8.3: The partial re-enchantment of the world
Why had Lottie’s innocent question about the tree falling over led her tutor to talk of idealism and then enchantment? Since it sets the scene for our story, it is worth stepping a little back in time and witnessing some of her morning’s tutorial.
***
Lottie arrives in Hipparchus’ study – an area in the back corner of the Potting
Shed that he as somehow marked off, against all commune guidelines and
etiquette, as his alone, with bookshelves – in a thoughtful mood. She tells him
of the falling tree that, by chance she and pTravis had observed the previous
night.
“I had the feeling that our seeing it somehow made it more
real. I don’t just mean we knew about it. But somehow our witnessing it made
the actual event more real. Would it have been less so if we, and everybody
else, hadn’t been there?”
Hipparchus replies: “I wonder whether you have been
subliminally channelling two famous limericks, the first certainly and the
second possibly by Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (1888-1957), an English Catholic
priest, theologian, author, and radio broadcaster, which play with the notion
of Berkeleian empirical idealism…
“Berkeley denied that any material things exist. To exist is
to be perceived and what is perceived –the objects of perception – are mental. (This view was helped by the argument from illusion that requires some ‘object’ even when n object, thing has really been perceived. Thus reality consists exclusively of minds and their ideas.
And hence, on his view, the fall of the tree depends for its being on its being
perceived by you or others. I am playing a little fast and loose with a
distinction between things and events but you will grasp the idea.”
“So is that right? Does anyone think it is?”
“It is safe to say that it is not a common view in
philosophy. I have never given it very careful thought…” – Lottie gasps! –
“because it seems such a desperate notion. Let me quickly point out three
problems.
“First: the position seems striking because it involves a
radical denial. The denial stems from an argument that the only objects of
perception are ideas. So the argument presupposes a distinction between perceptions and their intentional objects (what they are about) and then denies that there
are any material objects to have as their intentional objects. The intentional objects of perceptions are ideas not material objects. But
this threatens our understanding both of the nature of the denial – what
doesn’t exist? – and the nature of ‘ideas’.
“Second, it erases an ordinary distinction between experiences which
have independent objects such as perceptions and those which do not such as
feelings, tickles pains etc. Empirical idealism treats both as the same. But such a distinction seems a key aspect of our
language of the mental and so, again, it is unclear that we really do genuinely understand the
resultant position.
“Third, Berkeley permits the existence of minds. But as we
have discussed before, Hume has persuasive arguments against the idea of an
independent mental principle such as a Cartesian ego. The most plausible account we have of how to individuate
minds requires embodied persons and that requires material objects.”
“Oh. So there’s no truth in idealism, then?”
“Kant advocated a position he called ‘transcendental
idealism’, which he argued coincided with empirical realism. It was a form of
idealism because he argued that space and time did not exist independently of a
perceiving mind. Thus the form that our experiences of the world take is partly
a matter of the way our minds shape our experiences. We can discuss that on
another day.
“But a more recent variant might be called linguistic
idealism. It argues that the form of our language somehow shapes our
world. There has been a theme in scholarship about the later Wittgenstein as to
whether his view amounts to linguistic idealism.”
“Oh.” Lottie has the feeling that what had seemed
interesting may not be so, after all. Perhaps, in a rare moment of sympathy,
Hipparchus seems to notice this and heads off in a different direction.
“I have mentioned the contemporary philosopher John McDowell before. He is relevant today for two reasons. First, he is one of a number of philosophers who take for granted that the object of our perceptions can be material objects. Perception is not, in general, having a kind of mental image. It is standing in a relation to real things in the world. Perception is, when all goes well, relational. So this goes against an assumption that drives Berkelian idealism: that the objects of perception are always, merely, ideas. I should add that he marrs this idea with a less helpful idea about perceptual content. But let us not worry about that now.
“Second, he thinks, because of his less than helpful idea, that the only way to dissolve philosophical
puzzlement about how thought itself and in general can be about things, can
have ‘intentionality’ is to construe the world itself as conceptually structured.”
“Ah! So linguistic idealism?”
“Indeed. Or rather, possibly. He denies that his view is
idealist, though others have disagreed.”
Again Lottie looks a little bored and perhaps for this
reason her tutor presses on on a different, brisk, tack.
“So McDowell suggests that the world itself is partially
re-enchanted. Or rather: our thinking of it should be so.”
“Partially?”
“Foucault is good on this. Before the scientific revolution,
we used to think of the world as a sort of book of lessons or meanings. Worldly
happenings were like events linked in a story. McDowell thinks that it was progress
to strip that view from natural science and its view of the natural world. But
the very fact that we can experience and judge the world using concepts that
are linked to reasons – for belief and action – shows us that the world is, in
fact, fitted for our concepts: for the elements of our thoughts also used in
making sense of texts, in responding to meanings.”
Before Lottie can stop him. Hipparchus goes on to say rather
more about this tricky balance between thinking that natural events are
meaningless happenings charted by science and thinking that the world is also
part of what is calls the ‘space of reasons’. But we can pick up Lottie’s discussion with her stern tutor a little later.
Lottie: “I have the feeling that this is one of those bits
of philosophy where, if I try to explain it straightforwardly, you’ll say it
isn’t quite like that. The world is not, and yet is, meaningful, for example. That’s
not helpful! Can you say anything simply that would help?”
“Three things though only the first is in McDowell.
“First, once you think that the world and our way of thinking
are made for one another and that science is not the master vocabulary then it
is easier to take seriously non-scientific but perfectly sound descriptions of the world in, for example,
value-laden terms. Some states of affairs that we can see to be the case can, by themselves, call forth an evaluative judgement and thus an action without the need for some internal motivating factor. We can just see what we ought to do. On this picture, part of the explanation of that is that moral ‘oughts’ are the sorts of things we can simply see. The world itself contains the kind of features we would express as reasons for action.
“Second, we may have a sense of this partial re-enchantment when
we think of other people who make sense to us but are not us. Do you remember
we read some Lawrence Durrell in spring and looked at the poems of Cavafy.
Durrell and his characters think of their city – Alexandria – as though it were
structured by Cavafy’s poetry. Justine, in particular seems to be constructed as from elements of Cavafy’s poetry. The characters and the narrator all reach for lines from Cavafy to make sense
of their experience. But they don’t seem to think that this imposes limitations
on their view of the city. It is the way they seamlessly think of it. Language in
general is like that. We can make sense of things as we do. Not all our
attempts at thought work out. Sense has limits. But these are not actual boundaries,
not limitations. So perhaps you can think of partial re-enchantment like that. The
diaphanous form of the world! The way that thoughts and facts can be captured in instances of the T-schema!
“Third, however. I am wary of the idealism that seems to be built into all this. I wonder whether it stems from a part of McDowell’s philosophy that I do not endorse. McDowell thinks that the conceptual contents of perceptual judgements are somehow already present in perceptual experience. Whereas I hold that conceptual content originates in the judgements we make in response to our view of the world. If this is true, then the enchantment of the world all but cancels out. All we need say is that we find the world to be a meaningful place using the vocabularies that we have available, which include those of the sciences and also those of morality, logic, fold psychology and poetry. But I think we already knew that. McDowell’s spooky talk of partial re-enchantment may be merely a scenic detour to the right place which is that the world contains more real things than can be captured in natural science.”
Lottie looks suspicious when her tutor lapses in silence. Was that it? Can she go now? But on the way out pauses long
enough to borrow a copy of Cavafy. Hipparchus adds a copy of McDowell’s Mind
and World saying “You may as well enjoy them both!”