The following interview is the first in the “Philosophy and the Mirror of Technology“ series. In this Q&A, Charlie Taben interviews Michael Della Rocca to further explore the epistemological implications of The Parmenidean Ascent, including parallels with Wittgenstein and Nietzsche.
In a recent Spotlight interview, Michael Della Rocca describes his latest book as follows:
The Parmenidean Ascent is about the destructive and creative power of rationalism as expressed by a commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR), according to which—in one of its formulations—each fact has an explanation. As I argue, such a rationalism leads to a very uncompromising version of monism in which there are absolutely no distinctions and there is no multiplicity whatsoever. In seeing this connection between the PSR and radical monism, I am in the very good company of Parmenides, Spinoza, Hume, Bradley, Russell, and others. Finally, the book expresses a deep skepticism not only in the sense that it denies that there are differentiated objects as we ordinarily think we conceive them, but also in the sense that it rejects the view that we can coherently conceive of such distinctions. For me, distinctions not only do not and cannot exist, but they cannot even be thought or conceived.
Thank you for your willingness to expand on your spotlight interview, in particular on the challenge of your skepticism. In terms of epistemology, you note that leading theories of knowledge – “building block” or “knowledge-first” views – fail to meet the demand for explanation. You have raised the analogy of Wittgenstein’s kicking away the ladder, or even suggested this is a “cry for help”. Can you speculate on where this leaves classic epistemological questions? Is the challenge to the discipline as great as it would appear? Should we think about this in Nietzschean terms, where philosophical theories might be seen as more personal, as “a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir” (Beyond Good and Evil). Drawing on his polemic, do we relegate philosophy to an inspiring relic – “that all great things have first to wander the earth as monstrous and fear-inspiring grotesques”? In sum, if The Parmenidean Ascent is a “cry for help”, it would seem hard to overestimate the problem. Alternatively, could we see the import in less dramatic fashion and aligned with how you talk about Spinoza’s philosophy in the sense that philosophy may not be exhausted, but we must tap into a religious way of thinking?
The challenge of The Parmenidean Ascent to leading theories of knowledge is intended to be vast: almost all such theories—whether building block theories (roughly those engaged in the project of analyzing knowledge) or theories in the spirit of Williamson’s revolutionary knowledge-first account—fail to meet a basic demand for explanation or illumination that those theories impose on themselves. I argue that this failure is inevitable as long as these theories take up the project of stating or displaying what knowledge really is and what it really does. In this light, the challenge is not a doubt about whether we do indeed have knowledge, but rather, and more deeply, a denial of the coherence of these leading theories of knowledge.
You ask: where does this leave classic epistemological questions? To address the challenge I raise, I propose walking back the assumption—shared by all of the theories I discuss—that there is a way that knowledge really is. The project of articulating what knowledge really is is incoherent. This realization along with the general denial of realism in all the areas of philosophy that I discuss shows that what we most need to do in light of my critique of epistemology is to give up the appeal to differentiated knowledge and, once we have kicked away the ladder à la Wittgenstein, to stop investing our ways of talking with realist, metaphysical significance. Once we make this Parmenidean ascent, we thus are free from metaphysical realism with regard to knowledge. This ascent thus gives us a kind of freedom to think and speak of knowledge in a way that is shorn of the incoherence of relations.
Speaking of Wittgenstein, and framing The Ascent in the discipline, would it be fair to say that his famous view on the incoherence of private language is invigorated by this account? To the extent that there is no individuated action? That there can’t be a private language because there aren’t finite beings? Indeed, would it be reasonable to conclude that your use of his analogy suggests his turn in the Philosophical Investigations dovetails with your case? That philosophy is not theories or explanations: “Philosophy just puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain”.
The general Wittgensteinian concern about private language is certainly of a piece with my concerns about unintelligible relations in the domain of meaning. There cannot be a private language for Wittgenstein, I would say, because such a language would not be intelligibly related to the world and to the languages of other individuals. This concern with unintelligible relations in Wittgenstein fits in with my concern to avoid unintelligible relations.
Further, there is the deep connection between Wittgenstein’s position in the Philosophical Investigations that philosophy does not explain anything and the position that I am in once I make the ascent. In my book, the explanatory demands that propel philosophical theories ultimately undermine themselves, so philosophy—if it is to proceed—cannot have as its aim the explanation of anything that really exists. Here is the denial of realism that goes along with the Parmenidean Ascent, the realization that there is nothing to be explained in the realist way in which philosophers aspire to explain things. This outcome of my view does, I believe, put it in the same philosophical territory as Wittgenstein’s Investigations. I would, however, hasten to add—as my frequent use of the ladder metaphor suggests—that I would see the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus as more continuous with the Wittgenstein of the Investigations than is typically acknowledged.
Moving to a different aspect of the discipline, can you expand on the possible ethical implications of The Ascent, which appear to be comprehensive. As you note, the lack of individuated action effectively undermines conventional moral theories – such as consequentialism, deontological theories, and virtue ethical accounts. I know this is what you are currently developing with your next project, but can you briefly frame the implications? Can it be seen in Nietzschean terms? Does kicking away the ladder amount to starting from scratch as there is no external value – that is, that we must impose value because we have no choice but to create it?
Because I reject individuated, differentiated actions, standard ethical theories—to the extent that they rely upon or presuppose differentiated action—need to be reconsidered. My general view highlights the positive—I’m a positive kind of person as I say in the book (p. 59)—and I reject distinctions or negations, one thing’s not being another distinct thing. In this light, a deontological view which is structured around restrictions or constraints on one’s actions or omissions, i.e. around what one must not do, is ruled out. Deontological theories are inherently negative in a way that at least some other theories are not. In general, views which give priority to the good (such as certain consequentialist and certain virtue ethical views) are better off than the right-, duty-, restriction-, constraint-, and negation-oriented deontological views.
Further—and here is another preview of where my thought is trending—the distinction between internal and external reasons that one finds in certain moral realist views is inherently problematic. (Actually, the terms “internal” and “external” in this and most other contexts vex me and others considerably because they are used in so many different ways, but I will go along with the custom of using these terms here for convenience.) This distinction between internal and external reasons is problematic because the relation between internal and external reasons is unintelligible. There is, for example, no good way of spelling out in illuminating terms the kind of authority that external reasons are said to have over internal reasons. (Here I am in agreement with critics of moral realism such as Korsgaard). Importantly, however, I also think that the distinction between different kinds of internal reasons—between reasons stemming from our ordinary desires or inclinations and those stemming from our very nature as rational beings—is also unintelligible and as unintelligible as the moral realist’s distinction between internal and external reasons. In particular, there is no good way to make sense of appeals, in the manner of Kant, to a special kind of authority which certain considerations stemming from our so-called rational nature are said to have.
In all these cases—moral realist or Kantian or otherwise—the disparity between kinds of reason cannot be rendered intelligible. The bifurcation among reasons is, I would say, as problematic as the analytic-synthetic distinction from a Quinean point of view, as problematic as Cartesian mind-body interaction between substances with nothing in common, as problematic as the dualism of scheme and content that Davidson famously rejects. Each of these bifurcations is to be rejected, I argue, on rationalist grounds.
What’s left then is something akin to a view in the style of Bernard Williams or Nietzsche where values are of our own making and not of the making of an authority external to us and not of our own so-called rational nature.
To draw further on the similarities with Nietzsche, can his critique of atomism and faith in antithetical values – “how could something originate in its antithesis?” – be viewed as wholly consistent with the case against differentiation? More broadly, as you have noted in other interviews, Nietzsche’s naturalism bears many similarities to Spinoza’s monism – albeit with a radically different view of immanence (man vs. god/nature). Is there any interpretation of Nietzsche’s “ethics” that is at least not inconsistent with Spinoza’s divine conception, equating power with goodness and virtue? For example, could will-to-power be viewed in broader terms, beyond purely biological self-preservation, as the force creating value? In this case, although not the good, could will-to-power create a form of a good? I know you have said that there is no significant conflict between Spinoza’s conatus and Nietzsche’s will-to-power – is the main difference that there isn’t absolute truth (or value)?
I believe that Nietzsche and Spinoza are two of the greatest naturalists in the history of philosophy. For each of them, everything plays by the same rules, everything is subject to the same kind of explanation. Explanation is the same everywhere, for each of them. This shared feature does bring Nietzsche close to a version of the PSR and thus close to Spinoza. Of course, Spinoza rides the PSR-express all the way to a strong form of monism, to a naturalistic conception of God, and to a commitment to some kind of absolute truth. And Nietzsche does not and cannot follow Spinoza in these respects. But their shared naturalism and their shared equation of power and goodness are, I believe, crucial.
However, I should note that although, on the face of it, Spinoza’s commitment to absolute truth and thus to realism of a certain kind seems very non-Nietzschean, I have explored and will explore further certain signs in Spinoza that he flirts with anti-realism in a way that makes him closer to Nietzsche than one may have thought.
Finally, I would like to shift to two more speculative questions which help frame the series by exploring the import of science and technology on the discipline. Do you believe that scientific advances can inform or even support a strict monism? By way of example, the conundrum of particle entanglement has grown. We began with paired particles identically changing at a distance – violating the principles of Relativity (the terminal velocity of light). Modern physics is now questioning whether it makes any sense to even consider the distance between the particles in unison – such that there is actually no such thing as place or distance. The physicists sound a lot like you. In general, then, is it fair to look at the latest developments in physics through a philosophical lens. Can you envision scientific advances that might have concrete implications for philosophy and the strict rationalist case?
I leave it to others with more knowledge of physics to speak at length of the relation between physics and monism. But I am glad that, as you put it, “the physicists sound a lot like you.” (I am less certain, however, that the physicists will be glad!) More to the point, the physicists sound a lot like Spinoza. As my late and beloved dissertation advisor, Wallace Matson memorably said in a paper from the early 1990’s: “Almost alone of the ghosts of departed metaphysicians, Spinoza’s is entitled to materialize at a twentieth-century congress of theoretical physicists and intone, ‘I told you so’” (“Body Essence and Mind Eternity in Spinoza”).
In answer to your question, “is it fair to look at the latest developments in physics through a philosophical lens?”, I say, of course it’s fair to do this. It’s fair to look at anything through a philosophical lens. Or, perhaps more properly, the distinction between a philosophical lens and a lens provided by physics is just one of the distinctions I see fit to reject. This is one of the upshots of my Parmenidean Ascent with regard to meaning that I outline at the end of chapter 7 of my book.
Finally, as the series will focus on the impact of technology on our lives and thought, would you mind speculating about what Spinoza might make of the extraordinary success of science and modern technology? Especially the way computing and mathematics have transformed the world. As I am fascinated with quantum artificial intelligence, I’m especially curious if you think AI – the attempt to replicate “reason” – would be particularly interesting to historical rationalists? With a strict PSR, my presumption is that it would apply to everything in the world, including technology, which may be produced, but is still part of nature.
I think that naturalistically-minded rationalists, such as Spinoza and Leibniz, would be open to the idea that reason is replicable. For Leibniz, “everything in nature happens mechanically”, though he also stresses the metaphysical underpinnings of this pervasive mechanism (see, for example Leibniz’s letter to Nicolas Ramond, in January of 1714). For Leibniz’s naturalism in this area, see Larry Jorgensen’s excellent book, Leibniz’s Naturalized Philosophy of Mind. Descartes—whose rationalism and hence naturalism are much more circumscribed—would deny that reasoning can be replicated by a machine.
With regard to mathematics in particular, Spinoza obviously holds mathematics in high esteem in certain ways, and he says in the appendix to Part 1 of the Ethics that the truth would have forever been hidden from the human race “if mathematics, which is concerned not with ends, but only with the essences of properties of figures, had not shown men another standard of truth.” Nonetheless, there are also signs in Spinoza that he regards mathematical reasoning as relying upon imaginative and arbitrary distinctions. The status of mathematics in Spinoza is another hot area of Spinoza scholarship and work by Stephen Harrop, Alison Peterman, Kristin Primus, Eric Schliesser, and others is enlivening the discussion of these issues.
In response to your last sentence: yes, with a strict PSR one has also a strict naturalism. Everything is part of nature or—even better—everything is natural, and this would of course include technology.
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The purpose of the “Philosophy and the Mirror of Technology“ series is to explore the impact of accelerating technological advances – both good and bad- on ordinary lives and worldviews. The APA Blog strives to cover research from a broad array of philosophical areas and perspectives, reflecting the variety of work being done by APA members. If you have a suggestion for future posts, please contact us here.
Michael Della Rocca
Michael Della Rocca grew up in Brooklyn, New York in an Italian-American family. After being educated at Harvard University and at U.C. Berkeley, he began teaching at Yale University where he has been on the faculty since 1991. He has written extensively on early modern philosophy and in contemporary metaphysics. In addition to The Parmenidean Ascent, he is the author of Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza (1996), Spinoza (2008). He is the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza (2017) and the co-editor, with Fatema Amijee, of the forthcoming volume, The Principle of Sufficient Reason, which is part of the Oxford Philosophical Concepts series.
Charlie Taben
Charlie Taben graduated from Middlebury College in 1983 with a BA in philosophy and has been a financial services executive for nearly 40 years. He studied at Harvard University during his junior year and says one of the highlights of his life was taking John Rawls’ class. Today, Charlie remains engaged with the discipline, focusing on Spinoza, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. He also performs volunteer work for the Philosophical Society of England and is currently seeking to incorporate practical philosophical digital content into US corporate wellness programs. You can find Charlie on Twitter @gbglax.
