[lit-ideas] Re: Thingness and existence (was Movies without Guns)
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 20:09:59 -0700
Mike writes:
'There is no question of any denseness here. One of the points I was
trying to insinuate is that the current debate is, among other things,
very relevant to the question of whether or not there *are* or are not
any *animals simpliciter* (and hence, whether or not there are Truth,
Beauty, Justice, etc.). As a self-proclaimed nominalist, you want to
claim there are not. I am less sure.'
This is one question. Whether if a tree falls in the forest when
nobody’s around, it makes a sound, is another. Let me talk about hurricanes.
In the Beaufort scale, a classification of winds devised by Sir Francis
Beaufort, in 1806 (two years after Kant died) there is a progression
from ‘calm’ through
light air
light breeze
gentle breeze
moderate breeze
fresh breeze
strong breeze
moderate gale
fresh gale
strong gale
whole gale
to hurricane. Hurricanes were further divided by T. Theodore Fujita and
Allen Pearson, in 1971, into five categories, each corresponding to a
progressively higher wind velocity and accompanied by a description of
the damage to be expected from it. On what I take to be a modern
interpretation of the Beaufort scale, one finds such descriptions as:
Calm: less than 1 mph; smoke rises vertically
B1 Light Air: 1-3 mph; direction of wind shown by smoke but not by wind
vanes
B2 Light Breeze: 4-7 mph wind felt on face; leaves rustle; wind vanes move
B3 Gentle Breeze: 8-12 mph; leaves and small twigs in motion; wind
extends light flag
B5 Fresh Breeze: 19-24 mph small trees in leaf begin to sway; crested
wavelets appear on inland waters
B6 Strong Breeze: 25-31 mph large branches move; telegraph wires
whistle; umbrellas become unwieldy
B9 Strong Gale: 47-54 mph; slight structural damage occurs (chimney
pots, roof slates blown away)
B11 Storm: 64-73 mph widespread damage
B12 Hurricane: winds greater than 74 mph; widespread damage
Are there hurricanes? Do hurricanes exist? (Below, I try to dispense
with the words ‘exist,’ ‘existence,’ except where doing so would produce
rebarbative expressions.) We’ve just seen the devastation and suffering
that a class 4/5 hurricane can cause, so surely only a philosopher would
even think to wonder if there were hurricanes. To suggest that it is an
open question as to whether there are hurricanes would seem to fly in
the face of plain facts, and to display an insensitivity almost beyond
belief. But it is a genuine question when we are talking about what
there is.
I use the word Word*, e.g., to refer to whatever it is that is thought
to persist, subsist, or exist, independently of any natural or ‘social’
phenomena, such that there could be Words* even if there were no words.
This is a fairly weak criterion. There might be Grain* if if the crops
failed, so I'll add the further one that Grain* predates 'grain,' or is
in some unspecified sense timeless.
The Beaufort, and the Fujita-Pearson scales do not pick out certain
natural phenomena (a fresh gale, a hurricane) and then describe them.
They are not descriptions of, but classifications of natural phenomena.
For each category within these classifications there is a sketch of what
winds of a certain force will likely cause: unwieldy umbrellas,
whistling telegraph wires, toppling chimney pots. Other things may
happen too; hats may be blown off, children may be frightened, screen
doors may slam.
So, am I somehow giving primacy to what I’ve called natural phenomena,
and thereby suggesting that a crude empiricism trumps all? No. One
needn’t be driven to conclude that. What I want to say, although it’s
hard to articulate, is that there could be the very same natural
phenomena (winds of a certain velocity) without their having been
divided into light airs, gales, or hurricanes, etc. This should surprise
no one. It suggests (to me) though that answer ‘yes and no,’ to ‘Are
there hurricanes ?’ isn’t prima facie absurd, for one can well imagine
there being what are now classified as hurricane force winds without
their ever having been so classified. And this in turn suggests (to me)
that there are no such things as Hurricanes*, for we have a natural
history of their coming into being via a human act of classification,
which classification was of something prior, namely winds.
There are many parallels. Are there coins? Certainly; but before there
were coins, there were gold, bronze, copper, and wood for wooden
nickels. That something is a coin is determined by stipulation, more or
less, against a background of exchanging various things (not Things*)
for money. That this piece of gold is a coin worth so-and-so many other
coins or a certain fraction of another coin is not a reading of some
natural phenomenon but a socially constructed fact. That it is shiny,
isn’t, although the classical empiricists (including Russell) worried
about the relation of shininess to some supposed underlying stuff,
itself neither shiny nor not shiny.
In light of this, I’ll try to respond to at least one of Mike’s
worries—that I’m simply dismissing the possibility of there being
different kinds, different modes of existence. I think that certain
phenomena are hurricanes, rightly so called, only in light of what
Beaufort and Fujita have said about them; and to claim, given that, that
there might nevertheless be Hurricanes*, strikes me as extremely odd.
If one were to suggest that they could not have made their
classifications had they not somehow grasped the essence of Hurricanes*,
in privileged moments in which they confronted the Forms directly, well,
that is one, fairly implausible, story. It ought to be clear that we can
easily imagine different ways of carving velocities at their joints—e.g.
scales in which there is no difference between Beaufort’s light breezes
and gentle breezes, or no difference between Fujita’s class 2 and class
3 hurricanes. There is no Platonic metric which guides one here.
So, I do reject the notion of Hurricanes*, because it is a contingent
fact, and not something that could be known a priori, that winds of a
certain velocity comprise a hurricane. God made great winds, but only in
translation did he make hurricanes. So now the question, Are there
Hurricanes*? seems pointless; for we know, so to speak, how they came to
be, and in understanding that there is no room for (and no need for)
Hurricanes*
What this does not mean. This doesn’t mean that talk about hurricanes,
even if it came to pass that there were no longer winds above 74 mph,
and that no one living had ever seen or experienced one, would be
senseless, for the concept _hurricane_ would linger (or not) and be
invoked in talking about hurricanes on winter nights. In short, talk of
hurricanes would still make sense, without the need for the (idea of?)
Hurricanes*. I don’t see why Mike wouldn’t accept this, but I suspect he
wouldn’t, at least not completely.
Plato thought, at a certain stage in his philosophical career, that
there could not be just decisions, e.g., unless there were Justice*, and
that it was ‘participation’ in Justice* that made just acts just, a view
that’s anticipated in the so-called Socratic dialogues in which Socrates
wants a top-down, essentialist definition, or account, of Justice (not
an account of Justice*) which would explain why just acts are rightly so
called. Attempts to show why this is either wrong-headed or the only
path to wisdom have tied philosophers in knots ever since.
I don’t know if in light of Beaufort and Fujita’s efforts hurricanes
belong in W3; but whether they do or not, the Popperian assignment of
Hurricanes* to it seems at best problematic.
Thanks again to Mike.
Robert Paul
Reed College*
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