- Joined
- Nov 17, 2021
- Messages
- 293
- Basic Beliefs
- Theoretical Agnostic / Pragmatic Atheist
-
Features
-
Friends of IIDBFriends Recovering from Religion United Coalition of Reason Infidel Guy
Forums Council of Ex-Muslims Rational Skepticism
Social Networks Internet Infidels Facebook Page IIDB Facebook Group
The Archives IIDB Archive Secular Café Archive
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
The Death of the God of Leibniz: Deconstruction in a Nuthouse
- Thread starter 1Heidegger1!
- Start date
Michael S. Pearl
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2004
- Messages
- 592
I very much enjoyed this piece. I enjoyed it because it is interesting. It is interesting because it opens up any number of conceptual possibilities - which is to say alternative ways of thinking and expressing. Or, to put it another way, the article invites all sorts of questions and musings starting with these questions from the introduction, for instance:
What follows are some initial musings stimulated by the article.
In a sense, those questions from the introduction are answered later on in the article with this remark:
The idea that "Justice is ... incalculable" strongly suggests that no "math system" can ever suffice to result in justice. This is to say that the incalculability of justice serves to strike through the very notion of there being a mathematical approach (much less a solution) for encapsulating the philosophical situation with regards to the very notion of justice.
A mathematics of the incalculable simply serves to note and establish that there are limits to math which math does not and cannot overcome. If justice is incalculable, then justice is beyond the limits of what math provides. This is akin to what Wittgenstein said in his Lecture on Ethics about knowledge being a matter of science, there being no science of ethics such that ethics is essentially nonsense, and yet, as the inquiry into what is valuable and important, ethics is beyond science just as wisdom exceeds knowledge. Math might be useful in the pursuit of justice - but only to some limited extent, at which point something else, something in addition to, something non-mathematical that exceeds mathematics is required.
What does "Justice is ... absolute" mean? Especially if justice requires something beyond or in addition to calculation? One way of appreciating (or interpreting) the purported absoluteness of justice is as a claim for the reality of justice despite its being incalculable, despite its being something other than the as yet empirical. But, then, where is this real justice? It is certainly - even if only vaguely or dreamingly - in the minds of (some) experiencing beings. For that matter, it can be noted well that were there no minds there would be no justice. Justice is mind-dependent, but the condition of being absolute interjects an independence to justice such that justice is not defined by or limited to the conceptions of minds even if justice is dependent on minds.
This is where the notion of "Justice is ... infinite" becomes relevant. Each mind and all minds together are finite, and justice as infinite reiterates the independence of justice that spills out beyond its dependence on minds.
All that is fine even though it leaves justice as apparently necessarily vague. That vagueness gets mitigated by specifying a context which associates justice with "responsibility toward the singular, unique individual." Such a context is in opposition to more utilitarian social notions that are often the basis for many if not most laws and many approaches to ethics/morality.
The expressed notion of responsibility lacks a similar contextualization. Is it a social responsibility? Or is it a personal responsibility? If it is only or primarily a social responsibility that gets bestowed (or demanded) so as to instruct individuals, then individuals who "simply follow a rule blindly ... are acting as ... automatons, not ... ethical beings."
On the other hand, justice could depend (with or without being demanded) primarily on individual responsibility, on individuals being responsible and response-able. Indeed, each individual most often encounters situations in which there is an opportunity to respond to an other individual as that specific "singular, unique individual." If it is individual rather than social responsibility which is primary, then justice as individual responsibility can serve as the seed for a broader social response. However, it might well be that the social response cannot even conceivably manage to keep as its focus "the singular, unique individual." It might only ever be individuals who can keep that focus.
Nonetheless, in both the individual and the social responsibility cases, there is no calculation, no equation, no recipe, no algorithm for determining what response would be (most) correct, effective, and proper so as to be (most) just. So long as automatons are not sufficient for justice, then there is only personal judgment. Hence, the personal judgment event is the ultimate focus with regards to justice.
The idea of justice as an always asymptotic pursuit is unnecessary even if pursuit of justice is never "finally achieved" either socially or as a personal endeavor. This ties in with the notion of justice as infinite. Rather than infinite, justice can be described instead as indeterminate. If/when justice is achieved in some situation, justice is effected by those judgments which transform the indeterminate to a determinate state. That transformation occurs according to the creativity referred to as judgment. Whether or not that creativity results in an instance of justice, justice must be created to be instantiated. And even if justice manages to get actually instantiated in any situation, the individual responsibility to instantiate justice is never finished for so long as the individual continues to be. For so long as the individual continues to be, there are always other opportunities for attempting to instantiate justice.
The point about justice as indeterminate and personal and needing to be created, rather than as infinite and mind-independent and already always in some way determinate while infinite so as to be awaiting discovery, is to highlight judgment as the consideration of possibilities (the superposition to continue with your occasional quantum reference) constitutive of any situation from which justice might emerge. Of course, the ability to conceive of possibilities is itself a matter of creativity with that ability - as is the case with all abilities - being a matter of and a product of personal development.
The ability to think in terms of and anticipate possibilities requires and is dependent on analysis by means of reasoning (at some level of thinking) and logic - and experience, which, of course, includes the experience of having failed despite the justice intended. But even the experience of having achieved an instantiation of justice is, at best, only temporarily satisfying in that any such satisfaction is expected soon to be replaced by an awareness of justice requiring still further creation for instantiation in still other situations.
For all that, the term justice remains vague and indefinite and open to innumerable descriptions. It is a consequence of language that by giving a notion as broad and vague as justice a term that names the notion, the notion is made to seem more definite and more determinate than it is or than it ever has been described. At the end of the day, most people most of the time prefer certainty over uncertainty thereby rendering preferable terms that seem more definite and definitive. It might be that vague and broad terms such as justice are best presented in combinations of positive and apophatic expressions. That does not eliminate uncertainty, but it can help to limit the characteristically indeterminate so that it seems more manageable.
My question is what sort of math system best encapsulates this philosophical situation? Leibniz’s relational math? Gödel’s incompleteness theorems? Or do we need to invent a new math system?
What follows are some initial musings stimulated by the article.
In a sense, those questions from the introduction are answered later on in the article with this remark:
Justice is not a law, a judge, or a state apparatus. Justice is an absolute, infinite, and incalculable demand for total responsibility toward the singular, unique individual.
The idea that "Justice is ... incalculable" strongly suggests that no "math system" can ever suffice to result in justice. This is to say that the incalculability of justice serves to strike through the very notion of there being a mathematical approach (much less a solution) for encapsulating the philosophical situation with regards to the very notion of justice.
A mathematics of the incalculable simply serves to note and establish that there are limits to math which math does not and cannot overcome. If justice is incalculable, then justice is beyond the limits of what math provides. This is akin to what Wittgenstein said in his Lecture on Ethics about knowledge being a matter of science, there being no science of ethics such that ethics is essentially nonsense, and yet, as the inquiry into what is valuable and important, ethics is beyond science just as wisdom exceeds knowledge. Math might be useful in the pursuit of justice - but only to some limited extent, at which point something else, something in addition to, something non-mathematical that exceeds mathematics is required.
What does "Justice is ... absolute" mean? Especially if justice requires something beyond or in addition to calculation? One way of appreciating (or interpreting) the purported absoluteness of justice is as a claim for the reality of justice despite its being incalculable, despite its being something other than the as yet empirical. But, then, where is this real justice? It is certainly - even if only vaguely or dreamingly - in the minds of (some) experiencing beings. For that matter, it can be noted well that were there no minds there would be no justice. Justice is mind-dependent, but the condition of being absolute interjects an independence to justice such that justice is not defined by or limited to the conceptions of minds even if justice is dependent on minds.
This is where the notion of "Justice is ... infinite" becomes relevant. Each mind and all minds together are finite, and justice as infinite reiterates the independence of justice that spills out beyond its dependence on minds.
All that is fine even though it leaves justice as apparently necessarily vague. That vagueness gets mitigated by specifying a context which associates justice with "responsibility toward the singular, unique individual." Such a context is in opposition to more utilitarian social notions that are often the basis for many if not most laws and many approaches to ethics/morality.
The expressed notion of responsibility lacks a similar contextualization. Is it a social responsibility? Or is it a personal responsibility? If it is only or primarily a social responsibility that gets bestowed (or demanded) so as to instruct individuals, then individuals who "simply follow a rule blindly ... are acting as ... automatons, not ... ethical beings."
On the other hand, justice could depend (with or without being demanded) primarily on individual responsibility, on individuals being responsible and response-able. Indeed, each individual most often encounters situations in which there is an opportunity to respond to an other individual as that specific "singular, unique individual." If it is individual rather than social responsibility which is primary, then justice as individual responsibility can serve as the seed for a broader social response. However, it might well be that the social response cannot even conceivably manage to keep as its focus "the singular, unique individual." It might only ever be individuals who can keep that focus.
Nonetheless, in both the individual and the social responsibility cases, there is no calculation, no equation, no recipe, no algorithm for determining what response would be (most) correct, effective, and proper so as to be (most) just. So long as automatons are not sufficient for justice, then there is only personal judgment. Hence, the personal judgment event is the ultimate focus with regards to justice.
4. The “To-Come” (À-Venir): The Infinite Asymptotic Journey
Because Justice is incalculable, Derrida states that Justice is never fully present. We can never arrive at a historical moment and say, “We have finally achieved a perfectly just society, the calculation is finished.”
Instead, Derrida calls Justice “to-come” (à-venir). It is a structural horizon that is eternally arriving but never fully here.
The idea of justice as an always asymptotic pursuit is unnecessary even if pursuit of justice is never "finally achieved" either socially or as a personal endeavor. This ties in with the notion of justice as infinite. Rather than infinite, justice can be described instead as indeterminate. If/when justice is achieved in some situation, justice is effected by those judgments which transform the indeterminate to a determinate state. That transformation occurs according to the creativity referred to as judgment. Whether or not that creativity results in an instance of justice, justice must be created to be instantiated. And even if justice manages to get actually instantiated in any situation, the individual responsibility to instantiate justice is never finished for so long as the individual continues to be. For so long as the individual continues to be, there are always other opportunities for attempting to instantiate justice.
The point about justice as indeterminate and personal and needing to be created, rather than as infinite and mind-independent and already always in some way determinate while infinite so as to be awaiting discovery, is to highlight judgment as the consideration of possibilities (the superposition to continue with your occasional quantum reference) constitutive of any situation from which justice might emerge. Of course, the ability to conceive of possibilities is itself a matter of creativity with that ability - as is the case with all abilities - being a matter of and a product of personal development.
The ability to think in terms of and anticipate possibilities requires and is dependent on analysis by means of reasoning (at some level of thinking) and logic - and experience, which, of course, includes the experience of having failed despite the justice intended. But even the experience of having achieved an instantiation of justice is, at best, only temporarily satisfying in that any such satisfaction is expected soon to be replaced by an awareness of justice requiring still further creation for instantiation in still other situations.
For all that, the term justice remains vague and indefinite and open to innumerable descriptions. It is a consequence of language that by giving a notion as broad and vague as justice a term that names the notion, the notion is made to seem more definite and more determinate than it is or than it ever has been described. At the end of the day, most people most of the time prefer certainty over uncertainty thereby rendering preferable terms that seem more definite and definitive. It might be that vague and broad terms such as justice are best presented in combinations of positive and apophatic expressions. That does not eliminate uncertainty, but it can help to limit the characteristically indeterminate so that it seems more manageable.