Anti-introductionism, or the explanation structure.
An exposition of our cognitive situation.
Preface 1.
Contents.
Superior goals.
This preface to the Treatises No
1-6 mainly aims to explain why they have got their form. It has been written
after a slight re-editing of them all and therefore also aims to explain some
of the changes, including a single reinterpretation.
The treatises certainly contain
both introducing and summarizing sections, however for the sake of the understanding
of this preface, already here it must be shortly mentioned that the aims of
these treatises are the following:
1) Finding a semantically based
clarification of basic questions.
2) Finding a suitable attitude to
philosophical investigations.
3) Elaborating this basis – and to
use it.
The treatises.
Here follows some remarks about the
background, content and form of the text, and about the re-editions.
Background.
My present philosophy, which has
been described in the six treatises Part
I - VI, started long before these with the idea that the world is like “a
box or space with something within” was completely unacceptable. Just as
unacceptable is the idea that in the curse of time, man has literally developed,
starting with different elementary particles turned into atoms that are later
connected to molecules which by successive steps formed other physical
structures as they developed into cells, amoebas, and multicellular animals
that eventually got vision, hearing and consciousness when they became
sufficiently complex. For it is here essential that even if we assume this or
something similar, i.e. on the premises of the line of thought, this explains
nothing that is really fundamental. It does not answer the question of what it
is that causes that matter exists at all. Some would certainly say that The Big
Bang created matter. However, the question is more fundamental than this, as it
deals with how it is possible that such
a kind of existence can exist at
all, i.e. how matter can exist such as we understand it. It is necessary to
answer this question in this philosophical respect, before the answer on the
first question can be satisfactory. In this philosophical context, the
scientific answer is circular.
My thoughts about this first led to
a number of notes of different sorts, which I later sought to rewrite. As this
did not succeed immediately, instead I started finding out what was the core of
the matter and pushed the already written text in the background. This resulted
in the two treatises Part I and Part II.
Among the concepts that remained
central are the concept of the explanation structure, the top down versus the bottom
up model of explanation, and the criticism of the extended use of the principle of inference to the best
explanation, which are both described in Part II.
In Part I, I sought to clarify what must be the superior ideas and
methods of philosophy, and to employ these on some basic subjects, with focus
on the physical world and time. In Part II,
some aspects of these were elaborated, and inter alia, a section about
solipsism and other persons’ consciousness was added.
Then, the investigations of a
number of different questions followed as they emerged. This is why my debt to Michael
Dummett’s philosophy is not discussed until Part
IV, in which Bas van Fraassen’s philosophy of science is also discussed.
The sections of which the single
treatises have been composed may appear disconnected, at the same time as the
same subject is elaborated or seen from new angles in later treatises. However,
there has been no reason to change this. Firstly, works that are more important
are waiting, such as clarification of Zeno’s paradoxes. Secondly, I allow
myself to believe that the reading is more varied, such as the text is. At the
re-editing, I have only grouped the sections differently within some single treatises.
It must likewise be remarked that
some of the sections has a meta-philosophical character, i.e. has philosophy as
its object in the sense that at least they concern a number of philosophical
subjects. This applies to the subsections “The idea of proceeding to the very
matter” and “Our ordinary language” in Part
I:, the sections “The chief aims of
philosophy” in Part II, “Usage end existence” in Part III, “The semantic approach to the realism debate” in Part IV, “The philosophical basis of our thought” in Part V, and “The concept of semantic meaning” in Part VI.
However, a certain degree of
progress has appeared to take place, too. Not least, focus on the concept of
thing has provided the basis background for a work with the so-called mind-body
problem, just as other works have supported the solution of the question of an
ethical basis.
Corrections.
The first version of Treatise Part
I began with statements such as “that we
are situated in a clarifying situation, and that our existence even is this clarifying situation itself”.
I have tried to remove or clarify such dim expressions, as they exactly need
the semantically clarification these treatises aim at. The same applies to
questions of this kind: 1) What does it mean to be a human being? 2) Which kind
of existence is the world? 3) What does it mean to be a person in the world? 4)
Are these three questions are one and the same question?
The only change of content I have
made, concerns a subsection about Thomas Kuhn’s theories of science, “Do
scientists relate to different worlds before and after a paradigm change?” in Part V. Here Kuhn asserts:
“(...) paradigm changes do cause scientists
to see the world of their research-engagement differently. In so far as
their only recourse to that world is through what they see and do, we
may want to say that after a revolution, scientists are responding to a
different world.” ([Kuhn], p. 111, my underlinings.)
Obviously, this is not to be
metaphorically understood, such as I still thought after many considerations in
2007 and 2008. The explanation that can best make the quoted passage fit together
is that Kuhn presupposes scientific realism, however without mentioning it, or
justifying it. Therefore, in the new version I have clarified the problem on
the basis of this reading.
Literature.
[Berkeley
88] George Berkeley: Principles
of Human Knowledge
Penguin Books (London 1988)
Penguin Books (London 1988)
[Dummett
78] Michael Dummett: Truth and other Enigmas
Duckworth (London 1978)
Duckworth (London 1978)
[Fraassen
80] Bas C. van Fraassen: The
Scientific Image
Oxford University
Press (Oxford
[Kuhn 70] Thomas S. Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Second Edition, Enlarged
The University of Chicago Press
(Chicago 1970).
The University of Chicago Press
(Chicago 1970).
