite. In fact, it is cataclysmic. Asking if my car has perhaps been stolen, even recently, requires only a shift in my knowledge about the car. But now to defend against my claims to knowledge of my car's whereabouts, the skeptic must call into question the entire universe. When someone says of something that it is flat, they are of course including the caveat that it is not perfectly flat, that there are imperfections of a certain sort and that if you looked close enough you would find them yourself. An example given is a pool table. It behaves as if it were flat, and in fact, given the context of it's use, a "flat" piece of slat covered in felt, might not even be distinguishable from the behavior one would find from using a truly flat surface (if also covered in felt).
We have a similar experience when talk of things being empty. Certainly we recognize that a punch bowl is not actually a vacuum before we pour punch into it, but given the contextual framework of holding punch or not, there's nothing in the way of us pouring it full of punch. In that sense, it actually is "empty".
The thought occurred to me that given these contextual frameworks, perhaps we have a similar way of thinking about knowledge. When someone tells me that they "know" something, it is my general intuition to believe that they believe it, that it is true, and that they have at least a moderate amount of justification for this belief.
This is where the skeptic comes in and ruins our day. He raises his finger and says, "Aha! But you don't 'know' it, do you? There could all manner of things that contradict your knowledge, allow me to list a few...", at which point we are subjected to Cartesian dreams and demons, mad scientists and their toy vats, hallucinatory drugs, holograms, among other imaginative concepts. In short, what we are presented with are gross digressions from the knowledge we claim to have.
Take for example, my car. It is sitting in the driveway, right outside the room in which I am currently writing. I can't see it from the window, but I popped the screen door open, just to make sure it was there. Sure enough, it was. This isn't really the part of town (or even the town, really) to be expecting rampant car theft, and besides, it'd be hard for me to not notice my own car pull backwards out past the window next to me. But it is possible, so I checked. I can't see my car when I sit at my desk, so I cannot verify with my senses that it is there right now. But it was there ten seconds ago when I checked, and it doesn't seem to me that I have any less reason to believe that it is still there.
So I return to the skeptical claim that my car had perhaps been stolen and find that it does not hold. So the skeptic takes more drastic moves.
"Perhaps that's not your car, but only one that looks very similar to it," he says. This could be, logically, of course, but would be very strange. In fact, I've never heard of anything like that happening before. But I could very easily defeat this argument as well, perhaps by checking the license plate, or if that were insufficient, the VIN. At this refutation the skeptic could continue even more outlandishly...
"Maybe it's a perfect hologram, projected onto your driveway!" While this would be exceedingly impressive, it would also seem contrary to human nature. As far as I know, technology of this sort does not exist, or at the very least not in an easily obtainable and affordable form. So, to imagine that for any reason at all someone would steal my car, and then project a perfect holographic image in its place so as to deceive me seems ludicrous. Possible? Possibly. But ludicrous all the same. Furthermore, it's again easy for me to check that this is not the case by attempting to touch the car and see if my hand passes through.
At this point, the skeptic chooses to leave reality (if I can say that without begging to question too jarringly).
Perhaps someone built a perfect replica?
Well, it would be even more impressive that they took the time to make sure my key would work and that they perfectly replicated the trash on the back seat floorboards as well.
Maybe you're under the effects of a hallucinatory drug?Well, I don't take drugs, so this would be a first, and I would certainly think that as a first-timer my experience would be a little more potent than simply imagining my own car, inexplicably missing from my driveway, exactly as it were and in the same place. No dragons or talking trees and multi-colored hands or anything.
Perhaps you're dreaming? Or maybe you are a brain in a vat?This however seems drastically different from the case that we experience with other absolute terms. In the example of "flat", we can go back to our pool table. We can roll the cue ball back and forth, looking for any large deformations, but even finding none, still encounter the objection, "That table is not perfectly flat, it only, perhaps closely, approximates flat." While we may have slight hesitation or annoyance at having to acquiesce to this out of context definition of flat, we will still concede the point that the pool table is not perfectly flat. However, we would certainly have to try our hardest not to laugh in the face of someone who claimed that the table was "not flat at all".
Similarly with the punchbowl. We will easily concede that, "Yes, there are air molecules in the bowl," and thus the bowl is not empty, however, this still impedes in no way within our context of just needing to pour punch into the bowl. Furthermore, it's a technical, and if unaware, then unnoticeable, objection to the bowl being empty.
What would be noticeable differences would be if the pool table were obviously warped, or smashed in half, or the punch bowl was filled with peanuts. But since these are easily seen to not be the case (when they are, in fact, not the case) then we don't meet with any contextual objections to the pool table being flat or the punch bowl being empty.
Allow me to focus more closely on the pool table for a moment. There are quick, obvious, and true(!), objections to calling the pool table flat. We can observe its lack of flatness, we just don't find it to be an obstacle in the pool table fulfilling its purposes.
This is not the case with the skeptics arguments. At first, we find similar objections (perhaps your car was recently stolen), but these quickly give way to outrageous worldview-warping possibilities, the likes of which we do not find with other absolute terms, such as flat or empty. While the pool table may not actually be flat, even observable imperfections do not disrupt the balls path on it significantly. We are never taken by surprise to find after we've racked the balls that the table was split in two all this time. Even if there is a bothersome imperfection in the slate beneath the felt that does interrupt play, it is obviously not so gross as to have been immediately noticeable, and so the table still falls under the category of 'flat', just perhaps less closely approximate to. But any claims that the pool table does not possess even a functional flatness quickly runs out of steam when we can just look at the pool table, run a few balls across it, and show that it is indeed flat, certainly within working parameters of what our context calls for.
The skeptic's denial of our knowledge however, does not operate in this same fashion. It does initially of course start with somewhat reasonable objections. But once those are overturned, the skeptic calls not just our situation into question, but the very nature of knowledge, and to win the argument must say that no one can ever have any knowledge. This would be akin to the pool table skeptic saying that nothing is flat.
There is a sense in which they are both right, if being technically absolute. However, in the pool table's case, it is still flat enough to play pool on. The objections, while true, do not effect the game. The skeptic however, cannot prove the truth of their objections, and must really on the unfalsifiability of their claims to even get us to believe them, even with mere intellectual assent, if not full belief.
And so the skeptic plays a different game with knowledge and its absolute sense than can be done with other terms. Objections with flatness or emptiness can only be made on a certain scale. It is obvious that they cannot exceed this scale for it would be immediately noticeable. It would follow that the same could be the case with knowledge, but the skeptic hasn't been awakened to the ludicrous sense of their objection yet.
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