Introduction

What is the World? How do I know?
           Subjective, Objective
           Justifying our Reality Beliefs
           That the World consists of Differences

Understanding the World
           Understanding Value

A 'world' is any logical [reason-defined] integrity, domain or environment, to which a belief applies and within which is held to be actually or potentially true. I may speak, for example, of the world of plants, the world of mathematics or the world of science fiction. Not all of these worlds are real, but they all provide domains within which beliefs can be true or false. And all these worlds are primarily logical integrates because their content and limits, as worlds, are defined by their relevance to what someone thinks and believes about them - and, obviously, all worlds must be coherent enough to have beliefs about just to count as domains to which beliefs can apply. Many worlds also embody other kinds of integrity (physical, geographic, historical, and so on). But not all worlds are real or physical, and many human beliefs (be they true or false) are about conceptual, imaginary or purely logical worlds. The world of mathematics, for example, is a purely logical world; beliefs about mathematics are true or false wholly and solely according to the mathematical system of reasoning. The world of science fiction likewise provides a domain within which we can have true or false beliefs even though the world of science fiction is not an actual world. Its domain covers various possible and impossible worlds; and any beliefs that we have, about those worlds, will be true or false relative to those worlds rather than any real world. The world of plants, the world of Julius Caesar, the world of space exploration and the world of music, on the other hand, all are or were actual worlds within 'the' world.

A world is any logical integrity [domain] to which a belief applies. The world is a specific logical integrity defined by and including the whole physical, cultural, geographical and historical environment in which human persons live their lives and to which human beliefs about reality apply. I presently live in the world, and this document is being prepared in the world. My world is a sub-set of the world; it is the world as experienced by me. I know about the world, beyond my world, only by sharing language with other persons in my world. The world is collectively realised by all those 'my' worlds that are and have been connected by the speech and writings of selves. And unless there exists a God whose knowledge includes that of all persons, no 'my' world includes all of 'the' world. But that doesn't make the world less real than my world because, without language, there wouldn't even be a 'my world' let alone a 'the world' - the language that enables us to realise one enables us to realise both.

Worlds are not defined as real by what believers believe about them, but all worlds are defined as worlds (domains about which beliefs can be held) by the language in which beliefs about the world are expressed. The world is no different from any world in this regard. The centre, scope and limit of the world, like the centre, scope and limit of all worlds, is logically defined by what human persons know, think and say about it with the languages and sensory apparatus that we have. The centre, for humans, is the planet Earth and our place on it. The scope includes the known universe, our known history, our culture, our experiences of the physical world and our experiences within history, culture and a physical environment. The limit is defined by what persons can perceive, know, experience, imagine, think about and speak about. I do not assume that the world is not the whole of reality, but the world is the location and context in which human violence occurs and has consequences. And I limit my considerations of reality to the world mainly because the Renovation Philosophy Project is about human violence, the world is where human violence happens, violence violates integrity, and integrity is what holds the world together as a world.

One of the enduring ways that humans avoid responsibility for their uses of power is by denying the realness of the world. If the world is not real and not consequential, in the way it appears to be on the face of it, then violence is not entirely real and humans are generally absolved from the tiresome responsibility of having to take their own violence seriously. Perhaps more to the point, we are each personally absolved from having to take responsibility for our own contribution to the institutionalisation of violence which mars human personhood. What we each do and do not do is made inconsequential by the trivialisation of the world's reality. And what makes scepticism, idealism, superstition and mysticism so attractive is precisely that they are logical refuges for the addictive denial of responsibility.
        There is no narrative, that I can make, which is not vulnerable to the human passion for high-sounding half-truths with which humans normally counterfeit significance while fleeing responsibility. But, basically, whether or not we believe the evidence of our experiences and thereby accept the reality of the world, whether or not we want the world to be real, and whether we like it or dislike it, own it or disown it, is irrelevant to the consideration of human violence. We can engage with the world more or less perceptively and honestly, and we can make the world better or worse in any number of ways, but, to a self living in a world, that world is real. For this reason, violence is not the less real, nor any less violent, just for being trivialised, disowned and/or glamorised in anyone's thinking. The myriad human lies and half-truths about reality and violence deceive only those who believe them, and part of detoxifying a human self from violence will involve honestly facing up to the reality which that self is so desperate to avoid facing.

Once the basic issues of survival have been settled, the main questions facing human persons are what (if any) point there is to being a self in the world and what (if anything) to do about there being a point or not. If I am to address these questions properly then I need first to honestly face what the world is or is not rather than what any attractive and fashionable confusion would like it to be. This, in turn, requires addressing two other, related, sets of questions. There is a constitutional set which concerns: what the world is, what it is made of and contains, how it is structured and how it works; and any differences between the real and the unreal. And there is a belief-justifying set which concerns how I can know that the nature, content and point of the world is as I describe it. These sets of questions cannot be addressed independently of each other and, before attempting them, some qualifications need to be made.

1. In thinking about the world, I consider it neither necessary nor helpful to dichotomise reality as it may be 'in itself' from reality as it is to human persons. Nor can I see any  point in speculating about other possible worlds and/or any supposed reality lurking within, beyond, behind or beneath this one. Postulates to the effect that 'real' reality is somehow other than humans experience it, or that this world is an illusion in some way, serve to fuel our addictive denial of responsibility for living this life in this world - and it is living this life in this world which concerns me. It does not matter whether claims to other worlds or other realities are true or false; they are irrelevant to this concern. It may be that all kinds of worlds and realities exist and flourish quite unknown to me. And it may be that this world is but a shadow of some greater reality. But I do not live in any of these supposed other worlds or realities. I live as a realised self in this world, this reality, now. Of what does or does not exist beyond this world, I know nothing and can say nothing (I cannot talk about what is unknown to me; although that doesn't seem to stop most folk). More to the point, it is the reality of this world (the world in which I am living now) that is marred by human violence. And it is in this world that any responsibility I bear, for the violence which mars the world, needs to be realised. My account of reality will, therefore, be strictly a matter-of-fact account of this world.

2. Reality is not a quality, 'essence' or other constituent of the world. Real bread, for example, can satisfy my hunger where imaginary bread can only feed my appetite, but the difference is not in the ingredients - real bread is not an imaginary loaf or a 'bread idea' to which has been added a measure of reality, existence or being. To be realis to meet certain criteria for being actual rather than potential, imaginary, counterfeit or false. So it is not as if 'realness' is itself a reality-criterion. It is just that a real tree, for example, takes up space in time, and has a certain constitution and history, while an imaginary tree takes up no space and fake trees have different histories and constitutions. Reality criteria change according to the objects being considered. A real human is an integrity that is being real according to the criteria of being real that apply to humans. A real hope satisfies different criteria. But, in each case, the criteria are not absolute (there is no yard stick 'out there' against which humans or other persons can measure our measures of reality) but only comparative between objects of the class being considered - real hopes are compared with false hopes, real people with imaginary people, and so on.

3. In answering the belief-justifying set of questions, I cannot and will not be using the word 'know' and its cognates in any absolutist sense. Beliefs about any world may be true or false, and justified or unjustified, to various degrees. True beliefs about the world are of most value to me in narrating an understanding of human violence and my place in the world. But, as a finite human person, I cannot get outside of my own language and perceptions to check that they are giving me an accurate understanding of the world. There is simply too much that I do not know, cannot confirm, must take on faith or on condition that various rules, perceptions and so on are accurate, for any kind of unqualified truth about the world to be available to me. I consequently strive for no more than beliefs about the world that are as honestly and highly justified as human circumstances will allow. That is quite enough for my purpose, and more than that is beyond human reach in any case.
        The only measures of belief justification, open to me, are those of logical coherence; that a belief fits [coheres] with my experiences and my other beliefs about the world. Logical coherence is a rule-governed integrity holding within a belief itself (a belief must be coherent just to make sense), between a belief and what the belief is about, and between each of my specific beliefs and the whole body of my beliefs generally. There seem to be just five measures of coherence by which a belief may be justified. The internal measures are that (1) my whole narrative of the world 'hangs together' as a coherent picture of the world and (2) each belief within the narrative itself makes sense and communicates a meaning that can be understood by others who read it. The external measures are that all reality beliefs about the world are consistent with (3) my own experiences of reality as a self living in a world, (4) the public testimony of other human persons sharing the world, and (5) each other and the whole body of justified beliefs about the world, so that each 'fits' as an active ingredient in the whole body of human knowledge generally. Without these measures of coherence, all beliefs dribble away into nonsense anyway. This is because only logical coherence [integrity] makes it possible for any language, mathematics, reasoning, belief, faith or narrative to make sense and be potentially true or not. An incoherent occurrence of marks and sounds may resemble a piece of language or reasoning, but if it is not coherent (if it does not follow the shared rules which create language) then it is not language or reasoning at all; it is not just false or mistaken but meaningless. Without coherence, neither I nor any other person has any narratives or any beliefs of any kind. So, in seeking 'knowledge' of the world, while I accept that no human beliefs can be more than probably true, I also accept that beliefs are probably true to the extent that they are justified by measures of coherence. At least no one can gainsay this without proving it true at least in their own gainsaying.

Subjective, Objective. All human persons hold or assume a set of ideas about the nature and content of the world, and all such ideas entail an implicit or explicit theory of what is real or not, what kinds of criteria different objects have to satisfy to count as real, and whether what exists is particular [a specific thing] or universal [a property shared by lots of things], concrete [a sense detectable thing] or abstract [an idea], independently real as an object in itself [objectively real] or just in the experience or experiences of persons [subjectively real].
        The subjective/objective distinction comes about because all human perceptions, thoughts, emotions, desires and so on, are subject-centred (they are experienced by a subject) and object-directed (they 'point to' or aim at some object of attention). An object is any real or imagined integrity, goal or focal point, at which my attention, feelings, thoughts (and, sometimes, actions) can be 'pointed'. I never just 'sense', 'desire' or 'think' - I always sense something, I desire something, I think about something. The 'something' I sense, desire or think about, is the object of my sensing, desire or thought (what my sense, desire or thought 'points at') even if it is internal to me as the subject. If I perceive or imagine a horse, for example, then I am the subject(the one who experiences or imagines the perception) while the horse is the object of my perception or thought (what my perceiving or imagination 'points at'). Similarly, if I desire chocolate then chocolate is the object of the desire, of which I am the subject, even if there is no actual chocolate within my perceptual domain and it is not any particular piece of chocolate that I desire.
        The objects of my thought may be things but are more often facts (i.e., differences or similarities, goals or outcomes, absences, events or states of affairs, that can be known as differences, similarities, etc.). And the objects of beliefs or experiences do not have to be real in order for subjects to experience them as real. I often experience dreams, illusions and fictional events which affect me emotionally in the same way as would experiences of real objects and events. I can 'see' a person who turns out to be a trick of the light. I can think affectionately about Winnie the Pooh, feel sorry for or get angry at, fictional characters in books, movies or on television. I can fear what I believe to be a prowler in my home only to discover that my belief was mistaken. In these kinds of cases I say that the experience itself is subjectively real (a real experience of the subject) but that what it supposedly 'points at' is not objectively real (not 'there' apart from my experience). The main difference here is that others cannot lay hands on what is subjectively real only to me (an imaginary burglar cannot be apprehended by my neighbours), but they can share in what is objectively real to us (real burglars can be seen, heard and, with luck, apprehended). My objective understanding of the world, for example, includes horses (I hold that horses are real), but excludes Pegasus (I believe that winged horses are imaginary). My understanding of the world allows that the idea of a winged horse can be a real idea (the idea exists) but the constitutional status of an idea (the kind of reality it has) is different from the constitutional status of an actual horse. In traditional jargon, the idea is abstract, an actual horse is concrete. Abstract integrates exist only in the thoughts of persons and can only be subjectively real. Concrete entities may be both subjectively and objectively real but must be objectively real to be real as concrete entities. This difference is decided [evaluated] according to how well the attributes of an integrity cohere with the constitutional criteria embodied in how the words 'abstract' and 'concrete' are defined in a constitutional context.

Justifying our Reality Beliefs. I do not believe that the idea of Pegasus is realised in the world, in the concrete manner of actual horses, because a realisation of the idea does not cohere with the facts of the world; that a biological horse could fly, using only feathered wings and its own muscle power, violates the physics of the world as I understand it. This disbelief is based on criteria of external coherence (the idea does not 'fit' with what else I believe about the world). I do not believe that two-sided triangles exist, even in the abstract, because the idea is internally incoherent (the idea lacks integrity, as an idea, by being self-contradictory). What is externally incoherent is physically impossible (a winged horse could not fly in fact). What is internally incoherent is logically impossible (a two-sided triangle cannot exist even in principle). Physical impossibilities can be imagined even though they are not realised, logical impossibilities cannot even be imagined. Anyone who claims to see or imagine a two-sided triangle is lying or talking nonsense [violating the logic of language] because no one can visualise what is logically impossible.

Coherence (which is a function of integrity) applies to all beliefs about the world. It is the coherence of communicated human experience which underwrites the external coherence of beliefs. And it is the coherence of shared human language which underwrites both the coherence of communicated experience and the internal coherence of beliefs. What is real must be accessible to the experience of human beings, at least in kind, just for any human to be aware that it is real. I do not, for example, share exactly the same dreams, perceptions, feelings, thoughts and history as other persons. But these kinds of occurrence are common to human experience. And I know that illusions are real, as illusions, not only because I have experienced them but because I share in a language and conceptual apparatus to experience them as different from objectively realised objects. But that someone asserts that some object of a belief or experience exists is not enough for me to admit the object as real because it is clear to me that human beings commonly lie, make mistakes and believe illusions. So, to be accepted as objectively real, what is objectively real must be accessible to human beings either directly, with suitable aids to human sensory systems (microscopes and so on) and/or by following the directions laid down by those who supposedly already enjoy access to the object.

Public verification of human perception has so far proved to be the most reliable arbiter of what is or is not objectively real. I may postulate that God, goodness, gravity or sub-atomic particles are objectively real solely on the grounds of coherence, but I still rely on the perceptions of others to verify or falsify my postulates (I do not, for example, perceive either goodness or gravity as such, but I do perceive their supposed effects and postulate their reality as the most coherent explanation of my experiences). So if Pegasus was objectively real, and really flew through the sky, then I would expect him to be visible to normal sight, to show up on radar, and so on. That he does not so appear does not prove that he does not exist, any more than does the perceptual inaccessibility of gravity or sub-atomic particles, but his non-appearance makes his existence less likely in a way that the invisibility of gravity does not. This is because the non-appearance of Pegasus is inconsistent with his supposed constitutional status as a horse - if he was real then some reliable witnesses should see him, even if I do not - while the perceptual coyness of gravity is not. Similarly, positing gravity makes sense of the world and coheres with what else I believe about the world. Believing in Pegasus actually contradicts several important beliefs in my understanding of the world. Again, this neither proves that gravity is real nor that Pegasus is not, but it does make a belief in the objective reality of gravity much better justified than is a belief in the objective reality of Pegasus.

I do not 'define' what is real in the world by either public acclamation or coherence. I assume that my own experiences are underwritten by a world, that is much as I understand it, simply because that is the best explanation for them. But where there is doubt, about what is real or not, I give the benefit of the doubt to the testimony of coherence and public acclamation.

That the World Consists of Differences. Prominent in warrior thinking has been the assumption that the real world is basically made of things in their relations. I have been able to detoxify this half-truth by noticing that the basic 'stuff' of the world is not things, and not even facts, but differences. In a perceptual experiment in Out of the Caves 7.12, I note that if I look at a complex object such as a tree, while systematically eliminating the cultural assumptions and preconceptions that I bring to the looking, then the 'rawest' percepts I detect are differences of light (shade, shape, contrast, etc.). The same goes for all my other senses.
        This matters because our traditional mythology has it that we understanding things by taking them apart [violating them]  to get at their essences (Out of the Caves 5.321). The supposed essences of things is profoundly elusive. But, whatever else may or may not be the case, differences are not elusive. Differences are accessible, differences are real and, because being different is itself a sufficient reality-criterion for differences, the mere fact that differences are different is enough for them to be real beyond doubt. And whatever else I may doubt or be ignorant of, I can know that differences are different when I encounter them. I know, therefore, that differences are real.

In admitting a reality of differences I am also admitting similarities because sameness is a function of the same rule and criteria as difference; I have both or neither because I cannot admit one without thereby admitting the other. Similarities are differences linked [integrated] within a larger integrity; in this case, within a larger absence of difference. When I notice that several flowers are alike or that two animals are of the same kind, for example, I am noticing that the ways in which they are different from each other are different from [less than] the ways they are, together, different from other objects of comparison. This is a significant achievement.
            Difference and sameness are comparative relations - an object is never just 'different' or 'the same' but different from or the same as some other object of comparison. This relates [integrates] at least two objects of comparison within a larger integrity, using the 'stand on and point away to' logic of all language, thinking and feeling, meaning, belief and evaluation. I take this as confirming that relatedness [integrity] is a unity underwriting the differences of the world. But that differences are different would not be evident to me if I did not bring to my perceptions the rule-governed and culturally prior [already existing] notions of 'same as' and 'different from'. Evaluating any object of thought as 'different from' or 'the same as' is a matter of already having criteria [a values-set] and an established rules-set to follow. Eliminate this ethic and, although the differences remain, I would not actually perceive anything at all (without differences there is only an infinite entropy which is indistinguishable from there being nothing at all). But this does not imply a dichotomy such that differences are objectively real while my 'pointing' (the evaluation of differences) is merely subjective, or vice versa. Without difference and evaluation and the relationships between them, I have no reality at all (neither difference nor evaluation nor relationship); a dichotomy cannot even get started.

The world integrates facts and values in such a manner that I can have neither unless I have both. But it is cultural constructs of language (including mathematics, rules and narrative) which enable me to 'read' all the world (all facts, including life itself) as if it embodied information which could be decoded, understood and articulated. When I evaluate some fact or event for significance (what it 'means') I read it for value by treating it as a sign; as something which 'points' beyond itself to some other fact(s) or value(s). Facts do not, themselves, 'point at' or mean anything; a stone sinking in water does not itself 'point' to the fact that it is a stone (rather than anything else), that it is sinking in water (rather than doing something else with anything else) or that it is sinking because it is heavier than the water it displaces. All that nature gives me is differences. I do the pointing; and I need my personhood (my shared cultural rules) to construct facts such as stones, water, sinking and 'heavier than' out of differences or even to notice that the differences are different. The concept of a stone for example, and the rules which enable me to 'read' an event as meaning that a stone is heavier than the water it displaces, are both cultural (rule-governed) constructs. That is why persons and only persons [encultured rule-users] can 'read' a fact for significance by evaluating it as pointing at some fact or value beyond or other than the fact itself . In that regard there are no 'facts' in a world without an integration of that world's nature and the knower's culture.The world, like all worlds, is an integrity of differences and narrative, so the world is ethics-dependent. Values are what I 'put into' experience in the process of reading differences as facts, and, in conformity with the Law of Conservation, values are also what I 'get out of' experience in the process of reading facts for meaning. It is the language shaped and language enabled 'values-in, values-out' logic of human engagements with the world that make the world and make the world meaningful. So, far from being hidden away behind things or in their secret essences, the world is revealed in differences and similarities, integrated as facts and read for meaning, because the basic stuff of any world just is differences and similarities integrated as facts and readable for meaning. It is differences which are perceived as facts by persons. And it is facts (all the facts, including similarities) along with their implications [what the facts mean] with which persons engage as we live in the world. Admitting this allows me to notice that the supposed essence of things [what it is that makes anything the thing it is] is not hidden in things at all. On the contrary, 'essence' itself is revealed in differences. Each fact, thing, kind [class] and object of thought is an integrity that is what it is, and is revealed as what it is, in the sum of ways that it is different from all that it is not. If I attend to some object of thought, such as 8, then I understand 8, not by having access to some singular and elusive 'essence of  8' (although an elusive 'essence of ' is what an astonishing number of folk seek for most objects of thought), but by considering the many and accessible ways in which 8 is different from 7 and 9, the ways that numbers are different from letters, and so on. Indeed, what I have been conditioned to think of as essence may just be the sum of differences. If the narratives of natural science are to be believed, for example, then the most active warm-blooded animal and the most inert and amorphous cloud frozen gas both finally turn out to be made of the same basic stuff (matter and energy, which themselves may very likely turn out to be just different forms of a basic sameness) that are merely arranged and integrated differently and in ways from which space and time emerge as relationships. There is no constitutional essence making a gas what it is, no soul or other 'essence of self' hidden in my body making me who I am, and no essence of goodness or 'the good' in a right action making it good. There are just differences and similarities which I can recognise as different and similar, and evaluate for meaning, because I am a person.

Understanding Value. Basing my evaluation of the world on the accessibility of real differences, rather than on elusive essences, is not a matter of exchanging 'deep' thinking for superficiality under some 'deep versus shallow' dichotomy. Such a choice assumes, falsely, that some differences are less real than others. The differences themselves gives me no warrant for that. All differences are equally real to the extent that all are really different. Surface ['shallow'] differences are real, structural ['deep'] differences are real; big differences are real, tiny differences are real. There are no dichotomies. All reality exists as, and is revealed in, larger and smaller differences of arrangement and integrity. This applies not only to facts. Moral and aesthetic properties, such as those of good and evil or beauty and ugliness, are also revealed in the differences between certain acts, attitudes, things and relationships, and others. I cannot, for example, isolate to any quanta of length from the fibres in a length of string. Nor can I lay the length of a piece of string against any absolute measure of length somehow built into the constitution of the world. But I can point to differences in length, I can know that the differences are real, and it is the differences that I can most readily measure when I compare items with each other (not that this item is long and that is short but that this item is shorter or longer than that one). Similarly, I cannot point to any quanta of kindness or cruelty in an act. Nor can I lay the kindness of an act against any measure of goodness built-into the constitution of the world. But I can point to differences between acts, I can know that the differences are real and it is the differences that I can most readily measure when I compare acts with each other (not that an act is good or bad but that any one act is more or less valuable than another in a context where both acts are options).
        If the supposed goodness 'in' an act is elusive, but the differences between acts are both accessible and can be compared with each other, then it makes sense that the basic object of moral evaluation is differences. And this, I suspect, is the case in fact. In the past I have often talked as if I was laying the kindness or cruelty of acts against some constitutional, or even absolute, measure of value. But that cannot have been the case given that, self-deceptive narratives to the contrary notwithstanding, I have never had any such measure publicly open to me. And I suspect that what I do in fact, beneath the word-woven cloak of my confusion, is compare acts against each other and evaluate some as more or less valuable according to their differences. And this makes sense. There is no stuff of goodness 'out there', and no essence of 'the good', but there are real difference between acts and events which are better/more valuable than the available alternatives [good] and acts or events which are worse/less valuable than the alternatives [evil].
        This recognition helps to clarify and simplify my evaluations of and engagements with the world. My actual moral choices, for example, are seldom between good or evil. They are, rather, between a limited range of options, none of which is clearly right or wrong but most of which are more or less valuable [better or worse] only in comparison to the alternatives. To do good, on a logic of difference, is just to choose only from among the more valuable of such options as are actually open to me; I do not have to pursue or achieve some abstract ideal or essential good - an accessible better is enough. Once a comparative measure is institutionalised, the comparative 'better' and 'worse' and superlative 'best' and 'worst' can take over the task of narrating 'good' and 'evil' without implying any thingish status for values.
 

Steven Foulds (entry last modified 20 July 2006)

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