Will the circle be unbroken?
By and by Lord, by and by,
There's a better home a-waitin'
In the sky Lord, in the sky.

This is what one might call the circle of ontology or first principles.

You show a way to do something, for example, to begin counting without the possibility of counting backwards.

Then you maintain that this way comes first, or is the “real way”, because it begins without the possibility of counting backwards.

But you are the one who inflated this way of beginning to count as the primary way. You assumed an order when you said it came first in counting.

When you said it, you meant that it was first, beyond its use in your example. You meant that its primacy carried over to all other beginnings.

(There is philosophy again, saying something and packing an order into it.)

Suppose the ascending order is the first one that we do use when we learn to count. We also use the descending order in many other ways of learning to count. At best, one order is not more primary except in the way we are using it.

Of course, one can say that learning to count comes before other forms of counting. But you have not shown, in virtue of learning to count, that what we do when we learn to count is in any other way prior to what we do when we count in various other ways. Learning to count is just one thing we do when we count.

Learning to count is not special among counting activities. Your way is not special in learning to count.

The “special place” is simply “special” for the use in question. It does not have a special place independently of its use, to wit, to learn to count without the possibility of going backwards.

http://ingeb.org/spiritua/willthec.html

Continuing from the prior post:

The circle is harder to see here; you think you’re on to something fundamental, but you’ve just made something up. You have posited that there is a place to begin for which there is a reason that singles it out from all other possible beginnings.

Then you posit or assume that ‘place to begin going forward’ marks off this special place. Then with your analysis of ”beginning at 1,” you show that you have begun at the ‘place to begin going forward.’

Obviously, a counterexample might show that your place is not the right place. Someone puts a thimble on the table. Then he takes it away and asserts that he may go backward from 1.

Then you say that he is not REALLY going backward because there is REALLY nothing to count now.

So no one points out that your view means that you cannot “go light” in a poker game and pull the chips you owe out of the pot.

The term ‘really’ gets emphasized very quickly in your discourse. This suggests that you have assumed and not proved your conclusion.

But suppose no counterexample is offered. Suppose that somehow you really cannot go backward. That things are as you say.

You have nonetheless inflated your ‘place to begin going forward’ into something more than a mere place to start learning to count. You have posited or assumed that the conditions that you provide for learning to count make it special, i.e., make it such that there are no other possible beginnings that are special.

But this you posit and leave unproven. You have not shown all possible beginnings of learning to count. All you can say is that the other beginnings are not yours. Then you assume yours is the right one, the one that is special.

You have merely shown that beginning in your way yields results that other ways do not, e.g., if you start here, you can’t count backward. You assume that this helpful feature makes your way primary to all others. But it is only primary for the job you want to do: to start without being able to count backward.

The name of the place is “I like it like that.”


The dialogue continues:

“If I agree with you, am I allowed to point out that the ‘place to begin going forward’ is what you assume that the real way begins with? You see, I do not know what the ‘real way’ is. You have to posit the real way. Reality is in your hands.”

“What are you talking about? We begin with 1,2,3,4,5… because it is the only place we can start and not go backward.”

“Look, suppose I agree with you that you cannot go backward from 1 and therefore say that it has its advantage as a place to begin counting. Will that be enough to satisfy you?”

“No it’s THE place, for the reason given.”

“Well, I say that you have assumed that the reason you have given defines the “right order” or the “real way” when it is at best an advantage for a place to begin counting. You’re going around in a circle.”

There are also circles that result from positing. They are often harder to see.

Suppose someone tells me to order a randomly generated series of numbers. What could he mean?

I can posit an order for them. Ascending, descending, etc. What is the right order? There are many orders. There is no right order. If I posit an order to be the right one, then I create a right order.

“Well, you have to have 1 to have 2. So I’d say ascending is the primary way to order it.”

“But I have to have -1 to have -2. If I generate the positive integers with a simple formula, I ascend. If I generate the negative integers, I descend.”

“Well, learning to count comes before doing any of this.”

“Arguably, it does. So does learning to talk, learning quantities, learning numerals, etc.”

“Well, the ascending order really does come first, because that is the way you go when you learn.”

“You go backwards and forwards when you learn to count. You sing things like ‘99 bottles of beer on the wall…take one down and pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall.’ Just as you learn to sing notes backwards and forwards, too.”

“But c’mon, the real way is forward. ‘1,2,3,4,5…’ is the first way you go when you learn. Besides in counting, can you go backward from 1? No, you cannot. So 1 is the place to begin going forward, since you cannot go backward from it, and you can go backward and forward from any other number. Therefore, 1 is unique, and it is all ascending from there. Therefore, you can see why we start to learn to count by going ‘1,2,3,4,5…’ No question, the primary order is ascending and begins with 1.”

==============================

We’ve just heard a deduction of why we learn to count with ‘1,2,3,4,5…’ Not only do we learn to count by doing this first, but there is a reason that we do this first, to wit, the unique position of 1, such that we cannot go backward from it.

It is as though there is a certain floor beneath our feet that supports us when we start this way, so we start here. (An ontological put option of sorts. How do we price the premium?)

Furthermore, this order comes first in the ordering of numbers for this very reason.

http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/

The man who has to define his terms in order to make his statement true, makes his statement true by definition. Statements that are true by definition are circular.

If I say that civilization is defined as a state in which a nation is not at war, then obviously such a nation cannot be at war and be civilized. So the fact that America is at war makes it uncivilized. This, however, is on my terms. I’ve had to make my statement true by defining my terms to make it true. Then I can write a book about how uncivilized America is. My book will be true, but on my terms.

My proof will be circular because I have assumed that ‘at war’ means ‘uncivilized’.

“How is America uncivilized?”
‘It is at war.”
“How does this make it uncivilized?”
“‘At war’ means 'uncivilized'.”

If that is not a circle, I do not know what is.

You can always decline philosophy when it redefines terms. You can always say, ‘I do not accept your definitions, I do not need to. I speak well without them.’

Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations noticed the recasting of language in philosophy, so he talked about ordinary language.

Suppose the philosopher starts out of the blue with the text of the second speaker:

“Civilization in its purest state, means no war. If we seek to be civilized, we cannot be fighting wars.”

You are entitled to ask the question, ‘what do you mean by that?’, because you cannot understand what he is getting at without doing so. He has to define his terms differently, because civilized nations are sometimes, in the ordinary sense, at war.

If you ask this question, you are asking him to define the terms: ‘Civilization,’ ‘purest state,’ ‘war.’

He has to define them differently to make his case work.

But you do not have to do this, other than as a courtesy. You can say instead that there is no call to listen to one who has to define his terms in this way, and that you do not need a redefined set of terms to talk about civilization, war and peace. Diplomats make treaties without redefining them; i.e., they don’t use them differently, why should he or you?

In sum, one does not have to define terms to talk to somebody. The man who goes about defining his terms in order to talk has missed something very basic about talking, to wit, that talking is perfectly proper without defining terms. (This is an error of high school debaters as well as philosophers.)

The philosopher, however, misses yet something more basic. Redefining terms is a kind of arranging or ordering. But talking does not need this to be understood. It proceeds apace, ordered or not. Whether it is Bush or Blair (the latter clearly the better ordered speaker), each says something with which the other can agree or disagree.

“Did you know that Dasein is the being that questions and is the starting point for coming to grips with the question of the meaning of being?”

This question is quite complex and assumes much.

It assumes that there is a “question of the meaning of being” that makes sense to answer.
It assumes that there is a “being that questions,” that makes sense to discuss.
It assumes that it makes sense to say that the “being that questions” comes first in answering “the question of the meaning of being.”

This means it has to define two terms, such that one comes first in the explanation of the other. Then there has to be a point to this exercise, which is to look for first principles in the first place.

This is to look for first principles underlying “the being that questions.”

Questions are part of conversation. But conversation does not assume first principles. If it did, we would never get around to talking to each other.

The philosopher must make the move that conversation is somehow amiss, as Heidegger does in Being and Time, and that he has the terms to order what is amiss.

As we have already shown, this prompted Sartre’s refutation of Heidegger by way of Being and Nothingness. Therein Sartre’s analysis of absence takes care of what Heidegger thought was a first-order problem. (see posts of April 5, 2006 and following.)

"Heavens to Murgatroid!"


There is a question of first principles in philosophy. If you are going to talk about them, you have to give a reason why you should talk about them in the first place. First principles put things in order. You have to show a reason for the order.

We have already shown that the man who puts forth first principles is not an expert in anything. He purports to organize what others, who already have expertise, have discussed.

“Why can't the experts order their own matters? Don’t they understand them?”
“Well, it is in this privileged way that ordering, in terms of first principles, is necessary.”
“How so?”

The philosopher has to give a reason for ordering the stuff of experts. He has to create a problem in their expert accounts. But ex hypothesi, they are the experts.

Another account is not necessary unless experts qua experts are confused.

In the courthouse conversation, the second speaker’s attempt to move to this kind of order could be rejected by the first speaker because it was not called for. The conversation was doing admirably without it.

For the man who begins talking philosophy, nothing has been brought up as needing order. He has to contrive the order out of something he mentions to get the conversation going.

When he makes the move to ordering, you may reject the need for order.

Or you may politely say, “Fascinating,” all the while looking for an exit, stage left.

http://members.aol.com/PaulEC2/Snagglepuss.html

To this rug-cleaner salesman of ideas:

You can say, once again, as the first speaker in the rural courthouse example does, “I don’t know about that...,” and proceed with what you are doing. Or you can say, once again:

“There you go again, getting philosophical on me.”

You can say the above to a philosopher, as an outright dismissal.

“There you go again, getting chemical on me,” is not a dismissal to a chemist. The chemist has something to say that is not, in principle, speculative. You cannot outright dismiss someone for doing chemistry.

“Did you know that water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen?”

While it may not be the time for your son, who is learning chemistry, to bring up this fact; you can say something that furthers his interest or defers the idea for later, because he is talking about something specific and has no need to appeal to first principles. You would not say in response,

“That assumes that there is hydrogen and oxygen. That assumes that there is water.”

You would not say this because there is no question of these things in chemistry. They are not, as in philosophy, simply principles by which we arrange things as to which come first. For example,

“That assumes that you begin with experience and not with reason.”

Or

“That assumes that language can be modeled as you say.”

Etc.

What about the fellow who, as Socrates, begins talking philosophy? He does not wait for conversation to give him the opportunity to shift. How is he different from the man who notes the time or temperature in a bus queue?


"It's four o'clock. The noting of the time has several underlying conditions, among them those related to the meaning of being and its relation to the temporality of Dasein."

"Quite so, as we look forward toward death. Have a good evening."


The example of the courthouse conversation shows that a philosophical shift is not called for. The second speaker calls for it, and because of this he (and it) can be declined. The second speaker lacks pertinence. He has the burden to say something pertinent and he does not. He says something else. He interrupts the flow and has to accept the refusal, or say something pertinent.

(“We were talking about the Cowboy game. How did you get off on the New York Rangers?”)

If philosophy can be declined anywhere in a conversation, it can be declined at the beginning.

You can decline it at the beginning because there is nothing prior for it to organize into first principles. Nothing has been said for it to organize into first principles. It cannot give an analysis of a problem that has not been mentioned. Nothing has been mentioned.

So it mentions something in order to organize it into first principles. It has to introduce its own problem to begin.

It is somewhat like the salesman who fouls a floor to flourish his product.

Most people will give the salesman some rein. Rather than throw him out, curiosity gets them and they get the product.

The product does have something to do with something. It will clean crushed tomatoes off the carpet.

Philosophy in its first moment has, as it were, nothing to do with anything.

Here the curious buy the ever absent pig in a poke.

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.
(E. Pound, Personae, 80)

And still they write philosophy.

Writing gets the philosophical word in edgewise. There are conventions for responding to writings. While I may convert Sartre to frontierish, latrine tissue, saying, ”I don’t know about that…,” his word is in print.

His podium is the book on my shelf which I can loan to my neighbor. I have to write to Sartre or a journal to respond to his work. My response, if published, is an occasion for others to reply. The collection of Sartre’s works and others’ responses create a context for future work. They create the illusion that philosophy has something to say when, in dialogue, it can be orphaned at any moment.

Without writing, philosophy could hardly have got going; no one needed to listen to it.

Undoubtedly much of civilization is helped by writing. But writing may create the illusion that there is something to say. With or without writing, there is no illusion that there is something to say in science or history. Thales, according to tradition, was a geometer, a nautical astronomer, a political advisor; all of these things might have produced remarks that needed heeding. Based on this need, he might have written any number of texts. He may have, given Freeman’s Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers.(50f)

But philosophy is different. It does not need heeding. It never does in ordinary dialogue. Thus, to be noted, it must start first. The first principle of philosophy is to get the drop on the talkers by writing something. This is easier than to persist as Socrates, talking to the grave.

Socrates, who never wrote, as Nietzsche notes (a remark which Derrida thinks is so insightful (OG, 6)), was not literarily pretentious. He knew that he was interrupting. But he was persistent as a Bible salesman, after the Oracle at Delphi told him no one was wiser than he.

“From that time on I interviewed one person after another. I realized with distress and alarm that I was making my self unpopular, but I felt compelled to put my religious duty first.” (Apology, 21 e)

His heirs found the tactic unsatisfactory and invented contexts for their written word by introducing issues of their own making.

Even if what Aristotle calls “speaking out” is not an error, it is at least the case that there is no call for philosophy in the instant conversation. Even if both speakers go on to talk political philosophy, there is no reason to say that what they are now talking about is more primary than what they were talking about before.

Since nothing in the conversation calls for the shift, the shift is just that. It is just something else that is said; moreover it is not a weighing of what is said prior. Thus, one cannot say that it provides something primary to the prior conversation, such as a judgment which values freedom of the press over military tactics.

(There is good reason why many people who have some knowledge of philosophy seem to “miss the depth of it.” They go about quoting philosophers in the middle of conversations to spice them up. Ironically, it is arguable that if there is no proper place to start philosophy, a sprinkling of its terms is a reasonable use for them.)

There is no argument that the place to start philosophy is in the example conversation. Indeed, you can start philosophy any place, if people will let you shift. Thus, there is no argument that you should start anywhere in particular.

Of course, the flip-side is arguable. There is no place to start. No one has to let you shift.

“There you go again, getting philosophical on me.”

For the purpose of the history of philosophy, you can see why Sartre started where he did. But since you can start anywhere, if people will let you shift, the question where you should start is for the professionals.

They make a living at letting each other start. They think that there are special places to start. Again, that is how they make their livelihood. You have to be a special guy in a special place to be one of them.

You have to craft a podium for speaking out. Oddly, the podium is usually fashioned from the written word.

Continuing from the prior post, on how different the philosophical opinion is from the garden variety:

Courtrooms see this. In a courtroom, you have to be an expert on a matter at hand if you are to opine. You are not generally allowed to reframe a question. You have to weigh facts, already in evidence, based on accepted scientific theory, which has already been established as accepted theory.

If you disagree with any prior weighing of facts, you must support your disagreement with reasons for the different weight that you assign, as an expert. What a fact is and what a weighing of facts is, is understood, irrespective of philosophy.

What a fact is and what a weighing of facts is, is not in evidence. A courtroom in which you were allowed to define these things would be a place for the Marx Brothers.

Thales cannot be your witness, unless perhaps it is olives that are the concern (He cornered the olive press market according to lore.).

There is a reason that courtrooms will dismiss the philosophical way as speculative; it is not that it is irrelevant in a factual way. It is irrelevant in a speculative way. In principle, it states things that cannot be in evidence.

You can dismiss it in conversation for the same reason.

More on the discourse before a country courthouse:

“Speaking out” in the philosophical way is very different from offering evidence that the pictures do not affect public morale. If the second speaker were to offer evidence, the first speaker would have to take it into account.

He could not say “I don’t know about that…” or give a similar deferral in response to evidence to the contrary. He’d have to acknowledge, at the very least, that the evidence needed to be weighed. He cannot dodge the possible relevance.

If a historian with a tangential thesis offered some arcane fact, it would have to be weighed. If he offered an irrelevant fact, it would have to be shown to be irrelevant.

“Speaking out on first principles” involves rearranging what is already said into what comes first. So it does not add anything to what is already said.

Such “speaking out” is neither factual nor a weighing of facts, yet it depends on prior discourse. If nothing has been said, there is nothing to rearrange.

Philosophy is an opinion, not evidence. (Kant held this, Aristotle that.)

However, the philosophical response is not an opinion that simply weighs prior evidence. It is something different. Again, it is an arrangement usually in the form of an argument. It is neither a fact nor a weighing of facts.

Instead the philosophical move takes the discourse and reframes it, in order to handle it in different terms (i.e., in terms of what comes first). Its terms are irrespective of any prior facts that have been asserted or weighing of facts that has occurred.

Indeed, philosophy will purport to tell you what a fact is, what a weighing of facts (judgment) is, etc.

Thus, it is a very different sort of opinion that philosophy offers.

So how does philosophy fit into this? Where is the appropriate place to start? If you look at conversation as Heidegger does, you call it idle talk.

If you start with idle talk as a phenomenon, then you have to interrupt it to do philosophy. There is no place to start philosophy without a shift away from idle talk. The shift is not called for in the conversation. It is a change of subject, and it can be declined. We just saw an example of this.

Do we want to say that philosophy is a kind of shift in conversation that occurs as an interruption of ordinary discourse to which one may politely say ‘no’? Certainly the first speaker may decline in the instant case.

When he does this, does he display a kind of doltish ignorance? Ignorance of what? Of first principles? The conversation did not call for first principles, nor did it require the slightest interest in them or in whether there are any.

It is not as in The Devil Wears Prada, when Andy Sachs, who needs to know fashion, shows this kind of ignorance of the emergence of the color cerulean in skirts, sweaters and accessories.

Is it a different kind of error for the first speaker to decline to philosophize? If he declines to do philosophy at the point when the chance arises, where has he gone wrong? If someone offers me a Marlboro and I decline, where is my error?

It is very different if, when asked, I decline to check my tires before starting on a long road trip.

How has the first speaker gone wrong in declining to do philosophy in the context of the rural courthouse discussion? If there is no argument that he has gone wrong, why should we ever begin philosophy?

As Aristotle says, Thales was the first to speak out on first principles. Is not the second speaker speaking out on civilization? Is that not what the shift is about?

He wants to speak out about civilization. He wants arbitrarily to say that the nature of civilization is important here. It is arbitrary because the conversation does not call for the shift. That it does not call for the shift is evident because the first speaker may decline the shift without the burden of an error.

Rather, “speaking out on first principles” is an error-of-sorts in the instant, courthouse conversation.

Political philosophy misses a chance here (continued).

Note: it only misses a chance. The first speaker declines to participate. He does not have to accept the philosophical invitation to change the subject.

It would be awkward or impolite for the first speaker to offer the topic of the television pictures and then to refuse to continue it, unfinished, without asking for a conversational pardon.

But it is not awkward in the least to point out that someone is changing a subject and say that it has nothing to do with what you are talking about.

The dialogue, before the attempted shift, sits below unfinished:

“I don’t understand where this country is going.”
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t seem to be thinking very clearly. If we were, we would not be doing some of the things we are doing. We would not let the pictures of war deter us from fighting the war. Everybody knows war is hell. Why do we have to see the pictures of this hell? They are bad for morale, and they are causing opposition to the war.”
“Well, we got kids coming back, all shot-up, some in pine boxes. We’ve lost three of them from around here. That Jones kid, I played ball with his dad. It breaks my heart.”

Suppose it finishes with the first speaker saying,

“Here comes the ice cream man, I’ll see you,” or “That’s got nothing to do with it. I’ll see you,” or “You’re right. I’ll see you.”

In the first case, something irrelevant has ended the discourse, so it stands unfinished. In the second case, an unsupported assertion leaves it unfinished. In the third case, the finishing is incomplete because the first speaker has abruptly reversed his position for no apparent reason.

In each case the first speaker has done something untoward that undermines the conversation.

He may be known for doing this. If so, folks do not take him seriously, because he is apt to walk away from talk at any moment.

In the actual conversation he has a way out. He can say to the new subject “I don’t know about that,” and return to the original subject, “I just think these pictures are doing us no good…”

Is the second speaker impolite for attempting the shift? No, unless he fails to understand that the conversation does not have to continue as he wants. If he does not, then he may become insistent or something worse: a damned bore, for example.

This is not Emily Post’s guide to talking which has emerged here. All that is being said is that there are ways to introduce topics into conversation, ways to tell when the topic is exhausted or not, hence ways to tell what an interruption is, when a shift occurs, etc. If people did not know these ways, there would not be conversation as we know it.

When one changes a subject, it may meet with the approval of all concerned. It may ruffle a feather, cause a general molting, or flush an immediate fly-away.

Looked at this way, philosophy goes on everywhere. Rather than ask how one comes to ask the first philosophical question, which Aristotle answers as to the history of philosophy, let us look at the way a philosophical question might arise, from one sitting on a courthouse bench, not far from a river, within walking distance of an old jail.

“I don’t understand where this country is going.”

“What do you mean?”

“We don’t seem to be thinking very clearly. If we were, we would not be doing some of the things we are doing. We would not let the pictures of war deter us from fighting the war. Everybody knows war is hell. Why do we have to see the pictures of this hell? They are bad for morale, and they are causing opposition to the war.”

“Well, we got kids coming back, all shot-up, some in pine boxes. We’ve lost three of them from around here. That Jones kid, I played ball with his dad. It breaks my heart.”

“Yeah, but the war still has to be fought, and all this grief will stop it in its tracks.”

“Well, I don’t understand why war has to be fought; we’ve come far enough in civilization where this should not have to be this way.”

“Apparently we haven’t, or we would not be fighting this war.”

“Look, civilization in its purest state, means no war. If we seek to be civilized we cannot be fighting wars.”

“I don’t know about that; I just think these pictures are doing us no good…”

Consider the dialogue above. There is a distinct shift in it from a discussion of what is being shown in the wartime media, for which there are pros and cons; to a discussion of civilization, what it is to seek civilization and what is inconsistent with this seeking, e.g., war.

As the second speaker begins to etch out a thesis, the first speaker can either oppose it with another thesis( that we are not civilized or not seeking to be) or deny it outright( that civilization does not mean what the second speaker says). Or he may do neither, which he does. He ends up going back to the original subject, i.e., the pictures.

If he accepts the shift as a place to go, the first speaker will be doing philosophy with the second speaker. He will be arguing with his counterpart about the nature of civilization and of war. But the first speaker declines the shift and stays with the original topic.

He tries early to stay with the original subject :

“Apparently we haven’t, or we would not be fighting this war.”

But his counterpart insists on the shift:

“Look, civilization in its purest state, means no war. If we seek to be civilized we cannot be fighting wars.”

So he simply pleads a polite ignorance:

“I don’t know about that; I just think these pictures are doing us no good…”

Political philosophy misses a chance here.