There are two ways something can be real.
(1) As being thought, and (2) representing something objective (or thought about).
(1) The first kind of reality, in thought, differs in degrees from the certain to the possible.
(2) Representational or objective reality differs in degrees between the necessary to the contingent.
Something can be, with these distinctions, more or less real. Something must have both ideational and objective reality, in addition to having either ideational or objective reality, to be real. Having an idea of something must refer to at least the objective reality of what has the idea, just as the reality of something objective is accompanied by an idea of it, otherwise it is not known at all. There is not something with only one kind of reality alone. Whatever is clear or possible is at least contingent, and whatever is necessary or contingent is at least possible. Though things can differ in degrees over how ideationally and objectively real they are.
There are two reasons for the distinctions of ideational and representational reality.
1) Subjectivity of knowledge. Being is established by perception, prior to any determination of what it is. What is present to me as an idea is more real than what I don't have an idea of.
2) Parsimony of being is preferable (Occam's Razor). There is less room to go wrong (fewer assumptions to account for) and more reliance on what I perceive. The simplest explanation is more distinct in what its conditions for being right and wrong are, and so has a greater reference to reality.
Both types of reality give us what is clear (ideational) and what is distinct (representational). The following divisions of knowledge follow from the two types of reality, each differing between degrees of clarity and distinctness. These are the clear and the possible (ideational reality), and the necessary and the contingent (representational reality).
What is certain is not subject to doubt and does not require the explanation of something else existing.
The possible is known to exist in thought, as in subjectively by a knower, but it is not known whether the possible actually exists in itself or exists because of something else which I already know.
The possible refers to the existence of something I do not have a conception of (in relation to what I already know), yet still exists by virtue of having an idea of it.
The clear is that which I can account for in terms of what else I know.
The clear and the possible are not opposites but degrees of the reality thought has in itself. With its own objective reality.
Examples: It is certain that I exist, for whatever I know of is thought and nothing else has these thoughts besides myself. It is possible that a Sasquatch exists, but I do not know if it is wholly imaginary (explained by myself) or representative of what exists outside of thought (as a representation).
Of what can be said about what exists, there is what is necessary and what is contingent. These determine what is distinct by degrees.
What is said to be necessary is what we cannot conceive of as not-existing without contradiction. The necessary is always true, because of what it is, and what it is not. The ground for this distinction is between being and nothing. Given that nothing will not give rise to existence, what we have before us either must exist by its own nature or owes its existence to what existed prior ad infinitum eventually requiring a necessary being. Something also cannot exist in the same way and the same time as something else if they really are different things (Identity of Indiscernibles).
It is from necessity that we get the great laws of thought:
1) Law of Identity. A is A.
2) Law of Non-contradiction. A is not ~A.
3) Law of the Excluded Middle. A is not A and ~A.
4) Principle of Sufficient Reason. If A is an effect, the cause is not ~A.
The contingent is what can be conceived as not existing without contradiction. These are empirical truths. Seeing is believing, but not enough to establish what something is other than it has objective reality. An inductive truth only stands contingently, on further experience. That it rained all this week will not tell us for certain that it will rain tomorrow. We cannot know that it will rain until it happens, as rain is not inherent to there being a tommorow. With different things, there is no necessary relationship, but a contingent one.
The contingent will not give us a distinct idea of something either. That ice is cold does not give us its nature, what makes it what it is. Neither does the sensation of cold explain how it got that way. Still, experience is of something, which means some objective reality.
Examples: A dog is a mammal is a necessary truth because saying a dog is a reptile or not a mammal is contradictory. That a dog has black fur is contingent as something can be a dog with yellow or brown fur.
What I perceive clearly (certainly) and distinctly (necessarily) is better than what I perceive vaguely (possibly) and confusedly (contingently). This respects the limits of what we can know which condition what we can reason about as well as the subjective basis of knowledge.
Going forward I have labeled these distinctions as Cp and Nc.
Epistemologically, what is clear or possible has precedence over what is necessary or owes itself to the necessary as I might not have a notion at all of what it is, even if it would make sense.
So, Cp>Nc
Nevertheless if I have any idea of something, it will conform to either N or c. And so something can be CN as well as Cp. And it can be pN and pc.
Thus there are four determinants of what exists
| CN | Np |
| Cc | cp |
The Clear and Necessary. The highest in ideational & objective reality. The most clear & distinct.
The Clear and contingent. The highest in ideational reality, not objective reality, but being clear it is preferred above what follows.
The Necessary and the possible. High in objective reality, but not clear.
The contingent and the possible. Still real ideationally and objectively, but not clear and distinct.
The clear is preferred over the distinct, but because thinking has an objective reality in the ego (Cogito Ergo Sum) the clear is never alone, objectively. The objective reality of the self is contingent, even as its existence is clear, without doubt. Something which has objective reality but no ideational reality cannot be known, and so it is not a suitable grounds for existence (subjectivity and parsimony). No C, p, N, or c alone.
Our goal is to ascertain what Descartes called the clear and distinct, but what I call the clear and necessary.
What we have here is a sort of synthesis of Descartes' cogito with Aristotle's Hylomorphism. The experience of something has with it it's reality as idea telling us what it is and its objective reality telling us what it is "made of" or caused by. The idea of something is not disconnected from the reality of what it is, as with Hylomorphism there is a unity of what something is with what it consists of.
But what something is is a determination of thought, so there is a difference between the qualities something produces in the mind and what actually can be said about the object. This is because thought, the subjective, has its own reality and with which it has to have an idea of something to determine if it exists.
Thus an object like a body is not the same as the qualities it brings to the mind. What we describe an object as having must be certain to belong to it, making the object distinct. We say ice is cold and hard, but these could just be purely mental qualities. We must respect the subjectivity of knowledge. We must also be parsimonious with what we admit to existing in itself as a substance and what is essential to something. For we could be mistaken in our determinations of what it objectively exists in.
No comments:
Post a Comment