Where am I?
It is of course axiomatic that empiricism is the enemy of reasoned truth but the friend of elusive error. To think ones experience – to pull meaning from what one has percieved (and what one has felt), is to pepper ones mind with what is not simply ‘there’. Or even better, it is to open up ones mind with dimensions which are necessarily polyvocal- and babbling in very many tongues. Examples are genuinely dangerous affairs. Unless the reasoner is carefully, the example, which was meant to illustrate, takes them, and their proud thought to new, and rather strange lands. The theory becomes gutted in the example – is twisted into what it was not quite meant to be. Reason however does not take this lying down. It will find examples to illustrate theories come what may. Here perhaps three separate strategies abound. Firstly, philosophy itself is populated with the stale old examples some from more than 2000 years. Examples which might well have had power in their day, but have long since been absorbed within the assassinating embrace of a tradition.
Secondly there are those peculiarly stale things the philosophical example. Humans float in a black vacuum; or prisoners are locked in cages or cave or states of nature; or once again memory has a veil drwn over it; or a thinker looks upon a tempestuous scene from a place of safety; Or a workman makes clocks and goes for a walk. Endless highly contrived tales, which border of the symbolic (and can only aspire to the allegorical), and drawn out to make an argument derived from reason seem less frankly ‘weird’. But is this example it is clear that there is something rather restive in these example. The temptation is always to dismiss the hussle and bussle of everyday life, as somehow vulgar, if it does not squeeze into a nice neat philosophical example (it is inauthentic or merely daft. Nowhere is this done more than in that fine Romp of philosophy, philosophical history. History itself tells a tale (or no tale), who rhythm is set in the philosophical. The joy of this method is of course that the example itself appears richer. However the upshot remains the same. All too often history passively gives into the philosophy which masters it, and acquiesces to be thought. This acquiesce is complex, and need to merely involve reason, as in the classical Hegelian fiction. On the contrary one can look back into history, and attempt to dissolve humanity within that history. A task, which while it is undoubtedly worthwhile in itself, has yet surely left the path of history altogether. Or better it is using its pre-knowledge of history (which is uniquely tamed by time) –to pose deep philosophical question (revolving around that taming), and has lost sight of the story of history itself. History becomes almost the ultimate example (including the history of philosophy), which philosophy can annex to its own purpose, and subsume to illustrate its own point.
The third strategy of philosophy is to draw upon elements from the sciences, be they maths or biology of mats, and abstract from them their deep philosophical meaning. Once again this procedure is fine as far as it goes. The philosopher becomes cosair, able to plunder of disciplines at will in the service of their own thought. The only draw back with this example is that there is of course that deep point of schism where philosophy sees itself stating. An example is in a very real sense ‘plundered’, and then left exhausted (and bleeding) – or even worse, all engagement at that point is then lost, as the philosopher (from their superior perch) claims that the plundered discipline has no right to answer back move that has infuriated in its time, not only the cankerous Newton (faced with Leibniz) and the irritable Gauss (faced with Kant), but also the far more genial Einstein (faced with Bergson).
What makes empiricism so different is its attitude to examples. A good empiricist needs to be more like a novelist that a scientist. Empiricism is driven by the example it produces. And game of the empiricist is to choose example that are rich enough to resonate beyond immediate theorectical concerns. Here of course it must by and large fly directly in the face of philosophical tradition. That tradition insists that example ought to be nice and simple – or at least have a clear and luminous structure of their own. A workman making clocks is a rich, or going for a walk, is a rich example, and yet, the example remain confined to the single luminous point. He is working. He is order his time, Reaching for this tool or that. He is having his lunch or going for a walk. He is…he is…he issss. The problem is of course the same worker also like beer, get violent and beat his son, sing too loudly, hates the priest – all thoughts that are also there, josseling in his mind as he reaches for his tools. The Worker- tha person who is defined in there ideal type of a clockmaker, operates to strip reality bare – with the hope that from such simplicities (a world of work, philosophy ass work, history as) realms of meaning can be unwound. destiny….) Philosophy, seems not really to grasp at the complexity of examples it needs. Or certainly better, it grasps such example, and yet fails to trust them. it fills to actually let the experience interlink the connections, and resorts to ideal type argument.
For give an example… Contrast the Weberian Ideal type argument, with the Focaultian panopticon. The difference is palpable. Weber thinks like a philosopher. He produces an argument to buttress reason. The perfect capitalist is of course an illusion, and yet their ideal type might also exist. Once this type is said to be, philosophy (or sociology) can get up close, personal with history. The Panoptican by contrast is an ulnerable empirical example. After all what can it mean> It was never built. And yet in never being built is at once distilled and arguments a debate. The idea of viewing, and constructing engines for sight takes one very far from the ideal type. For who knows where a panoptican leads? Who knows what it might produce. All that it ensures is a certain dimension of production. The example allows an argument to pull and re-pull itself in myriad other ways (other picture of viewing, other dimension, of prayer or of hysteria) – are all caught into the same basic prism. However, as with the best of examples the last argument does not solely illustrate my point. It was not really meant to! Foucault , by the parameters he set himself remains bound within history. He is also a philosopher ‘doing history’, as well as a profound empiricist re-reading the past . And Foucault is utterly aware of this fact. After all what else is genealogy but this union? It is however Foucault peculiar genius that he never looses sight of the empirical element that needs to sing inside the history of the present.
Any one playing the pure Empirical game, would better start slightly elsewhere. With the Novel. For a novel is rich in a diversity of examples – which resonate though and across one another – pulling narrative and thought one way and then the other. Perhaps what is critical in this pulling and re-pulling is the fact that character in novels have a peculiar empirical power. They answer back! That is, it is surely impossible to really enjoy a novel unless the characters in its do not lie vivid and lively in the mind. That is unless one felt one ‘knew’ these people. Elizabeth Bennet is surely ‘before u all’ (which is why novels make bad TV- and actress are NOT the same). Reading a novel incites the mind to imagine a dimension with then pulls away from oneself – which stands out as someone or something to be know. To think them is to enter an axis, where ones one imagination, and ones ability to grasp another mind become caught up together – in the memory of a tale, and the giving of example: That is it challenges the mind to think empirically. To create an example rich enough to live on itself, and generate its own opinion and concerns. So attempt to ‘do’ philosophy with such figures become itself highly perilous. The meanings have a habit of slipping away – and becoming something else…(and whether that elates, perplexes, infuritates, or merely challenges is very much up to you).
Perhaps it is the peculiar problem of empiricism lies here. A problem so very badly understood by men of reason (or even unreason). Empiricism great fear is never relativism, but rather is lack. To look at the world is to be certain And experience itself has a habit of breeding certainty. A move that in itself poses a deep problem for the philosopher (who often wants to unpick that certainty). The Philosopher, will attempt to move beyond such certainties (and into the realm of the uncertain), and develop new and elborate schemata to do so. It is then from this perspective (a perspective that has already stepped beyond the world of the experiences themselves) the philosopher critiques once again that tender word of reality, which left without philosophy would appear to collapse into relativism (that is it would suffer from a welter of certainty, or realities). Relativism become synonymous this the mere juxtaposing an multiple worlds, each claim to be true, and without any tools for understanding the links between these world but which according to this definition of empiricism cannot be given by experience itself. Its own reality, it is vivid tangibility , is thereby transmuted into an illusion.
Empiricism left to its own devices makes none of these moves. It is true that it starts with vivid reality. And this reality certainly forms a system of axes – in which thought can be articulated in two contrasting directions. Either for the domain of the mixing up principles (with their alleged simplicities). Or the more complex more, that start in the middle of the affairs and move anywhere. It is in this last domain that the example is do important. A example straddles other worlds, and allows one to always think what is going on a little differently as from the strictest of empirical perspectives it also includes, it reality (that is lively and volatile givens) within it. Examples are the locus to whisk a mind elsewhere. The allow ‘relativism’ to blossom with the barren heart of ‘reality’, and there open p a mind to always mand also other things.
However in considering such examples, and the manner they might govern a mind, it is clear one needs care. There really need not be the same the axis for all example. On the contrary such a claim is clearly Oxymoronic in the extreme. Again from Foucault, it is clear enough two rather different takes of experience ad the examples it give: To experience a word, is not the same as to have an experience – and much of post-structural thought made merry in the difference. However care needs to be given as the great temptation is always to understand these differences in terms of either as an utter difference if kind (the word would worry poor Old Hume), or a joint products on an unconscious, which somehow ties the two together.
Empiricism expresses its doubt about the first of these splits, on the grounds that the ideas it craves always juxtapose radically different elements or impressions. Ideas deliberately create and recreate disjunctive unions between diverse elements. Hume (from the position of the mixed up principles), would be profoundly uncomfortable with a dimension which if taken in itself, clearly rests on the assumption of deep apriori structures. However perhaps he might perk up a bit when he remembered the category of resemblance, which was not only founded on the mechanics of an individual brain (rather than on the mechanics of reality), but also a series on meaning based upon different manner or forms of ressembling. Form such a position, It makes much sense to ask is what sense a language has its own axis of meanings. That is in what way, there are internal to he resemblance a mess on contiguities and causalites.
Once however the initial jump into the identical is made (that is, the ressembling itself = language), a new and rather complex extra dimension emerge. Each language as it involves such a resemblance articulates backwards, creating links and resonance beyond any particular meaning. Resonances which in turn will need to be explored through the world they conjure up (that is through the prism of the contiguities and causailites – which are thereby being allowed to say something else). A complex principle emerges, pitched in the gap here. Language pulls apart from ‘reality’ (which does not start with the same relationship with resemblance).
However a new and rather different poison bubbles up at this point – the poison of the unconscious. The unconscious looks at this domain, this extra dimensions of meaning, and immediate demands that it is what inhabits in this land It is what explains it (even while it merrily accedes that the It itself here is empty- but that is a part of ‘its’ mystery). At this point Hume looks far more troubled. The unconscious is claiming here two rather distinct aspects of consciousness, for its own domain. On the one hand there is language., which Hume would suggests resonated not in the conscious o much as in the extra pinch of consciouness. That is in hearing a word one is always aware the same world also means of things: that the aspect that allows one to grasp its meaning looks also upstream to other meanings, of possibles other echos. And yet this relatioship is not with the great unconscious, so much as the very price paid for being conscious as an element as a word in the first place. To here are a world, and derive in that word a meaning, in therefore to know more – or at least to know that one has access to more than the word says, at this time Now (although it does also say it).
Thus far the word might appear to behave really rather like perception. And yet with a clearly difference. Where experience rests directly on the impression itself (including also words) – an impression, which as a complex idea rips across a mind. The Impression themselves are already present and active. They are already blending and re-blending ideas (and therefore the mind). Language by contrast, only proceeds from the level of ideas (and the sound itself ‘means nothing’. As it is language, it proceeds from resemblance (and not reality). It is at once more restricted in its nature – and yet in that restriction rather more focussed. Words breed words according to tighter rules than reality – and there is no real reason why their ‘prethough element’ which rests of a disjunction of meaning and the wave of different sounds and breaths need reflect the far more open pre-thought element of impressions.
Or to put this differently. Impressions, and their ideas are for the empiricist reality ( to be is to perceived). A dimension of ‘reality’ is therefore lying malignant in the mind. Operating its relativistic conjuring tricks. In contrast language needs a reality to give meanings (or at least element like means) to . Where perception jumps to a profound ontology, language frequently only aspires to complex (and possibly radical) epistemologies. Or better- it wants must also worry as its ‘meaning’ (or its lack of meaning – which can itself be a force), while explains based on reality can of course say get stuffed to anything which is not themselves! (the advantage of not being founded on ressemblance is felt here.)
And yet spite (or rather really because of) this difference, both elements share one dimension, the uncertainty in what they reach for – that is the power of experience pull and re-pull itself, as it works what it is into a fabric of the mind . This uncertainity) or better, this pitching about, is simply weird into the impression as it is given. It is already a sprocket, whose meaning might be different – o could evolve, or is also meaning somethign else (and one does no need the story telling fancy of the unconscious to show one that).
Moreover a Humean would wryly note here that part of the problem is that these two rather different modes of resemblance have become caught up in each other (by the single paradigm of the unconscious). In this exchange, that beautifully human creation language (with its special link to epistemology) becomes the dominant paradigm. Langauge after all presents the mind this a moment ‘before perception’ – the naked soul itself. It appears thereby to allow one to think what it means to be at once be conscious, and yet also know that elsewhere there are other dimensions, other aspects of meaning also pulling the mind into different places. The Mind (that is the conscious) sees its own limitation is this gap, - but the attempts to repopulate the schism with any number of clever thoughts (based of the very theological-hidden spring claims of the kind the elements that allow for the chasm to always also be crossed). Once this bridge has been posed, the mind then gives itself airs. It assumes tat it might also know the how to grasp in the miasma of meaning the reality of the world itself . Philosophy perks up (for it really does hate empiricism so), and everything start to move off again.
Hume however would insist that that is one start with impression, one starts down stream of all this (while of course allowing that their are textures – or blind forces or hidden spring in the brain- which determine domains). That is one starts in perception with the substantive dimension of the real. From this dimension there is no problem of meaning (which is reduced to an arrent nonesense). From this perspective there remains a chasme between the ideas of thought and the sound, and yet that chasme is not as profound as might appear.
In the case of impressions there is a similar splitting of. A simple idea is less lively (and it is not simply volatile in its own right) than an impression (or a reflection). And what is more the mind is more than aware of this fat (red is not blood or fire or traffic light). Where language differs is that the sound itself does to resonate directly in the idea. Ketchup, is not very tomatoy (if it ever is…) The meaning of a word – might spring from a vivacity (the word is after all said), which then populated a ressemblance (language) into which other ideas are held.. This move allows certainly for a different axis, a different principle to function in the case of language (which is ressembling other that the vivacity which promotes it). But by the same logic, it prevent this other axis being the copy book example within which all truth is then grasped. The point of language lies in the freedom of this difference- and nowhere else…
However this past point merely intensifies the problem of the example raised at the beginning of this essay. How ca one have examples which rests in language – that pick out the problem of language- and do so without articulating meaning or nonsense which are the problem as seen from the perspective of a language that claims more than was might be its right. How o where in literature might such odd examples lurch – and how is this principle at once similar and yet so different from that other example, which rests n character and the complex direct ideas of reality? What examples will found these two sets of principles – and thereby allow an articulation of the nature of ‘principle’ itself?
Once again, as so often in these studies, I will address these problem through turning to Little Dorrit- where this dimension is also explored, albeit in rather a quite manner. Language within the work is tied up in the issue of journeying and travelling distance. The book has various character who travel – who hear (and almost always miscomprehend) other tongues. It has songs, in Italian (and Italian words) whose meaning is open – and flexible. And characters who ‘pigin’ English is translated into ‘Cod english’. These elements are rapped up (by Little Dorrit herself, in her letter) with a perspective of history. To hear a language, is to travel at once in space and time: it is to here another land, but also anther history – a history whose access point Little Dorrit feels remains unattainable and sad. Or a less grand level, the Initial character in the book, breed in their travels a ‘history’ of their own. A series of exchanges that haunt the book (and render it also a ‘mystery’). This principle, this mystery is the wrapping up of history geography and language in a single bundle, a bundle from which the plot is twisted and retwisted.
If Langauge is caught up in the travels to other lands (and other histories), then experience itself is caught up in the strangely vapid (and yet so accurate) details of London, where every experience contains within it some other dimension – so the street or life to be ld. A life at once present to us all –and yet unthought as one goes about ones way. A life little Dorrit is only too aware of…
It is then these differing dimensions of the same basic principle the next essay turns.
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