Ping Pong 15: It is all theirs after all
Perhaps the real problem with Berkeley’s argument as considered in the last Rant, was that it remained caught up in the mysteries of religion. Berkeley might then uncover a deep and problematic paradox about whether a perception is ever truly mine or whether it really belongs to something else; and yet he then embeds this argument within the most traditional religious arguments imaginable. He left then utterly open the problem of whether one can ever have anything more to say about the status of these perceptions, or whether one can ever use that status to think about a morality. And it was exactly these two problems that Hume took up.
Hume’s answer to these problems can perhaps be reduced to four main headings: the nature of the external world itself; the composition of reality; the nature of passions; and the importance of morality. The first two of these arguments will be considered in this Rant and the last two in the next.
Since Kant, Hume has been said to put forward two really rather contradictory theses. On the one hand he is held up as the supreme uncertainty merchant. The thinker who, following Berkeley, doubted that anything was real including perceptions. Reality thereby slips out of the picture. Everything is perceptions, (and my perception to boot). On the other, Hume is often thought to represent one great theory about how one might learn of the truth. One might learn about the truth of the world, this argument goes, through perception alone, and Hume is the master of showing us exactly what it is that we perceive, and what can be inferred from that perception alone. ‘Truth’ might be only given in perceptions, but that does not stop the fact that these perceptions really do teach one about a world.
Now as is often the fate in the history of philosophy, one would look in vain for either of these arguments within Hume. He dismisses the former, because he doubts that there is an ‘I’ which is even doing the perceiving; whilst he would doubt the latter because once again the entire point of his argument, was to find something other than truth. Why then the orthodoxy? The first thesis, that the world is only my perception, is one of those perennial theses in philosophy. Humans (or at least we in the West) being the good solipsists that we mostly are, would so like the world to be about us. The argument then slips rather neatly into the suspicion which most of us have to fight most of the time, that we really are the centre of the world (or at least we are the centre of our world).
Perhaps the real problem with this slippage into solipsism is the nature of what the ‘I’ would claim to be – that is, the centre of the world. Perched as it is on the edge of all the sliding perceptions of the world, it is at once rather lonely and rather hard to define. And it is surely empirically the case that human’s great model and their main ruse for being human, is surely other humans, which they at their deepest levels imitate. The problem then with the ‘number one theory’ (as in ‘looking after number one’) of humanity is that one cannot hold down any simple identity. On the contrary the number-one-ers will tend to bend with any and every wind, as they follow their perceptions and feelings. The idea that the world is all about me, then slips into the laziness of assuming that one can and should follow wherever the torrent of feeling leads one (and no matter if it is contradictory). One demands then cheap petrol, but also to ‘save the planet’. One demands good health care and yet less tax. The problem of course is that if we really are the centre of the world, and human identity is only really held down in our feelings (or what perceptions they implicate) then this volatility is utterly accurate.
The second habitual argument attributed to Hume was that he argued that perception and truth were synonymous. In perceiving, one therefore learnt about the world (in some way); and what one could learn about that world was defined in perception alone. Neither of these two ideas really reflect Hume’s more subtle position. Hume in fact argues that the very question about what the nature of the world might be (or whether it can really be said to have a nature) is essentially a daffy one. One only produces an account of the world, at the end of the process of perceiving and feeling. It is the last series of ideas that one can possibly produce. It is therefore in a sense essentially a by-product, a last case in a sequence of thoughts. It makes no sense then to claim that learning of this world, is somehow the aim of perceiving or even difficult. On the contrary, the idea (like the idea of the self or even God) is an inescapable by-product of thinking. One is never then learning about it, so much as creating it, nor is this creation merely a relativist affair (we all see our own truth). On the contrary the world we create for ourselves really will be ‘real’ (as we understand the term). Hume allows for the fact that we never can know, that there really might be a very large number of conflicting worlds out there.
Once again one needs to examine exactly why Hume has been heard as the search for truth rather than as the creation of reality. The answer is surely that Hume’s own formation is so wonderfully demeaning to humanity. Humanity, rather than learning about the world, and so becoming through that learning ready to stake a claim in it, to own a piece of It, must rather be content with possessing a handful of perceptions. These perceptions, while real to the human, have no absolute status. And cannot convey the rights of ownership on the possessor.
The status of this possession is even more complex when one takes the previous argument into consideration. An individual’s identity is not something independent of these thoughts or feelings. On the contrary what I am is also given in and through my ability to possess (and never own) perceptions. I am therefore not to be separated or unconfused with the advent of the idea of a world in me, as the idea of my very self, not only is created by the same processes, but also necessarily implies the giving of a world (somewhere for a me to live in).
This last point is very much an argument which haunts us today. Western affluent humanity has long since stopped being able to tell themselves apart from the world which they inhabit. The world therefore appears peculiarly designed to owe them their own living, or even better it appears to be designed to be able to be changed in varying different ways, such that various of one’s greeds can be placated at affordable prices. We not only therefore slip into thinking that we own the world, but also into the corollary that that ownership allows one’s one desires to ride roughshod over whatever realities it finds there.
Hume read aright, should serve to distance us from such vanities. Hume actually claims that if one can think a reality beyond our own nature, one must think of it as a nest of hidden springs, whose next move one can never know. The forces then that have allowed greeds to run rampant across the fabric of the world could (or could not) be also preparing a come-uppance for that rampage. Humanity’s problem is then that they will never know whether this come-uppance is there, or is merely another moral crusade (a howl which blends the cries of the dispossed and the mildly guilty). The Challenge Hume then offers us is the challenge to manage this very real doubt. That is the challenge to allow the world to be doing its own thing, quite hidden from us, and our own little world and tiny selves. A challenge that is unfortunately all too uncomfortable for most of us to respond to (or even begin to think about responding to).
However for Hume, this failure really matters, as it leaves us unable to grasp the actual nature of reality as it is given to us. Here Hume partially follows Berkeley. He argues that the world is made up of perception (impression) and ideas, and with Berkeley, contends that there is a very real different between the two. And yet for Hume that difference lies not in the necessity of the order of impressions, so much as their vivacity. A perception of a blue sky is Hume says, far more lively and volatile than a mere idea of that impression. An idea held in memory has the tendency to collapse into a maze of shifting ideas and abstractions, while a perception as long as it is before us, holds true to what it is.
Behind this argument lies an acceptance but also a development of the Berkeley idea of abstract ideas considered in the last week’s Rant. That idea had contended that abstract ideas were really an amalgam of different perceptions pegged together by a word. The idea of a triangle had no reality therefore than the torrent of images of the triangle that swam into one’s mind when one heard the word said.
Hume now develops this idea in two ways. On the one hand he argues that my thoughts and the reality of the world are different in just this respect. One of my abstract ideas is always confused, and always a hodgepodge of differing perceptions, moreover it must be in order to have any power in the mind. Memories are necessarily confused affairs, that always take the mind of odd little journeys and detours. By contrast perception is vivid and singular. A Perception lies then before us all, and announces its own reality to all and sundry. We might differ then in the idea of what a colour green is (or even that it is different from red) but the green itself I see in the trees is different in kind from the idea of green lying in my mind.
On other hand, this difference is not absolute, as it is the very vivacity of perception which will inspire the torrent of abstract ideas. Each vivid impression scatters the stardust of its vivacity very freely around. Memories that are linked to that impression or constellations that include other impressions and other memories, will also start to shine. The conjunctions that are abstract ideas therefore will be formed as all these separate memories and perceptions become linked up together, and shine as a single constellation.
At this point one needs to remember what was said about the world and the self above. Both world and personal identity are very much abstract ideas. From which two things follow: Firstly there is a clear issue about what I am, given that my reality is lent, and secondly one must return to the issue of whether trends are detectable within what is lent to us.
To consider the first of these points, it is clearly that my own personal identity is essentially lent to me by reality. That is, it (be)comes to be through the fact that certain of my ideas, that is, my impressions are so much more vivid than other ideas are. I owe what I am therefore at the deepest and strangest of levels, the levels of my perception, to a world whose nature I can never grasp beyond that lending. Far then from being the centre of the universe, humans actually owe what they are to their failure to grasp the universe for itself, and to the generosity of the universe in the face of that failure.
To be human becomes then, to be necessarily challenged by the consequences of this failure. One must either attempt to ignore it, and to use one’s passions to manufacture an identity of one’s own, irrespective of the world (an argument which I will return to next week); or else one must use the generosity of ideas to forge realities which run counter to anything ever perceived or even perceivable (which for Hume is the role of religion, but for us include such complex ideas as the poor or the English). But if one does this last move one will have to cope with how to manage one’s own thoughts given the fact that the vivacities of the world (impressions) do not seem to support them. Or again one might attempt to uncover very real flows of vivacities within one’s perceptions, flows that will form ideas that are reliable and constantly enriched.
This last move was for Hume encapsulated within the nature of causes. A Cause provides the mind with a little segment of reality in which the flow of vivacities are by and large predictable and known. This little patch is problematic, its status is of course lent to us by whatever hidden springs drive reality forward (and therefore one must always be open to the idea that one’s mind will need to change on this matter). But that aside the idea that tomorrow will be happen, or that when my heart stops I die are predictable enough to base a life on (Hume is very aware that one does not need truth or certainty, merely an absence of doubt, - and causes provide one with that absence). Humanity therefore becomes akin to a colonist who by hard labour wins the right to a very small patch of land (a set of known causes) in which their minds can function, and yet only does so on the most provisional of senses and without any guarantee that the rules of the game might well change, moving the hobo human onwards.
The world therefore become beautifully provisional. A set of temporary claims to truth, and a sequence of lives lived within those claims. Indeed the being provisional of the world becomes almost synonymous to its reality, and yet it does so in a way that still excludes doubt (even if it does not guarantee truth) and therefore allows humanity by and large to continue unabashed (only philosophers are outraged by this prick to their pretensions). And yet this still leaves unthought both the problem of why we are so very bad at seeing the world in this way; but also how one can construct a society (or a morality) within such a provisional world. This is then a topic I will return to in the next Rant.
