A weedy florilegium

Spinoza was a substance monist. To the question: What is there? Spinoza would undoubtedly reply, “That which cannot be conceived except as existing, namely God; moreover, there’s only one.” All else, for Spinoza, is property of that one underpinning substantive being.

In metaphysics we deal with this question at every possible level or category or context. To hazard a crude example, say we set our vision over a verdant green cast out before us for miles and miles. Within our field of vision, we will identify enumerable happenings, going-ons, to speak loosely and colloquially, events, objects, processes, entities, substantives, properties, to speak technically (under the language of metaphysics).

Spinoza, as a monist, must also be a reductionist. Everything must be reducible, or defined in terms of, the one underlying substance, God. There is, for Spinoza, beneath the family resemblances, essentially disguised, one thing which answers the skeptic of every degree, a philosophical showstopper. Again, that thing is God, a concomitant of an infinity of attributes each of which express an infinite and eternal essence.

All that esoteric talk really runs a mouth-full. What does it amount to in more practical terms? Well, I am really trying to figure that one out. Spinoza would likely, rather than the Realist, turn away from reducing everything to substantives (things, objects) and processes (events, activities). Spinoza held the mode to be the essential manifestation of contingency in reality (or Reality, perhaps). If you want to speak of the contingent matters, the matters of fact, the cats on the mats and the Kings of France, you are getting into talk about the modes of substance.

For us, that just means: the properties of Reality. But we take “property” from the ordinary language all the way down to the speculative-metaphysical tongue. To introduce a model: subjects and objects are properties of substance (say, God or Reality or whatever). So the cat and the mat are properties of something, namely the underpinning reality. Properties, say, like a smile is to a face. We may say mats and cats, in any particular setting, inhere in the world (reality) in the way a smile inheres within a face. The smiling face is not a thing but nor is it an activity or process. The concept of smiling face captures more than its mere physical (substantive and chemical-muscular sequentive) aspect.

But is it merely an event?  Well, it certainly is an event to smile. We certainly smile at this or that time. But is that all we get from the smile? “Event” is a gestalt term. It means very little without qualification. But does “mode” service us any better? Whatever these terms amount to, their acceptance certainly is step away from the ghost chase for real entities whom may correspond to the theoretical posits of our modeling.

1 A proposition is an expression of a relation. The relation is itself the content of the proposition. Moreover, it is a record of a fact: a relational fact. A relation stands under a context. Where there is no context, there is no relation. A proposition is committed. However, the speaker is not, at least not in the same sense of commitment. The speak does nothing beyond the obeying of a rule. The commitment of the proposition follows from the standard of its correct or incorrect application. Propositions are either correct or incorrectly applied, expressed with sense or without sense. A speaker cannot be senseless.

1.1 A sound is not necessarily linguistic. (Indeed, this is an important reminder that we ought to keep with us at all times.) A word insofar, and exhaustively speaking, as it contains a finite concatenation of letters is not linguistic. A letter is a marking. A proposition would be the expression of, or generally speaking, the function of the non-linguistic entity that is the marking. But a proposition requires a propositional space which is just to say, it requires a space for possible standings. Nothing stands related to another thing in this space, but things do fall under some while not others. I do not stand in relation to my self, nor do I stand in relation to my height or “a height.” I meet a criteria for being said to “fall under” this or that. But we need not speak of extensions. I need not speak of the set of all those entities of so-and-so height. I am not on a list of sorts or of any sort. There is no list to speak of. I meet the criteria for saying of me that I am so-and-so height. But the criteria are conditioned. Between a man 5 feet in North America and a man 5 feet in South Africa, do each of them fall under the extension of “is five feet tall”? But where would we go to determine this?: The criteria for ascription under the N.A. and S.A. contexts. So is to say “each man here is 5 feet in height”, under our extension-speak, the same as saying “each man here is the same height“?

2 From (logically) a genuine proposition, which is a proposition that agrees with the non-linguistic arrangement, to a pseudo-proposition. From a genuine to a genuine. From a pseudo-proposition to a pseudo-proposition. And from a pseudo-proposition to a genuine one. A proposition, generally, agrees with something. What does it mean to agree? And how is “agreement” possible? On what grounds might a thing (a proposition) be said to agree or fail to agree?

3 Every proposition agrees with something agreeable. But to be agreed with and to be agreeable need clarification. Might I make the basis of agreement (our question of possibility supposed affirmatively — denying dogmatic skepticism) the subject of my proposition? To say that a proposition does agree is to cite some basis. But to ask: Is it nevertheless agreeable? This hints at the skeptical orientation. But what does it presuppose? Does it presuppose the “principle of skepticism”: dogmatic skepticism? Is there a principle to speak of?

4 I ask: Is it agreeable? This is to ask: Have you checked the basis for agreement? We must be wary of accidental bases; but to the extent of dogmatic skepticism? Should we never speak for fear of the “global accident” or the Cartesian Demon? How might I discover that I am being universally tricked? What does it mean — what would it look like — this “discovery”? (( The construction of a theory versus the creation of a theory. ))