From: cash@convex.com (Peter Cash)
Subject: Schopenhauer, Moore, Plato and Anselm (whew!)
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 17:22:22 GMT
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
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In article  <1992Sep3.212927.1238@colorado.edu> Andy Hoople wrote:

>I just looked up in Schopenhauer's "Essays and Aphorisms," and I found
>the perfect statement of the doctrine of "Appearance" and "Reality."
>"On the Antithesis of Thing In Itself and Appearance:"
>     "Just as we know of the earth only the surface, not the great,
>solid masses of the interior, so we know empirically of things and
>the world nothing at all except their 'appearances', i.e. the surface.
>Exact knowledge of this constitutes physics, taken in the widest sense.
>But that this surface presupposes an interior which is not merely
>superficies but possesses cubic content is, together with deductions as
>to the character of the interior, the theme of metaphysics."

Well, this makes me wish I'd read more Schopenhauer (I have a deep
irrational dread of any German philosopher whose name contains an "H"). I
was at one time fascinated with a comment the British philosopher G. E.
Moore made in one of this papers ("A Defence of Common Sense"). Moore
thought that it was obvious and self-evident that we cannot "directly" see
material objects because we can _at best_ see their surfaces. That is, when
you hold up your hand and look at it, you may see the palm (what I take to
be the "surface" of one part of my hand, at any rate), but not its
insides--not the veins and sinews and bones that make up the hand.

It seems to me that Moore was saying _exactly_ what S. was saying: that the
"surface" of the hand is "appearance" (i.e., what is open to us via visual
inspection), but that the insides of the hand are an unseen "reality". (Ah,
at one point that Schopenhauer reference would have provided me with a
juicy footnote...people were telling me that only Moore could be this
nutty...)

In "Defence", Moore equivocates on whether we "directly see" the surfaces
of things--he leaves open at least the possibility that we do. But this was
an aberration; the later Moore placed himself solidly in the sense datum
camp by insisting that not even the surfaces of things can be "directly
seen"--only sense data can enjoy that status. What I found fascinating was
Moore's use of the surface/insides dichotomy to drive a wedge between
"appearance" and "reality"--even though the wedge itself later turns out
only to be another appearance. 

Can you tell me what Schopenhauer's position on this was: are "surfaces" in
some way "directly perceived" or "directly seen" by the mind, or did he
think that our seeing of the surfaces of things is in turn mediated by
another regress of "appearance"--e.g., a mental object that "represents"
the surface before our minds?

Thanks for pointing this out--it's very interesting (even though its
connections with Plato aren't immediately apparent to me).  

>All of this I think is perfectly true, and to this extent, I would
>believe in the doctrine of Appearance and Reality.  However, I'm not
>so sure I would go as far as Kant and Schopenhauer do in limiting
>the scope of human knowledge.  Kant holds that about the Thing In
>Itself, we can know nothing.  But what about thought?  This obviously
>exists, and it can in no way be spatial.  It hardly seems proper to
>say that it even has a surface to it.  When we think, when we perceive
>the Platonic "Idea-Forms", we perceive being in itself, the Thing In
>Itself.  The human mind is not shackled by the categories as Kant
>supposes.

You're realling lumping a number of divergent philosophers together here. I
don't deny that you can find commonalities--but pointing out these
commonalities may take some work. Also, you shouldn't assume so readily
that Plato was talking about the same thing as, say Schopenhauer, when he
talked about "appearances" and "reality". That's why I'm so reluctant to
turn to another philosopher to clear up what the first one said--I don't
think it helps to go to Schopenhauer to understand Plato better. At best,
we now have the problem of understanding _two_ difficult philosophers.

>     As to your question about images, I would point you to the last
>part of Book VI of the Republic.  The book I'm using is the translation
>by Allan Bloom.  Perhaps some translators would not use the term
>"image" as he does.  I would hope that my quotation from Schopenhauer
>clears up your questions as to why "images" are not the same thing as
>"appearances."  In a sense they are; they are simply what is perceived
>through the faculty of sight.  Plato calls them "images", because they
>simply are unreal and simply must be reflections of a higher reality,
>the reality of the Platonic "Idea-Forms."   

As I recall (I'm sorry, but I don't have my Plato here at work, and I've
been too preoccupied to do any studying), Plato used "images" as a
heuristic device. That is, he insists that the world we perceive is unreal
in the same sense as a reflection of yourself in a pond is
unreal--moreover, the world has exactly the same relation to the truly real
(the Forms) as the reflected image has to the thing reflected. "Images" are
at yet another remove from reality than the world: "images" are reflections
of reflections.

(There's some interesting twists and turns in Plato's talk of "images" as
reflections of reflections that have to do with the logic of mirror images
and reflections. This simile may not be as easy to understand as Plato
seems to think.)

>In response to your
>second question, I would say that "images" are unreal due to the "flux"
>of the world.  Plato calls the world of "flux" the world of becoming.
>Anything in the world of becoming must be unreal because it came about
>through a process of change or becoming, but this means that it came
>out of nothingness, since this is what is always entailed when there
>is any process of becoming whatsoever.  The being of something perceived
>through the five senses is very "thin", because it came out of
>nothingness.  Whatever is real about it has to be a reflection of
>another reality that is not in a state of flux, the realm of
>"Idea-Forms."

Does Plato talk about "flux" in this way? Again, a reference would be
helpful. I would have thought that Plato thinks that reflections or images
are unreal precisely because they are reflections, and not the thing
reflected. 

>     Since you obviously know alot about philosophy, I would be
>very interested to know your ideas about the nature of God and the
>immortality of the soul.  These are as Kant and Dostoevsky and I would
>have them, the most significant and ultimate questions of philosophy.

I hate to disappoint, but I think that philosophy tells us little about the
nature of God and the immortality of the soul. (Other philosophers will
disagree with me on this.) 

Well, there _is_ Anselm's "ontological argument". Though it fails--despite
its ingenuity--to accomplish what many think it was intended to do (i.e.,
prove the existence of the God of Abraham), the argument _does_ offer what
I consider to be philosophy's single greatest contribution to our
understanding of God: a rigorous definition of the term.
-- 
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             |      Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist.     |
Peter Cash   |       (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein)      |cash@convex.com
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