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Reality, or, The Philosophy of Yes and No

 ©2020 by Joel Marks*   A Tribute to Joel J. Kupperman Most people, I imagine, think they know the world or reality directly. You open your eyes (or touch something, etc.) and there it is. That was certainly what I assumed at first too. What could be more obvious? But now I believe that what we experience is very far removed from reality. Or, more precisely, I think the answer to the question “Do we know reality?” is “Yes and no.” In fact, what I am about to talk about could be considered as much a demonstration of the Philosophy of Yes and No as an essay on our knowledge of reality.               My first step away from the naïve belief in knowledge of reality came in college, when I was introduced to the concept of the visual field by psychology professor J. J. Gibson at Cornell University. Ironically he intended to use that concept to  debunk  the idea that we  don’t  know reality directly, since, he argued, the visual (or other sensory) field – for example, objects further away app
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Like Ships Passing in the Day

Communication is a constant problem for me. It’s not because I have any trouble articulating my thoughts. Far from it: Try and silence me! And I am forever striving to speak or write precisely, with continual self-editing. Nor do I have a hearing problem, and I always strive to listen intently. The problem is that, as both a wordsmith and a philosopher, I have become aware of the ambiguity inherent in all verbal (not to mention other kinds of) expression.  My simplest way to express this idea about expression is to point to any half-decent dictionary: For every word there will be multiple definitions. These are not homonyms, mind you, but one and the same word having multiple meanings. (Savings) “bank” and (river) “bank” are homonyms, but even (savings) “bank” alone means:  noun an institution for receiving, lending, exchanging, and safeguarding money and, in some cases, issuing notes and transacting other financial business. the office or quarters of such an i
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Reb without a Cause: the antidote to absurdity

This is a story told to me by Jerry Shaffer: A Rabbi, doing marriage counseling, listened to the wife and said, "You are right." The husband said, "Wait, listen to me," and after listening, the Rabbi said, "You are right." The Rabbi's wife, listening behind the screen, said, "Rabbi, they can't both be right!" The Rabbi replied, "You are right too."              This could just as well be a Zen story. And like one of those, I think it captures the essence of human existence. It’s not just a joke! (Although it is also possible to view human existence as a joke.) It contains a profound wisdom. I for one have come to take it literally : It could very well be that they are both right .             And I don’t mean this to apply only to marital disputes, or even just human relations. For me it has become a guiding idea that all assertions of any kind (including 2 + 2 = 4) are both true and false. And this is equivalent to
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The Genesis of Objectivism

My diagnosis of the ills of moralism has been that we objectify what is fundamentally subjective, transforming our beliefs and desires into facts and (objective) values. Thus, if we believe something, we take it to be true ; and if we desire (or like) something, we take it to be right [1] (or good ). [2] The resultant “ ills ” are therefore twofold: We are overconfident in our judgments, and as a result of these hardened attitudes, we take actions that are both stultifying and aggressive. Thus, wars are fought because the opponents consider each another not simply to have different or conflicting beliefs and desires, but to be wrong and evil. If the differences were only the former, there would be more possibilities for mutual tolerance, negotiation, and change.             But where does the faux and noxious objectification come from? I have previously noted that it lends a certain advantage in certain circumstances, which may have been instrumental in assuring the survival of our
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Polysemy

Polysemy (or the concept as I shall use it) is the view that all words or concepts have multiple meanings. This would seem nonsensical to some critics because the whole point of a concept is to isolate a single and precise meaning. Thus we might suppose that some word could be used to express multiple concepts; for example, “bank” can pick out a financial institution or land beside a river. (There is the further ambiguity of whether “bank” is therefore one word or two words.) But my long experience as both a wordsmith and a philosopher has convinced me that no concept itself is singular in its meaning.             Insofar a this is an empirical issue I can at once point to an interesting empirical study that would seem to bear out my contention in spades, to wit: Many social and legal conflicts hinge on semantic disagreements. Understanding the origins and implications of these disagreements necessitates novel methods for identifying and quantifying variation
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