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Tractatus Ethico-Actualicus:

A user friendly guide to actualism and its ethical system

1. The trouble with Informativity..........................................................................1

2. Pseudoinformation– internal and external.....................................................4

3. Identity, holism, truth.......................................................................................23

4. The pseudoproblem of underdtermination........................................................36

5. Ethics be good...................................................................................................39

1. The trouble with Informativity

1. Informativity is the explanation of one thing by another thing, or the

predication of one thing of another.

1.1 Though informativity is always the explanation of one thing by another,

emptiness is not only the explanation of one thing by itself (tautology). Sometime

it is the explanation of one thing by no-thing, and sometime it is the explanation

of no-thing by another no-thing, and there may be other kinds.

1.11 Examples of such emptiness are explanations by definitions, by laws of

the game, by facts in a fiction story, by facts in a dream, (or the predication that

occurs in nominal definitions). Though these seem informative, they are empty:

The ontology involved says that the objects and their laws (e.g. the knight and its

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rules) or their actions (Hamlet and his killing of Polonius) are not real. No

information about real objects is involved, only about fictitious objects.

1.111 In so far as the knight and Hamlet are real objects, all chess and literary

propositions about them may be informative but false, and in so far as they are

true they turn out to be empty.

1.112 The tell for this emptiness is the necessity of the truth accompanying

them: the knight moves only so and so, Hamlet committed suicide, the 747

stopped in midair hovering silently.

1.2 There cannot be a necessarily true yet informative proposition, because as

informative, it links two mutually separate things which, being thus separate,

there is a possible world in which they are not so linked, hence the proposition is

false in one world.

1.21 Hence propositions carrying necessity can be informative only if they are

contingently necessary. This necessity we call physical, and it says that the

proposition is true in all the sub-worlds of our given world, but this whole world

is not necessary, i.e., not the only possible world.

1.211 It is very difficult to say which are these sub-worlds. We thought that the

distributive law is a contingently-necessary truth but discovered that the atomic

realm does not obey it, maybe. For atomic particles it is not true that if p is true

and also q or r are true then p and q is true or p and r is true. We still think that it

is contingently-necessary that if p is true then its negation ~p is false. But we are

not sure at all.

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1.22 A proposition is informative only if it is false in some possible world. This

entails that it links some mutually separate things. It also entails that a proposition

that is true in all possible worlds does not link separate things. Hence, it either

links a thing to itself, or it links fictitious, unreal things. But separateness from

man and so from each other is a property unique to real things. Things which are

unreal are non-separate from us and so cannot be separate from each other. Their

non-reality entails their mutual non-separateness and this entails the emptiness of

propositions which are exclusively about them.

1.3 This is a theory of objective, i.e. separate informativity : It describes an

informativity that is a property of the proposition which holds of it separately

from its being known. This informativity has nothing to do with human

knowledge, understanding, learning, innovation, surprise, belief, etc.

1.31 This objectivity or separateness is what distinguishes this theory from

Popper’s. Though his theory classifies propositions into scientific and non-

scientific according to their objective informativity, it also demands that this

informativity be actual for man. This actual informativity Popper called

refutability, and this demand turns his concept of informativity non-separate from

human knowledge and so relative to man, or subjective. This was a mistake,

leading to further and graver mistakes (see ch ).

1.32 Another conception of subjective informativity is the following:

Knowledge, as expressed by language, is something relative to definitions.

Though this conclusion may seem paradoxical at first, it is true. For

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whether a proposition contains knowledge depends on what we know

before. (Schlick 1918:49)

1.33 Popper’s and Schlick’s concepts of informativity are pragmatic, or

subjective, or relative to man. The concept of informativity which I use is

objective – man and his knowledge are irrelevant to whether a given proposition

is or is not informative. Explaining combustion by phlogiston was informative

always and independently of the vicissitudes of the theory in history. That there is

no such thing, phlogiston, in reality, only make it false, and what makes it

informative is that were it true, it would have explained combustion by another

thing, namely, phlogiston.

2. Pseudoinformation– internal and external

2.1 Had phlogiston been introduced as a fictitious thing, the explanation

would be non-informative , no matter what. So we need to make a distinction

within unreal entities between falsely assumed to be real, such as phlogiston and

epicycles and those truly assumed to be unreal, such as fiction persona, dream

entities and game figures (Chess pieces, say ). Call the first – false, and the second

– fictitious entities. Call discourse about fictitious entities within their fictitious

worlds – fiction. Then the claim I make is that fiction is necessarily non-

informative, but this is not the case about false entities. Ptolemy’s theory of

epicycles and the phlogiston combustion theory are false but informative theories.

But all our explanations of Hamlet’s actions by his thoughts and drives and

depression etc. are empty , for the simple reason that Hamlet is a fiction, a

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figment of our imagination. Even if it turned out that Hamlet and the Danish court

are real things, this would not change the situation: the Hamlet we explain is a

fiction and will remain such come what may in the real world, just as the truth-

values of the propositions in Sheakspear’s play do not change according to the

world’s state. The sign of fiction and the fictitious is absolute fact-insensitivity.

This entails their emptiness, i.e., non-informativity.

2.1.1 Just as intended reference to real entities is a necessary condition for

informativity, so intended non-reference to real entities is a sufficient condition

for non-informativity.

2.1.1.1 One necessary condition for the separateness of informativity is the

separateness of the proposition and its truth status, i.e., when a proposition is true

or false. When an informative proposition is true, the world in which it is true, is

actual. When it is informative and false, that world is potential. When it is non-

informative, it is true in all the possible worlds, and so it is necessarily true. Truth

status and informativity status are mutually separate.

2.2 This explains the emptiness of a necessary proposition : For it follows now

that truth in all worlds entails the non-separateness of the elements constituting it.

This must be mutual non-separateness and consequently non-separateness from

us. Hence their non-reality.

2.3 “This table is square” is informative only if it is possible for it to be not

square. When it turns out that “this table is square” is an observation proposition

true in all possible states of the observer, so that no change in his perspective

effects the squareness, we conclude that the table and its squareness are mutually

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non-separate, or that at least one of them is not real. We conclude that this is a

case of optical illusion.

2.3.1 For example: the subject is non-separate from its predicates in Leibniz’s

ontology and that’s why their linkage is necessary. This is the case also for

Aristotle’s theory of definitions : “Man is a biped etc. animal” is a necessary truth

because there is no such entity - man – separate from its predicates (see my 1995:

).

2.3.2 This is also the case with Kant’s synthetic a priori. In all the worlds

possible for us the same general laws of nature will hold which are therefore

synthetic a priori. Kant’s conclusion was that the things linked by each of them

are not real exactly because they are mutually non-separate and so non-separate

from us. Their mutual non-separateness entailed, moreover, that the only way they

can at all obtain meaning is through each other and us. (see ch.3)

2.3.3 This was an external view, i.e., the laws seem informative only to us, i.e.,

from the inside. But viewed from the outside, i.e., from a vantage point from

which our actual world is just one of the rest of the possible worlds, it becomes

clear that the laws are merely our creations. To the outsider it becomes clearly

visible that the general laws of nature are just the subjective rules of our

synthesizing our fiction world. For him it is clear that being mere rules of

synthesis, the laws are non-informative.

2.4 The fictitious objects in our fictional synthesized world, according to

Kant, are space, time, substance (or object), causality, the ego. As a consequence

of their non-reality, such things as motions and the forces causing them are non-

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real, i.e., merely subjective. Only, since this subjectivity is shared by the entire

human species, it cannot be seen from within but only from the outside.

2.5 This subjectivity Kant called “mere formal”, thus pointing out that the

general laws of nature, just like the categories and the forms of sensibility, are

empty of content, i.e., they are non-informative both about reality and obviously

about the phenomena, i.e., the fiction we synthesize by them.

2.6 Kant’s awakening from his “dogmatic slumbers” was his recognition of

this total subjectivity of experience, subjectivity that is the contradictory of

“dogmatism”, and this was the essence of his “Copernican Turn”. (His so-called

“criticism” is a red herring, for it means just this subjectivism.)

2.7 This Copernican reference was a true Kantian irony : Copernicus

suggested that it was the subjectivity of the ancient astronomical theory that was

the source of its certainty, and offered to replace it by an objective (i.e.

“dogmatic”) theory in which doubt prevails. Kant demanded that we wake up to

the horrendous objectivity of Newtonian science and replace it by a subjective

science, thus obtaining absolute certainty and truth, going back to the ancient

ideal which Copernicus demolished.

2.8 The Knight and Queen and Pawn, in their dogmatic slumbers, doubt the

certainty and necessity of the general laws of nature that make them go so and so.

The Queen, a Newtonian disciple that she is, becomes alarmed and worried about

the future of all this necessity and certainty now that god is dead. She contracts

anxiety, cant sleep, overeats, gains weight. Her husband the King calls Professor

Kant to start psychoanalysis treatment but Kant suggest psychosynthetic treatment

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instead: The queen must awaken from her dogmatic slumbers and understand that

she actually lives in illusion-world – there is no real Knight, nor Pawn, nor King

etc., and the alleged laws of nature dictating their possible motions are mere rules

of game which synthesize the Knight and the Pawn and all the rest of her orderly

world. These rules of game, moreover, are merely the brainchildren of human

beings, and so all her world is a mere creature of the human mind and is

inseparable from it. As a consequence of this illusory state, there is no power in

her world that can break these rules. Certainty and necessity are guaranteed. The

Queen shakes off her anxiety, loses weight and starts living it up.

2.9 Kant’s “Critical philosophy” is the demand to stop viewing our world

from within, and start understanding it from without. Only thus is the eye viewing

itself an enlightened eye, for only thus can it get to see the true, i.e., illusory

status, of everything it sees.

2.9.1 Enlightenment is the recognition of the limitations of our cognition. “The

categories are the limits of my world” – This is enlightenment, and this can be

grasped only by the eye that sees itself. But a view of limitations and limits is

necessarily a view of the inside from the outside. This is the notorious reflexive

thought, self-consciousness, etc.

2.10 Starting with Kant, only external questions can be answered informatively,

and so it turned out that the central classical question – what is causality, what is

force, what is a law of nature – were all mistaken questions, for they were asked

from within. But though only external question can have informative answers,

they cannot be even formulated – the categories apply only from within. This is

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why we cannot explain anything informatively – inside questions are formulable

but are slaves of the categories, and though outside questions would be free from

this bondage and so would be informatively answerable, they cannot even be

formulated.

2.11 Thus, in so far as they pose as views from the outside, all of Kant’s theses

and hypotheses are senseless. They suffer the same fatal confusion which he

showed to dominate the standard metaphysical talk about the structure of the

world-in-itself. More in detail: since only from the outside is it possible to view

the nature of causal propositions, laws of nature, etc., it is necessary to look from

the outside in order to discover that categories and laws of nature do not refer.

Only from the outside can it be seen that their sole reference is internal, i.e., to

each other, so that each concept refers to only other concepts and never to a

separate object.

2.12 It is necessary to wake up in order to see the nature of dream, it is

necessary to invent a game and to write fiction in order to see the nature of game

and fiction.

2.13 This non-reality is the root of the holism that dominates dreams and

games and fiction. Conceptual holism is the thesis that every conceptual system is

like a dream in that its concepts cannot refer outside but only inside, i.e., within

the conceptual system. Or rather : The meaning of each concept is just other

concepts. Or thus : An idea can denote only another idea (Berkeley, Pierce,

Schlick).

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2.14 Only from the outside is it possible to see the situation as it “really” is.

That’s why it can be said that Kant is a realist, that idealism is realism, that

solipsism is realism, that conventionalism is realism. This is as if taken out of

Orwell’s Newspeak.

2.1400 Transcendental idealism is realism in an abslolute sense. (Kant

1993:255)

The objective, which ought to constitute the opposite to this subjective

side, is itself subjective likewise. (Hegel :History of Philosophy:440)

2.140 But this means that he cannot be taken seriously, for he proved that language

does not create facts, i.e., he proved that there is at least one language in which

the facts described ( i.e., the fact that language creates all facts,) are not created

by any language, and this is the language in which he writes all his books.

2.1401 I call this The Escher Effect after his The Hand: Since

another hand must draw the hand that draws itself,

this proves that not everything is drawn by the hand

in the picture.

2.1402 In other words, he who declares that all facts are language-functions proves by

that act that he is wrong and that he does not wish to be taken seriously.

2.1403 He is only making a joke. He is speaking with his tongue in his cheek. Or rather

with one of his tongues in one of his cheeks.

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2.141 Only from the outside is it possible to see that the synthetic a priori is mere

form and thus empty of information.

Only from the outside is it possible to see that the world is finite, or

infinite, or Euclidean, or non-Euclidean. We cannot see this from within, because

we cannot see that or how our measuring rod changes its length as it moves

around.

Only from the outside is it possible to see that out world picture is “really”

dictated by the logical syntax of our language and by nothing else. Since the eye

cannot see itself, we believe that the fact that a surface cannot be two-colored all

over is a consequence of the laws of nature. Were the eye able to see itself, it

would understand that this fact is the consequence of its rules of logical syntax.

That is why the synthetic a priori looks to us informative.

And why the geometry of the world looks to us informative.

2.142 But from the outside, i.e., really, all of these are empty since they are mere

rules of games. This fact can be sees only from the outside, from where its

emptiness shines clear, since from the inside it is impossible to envisage different

possibilities.

2.15 Kant came back from the outside and explained to us his vision, i.e., that

all laws of nature are merely our subjective rules of game and so are really empty

(“formal”) and arbitrary. Only from the inside do they look necessary and

informative (a priori and synthetic). He saw from the outside that all our necessity

in our world is internal, i.e., logical and formal.

2.151

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2.16 Only the philosopher has the ability to be inside but observe from the

outside. He then tells us what he saw, and adds that it is impossible to say what he

just said. He also demands that we be silent about what we cannot say.

4.12… In order to be able to represent logical form, we should have to be

able to station ourselves with propositions outside logic, that is to say, out

side the world. (Wittgenstein – Tractatus)

2.161 “There is no God’s eye-view” – this is declared by the philosopher who

comes back from the “out there” where he saw that there is no “out there”. He

then concludes from this contradiction that there is only the “inside” and so all

predication and necessity are arbitrary. But even to say that there is no God’s eye

view, is to utter a contradictory statement. All the pragmatist’s dramatic

declarations are contradictions like that.

2.162 Putman’s “internal realism” is such a contradiction.

2.163 This contradiction is the conjunction of the old external insight that what

is merely internal is arbitrary (subjective) and the new external outsight that there

is not “out there”.

2.164 All of these are self-contradictions :

1. The nominalist thesis (Kant to Wittgenstein)

2. The relativistic thesis (Nietzche to Fucault)

3. The pan-force thesis (Nietzche to Fucault)

4. The linguist thesis – all is logical syntax (Wittgenstein)

5. The idealistic thesis (Kant)

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5. Hegelian actualism: abstractions are distortions of reality.

2.1641 This is how the contradiction gets constructed:

(x) (Fx Gx) ^ (Gx Kx)

in which

F = “concept”, “proposition”, “theory”, “abstraction” etc.

G = The philosophic thesis that one thing (e.g. concept, proposition) is another

thing (e.g. word, mental representation, the effect of forces, language game ,

distortion)

K = The rest of the philosophical thesis :

Hence it is non-separate, unreal, devoid of any truth-status, does not represent

anything, distort , etc.

The construction then begins thus :

Any concept (or proposition etc.) is nothing but a word (representation in the

mind, the effect of force and power etc.). The contradiction is then created when

this sentence, p, say, is substituted for x in the schema. We then get that this

proposition is K, i.e., is devoid of any truth-value, is not real, does not represent

anything, is distortion, etc.

The structure of this contradiction is the same as the Liar’s paradox.

Since all these philosophical theses are contradictions, they do not exist:

There is no nominalism, no pan-forcism, no pan-linguism, no Kantian idealism,

no Hegelian actualism , etc. All of these are philosophical illusions.

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2.18 The axiomatic-thesis is the external discovery that all meaning is strictly

internal.

2.180 Internality is relativism, and so the axiomatic-thesis entails the relativity of

all terms and concepts and propositions (Hilbert entails Skolem).

2.181 Nominalism is the external thesis that all essence is strictly internal.

2.182 Emotionalism is the external discovery that all values are strictly internal.

2.183 The relativistic thesis is the external discovery that all physics is strictly

internal, i.e., that all physics is arbitrary, including its most general structural

laws.

2.1831 Innocent relativism says that the laws of nature keep their logical form in

all reference systems.

2.1832 Sophisticated relativism says that innocent relativism is made possible

only because the laws of nature are merely internal, i.e., because they are

synthetic a priori. Only because the matter of the world possesses no logical form

or structure of its own, can there be laws of nature which conserve their logical

form in all reference frames. For only then do these laws link things unreal, i.e.,

arbitrary objects, and this is why they succeed in conserving their own form in all

changes of reference-frames. Were they to link real, separate objects, there would

have been at least one world, i.e., one reference frame, in which these objects are

not linked at all.

2.1833 Sophisticated relativism (Einstein after Kretchmann) is the external insight

that reality is amorphic (there are only intersection points of world lines) and that

innocent relativism (Einstein before Kretchmann) is merely internal view.

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2.184 Kant’s critical idealism is his external insight that all that is accessible to

our cognition is necessarily internal only. Sophisticate relativity theory is founded

on this idealism.

2.19 The characteristic externally-seen sign of the internal is its arbitrariness :

meanings, concepts, essences, values, accessible reality, formal structure – all of

these are arbitrary really, i.e., but only from the outside. From the inside they

look necessary. Uncovering the arbitrariness is the presentation of forms and

categories as arbitrary (Kant, special theory of relativity) and laws of nature as the

logical syntax of language (Kant, Wittgenstein, both special and general theories

of relativity).

2.191 The model is Helmholz’s concave mirror, Poincare’s expanding world,

Einstein’s shadows world: Only from the outside can all discoveries within the

world be seen as arbitrary and so merely internal.

2.1911 Actualism is the external thesis that only what actually appears to the

denizens of the concave mirror world is real. Moreover, it also adds that what

actually appears to them is exactly what actually appears also from the outside.

This shared actual appearance is the immediately given, purified of all structure

such as categories, laws of nature, etc. The only reality is, Einstein concluded

after much toil, are the intersections of world-lines :

Only what is really observed can be used as basis for explanations in

science:

No explanation can be accepted as epistemologically satisfactory unless

the given reason is an observable fact of experience. The law of causality

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has not the significance of a statement as to the world of experience except

when observable facts ultimately appear as causes and effects. (Einstein

1916:112-13)

2.1912 Leibniz law of identity of indiscernibles is the external insight that the

internally viewed different is not always really different.

2.1913 Only from the outside can it be seen and known that all the internally

invisibles (space, time, forces atoms, fields, causal necessity) are not real at all.

This is the insight of Russell’s rule of construction :

The supreme maxim in scientific philosophizing is this :

Whenever possible, logical constructs are to be substituted for inferred

entities.(Sense data : 148)

2.20 The inside-outside thesis says that whatever is discovered inside is unreal,

arbitrarily determined by categories, logical syntax, game rules. It says also that

this fact itself is observed from the outside and so is real.

2.21 There is no sense in the inside-outside thesis if it cannot say (1) that all

that is observed from the outside is real, and (2) that the inside-outside thesis is

itself discovered from the outside.

2.211 The inside-outside thesis must say, in other words, that the outside has no

further outside, i.e., that it is an absolute outside.

2.212 But it must also say that this outside can be observed only from outside of

itself, i.e., that it cannot be observed at all.

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2.213 If to be merely internal attribute is to be subjective (arbitrary etc.) and if it

can be internal even when there is no possible meaning to the outside, then the

properties of spacetime and the world’s mass (e.g. the radius of curvature at a

specific spot) could be subjective along with general relativity.

2.300 The actualist demands that the objective and the appearing be identical,

and he thinks he can achieve this by fleeing from content to form. He says:

Obviously form appears and is conserved in the inside-outside transformation.

Thus the merely formal becomes the only objectivity.

2.301 This flee from content is made for fear of error but is presented as

cleansing of subjectivity.

2.302 Fleeing from content to form is shared by Kant, Hilbert, Poincare,

Einstein, the logical positivists, even though the moderns love to present it as the

destruction of Kantian Intuition. With all of them, the necessary laws of the

phenomena are merely regulative.

2.303 Construction science, or the construction of the world by science, means

that science does not deal the content of the world but only with its logical form,

i.e., with the order of structure of the phenomena.

2.304 Logical structure is holistic and so hovers in logical space. There are only

two ways of anchoring it to physical reality – by finger-pointing, and by

definition. But since finger-pointing is subjective, only definition remains : the

hovering logical structure is itself what defines material, reality. The material

becomes thereby merely formal itself as well. (Hilbert’s and Schlick’s implicit

definition becomes Carnap’s “structural definite description”.)

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2.3041 The result is that each scientific statement can in principle be so

transformed that it is nothing but a structure statement. But this

transformation is not only possible, it is imperative. For science wants to

speak of what is objective, and whatever does not belong to the structure

but to the material (i.e., anything that can be pointed out in a concrete

ostensive definition) is, in the final analysis, subjective. One can see that

physics is almost altogether de-subjectivized, since almost all physical

concepts have been transformed into purely structural concepts. (Carnap

1928:29)

2.305 The trouble is that every possible structure is completely subjective,

because it is arbitrary : there is a contradiction between the holistic thesis (implicit

definition of each concept by the axiom system) and the uniqueness of the

structure (or the logical form) of a realm of objects (the proof was supplied by

Skolem in 1920).

2.3050 Any argument from induction is completely valid, since any predication is

the projection of structure upon a completely amorphous and structureless world.

Goodman’s grue argument is a proof of this thesis : There are no better and worse

structures (predications), only less or more surprising ones. But were the world to

contain a real structure, it would be impossible for all possible projected structures

to be of equal quality. Hence every such possible structure is equally true, and

every possible induction, mad as it may be, is completely true.

But there is a simpler link between actualism and  the subjectivity of all

structure, and this via the non-observability of necessity ( Hume and Kant): If we

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never observe necessity, then there is none in the world, hence the world is a

chaos. In other words, actualism entails that since no necessity is actual, then no

necessity is real, but then no objective structure exists and all apparent structure is

strictly subjective. But then any of the world’s visible structure is our creation,.

2.305101 Thus actualism entails subjectivism and nominalism (such as Kant’s and his

successors’):

Philosophy is this tyrannical impulse , the most spiritual Will to Power,

the will to ´creation of the world‘, the will to causa prima. ( Nietzsche,

Beyond Good and Evil # 9 )

2.30511 Just as whatever is not perceptible in phenomena is thereby subjective, so also

whatever is not aposteriori in propositions is thereby subjective, i.e., the a priori

is necessary through being subjective, and it is subjective by not being an

aposteriori.

2.30512 The existence of synthetic a priori is entailed by the subjectivity of all that is not

empirically given.

2.30513 The non-informativity of the synthetic a priori now follows trivially from its

subjectivity: Since all its subjective elements are mere fictitious entities (entia

rationis ), they carry no information about the world. This Kant expressed by

emphasizing the strict formality of all synthetic a priori judgments.

2.30514 The arbitrariness of form is essential in Kant’s thesis : if form is merely

subjective, it is logically arbitrary.

2.3053 The arbitrariness of form came to dominate philosophical view, beginning

with Riemann’s (1865) insight that geometry and physics constitute one

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indivisible conceptual whole. Since such holism produces circularity at each

attempt to determine our physical space’s geometry, it follows that any such

decision is logically arbitrary. If scientific knowledge is merely formal

(Aristotle’s thesis of the non-separabilty of Forms, later on to be adopted and

reshaped by Kant’s thesis of the formality of all the synthetic a priori i.e.,

“thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”

[Critique:A51/B75], modernized by the logical positivists construction of the

logical form of the world), then it is necessarily arbitrary if the world is

amorphous. But arbitrariness implies subjectivity (though Kant and the logical

positivists attempted to identify it with objectivity).

2.3054 Einstein embedded this holism into the foundation of his physics, and so

turned it into a subjective physics.

2.3055 Thus the Einsteinian revolution became the toughest refutation of the

logical positivist program to identify what is objective in physics with the formal,

and the subjective with content.

2.3056 And so also collapsed the notion that the objective is what is conserved in

the transformation from the inside to the outside : If one structure is conserved

then all structures will be, mad as they may be. Thus, conservation of form under

any transformation, far from guarding against its arbitrariness and subjectivity, is

in fact the clinching proof of its subjectivity.

2.3057 The general theory of relativity looks as an effort to derive content (the

geometry of our physical space, the nature of gravitation) from the alleged

objectivity of some universally conserved form (the covariance principle) and

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thereby to prove the objectivity of this content. But in fact, this was no content at

all – it turned out to be mere form all over again.

2.3058 The fatal blow to the objectivity of form was that any ontology can take on

the covariance form. That is, form has no contentual consequences. Form is empty

of information. This was the final collapse of the modern attempt to evade the

Hume-Kant discovery of the non-informativity (arbitrariness, subjectivity) of

form.

2.306 All of this was known to Helmholz, Einstein and Schlick, even before

being proved by Kretchmann (1917) and Skolem (1920) and explained to Russel

by Newman (1928). But it never really took. It is almost completely ignored

today.

2.307 Cantor was the first to show that a property taken till now to be part of the

logical form of a class is not such : Though the naturals differ from the rationals

in being discrete (whereas the rationals are dense), in fact this property does not

capture their logical form. For if logical form is captured by isomorphism, then

the class of naturals and that of rationals are isomorphic to each other, i.e., they

posses the same logical form. But in fact the logical form of the class of rationals

and that of the reals are different, it is impossible to create a one-one correlation

between them.This in spite of the fact that both are dense, i.e., there are an infinite

number of other rationals between any two rationals, and the same goes for the

reals.

Bechler/Ethico 22

2.310 Actualism holds that for meaning to be real, i.e., for a word or concept or

statement or proposition etc. to be really meaningful, its meaning must be an

actual thing (event, object, property etc.), i.e., meaning must be observable.

2.311 Hence follows the verification thesis: some series of observable actions

and events exhausts the meaning of any given proposition.

2.312 Thus, the meaning of a proposition about the existence and properties of a

separate entity is exhausted in some phenomena. In other words, meaning is

strictly internal, i.e., the whole meaning is a part of “my system” or “my world”.

There cannot be any part of an object that is external, i.e., not observable.

2.313 Hence every real entity is completely observable, i.e., every reality is

phenomenal:

Wittgenstein says it is nonsense to believe in anything not given in

experience.[...] For to be mine, to be given in experience is the formal

property of a genuine entity[..

This is the reason that the world is my world.

(Frank Ramsey, cited in Hintikka Ludwig Wittgenstein Kluwer 1996:138)

2.32 A road chart: From actualism to the verification thesis and from there to

strict internality and from there to the strict phenomenality of every reality.

Consequently there can be no limits to human knowledge, nothing escapes it. The

electron as the meaning of the concept “electron” is completely exhausted in

phenomena,i.e., of its properties is a “hidden variable”. There cannot be

unknowable properties:

Bechler/Ethico 23

[…] a fine example of an important principle of consistent empiricism, as

upheld, for example, by the Vienna School, [is] the principle that nothing

in the world is intrinsically unknowable. (Schlick Philosophical Papers

II:489)

2.33 This is the reason why any doubt about the completeness thesis or any argument

against it is necessarily based on potentialism, and consequently is an invalid

argument. Einstein argued against Bohr that there is a quantum reality which is

unobservable according to quantum mechanics itself. But he could not have

concluded this without presupposing some potentialist interpretation of quantum

mechanics or of meaning in general. Hence his argument was circular.

2.331 This is the reason why Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle was interpreted

by Bohr as a completeness principle : Since there is no reality separate from

(external to) phenomena, observation creates quantum reality and hence there is

no possible uncertainty about this reality.

2.332 It was Russell who discovered the incompleteness of logic, but somehow missed

this fact : In elementary set theory there are propositions whose truth value is

unsolvable within this theory, because from their truth follows their falsity

(Russell’s antinomy). Since the proposition is either true or false, it follows that

its truth value cannot be determined within this theory.

3. Identity, holism, truth

3.0 According to the actualist, the actual is prior in all respects (conceptual,

logical, temporal) to the potential. Thus, material objects are prior to the space in

which they are located, hence space is constituted by or is relative to them.

Bechler/Ethico 24

Similarly, counting is prior to number (Aristotle, Kant) and therefore number is

relative to the counting man. This notion of the relationality to man in the case of

numbers was expressed by Wittgenstein– “Number is the exponent of the action”

(Tractatus 5.021), meaning that number denotes strictly some human action, i.e.,

how many times it was repeated.

3.1 Since the actual is logically prior to the potential, it follows that as long as

the distinction or difference between two things (e.g., concepts, objects,

propositions) is only potential, it is not real and so it is no difference at all. This

leads to the principle of the identity of indiscernibles. This identity principle is the

first and most important consequence of actualism and it expresses its essence,

i.e., the priority of the actual.

3.2 From the principle of identity follows the theory of meaning of concepts

and theories, and from this follows the ontology of a formless and contentless

world.

3.3 Thus, two theories will be identical if their meanings are identical, and this

will be the case when their “truth conditions” are identical, for then they cannot be

“discerned” in actuality.

3.4 The identity-of-indiscernible theory is the philosophical core of such

actualistic theories as Kantian idealism, American pragmatism, and Logical

positivism.

3.5 The principle of the identity of indiscernible meanings expresses the

demand for the actualization of meaning: If a concept possesses meaning, it must

Bechler/Ethico 25

appear as phenomenal, e.g., as actual use conditions, actual “truth conditions”,

“verification method”, etc.

3.6 The demand for actuality of meaning is the central motive of empiricists

such as Berkeley and Hume, of idealism from Kant on, of American pragmatism

and of logical positivism:

It is permissible to assume differences in reality only if there are

differences in experience, in principle (Schlick xxx)

3.7 For use and truth conditions to capture the meaning of a given concept, no other

concepts can be involved even if their meanings are given in phenomena. The

concept must be completely isolated.

3.8 Since this is an impossible demand, i.e., any concept can be explicated

only through other concepts, the actualist tends to conclude that meaning can only

be reference to other concepts. The holistic theory of meaning is the conclusion

from the impossibility of the actualization of the meaning of a single concept.

3.9 Similarly about the meaning of propositions: a proposition’s meaning can

be presented only through other propositions, and therefore these are its meaning.

Concept-holism leads to proposition-holism

3.10 From the (Leibniz’s) identity principle follows the total holism thesis,

which is, in effect , the thesis of total relativity – of essence, of space and time, of

the concept, of theory, of meaning – to language.

3.11 Einstein’s general relativity theory is a theory of the relativity of theories.

That is, the thesis of the identity of indiscernible theories is the thesis of the

relativity of any theory to its actuality.

Bechler/Ethico 26

3.12 From the thesis of the relativity of theories to their actualities follows at

once the insignificance of interpretation. This is the thesis of no-interpretation

interpretation. It was first urged by Berkeley and its peak is the Copenhagen

interpretation ruling today.

3.13 Since, by the identity principle, equivalent theories are identical, none of

them can be informative, for otherwise they would be contradicting each other yet

be true. Hence none of them can be taken to carry information about the world.

Hence it is impossible to be informative.

3.14 Consequently the world is devoid of both form and content.

3.15 A set of road charts: From the identity of indescernibles to the internality

of reference and meaning , i.e., to conceptual holism. This is its actualistic

geneology.

3.16 From the identity principle, the essence of actualism, to the absence of

form and content of the world.

3.17 And backwards too: From the separateness and objectivity of the world’s

form and content to the falsity of the identity principle. For if the world possesses

its own form, then it is a fact that there are indescernibles which are different.

3.18 The actualist must conclude that theories lack truth value – a theory cannot

be true and it cannot be false.

3.19 Hence the notion that science can progress towards truth is sensless for the

actualist. It makes as much sense as the notion that science can progress towards

acidity or triangularity.

Bechler/Ethico 27

3.191 The certainty of science is the certainty of the non-informative talk, not of

truth.

3.20 And so the actualist conquers doubt, acquires certainty, but loses the

meaning of truth and the possibility of progress towards it. On the contrary, for

the actualist history supplies further proof for the inseparability of the concepts

and theories and truth from man.

3.201 Actualism holds that concepts are inseparable from man and it uses to

show this by the fact that the concepts employed in human society change their

meanings through history. We must understand this passage from history to

inseparateness from man, and so to the non-reality of separate meanings (e.g.,

from Weber to Kuhn and Foucault etc.)

3.203 This passage is made by the principle that any property is real only if it

can be discerned (or identified). For historicity is a proof of the impossibility of

certain identification of the meaning of any concept and theory. Hence their

inseparability from man and period, and hence their non-reality.

3.21 Scientific progress must be measured by another criterions than

diminishing error and increasing truth or increasing certainty level in the truth of a

proposed theory. Usually what replaces these is usefulness.

3.211 But there is no escape in this – for propositions about usefulness must by

true or false if they are to be used as progress criteria. But since they are theoretic,

they are neither true or false, nor can they be useful themselves. Utilitarianism is

an actualistic thesis and therefore it is empty of information about man in the

world.

Bechler/Ethico 28

3.22 Since theory cannot be informative, its concepts do not refer to things in

the world. This, “electron” does not refer to electron, etc. concepts lake reference

and so all they possess is internal meaning, i.e., links to their non-referring

concepts in the theory.

3.23 The holistic theory of reference entails that truth too is necessarily

internal. A proposition can refer only to another proposition, and so it can be

compared only with another proposition and not with separate facts and world.

Truth is necessarily internal.

3.24 This is brought out in the balloon model of theories:

A system of truths constituted by implicit definitions does not touch the

ground of reality at any of its points. On the contrary, it hovers freely, and

like the solar system it carries within itself the guarantee of its stability.

(Schlick:1918:37)

3.25 On the net model of meanings:

Each concept is like a point at which several propositions intersect (i.e.,

those containing the concept); This is the knot that binds them. Our system

of science is a net in which concepts represent the knots (die Knoten) and

the propositions represent the ropes that link them. (Schlick 1918:46)

3.26 This is also the situation with Kant, only he explained also the way truths

are created as internal – by our synthesis of the whole phenomenal world from our

”representations” (vorstellungen). Since all that is externally originated are only

Bechler/Ethico 29

these “representations” and all the rest is “combined” (verbunden) from them

according to our Forms and Categories, all meanings can only be internal, i.e., any

thought or concept can only refer to another thoughts or concepts.

3.27 Kant clarified that his holism is conceptual because all the concepts of

pure reason and therefore all laws of nature (or at the general ones) are a priori

products of pure reason. For it follows from this alone that pure science of nature

is a typical holistic structure, just as it is pure reason itself:

But pure reason is a sphere so separate and self- contained, that we

cannot touch a part without affecting all the rest. We can therefore do

nothing without first determining the position; of each part, and its

relation to the rest; for, as our judgment cannot be corrected by anything

without, the validity and use of every part depends upon the relation in

which it stands to all the rest within the domain of reason. So in the

structure of an organized body, the end of each member can only be

deduced from the full conception of the whole. ( Prolegomena ,

Introduction)

3.28 Even though it is impossible to say what the meaning of a concept is

without saying also the whole system of concepts, this whole cannot be said. For

this whole conceptual system can be pointed at only from the outside, externally,

and since we cannot step out of our conceptual system anymore than we can step

out of our skin, this is impossible. Speaking about this whole can be done only by

using concepts not within it, but then the whole difficulty repeats.

Bechler/Ethico 30

3.29 If, in spite of our inability to say the whole conceptual system or to say

anything about it, it is nevertheless possible to “see” it or “present” it, then

meaning became an observable object or fact or phenomena. This is what

happened to Wittgenstein.

3.30 The actualist concludes that the meaning of a concept is its conceptual

neighborhood, and this is internal meaning. This is the logical form of a concept,

its essential meaning. Consequently, its reference is merely external, glued on,

contingent. And so, contrary to its form and meaning, which are the essence of the

concept, its reference and content are arbitrary and contingent. So its meaning is

independent of and neutral to its reference.

3.31 This neutrality shows in the non-uniqueness of content and reference: the

same concept can refer to, or represent, just any object and any relation, because

its meaning (i.e., the whole in which it sits) does not determine at all (and not just

uniquely) the objects that satisfy it, i.e., its model.

3.32 That we often think otherwise, is only a sign that we got confused and

conferred on some concepts meanings that are independent of the system. Thus,

for example, we tend to think that the observation proposition “between every two

points there is another point lying on the straight line connecting them” describes

an observed fact, independently of any conceptual system. The holist regards this

as confusion and error since all the observation-words are already part of the

whole, i.e., of the conceptual system, and so their meanings are “fixed” strictly by

and within this whole (and not the phenomena). Consequently, if the fact

Bechler/Ethico 31

described here (about the points and line) is true by virtue of three meanings then

it is a necessary truth ; but if otherwise, then it is necessarily false.

3.23 This implies that it is logically impossible for phenomena to contradict any

proposition. When we are presented with such a case we must re-assign

references, i.e., we must conclude that these things are not “points”, this relation

is not “between”, that those things are neither “straight” nor a “line” etc. this is

how phenomenal reality is constructed, or “combined”, or “synthesized”.

3.34 It is also clear that just as content and reference are not “fixed” by

meaning or form, even so experience cannot refute or change meanings : there are

infinitely many models but not even one refutation.

3.35 And the converse follows too: just as the logical form of a theory cannot

fix its contents, i.e., its models, even so no group of objects can fail to be a model,

i.e., the content, of any given theory.

3.36 Hence the infinite freedom of interpreting any set of facts: the

indeterminacy of reference entails the truth of every possible interpretation of

facts, i.e., any theory fits any set of facts.

3.37 In sum: The holistic thesis about meaning and references entails that no set

of facts or objects possesses a form or logical structure.

3.371 This consequence of holism was proved by Skolem. His aim was a

reductio ad absurdum of Hilbert’s axiomatic thesis, which is a form of the holistic

thesis.

3.38 But the holistic thesis about reference is just a simple formulation of the

actualistic thesis about meanings, i.e., the ontology which denies separate

Bechler/Ethico 32

meanings. To remind ourselves – only if meanings are separate from all language,

can propositions in any given language carry definite and unique contents. This

they do by referring to those separate meanings and contents called concepts. By

separate meaning is meant that content which is carried by a concept (not a word)

irrespective of the conceptual system in which it may happen to reside. The

actualist denies separate meanings and therefore separate propositions and

therefore separate facts. Thus Peirce:

No present actual thought has any meaning, any intellectual value for this

lies not in what is actually thought, but in what thins thought may be

connected with in representation by subsequent thoughts; so that the

meaning of a thought is altogether something virtual. It may be objected

that if no thought has any meaning, all thought is without meaning. but

this is a fallacy similar to saying, that, if in no one of the successive spaces

which a body fills there is room for motion, there is no room for motions

throughout THE WHOLE.

 At no one instant in my state of mind is there cognition or representation,

but in the relation of my states of mind at different instants there is. In

short, the Immediate... runs in a continuous stream through our lives; it is

the sum total of consciousness whose mediation which is the continuaity of

it, is brought about by a real effective force behind consciousness. 

(“Consequences of Four Incapacities”: 173)

Bechler/Ethico 33

3.381 Consequently, only if meanings are separate can a conceptual

system be false or contain a contradiction, or be refuted by facts. If meanings are

internal, i.e., determined or fixed by the whole, this automatically bars any

possible contradiction within the whole. In any axiomatic system consistency is

insured a priori.

3.39 The holistic theory of reference is a simple corollary from the

actualism of meanings, and conversely, therefore, it is the view accompanying

any version of actualism (e.g., Leibniz’s theory of monads, Berkeley’s idealism,

Kant’s critical idealism, Pierce’s pragmatism):

There are no single facts. The diamond is not a separate fact but it is

interwoven in the network of all the rest of facts. It is unsevered, although

singled part of the unitary fact. The hardness of the diamond is part of this

whole. ( Peirce, Issues of Pragmatism:1905:218)

3.40 The holistic thesis about language reflects an important impossibility

thesis: it is impossible to extract the meaning of any word (concept), in a

language. The actualist must conclude that “meaning is nonsense” ( Quine). But it

also leads to an even more extreme impossibility – it is impossible to describe

language or explain it or present its logical structure. First, the theory that would

attempt any of these must be expressed within some language, and if it is the same

language then it must be holistic and so would be unable to extracts any of its own

elements and clarify them. Second, whatever be the language it is in, it will get

implicated in an infinite regress once it attempts to explain any of its elements.

Bechler/Ethico 34

3.401 In other words, there can be no semantics for a holistic language.

3.402 Consequently the very notion of another , alternative language is senseless

in an holistic language: Describing this language and presenting it must

presuppose the original, holistic language and so the alternative would be just its

sub-language.

3.403 From the holistic to the universalist thesis: The language in which we live

is the only possible for us, and every thing that exists, i.e., the whole world, must

be described within it.

3.404 Since there is no alternative to our actual language, there is no other world

possible except the actual.

3.405 From the actualism of meaning to linguist holism, and from there through

the universalist language thesis to the meaninglessness of the notion of possible

worlds, i.e., back to the starting point of actualism.

3.406 The universalist thesis leads at once to the impossibility of semantics, and

this through the impossibility of externality: the universality of language prevents

externality to it, but any semantics demands externality.

3.407 The natural result of the universality thesis is (through the meaninglessness of

possible worlds) the thesis of universality of logic: the laws of logic are the most

general laws of actuality, that is, they are true about any possible fact in the actual

world, but not about facts external to it, i.e., not about possible worlds (because

there aren’t any). These are our synthetic a priori laws of the world (Frege,

Russell).

Bechler/Ethico 35

3.408 Wittgenstein held the universalist thesis, and so he eliminated the notion

of external speech, but got stuck in the tautological nature of the laws of logic. It

is difficult to link these two.

3.409 The characterization of analyticity as truth in all possible worlds is

forbidden for the actualist and for holders of the universalist thesis. Analyticity

must therefore be characterized by universality within the actual world only – e.g.,

the laws of logic will be analytic exactly because they are universal within this

actual world. And so they will be analytic but also synthetic.

3.410 This is the case also with Kant’s laws of his transcendental logic – our

synthetic a priori laws are both synthetic and analytic.

3.411 Truth “by virtue of logical form” as a characterization of analyticity won’t

be able to overcome the problem – if logical truths are universal, their logical

form would be universal – a form that holds for every fact in this world.

3.412 The actualist cannot characterize analyticity by non-informativity since he

denies possible worlds.

3.413 So Wittgenstein’s tautology is informative about our world since it is the

logical form of every fact in it.

3.414 Since the universalist thesis says that it is impossible to change the actual

model of language. It seems to negate the notion of language as an uninterpreted

calculus. Such a calculus would be considered an impossible abstraction.

3.415 But the calculus thesis contains a meaning holism.

Bechler/Ethico 36

4. The pseudoproblem of underdtermination

4.1 Though conceptual holism is an expression of actualism (idealism, the non-

separability of meaning etc.), the potentialist too holds a holism, but this is

another animal – we’ll name it complexity holism. For whereas the actualist

contends that conceptual holism leads to the logical impossibility of testing a

theory in experience, the potentialist holds that experiment can indeed refute a

false theory, such refutation is useless for us: since theory is a very complex

entity, consisting of several sub-theories, it is impossible for us to know exactly

what is the error in this complex.

4.2 Thus, there can be no doubt that Newton’s theory of gravitation was

refuted, but it is impossible to know which one of the many components of the

complex is to blame (geometry, optics, atom theory, electromagnetic theory, or

maybe the gravitation theory itself). This is complexity holism, not conceptual

holism.

4.3 Confusion between these two species of holism is widespread. Proponents

of complexity holism are taken to be actualists whereas they really are merely

potentialists (e.g. Duhem) and vice versa (e.g. Poincare, Popper). That is why

potentialists, who should be pessimists as to the prospect of recognizing progress

towards truth are often optimists (e.g. Duhem, Popper) but actualists whose

conceptual holism should have delivered them from the burden of such progress,

are often pessimists (e.g. Kuhn, Feyerabend, Rorty).

4.4 A closely related confusion is that between the problem of induction and

the problem of under determination. It is impossible to verify any theory because

Bechler/Ethico 37

not only is it universal but mainly because it is top complex. But conceptual

holism make it impossible to test any theory, irrespective of its complexity, since

all testing becomes then circular.

4.5 This difference is rooted in the type of truth that applies in the two cases:

Induction is a difficulty about external truth (copy or correspondence theory) but

conceptual holism admits only internal truth, and so faces no problem of

induction.

4.51 This is reflected in conventionalism (e.g., Poincare) which is the scientific

counterpart of idealism: Truth is the result of projecting the theory onto the

actualistic reality, “man legislates to nature”, as Kant’s “complete solution of

Hume’s problem” of induction goes.(Prolgomena, XX).

4.52 Actualism cannot entertain the problem of induction since it holds that all

reality is open to our gaze. Moreover, since it holds that our gaze determines

actuality (Helmholz’s spectacles), it cannot even entertain underdetermination. So

who is it that does entertain it, if it is to be distinguished from the classical

problem of induction ?

4.6 Nothing remains of underdetermination once it is realized that the

problem of induction is the exclusive pride and property of the potentialist. So

either underdetermination is just a glorified induction problem, or it does not

exist.

4.7 The only shadow that might remain of the evanescent underdetermination

problem is that of free choice – which part of theory (i.e., of the world) we should

fix (determine) arbitrarily and which let experience fix in accordance with this.

Bechler/Ethico 38

Since there is no question here of external truth, it is impossible to choose falsely,

and so all possible choices are equally true (internally).

4.8 This is then the actualist final resolution of the problem of doubt, and it is

known as conventionalism or idealism. The world “must conform to our

knowledge” (Kant, Critique, Preface to 2nd edition: XVI) which is strictly

arbitrary (our “nature” even if not choice), and so every theory must be true.

4.9 The problem of induction exists only if the world possesses its own form

and content, but if it doesn’t then not even the problem of underdetermination can

exist. For then we are what determines its form and content. Either there is a

problem of underedetermination even for the actualist for he holds that “there is

no fact of the matter”, or it is merely the old problem of induction, but then, as the

potentialist holds, there is a definite fact of the matter.

4.10 A potentialist ontology makes certainty in science an impossibility, and

the rage against such a fate is the core of actualism: For science to be possible, the

world must be fully pliable, like dough, by my concepts – the world must be my

dough, and the concepts which cut it into small cookies must be my concepts :

This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in

solipsism. For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be

said, but makes itself manifest.

The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of

language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of

my world. (Wittgenstein: Tractatus : 5.62)

Bechler/Ethico 39

“my” because it is impossible for me to entertain any doubts about the cookies that

I have created:

A concept which I have invented I can always define; for since it is not given to me either by

the nature of understanding or by experience, but is such as I have myself

deliberately made it to be, I must know what I have intended to think in using it.

(Kant, Critique : A729/B755)

as regards the formal element, we can determine our concepts in a priori intuition, in as much

as we create for ourselves in space and time, through a homogeneous synthesis,

the objects themselves. (Critique A723/B751)

We may look at these two confessions, together as clear recognition that

Kant replaced “Hume’s problem” of induction with his own problem of

underdetermination, and then solved it “completely” ( ) by his

substitution of his dough world for Newton’s granite, Jehova-created world. This

re-instituted modern actualism for classic potentialism, and this institution of

was his “Copernican turn”.

5. Ethics be good

5.1 If all that is internal is a product of our conceptual and language system, and

values are strictly internal, they are our creation and fictions and figments of our

imagination.

Bechler/Ethico 40

5.11 Kant called ethical rules “regulative” meaning they are strictly fictitious and, like

the rest of the laws of nature, they are merely formal principles by which we

construct the social part of reality.

5.12 For the actualist, in so far as the moral values and rules pretend to be normative

they must be regarded as external, but then they are meaningless, referring to what

is inaccessible to any possible experience. This conclusion from Kant was adapted

by the logical positivists:

Logical analysis, then, pronounces the verdict of

meaninglessness on any alleged knowledge that pretends to

reach above or behind experience. ... the same verdict must

be passed on all philosophy of norms, or philosophy of value,

or any ethics or esthetics as a normative discipline. For the

objective validity of a value or norm is ... not empirically

verifiable nor deducible from empirical statements; hence it

cannot be asserted in a meaningful statement at all. (Carnap

- Elimination:77 (Ayer)

5.2 The identification of the good with actuality is the prime version of modern

theodicy: it is the effect of the external vision that all values have only internal

reality and so no reality at all. This legitimizes the conclusion that all reality is

good.

5.3 Values as norms can, therefore, be only things external to the world, or things

that can be seen only on the outside:

Bechler/Ethico 41

The sense of the world must be outside the world. In the

world anything is as it is, and everything happens as it does

happen: in it no value exists - and if it did exist, it would have

no value. If there is any value that does have value, it must

lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case.

[...] So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of

ethics. Propositions can express nothing that is higher. It is

clear that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is

transcendental. (Wittgenstein - Tractatus: 5.41, 5.42)

5.4 Kant’s ethics is a strong example for the actualistic thesis that values do not exist

as separate entities in our world. He derives the ethical case as a special case of

the general actualistic thesis that there are no separate laws of nature. Since the

laws of ethics must be universal laws, they are part of the laws of nature, and so

are not separate from man. This is the full subjectivity of ethics.

5.5 But more follows: since laws of nature are forms without content, so must be the

laws of ethics. This combination of subjectivity and emptiness (contentlessness) is

the end product of Kant’s actualistic ethics.

5.6 The actualism of the logical positivists was, as in most other cases, a close

repetition of Kant’s steps while shouting and kicking him:

One of the worst errors of ethical thought lies in this belief

that the concept of the moral good is completely exhausted

by the statement of its purely formal property, that it has no

Bechler/Ethico 42

content except to be what is demanded, “what should be”.

( Schlick in Ayer: 253)

5.7 What Schlick’s ethics changes here was in replacing Kant’s formal subjectivity by

contentual subjectivity – the ethical ought became the anthropological is.

5.8 What is essential to actualistic ethics is not its emptiness (its non-informativity)

but rather its subjectivity. For in the ethical realm, since subjectivism transforms

the ought to the statistical is, the ethical element disappears, and the ethical laws

become laws of nature, just as they were with Kant.

5.81 The formality of laws in Kant, which is the outcome of his demand for the

objectivity of the laws of nature, becomes in the ethical case the emptiness of

ethical content: for since the law is an anthropological fact, it cannot contain any

command. Its information is only about the species man, instead of the ought.

5.9 Kant’s synthetic a priori implies information about man’s nature but not about the

world. What the synthetic a priori appears to say about the world is not such at all,

and so is not real information.

5.10 Just so here too: though something is said about man in an anthropological law, it

does not say anything about the ethical except declare it to be non-separate.

Hence there can be no information about the ethical.

5.11 Popper’s reaction to the Nazi phenomenon was an attack on essentialism and what

he called “historicism”. Both doctrines share as a crucial element some version of

absolutism, of essences or of laws of nature governing human history. This

shared element he regarded as the source of tyranny, the vision of a closed

Bechler/Ethico 43

society. But he failed to see that in rejecting them he was committing himself to

relativism and therefore to some kind of radical nihilism, both about values and

about laws of physical nature. For both must go together and stay together.

5.01 The birth of 20th century ethical relativism was linked heavily to Weberian

historicism, and this one had its roots in the attack on the absolutism of values, an

absolutism that grounded the French Revolution.( Strauss : Natural Right :13-14).

5.12 Popper thus belongs to the tradition of the attack on social utopias, on the social

revolutionaries, the social reformers in the name of progress towards a closer

actualization of some ideal Good. Popper thus belongs to some conservative

right wing political view.

5.13 By attacking Plato’s demand to base social reform on the reality of separate Ideas,

Popper placed himself right in the middle of the modern anti-humanist

philosophy of Nietzsche and Heidegger and post-modernist existentialism. He

became, unwittingly, an actualist who was not only against the notion of

absolutism but also against the separateness of the Good and Justice and Truth.

He failed to see the tight link between absoluteness, which he hated, and

separateness, which he could not reject without becoming a nihilist.

5.14 If Popper held that relativism does entail nihilism, but was also against Platonic

essentialism, then he was anti-relativist and also anti-essentialist, which means

that, just as the round square, he was nothing.

5.15 But even more perplexing is the position of Leo Strauss. He regarded a return

to Plato as the only or at least the best program we can choose for the restoration

of western culture. But he also could not stomach Plato’s notion of the separation

Bechler/Ethico 44

of the Ideas. So he held that for Socrates, his moral beacon, the good was not a

separate entity, not a being, but merely

the good is primarily what is good for a given intellectual in

these or those circumstances, but being is primarily the

‘what’ of a class or tribe of beings. ( Xenophon’s

Socrates :119)

Moreover, for Socrates all good was strictly relative, a good for something:

Things are good in relation to needs; something that does not

fulfill any need cannot therefore be known to be good.( ibid.

75; cf. City and Man: 29)

But since Strauss retained the Platonic view that the good is the causal element

in our practical life, and yet this good turned out to be a mere class concept, not a

being at all, he was boxed in the conclusion that “ the class, or the class character

is the cause par excellence”. ( City and Man: 19) And, as is only to be expected,

it turns out that the root of this confusion is, strange as it may sound , Strauss’

passion for certainty. The concept of class he calls ‘the whole’ and he says that

since “the roots of the whole are hidden” it follows that “The elusiveness of the

whole necessarily affects the knowledge of every part” (ibid:19, 21 ) and therefore

the Socratic way is imperfect and is in need of some supplement.

5.16 The philosophy-of-nature basis of modern actualistic ethics turns out to be the

same one we meet in Hobbes and Spinoza, i.e., the identity of force and the

motion it causes. Thus Hobbes pointed out that “power” may be attributed to a

thing only when it is actualized by it:

Bechler/Ethico 45

powers, as I said in the first article, are but conditional,

namely, the agent has power if it be applied to a patient,

and the patient has power, if it be applied to an agent;

otherwise neither of them have power, nor can the

accidents which are in them severally, be properly called

powers. (Hobbes EW I )

5.16.1 Hobbes also made it clear that such actual power is identical with the motion

caused by it:

all active power consists of motion also; and that power is

not a certain accident, which differs from all acts, but is,

indeed an act, namely motion. (ibid., ?6)

5.17 In the same vein Spinoza attacked the Cartesians who

distinguish between the thing itself and its conatus by

which each object is conserved, although they do not know

what they mean by the term conatus. For these two things,

although they are distinguished by reason, or by words,

which fact deceives them, are not to be distinguished in

the thing itself. ( Spinoza Cog.Met.I, 6, p.134)

5.18 The actuality of strength, Nietzche explained, is necessarily the activity of

overpowering, conquering, overthrowing, mastering, looking for antagonism and

triumph, and the reason is that

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A quantum of force is just such a quantum of movement,

will, action – rather it is nothing else than just those very

phenomena of moving, willing, acting… (Genealogy §13(656).

There is no potential energy, all energy is kinetic, actualized energy. Hence to say,

as scientists use to do, that “‘Force moves, force causes’ and so on” is in fact a

logical tautology, masking the fact that our

whole science is […] a dupe of the tricks of language, and

has never succeeded in getting rid of that superstitious

changeling “the subject” (the atom, to give another

instance, is such a changeling, just as the Kantian “thing-it-

itself”). (ibid:657)

So, just as there is no such thing as “force” to cause and change motions, so there

is no thing-in-itself and no atoms that cause the phenomena, and no “subject (or,

to use popular language, the soul)” (ibid.657) to cause and decide human action.

Hence there is no logical sense in the notion of checked or contained or

unexpressed strength: “To demand that it should not express itself as strength” is

an absurdity, and a logical one at that – it is a self-contradictory demand, since

that strength is always and only expressed strength is a tautology.

5.19 This is the actualism that is at work as the ground of the modernist attack

on the “subject.” This notion is an outcome of “the fundamental fallacies of

reason” which got “petrified” in the grammar of language, to the effect that “all

working [is] conditioned by a worker, by a ‘subject’ ” (ibid.). And so, “popular

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morality separates strength from the expression of strength” because it is using the

“subject” ontology:

As though behind the strong man there existed some

indifferent neutral substratum, which enjoyed a caprice

and option as to whether or not it should express strength.

But there is no such substratum, there is no “being” behind

doing, working, becoming; “the doer” is a mere appendage

to the action. The action is everything. (ibid.).

“The action is everything”, i.e., there is nothing real behind or underneath action

and actuality, hence the morality of restrain is senseless, based as it is on a false

ontology. Obviously, it follows that there is no such thing as will and choice, free

or otherwise. The “belief in a neutral, free-choosing ‘subject’ ” took root merely

because it proved to be “the best dogma in the world” for the self-justification of

the weak via “the interpretation of weakness as freedom, of being this, or being

that, as merit” (ibid.658).

5.20 Nietzsche regarded Kant’s notion of “pure” understanding etc. not just as

typical distortion of actuality but, rather (or maybe by virtue of being such

distortion) as contradiction. He urged to

guard ourselves more carefully against this mythology of

dangerous ancient ideas, which has set up a “pure, will-

less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge”; let us guard

ourselves from the tentacles of such contradictory lifeless

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“pure reason,” “absolute spirituality,” “knowledge-in-

itself”:( GM :744)

That is, there is no pure will, pure thought, pure anything, since in actuality

everything is mixed up and interacts and relates to many other things. This comes

out best in his summing up of his theory of the eye: it is supposed to think, but it

is an unthinkable eye since it is supposed also to have “no direction at all”,

meaning that it is supposed not to have any “active interpretive functions”.

(Obviously, it cannot be Kant that is attacked here, but then who is the target?)

Nietzsche pointed out that these are just the functions that do the “abstracting”

which constitutes thought (they are “the means by which “abstract” seeing

became seeing something” (745)). So it seems that thought is by essence

perspectival, the name he now called this abstracting activity of the thinking eye:

There is only a seeing from a perspective, only a “knowing”

from a perspective, and the more emotions we express

over a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the

something, the more complete will be our “idea” of that

thing, our “objectivity.”( GM 745)

These “perspectives” are in actuality the various interests which drive the soul,

such as its “emotions”, and so thinking is in actuality emotive in an essential way.

Hence “objectivity” is just so much subjectivity, and the more the greater the

objectivity, whereas eliminating such emotive perspectivism is in effect

eliminating thought as such:

Bechler/Ethico 49

But the elimination of the will altogether, the switching off

of the emotions all and sundry, granted that we could do

so, what ! would not that be called intellectual castration?

(ibid.)

Objectivity is, then, the infinite plurality or multiplicity of the will (or desire)-

directed views of something, for these are all there is and so all that is possible for

human reason. This was, then, the real objection to Kant, i.e., that his kind of

perspectival model of reason was too poor, abstracting from will and desire which

are always there, allowing the eye just one, universal pair of coloured glasses, the

same for all eyes of humanity.

How can we reconcile Nietzsche’s super-perspectivism with his disdain of

skepticism and then with his attack on Kant’s “intellectual integrity” for not

having been rigorously skeptic? Only one way is open for the first puzzle – he had

equal disdain for the notion of a reality independent of the eye, a reality with its

own separate form. Hence the outcome that all views are equally true and that the

more various and numerous they are, the greater is the resultant “objectivity.”

Doubt is impossible, skepticism is an absurdity, error is a nonsense, and all

demand for consistency is basically meaningless.

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