Reading Notes: December 2nd, 2021

“[T]he principle contribution of the new realists to contemporary epistemological thought consists in their effective insistence upon three now relatively non-controversial claims, the current acceptance of which is in considerable part due to the efforts of the new realists themselves. The first is the claim that all cognitive experiences intend objects other than themselves….The soundness of the claim that cognitive experiences intend objects independent of themselves, though often obscured by philosophical theories, would seem to be evident almost as soon as the question concerning what such experiences intend is unambiguously raised. To claim to know is to claim to know about something, and even when what one claims to know is itself a sentient experience, the experience said to be known presents itself as distinct from the experience in which it is known. For the most part what cognitive experiences claim to apprehend are not experiences at all but logical or mathematical truths or physical objects or events, and by their very nature neither logical or mathematical truths nor physical objects or events can themselves be just experiences. The force of this intention in cognitive experiences to refer to objects beyond themselves is reflected not only in the character of such experiences and in the structure of our sciences but also in the elementary forms of our language. Thus, for example, when we say that we believe, or take for granted, or know something, we are saying, not that we believe or take for granted or know our believing or taking for granted or knowing experiences, but that we believe, take for granted, or know some true proposition, fact, or possible fact independent of these attitudes.” (Hill, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, 119-120) 

“In Royce’s Idealism, the existence of error—itself indubitable, he argues, since to deny the existence of error would be to describe the view that error exists as “an error”— compels us to admit an Absolute. According to traditional empiricism, error consists in having an idea which “fails to agree with its object.” Royce raises an obvious objection: there is no error merely in having an idea which “fails to agree,” there is error only if our idea fails to agree with entities with which we meant it to conform. To be mistaken, he concludes, is to have a certain intention: an erroneous idea is one which fails in its purpose, which does not indicate what we intended it to indicate. There is error in the idea of a bent stick, he says, only if that idea is intended as a means of revealing the shape of a stick which is actually straight. Therefore, Royce draws the consequence, the fact that an idea of ours is erroneous can be recognized only by an intelligence which is capable of considering both our idea and what that idea, in some measure, has failed to reveal to us. “An error,” Royce summarizes his conclusions in The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885), “is an incomplete thought that to a higher thought is known as having failed in the purpose that it more or less clearly had, and that is fully realized in this higher thought.” We can come to be conscious of our own errors, he thinks, in so far as we are able partially to identify ourselves with the standpoint of this higher thought, of which we are ourselves a fragment. But the number of possible errors is infinite, since every truth brings with it an endless number of errors—the error of supposing that it is false, the error of supposing that this error is not an error and so on. Only an Absolute experience, he concludes, can sustain the reality of error; no finite experience can ever be conscious of more than a particle of the errors which the world contains.” (Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy, 91-92) 

“According to the Smith-style basic notion of reduction, if chemistry is reducible to physics then we should expect an explanation of chemical phenomena in some fashion or other purely in terms of physics. Let us consider quantum chemical explanations of some of the spectroscopic properties of water. If one is of a reductionist turn of mind, one would expect the quantum chemist to write down a Schrodinger equation (the equation which describes all interactions in quantum mechanics) solely in terms of fundamental physical interactions for the molecule in question. However, this is not what happens. What quantum chemists seek is a model in which they can apply their theory and provide some useful and tractable results. Here is a brief qualitative summary of how one might go about investigating the spectroscopic properties of water molecules:” (Ritchie, Pragmatism and Pluralism, 19-20) 

“Spectroscopic properties of any molecule (or atom) are determined by the energy levels of the electrons. As an electron falls from one energy level to another, a photon with a frequency corresponding to the energy difference between the two levels is emitted. The quantum chemist thus wants to come up with some way of calculating the value of these energy levels. To do this she has to be able to model the sorts of interactions that dictate the features of the Hamiltonian, i.e., the part of the Schrodinger equation that describes the possible energy functions of the orbital electrons. A basic construction of the Hamiltonian might begin something like this. First one would assess the sorts of interaction a molecule like water might undergo. It is known from chemistry that the water molecule is a three atom, non-linear structure with one heavy nucleus bonded with two lighter nuclei. One would therefore expect there to be vibrational motion between the nuclei, along the bonds, as well as rotational motion for the structure as a whole. The quantum chemist can model these vibrational modes using the harmonic oscillator (with a few adjustments); in other words by treating the movement between the bonds like the quantum version of a spring. For the rotational modes a rigid rotator model is used, which is the quantum analogue of the classical motion of rotation without deformation. One can solve these Hamiltonians and obtain theoretical values for the electron energy levels, which in turn can be used to calculate the value of the spectral lines. More accurate results can be obtained by adding perturbations—for example coupling effects, and possible deformations to the basic molecular structure. Alternatively, so called variational calculations may be made. Essentially, this involves exploiting certain mathematical properties of quantum mechanics to obtain an approximate solution to the ground-state energy for the molecule by varying certain judiciously chosen parameters. Here again knowledge of the structural properties of water is essential in applying this strategy as well as modelling the Hamiltonian. The sort of coordinates that one chooses to model the system is dictated by knowledge of the structure of water. Moreover, in making the actual calculations when employing this method, one has to know certain facts about the typical bondlengths and angles of water in order to break it down into computationally tractable chunks. So what we see, in fact, is that prior knowledge of classical chemistry is imported into the quantum chemist’s treatment at every stage. First, in modelling the kind of motions that one would expect the molecule to undergo and thus allowing the theoretician to write down appropriate Hamiltonians. And second, knowledge of the typical values for certain features of the molecule are necessary before one can even begin to make calculations. Generally, one can say that the application of quantum theory depends on prior knowledge of the structure of the water molecule.” (Ritchie, Pragmatism and Pluralism, 20-21) 

“What we find then is that quantum chemical explanation of spectroscopic effects must assume certain facts about the structure of the molecule, facts which are not derived from fundamental theory but from classical chemistry. Now, as said at the outset, I do not expect anyone to be particularly surprised by this description of quantum chemistry. A physicalist could argue that although there is in fact no reduction here, that does not mean there could not be a reduction in principle. It is, after all, by physicalists lights, not mysterious why one cannot explain the spectroscopic effects in purely physical terms. Schrodinger equations which attempted to describe only basic physical, in particular Coulombic, interactions for this system would be mathematically intractable. Given that the direct route to reduction is blocked off, the only way one could explain the spectroscopic features of water is by introducing knowledge from other domains. I have no objection to offer at this point9 to that response but one should bear in mind that it reverses the order of the explanation. Instead of arguing for physicalism, one is now justifying the apparent failures of reduction assuming physicalism. In short, science is no longer supporting physicalism, physicalism is explaining away certain features of science. This is, of course, a game any metaphysical theory can play and physicalism’s claim to be special, to be a naturalistic metaphysics, is thus weakened.” (Ritchie, Pragmatism and Pluralism, 21-22) 

“The above considerations provide yet another nail in the already well-sealed coffin of the meta-inductive argument. There are, in reality, very few data-points for on which to base the meta-inductive argument. As the above discussion shows, even favorite cases like chemistry turn out to be problematic for physicalists and there are many other, more detailed case studies that demonstrate the same point for other disciplines. For example, Nancy Cartwright (1999) and Sunny Auyang (2000) have independently discussed cases where reductions in different areas of physics are seen to be problematic; Sahorta Sarkar (2000) shows the inadequacy of thinking that molecular biology reduces to physics or even chemistry; John Dupre (1993) discusses similar cases in biology more generally. Moreover, the whole philosophical world knows the enormous number of anti-reductionist arguments that have been put forward regarding the mental. The conclusions the various authors wish to draw from such cases are as varied as the areas they have chosen to discuss. What is undeniable though is that their case studies, taken together, show that the world described by the sciences is a mess. A whole host of theories that make all kinds of different ontological assumptions are employed to describe the world. Contemporary science provides nothing like the sort of picture that could support the meta-inductive argument.” (Ritchie, Pragmatism and Pluralism, 22-23) 

“We may summarize our discussion of the meta-inductive argument as follows. The argument in the abstract is flawed because it provides no basis for thinking that one can reasonably infer that successful reductions in one area will lead to successful reductions in another. Moreover, the putative cases of reduction provide no pattern from which a physicalist ontology might be inferred. Once we look at science in detail we see that even favored cases of reduction turn out to be complex and at best partial; and the history of science testifies as much to the failure of reductionist programs as to its successes. Let me reiterate what I take it has been shown: there is no argument from reduction in science to physicalism. We should conclude no more than this from the arguments so far given. It certainly has not been shown that physicalism is false. All we are entitled to claim is that there is no support for physicalism from this quarter.” (Ritchie, Pragmatism and Pluralism, 24) 

“Egocentric Predicament: The predicament of the knower confined to his own ideas and incapable of knowing anything else.” (Hunnex, Chronological and Thematic Charts of Philosophies and Philosophers, 14) 

“The first scientific dream studies started in the latter half of the 19th century, around the same time as introspectionism ruled in psychology. In that era, dreaming was defined as a succession of mental images that the dreamer perceives as real, and the study of dreams focused on the subjective appearance and experience of dreams, not on the meaning or the function of dreams. The introspective dream report was considered as a valid testimony of what had been experienced during dreaming. A student of William James, Mary Calkins, who later became the first woman President of the American Psychological Association, conducted the first statistical studies on dreams in 1893. She calculated the frequency of occurrence of the various sensory modalities in dreams and came up with similar figures to those of modern dream researchers. In spite of this promising kickoff, the kind of scientific dream research that takes consciousness seriously soon collapsed with the rise of Freud’s psychoanalysis and Watson’s behaviourism….[T]he focus turned away from the actual phenomenology of dreams….[A]cademic psychology as a science also became hostile towards scientific dream research, because dreaming is a subjective phenomenon of consciousness….In the 1950s, empirical dream research made a sudden comeback [with] the study of dream content…[through the publication of] new descriptive statistics on the phenomenological contents of large samples of home-reported dreams [involving a] method of content analysis [that] has become the most widely used way of comparing the phenomenological content of dreams across different populations and samples. In this way the line of research originally started by Mary Calkins in 1893 was finally resurrected and the dark ages of psychoanalysis and behaviourism were gradually left behind.” (Veronsuo, Consciousness: the Science of Subjectivity, 236-238) 

“But there is still a more directly idealistic implication in the epistemology of Sellars. He holds that things do not impress themselves directly on the mind. He rejects the copy theory. In fact, he goes so far as to say: “We shall never see the face of external things.” And yet he believes that human knowledge is valid for [the external world], that is the mind can denote the essential characteristics of [external things]. But since this does not involve a direct intuition of [external things], it must involve a representation of the [external things] in mental terms, in terms of mind or ideas….This content of knowledge is of course essentially mental. If [external] things then cannot be known except in terms of their characteristics which are known only in terms of mind and in no other way, the conclusion seems to follow that [external] things are in their essential nature of the order of mind….Miss Calkins justly makes the criticism that Sellars, along with Lovejoy and Pratt, seem to approach the idealistic instead of the realistic point of view….On the basis of his epistemology one can rightfully draw the conclusion that at times he is not far from the Kingdom of Idealism; for [external things] are never directly intuited nor are they copied, but rather revealed in terms of ideas or mental contents. He must either admit that [external things] are of the nature of mind or else frankly hold with Kant, the existence of things-in-themselves….If [external] things are known only in terms of thought and yet are not of the nature of thought but something other than thought, then Sellars must postulate things-in-themselves lying back of appearances….Either there is an unknown something which lies beyond the reach of thought, or else, since mind can grasp more and more of their characteristics and order and pattern and nature in terms of mind, things are [of the nature] of Mind…” (Munk, Roy Wood Sellars’ Criticism of Idealism, 24-31)