When I want to know something, I want to see it as it is. I think that if I could put aside everything else that distracts and clouds my vision (everything competing for my attention), I would see the thing alone and find contentment of understanding in a pure comprehension of it. But when I think of times when I have had the feeling, after long contemplation and puzzlement, --"Now I see it"--, it has always been because I finally understood a context.
To be illustrated in the next post.
I don't want to disrupt your illustration but reading this just after reading more of the discussion of intuition and space at Seynsgeschichte, I remembered something I thought about when taking Epistemology at school: a combination of Bertrand Russell's affirmation of the existence as relations of universals "named by prepositions," such as "Edinburgh is north of of London," [see "The World of Universals"] and the soul, having stepped into the light of the Good, existing as a Form dwelling among (in a spatial sense) and thereby knowing other Forms, like knowing like, a sort of directed comprehension that is at the same time the understanding of a context. The effect of the combination is the idea that relations (distances) are just as Formal (visible in the light) as the "substantial" Forms and therefore a necessary part of some Ideal knowing.
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ReplyDeleteJ, Russell was probably thinking of Frege's multiple-place predicrates. So it's the "north of" in "north of London" that counts as universal.
ReplyDeleteRimwell, Doesn't the discussion of Forms in the Republic start with relatives?
I couldn't say. At the time I hadn't read it and if I did later it was not well enough to disturb the influence of Mr. Shea's Platonism in the context of the systematic "explanation" of knowledge (in retrospect very similar to Russell's own). A case of wanting to see without being willing to pursue the textual context.
ReplyDeleteJ, Russell's discussion of Platonic universals and relations can be found beginning on pg. 90 here. It seems to end at pg. 97 and I don't remember whether that's the actual end or not (of that chapter, that is). I think Amos is right about "north of."
I'm familiar with the passage. In terms of spherical geometry it may be a universal (of sorts): Point B (Edinburgh), being closer to the polar coordiate , is therefore "north" of Point A (London)-- closer to the polar point--at this point in time. But the semantics are not necessary--merely city names, it could be Lyndazznistan and Ezdryiayhd, or whatever in a few centuries.
ReplyDeleteThe geography itself while nearly immutable from our perspective is not itself necessary (ie, the relation probably did not hold thousands of millienia ago--nor would if the sun super-novaed, or some other cataclysm occured). Yet....the relations of say the pythagorean theorem are not subject to change; even if the terms/language changes, the relations hold, a priori (and numerically, really, not just in a euclidian sense). Geography's a posteriori....
Nor is it a point about absolute space-- does that mean, closer or "more north" in regard to the galatic center? What does "north" mean, say from a Leibnizian sense of relative space, or Einsteinian for that matter (oops the S-word. hopefully I won't disturb Herr Pseudo.)
Let's rephrase it.
ReplyDeleteRussell wants to claim that "E.'s north of L." holds as a mind-independent fact, but really it's just a simple magnitude --E's a shorter distance to the point aka the "north" pole than L. Before humans were around ...the geographic relations probably held (and I suspect Leibniz and Russell are in agreement on that), the point A (which becomes Edinburgh) was north of, ie closer to pole, than point B (which becomes London)--but the nomenclature did not exist (Kant would presumably not agree the relation holds mind-independently). Russell thus sort of skirts the constructivist problem for lack of a better term (as usual)--it's not the greatest example. For that matter, I would say the relation does exist in space (and time, probably) and that humans abstracted the relation (and countless others) from their interaction with the natural world.
The whiteness example seems a bit more germane to the universal issue. I don't deny universals (even whiteness, triangleness, identity, Justice, etc) but they were ...produced by the human mind. Conceptual, not hanging in a timeless platonic abode...