For fun with this material, see: Tom Stoppard, "Jumpers" (New York: Grove Press, 1972). Bruce Duffy, "The World as I Found It" (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1987).
Due to attacks on my computer I was required to write this essay without the use of italics or bold script.
I. Introduction.
G.E. Moore's (1873-1958) critique of idealism is a famous example of philosophical confusion that was eventually disowned by its author as "inadequate." Moore writes: "... 'The Refutation of Idealism' ... now appears to me to be very confused, as well as to embody many down-right mistakes." (See "Philosophical Studies," p. viii.)
Moore's essay, nevertheless, has become influential in the English-speaking world because of Moore's popularity with Bloomsbury's poets and painters early in the twentieth century. I have decided to examine this essay only because many of my Internet adversaries, often those who are fond of patronizing me -- under the impression that they are providing "instruction" on these issues -- believe that Moore's essay somehow destroyed idealism. It didn't.
I am a phenomenologist who makes use of idealist insights and hermeneutic theory. This is sufficient for my remarks to be labeled "convoluted gibberish" by my self-styled "intellectual superiors" who then ask me to explain philosophical concepts to them. Twenty-something year-old philosophical geniuses ("I went to Smith College!") unjustly and inaccurately associate idealism with gas lights and Victorian fashions. ("Is clarity enough?")
Moore is so thoroughly muddled about idealism that his criticisms are mostly irrelevant to this well-known philosophical position. Moore rejected idealism as a way of declaring independence from an older generation of British philosophers, especially Bradley and MacTaggart. (See Paul Levy, "G.E. Moore and the Cambridge Apostles," pp. 133-134.)
MacTaggart is probably a better metaphysician and far more learned than Moore. Incidentally, I have seen both spellings, "MacTaggart" and "McTaggart." Feel free to adopt your preferred spelling of this very British name: "John MacTaggart Ellis MacTaggart." I doubt that MacTaggart was Jewish. Aside from how MacTaggart's name is spelled it should be recognized that he was an outstanding philosopher and a great scholar of the subject. MacTaggart's books are due for reconsideration and discussion in light of the emergence of postmodernism.
See John MacTaggart, "Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic" (New York: Russell & Russell, 1964), revised edition of 1898 which was first issued in 1922; and Michael Tanner, "Metaphysics and Music," in "The Impulse to Philosophize" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 181-200; as well as John MacMurray, "The Self as Agent" (New York: Humanity Books, 1999), first edition 1957.
We tend to forget that in an age with few distractions nineteenth century philosophers were often great scholars in several academic fields because they read an astonishing number of books. The learning found even in personal letters or the recorded conversations of someone like MacTaggart takes your breath away. MacTaggart's writing is elegant, clear and beautiful. Nineteenth century philosophers were also products of an educational system that concentrated on the classics and modern "great books." They were fluent in several languages and well-versed in the high cultural tradition of the Western world.
Persons who are dismissive of philosophers I admire tend to like G.E. Moore and Virginia Woolf, possibly Ludwig Wittgenstein and Richard Rorty will also be mentioned. In addition, of course, reference will be made to the poetry of Silvia Plath.
MacTaggart's books have been forgotten by several generations of British and American thinkers. MacTaggart's works are mostly out of print.
MacTaggart's philosophy is highly relevant to recent Continental thought and scientific discussions.
On a day when new bombing attacks have erupted in the UK it may help to reflect on the tradition that is under attack and why the terrorists will not win.
MacTaggart's philosophy of love is one of the most beautiful and profound in all of Western thought. It is unknown today even to many professional philosophers.
Bradley's and MacTaggart's English language metaphysical writings are better than a lot of today's Continental philosophy, including works by thinkers with huge international reputations who are sometimes only reinventing the wheel in a trendy new jargon.
We need new biographies and appreciations of these nineteenth- and twentieth-century "English language" idealists -- from both sides of the Atlantic -- and assessments of their relevance in light of current scientific developments. I plan to write more about these neglected philosophers.
I am shocked that there is no recent scholarly biography of F.H. Bradley or John MacTaggart.
I am sure that MacTaggart's insights will be found useful by feminists. However, I am unaware of any feminist philosopher making use of MacTaggart's books or, say, his non-idealist contemporary George Santayana's works. No one today bothers with Americans Mary Whiton Calkins or Josiah Royce.
Santayana's philosophy is materialistic and naturalistic. Science worshippers can relax. Nevertheless, Santayana accords an important place to aesthetic feeling and intuition in knowing. Santayana is antimilitaristic, respectful of spirituality and autonomy in relationships -- probably a feminist before the term was widely used -- even lending his assistance to several "young ladies" seeking to write a dissertation on his work.
In Santayana's response to a letter of inquiry from Bryn Mawr students he feigned shock: "... What, you find me -- ME -- difficult! ..."
True, like me, Santayana may be dismissed as one of those "Latinos who are not smart enough to be philosophers."
Moore was a "common sense" philosopher, school of Thomas Reid, a semi-utilitarian. As an admirer of Bentham and Mill, Moore argued for the importance of intuition, art, and the reality of the experience of the "indefinable quality of goodness" leading to the best consequences for all members of a community. Moore's forays into epistemology and metaphysics are less successful than his ethical writings within the teleological tradition.
Whenever you hear British politicians speak of Moore's much celebrated "British common sense" it means that they are desperate for your vote. No current Labor P.M. will be mentioned by me. (Yes, they spell it "Labour.")
The unique manner in which Brits display their romanticism and idealism -- qualities which are just as deeply ingrained in the national character as are "common sense" and empiricism -- is by adopting a semi-Victorian propriety and self-containment in public roles.
The Whitehall public servant complete with Bowler hat is merely a "character." The "role" is a part written by Shakespeare, as is the poet, antinomian, artist, musician. Britain is a paradox. Most countries are. British people, more than most others, are always different from what you see on the surface. In accepting the Oscar award Tom Stoppard followed Roberto Benigni -- whose antics as he received the award are impossible to describe or duplicate: "I want to make love to everybody!!!" Benigni said.
Who doesn't? Brits will be horrified at my use of one, let alone three exclamation marks. For Latins, on the other hand, there is no such thing as excess.
Stoppard responded to his award and predecessor on the podium in a droll and casual way: "I feel like Roberto Benigni ... inside."
There is a Roberto Benigni "inside" most Brits, except when he is on the "outside" in the personas of a few eccentrics -- such as Boy George, Monty Pythoners, and all Tory politicians. There are several characters "inside" most of our British cousins. Again, I will say nothing about Mr. Blair. There are always contradictions and unsuspected layers of personality in Brits. This makes them fascinating. After all, Britain is also the world's richest literary terrain, blessed with great thespians in every generation. Compare Thomas Love Peacock, "Nightmare Abbey/Crochet Castle" (London: Penguin, 1969) with Tom Stoppard, "Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon" (New York: Grove Press, 1966).
Perhaps this contrast between appearance and reality will be illustrated in the differences between the aptly named "Gordon Brown" (the man your mother hoped you'd marry) and Tony Blair (the man she feared you'd marry).
Britain's second Labor Party "marriage" may be wiser than the first. However, it is unlikely to be as much fun or as exciting. O.K., Shakespereans: Please contrast Shakespeare's vision of love and romance in two comedies -- "As You Like It" (Branagh, 07) and "Twelfth Night" (Nunn, 96), then look at a third exploration of these themes in "Much Ado About Nothing" (Branagh, 93).
This literary quality in Brits is found even among those who may not think of themselves as great readers: Mick Jagger, John Cleese, Winston Churchill, Julie Burchill, even Tony Blair (I could not resist!) and Britain's "Iron Lady" (Mrs. Thatcher) are "characters" worthy of the Globe Theater.
Are any of these personalities "real"? Who knows? They certainly don't.
Germaine Greer is also unlikely to serve as a model of sanity. G.E. Moore is now a character, a philosophical type. Would Professor Moore be confident concerning the issue of whether he "existed"? ("A Philosophical Investigation of Ludwig Wittgenstein.")
All of the foregoing persons have submitted vouchers for their travel expenses to Parliament, twice in some cases. This effort was especially peculiar in the case of Winston Churchill -- who has been dead for some time -- and who provided an address in New Jersey for all cash reimbursals that is shared with "Bob Menendez." ("Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks.")
What do I mean by a philosophical type? Well, there is a persona associated with each worldview or philosophy discussed in the traditional syllabus. Moore, later Russell, and (less so) Whitehead and Ryle -- eventually all of the English linguistic-analytical school -- conjures thoughts of a friendly, no-nonsense neighborhood grocer.
These are all good philosophers who "say what they mean and mean what they say." Recent British linguistic-analytical philosophy reflects an outlook associated with clarity and an absolute horror of grand, pretentious-sounding phrases, or "profundity" in a German sense:
"I have always had an allergy to pomposity of every kind," Simon Blackburn writes, "and I especially dislike being made to work harder than I have to in order to understand what is going on."
"Escaping the Straightjacket," in "The Philosopher's Magazine," Issue 38 (Summer, 2007), p. 42.
Professor Blackburn is a world famous metaphysician and logician. He is every bit as profound as the latest Parisian "Master Thinker." However, Blackburn is a "philosophical grocer." Philosophical grocers will resort to words like "practicality, conceptual frugality, self-control" and "staring facts in the face." They like to "see the world as it is." The person adopting this perspective in life will think of him- or herself as a "realist," living in the "real world," who can weigh and measure, counting "exactly," and with "precision." These will be the terms of intellectual rigor and admiration. It will never occur to such a person to wonder which of the many "real" worlds in which we all live is being measured or counted.
Who is Bill Clinton? Who is Kate Winslet? Who are you? In each case, are we not discussing -- among other things -- a "performance" for the benefit of an audience? (See my essay "Cyrano de Bergerac and Literary Identity.")
The "philosophical grocer's" identity is also a performance. If you ask for half-a-pound of sugar, then you may expect exactly half-a-pound and not one ounce more or less from your grocer. The same applies when you ask for a thirty-page philosophical essay. This is a sign of such a philosopher-grocer's understanding of integrity, clarity, analytical rigor.
One does not ask for a pound if one only wants half-a-pound of sugar.
Would you care for one pound of philosophy?
When combined with pragmatism this grocer's view of life will be the perspective of most English and American lawyers, business people, politicians.
From the point of view of other philosophies and world views -- including most of the richest "foreign" perspectives -- this is the sort of person who will "appear" idiotic.
I suspect that there is an insight here concerning many of America's current difficulties in the world. American and British artists and many others in both countries often see things differently, but rarely wield power in their societies. ("The Art of Robert Downey, Jr.")
Are there analogies to gender controversies available?
Gender roles are always arbitrary and -- like theatrical "roles" -- must be "performances" for an audience. We strangely associate rigor and a "no nonsense approach" with masculinity; whereas "creativity and sensitivity" are weirdly identified, exclusively, with the "feminine." (Compare "Let's hear it for the boys" and "Thoughts of a Domestic Revolutionary" with "The Taming of Somebody I Don't Know Who" and "Judith Butler and Gender Theory.")
As I say, Moore is a "philosophical grocer." A person may be a genius and a philosophical grocer. However, a person may be a genius (Wittgenstein) and yet lack what Henry James describes as an "experiencing nature," or emotional and aesthetic subtlety, theoretical or scientific elegance and imaginative power or a gift of empathy. Compare Moore with Bradley. What is the difference? Your essay should be exactly twenty-five pages long. By the way, Bradley is much better, philosophically and in terms of literary values, than either Moore or Russell.
Why is Bradley less well known today? Why are Bradley's books out of print? Is it those Americans again?
No one can be a great actor or any kind of fine artist without an "experiencing nature." In this sense, a great actor may be a genius at empathy in a way that is absolutely impossible for a Nobel prize-winning scientist. ("Stuart Hampshire and Iris Murdoch On Freedom of Mind.")
"Time is unreal," Iris Murdoch quotes MacTaggart then provides Moore's response: "I have just had my breakfast."
Put those two philosophers together, MacTaggart and Moore, and you will have a sense of the British character (or mind) as well as an inkling of Shakespeare's genius. Think of feminism again. The United Kingdom (maybe the U.S. as well) is a mental landscape of "practical idealists."
The U.S. is made up of a similar duality and dialectic between idealism and pragmatism which (today) is nearly evenly divided along gender lines.
See what I mean? Why were Clinton (poetry) and Gore (prose) so perfect as running mates? Obama (poetry) and Biden (prose)?
Poetry wins elections; prose governs nations. Think about it. I believe that Hillary is both poetry and prose.
Yes, I suppose all of the best politicians -- like Obama -- are a little of both, prose and poetry. Without the poetry, however, you will not get the chance to govern. John Lennon could only be British. Not surprisingly, Lennon found himself very much at home in New York. Paul McCartney's earthy examples and simple lyricism, combined perfectly with Lennon's politics and ideas. Lennon was in the idealist mold, while McCartney is in the "common sense" and empirical mold of British thinkers. They were better together than apart. ("Colin McGinn's Naughty Book.")
The best British philosophers are as good as any in the world. They must be counted among those few thinkers who will always be essential to the contents of your mind: David Hume, F.H. Bradley, Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. (Philosophically, Wittgenstein is a weird Brit as Santayana is a strange American.)
British philosophical heros -- especially for Americans -- must include John Locke, Bishop Berkely, Thomas Reid, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, T.H. Green, George Eliot (yes, Mary Ann Evans). I suppose Jeremy Bentham and good-natured John Stuart Mill (the ultimate plodder and grocer), who was Bertrand Russell's grandfather, must also be listed. Anally-retentive readers will point out that they've seen "Marian Evans" as the proper spelling of George Eliot's "real" name. These are the sort of comments I get from New Jersey persons. (David Hume's Philosophical Romance.")
Readers will discover that both spellings are used by scholars. Ms. Evans altered the spelling of several names that she used during her adult life, including "Mrs. Lewes" -- although she and her life-partner, Mr. G.H. Lewes, were not married when she did this "editing" of her name.
II. Moore's Biography and What Moore Reacted Against.
Before delving into the specifics of Moore's unexciting biography, most modern British philosophers are products of the middle class (father was a physician, solicitor, clergyman, politician or -- horrors! -- "in trade"), I should clarify this suggested dialectic in the British mind for future thesis writers.
You should get your highlighters now and take good notes. Get rid of the chewing gum, please.
The greatest British philosopher is David Hume. Very close to Hume's genius is Bishop Berkeley. There is a continuity from Hume to Bertrand Russell in the twentieth century. There is also a continuity from Berkeley to F.H. Bradley in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
One side of the British mind is materialistic, practical, worldly, commonsensical, serious, given to creating global empires (Gordon Brown); another side of the British mind is idealistic, poetic, antimaterialistic, humorous, fond of producing artistic masterpieces (Tony Blair).
Hume to Russell (until Russell's final years!) represents the first of these traditions; Berkeley to Bradley is identified with the second.
Concerning Jack the Ripper (Boris Johnson?) and other unsavory characters there is no need for discussion since many of these persons were shipped off to the colonies, like New York, or permitted to serve in the front lines of the infantry. Perhaps this explains why Kate Winslet lives in New York. These strands in British intellectual history cannot be separated.
Idealism and common sense realism are involved in a dialectic in the British mind. Things go seriously wrong in Anglo-American thinking when there is a loss of "equilibrium" or balance between these partners in debate, as in the twentieth century with the rise of Cambridge analytical philosophy and Oxford's linguistic school now balanced by a renewal of older philosophical traditions in the English-speaking world.
The so-called "masculine" side of the British mind ("tough-minded, common sense, pragmatic, empirical realism") has been excessively and exclusively dominant during recent decades. The result has not been a great success. There is a dawning recognition that important aspects of the British and American mind (the feminine intellect) have been relegated, mostly, to the ghetto of entertainment and the arts, dismissed from the so-called "serious" world of politics and economics.
The consequences of this division include everything from global warming to Iraq. I am sure that N.J.'s femi-Nazis will wish to steal these ideas while denigrating my inferior intellect and writing skills, naturally, after arranging for more hacking into my computer and cybertorment, of course, to say nothing of accusing me of insensitivity to women's issues. ("Is clarity enough?")
Senator Clinton's greatest challenge was overcoming the subconscious assumption that she was transgressing a kind of gender boundary by blurring these distinctions (feminine/masculine roles) in her thinking and life-journey. Regrettably, the most crucial issues arising from a woman's candidacy for the U.S. presidency were never really addressed, directly and forthrightly, before Ms. Clinton's discussions of policy issues. ("Helen Mcfarlane on Hegel and Marx.")
I am sure that sexist assumptions could have been examined in the light of reason, and only then dissipated. Ignored, they grew in importance and were enhanced by the understandable tendency of Clinton's aides to shelter the candidate from unfair criticisms.
Big mistake.
It was essential to address concerns of voters on the "woman issue" much more forthrightly than was done in the primaries.
Despite my experience of torture and censorship I find myself feeling compassion for Mrs. Clinton's dilemma in trying to discharge the awesome responsibility of her office as "colleagues" and others seek to undermine her credibility, insult her intellect, demean her efforts, even target her family members for serious emotional harm not because of her opinions or actions, but because of the magnificent person that she is that so many people find "offensive" in a mere woman. ("'This is totally amazing!' -- Donald J. Trump.")
Maybe some of what I am experiencing today -- as I repair the harm done to this essay, again -- is aimed at embarrassing a woman who is now our Secretary of State and (despite all of the harassments), obviously, one of the best at that office in our history.
Shakespeare is Britain's supreme poet and also a great intellectual grocer, an important philosopher. Shakespeare is the source for both partners in this dialectic.
The Swan of Avon (who?) is the ultimate English language philosopher and poet, judge and politician or statesman, masculine and feminine, young and old, actor and playwright.
Shakespeare also dabbled, successfully, in real estate.
Shakespeare probably could have passed the bar examination if they had one in Elizabethan London.
Isn't it weird how many similarities there are in Hume's and Bradley's love-lives? Even more weird, the similarities also apply to Shakespeare and Dickens. ("Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
A. The Intellectual Climate of Victorian-Edwardian Britain.
Much of the nineteenth century was dominated by British military and industrial power. English literature and philosophical thought exploded during this fascinating period. Charles Dickens depicted the era with unforgettable genius. British empiricism, along with German Romantic and metaphysical thought combined to create a powerful form of idealism that sometimes challenged, successfully, Benthamite utilitarianism in ethics; classical empiricism in epistemology; as well as "John Bull realism" in metaphysics.
See David Boucher, ed., "The British Idealists" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) (The essay by Henry Jones is especially recommended). Christopher Hitchens, "Oscar Wilde's Socialism," in "Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere" (London: Verso, 2000), p. 10 and Christopher Hitchens, "Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship" (New York: Nation, 2004), pp. 3-22.
In light of the foregoing discussion of "masculine" and "feminine" sides of the British mind, see Mr. William Hazlitt's "Liber Amoris," in "Hazlitt: Selected Writings" (New York & London: Penguin Classics, 1985), pp. 292-378.
If it is or was true that "wars are won on the playing fields of Eton" then Britain's idealists may deserve some credit for this. (It is certainly possible that wars were lost on the playing fields of Eton.) Idealists should be credited for contributing to the moral recognition that led to the success of Ghandi (yes, Ghandi) in the twentieth century and other important movements for pacifism. Civil disobedience is only effective in a society or with a government concerned to be moral, despite its flaws. This is not to deny or diminish the greatness of Ghandi. Something of the spirit of idealism helps to explain the heroism and dignity of the British people during the Blitz and Battle of Britain. British heroism during the air raids is no myth. This history should not be forgotten, especially in light of recent bombings.
For a novel that is depressingly close to perfect, I recommend Ian McEwan's "Atonement" (New York: Anchor, 2001) -- and no, I haven't seen the movie, but I will. After writing the previous paragraph, I did see "Atonement" -- the "movie experience" -- as they say in Hollywood. It is the best film I've seen so far this year. "Atonement" should win plenty of awards at the Golden Globes and Oscars. ("Law and Literature.")
Similar histories unfolding in America, over the past several centuries should also be told -- such as the civil rights struggle of women and African-Americans. The British and American-led fight against totalitarianism in the twentieth century should be celebrated. None of these continuing struggles, in my opinion, will be won by nihilists. You should memorize the following poems: Alfred Lord Tennyson, "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and Arthur Hugh Clough, "Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth," in Paul Negri, ed., "English Victorian Poetry: An Anthology" (New York: Dover, 1991), pp. 25, 113 (they don't write them like that anymore).
Both narratives in verse will come in handy after many a romantic evening in renewing our much-needed idealism and hopefulness about the human condition.
Wouldn't it be great if more women were idealists -- except about men, of course? ("Master and Commander.")
Philosophical idealism -- as popularized by poets and political figures -- sometimes served to buttress British imperial claims, I admit. Idealism also challenged those claims as a source for powerful movements of political reform and social equity and was important in the struggle to end slavery in the UK and all of its dominions and possessions.
Utilitarianism also justified what Rudyard Kipling described as "the White Man's Burden" until utilitarianism was reinterpreted, correctly, to "cut the other way."
On idealism's social meliorist component, see T.H. Green's 1874-1885 introduction and critique of Hume and Locke, from which classical British empiricism never fully recovered: "Hume and Locke" (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968).
This critique of empiricist foundations led to Green's democratic-socialist or communitarian "Prolegomena to Ethics" (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1969).
Any version of Oscar Wilde's "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" and "De Profundis" are recommended with due allowances for changes in historical circumstances. In addition to Hitchens, I suggest a return to the original version of Oscar Wilde's, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," in "De Profundis and Other Writings" (London: Penguin, 1984) and Richard Ellman's "Oscar Wilde" (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988).
There are American parallels to these developments and intellectuals, from Emerson to Royce, Blanshard and Weiss to Rawls and Nozick. Maybe Ronald Dworkin is best placed in this company. For the connections between British idealism and Continental phenomenology as well as German idealism and contemporary feminism, see Maria Dimova Cookson's "T.H. Green's Moral and Political Philosophy: A Phenomenological Perspective" (London: Pakgrave, 2001), at pp. 61-71. Professor Ramon Lemos of the University of Miami, an expert on T.H. Green, noted in 1968:
"Both Locke and Hume then, according to Green, can only state their position by employing the very a priori judgments the existence of which they deny. Green's assault upon Locke and Hume is, therefore, an argument for rationalism and Kantianism by way of an attempt to reduce empiricism to absurdity." ("Hume and Locke," p. xv.)
In light of these comments, see F.H. Bradley's "The Principles of Logic" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd Ed., 1922), pp. 1-13 ("The General Nature of Judgment") and James W. Allard & Guy Stock, eds., "F.H. Bradley: Writings on Logic and Metaphysics" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 3-17; and also Guy Stock, "Bradley's Theory of Judgment," in Anthony Manser and Guy Stock, eds., "The Philosophy of F.H. Bradley" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 131-155.
Britain abolished slavery, struggled to increase workers' rights, enhanced access to education and made art available to more persons in thriving cities under the inspiration of an idealism firmly rooted in English traditions and Western thought. See E.J. Hobshawm, "The Industrial Revolution," and "Ideology: Secular," in "The Age of Revolution" (New York: New American Library, 1962), pp. 44-74, 277-299; also the works of R.H. Tawney for discussions of the legacy of idealist reforms and Chartist upheavals in the early socialism of the twentieth century: "The Radical Tradition" (London: Pantheon, 1964) and "The Acquisitive Society" (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, 1920).
For the roots of the tradition I suggest a viewing of the 2006 film "Amazing Grace."
At this point, humanistic Marxism becomes highly relevant, from the early writings of Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch and the Frankfurt School, leading to American thinkers such as Angela Davis and Frederic Jameson. For a perspective not usually considered in these discussions, I suggest D.M. MacKinnon's essay "Some Aspects of the Treatment of Christianity by the British Idealists," in Volume 20 of Religious Studies at pp. 133-144 (1984).
Iris Murdoch greatly admired Donald MacKinnon and was much influenced by his essay. See Iris Murdoch, "On God and Good," in "Existentialists and Mystics" (London: Penguin, 1997), at p. 337.
"Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself," Iris Murdoch comments, "and then comes to resemble the picture."
This is a perfect one sentence summary of idealism -- and, indeed, of contemporary science. This one sentence also contains a hinted theory of transcendence relevant to my critique of Moore's essay. I believe that this sentence may also explain the importance of religion. Idealism is more compatible than its rivals with developments in recent science, not only in quantum mechanics and biology, but also in the fusion of bio-chemistry that is generating the revolution in neurology and consciousness studies. Concerning the return of the a priori and "essences" in consciousness studies, see Daniel N. Robinson, "Consciousness and Mental Life" (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), pp. 116-144 and Danah Zohar, "Consciousness and the Brain," in "The Quantum Self: Human Nature and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics" (New York: William Morrow, 1990), pp. 62-75. ("The 'holists' want to emphazise the wave aspect of experience, the extent to which every element of consciousness -- indeed every element of reality itself -- is related to everything else.")
During the past decade important work has been done in relation to the "holographic model of mind" -- new forms of transcendental dialectical realism-idealism -- and quantum mechanics. Not all of this scholarship is found in the United States. I am not aware of any multidisciplinary writings comparing the works of Rupert Sheldrake, Humberto Maturana, Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking -- all of these thinkers are philosophically important, none is a "professional" philosopher. All of them are helpful to the reformulation of idealism and fusion-thinking in phenomenology-hermeneutics that is currently underway.
Why is science important to assessing philosophies?
The universe we know and describe, scientifically, will express itself in all of our thinking. Hence, in a Newtonian universe our notions of law, ethics, politics will be altered from what they were in an Aristotelean universe, both will be different from the ideas possible "inside" an Einsteinian universe. Notice that the universe, as it is in itself (whatever that may be), has never changed. It is only our conceptions or "scientific pictures" of that evolving and altering "external" (but is it?) reality that change or develop.
I wonder what is that mysterious external reality that we never fully grasp? Is it not within all of us? Do we not participate in that reality's process of self-creation and -revelation? ("Is it rational to believe in God?")
Perhaps philosophy and science or religion may be defined as kinds of "participation."
I spoke earlier of MacTaggart's genius. Here is a taste of his prose. Think of the word 'love" in this paragraph as identical with the "participation" that I just mentioned:
"[Human destiny] ... is a timeless and endless state of love -- love so direct, so intimate and so powerful that even the deepest mystic rapture give but the slightest foretaste of its perfection. We know that we shall know nothing but our beloved, and ourselves as loving them, and that only in this shall we seek and find satisfaction." (See my story "Pieta" and "A Doll's Aria.") (Tanner, p. 193.)
From a Continentalist-postmodernist direction:
"It is by means of this spirit" -- of multiplicity, pluralism, or "Neo-Baroque" -- "that I am able to associate certain current scientific theories (catastrophe, fractals, dissipative structures, theories of chaos and complexity, and so on) with certain forms of art, literature, philosophy, and even cultural consumption. This does not mean that there is a direct link. It simply means that the motive behind them is the same, and that this motive has assumed a specific form in each intellectual field."
Omar Calabrese, "Neo-Baroque: A Sign of the Times" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. xii. ("'Westworld': A Review of the T.V. Series.")
1). Bertrand Russell reacts against F.H. Bradley.
Bertrand Russell was slightly older than Moore. The two met at Cambridge where Russell was Moore's earliest philosophical friend. Both were reacting against the constraints of a philosophical tradition associated with authority and the British empire. Both men were searching for a more plain-speaking, common sense approach to philosophical issues.
Russell said of his abandonment of idealism:
"I felt it as a great liberation, as if I had escaped from a hothouse on to windswept headland. I hated the stuffiness involved in supposing space and time were only in my mind. I like the starry heavens even better than the moral law, and could not bear Kant's view that the one I like best was only a subjective figment. In the first exuberance of liberation, I became a naive realist and rejoiced in the thought that grass is really green. ... I have not been able to retain this pleasing faith in its pristine vigour, [sic.] but I have never again shut myself up in a subjective prison."
"My Philosophical Development" (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959), p. 62.
Far from suggesting that either the starry heavens or moral law were "subjective figments" Kant would have insisted that both were "objectively necessary for all rational agents."
Kant's fusion of subjective/objective realities is underappreciated by Russell. Notice the impossibility of avoiding the language of subjectivity even in this foregoing paragraph by Russell. Bradley would smile if he had lived to read it.
Russell confirms, unwittingly, much of what Bradley says, thereby establishing that Russell was one of the great idealist's most able pupils. For instance, Russell's paragraph is filled with metaphors ("from a hothouse to a windswept headland"). Resort to metaphor is an escape from the empirically verifiable into the so-called "subjective" realm of the suggestive or insightful. Metaphors thrive where figurative meaning -- as opposed to "objective" description -- is needed. Are these realms really so separate? Bradley suggests that they are not. I concur. Think again of religion or science. Yes, I will be writing about Donald Davidson. ("Metaphor is Mystery.")
Russell's basis for rejecting a world view that he could not refute by means of philosophical arguments is emotional. Russell could do no more than to caricature Bradley's position -- a position which he explicitly admired in letters exchanged with Bradley. Russell speaks of what he "likes" or "hates." A preference or taste is not a philosophical argument or refutation of a rival position. If something is logically true, then whether we like it or not, it will remain true -- whether such truth can be known with certainty is a different question. This sounds like Kantianism again.
Moore's early idealism during his brief spell as a Kantian was unsuccessful, I believe, because of a lack of comprehension resulting from temperamental hostility. It still amazes me that people fail to understand these philosophies, thinking of idealists as "fuzzy" or "hazy" for some reason. British idealists do not suffer from the dense writing styles of their German counterparts (Schopenhauer's clarity is an exception) and can be read for pleasure by anyone who cares for excellent prose. There is no philosophical tradition that I am aware of that compares with British philosophy in terms of its literary quality.
The idealist contention that "logical truth is not altered by emotional reactions" is a distinct claim from similar postulates by so-called "common sense" realism which may, nevertheless, overlap with this Bradlyean contention.
Realists are willing to discard logic when it contradicts experience, even as they dismiss feelings as "non-cognitive" or recognize only one kind of very "rigorous" logic. The self-styled realist is impatient with theory (failing to see that "realism" is also a theory), dreading "wishful thinking" as both an intellectual error and a kind of "sissy-like" moral flaw in a person.
Real men, of all genders, see things "as they are" and must be unswayed by illusion, desire, or wish-fulfillment. ("Stuart Hampshire and Iris Murdoch On Freedom of Mind.")
"Adjust to reality!" The middle-brow realist and pragmatist insists on this, then pounds his fist on the table, belches and/or farts. Diana? Tuchin? The New Jersey Supreme Court perhaps?
Insistence on "common sense" realism is the clearest example I know of wishful thinking: Iraq? Pakistan? Syria? Things will always be said to be "improving."
Reality is plural, so is truth -- both may, nevertheless, remain objective. I realize that this is difficult for some persons.
The genuine illusion of the realist is to imagine that "reality" can be kept simple and clear, that our lives can be controlled and managed. 9/11 should be a reminder of the frailty of all such illusions.
Nothing is so damaging to a person or nation as the attempt to force human subjectivity into the tiny boxes prepared by government officials in Washington deluded into believing that persons are defined by narrow, binary, and exclusive categories: gay or straight, white or black, male or female, intellectual or non-intellectual, childish or mature.
One of the liberating messages of recent feminism is celebration of plurality, complexity, variability, of our sour and sweet, strong and fragile natures. ("Is clarity enough?")
Nations are religious and secular, friends and foes, helpful and obstructive -- the challenge is to maximize the helpful places of "meeting" with others and not to seek to bend all of humanity to our will in order to make them "slaves" of our policies and wishes.
We should want free and equal partners, I hope, not serfs to do our bidding. You (like me) are (and must remain) a freedom or protean essence in the world. ("Why philosophy is for everybody.")
Persons live and die by the unavoidable human dreaming faculty that expresses itself not only in religions, also in science, engineering and in the idealism of police officers and firefighters rushing to their deaths -- like to their beds -- even for an "eggshell" where honor and duty are at stake. Please see "Saving Private Ryan." ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")
Do you believe that the men and women risking their lives on 9/11 were motivated primarily by $40,000 per year and occasional free doughnuts at Dunkin' Doughnuts? I don't.
Russell's unavoidable reliance on subjective/objective judgment confirms Bradley's point about the importance of feelings in cognition and in constructing what counts as a fact. Hegel's influence is felt. None of this deprives us of truth or rigor in analysis. Insisting on feelings in cognition is not a denial of the reality and objectivity of cognition, as a phenomenon, historical or otherwise. We are not left with "emotions" as the ONLY basis for philosophical preferences. Rather, we are led to ponder the importance of feelings to all philosophical argumentation. We need both truth and meaning. (See Mary Wollstonecraft's exchanges with her favorite philosopher, William Godwin.)
At this point R.G. Collingwood comes in handy, see David Boucher, ed., "Essays in Political Philosophy" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 166 ("The Present Need of Philosophy") and as caveat, see also R.G. Collingwood, "No Science of Pure Being," in "An Essay on Metaphysics" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), p. 11.
I realize that it is academically outrageous to suggest such a thing, but it is obvious (to me) that, in terms of natural intellectual ability, Mary Wollstonecraft possessed a better mind and was more far-sighted than either Russell or Moore. I wonder why Wollstonecraft is not usually placed among "serious" or "important" philosophers in university courses? Sexism? If Wollstonecraft had been a mathematician, would we admit her intelligence? I am not sure that, even then, she would receive fair consideration. Does the fact that Wollstonecraft anticipated developments in moral and political thinking 150 years after her death not suggest that she was a genius? It does to me. ("William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.")
Maybe this same reluctance to accept what conflicts with strongly-held prejudices explains the inability to judge my writings on their merits or explains the assumption that they could not have been written by someone like me. Maybe another analogy from acting on film will help to make my point: Great actors do not try to control or determine how viewers will interpret what they have placed on screen. They do not wish you to see a performance in only one way -- their way. Outstanding actors create characters who are as baffling, ambiguous and surprising as the people you know. It is up to you to decide whether personas on screen are good or evil, charming or hateful, and so on. Different reactions to the same character on screen is "success" for actors.
I am planning to review the FX series "Justified," mostly because of the acting and writing which makes it difficult to know exactly what I feel about each character, especially the surprising and elusive "Eva" played by Joelle Carter. I enjoy being surprised by characters in drama that are not reducible to stereotypes. ("'Justified': A Review of the FX Television Series.")
Almost twenty years after Russell's student days and his first struggles with Bradley's Logic, Russell wrote to thank Bradley for a new edition of that work, which Russell came to appreciate more, as he grew older.
Russell substantially abandoned his youthful empiricism, questioning much of his "analytical" thinking, ending up as a kind of idealist according to Bryan Magee, whose book is quoted below:
"I am very glad to see there is a new edition, [of Bradley's Logic] and I am very proud of having it as a gift from you. Your Logic was very nearly the first philosophical book that I read carefully, nearly twenty years ago; and the admiration I felt for it has never diminished. I see that there is a great deal of new matter which I shall read at my first spare moment."
Russell to Bradley, 20 November, 1922, quoted in "F.H. Bradley: Writings on Logic and Metaphysics," at p. Xii.
Concerning the discovery of errors in Russell's rejection of idealism, Professor Magee writes:
"I think that this catastrophe" -- British philosophy turning away from idealism -- "is partly explicable in terms of intellectual history. There has never been a time when the philosophy of Kant gained general acceptance in Britain. The German idealism that dominated philosophy in Cambridge in the late nineteenth century was Hegelian, not Kantian, and the outstanding figures there, such as [MacTaggart,] are rightly known as neo-Hegelians."
Bradley and MacTaggart have been misunderstood because of their use of Hegel, who has never been fully appreciated by most philosophers in the English-speaking world. The recent Hegelian revival is very encouraging. MacTaggart and Bradley were always, primarily, English thinkers. Hume and Berkeley are as important as Hegel to their philosophies. By way of comparison, see the scholarly work of T.L.S. Sprigge, "James and Bradley: American Truth and British Reality" (Chicago: Open Court, 1993), pp. 585-595 ("The Correspondence of William James and F.H. Bradley").
"Russell and Moore were brought up in that [idealist] tradition. We easily forget that Russell's first published work was neo-Hegelian. It is a negative fact of extreme importance that when he and Moore rebelled against their intellectual background they were rejecting Hegel and neo-Hegelianism without having ever ingested Kant. They regarded themselves as having been through German idealism and come out the other side, but in fact at no time had they ever metabolized Kant into their living tissue. The criticisms with which they rejected German idealism applied [arguably, if at all, only] to Hegelian philosophy but not, in essentials, to Kant. So in this whole process Kant" -- and, I suggest, the young Hegel -- "was the baby that got thrown out with the bathwater. And because the young Russell had not learnt [sic.] what Kant could have taught him it took him a lifetime of independent thinking to arrive at Kant's starting point. For this reason I doubt whether any of his books [or Moore's] will be required reading for philosophy students in the future. Even his path-breaking work in mathematical logic has, inevitably, been superseded by subsequent developments."
"Confessions of a Philosopher" (New York: Random House, 1997), p. 176 (emphasis added). For a comparison, see Bertrand Russell's "My Mental Development," in Robert E. Egner and Lester E. Dennon, eds., "The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell" (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961), p. 37.
Are not "likes" and "hates" merely "subjective" in accordance with the positivists' and analysts' psychology? Are these proper "reasons" for rejecting any philosophical position or for censorship? Are they "reasons" at all in accordance with Russell's self-professed empiricism and logical clarity?
I am unconvinced by Russell's objections. But then, in the end, so was Russell -- unconvinced by his own positivism and the quest for clarity at all cost. As Santayana once said: "There is no reason to expect that the universe will be concerned to make itself understood by us."
Santayana neglected to add, however, that the only universe that can or will exist for us is one that is (or can be) known by us, or any rational-linguistic agents. Bradley did not, unlike Hegel, "identify thought with the real." Bradley argued, persuasively, that there is a blend (mind and world) of the two in our cognitions as well as in social forms. There are multiple "realities" or worlds calling for different kinds of judgments from us leading to an Absolute that contains all. This Bradleyean position has since been more than vindicated, within Continental philosophy, but also in the sciences, as demonstrated (to Frayn's surprise!) in Michael Frayn's recent book, "The Human Touch."
"Let us consider some of the extensions of the transdictive complex." Roy Bhaskar writes: "I have already noted the duality of the principles and aporiai of instance-confirmation and instance-falsification. Then there is what has been called the indeterminacy of explanation."
This is not unfettered subjectivism and nihilism, just the opposite. This is a new idealist-realist (Dialectical Critical Realism) philosophy of science:
"This stems from the fact that for any finite system there will be an infinite number of descriptions [multiple aspects or accounts?] compatible with it. But once we have identified the higher-order explanans and referentially detached it, unless there are positive grounds for introducing, say, a place-time dependent predicate (as space and time may sometimes be, as we shall see ... causes), there is no justification for adding an arbitrary or irrelevant one, so there remains nothing indeterminate about the explanation. Note that when the explanans of an explanandum is itself alethetically explained, then there can be no further practical doubt about it. Hence, my emphasis on multi-tiered stratification."
Roy Bhaskar, "Explanation and the Laws of Nature," in "Plato, Etc.: The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution" (London: Verso, 1994), p. 31, pp. 18-46.
Now read Umberto Eco on "forces" and Donald Davidson on "explanation." Scientists like Lee Smolin, Lisa Randall, Amit Goswami and others may be quoted in support of these ideas, much to their surprise. It follows from this idealistic-epistemology leading to a "quantum-like" metaphysics that there are (and must be) multiple aspects of our natures in "a multi-tiered and stratified universe."
Let us compare Bradley's "Absolute" with the search for "synchronicities" by physicists and mathematicians: F. David Peat, "Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind" (New York: Bantam, 1987), pp. 214-241 ("Time and Transformation") and Lisa Randall, "Warped Passages" (New York: Harper & Collins, 2005), pp. 52-53 ("Dimensions and Boundary Branes").
Michael Talbot quotes David Bohm:
"As Bohm states, such 'electrons are not scattered because, through the action of the quantum potential, [freedom and protean essence] the whole system is [perpetually] undergoing a co-ordinated movement more like a ballet dance than like a crowd of organized people.' Once again he notes that 'such quantum wholeness of activity is closer to the organized unity of functioning of the parts of a living being than it is to the kind of unity that is obtained by putting together the parts of a machine.' ... "
"The Holographic Universe" (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), p. 41.
From a "masculine" mechanical model we move to a "feminine" organic paradigm. ("john Searle and David Chalmers on Consciousness.")
Recent readings in the history of Chinese philosophy have disclosed similar developments in China's twentieth century new idealism, blending Kantianism with Chinese organicist traditions of speculation, anticipating developments in America and Europe later in the century. For example, Professor Chang Tung-sun's fascinating "revised Kantianism" summed up in an article published in 1937, entitled "The Pluralistic Theory of Knowledge Restated" is more timely today than when it was written. Wing Tsit-chan, "Philosophies of China," in D.D. Runes, ed., "Twentieth Century Philosophies: Living Schools of Thought" (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), pp. 553-555. I recently discovered Fung Yu-Lan's classic "A Short History of Chinese Philosophy" (New York: Free Press, 1948), pp. 338-342:
"According to the tradition of Chinese philosophy, the function of philosophy is to help man to achieve the two higher spheres of living, and especially the highest. The TRANSCENDENT SPHERE may also be called the sphere of philosophy, because it cannot be achieved unless through philosophy" -- and science -- "one gains some understanding of the universe." (Compare the discussion in Ibid., at pp. 294-319, Neo-Confucianism's schools of "Platonic Ideas" and "Universal Mind.") (Robert Brandom's pragmatist and idealist rationalism also comes to mind.)
Scientifically sophisticated inquiries in China today are based on holistic intellectual foundations that are difficult for American scientists to grasp. For a painless introduction to the sort of holistic thinking I describe, read Stoppard's "Arcadia." Analytical groupies can approach this insight by way of Donald Davidson's contention that mentality and meaning are "real" but that they are not reducible to explanatory laws of physical phenomena.
"Meaning ain't in the head," as Hilary Putnam puts it. However, you must have a head with a brain in it in order to discern meaning, mentally. Chinese medicine is highly relevant to this discussion.
2). G.E. Moore reacts against John Mactaggart Ellis MacTaggart.
This brings me to G.E. Moore's faulty upbringing and misspent youth as a model English public school student. Moore attended Dulwich College then Cambridge University. He was a product of the Edwardian middle class (dad was a physician), who inherited sufficient wealth to survive on a meager fellowship at Cambridge University. Evidently, Moore played cricket. Later, Moore hunted philosophical butterflies with an analytical net. Moore's proposal scene in "The World as I Found It" is historically accurate and an excellent indication of Moore's "worldly" nature. Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter also play cricket. However, their views on "snookers" are not known to me.
Moore is said to have been intimate with only one woman, the woman he married. I fear that none of these male philosophers may be consulted on the best approaches to the "fair sex" -- assuming that women are the "fair sex." Reliance on philosophers' romantic advice could prove disastrous, even tragic. Lawyers call such reliance res ipsa loquitur, "negligence per se."
A future essay might be devoted to the moronic advice offered by great philosophers on the subject of women and romantic relations. (Kant is said to have suggested offering women cheese, honey, and tea -- or was it honey in the tea?)
There is a strong competition between C.S. Peirce and David Hume for the title of most inept philosopher with women.
My suggestion to those interested in the "philosophy" of women is to consult the works of that great philosopher, "Amathea." See Hilaire Belloc, "A Conversation With a Cat," in (get this!) Sir William Emrys Williams, C.B.E., D. Litt., ed., "A Book of English Essays" (New York & London: Penguin, 1942), pp. 230-235.
John MacTaggart Ellis McTaggart was a formative influence on G.E. Moore. In many ways, MacTaggart was everything that Moore was not:
"... a philosopher by nature and choice [MacTaggart] was also a lover and husband, a devoted son of Trinity and of Cambridge, a paradoxical wit, an ethusiastic epicure, and a whole-hearted British patriot." (Levy, p. 106.)
Moore was, by his own admission, greatly influenced by MacTaggart. In 1894, age twenty, Moore attended MacTaggart's lectures for part II of the "Moral Sciences Tripos." (I love the names they give to examinations in Britain!) Here is Moore's evaluation of MacTaggart:
"I think I was undoubtedly most influenced by ... MacTaggart. This may have been partly due to the fact that I saw a great deal more of him outside the lecture room, and partly also to the fact that he was nearer to me in age. He produced the impression of being immensely clever and also immensely quick in argument; but I think what influenced me most was his constant insistence on clearness -- on trying to give a precise meaning to philosophical expressions, on asking the question, 'What does this mean?' ..." (Levy, p. 108.)
Moore makes it clear that he wrestled with German idealism for his first essay on Kantian freedom, but that his efforts were unsuccessful. In his autobiography Moore said that his interpretation of Kant's ethics "was absolutely worthless." ("Autobiography," p. 21.)
Based on Moore's account in his autobiography it is clear that he seriously misunderstood Kant. For example, Moore speaks of "two selves" in Kantian thinking, one noumenal and another phenomenal. ("Autobiography," pp. 20-21.)
Kant argues that there is one self with multiple aspects that exists as both empirical object and free subject. Kant's philosophy is intended to be compatible with empiricism. For a form of idealism that respects experience, see Michael Oakshott's "Experience and Its Modes" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933) and "Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays" (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991).
I must warn the squeamish that Oakeschott was a Conservative (with a Thatcherite capital "C"). Moore is, arguably, mistaken in his dualistic interpretation of Kant while his grasp of Hegel is even more precarious. These errors have been inherited by subsequent generations of so-called "mainstream" British philosophers. This confusion, as I have indicated, is a matter of temperamental shock and conflict for a well-behaved English public school graduate who cannot accept a universe that misbehaves or is occasionally less than crystal clear in its operations.
Not only God, but the universe (for Moore) is an Englishman. Moreover, the universe must have attended Dulwich College, then Cambridge University.
For a view, that is different from mine on this matter, see John O. Nelson's contention that Moore fully understood the claims of Bradley and MacTaggart that he rejected. (Nelson, p. 373.)
I doubt that Moore could have understood a position so at odds with his temperament, since he lacked the gift of dwelling within the views that he opposed. Shakespeare might have helped Moore with this eternal challenge for the philosophical imagination. This is an area where actors can teach philosophers a great deal:
"Russell had invited me to tea in his rooms to meet MacTaggart; and MacTaggart, in the course of conversation had been led to express his well-known view that Time is unreal. This must have seemed to me then (as it still does) a perfectly monstrous proposition, and I did my best to argue against it. I don't suppose I argued at all well; but I think I was persistent and found quite a lot of things to say in answer to MacTaggart." ("Autobiography," p. 14.)
Notice where this leads Moore:
"I do not think that the world of the sciences would ever have suggested to me any philosophical problems. What has suggested philosophical problems to me is things which other philosophers have said about the world of the sciences." (Ibid.)
Today it is scientists who say weird things: "time" runs backwards or stops in black holes; causes follow effects; electrons may be in two places at once in the quantum realm. The thinking of men like MacTaggart and Bradley is more timely today than ever before. Bradley is without question one of the greatest philosophers in Western history, on the same level with Hume, Hegel, Nietzsche and Marx.
These thinkers in the British idealist tradition are mostly ignored or forgotten at a time when most university students in the U.S., for example, will not "experience" a single course in philosophy. A new generation displays logical errors that would have been unthinkable twenty years earlier for elite school graduates. This chosen stupidity is likely to result in tragedy when these same young people find themselves in positions of authority. I fully agree with John McCumber on this point:
"Any philosopher must therefore hold that philosophy is an activity which is worthwhile and whose merits can and must be explained to outsiders. Such explanation is a Socratic task, for it means explaining ourselves as philosophers. Perhaps it is the philosophical task par excellence."
"Reshaping Reason: Toward a New Philosophy" (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 4.
Why is an intelligent person like G.E. Moore incapable of seeing what is before his eyes?
The answer, I think, is culture or ideology. Great philosophers escape such constraints more than most of us. Moore did not succeed entirely in doing so. Fortunately, Moore learned MacTaggart's insistence on clarity and developed that aptitude for clear expression in a linguistic and conceptual direction influencing future British philosophers to do the same. This hoped-for "clarity" is what led to Moore's notorious critique of idealism. ("Is clarity enough?")
While Moore's critique is a failure, his method and insistence on clarity is a great success, which should be exported to the European continent for the benefit of rival traditions. Clarity must not become a fetish at the expense of meaning or profundity.
Bradley provides that same clarity, greater elegance and stylistic beauty than Moore, far greater imaginative and sympathetic power as well as intelligence in his writings.
I have no doubt that Bradley and MacTaggart are better philosophers than Russell and Moore.
III. Moore's "Refutation" of Idealism.
Moore's essay begins with the claim that: "Modern Idealism, if it asserts any general conclusion about the universe at all, asserts that it is spiritual." (p. 1.)
Simon Blackburn defines idealism as "the doctrine holding that reality is fundamentally 'mental' in nature." See "Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 184.
The "Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy" identifies the essence of idealism with the claim that the knowable world consists of a mixture of mental and non-mental elements.
Each of several other authorities consulted alters the definition of idealism, slightly, depending on the philosophers whose thoughts form the background for the individual writer's analysis. Moore's mature analysis develops against the idealism of MacTaggart. Hence, much of what Moore says: 1) will not be applicable to other idealists (though he seems unaware of this); and 2) is incomprehensible without some knowledge of MacTaggart's system, which is beyond the scope of my present analysis.
Incidentally, there are forms of idealism compatible with aspects of realism, that is, there are areas of overlap: i.e., Frederick Beiser, "Hegel" (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 65-79. (Beiser's book on Hegel and Paul Guyer's equally good treatise on Kant can be read and understood by any lawyer.)
Moore's critique will seem pointless or irrelevant to most idealists.
Moore shifts the focus of his attack mid-way through his essay from MacTaggart's spiritualism to Berkely's claim that "esse is percipi." (p. 5.) Moore fails to distinguish MacTaggart's ideas from Berkeley's very different views at any point in this essay which is insufficiently footnoted:
"... the note of philosophical optimism that expressed itself in 'Principia Ethica' and 'The Refutation of Idealism' in the view that solutions to the problems under discussion have either been completed in their pages or are on the brink of completion finally gave way to a note of philosophical pessimism and puzzlement. But in its main outlines what might be called Moore's philosophy proper was now permanently formed." (Nelson, p. 374.)
The long term prospects for Moore's thinking concerning idealism are doubtful:
"In his essay of 1903, 'The Refutation of Idealism,' Moore maintained that material things can be directly apprehended and therefore can be known to exist with as much certainty as one's own acts of consciousness. Soon afterwards, however, Moore was led to change his mind on this crucial point, apparently by what has sometimes been referred to as the argument from synthetic incompatibility." (Nelson, p. 379. Professor Nelson is referring to Kantian Critical Theory and the "transcendental deduction.")
My method will be to read through Moore's essay. My goal is to understand Moore's stated critique and all of his underlying concerns. I will offer my response as a kind of dialectic or "conversation" with the text.
Moore says that the proposition "esse is percipi" is a "very ambiguous proposition, but in some sense or other, it has been very widely held." (p. 5-6.)
In some sense or other, this position is held by me. It is also held by most physicists today, including those who may not have heard of Berkeley.
Moore claims to "have met with facts" which make this view untenable. However, we do not "meet" with facts. We decide what is a fact. Please go out to your backyard and bring back the "fact" that it is "hot today." I am not asking about the temperature. For whom is it "hot"? This is not to challenge the reality of facts. It is not to deny that facts exist. It is indeed "hot" today.
A "fact" is a judgment as to truth made by an agent who is capable of making such judgments (epistemology); an event occurring in nature or "empirically" is an ontological reality, something that "is" (metaphysics).
What occurs in nature can only be known, objectively, by creatures capable of knowing things, subjectively.
Accordingly, people will agree when it is hot for objective reasons. Ultimately, the subjective/objective division collapses. Let us see where these simple claims take us.
Facts exist only for beings capable of formulating the concept of a "fact" (rational agents) and deciding that something is a fact. What is unknown by an agent "X" does not and can not exist "for" that agent "X" -- even if the effects of that unknown entity are "felt" and do exist for him or her. Effects which are felt are indeed "known" by that agent even if their cause is not. This claim is true. It may even be true, necessarily, for all rational agents.
A fact may not exist for one rational agent, even as it exists for another or (potentially) for great numbers of others, as knowledge. Let us call this idea "Schrodinger's fact." Rational agents must be identically "situated" to enjoy the same experiences. (Kant, Rescher's pragmatic idealism.)
Moore finds this simple string of propositions incomprehensible entirely apart from whether he agrees or disagrees with them. Moore cannot understand what I have just said. Moore is rightly listed as an important philosopher.
What makes Moore an "important" philosopher may be this very difficulty in understanding such simple propositions.
What makes Moore not a "great" philosopher is this same difficulty in understanding simple idealist propositions.
What cultural assumptions are getting in Moore's way? What is the "fact" contained in the following proposition? "G.E. Moore is an important philosopher?" Whether this truth is known, there must be a fact of the matter. If you say that "it's a value judgment"! This too would be a fact, as is the content of that value judgment. (See Iris Murdoch's writings on facts and values.)
However, this fact may not "exist," for us since we do not know it with certainty. Luckily, we can have a "warranted belief" concerning the proposition. Sometimes, warranted belief is enough. Furthermore, an assertion of ignorance is also a fact. It is a fact that I am making this statement. It is also a fact whether the statement is true or false, though this is something I may never know with certainty, which is also a fact. Thus, this latter fact may not exist "for" me if it is unknown.
"I shall undertake to show that what makes a thing real cannot possibly be its presence as an inseparable aspect of a sentient experience." (p. 8.)
What do you mean by "real" Professor Moore? "Real" for whom? What do you mean by "presence"? Are you tacitly relying on the concept of God? If you call God "reality" or the "universe," it may still be God to Whom you are referring.
"All facts are 'present' for God," Berkeley would say, "because God is that factual presence."
If the claim you make is that something -- any event -- may be "real" even if no one is aware of it, then my question becomes: How do you know that?
If you point to a device which is recording events, then there must be someone to see what is recorded, otherwise both the recording device and what is recorded will not exist for those who are unaware of them:
"From the knowledge that a thing was real we should be able to infer, by the law of contradiction, that it was experienced." (p. 9.)
Really? Doesn't this get things backwards? Black holes are real, scientists tell us, have you non-mentally "experienced" one? Do you "experience" telescopes that tell you black holes exist? If so, then you are relying on your eyes and thought processes, knowledge, to infer what is or must be real. Your inferences are experienced and are real. Without those thought processes or inferences, you could not KNOW what is real, even scientifically. This is idealism. Nothing unexperienced, mentally, would be real -- for you. Even sense data must be interpreted by your brain and/or mind.
From your experiences you may infer that something "real" produces them, even producing them necessarily and objectively, but the difficulty (impossibility) is to get beyond experiencing nature to the "independent" facts (or reality as such) outside of any experiencing nature.
Kant has demonstrated conclusively the impossibility of empirical knowledge existing beyond experience and/or all of the constraints of cognitive rational agency.
This brings us back to the concept of God. Many people "experience" God. Does Moore's reasoning lead to the conclusion that, therefore, God is real? (Berkeley is chuckling right now in Elysium.)
If the universe requires an observer (or to be experienced) in order to "snap into existence" then who or what might be that observer or experiencing power? If you say that, in the absence of humans, there is no observer, then you are also saying that all laws of nature and the universe go out of existence, as knowledge, when we go out of existence. This is idealism.
If you say that the universe is postulated to continue existing in our absence, then the question becomes: "How can you know that?" If you admit that you cannot know it, then you are an idealist again. If you opt for a "warranted belief" that the universe will exist without us, then you admit not knowing (remaining an idealist), but also you are engaging in an act of faith comparable to the religious believer's warranted assumption of God's existence. Indeed, these beliefs may amount to the same religious acceptance. (See "Is it rational to believe in God?" and "Is this atheism's moment?")
Objective idealists claim to be confident that the universe will exist without them. Empiricists are prepared to exist without objective idealists today. Remember, belief in God "vanishes" this epistemological problem.
What part of this do you find difficult?
Despite his best efforts Moore does not get it. There must be such a thing as "a pound of sugar" because Moore can weigh the sugar on his scales. But "pound" is a concept or measure invented by people that is totally arbitrary, until it is defined socially. We decide what it means. If there were no grocer, then that individual grocer's world of experiences can not exist. Sugar and the concept of a pound would not exist FOR THE GROCER, OBVIOUSLY, IF THE GROCER DOES NOT EXIST.
It follows from this reasoning that the reality of things, "facts" apart from all knowing agents, must be -- by definition -- unknowable. Such unknown entities have and can have no reality for knowing agents who are unaware of them. This has no bearing on whether or how they exist outside of human knowledge (whatever that might mean), in reason or logic, or in terms of the discoveries to be captured, eventually, in human languages of numbers and symbols.
Think of MacTaggart's argument for the unreality of time. Once the concept of sugar is in place and defined, then this concept takes on an objectivity as well as a life of its own that cannot be set aside easily by any individual mind. "Sugar" becomes a move in a language game whose permutations and transformations are unpredictable. (Again: "Metaphor is Mystery.")
There is nothing "outside" human language or knowing says the frustrated psychobabbler. There must be or there would be no scientific progress, i.e., new knowledge discovered all the time. "Where" was that new knowledge before we discovered it? Surely, it existed. But where? And how? For Whom? Yes, undiscovered knowledge (intelligible order) exists, but not for us. We are back to idealism.
We cannot simply "go and look" at the world in order to "see" facts. We do not "meet" with "facts" in the empirical world. We are constantly constructing what we perceive as a fact. Indeed, the very act of perception is a kind of construction. This does not make facts untrue or unreal for fact-finders or -creators. Nietzsche reminds us that there are no "uninterpreted" facts. Some interpretations will be truer than others. Why? What makes them truer? What makes a statement about black holes true? Is "Gone With the Wind" a good movie? What is the fact of the matter?
The proposition "the earth is round" was true before the sentence was spoken or fashioned by any speaker or language-user, but it could not have been known to be true or communicated until the invention of language and maybe not until Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue. ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")
I am in search of the bathroom at a Barnes & Noble bookstore. It is a "fact" that I (a) need to find the bathroom; and (b) something other than the bathroom simply will not do, with the possible exception of the psychology section of the bookstore, for my immediate purpose. However, if I did not exist, then my "need" -- or, indeed, the concept of a bathroom -- would not exist FOR ME. The potential existence of a bathroom in China, for instance, is not very helpful or even "real" (for me) in my New York moment of urgency. Even a theoretically "real" bathroom in China, at the moment I happen to need one in New York, is much too abstract a concept for my philosophical and other purposes in what lawyers call: "exigent circumstances."
A hypothetical bathroom in China does not exist, for me, as more than a mere conjecture. For me, such a "Chinese bathroom" (do bathrooms have nationalities?) is quite "unreal."
This is hardly to deny that such a bathroom in China may well exist for those who experience it, empirically, and find it useful -- no doubt highly useful! -- at crucial moments. It is real for them. Hence, it is true both that this bathroom is real for its users in China and not real for me in New York. From the perspective of the Absolute, both statements are true at the same time and there is no contradiction between them. Dual aspects?
In fact, to appreciate the full truth concerning this hypothetical bathroom in China, we must bring together these two statements and examine them. Regrettably, this will not help with my difficulty in New York. I will cross my legs. I ask the reader to compare David Deutsch, "Comment on Many Minds Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics by Michael Lockwood," in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 47, pp. 222-228 (1996) and http://www.qubit.org/people/david/Articles/CommentOnLockwood.html ("All experiences are presumably associated with measurements, and as Lockwood explains, measurements create QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT between the observer and the measured system.") with Michael Talbot, "The Holographic Universe" (New York: Harper & Collins, 1991), pp. 30-31:
"Pribram realized that if the holographic brain model was taken to its logical conclusions, it opened the door on the possibility that objective reality -- the world of coffee cups, mountain vistas, elm trees, and table lamps -- might not even exist, or at least not exist in the way we believe it exists. Was it possible, he wondered, that what the mystics had been saying for centuries was true, reality was maya, an illusion, and what was out there was really a vast, resonating symphony of wave forms, a 'frequency domain' that was transformed into the world as we know it only after it entered our senses?" (Instantiation? See Kant on synthetic a priori knowledge.)
See if you can trace a connection between these ideas in philosophy and the troubles faced by physicists today, like Michio Kaku, exploring string theory and possible field string theories:
"Two particles with the same information are identical, so teleporting the information is essentially the same as teleporting the particle itself. ... physicists have been able to teleport photons and entire cesium atoms." Discovery, March, 2008, at p. 42. (See my story "A Doll's Aria.")
These scientists are contributors to discussions concerning the metaphysics of identity. For example, Richard Dawkins has argued recently in "Edge," that minds may be reduced to information to be transmitted across vast distances someday. What are the possibilities for "entangled minds"? What identity issues arise? How must our understanding of communication change? Do you see the relevance of idealism and constructivism to developments in "political connectionism"? Aesthetics? Again: What is a movie? ("The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem" then see "Salt" and apply the theories of Derek Parfit concerning identity to aesthetic encounters.)
This set of philosophical-scientific conundrums gives rise to boundary-issues in the dialectics of identity. Bashkar and Ricoeur are the master-thinkers in this unexplored area of philosophy. Meanwhile, Hans-Georg Gadamer and all of the fancy scientists these days find themselves involved in an important dialogue of which all parties seem unaware.
Analysis is less important under these unprecedented circumstances than synthesis. American students have been taught to think only analytically, based on mid-twentieth century needs and intellectual fashions. As a result, they are often not prepared to meet this new challenge. ("Is clarity enough?")
China's different philosophical orientation is not irrelevant to the explosion of scientific and economic growth in that great nation whose concern with human rights must evolve to meet its growing genius and power in intellectual achievement.
Moore finds holism unacceptable. (Don't say anything about holism in connection with bathrooms.) The meaning of a term or fact is isolatable. Sugar is sugar. One pound is exactly one pound. A bathroom is a bathroom. That is all there is to it. However, a species that does not require bathrooms would find the concept of a bathroom mysterious. A culture that has never discovered or made use of sugar or the concept of "pounds" would feel no great loss at their absence. Not only is "meaning" a matter of a "fit" into a structure or system, but "symbols" in advanced capitalist and postmodernist societies can now do the "fitting" for concepts -- and even for persons. I suggest a careful reading of my essay "The Art of Robert Downey, Jr." and see "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang."
Objectivity is preserved through the transcendental move in scientific or hermeneutic language that defines rational agency. ("'Ex Machina': A Movie Review.")
Furthermore, these claims are now asserted by me to be true through the manipulation of some symbols, that is, words. (See Jean Baudrillard's "Simulation and Simulacra" and my essay "Umberto Eco and the Semiotics of Power.")
New thinking is usually best discovered in America in the arts, especially cinema. ("Where are thoughts located?" and "Are you trying to make a monkey out of me?")
"... modern societies are organized around the production and consumption of commodities, while postmodern societies are organized around simulation in which codes, models, and signs are the organizing principles of a new social order where simulation rules. In the society of simulation, identities are constructed by the appropriation of images, codes and models [that] determine how individuals perceive themselves and relate to other people." (Ideas? Cinema?)
Douglas Kellner, "The Real Thing," in The Philosopher's Magazine, Issue 38 (Summer, 2007), p. 12. Compare Alex Callinicos, "The Mirror of Commodity Fetishism: Baudrillard and Late Capitalist Culture," in "Against Postmodernism" (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), pp. 144-162 with G. Deleuze & F. Guattari, "L'Anti-Oedipe" (Paris: 1973), p. 356 ff. (Deleuze is a weird kind of empiricist and Humean.)
For a fascinating discussion of Chinese cinema's discovery of these same postmodernist paradoxes and attempts to develop identical solutions, to create works that function as both pop-phenomena and artistically satisfying objects for intellectuals, see Yingyin Zhang, "Chinese Cinema in the New Century: Prospects and Problems," in World Literature Today, July-August, 2007 at p. 37.
The economic explosion in China is generating a cultural explosion that has global impact -- an impact that will only increase in decades to come. I suggest that current events in China are profoundly inportant for philosophical reasons and political ones. Paris in the late eighteenth century and Phildaelphia during those years, Russia early in the twentieth century, and now China early in the twenty-first century are places where ideas are incubated -- ideas that alter the world for decades afterwards. Important discussions with Chinese leaders on the Charlie Rose t.v. show have developed political and philosophical themes and economic concerns that mirror the points made in this cited article about Chinese film culture.
I know this seems paradoxical, but idealism will be useful in understanding what is happening in China.
China faces the challenge of development, while retaining social justice values established, painfully, over a century or more. I learned that there are nearly 85 million disabled persons in China, nearly 40% of the population has an income well below $10,000 per year as the economy explodes with growth. China cannot abandon these people. There may be an analogy to the situation of other societies facing possibilities of development -- Cuba, for example.
Peace and stability is in everyone's interest for both cultural and political/economic reasons. Resolution of all hostilities with the U.S. would bring new economic prosperity to Cuba, also new problems and challenges for Cuban society and for the next era of the Revolution.
When there is more money circulating in an economy there will also be greater temptations for thieves and other criminals. New Jersey? The goal for Chinese public officials is to promote new wealth and, at the same time, allow for improvements in everyone's life in China, NOT to concentrate new wealth at the top of the society. This means that China will have to cope with corruption just like every other developed nation. At the center of these discussions are Chinese versions of many idealist issues, a point which has not been emphasized by commentators.
China today, along with other countries (especially the U.S.), is inventing much of the cultural and economic reality that the nation -- and world -- will inhabit fifty years from now. Take another look at my quote from Iris Murdoch.
Cinematic and pop cultural language is fusing everywhere into a single global idiom, an idiom which is highly American but not only American. This is a hopeful development totally ignored by political leaders. This is important "common ground" today.
Why is this discussion of cultural fusion not taking place in elite publications in America? (See "'Eagle Eye': A Movie Review." I am told that this film was partly financed with Chinese capital.)
New "errors" were inserted in this essay since my last review of it. Such tactics will continue in violation of American law because, I surmise, perpetrators have paid off the right officials in New Jersey. See what I mean about corruption? Does this level of corruption exist in China? How will Chinese students react when they listen to U.S. free speech claims after witnessing this censorship and torture of an American dissident? My current reading list includes two classic comments on Chinese thought: Wing-Tsit Chan, "Philosophies of China," in "Twentieth Century Philosophy: Living Schools of Thought" (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), p. 539 and C. Wright Mills, "The Language and Ideas of Ancient China," in "Power, Politics, and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills" (New York: Ballantine, 1963), pp. 469-521.
For an updating of these sources and associations between Chinese philosophy, Chaos theory, postmodernism and the new aesthetics, see David Jones & John Culliney, "The Fractal Self and the Organization of Nature: The Daoist Sage and Chaos Theory," in Douglas W. Shrader, ed., "The Fractal Self" (New York: Oreonta Philosophy Center, 2000), p. 205 and John Barth, "Chaos Theory, Postmod Science, Literary Model," in "Essays, Lectures, and Other Non-Fiction 1984-1994" (New York: Cornell, 1995), p. 328.
Moore claims that "We can and must conceive that blue might exist and yet the sensation of blue not exist." (p. 19.) The key words in that last sentence are "conceive" and "sensation." To conceive of "blue" is to have the experience or sensation of "blue." This is true even if that experience is not a present one. Time factors are important. I cannot conceive of blue -- in accordance even with Hume's empiricism -- if I have never had the experience of blue. Why should I? What someone tells me is blue may be associated by me with green. In the "Matrix" "everything tastes like chicken" because the machines may not have known, say, the taste of lobster.
We now live in a situation in which blue or, let us say, dark skin may be coded as "good" or "bad." It will seem to people taught this code that dark skin is objectively "good" or "bad." "I can see the skin color," a reductive empiricist would say. Remember that to suggest that a claim of objective truth is false is also to make an objective truth claim. Morpheus explains to Neo: "Your mind makes it real." ("Is Western Philosophy Racist?")
Reification for Marxists. This relationship between skin color and moral quality is not "real" apart from so-called "knowledge," like a pound of sugar that only exists in a culture that has concepts of sugar and pounds. Think of gender as opposed to sex. This does not make such judgments "unreal" since they are all too dreadfully real. Sometimes they are even claimed as "true" -- for those who wish to admit their truth within a necessary discourse. ("Hillary Putnam is Keeping it Real" and "Richard Rorty's Ethical Skepticism.")
You cannot escape responsibility for such constructions by saying it is just "how things are." Just as you cannot step out of space without occupying space, so you cannot "be" without a "ground of being." Language. To engage in discourse is to postulate the possibility of successful (better) communication and truth. Otherwise, why bother to think or say anything? ("It's all relative" is a statement that, to the extent that it is meaningful, is self-refuting.) These insights lead in only one direction. Guess Who is waiting for us at the end of our philosophical explorations? (See again: "Is it rational to believe in God?" and "Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism.")
I am surprised to find that Davidson is a theologian. We must create a picture today of where we will live tomorrow. We must believe that there is something "real" to which we refer when doing so. You cannot move "forward" without some agreed or necessary idea of what "forward" means. This agreed-upon notion of what is the "forward" direction will involve an entire understanding of history. There is an insight to be gleaned concerning the therapeutic relation from these observations. No true dialogue or therapy is possible in a setting in which participants do not agree on history or terms, do not share meanings, cannot inhabit the same logical terms or space, are unable to move in the same direction.
America is facing a condition of division in culture that is nearly schizoid in the first decades of the twenty-first century because we are involved in competing understandings of the reality that we inhabit as well as of what constitutes "moving on" or progress. Liberty or security? We must have both.
The Constitution or torture and secrecy?
We cannot have both, Mr. Obama, we must choose one option or the other.
This epistemological/metaphysical "picture" does not make everything relative, since my meta-claim concerning the unreality of the correlation between color and moral quality is not relative. It is absolutely true that such a correlation between skin color and moral quality is objectively and demonstrably false. The correct or most cogent interpretation of the hermeneutic structure in which the claim is fitted will tell us, necessarily, when things are not true. ("Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")
American philosophy reflects the condition of division in the culture, analytical/pragmatist and Continental "schools" thrive in mutual opposition.
The resulting paralysis in terms of the development of new thinking may be fatal.
"If persons find these thoughts difficult," Kant said to Jacoby, "I can assure them that I also find them difficult."
Ironically, this exchange was duplicated in Albert Einstein's correspondence with a clever nine year-old:
"I promise you," Einstein remarked, "that my difficulties with mathematics are even greater than yours."
No, I was not the nine year-old who wrote to Einstein.
My shirt is blue. I know this because I live in a culture that has a well-settled definition of blue. I have experienced things that are blue. At the moment I may be "blue." I am certain that rational agents, placed as I am, will agree to call the experience of my shirt as blue, a "true" one -- even an absolutely true experience or judgment.
Such agents may have no rational choice about such a conclusion. The shirt would cease to be knowably blue in a universe without beings capable of perceiving the color blue. To perceive my shirt as blue is to construct the shirt as blue within a culture and among persons for whom the construction is meaningful. Kant would say that it would be meaningful among all rational agents with our sensory faculties who are similarly placed as a necessary synthetic judgment. Objectivity. Universality.
Objectivity may be internal to reason or a discourse. Internal is not the same as relative. Emergence. Complexity. Got it?
We have stumbled upon a fact even as we create that fact. My shirt is blue. It is non-relativistically blue since the physics that explains color-perception will make the objectivity of the perception of blue necessary, that is, for all rational agents with the required faculties to perceive blue, transcendentally, even if they should live in the Andromeda galaxy or attend Oxford University one billion years from now. Even in the abstract we can postulate that all rational agents with the faculties necessary for perception will perceive my shirt as blue.
This abstract CLAIM is not relative, even if the qualities necessary to make the perception of blue may be relative to a species with the requisite abstract powers. This truth ("my shirt is blue") is instantiated in a context -- including a linguistic context -- that makes it NECESSARY.
If a blind person enters the room, the shirt is still "blue." For the blind person, however, blue may be meaningless. It will be absolutely true that blue is meaningless for that blind person.
Any questions?
Moore's discussion becomes progressively more confused. Finally, the poor man sighs with exasperation:
"When we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue: the other element is as if it were diaphanous. Yet it can be distinguished if we look attentively enough, and we know that there is something to look for. My main object in this paragraph has been to try to make the reader see it; but I fear I have succeeded very ill." (p. 25.)
In this one essay, I am afraid that Moore has succeeded very ill. Nevertheless, the effort is worthwhile and he has taught us to think of these matters in a new way, with an overriding concern to be clear. As a result, I urge readers to study this essay and think of how you might help Moore to clarify his position.
IV. Conclusion.
Much of Moore's essay seems to me and others who are sympathetic to idealism to be irrelevant to the concerns or essence of that philosophy. Idealism is highly aware of the contributions of the human mind to the construction not merely of knowledge, but of the "worlds" that we inhabit. Think again of Iris Murdoch's comment quoted above. (Again: "David Denby is Not Amused" and "'Inception': A Movie Review.")
I stroll down to Thompson street in Greenich Village and spend a day with chess players. The experience is a journey to a foreign country where I happen to speak the language. In the evening I attend a performance at the MET Opera, encountering regulars in that world, where I also speak the language. Much the same may be said of encounters with philosophers and lawyers, scientists, artists, sports-lovers, political workers and activists, business people and (most especially) "accountants," scholars and students, also many others.
All of these are real worlds. We must move between and among them becoming different "subjects" in each setting. This is idealism, phenomenology, hermeneutics. Lyotard points out: "Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and 'retro' clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games." "The Postmodern Condition," p. 76.
My daughter reports, after a recent visit to Beijing, that there is a Starbucks near the Forbidden City. Are all of the symbol-systems and signifying-games in which we find ourselves "real"? All of the persons in these sub-cultures are convinced that they inhabit and describe the "world as it is." They are living in the "real world." Each knows a very different place, different values and standards as "real." All of these places, as I say, certainly are real. Their hierarchies of values are "true," even in an objective sense, for participants. We live within cultures and discourses that are identity-conferring: Hollywood, Washington, D.C., or New York, even the much-dreaded New Jersey -- are all very real worlds -- as is legal culture and, alas, criminal underworlds (plural). Are "legal culture" -- or, indeed, New Jersey -- and "criminal underworld" overlapping categories? Very likely. Just call me "Number 6." ("A Review of the AMC Television Series 'The Prisoner.'")
"Madness" is a world. Madness is sometimes a very beautiful -- if painful -- world. I suggest that the world of the nihilist is a different place from the home of a truly religious person or anyone concerned to live a moral life. A criminal underworld is also a milieu. In a criminal underworld there are also standards (if not "ideals"). That underworld is also "real." It is objectively real. ("Why I am not an Ethical Relativist.") The reality of that criminal world, of evil, may go a long way towards explaining madness as a rational response to the encounter with unbearable evil and suffering. These issues may be explored in the following source: Robert Coles, "Life's Madness," in "The Mind's Fate: A Psychiatrist Looks at His Profession" (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1995), pp. 174-180. ("Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.")
Descartes' efforts to cope with the loss of his daughter come to mind, see Stephen Gaukroger, "Melancholia and the Passions," in "Descartes: An Intellectual Biography" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 384.
In light of my foregoing discussion of scientific theory, see Amir D. Aczel's highly readable "Descartes' Secret Notebook: A True Tale of Mathematics, Mysticism, and the Quest to Understand the Universe" (New York: Broadway Books, 2005), p. 4: "Every pixel on your computer screen is described internally by a pair of numbers: its horizontal and vertical coordinates. Thus all computer technology relies on Descartes' [mathematical] invention."
Ideas? This was an a priori, mathematical and philosophical invention or construction by Descartes, uniting algebra with analytical geometry to facilitate Descartes' efforts at a rationalistic unification or interconnectedness of the intellectual landscape.
Is philosophy irrelevant and unimportant, science majors? Rationalism? Idealism? All nonsense? Was Descartes' mathematical discovery only relative to him? Were these mathematical truths valid before they were discovered by Descartes? Were Descartes' mathematical discoveries only "true" for him in his time? Are these truths "relative"? Do such mathematical ideas continue to exist even if you are unaware of them? How? And for whom would they exist? How can such truths make possible the changes brought about by computation and Internet communications in the "real" world if they are merely "subjective"?
"Wars are won on the playing fields of Eton" because some values are real on those playing fields -- which may be duplicated at Central Park or even by inmates at Auschwitz -- other "values" are unacceptable everywhere. Much the same may be said of a legal system (no secrecy or torture, not even psychological torture, censorship, destruction of copyright-protected writings, or plagiarism), politics, schools. The very idea of a legal system is undermined by torture. The world becomes our theater. This claim is an objectively true interpretation. We write the play and act in it, then call it "The Universe" -- or perhaps another short word. Or are we the ones being written? ("Atonement.")
"Hamlet" is written and still reinvented by every actor who plays the part. Each time you see a performance of "Hamlet," the compatibility of free will and causal necessity is illustrated. We are all Shakespeare. That is idealism. "We live," Oscar Wilde said, "in an age of surfaces." Today, in a universe of quantum uncertainties, Wilde might say we have become only a set of appearances, surfaces, images -- reflections of reflections. See "Las Meninas" by Diego Velasquez, then decide: What is the subject of that painting today? How is that painting like an Internet blog? Where are we right now?
My image-posting feature has been destroyed by New Jersey's hackers, but the "image" of the painting is attached to this essay at "Critique." If MSN groups still exists, I urge the reader to see my images accompanying this essay at that site.
If you read my short story "Master and Commander" you will notice that another awareness is disturbed by what the characters do not acknowledge or seem to know at the end of the story. You will feel that something is wrong. Who is that "other" character? What does he or she know that none of the individual characters in the story knows? Why is the ending disturbing? Is it a happy ending? See Foucault's discussion of "Las Meninas" and causation in science, also his "epistemes," in "The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences" (New York: Viking, 1973), pp. 344-386.
Foucault's tension between "knowing subject" and "discursive practice" re-enacts the dialectic between analytical and Continental thought, together with Foucault's personal odyssey culminating in "The History of Sexuality."
If we agree that humans possess this world-constituting power that comes with consciousness and thought, languages, then we have articulated a theory of freedom and tragedy, of good and evil, perhaps of the "technologies of the self." (Again; Foucault)
We must "choose our worlds even as we make them." Once those worlds are in place, they take on a life of their own. Where does this power to choose come from?
This is what MacTaggart means by "spiritual" and Bradley by the power of judgment. We direct ourselves, as Iris Murdoch explains, through a kind of "attention" towards one goal as opposed to another. Transcendence. Meaning. Love. Chinese philosophy explores these issues in terms of Lao Tzu's classic gnomic aphorisms, Neo-Confusianism mixed with Chinese versions of Bergsonian vitalism and contemporary science. Most especially, in philosophically and scientifically sophisticated recent versions of Buddhism:
"In philosophy, it treats the universe as the spiritual body" -- like the Body of Christ? -- "of the Body of Law, of the Buddha, which manifests itself as the 'Realm of Diamond Elements,' that is, the world of principles, and the world of Matrix Repository. These two worlds are but different repositories of the same Buddha."
"Philosophies of China," at p. 558.
We must share in Buddha-consciousness in this ultimate "multiple-aspect-theory" of a single mind or reality.
Are you a guilty bystander to torture and inhumanity? Being obstructed and prevented from writing a memoir is like being killed. It is being denied one's life: Leslie Feinberg, "Stone Butch Blues" (New York: Firebrand Books, 1993), p. 96: "I felt connected to her grief. I watched the couples dancing in the smoky darkness. Out of the blue Edna looked over at me and whispered: 'I hurt.' ..."
Feinberg and her protagonist are already living identities of the future. Iris Murdoch observes:
"The theory of the sublime ought to be Kant's theory of tragedy. It nearly but not quite is Hegel's theory of tragedy. ... Kant thinks of the sublime as the failure of imagination to compass an abstractly conceived, non-social, quasi-mathematical totality which is not given, but only vaguely adumbrated by reason. The sublime is a segment of a circle, grasped by imagination, with the rest of the circle demanded and as it were dreamt of by reason, but not given. ... Hegel here, as indeed everywhere else, makes social and historical and human and concrete what Kant has offered as abstract and non-historical."
"The Sublime and the Good," in "Existentialism and Mystics" (London: Penguin, 1997), p. 213 (compare my essay "Is it rational to believe in God?").
Is the word "God" a way of encompassing the "sublime" and "good"? ("John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")
