three little books that should be read together
If when you woke up this morning you thought that:
a) there’s a world of objects out there the qualities of which exists independently of your perception and conceptualization;
b) these objective, mind-independent qualities inhere in those objects are “carried” or “conveyed” (mechanically, electromagnetically, chemically, etc.) to your senses which then deliver them to your mind, which them synthesizes them in thought (implying for instance that vision is inherently distinct from touch, etc.)
c) these sense “data” are the bedrock foundation upon which fancier “thought castles” (theories, beliefs, speculations, etc.) are built;
d) the sense-data are indubitable and unchangeable while theories about them come and go, implying that perceptual judgments are themselves not “theoretical.”
Then you should….
Wait. Let me pose a riddle first. What do a radical Marxist interpreter of Heidegger and Husserl, an (equally radical?) defender of capitalism and liberal democracy, and a nondescript philosopher trained in the analytic tradition have in common?
Answer: they all agree in suggesting that propositions a-d above are false, and largely agree on what propositions they should be replaced by:
a) there’s a world of objects out there all right, but their qualities are mind-dependent. The ways the objects are organized in relation to one another (objectively) is analytically and empirically distinct to the way that the objects are organized in relation to us.
b) there is no such thing as mind-independent sensory qualities. Qualities are constructed through an interactive process between (mindful) bodies and the world.
c) there is no meaningful distinction between so-called “sense-data” and theoretical judgments. There’s only the distinction between theoretical judgments that we are habituated to make in real-time, and those that we have we have to learn propositionally and with some difficulty: perception is theoretical all the way down. That means that we can be taught to perceive the world in radically different ways from the ones that we are accustomed to.
d) this also means that perceptual judgments can change over time and be radically overturned (although it is hard). Thus, objectivity is not an epistemological issue associated with some indubitable bedrock of experience, but a socio-historical accomplishment that is always transitory and provisional.
The three little books in which (some version of) all of these theses are defended, and which surprisingly converge on the same solutions (independently of one another) are, F. A. Hayek’s The Sensory Order, Paul Churchland’s Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, and (a recently translated set of radio lectures delivered in the French equivalent of NPR in 1948) Maurice Merlau-Ponty’s The World of Perception.
Each of these books can be read in a few hours (the Merlau-Ponty lectures are the length of an article), and all of them will provide a nice payoff (at least they will make you think about things that you don’t think about very often in a different way).
Funny, I picked up The World of Perception just the other week. Laurie taught an undergrad course on Experience & Reality this past semester. The class read a lot of Husserl (Crisis of European Sciences) and a bit of Merleau-Ponty. Interesting stuff. Hard to get a handle on properly. There seems to be a lot of really low-quality secondary literature on Husserl.
Next semester’s she’s doing a follow-up (on existentialism), mostly Heidegger. Who says analytically-trained people don’t cover the interesting stuff?
Kieran
December 31, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Fascinating stuff. I was a bit surprised to see this come up on orgtheory, but happily surprised! But come now, Churchland is anything but ‘nondescript’. :-) I didn’t know Hayek had written anything like that! Thanks for pointing it out.
In my humble opinion, Bruno Latour offers a different, interesting take on all of these propositions. The first two chapters of his Pandora’s Hope will give you a good idea of what he’s getting at. In short, perhaps both sets of the above propositions do not stand in complete and utter contradiction.
Graham Harman, with his object-oriented approach, meditates on these matters at length in his book on Latour (and his own philosophy), available as an open source .pdf here:
http://www.re-press.org/content/view/63/38/
anxiousmodernman
December 31, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Hat tip to Omar, and anyone else, who can read and understand the Sensory Order in a few hours.
Happy New Year!
Brian Pitt
December 31, 2009 at 6:56 pm
A bit Latinate and not the best written book in the world (long sentences, lots of embedded clauses, etc.) but hardly unintelligible. The argument (against “sense data” empiricism) is straightforward and innovative (anticipates “neural networks” theories of mental representation,etc.). Hayek is repetitive (which helps) but always to the point. It can certainly be grasped on a first pass, although the digressions and the details may not be fully appreciated on a quick read.
The main points in the argument as summarized by Hayek:
And again:
Once again, somewhat awkwardly rendered (Churchland is a more engaging writer) but hardly something that requires hours of toil to comprehend.
Omar
December 31, 2009 at 8:36 pm
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