The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (102 page)

23
See also ‘Change’, p. 147.

24
These differences between the possible/real distinction and the virtual/actual distinction allow for an interesting variation on a Kantian theme. I noted in the lengthy parenthesis in
Ch. 5
, §5, how Kant was concerned with conditions of experience, of a kind involving relations between the possible and the real. Bergson too is concerned with conditions of experience, but of an importantly different kind, a kind involving relations between the virtual and the actual. See Deleuze (
1988b
), pp. 27–28, and Turetzky (
1998
), p. 201.

25
Much of
Matter and Memory
might be viewed as an attempt to make (ii) precise.

26
A
is a proper superset of
B
if and only if all members of
B
are members of
A
but not
vice versa
.

27
Cf. Deleuze (
1988b
), p. 98.

28
Cf. Quine (
1987a
). (Actually, Michelangelo is reputed to have said that every block of stone does have a statue inside ‘and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it’. The view is not absurd.)

29
This excludes what van Gogh does when he brings a picture into existence.

30
See
Ch. 8
, n. 11.

31
See further Moore (
2003a
), pp. 122–124.

32
See
Time and Free Will
,
Ch. 3
, passim. He summarizes his discussion in that chapter as follows: ‘Every demand for explanation in regard to freedom comes back … to the following question: “Can time be adequately represented by space?” To which we answer: Yes, if you are dealing with time flown; No, if you speak of time flowing…. All the difficulties of the problem … arise from the desire to endow duration with the same attributes as extensity, … and to express the idea of freedom in a language into which it is obviously untranslatable’ (p. 221).

33
Helpful secondary literature on the material in this section, beyond that already cited, includes Kolakowski (
1985
), Chs 1–3; Lloyd (
1993
), pp. 96–107; and Ansell Pearson (
1999
), pp. 20–40.

34
See Frege (
1967
), §§20 and 21.

How does (i) accommodate, say, the fact that Wilfrid was once clean-shaven and is now bearded? Analytic philosophers disagree about how to answer such questions. Some would construe ‘features’ in such a way as to exclude being clean-shaven and being bearded in favour of being clean-shaven-at-
t
₁
and being bearded-at-
t
₂
. Others, notably Lewis (see Lewis (
1986c
), pp. 204–206), would deny that the entity which was once clean-shaven is numerically identical to the entity which is now bearded. There are many other views besides. For a very helpful survey, see Gibson (
unpublished
),
Ch. 4
, §4. For an excellent contribution to the discussion, see Sattig (
2006
).

35
See n. 85 of the previous chapter and the passages from Nietzsche cited therein.

36
For thought-provoking comments on Bergson’s positive conception of difference, see Deleuze (
1988b
), pp. 46–47. Later, at pp. 75–76, Deleuze describes ‘the Bergsonian project’ as that of ‘showing that Difference, as difference in kind, could and should be understood independently of the
negative
’ (emphasis in original), while at p. 103 he writes that ‘difference is never negative but essentially positive and creative.’ In Chapter
21
we shall see how Deleuze develops these ideas on his own account.

37
One passage in Bergson that is especially reminiscent of this is
Creative Evolution
, pp. 375–377.

38
This is connected to the point that I made in n. 24.

39
Note also, in the light of Spinoza’s fundamental concern with the question of what a body is and can do (
Ch. 2
, §3), the subtitle of
Ch. 1
of
Matter and Memory
: ‘What Our Body Means and Does’.

40
How does this comparison of Bergsonian intuition with Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge consist with the fact that the former requires seeing things
sub specie durationis
, the latter
sub specie
æternitatis
? The first of the many points that need to be made in response to this large question is that Spinoza’s conception of seeing things
sub specie
æternitatis
is not at all the same as Bergson’s: see Spinoza (
2002c
), Pt V, Prop. 29, and accompanying material.

41
For a discussion of what Bergson means by joy, further indicating his kinship with Spinoza and Nietzsche, see
Mind-Energy
, pp. 29–30. He there says that joy, which he distinguishes from pleasure, ‘always announces that life has succeeded, gained ground, conquered,’ and that ‘wherever there is joy, there is creation; the richer the creation, the deeper the joy.’ Cf. n. 75 of the previous chapter.

42
Cf. e.g.
Ch. 9
, §2, and
Ch. 10
, §3.

43
For a discussion that bears on the material in this section, see Mullarkey (
2007
).

44
See also (e.g.)
Creative Evolution
, pp. 212–218.

45
See the two quotations at the end of the previous section for an indication of what the principal benefit might be.

46
Note that this gives metaphysics, and thereby intuition, a disciplinary role that somewhat mitigates the comparison that I drew in §5(b) between Bergson and the pair Spinoza and Nietzsche. Neither Spinoza nor Nietzsche would have been comfortable with Bergson’s discussion of ‘the power of negation’, or with his likening of intuition – which gives its ‘most clear-cut manifestations’ when ‘it forbids’ – to ‘the demon of Socrates’ (‘Intuition’, pp. 109–110).

47
See n. 32.

48
For a brief discussion, see Moore (
2001a
), pp. 103–104.

49
Cf. Wittgenstein (
1961
), p. 3 and 4.003; and Wittgenstein (
1967a
), Pt I, §122. Note that the comparisons with Wittgenstein are by no means confined to the methodological point that I have just been highlighting. One further extremely important comparison relates to what I said in
Ch. 10
, n. 15, about Wittgenstein’s recognition of a deep distinction between that which is simple and that which is easy. Bergson recognizes just the same distinction. He frequently insists on the simplicity of metaphysical practice: see e.g. ‘Intuition’, pp. 109 and 126. He even more frequently insists on its difficulty: see e.g. ‘Introduction II’, pp. 41, 67–68, and 87–88. (As regards learning how to do this difficult thing, at one point he likens it to learning how to swim, where we must begin by fearlessly throwing ourselves into the water: see
Creative Evolution
, p. 211. This brooks comparison with the passage from Hegel (
1975a
), §10, which I quoted in
Ch. 7
, §8.)

50
Cf. ‘Introduction II’, pp. 42–43, and ‘Metaphysics’, pp. 191–192. Cf. also of course Wittgenstein (
1961
), 6.54.

51
The analogy extends even further. For just as Spinoza holds that knowledge of the third kind would be impossible without knowledge of the second kind, so too (§2 above) Bergson holds that intuition would be impossible without analysis. And I have already independently remarked (§5(b)) that Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge can usefully be compared with Bergsonian intuition.

52
This is connected to the point raised in n. 24.

53
Cf. the passage from ‘Introduction II’, pp. 32–33, quoted in §3 in this chapter. Cf. also
Creative Evolution
, pp. 194–195.

54
Cf. ‘Intuition’, pp. 111–112.

55
Note that it involves novel questioning no less than novel understanding. Novel questioning is itself, Bergson urges, a matter of invention: see ‘Introduction II’, p. 51; and cf. ibid., pp. 47ff., and ‘Intuition’, p. 121. (Cf.
Ch. 21
, §6.)

Chapter 17 Husserl Making Sense of Making Sense; or, The
Ne Plus Ultra
of Transcendentalism

1. Husserl
Vis-à-Vis
the Analytic Tradition

Towards the end of
Chapter 12
I argued that Quine’s extreme naturalism, whereby the only way to make sense of things is the (natural-)scientific way, failed because that is not the way to make sense of making sense of things. Invoking Neurath’s image of the ship, which Quine himself was so fond of invoking, and taking the ship to represent those of our beliefs that we arrive at by (natural-)scientific means, I suggested that understanding
how
we arrive at these beliefs, in contrast to actually arriving at them, requires something of an altogether different kind from staying on board and ensuring that the ship’s parts are in proper working order; it requires jumping overboard and looking at the ship from the outside.

I shall not dwell on this analogy. It has several defects. (Not least of these is its implication that what is wrong with a naturalistic attempt to make sense of how we make sense of things is that it is not sufficiently detached from its subject matter. In due course we shall see reason to regard this implication as the very reverse of the truth.) The crucial point is that a standard scientific investigation of how sense is made of things, even an investigation that belongs to the psychological or social sciences, cannot account for the rudimentary way in which the things of which sense is made do not just affect the sense that is made of them, but manifest themselves in it; do not just cause the making of that sense, but are given in it; do not just stand in certain relations to the sense-maker, but are made sense of
as so standing
.

Analytic philosophers have recently made deep and important contributions to the quest for a suitable alternative,
¹
thereby testifying to the fact that not all of them, by any means, are Quinean naturalists. But the earliest examples of the sort of thing that these analytic philosophers have been doing were provided some fifty years before Quine even began to proclaim his naturalism. They were provided by Husserl, founder of the
phenomenological tradition, a tradition that is often set in contradistinction to the analytic tradition.

Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) was only a decade or so from being an exact contemporary of Frege. He and Frege had many of the same interests. The title of Husserl’s first book,
Philosophy of Arithmetic
,
²
bears witness to this. This book contained some criticisms of Frege’s
Foundations of Arithmetic
. Frege wrote a trenchant review of it (Frege (
1984b
)) and the two of them corresponded about the issues. Husserl later retracted many of his earlier views, in favour of views much closer to Frege’s. How far this was due to Frege’s influence and indeed quite what the essence of his
volte-face
was are both matters of dispute. Concerning the question of influence, there is reason to think that Husserl had independently come to have reservations about his earlier position.
³
Concerning the question of what exactly his
volte-face
consisted in, the popular account is that he had earlier championed a psychologism of the sort that we saw Frege oppose in
Chapter 8
, §6: a grounding of arithmetical laws in psychological laws. Such indeed appears to be the lesson of Frege’s review. Such, for that matter, appears to be the lesson of Husserl’s own subsequent glosses on his first book (e.g.
Investigations
1, ‘Foreword to the 1st Edn’ and Vol. I, §45). However, while it is certainly true that this would have represented a change of position, inasmuch as Husserl was later a vehement opponent of any such psychologism, there is reason to doubt whether he had ever really subscribed to it.
⁴

Be that as it may, there was enough eventual convergence of philosophical doctrine, attitude, and interest between Frege and Husserl to make the later opposition between the analytic tradition and the phenomenological tradition, or rather the later sense of opposition between these two traditions, a matter of some mystery. There is much that might be said to quell the mystery.
⁵
My own first instinct is simply to emphasize that what there
was later was merely a sense of opposition, and to bemoan it as a false sense. But even that leaves a puzzle about what begat the sense, and of course, relatedly, about what makes the two traditions
two
traditions at all.