From: fjc@mips2.ma30.bull.com (Frank Casper)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: WHAT IS LOVE?
Date: 7 Sep 92 19:30:02 GMT
Reply-To: fjc@mips2.ma30.bull.com (Frank Casper)
Organization: Bull Worldwide Information Systems  (Billerica, MA)

Randall Holmes writes:
>Of course, what we really need to worry about is the _metaphysical_
>status of _reality_.  There is too much epistemology going around.
>(Thus the proliferation of "subjectivity" and "objectivity").

>We should think about what we know (reliably or not so reliably)
>before we worry too much about how we know it (epistemology should be
>a critical activity, not the basic activity).  Otherwise we will never
>get to the point where we know anything.  Exorcising the terms
>"subjective" and "objective" is a good place to start.

>It would be nice to return to the common-sense view that there is
>simply "the world".

Perhaps you could be a bit more explanatory of what you mean by
"too much epistemology"? How has that led to the "proliferation
of subjectivity and objectivity"?  How is it that you propose to
"exorcize" these terms? After all, wasn't it Descartes who began 
with the question that you have in your second paragraph? Did'nt
he want to know what can be known reliably?  Did'nt Hume
conclude, at least for metaphysics, that there's not much we can 
"know" except the patterns passing before our  eyes? Did'nt Kant
think the question so important as to devote his whole energy to
answering it?   Again, there surely is such a view as the 
common-sense view that there is simply "the world", but what 
does that explain? On the whole few if any would deny that there
is  "a world",  but after that there is serious disagreement of
just what the character of that world is. It is not "that" it exists
but the "how" and the "what" of it that are the important 
questions. 

I wrote :
>But I take Whitehead to be the guide here,  that philosophy is explanatory of 
>abstraction, and not of concreteness. In other words, it is the business of 
>philosophy to explain how the more abstract things emerge from the more 
>concrete things.

Randall Holmes responds"
>But what if they don't?  What if "abstract" is a deceptive term (it
>presupposes the notion that what I prefer to call "formal" objects are
>obtained by a process of "abstraction" from concrete objects)?  What
>if the "abstract" objects come first?  What if all objects, "abstract"
>and concrete, are coeval?  What if the influences run both ways?  All
>of these are philosophical questions which need to be answered before
>you can say that this is the business of philosophy.

You're right about that, these issues do have to be thought through before
making pronouncements on the task of philosophy.  I think Whitehead
has thought these matters through, that is why he can make such 
statements. Moreoever, you might be interested to know that you
echo, in a way, some of the things he has to say about subjects and
objects and consequently, epistemology. For example:

When Descartes, Locke, and Hume undertake the analysis of
experience, they utilize those elements in their own experience which
lie clear and distinct, fit for the exactitude of intellectual discourse. It is
tacitly assumed, except for Plato, that the more fundamental factors will
ever lend themselves for discrimination with peculiar clarity. This assumption
is here directly challenged.

No topic has suffered more from the tendency of philosophers than their
account of the object-subject structure of experience. In the first place,
this structure has been identified with the bare relation of knower to
known.  The subject is the knower and the object is the known....It then
ollows that the more clearly any instance of this relation stands out for 
discrimination, the more safely we can utilize it for the status of 
experience in the universe of things. Hense Descartes' appeal to 
clarity and distinctness.

This deduction presupposes that the subject-object relation is the 
fundamental structural pattern of experience. I agree with this
presupposition, but not in the sense in which the subject-object is
identified with the knower and the known. I contend that the notion
of mere knowledge is a high abstraction, and that conscious discrimination
itself is a variable factor only present in the more elaborate examples
of occasions of experience. The basis of experience is emotional. Stated
more generally, the basic fact is the rise of an affective tone originating
from things whose relevance is given....

A.N Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, Chapter 11, Objects and Subjects.


fjc
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta