I figured I'd do a short post on why I ultimately reject Davidson's externalism. Ultimately it reduces down to Davidson adopting a kind of coherentism where what counts as evidence for a belief is other beliefs. Now of course Davidson's coherentism isn't what we normally call coherentism. Further, as we discussed Davidson's belief-content is externally grounded in terms of typical use and causal relations to objects. So his coherentism isn't the typically coherentism which is still part of the Cartesian tradition. (i.e. coherence of representations)
My problem with Davidson is the following. As I mentioned in our prior thread what I find of value in externalism is that it explains how we adjudicate our disagreements. That is by showing how we act on our beliefs in terms of content it, to me, establishes what that content is. While internalists can explain this as a secondary function, that just seems incorrect to me due to how I understand content. Put an other way, we shouldn't consider content purely in terms of internal functions.
Now where I feel Davidson misses out is in the pragmatic angle. First let's consider Heidegger. Heidegger sees meaning wrapped up in our practices and goals in the world. So meaning isn't just about beliefs but also know-how and our for-the-sake-of. Now if we think about the adjudication principle, this makes sense. If I ask about content and understanding of course I'd appeal to practices to make sense of that. If someone asks about whether something is a paint brush then I can only make sense of that in terms of the actions and aims of painting. My very ability to identify objects is wrapped up in that. Now one could perhaps stretch Davidson in that direction in terms of his social externalism. But I see no evidence that it would be a natural fit.
This can also be seen in terms of the pragmatic maxim of Peirce. For Peirce meaning is ultimately about "whatever unitary determination it would impart to practical conduct under any and every conceivable circumstance." (CP 6.490) Now Peirce primarily considered this in terms of science and how we measure properties. Thus hardness' meaning is wrapped up in all the possible ways we might measure hardness. But that ties meaning to practices, albeit practices tied to verification.
For Peirce a belief is simply a habit whose content is wrapped up in the habits that manifest as action in possible situations. So an other way he framed the pragmatic maxim was in the consideration of what habits would develop in taking the belief as true. Once again though this is wrapped up in verificational evidence, albeit one considered counter-factually.
So, consider Davidson in light of Heidegger and Peirce. How do we verify the content of a belief? Certainly Davidson is right that ultimately this is about a kind of translation in terms of how a speaker holds the assertion as true. Yet by tying content only to the causal object and the speakers who taught the words (in terms of typical use) I think he misses something essential. Those aren't the only things we appeal to when we verify.
I assume you reject Davidson's account of action, then? I'm not seeing why you think Davidson's "beliefs" are something insufficiently related to our actions. It's because our beliefs are so intimately linked to our actions that we can interpret each others' actions in such a way that we can tell what we believe.
I noticed something like this going on when I was reading phenomenologists' criticisms of McDowell a while back -- it's assumed that Davidson/McDowell mean for language to be working at the "theoretical" level that Heidegger has it working at, so that it's separate from our everyday actions and "know-how." But 'tisn't so. "Belief" isn't a disinterested matter of nodding one's head to a sentence; what I believe guides what I do. I believe that this would bring about situation N, and I would like for N to be the case, so I do this.
(I remember reading a really nice article back then about McDowell and, IIRC, Merleau-Ponty, which ended with the claim that "Awareness is conceptual all the way down, but understanding is affordances all the way up" -- or something along those lines. It was a very snazzy little blending of McDowell and the Heideggerians. Roughly, it argued that he Heideggerians couldn't give us a workable picture of how to get from non-conceptual "coping" to conceptual awareness/action/understanding (they tended to end up stuck in the "Myth of the Given"), so McDowell was write to affirm "the unboundedness of the conceptual" -- but a lot of what the phenomenologists were concerned with were issues that McDowell simply didn't address, and combining them with McDowell's rather sketchy mentions of "second nature" could give us a much more satisfying picture of how we rational animals get about in the world. A half-hour of searching my files has failed to turn it up, annoyingly. I would love to reread that piece, if I could find it.)
Certainly belief guides what one does. And Peirce was the classic for that. Belief is that which a person is prepared to act upon.
I'll write up later today why I think Davidson doesn't quite make it. But who knows, maybe I'm wrong about him.
OK, very briefly, as there are a few other posts I want to do. Then I'll come back to this topic.
For Davidson, actions are explained in terms of belief + desire if they caused the action. Language (speech acts) becomes a subclass of actions. This ends up being a nearly pragmatic sense where when I turn on the dish washer it is in terms of my belief(s) about turning on dish washers (i.e. that button turns it on) and my desire to have the dish washer running. Thus actions have meaning in terms of desires and beliefs. For any given act beliefs and intents are underdetermined.
This is close to Heidegger, but not quite the same thing.
For Heidegger intelligibility of things is made possible in terms of other practices and aims, not actions (practices) in terms of attitudes. Put an other way, for Heidegger, what makes objects appear for me are shared understandings of how-to and not descriptions of these nor beliefs. My understanding of painting is not a series of beliefs, put an other way.
So Davidson gets right the nature of intentions I think. He gets right the relationship between things and beliefs. (Although there is that temporal issue I mentioned there that I find problematic) But he leaves out practices as primordial. Practices don't explain beliefs rather beliefs explain practices. Put an other way, knowledge-that is more important than know-how. Causal explanations in terms of things and desires is more important that practices and difference.
The key text is probably "Actions, Reasons and Causes." I think Davidson gets probably halfway to what I see as the correct answer. But only halfway. Maybe I'm wrong in this and somewhere he writes about how shared practices rather than shared-beliefs allow intelligibility. But I don't see where he says this.
An other problem I see in Davidson is that he appears to reduce actions to events. But this, to me, overlooks the importance of habits or, put an other way, it privileges actuality over possibility whereas as I see it Peirce and Heidegger (correctly) put possibility before actuality.
Let me put the above a little more simply.
Consider my raising my arm. Davidson, as I understand him, wants to have the meaning be in terms of causes but causes like beliefs and intents. What is excluded in this is practices and abilities. That is the meaning of my arm raising certainly includes my belief that I can raise my hand and my desire that I want my hand raised. But one must also include my know-how of raising my hand and the associated practices in which raising my hand is a part. That know-how of raising hands is in terms of possibilities. (All the ways and situations in which I could raise my hand in the sense of that particular practice including the things involved)
Thus the correct (as I see it) answer to meaning must include both the actual and the possible. I'd also note that I think Peirce is right that belief is best seen in terms of habits for possible action. So Peirce grounds belief in terms of possiblities rather than events (actualities)
Clark: What Daniel said.
If you ever locate that article, Daniel, I'd like to see it. (John Haugeland possibly?) I do find phenomenological criticism of McDowell (in defense of "non-conceptual content"), and of Davidson himself (as if one is condemned to metaphysical realism simply by speaking of *truth*-conditions!), very frustrating. McDowell brings some of it on himself though. The name he uses for his position ("naturalized platonism") should be taken out and shot.
I'll have to think about that claim about the Heideggarians and coping, Daniel. I'm afraid I can't give a pithy rejoinder on that. It's just not a particular issue I've thought about. My tendency would be to say that Heidegger would focus on language use which is tied up in all the other practices and named practices.
While the Heideggarians are very much focused on the given, I don't think they fall prey to the myth of the given in the least. (Certainly not Derrida) In a sense Heidegger's analytic of Being ends up being focused on truth and what truth provides. In that sense he's in the same general ballpark as Davidson, although I'm nervous about drawing too much of a parallel. It might be the same ball park but may be outfield and catcher.
But it's a good thing to think about.
I should add, that I think one issue the Heideggarians would make is that what makes understanding possible can't be treated as a being. That is, one must take the unconscious serious. This is found in critiques of AI like one finds in Dreyfus against rule based and connectivist approaches to AI. Certainly one can bring the conceptual out of the non-conceptual. It's been a while but I recall Dreyfus being open to neural nets or other approachs to pattern making.
I guess what I'm saying is, perhaps what you say about a "problem" in Heidegger is there. But I'm not sure it's a problem. The old computer adage might be appropriate. "That's not a bug, that's a feature." I think one big gap between Heideggarians and many analytical philosophers is over what counts as a bug vs. a feature.
The essence of falling into the "Myth of the Given" is to end up in a position such that what is supposed to be justifying our beliefs is something which can't do the work demanded of it. For something to be a reason for something else, both elements have to be part of the "space of reasons" -- they have to both be conceptual, linguistic affairs. A non-conceptual "happening" could only be a cause, but not a reason, for a conceptual "happening." If I see a red flower, this can be a reason for me to believe that there is a red flower in front of me. If I see [non-conceptual whatsits], then this isn't the sort of thing which can give me a reason to hold or reject any view.
The Myth can extend to all of the other propositional attitudes as well, but perceptual beliefs are how it was introduced, and it's a nice paradigm case. But it's the same issue in trying to separate my non-conceptual "coping" or "know-how" from my (conceptual, linguistic) attitudes toward my own capacities. The bodily habits I've picked up (I can open doors, I can drive a car, I can tell when the stoplight's turned colors) can play a part in my actions because they're already the sort of thing which, if I have the capacity I'm held to have, can combine with a "pro-attitude" to cause an action. So I don't think Davidson fails to pay attention to practices and habits in his account of action; I think that this is what he's doing with his account of action. It might show up more in his later essays, when he starts to poke at the puzzle of how to get from non-rational animal activities to rational animal activities. I know later on he frequently suggests that language can come to us so easily because we have evolved to find the same sorts of things interesting (which makes it less difficult to compare our reactions to those of others, and so to triangulate), which is a point he picked up from Quine.
I'm not sure how Hedieggerians are supposed to be peculiarly immune to the temptation of the Mythical Given; it does not seem uncharacteristic of them to assert that there is some "Other" which escapes our conceptual capacities, and that this is what's yoking our linguistic/conceptual activities to the world itself. (I know I've seen exactly this move used in popularizations of Derrida, to show that Derrida's still a "realist" and so neither a relativist nor a nihilist -- see, language doesn't refer to things, but merely more language, but there's always a "trace" of the "Other" in language and this is what yolks language to the world, in the thin sense in which it's right to say that language is yolked to anything. Presumably, Derrida himself is subtler than the account given in those little "Introduction to Derrida" books, but the threat of falling into the Myth is there.)
Actually, does Derrida ever mention Sellars? He's not widely-read enough in analytic circles, but I've never heard of him being read at all by continental folk. ("Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" is actually available via Google; the good stuff from the middle of the century is slowly arriving in the public domain.)
Duck: At least it's more elegant than anti-anti-realism, which makes it sound like McDowell's views occupy a niche position of a niche position. But yeah, he really could benefit from a better name. At least it's less misleading than "Absolute Idealism," which was neither an idealism nor particularly concerned with "The Absolute."
Still trying to find that paper. It has to be on my laptop somewhere; I never delete PDFs after I finish reading them. (Maybe that's part of why I can't find one PDF in particular.)
Crude as it is, I kind of like the term "anti-anti-realism" -- the point being that, while it is directed against anti-realism, IT ISN"T REALISM EITHER, OKAY? Sorry to shout, but realists do get confused on this point (as if to reject anti-realism meant we had to see-saw back to realism). Of course it works better as a descriptive term than as a full-fledged doctrine. I also kind of like "Objective Idealism," which is at least better than "Absolute Idealism".
Objective idealism is an interesting term since it ends up entailing panpsychism in most of its forms. (Peirce, Royce, etc.) This tends to be the very doctrine most folks find extremely distasteful, even if it isn't the subjective idealism of Berkeley or the problematic kind of Kant.
Personally I prefer semiotic realism. Although that's not a term I believe Peirce actually used. (I'd have to check to be sure)
I'll deal with the myth of the Given and Derrida in an other post.
When I hear "Objective Idealism" I think Schelling. The less often I end up thinking about Schelling, the happier I am. Hegel is an easier read than that mess. Ugh, just remembering that funky diagram with the plus and minus signs is giving me nausea.
I once saw a reference to "McDowell's domesticated Hegelianism." I kinda liked the sound of "Domesticated Hegelianism."
Well Royce was a Hegelian of sorts.
Schelling said that active matter was mind and passive mind was matter didn't he? Which is pretty much the same as Peirce's objective idealism as matter as effete mind. He even admits he took the term "objective idealism" from Schelling. And, as I said, it is pretty similar. He also admits similarity to Hegel but qualifies it significantly.
Of course Peirce doesn't have a lot positive to say about Schelling (calling him, along with Emerson and others) "minds stricken with the monstrous mysticism of the East." He also speaks of "One system, also, stands upon its own ground; I mean the new Schelling-Hegel mansion, lately run up in the German taste, but with such oversights in its construction that, although brand new, it is already pronounced uninhabitable."
He finally admits a lot of similarity to Hegel but attacks Hegel for only accepting what Peirce calls thirdness and neglects firstness and secondness. (Roughly the phenomena and the Other)
The truth is that pragmaticism is closely allied to the Hegelian absolute idealism, from which, however, it is sundered by its vigorous denial that the third category, (which Hegel degrades to a mere stage of thinking), suffices to make the world, or is even so much as self-sufficient. Had Hegel, instead of regarding the first two stages with his smile of contempt, held on to them as independent or distinct elements of the triune Reality, pragmaticists might have looked up to him as the great vindicator of their truth. (Of course, the external trappings of his doctrine are only here and there of much significance.) For pragmaticism belongs essentially to the triadic class of philosophical doctrines, and is much more essentially so than Hegelianism is. (Indeed, in one passage, at least, Hegel alludes to the triadic form of his exposition as to a mere fashion of dress.)
To add, I know very little about Schelling and haven't actually read any of his texts first hand. I did read both Heidegger books on him though.
Two more quotes. (More for the Google hits)
I carefully recorded my opposition to all philosophies which deny the reality of the Absolute and asserted that "the one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind." This is as much as to say that I am a Schellingian of some strip. (CP 6:86)
If you were to call my philosophy Schellingism transformed in the light of modern physics, I should not take it hard. (CP 6:415)
As I said I don't know enough Schelling to really say much there. I think he just means his idea that all matter is semiotic in nature. Somewhat like modern physical theories where physics is conceived of in terms of information theory with the mathematical relationship between information theory and thermodynamics taken seriously. Of course Peirce is writing before the discovery of quantum mechanics although in some ways one could say he anticipates it (his notion of chance) and in other ways his thought is antithical to it (his doctrine of continuity)
Schelling says a lot of things. In his "History of Philosophy" lectures, Hegel mentions that Schelling never presents his system in full, and it's always changed radically from the last time he presented part of it, so it's fine to mention him as an historical figure, despite the fact that he actually outlives Hegel, and continued writing until his death. At one point he treated mind and matter as two poles working out from his "indifference-point". Hegel quoted Schelling's formulation of nature as "petrified intelligence", with approval, in paragraph 24 of the Encyclopedia Logic. (One of the best things he ever wrote, for my money; I'd put his discussion of pantheism/atheism in paragraph 573 above it, but 24's of much wider interest.)
The bit about "triadism" (which Hegel attributes to Kant -- the dogmatism/skepticism/Criticism bit stands out) being a mere form of dress is another one of my favorite bits of Hegel; it's part of his discussion of "method." He ends up saying that there is indeed one true method for all topics: Whatever the situation calls for. This, of course, isn't a method at all. Which is the joke. It became a lot easier to make sense of Hegel's comments on Kant when I realized that he makes fun of Kant a lot. Mostly good-naturedly, of course, but he's still flat-out mocking the Critical philosophy.
I can't agree that Hegel's smile is contemptuous. The various elements ("moments") of his system aren't reduced to "higher" elements (this is where he criticizes Spinoza for being an "acosmist"), it's just claimed that the various moments can only be properly understood when one has all of the moments in view. (One doesn't have the right view of being, or essence, or the concept until one sees how these hang together with each other, with everyday experience, with natural happenings, biological life etc. etc. since these are all entwined with one another in reality.) Actually, it's worth noting that the penultimate topic in the "Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences" isn't actually religion proper, but irony. The threat seems to be that one could see how "things, in the broadest possible sense of the term, hang together, in the broadest possible sense of the term" and then act as if everything was not worth taking seriously. The difference between irony and philosophy is that instead of smirking, one nods. So to speak.
Thanks for the info on Hegel. I obviously can't really say too much since, as I've often said, I know just enough Hegel to be dangerous. Peirce really felt that he neglected firstness and secondness in the senses Peirce spoke of them.
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