Re: Emerson's "Nominalist and Realist."
Man has a dual nature, at once particular and catholic. Our empirical nature is forever mired in the minutiae of particulars. Every sensation I have is of a particular thing at a particular time, from a particular angle. Yet my mind is compelled to draw inferences from particulars, to abstract from specifics into general characteristics. Emerson said Truth is in the Universals. That would explain why we want to draw these general conclusions from specific instances. We see movies like Gladiator, and even though the events are not historically accurate, there is a truth to them, because they represent Rome. They are not what happened in Rome, but what Rome was. They are true in character, if not in fact.
But there is a problem with inferring these universals from the particulars. Emerson's image of the arc is a nice one. From the slightest arc we see the whole circle. But the arc is not a circle. Our desire to universalize is symmetrical. We want things to be balanced and distributive. But what is true of the part is not necessarily so of the whole. My parents have an Apple computer that never works right. They never make a big deal out of it, but I know they think that Apple's are crap. But we all do that. We make leaps of intuition from the few experiences we have to general conclusions. Hume would be mortified.
Maybe he wouldn't. It seems like the human ability to generalize might be the species-making difference between us and other animals. Emerson said that nature is in the particulars. The day-to-day actions of work and production and survival and procreation, the actual events are what make up our lives. If we spent too long in the thrall of universals, he claimed, we would have frozen or starved long ago. On the other hand, if we spend all of our time in the details, in the minutiae, we never get an idea of the larger picture. If we spend all day tilling our own plot, we never look out on the horizon. It is our ability to think in abstract terms that pushes us to evolve and improve. It is what separates us from the animals.
Emerson echoed Hume in wishing that we could reason free from moods. This would certainly allow us to take things as they are, not imbuing them unduly with character or generality or desirability or aversion. But Spock said it best, "Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not its end."
The real wisdom is in being able to see the character in its complexity.
Man has a dual nature, at once particular and catholic. Our empirical nature is forever mired in the minutiae of particulars. Every sensation I have is of a particular thing at a particular time, from a particular angle. Yet my mind is compelled to draw inferences from particulars, to abstract from specifics into general characteristics. Emerson said Truth is in the Universals. That would explain why we want to draw these general conclusions from specific instances. We see movies like Gladiator, and even though the events are not historically accurate, there is a truth to them, because they represent Rome. They are not what happened in Rome, but what Rome was. They are true in character, if not in fact.
But there is a problem with inferring these universals from the particulars. Emerson's image of the arc is a nice one. From the slightest arc we see the whole circle. But the arc is not a circle. Our desire to universalize is symmetrical. We want things to be balanced and distributive. But what is true of the part is not necessarily so of the whole. My parents have an Apple computer that never works right. They never make a big deal out of it, but I know they think that Apple's are crap. But we all do that. We make leaps of intuition from the few experiences we have to general conclusions. Hume would be mortified.
Maybe he wouldn't. It seems like the human ability to generalize might be the species-making difference between us and other animals. Emerson said that nature is in the particulars. The day-to-day actions of work and production and survival and procreation, the actual events are what make up our lives. If we spent too long in the thrall of universals, he claimed, we would have frozen or starved long ago. On the other hand, if we spend all of our time in the details, in the minutiae, we never get an idea of the larger picture. If we spend all day tilling our own plot, we never look out on the horizon. It is our ability to think in abstract terms that pushes us to evolve and improve. It is what separates us from the animals.
Emerson echoed Hume in wishing that we could reason free from moods. This would certainly allow us to take things as they are, not imbuing them unduly with character or generality or desirability or aversion. But Spock said it best, "Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not its end."
The real wisdom is in being able to see the character in its complexity.
bloodfart:
B+