[lit-ideas] Frege, quintessence, seeing, inner/outer world, etc...
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 13:58:11 -0700
(From Bill Ball. -- andreas)
-----Original Message-----
From: William Ball [mailto:ballnw@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2004 2:22 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Frege, quintessence, seeing, inner/outer world, etc...
It started with Richard H. and Robert Paul discussing Frege, about whom
I am colossally ignorant. Trying to follow the discussion, before JL
came in and stated his thoughts, I tripped a dozen circuits in my brain
(inner world or outer?).
What seemed like a faint candle, as I began to curse the darkness, was
this statement of Frege (I believe the second quotation of Frege):
"Having visual impressions is... necessary for "seeing" things, but it
is not sufficient. What must be added is not anything sensible. And it
is precisely this that unlocks the outer world for us; for without this
non-sensible something, each of us would remain locked up in his inner
world."
I believe I saw Plato peeping from behind a tree and thought I might be
able to offer something to the discussion.
It's an epistemological issue, I believe. How do we know anything? I
think of Plato's divided line and consider the tree we "look at" to be
in the lowest section of the line, maybe the shadow of a tree cast on
the ground beside the material tree. Then we look at and "see" the tree.
We feel it, we smell it, we are in the next section of the line,
approaching the biological reality of the tree we kick, to make sure
it's really there.
Then we wonder how tall it is. We pace out from the base of the trunk,
measure the distance, get an angle on the top of the tree and figure
it's at least seventy feet tall, and we found it because of the next
rung up on the line, the mathematical section for KNOWING the tree.
It may be then we break through to the outer world and begin to "see,"
"to know," to relate its "treeness" to all other such objects.
It gets a bit sticky though when we start out with a concept, like
arete este episteme, excellence at anything is total knowledge of
that thing, instead of something material, like a tree that wants to
shed its treeness, enter chairness and bcome a chair.
But I ramble. Woops! I think I'm slipping into Aristotle's causes of
Change. They told me philosophy was a slippery slope.
Regards from the holy City of Jaffrey,
Bill Ball
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
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