The Perpetual Wound pt.3 Acceptism and Metaphysics

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A quick note on clarity, I'll leave aside the question of metaphysics for now. A Cartesian picture would, on a brief construal, run as follows: In specifying what I can know of myself and the world, I have only to begin by considering those mental states as immediately experienced by me in consciousness. That I can so much as take the content of those mental states (in self-consciousness) as an object of reflection now licenses me to infer that whatever the content itself amounts to

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I am in some or other sense 'thinking' about that content. It would then follow (in the familiar refrain) that whatever I myself might be, I cannot doubt that I am a thinking being. etc.

So, the Cartsian distinction can be said to turn on this notion of mental content. And for his argument to go through, Decartes needs mental content to be of a peculiarly subjective kind, as distinct from some physical or material realm.

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As we know, so exclusively inner is Decartes' picture of the mental that even if each and every appearance of the world (as it seemingly appears to me) were nothing more than a dream or an illusion etc., that would nonetheless count as providing the condition under which an indutible truth can entail i.e. that I

am a thinking being.

But the problems for Decartes loom large. For once his dualism is in place he

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is either 1) bound by his argument to consider once more the immediate content of experience (i.e. upon which he grants the possibility of indutible self-knowing). Such immediate content is, of course, of the mind too,and so, on Decartes' picture, it is also to be conceived of as consisting in the subjective, mental realm. But it appears that such claim can only be santioned by making an inference from his conclusion -

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that there be two types of category, that of the mind and that of the material.

Or else, (2) the kind of dualism he goes on to set up must be postulated from the first, which seems even more self-evidently circular and unsatisfying. The question at issue is this: Can Decartes license either move? And I say he cannot.

I'll leave it there for now. Hopefully, the above will make my earlier blurb a little less opaque.

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As for 'prereflective', it usually refers

to those mental or phenomenological states whose content is not, or has yet to be, apprehended by self-consciousness, but which is not said to be closed

under causation (one would usually position themselves over against a neurophilosophical take in admitting of this kind of content). Oh, and finally, how might Satre fit in to all this?

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Well, it is commonly though not universally held that, where Decartes distinguishes

consciousness from the world at the level of self-reflection, so to speak, Satre motivates the same kind of distinction at a pre-reflective level, by deploying his catagories of the in-itself and the for-itself.

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(This putative similiarity is not strictly accurate though, since Satre introduces a third kind of catogory, being-for-others, which Decartes does not - unless one wants quite plausibly to introduce God into the Cartesian picture a little early). At any rate, it can be said that Satre distinguishes between consciousness

and the world in a way that, say Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger do not.

[maksiiiskam2]

Now I must buy some Descartes and begin that horribly too big Sarte's Being and Nothingness...

thanks for the interesting explanation, I will read about it.

[azrienoch]

Thanks again, mak. Yes, I do think that's a good point: I wanted to try and give a means for which we can have that inch. But it means letting go of the standards we hold now and accepting a new focus.

[maksiiiskam2]

It is a loop!

We must build around logic, reason, knowledge, faith, mysticism, empiricism, metaphysics, and analytic philosophy... what is there else? aesthetism, poetry, and story telling. What is going to happen is that we will repeat Greek pre-socratic history until some Parmenedes, Heraclitus and Isocrates come and change philosophy back to what we know. I do not see how to get out of this loop.

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Well, one might this:

weaken those claim pertaining to what metaphysics and knowledge is, what entails from reason, and so on; limit the amount of ontological catogories there are, such that we need only find arguments for their putative instantations, and not their existence-condiitions (i.e. nominalism of sorts). And, most especially, do not assume a Cartesian/Satrean distinction which can never be resolved. To merely think acceptance is to have an intentional stance toward

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some content of experience other than what my acceptance or not(in any given propositional)amounts to.

One might reply to this by saying that certain acceptance-conditions are themselves prereflective, not unlike Satre's notion of freedom to chose. But content of that kind need in no way be characterised as superviening entirely on the content that one is exposed to when one is motivated to act in certain way, unknowingly, in a certain situation.

There's no need to be so pessimistic.

[maksiiiskam2]

Well, that sounds interesting, but I could not judge until I really read it in an extended form: I do not see how limiting ontology would solve the problem that ontology is metaphysical and methapisics arbitrary in the first place, but appart of that my problem with your comment is incomprehension. I will search a little for what you mean.

[maksiiiskam2]

I do not know what is the Cartesian/Sartrean distinction, I do not know a "prereflective" means and I do not understand the phrase "be characterised as superviening entirely on the content that one is exposed to when one is motivated to act in certain way, unknowingly"