Email to Peter Caws, April 21 2006

Hi Prof Caws, attached to this email is the manifesto I told you about when I saw you last. I thought you might find it interesting. Look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Dave Backer


The following document was attached to the email that Backer sent to Caws.




PhiPos Synopsis As of Now

Philosophical positivism is a school of thought that deals with the following:
1) Meta-philosophical questions, such as: What do we do when we do philosophy? Or, a more normative question: What should we do when we do philosophy? What is philosophy and what isn’t philosophy? How does philosophy and philosophical activity relate to the world, how has it come to that particular place, and what’s to come?
2) Personal questions such, as: What does it mean to be a philosopher? How should we approach our philosophical research and how should the academy relate to the world at large?
3) More general questions, such as: What does it mean to be and be human? What is the situation of the human in our world as we experience life?

Philosophical positivism is characterized by particular arguments relating to these general questions. The following are short positivist responses to them.
1) The history of thought, over the past few generations, has produced a markedly deconstructive variety of theories that have taken apart our philosophical methods, view points, and practices piece by piece. All the ideas (constructive and deconstructive) that have shaped the history of thought up till now compose what positivists call the field of ideas. Rather than deconstructive, philosophical positivism is a reconstructive philosophical approach. Positivists argue that when we do philosophy, we should reconstruct—that is, we should look at the various and sundry ideas that have been created via construction and deconstruction (the field) over time and find similarities (what might be called conceptual correlates) in what seem to be disparate areas. These areas are currently (and hurtfully) separated by walls built by philosophical traditions. Postivists believe these walls are transparent, and that the seriousness with which they are currently taken in the philosophical community disrupts philosophical activity, and has muddled what it means to be a philosopher.
2) Reconstruction requires a particular attitude towards ideas and people that is inclusive, and views the production of human thought as a unified whole with many different aspects. Particular attributes are necessary for maintaining this view point. Being a philosopher, positivism says, means having a philosophical attitude. This attitude allows one to do reconstructive philosophy, as well be open-minded, serenely confused, and interested in the entire field of ideas. An important positivistic claim here is that if you do not have arguments to discount a particular way of thinking that meet your own standards of philosophical rigor, then you are not justified in discounting that way of thinking—to others or to yourself. In fact, we believe that it is counter-philosophical do have a sarcastic or closed-minded attitude that is not justified by rigorous argumentation. Therefore, positivists claim, if you persist in maintaining unexamined preference in philosophical research, writing, teaching, and interpreting and convey those unjustified opinions to others then you have lost the philosophical attitude and are not a philosopher.
3) Positivism predicts that the finding of conceptual correlates in seemingly disparate areas of the field of ideas will produce new and interesting conclusions about what it means to be human. When symmetry is found between different locuses of thought within the field we may be in a position to conclude that a greater, more important facet of the human situation has been found. Therefore, reconstruction aims generally to reconstruct a theory of being human.






Essay
Seeing the field of activity, the wanting to take elements seriously and put them together to say something about being. Philosophical positivism is about an approach, an understanding, open-mindedness, connections. We've deconstructed enough! We need to put ourselves back together! This is the work of philosophers.
We've exhausted deconstruction. It has led us to ‘clarity’ of thought, but has it brought us any closer to that which we seek? To the knowledge that drives us? What it means to be human? We’ve taken things apart in our paranoia and, I think, in our passionate deconstructive search of language, we've lost sight of something. We’ve lost sight of why we started deconstructing in the first place—what led us to begin this incredible task of taking apart language and method. We’ve lost sight of the reason why we started doing philosophy in the first place. Now we need to blaze a new trail with our old companions, the traditions of philosophical thought. We need to join together and observe the richness of the field of ideas with open eyes for each of its components.

What is the field of ideas? It is the landscape containing each of the conceptual structures that have developed over the history of human thought. It is the frothing, conflicting amusement park of realisms, mysticisms, logical hierarchies that have been offered by thinkers over time. Some of these structures are those that were constructed to deconstruct earlier theories. Over time, theories have been offered, and theories about the problems with these theories have been offered. The latter are those deconstructive philosophies that alert us to the ambiguities of language, the inability of language to express what we want to express and express it honestly. These stand in the same company of those ancient, medieval, and modern theories that were supposed to be dissolved by the deconstructive ones. Now we stand at a point in history where we can see a tradition of deconstruction and survey the territory. This vantage point must be taken advantage of. It must be utilized. We must now reconstruct, observing all theories up till now and piecing together the disparate sections to produce new ideas within and without our home theoretical territories.
The seers of the field must let no unargued opinion close their minds. We must not be blinded by unkempt and rusty idols passed down to us by our myopic teachers. Cast aside presupposed conceptions of theoretical legitimacy—our search should be one for knowledge and elucidation independent of the halls of tradition. We must seek to learn in whatever direction our thoughts take us, and we must seek the relationships between different ideas: for these connections are the strongest bonds between the progressive thoughts and the reliable, but slightly battered and worn-out positions of thinkers past. To seek in this way is to enter into research without the blindfolds of unjustified preference. To help others seek in this way is to teach what it means to enter research thus.

To seek in this way, to see the field of ideas, to reconstruct properly we must revisit what it means to be philosophical, to be a philosopher—what it means to possess a philosophical attitude (PA).
The PA is an attitude of wonderment; it is a gentle, naive, paradoxical trait. Possessing entails the love of wisdom, whether this is the sparkling pattern of lights on a building, the relationships between mathematical formulae, logical proofs, or inspiring bits of literature, art, conversation, or pop culture. The philosophical attitude is an attitude that condones meeting each and every medium, school of thought, or person on its own ground. The philosophical attitude is curious about the world, and therefore seeks to find out from each and every disparate locus of thought what that locus has to offer. It slanders nothing without rigorous argument—for every idea has a unique place in this world no matter its membership to particular traditions or derivations.
The PA precedes tradition. No matter what your school of thought, it is true that every member of any school (whether they be conflicting or in agreement) thinks about the world in a particular way. The philosophical attitude is held by those who don’t purport to be the members of schools or traditions. The PA has no prerequisite other than being: it requires perceptiveness, breath, awareness, interest, curiosity, and an embracing of confusion. It is prone to seeking without hesitation. It moves toward every stimulus. It asks, it responds to the questions it poses to itself.
The PA seeks to generate responses to questions; it seeks things to find things to say about the world. It observes, asks, synthesizes, ambles through confusion with a human-like manner of serenity. It is skeptical, it is decisive, it laughs. It thrives on absurdity and knit-picking through contradiction. It sorts out. It mulls over. It follows any path, it makes random travel plans. It is not philosophy per say, it is the origin of philosophy—the germ or bacteria that causes philosophy. Philosophy is a symptom of the philosophical attitude. It is the seed that has bloomed through the history of abstraction, of writing, of creation—from the authors of the Gita to authors of Finnegan’s Wake or Principia Mathematica. It is Wittgenstein pacing in front of Russell. It is Sartre scratching in a notebook during WWII. It is Socrates sleeping on the street. It is Rorty ejecting. It is Jesus struggling. It is held by those frustrated with being and are aware of this feeling, it is the mindset of the fascinated, of the overwhelmed. It is the desire to be familiar with that which is unfamiliar. It is the geyser of theory, the praiser of beauty, the creator of logical systems, the motivation behind each and every question asked—it is a kind of child-function in all of us. Our amazement with life, our desire to pursue its expression, its origin, its argument. It is with all of us: writers, readers, continentals, Marxists, realists, sketpcis, fanatics, Nietzscheans, Quineans, and Hegelians. It is why we are here, and we must nurture it. It is the root and banner of our new Positivism. The philosophical attitude is in teenagers, the elderly, the unemployed, the rich, the destitute, and the very young. As philosophical positivists we remember and cherish this, we mind everyone around us: those in line for bagels, at conferences, in classrooms, when getting gas. We live this. We laugh wherever we go; we travel when walking down the block.
As positivists, we take this mindset and we let it loose on the conventions that have formed around us, on the supposed walls built by traditions of pageantry, disinterest, and close-mindedness, all born from paranoia. We must allow ourselves peek over those walls, dig underneath them, break them down if necessary. It is imperative that we do so! It is the PA that will guide us through them, around them, and under them. PhiPoz is for anyone curious, it concerns us all, academics and non-academics. There will be positivists who have never read Descartes, never debated Plato, never learned the lingo or jargon of traditional philosophical schools. They might be shop-owners, train conductors, little sisters, enemies, soldiers, politicians. And there will be even more entrenched in the tradition who plug their ears to the call for a broadening of perspective.
As philosophers have work to do. Those hear this call will seek not only to see the field of ideas, but see the vast field of people and teach them. Be open not only to ideas, to your fellow people for they are the holders of ideas as well—remember that ideas lurk within every corner, every unsuspecting place, the dirtiest vile hallways of your world. These should not be left unexplored.
Positivism is having the attitude. In our field, it is about sewing together the fractured traditions separated by accidental rusting of time, but also the reaching out to those in the world who want to know and ask and be a part of what it means to be human. It is our job to help empower them by showing them what they are capable of, showing them they have the spark, showing them how to nurture it. How to communicate. How to be critical. How to be curious and confused and creative. It is our job to reconstruct, to connect, to be and be open. To be positive.
At this point in the development of the idea, I wish to offer merely a hint, a gesture, a suggestion, a question, an idea. I would ask that, for this session, you put away your tools, your knives, and mortars and pestles that you have accrued from your philosophical training, and let what I am saying infuse your method; see if it resonates. The reason you do philosophy is because you curious, because you are open, because you have a thirst for understanding and amazement with being alive, a fascination with it. Why else would you do philosophy and care about it? You are naturally a positivist. To ignore that is to ignore the foundations of your philosophical inquiry. What I ask you to consider is that this basic attitude be reinvigorated in your philosophical pursuits. Do not let unexamined opinions stand in the way of your fascinations, do not allow the facade of your teacher's expertise sway you completely away from that which interests you. And if you do have arguments as to why particular styles, streams, or ideas are unfruitful, then state them, offer them to us, talk them out.
I am not demanding that we be limp and passive in our engagement with ideas. I am asking that we look at ideas, rather than dismiss them. Think of them critically, originally, and as an inspired thinker looking for the answers that you claim to seek. Let us look at everything with our own interests in mind, with an attitude that something interesting may be there, something we can use.
If you say "well, I just do" then you are no philosopher. If you are a philosopher, I expect more than just a rote statement of unexamined preference. You may maintain this stubbornness, but I will not call you a philosopher if you avoid my question as to why you feel this way. And you will know that you have missed out on the opportunity to have new ideas and ways of thinking about your own questions as a result of your maintenance of theses unexamined opinions. It will be you who lacks the creativity to dissolve problems, you who are limited—you limit yourself philosophically by limiting the terrain your thought covers. Perhaps I can understand my problem of logic by reading Sartre; maybe I can ask a question about Kierkegaard if I understood the behavior of modus ponens and the law of excluded middle. "So Do I have to go read Heidegger? How can I do that is there's so much to know and read in the other traditions? What do you expect of me? We aren't all able to be you; we all can't find connections in disparate areas, and why should we?"
My response: remember why you started doing philosophy in the first place. Remember why you kept at it. Why you cared about it at all. All I am saying is wonder, don't let your first instinct towards something new be a discarding one. Ask yourself why you're closed off to particular approaches and see if your response meets your own criteria for consistency, coherency, and validity...see if it meets the criteria you use to criticize others. Wonder what philosophy is in general, it if it's important to so, why this is so.
And, if nothing else, do not teach your students or your peers or your family members or those you interact with most remotely your closed-mindedness. Do not set their preferences, because they revere and respect you and will consider seriously the things you might have left unexamined but still express habitually.
Also, unlikely places might be familiar ones. Just places where you might not have drawn a connection before you can connect certain types of analytic philosophy to one another to solve problems in a single stream.
//but wait, can’t a positivist still develop the streams? Isn’t that the idea? I can work entirely within the analytic tradition and be positive to continental work? That continental work can influence me although that influence may only be manifest in the language of quantifiers, antecedents, and rigor? (And this might not be a call for every one. We need people continuing to work on the streams, developing them and maintaining them. What I am saying is that there should be a group of people who walk away from the streams and see where and how they all feed into the ocean of thought. But I will stand firm in my claim that if you maintain unexamined preferences towards certain ways of thinking and have no arguments that meet your own standards to dismiss these ways of thinking, and further if you teach these rotted opinions to your students and peers, then you are not a philosopher. I do not think everyone has to be a positivist. But I think that if you call yourself a philosopher, you should act like one.)
If you are so militant against this, then ignore it like you might other silly or uninteresting streams and continue on with your opaque vision. What I ask is that you do not leave your own stones unturned. What I ask is that you come up with a response to my question that meets your own rigorous standards. Do not cheat yourself out of philosophy; do not cheat those around you by closing them off. Then, go on and do what you will. For the rest of us, let's put something together! Let's paint ourselves with the hues mixed by the demolition and examination of the deconstructive movements so popular till now, let's dip our brushes in it and see what pictures of this world we can produce. I think we will be surprised at how interesting, unique, and creative we can be. Let's reconstruct! Let's be philosophical! Let's be Positivists!