Tuesday, December 11, 2018

The Clash of Objects, Sounds, and Theories - All in the Imagination



Two weeks back I went to the CUNY Philosophy Colloquium. I have been habitually checking them out on Wednesday afternoons this fall. Now two weeks ago the speaker was Umrao Sethi, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Lehman College at the City University of New York. She was presenting a paper / talk titled “Varieties of Instantiation”.

What follows is a tale of my thoughts and reflections on that talk in the past two weeks. In my wanderings I touch on Aristotle, Locke, nominalism, contemporary philosophy of science and so on. Ultimately I end with the inclusion of a contemporary musician, whose new music has been playing in the background as I dealt with these topics and now seems somehow apropos. Again these are my wanderings over the past two weeks. It starts with Professor Sethi's talk, but it is not really an analysis or critique of that talk. It is more an exploration of where that talk led me.

Basically, Professor Sethi’s talk focused on metaphysics, what was and to some degree still is a core component of western philosophy. In short, she focused on understanding what it is that we are observing when we see an an object. I say that such topics are or were the core of western philosophy as we are talking of a project that has a history of over 2000 or perhaps more like 3000 years old. The question(s) have of course evolved over the years. At the start it was more about the object. Today, in philosophy, it is more about how we come to know the object. We have gone from metaphysics to epistemology, the understanding or study of knowledge, as opposed to an understanding or study of being. So yes, an hour talk pretty much covered it. . .

Honestly, I got stuck right at the beginning of her talk. That getting stuck however, does lead me down the path of the tale I am offering up here. In a nutshell, a very quick run through some of the history and thought of the project I reference above and finally dovetail it to the work of a contemporary musician that I am once again enthralled with.

As I said, I got stuck very early on in her talk. At the outset, Professor Sethi introduced both Aristotle and John Locke. Aristotle is of course the ancient philosopher. John Locke is an English  philosopher from the early modern period. It was just an interesting combination.

Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, lived in the 4th century BC. He is known as a student of Plato who went on to form his own school of thought, and his own school also. He challenged Plato's idealism offering up what today is described as a type of realism. His approach routinely involves an exhaustive review of the subject matter, the examples or objects at hand, whether it be the detailing of biological species or the defining of the good. In both of these he would look at and examine concrete instances or examples of the topic at hand.

Legend has it that when Alexander the Great, a former student of Aristotle, conquered Africa and other locales, he would ship home to his former teacher exotic and interesting animals-specimens. Aristotle would examine these creatures he had never seen before, detailing and classifying each of them in his notes and studies. To this day you still hear reference to the term "genus-species" in biology. Knowledge for Aristotle was largely the classification of things. Perhaps?

Going back to the talk, however, Professor Sethi focused on substance. Substance. It is a neglected term today. We might hear someone say that, "He or she is a man of substance." Rarely. Typically, to have substance is to not be superficial. Going back to the genus-species reference, substance perhaps focuses on that which unites the instances, or individuals - the genus. Substance is that which is greater than what is merely seen.

I struggle here as I am not going to a text. I am not quoting Professor Sethi, nor Aristotle. A quick disclaimer - this is not an academic work, but rather a personal tale - a recollection not of the talk but of my own wanderings in thought and my responses to those thoughts. It perhaps illustrates one path away from the talk, one direction, one option. Any substantial work on this topic would require a serious fleshing out of various points! Rather, what I offer here is a simply a daydream, several random snapshots of my musings regarding the subject over the last two or three weeks.

The tale continues. Let us look at a few other items relating to substance. Aristotle as I said challenges Plato, who is an idealist. Plato believes that the ideal, what he describes as the "form' is what is real. Aristotle largely challenges that. Is he saying that only the material, the object, is real? Not sure. Again we arrive at a question. Is Aristotle what today we would describe as a materialist?

The story continues. or at least our thoughts regarding Aristotle. Historically, the Catholic Church latches onto him or his thought. Most famously, St Thomas Aquinas. It is Aquinas who equates God to Aristotle's unmoved mover. At least that is the story I recall. Substance here, I am sure is god. Matter is nothing, but again this is in fact several steps away from Aristotle now. It is still in some way Aristotle's thought, perhaps stretched and yes manipulated. So now we have two theories of substance - that it is matter and that it is God.

And do not fret. . . we have not forgotten Locke, nor our musician.

Regarding John Locke. I really know little about the man. He is a seventeenth century English Philosopher. I barely read him in either my political science nor in early modern philosophy classes. He is early enlightenment figure, and politically a defender of natural law. He is known as an early empiricist, basically valuing the senses and coming to know the world through them. His thought was inspired by and in turn supported the beginnings of modern science. Unlike Aristotle, his world was not a system of classification but rather, much more involving what we would call the scientific method: hypothesize, observe, confirm, and repeat. So though there were similarities, Locke's substance was poked and tested, as opposed to Aristotle's, which was much more static, observed, and classified.

If you go with the Church view of Aristotle, however, they, Aristotle and Locke's view of substance, are two entirely different things. The church view is that substance is God, and it is through God that we have these various classifications that Aristotle made. Locke on the other hand is offering up the beginnings of what will be the scientific method. He is suggesting that you can discover substance through such a process. And at my CUNY event, as Professor Sethi spoke, I was much more thinking about these, about Aristotle as per the church versus Locke, the proto-scientist. And it was with these two ideas in mind that I wondered where she is she going?

Professor Sethi continued her talk and ultimately went to question and answers, where she talked of a "naive realism". This essay, as I have said above, is not her story. For me to really engage her ideas will require me finding the text and doing some reading. Her role here is largely done, but I thank her. Again, this is a tale of my meanderings over the past two weeks, the starting point again being her talk.

So I left that event pondering how she combined these two, Aristotle and Locke. I am holding these two up as I think of a third concept or idea, what I call nominalism. It is something I have been intrigued with since reading Richard Rorty, who in one passage alluded to being, like many of us, a good nominalist. I was intrigued. If Rorty was a good nominalist, maybe I want to join this club. . . maybe not. Well, that was twenty years ago that I was pondering such, and it has haunted me since. And I have since explored nominalism a bit more.

Nominalism starts with the idea that universals or general ideas are mere names without any corresponding reality. It could be argued that to be a nominalist is to suggest that there is no such thing as substance. The idea of nominalism began with a challenge to the church, basically of its theology and metaphysics. This was circa the 14th century. And the metaphysics and theology being challenged did owe a debt to Aristotle. Again, the church was claiming in essence that the world was created by God, it is of God. We can look at it down to its minutest details, but in the end it points back to God.

Nominalism challenges that. It questions the nature of God based upon the events of the day. Considering items such earthquakes, plagues, famines, even mini-ice ages if I recall correctly. William of Ockham and others simply had their concerns regarding the benevolence of God. They asked what type of God was this? Was he in fact knowable? The categories that Aristotle offered were not so obvious to these men in the fourteenth century. Such classifications seemed less than useful to them. Keep in mind that the categories they pointed to were not classifications of flora and fauna. Rather they were looking for ways to know what would and would not happen to themselves.

They were more interested in God's relation to man, his treatment of man. Further, you have at this point the chaos of the church itself. The Pope at this time was in Avignon in France, and protected by a French King. The nominalist were uncertain of the world they lived in and of the God who was responsible for it. And from this uncertainty empirical science sprouted, basically embracing the evidence of the senses and building upon it. What they were certain of was what they observed, what they gained from their senses. And John Locke followed this trend. I do not know Locke's empiricism but generally, empiricists held that theories are confirmed by the observations - what one sees.

So to sum up where we are so far. Starting with Aristotle and Locke, I questioned how these two were coupled together as sharing a belief in substance, The differences to me just seem too great. We just have this gulf between the ancient and the early modern, the church and nominalism,  So I was and still am skeptical of the idea that they can share a common notion of what substance is in relation to perception or elsewhere.

This internal debate or soliloquy continues. Over the next few days I dig out several books I have from Paul Churchland. That is the closest I have to the subject. Much of his writing is focused on what he terms "scientific realism", but is this metaphysics? He seems to basically grant that there is a  mind-independent existence. His focus, however, is on philosophy of mind and philosophy of science. He is also interested, like Professor Sethi in observation, in what is seen, what is confirmed. I start to wonder. Is it the case that both Aristotle and Locke would grant the same? That there is a mind-independent existence. The individual object being observed is mind-independent. Is this much conceded by all? Perhaps the dispute is over not the observed but the unobserved, the category or class. Doubts start to appear in my speculations.

I now dig out my Complete Works of Aristotle, a heavy volume with fine print. It is in some ways too nice a volume to work over. I wish I had smaller and lighter editions of Aristotle's Metaphysics and De Anima. Locke is simply missing from my collection. So I end up perusing the Churchland books.

And in my review of the various essays I come across one,"To Transform the Phenomena, Feyerabend, Proliferation, and Recurrent Neural Networks" from On the Contrary, Critical Essays, 1987-1997. An essay again talking of observations, and the fact that often the same observation can confirm multiple theories. Is it the case that we have some of that here? That is exactly what we have here. Did Aristotle and Locke see the same object before them despite their various beliefs. Churchland would probably offer a conclusion of perhaps.

The answer would really be contingent upon what the physical object was and how it was perceived, how it was engaged and how accessible it would be to both men. A glass of wine would be recognized by both perhaps. A firearm would only be recognized by Locke, and really only a musket or cannon. Both would most likely swat at a fly or a mosquito.

Now Churchland in his essay is looking not only at competing theories, but also exploring how we can flip from one to another. He sites an example in the  history of physics, and likewise offers up the classic old hag / young woman picture seen above. He offers up the ability and the benefits of multiple theories and what can be gained with such. Without such theories, chunks of data would be missed.  So part of me is of the mind that you do not mix up modern with ancient philosophy. The historical context of the thought must be considered. Yet another part of me arrives at an essay such as I offer here.

I do not know, it is too scattered at this point. I put my books down and I listen to the music that I have playing in the background. It is a new album from an artists I have had an affair with for many years. I like his music. The artist is a guitarist by the name of Bernie Torme. For those familiar with heavy metal and hard rock he might perhaps be known. He has been making a racket, as he says, for the past forty years.

I just take it all in as I reflect again on the above. The song playing is one of the last on Torme's new album, Shadowland - "Innovation Jam / Chaos Theory". I have been listening to this album and this tune for the past two or three weeks. The song is a 14 minute plus opus of guitar playing. Its title is interesting. At first I just took it that he meant that this was an innovative piece of music, which does involve a lot of jamming, and there is a bit of chaos. That is just part of the musical genre of which he is part. That is one interpretation, one view of the object, the title, or song.


The title, however, is not Innovation Jam / Chaos. It is Innovation Jam / Chaos Theory. Add to this the first note of the song. It is a lone harmonic followed by a pause, allowing for the strings to resonate. Specifically, it is the harmonic used by Steve Howe in the opening to the classic Yes song "Roundabout". Consider that this was perhaps one of the first things Torme was learning to play as a young student of the guitar. Consider that this is perhaps one of the last albums he will make in his career. He has advertised the tour as one of his last. Consider that this song features not only him but fans and disciples joining him in the jam.

You realize that in fact you have both innovation and an instance of the mathematical 'chaos theory'. Steve Howe's harmonic becomes the almost silent trembling wings of that butterfly that leads to the ensuing storm. The storm in Torme's case being forty years of music and now this jam featuring him and a group of devoted fans and inspired guitarists who join him in the recording. Why else start with that note?

Somehow, I have flipped from a query regarding Aristotle and Locke to an amazing piece of music; the title of which plays with a dash of mathematics, maybe more.











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