Sunday 12 May 2019

Philosophical Confusions Part V: Finally and for the love of God, Some sort of Point

by Simon Smith

Once again, just as we were approaching some point or other, we were forced to ditch the discussion and dive for cover. All to avoid the stampede of intellectualists and thrill-seekers desperate to purchase an affordable paperback copy of Beyond Realism: Seeking the Divine Other – still available from Amazon and Vernon Press, where it is also now an e-book.
Of course, the same, more or less, could be said of Looking at the Sun: New Writings in Modern Personalism: it’s available from Vernon Press and Amazon both as a paperback and e-book. Now, isn’t that interesting?

However, if everybody is quite ready, perhaps we can get on. Indeed, get on we shall, for finally and at the very longest of long lasts, we come back to the point where this all began. Or possibly what it was leading up to, I forget which. In either case, all ahead for a Derridean thought.
It goes something like this: I think we can extrapolate Derrida’s claims about how messages work to help us understand something important about human action in general (if there is any such thing). I think we can do so for the simple reason that language-use is a human activity, perhaps even the most typically human of human activities. And, of course, it’s actually quite difficult to see how all this might work if it only applied to writing and no other form of activity. I’m not even sure what that would mean; it would make writing some kind of alien modality.
Assuming we can legitimately extrapolate, the central point will remain the same: no particular action entails any particular actors or interagents. An action, if it is to be an action, must logically be able to do without the doer and the done to.
To make sense of any phenomenon as being a human action, it must fit within the framework of what ordinarily counts as human action. That’s to say, for said phenomenon to be a recognisable action, it will have to: a) be physically manifest in some way; and b) a reasonable fit within the bounds of ordinary social convention, at least to some degree. I say, ‘to some degree’ because an action may well be original in many ways, but it will still be comprised of recognisable movements. An action that was utterly and entirely original in every way, that looked nothing at all like any other human action – how would we even know it was an action? It could be anything: a toe made of asparagus, the taste of a hippopotamus, or someone snorting an archangel.[1]  
All of which, believe it or not, is just another way of saying that our actions cannot be utterly or absolutely unique if they are to be cognisable and recognisable as actions at all. In short, actions have to be the sorts of things that people do, which gives us a tolerably wide range of options, I should say.
Before moving on to what I am sure we all hope to God is the conclusion, I imagine one or two of you will just be mustard-keen to have a poke at that first requirement: action should be physically manifest in some way. What, you may be wondering, about mental actions? No? What about pure thought, ideas, conceptions? Seriously, no one is wondering that? I don’t believe you.
Well, in the first place, I’m not sure there is any such thing as ‘pure thought’, or rather, I’m not sure what that expression is supposed to mean. More pertinently, however, I’m with Farrer on this one: 

Surely, the burden of proof lies on the man who says that there is ever thought without so much as the ghost of motion; and it will be hard for him to prove the negative part of his case. ‘Not even the ghost….’ How could he be sure of that?[2]

The positive presupposition lies on the side of physicality since that supplies our earliest and every subsequent experience of action. Without the ability to express ourselves physically, it is highly doubtful that we would be able to even identify ourselves as selves in the first place, let alone have the first clue as to what action is.
Speaking of positive presuppositions takes us back to where we began, with the presence or priority, ontological, of course (whatever that means) of agents who act and interact. Actions – particularly those we experience directly – presuppose agents; minimally, two: one ‘behind’ and one ‘in front’, which is to say, one who acts and one who is acted upon. In the same way, relations presuppose relata. But presupposes is as strong as the inference gets. It does not, cannot, designate or determine any necessary connection or entailment relation; it doesn’t point indefatigably, unquestionably, irrefragably, or absolutely to you, me, or anybody else. All and as much as it can do (to labour a point) is require an agent in order that we may make sense of whatever it is as an action.
Pressing the point, we even might be tempted to say that actions alone are real – in the sense that we have frequent, unmediated, and very empirical experience of them. Actions make an impact, an experiencable difference to our lives. Agents, on the other hand, are conceptual constructs, projections, frequently quite abstract and never – that is, logically and empirically never – known apart from what they do to make themselves known. In short, no one ever has or ever will meet an agent without some kind of activity being involved.
All of which leads, I think, to the inescapable conclusion that, notwithstanding the fever-dreams and nightsweats of realist philosophers, action and relation cannot logically, empirically, or metaphysically support the weight of ontological priority (whatever that means). The self-in-itself or self-apart or radical subject or private part of a person or whatever else you call it, is a notion which cannot be sustained by any active inference, claim to real relation, or concrete connection.
It seems, therefore, that those who remain wedded to this so-called ‘substance-self’ must either find some coherent way of substantiating the knowledge-claim or accept that they are, in the end, just making stuff up. Saying ‘I just know it’s true’ or ‘I feel it deep down’ or ‘In my version of philosophy, I don’t need to come up with an argument’ will no longer do.  
Finding a way to make sense of their ideas would be interesting to see, not least because real knowledge is a corollary of action. For those who like the comedy of embarrassment, it might also be fun, but that’s not really my thing. Accepting that they’re just making stuff up would, I think, be preferable, since it would mean philosophy in general, and metaphysics in particular (you know what I mean), could finally move on. We could leave behind someone of the most unutterably dull and pointless conversations ever had and, just possibly, do something useful for the first time in two thousand years.
In sum, then, the point is—

Wait, what’s that? Is that some kind of alien modality? No! No! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
My God! That nighted, penguin-fringed abyss!



[1] If you really want to know, see Farrer A. ‘Metaphysics and Analogy’ in Reflective Faith, 88.
[2] Farrer A. The Freedom of the Will (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960) 38.

No comments:

Post a Comment