Where we started ... and arrived at:

From Darwin and Emergence

• essentialism vs relativism? ... both, but not as originally thought things seem to have "essential" properties, but these seem to result from the "time slicing" of processes of interaction which are coninually in flux
• realism vs constructivism? ... both, but not as originally thought there may or not be something out there, but regardless it is unlikely to be a stable benchmark of the kind implied by realist usage/aspiration (or needed by the correspondence theory of truth)
• non-intentionality vs intentionality? ... iffy, but needing more work at a minimum, non-intentionality and intentionality are not discrete categories: intentionality arises from non-intentionality, probably in a graded fashion, certainly with no evidence for any mysterious added factor
• objectivity vs subjectivity? ... iffy, but needing more work TO TALK ABOUT, but requiring context that the issue, if real, must have, like intentionality/non-intentionality, emerged from states where it was absent
• singularism vs multiplism? .... iffy, but needing more work TO TALK ABOUT, but requiring context that the issue, if real, must have, like intentionality/non-intentionality, emerged from states where it was absent

From the brain

• "seems" = all there is to work with
• "reality" = the shared parts of our stories
• objectivity = adhering to that which is common to our stories
• meaning and purpose = that which we create in the story telling process to give coherence and direction
• intentionality = a confusing term, partly a function of story telling, partly not
• multiplism = an acknowledgement, hard won, by the story teller that stories seem to have an inevitable tentativeness about them (which COULD be related to what the stories were about IF they were in fact about something)
• pragmatic multiplism = life is a playground in which we are free to provide meaning and purpose (indeed must if we wish such things)
• a challenge - to conceive philosophy without the antecedent concepts of reality/truth/meaning? (evolution/emergence implies alternate possible "stories" ... "replay the tape" and see where it goes?)

Facing up to last week's challenge ...

Idealism?

• The word 'idealism' is used by different philosophers in somewhat different senses. We shall understand by it the doctrine that whatever exists, or at any rate whatever can be known to exist, must be in some sense mental

  Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, Chapter 4

• The term "German Idealism" refers to a phase of intellectual life that had its origin in the Enlightenment as modified by German conditions. English and French representatives of the Enlightenment, giving precedence to sensation, had become empiricists and skeptics. They viewed the world as a great machine, adopted hedonism as their ethics, and interpreted history from a subjective-critical point of view. The situation in Germany was just the reverse. There thought was given precedence over sensation, and, instead of empiricism, idealism was dominant. Ethics was based on norms of universal validity, instead of on individual whim. History was interpreted genetically as a rational process; and in place of the mechanical conception of the world, an organic or dynamic view was substituted. Nature was seen to be spiritual, as well as spatial, and was interpreted teleologically. In the hands of Jacobi and Kant, Hume's skepticism became the weapon that destroyed the influence of empiricism and thus paved the way for idealism. For the Germans, at least, Rousseau's radicalism brought into question the value of the culture-ideals of the Enlightenment, and impelled them to seek the basis of culture in the creative power of the mind.

  The conceptual framework of German Idealism was provided by Immanuel Kant who was the first to reconcile the conflicting empirical and rationalistic elements of the prevailing dogmatic philosophy. With one stroke he secured for mind priority over nature, and yet without endangering the validity of the principles of scientific investigation. By giving the primacy to practical reason, he placed religion and ethics on a sure footing and broke the ban of rationalism. In the first instance Kant's work was purely epistemological. He made it particularly his problem to rescue natural science from the (epistemological) skepticism of Hume, and then to rescue religion from nationalism. Kant demolished the rationalistic arguments of Anselm, Descartes, and others, for the existence of God. Science is valid, but it has to do only with phenomena. This phenomenal world, however, is produced a priori by the activity of consciousness, reacting on that external reality whose eternal nature cannot be known. The constancy of experience is accounted for by the very fact that the world as we know it is only the sum total of phenomena. This becomes the basis of the universal validity of certain principles of explanation. Space and time, and the categories of the understanding are subjective and thus ideal. Taken together they form a mold in which we shape the impressions coming from the unknowable, transcendent reality. Thus, the principles of science and the laws of nature are universally valid because they are in the subject, not in the object. Knowledge of ultimate reality comes through the practical reason, particularly through the a priori moral law in us. Kant's idea of inner freedom became the inspiration of the creative genius.

  The effects of this idealistic development are apparent in the positive sciences no less than in metaphysics. In accord with the idea of the oneness of the world, the natural sciences have been given a subordinate position, or else reduced to natural philosophy. The new spirit is manifested even more clearly in the historical sciences, where the genetic method is everywhere employed and individual facts are treated in relation to the whole development. For instance, the historian of literature or art now seeks to bring the facts with which he is dealing into relation with other phases of life and thus grasp the life and ideals of a nation as a whole. Similarly, the philologist is no longer satisfied with the study of one language, but seeks to correlate it with kindred tongues and reconstruct the inner life of the people. Even in the field of jurisprudence the genetic method has been adopted and particular stress laid on the development of common law.

  The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Not idealism but what ... ?

• need "checks" to avoid solipsism, individual isolation in absence of external purpose/meaning
• accept "the genetic method"
• deny "mental", with implied distinction from physical/material and implied arbitrariness
• accept "neural", with understanding that it yields both unconscious and conscious activities, that "mind" is a component of organized matter, with the latter having evolved by a process of natural selection NOTE check 1 - what exists reflects both internal dynamics and interaction with things outside
• accept - "space and time, and the categories of understanding are subjective" but NOT that they are ideal (Platonism/Kant's a priori's in the brain), nor unchanging/unchangeable
• accept - "external reality whose external nature cannot be known" as good hypothesis NOTE check 2 - stories need to be continually tested for usefulness (though this is not necessarily dependent on "falsifiability"
• deny "subordinate position of natural science" as I understand them (since "natural science, in my mind, includes neuroscience) NOTE check 3 - stories can be tested not only against the "natural world" but also against other stories ... not "the view from nowhere" but rather "the view from everywhere"
  (see "Scientia" and "Cultura": The Origins and Development of these Words

Pragmatism as a the needed philosophical perspective?

William James, an early darwinist/neurobiologist
What's there? What's needed?

• William James, What Pragmatism Means
• William James, Pragmatism's Conception of Truth
• (Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club, 2001)