Respuesta a Macario (encontrada entre la correspondencia Corsaria)

Estoy sentado frente a la calle, esperando se vaya la angustia. Anoche, mientras trataba de dormir, se armó un gran alboroto y no pararon de pensar hasta que amaneció. Los demás no lo dicen, pero yo bien sé que tampoco a ellos les dejó dormir la gritería de la angustia. Y ahora yo bien quisiera dormir. Por eso me obligué a sentarme aquí frente a la calle, con una tabla en la mano para que cuanta angustia salga a pegar de gritos afuera, la pueda apalcuachar a tablazos. Las angustias por lo general son blancas o de colores ténues, menos en el centro. Las tristezas son oscuras y un tanto apagadas, menos agresivas que las angustias. También mis ojos son oscuros, como las tristezas. Las angustias no sirven de mucho en realidad. Sólo te destruyen y te quitan el sueño. Aunque a veces sirven para trabajar. Las manos corren livianamente por las tareas. Todo parece moverse aceleradamente. Las tristezas por su parte son lentas. A veces me hacen caminar pero casi siempre es sólo para respirar y mantenerme vivo. Son tan lentas las tristezas que mis pulmones no logran robar el poco de viento necesario. Asi que camino, despacio quizás, para forzar el aire hacia mis tristes pulmones que no quieren respirar. Me arrojo lentamente hacia el frente, estrellándome poco a poco contra el mundo. Solo diminutos microscopios logran percibir mis pasos. Tan violenta, tan lenta, que el viento inevitablemente termina por entrar en mis pulmones. Asi son las tristezas. Las angustias son buenas para quitar el sueño. Las tristezas no son para soñar; pero yo las he soñado también, aunque no sean para soñar, y sueñan igual que las angustias. Catalina es la que dice que es malo soñar tristezas. Pero yo igual las sueño, como a las angustias. Ella es la que me tranquiliza cada vez que me tocan las angustias. Aunque no siempre así con las tristezas. Ella no quiere que yo tenga tristezas. Pero, a todo esto, es el mundo quien me hace sentir las cosas. Yo quiero más a Catalina que al mundo. Pero es el mundo quien saca de sus entrañas para que yo sienta y respire, y para que Catalina sonría. Catalina sólo se está ahí, tratando de calmar mis angustias, para mantener un equilibrio entre los tres. No hace otra cosa desde que yo la conozco. Lo de limpiar y cargar a mí me toca. Por eso lo de las angustias y las tristezas. Luego es el mundo quien nos reparte las emociones. Un montoncito para mi. Un montoncito para Cata. Pero a veces Catalina está ya muy contenta y entonces son para mí los dos montoncitos. Por eso quiero yo a Catalina, porque yo siempre tengo hambre y nunca me lleno, ni aun teniendo las emociones de ella. Aunque digan que uno se llena viviendo, yo sé bien que nunca me lleno por más que viva todo lo que me den. Y Catalina también sabe eso… Dicen en la calle que yo estoy loco porque jamás se me acaba el hambre. Mis amigos han oído eso. Yo nunca lo he oído. Yo sólo sé que siempre me sigue la angustia, la tristeza. Cada uno por su lado. Sin confundirse. Catalina a veces me deja andar solo. Y así viene el desastre. Una tras otra se acaban las gracias. Echa a andar la maquinaria. Lentamente vuelve a empezar. No hay más sonrisas. Pensar en las horas consume mis días. “¿Cómo librarme de ellos?” pienso. Pero nada más; nada más. Quisiera de pronto amarrar mis ideas. Como de niño amarraba mis manos la abuela. Estaba en la iglesia y no podía interrupir la misa. Ahora quisiera estar en mi cuerpo y no interrumpir mi vida. Deteniéndola neciamente; un poco aquí, un poco allá. Constantemente. Dicen por ahí que le ando quitando el sabor a las cosas. Si yo fuera cosa no me dejaría ultrajar. Pero creo que es muy tarde. A veces no me encuentro sabor. Algunos dicen que todo esto es ácido. Yo más bien lo encuentro insípido. Pero no sé bien. Lo mejor será preguntar a Catalina. Ella no dice mentiras. Hoy leí a Pitol; con el afán de apalcuachar las angustias y las tristezas. Pitol está de acuerdo conmigo. No es posible saber si esto de la acidez es consecuencia del envejecimiento, o si el envejecimiento es consecuencia de una previa acidez. La acidez puede, como cualquier otra cosa, ser dada. Es decir, adquirida con la fuerza y tozudez necesaria para eliminar su adquisición de la memoria. En mi caso esta constante incapacidad por seguir creyendo en algo es algo dado. O bien surge alguna creencia opositora; o bien se acaban las ganas de creer (i.e. aquello que los esnobs llamamos “duda”). A veces no le tengo tanto miedo al puro tiempo, ese que trae consigo a las angustias y las tristezas. Pero a veces si. Luego me gusta darme mis buenos sustos con eso de que ya nada tiene sentido, de que da lo mismo la incompleción de la lógica de primer orden que la falta de Valentina en la alacena. A veces pienso que me voy a suicidar, por tener la cabeza tan dura y por gustarme dar de cabezazos contra lo primero que encuentro. Pero viene Catalina y me espanta mis miedos. Me hace cosquillas con sus ojos y me saca las sonrisas como ella sabe hacerlo y de alguna manera me vuelve a engatuzar en este juego de hacer sentido. Y es que no es al hueco sino al relleno al que le temo. Y es que nos encanta rellenar por rellenar cuando las cosas están muy bien como están. No le temo al tiempo puro ni al puro tiempo. Me gusta darle tiempo al tiempo. Lo que temo es no tener tiempo. Peor aun, temo temer la perdida de tiempo. Temo estar una vez más en esa situación en la que hacer lo que hago es una pérdida y por consiguiente obligarme a creer que me estoy perdiendo. Temo volver a creer en esos temores, a caer en esas paranoias. Por eso mismo he decidido volverme escéptico. Pero mi escepticismo ha requerido refuerzos contra si mismo, porque su blindaje contra el temor al tiempo suele ser internamente corrosivo y de pronto me encuentro con las angustias y las tristezas una vez más. Como si fuera solamente un juego de palabras que va y viene con las mismas frases. Así van y vienen las angustias y las tristezas. Hasta que las apalcuachamos o las dejamos ir por donde vinieron. A veces, como yo ahora, lo mejor es seguir el juego y sacar las tablas para matar a las angustias y espantar a las tristezas. Pero esta estrategia pocas veces resulta efectiva. Sólo hace falta una que otra palabra para regresar con los fantasmas. En general hay que tomarlas como palabras – aunque no como a las palabras, porque a las palabras, aparentemente, las tomamos como algo más – y dejarlas ir por donde sea que hayan venido. Cuando le gusta estar conmigo Catalina dice que las cosas no están tan mal. Saca un espejo y comienza a dibujarme poco a poco. Después de un rato esto resulta insoportable. Es decir, insoportablemente convincente. Algo tiene que haber ahí, aunque sea sólo un reflejo. Entonces la dejo seguir con las historias. Es como si me limpiase por dentro. Cuando no leo a Pitol, o a cualquier otro en mi eterna práctica del arte de la fuga, me dedico a mirar sus dientes. Tiene la sonrisa más severa que haya visto en años. Imperturbable, constante, sólida, adjetivos que tan poco le sirven a muchas otras sonrisas. Sin embargo, esto de tener la cabeza dura y hueca es la gran cosa. O al menos eso dice Rulfo. Porque uno da de topes contra las paredes horas enteras y la cabeza no se ablanda, por el contrario, se hace más dura y más hueca. Y uno da de topes contra elsuelo: priimero despacito, después más recio y aquello suena como tambor. Catalina dice que si tengo un montón de angustias y de tristezas es porque voy a acabar idiota si sigo con mi maña de golpearlo todo hasta sacarle las entrañas. Pero lo que yo quiero es probar su resistencia. Es lo que ella no sabe. Que no me interesa destrozar las historias ni las paredes, sino creer en ellas. ¿Cómo estar realmente convencido de que el piso no se caerá sin golpearlo hasta el cansancio o la caída? La gente parece no tener empacho en hacerlo. En la calle suceden cosas raras. Nunca falta quien esté dispuesto a romperme la cabeza. A la gente le encanta creer sin probar. Será por eso que no tienen ni angustias ni tristezas. Llueven las historias grandes y filosas por todas partes. Y luego hay que remendar mis teorias. Y aguantar otra vez a que Catalina me amarre la cabeza para no darme de topes con sus historias. Pero también hay que reconocerlo, quebrarse la cabeza tiene algo de placentero. Es como si mi cerebro secretara una sustancia química muy especial; hay algo en ello que me droga y paraliza y no puedo hacer más que seguirme quebrando la cabeza. Por eso prefiero quedarme en casa. Así evito a los peatones que se empeñan en contarme su historia. Que si el mundo es así o que si es asá. Sólo me dan dolor de cabeza. Aquí en mi casa nadie me molesta. A excepción, claro está, de uno que otro perverso encantador de serpientes que se metió a mi casa entre las notas. Pero a esos los exorciso rápidamente, con un tenue y discreto movimiento de mentón que en no pocos lugares del mundo es señal de desprecio e incredulidad. Mi casa está en ese mundo; aunque no sepa muy bien cuál es. Por eso me duele tanto la cabeza. Por eso prefiero quedarme en casa. A veces se me olvidan las creencias y ni cómo regresar. Ahora estoy sentado frente a la calle. Y no ha salido angustia ni tristeza en todo esto que llevo platicando. Si no salen pronto puede ser que me desespere y lleguen más angustias. Eso sería muy triste. Dicen que uno llora cuando está triste. No sé si creer esta historia. Pero, con tanta angustia tampoco podré dormir hoy y eso me hace llorar. Mejor sigo platicando… De lo que más ganas tengo es de tener una historia. Así podría contarla a los siete vientos, como todas las demás personas. De otra manera nunca saldré de mi casa. En cuanto logre apalcuachar las angustias y las tristezas voy a inventarme una historia.

Trying to make sense (reason, self-reference and paradox)

Why do we have theories? Why do we have explanations? Why do we have Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Philosophy and Religion? A quick answer would be to say “Because we need them”. But this is just like passing the buck to a further level: why do we need theories? My bet is this: we need to have theories because we need to make sense of our experience. Theories are nothing more than stories that pretend to make sense of it. This stories present ways of making sense, ways of understanding and part of their job is to be convincing. What we call "the world" are those internalized stories that make sense of our experience. This claim is very bold, and it pretends to be even stronger. It is not just that we need to make sense of this and that, rather, we need to make sense of everything.

We start, it seems, by making sense of what we are. We tell stories about ourselves, the stories include identity claims. We are this and that. The story-telling endeavor results, in must of the cases, with an identification of persons with bodies, and individuals and self with biological limits, physical limits and else. Very rarely do we realize that all stories rest in a little piece of fantasy: we are this that we see in the mirror, that which feels our feelings, which has our emotions. That the limits of the self are the limits of the immediate domain of causality, is already a piece of story telling that we are very likely to buy. And so, the story claims, there is you and there are the others. It is over this little chunk of story that we get started building our theories, stories that we somehow forget to be stories and simply presuppose. We start by telling, for instance, that our personal story is also socially told. And so, we tell stories about others, about ourselves (this being part of a previous story), just as much as we listen to what those invented others have to say about “ourselves”.

There is peculiar mechanism between humans, something that our biological story might have something to say: we internalize our stories. Some like to think the result of this internalizing process turns into theories, and cultures. True, but not all there is to truth. For this process has some powerful results; for we not only believe stories, we act upon them. Acting is the way for humans to make the world look like the stories they are told. Acting is causally powerful, by acting we constantly modify the world. In so doing we fancy ourselves with more and more supporting “evidence” for our theories. And so we act more and more on behalf of them. The most typical result of this fairly natural process is the dogmatic assumption of our stories. This is when we stop talking about our stories in terms of stories and we start talking about them in terms of a given world. The world is physical, and has atoms, and super strings, and molecules, and political states, and nations, and wilderness, and whales, and persons, and families, and universities, and books and you and me as distinguished entities, and entities, of course.

The world is full of whatever makes sense to believe. Both because it results from what makes sense for us to believe and therefore act upon. And because we fill it up with our stories, it is literally filled up by stories, by whatever makes sense. The limit of whatever it is that makes sense will, not surprisingly, be the limit of our imagination. Remember, we tell stories to make sense and stories are nothing but the product of our imagination.
We need to make sense because we have emotions, desires and beliefs that are there to be satisfied. This satisfaction is partly done by wishful thinking, or free theorizing, or merely story-telling. Hegel liked to mention a Kantian theme that was brought to my mind by Peirce’s “First Rule of Logic”. The rule is: Reasoning tends to correct itself.

Take reasoning to be whatever way in which we relate to our surroundings. Or, if you don’t want to accept the old story that different bodies have different persons, take reasons as whatever or process in which whatever there is keeps going on. In any case, reasoning is that way of relating, or that process that keeps going on. In any case, reasoning corrects itself. In the case of whatever there is, it does so by following its own process (the common story says that it goes on by evolving; even planets, I guess, are subject to the force of universal selection and universal adaptation). In the case of human beings, the correcting goes on by means of story telling. It is not at all surprising that our stories are self-referential and, thus, subject to a high degree of paradox. If Reasoning corrects itself and stories are the products of reasoning, stories must correct stories and talk about themselves.

There is an important relation, then, between human nature, reasoning, self-reference and paradox. Human nature and reasoning is bound to be paradoxical, so much as it is bound to satisfy its own needs and, hence, to make sense of things. Kant signaled this out in the antinomies. That is why Hegel focused so much in them. I doubt, however, that Hegel was aiming at any sort of naturalistic story, like the one I have just given. It will be interesting, though, to wonder whether self-predication is prior to self-consciousness, or if such a distinction is mistaken (given the story). It might be that stories correct themselves just as much as nature corrects itself. Notice, however, that correction does not by itself imply any sort of moral or epistemic improvement. It barely implies a change made to make things work. For all we claim to know, consistency (or some level of it) is the only state required for things to work.

What are we doing here? We are just trying to make sense; and we do so by means of self-referential stories. Striving for consistency while risking the fall into paradox is perhaps the most efficient way to keep the story telling as a never-ending story. Otherwise, I believe, all this would have stopped too many years ago. And so, we have religion, and chemistry, and biology, and film, and philosophy, history, literature, medicine, and the daily labor of newspapers.

¿Escritura obligada?

He perdido el contacto con las palabras. Quizás a eso se deba mi falta de pensamientos. Antes solía discurrir de casi cualquier evento que dejara entrever algún dejo de argumento, para al menos hacer una breve anotación al margen, como quien no quiere la cosa, disfrazando así las críticas de comentarios inocentes. Ahora, no obstante, me encuentro vacía. No hallo en mí ningún pensamiento, idea o controversia sobre los cuales elucidar. Mi vacuidad se extiende hasta los abismos y sólo deja espacio al anonimato. Pero éste tampoco es posible. No hay interlocutor desde un espacio que no esté estrictamente determinado y ceñido bajo un nombre.

Pero esto no es todo. Aún saliendo del anonimato, no vale simplemente escribir porque sí, simplemente para contar, por ejemplo, la imagen de un señor cobijándose de la lluvia en una esquina; sin un antes ni un después, y mucho menos de un ahora. No señor. Es preciso abordar algún tema de actualidad, de interés público, producto de alta intelectualidad... ¡Y todo esto con la promesa de que así se habrá tranquilizar el alma!

¿Escusas de una persona que lleva tiempo sin articular un pensamiento? Tal vez. ¿Divagaciones de insano mental? No lo creo. Simplemente, una apología del vacío.

Pero luego pienso. (Sí, insisto en realizar una tarea que se me va de las manos.) Recapacito. Si, como razonaba el comediante Karl Valentín, el teatro debía ser obligatorio-pues ésta sería la única manera de asegurar la sobrevivencia de este arte- ¿no deberíamos también estar obligados a escribir para no perder la cabeza? Escribir para evitar el vacío, para recuperar el pensamiento, para darle un sentido a las palabras, para volver al íntimo estado infantil de la fantasía. ¿Comenzar una escritura obligada, aunque no tengamos nada que decir? Quizás. O quizás no. Pero al menos existe ya la disyunción.

Nada nos es ajeno!

That everything implies Nothing, has puzzled human animals for thousands of years; and will keep puzzling them for years to come. That everything is red does not force us to reject that nothing is red; at the most it entails that it is false that there is something that is not red. And this is not a problem about colors. Or to put it more into a proper form, to accept that everything is X does not preclude us from accepting that nothing is X. Furthermore, we may sometimes find it compelling to derive that nothing is x from accepting that everything is x. Plato famously (and correctly, I think) argued that if everything is true then nothing is true. The problem, for Plato at least, was not the inference but the predicament. He did not want everything to be false, and so he paid by squeezing things out of reality.

Another way to put this same point consists in pointing out that the claim that nothing is x does not contradict the claim that everything is X. Strictly speaking, if you claim that everything is green and I that nothing is green it can be said (in some pragmatic sense of disagreeing) that we disagree, but it cannot be said that we contradict each other. For the negation of the universal claim is not another universal claim, but a particular one with an inside negation. Thus, to contradict that everything is x I must claim that there is at least one thing that is not X; but this is clearly different from claiming that nothing is X. This may be reason for despair. How can it be both that everything is X and nothing is X. One way to make sense of this consists in reifying everything and nothing, by taking the quantifiers to be referential terms. Thus, having something like Being and Nothingness in your ontology, and ascribing the same property X to both of them. Hence, Being might be X and so may Nothingness too. Why not? After all they (i.e. Being and Nothingness of course) are different objects. Another way of making sense of this merely consists in noting that the phrases are about different domains and, thus, can’t be taken to contradict each other. Everything has as its domain, say, the Universal set, while nothing has the empty set. The disagreement would be, as it appears to make sense to say, about the distribution of property X. But then the problem is passed on to the way in which the concept of X works, and not about everything and nothing.

A third way to put this, the way I currently prefer, is given by the following example. In her last opera, Marcela Rodríguez represents Seneca (the famous roman Orator and Stoic Philosopher) as claiming that everything is foreign to us, that we own only time and nothing else. As the argument (created by Carlos Thiebaut) goes, everything we experience is constantly gone. As our experience seems to show, no single thread of life is able to last more than an instant. EPHIMERAL is properly predicated of everything. Nothing that we take to posses is something that we have, for even that will somehow be taken from us. Even our experiences, even our imperfect memory, everything, everything is foreign to us. So, as sad as many correct philosophical conclusions tend to be, everything is foreign, external, independent, outside.

There is something to these externalist claims when they are made to the extremis. They all wind up crawling back to where they started. Consider the following. Something is foreign to you if and only if it is local or proper to an organism distinct from yours. Thus, something is or will be foreign if an only if something is proper. If, however, as Seneca claims, absolutely everything is foreign and so it is false that there is something that is proper then, by definition, we are lead to claim that nothing is foreign. Not only by definition, perhaps also by some emotions and needs to recognize ourselves in what we do and what we feel. For all I know, Seneca might have also claimed that, because everything is foreign to us, it is also the case that everything is proper to us, everything local. For every single object of experience is a fleeting one. Every single shade, book, text, drink, food, sight, place, and smile is (as Seneca puts it) forever gone. In that very sense it is that I claim that everything, every object of experience is such that it is proper or local or internal or non-foreign to us. For it makes no sense to think of an object that is now being suffered (or sensed if you may) by an organism that we take to be distinct from us, as the same object that we used to suffer by ourselves.

And such is the big consolation hidden between the words of this fantastic stoicism. That everything takes us to accept some claims about nothing; and so, that we win reality by losing it all. Be merry, then, for nothing more than your experience will ever be within your reach and that is something you already have.

No mentirás!

De vez en cuando la filosofía moral saca a relucir su mala cara. Principios incontrovertibles cuya defensa habría de ser más un pleonasmo que una odisea, se convierten en el blanco de acérrimas críticas. La defensa de la honestidad tiene una historia un tanto infame entre filósofos. “En más de una ocasión” se argulle, “lo correcto es mentir, no ser honesto”. Este ataque, generalmente dirigido en contra de éticas deontológicas (famosamente defendida por Kant) ha tenido cierto atractivo entre la concurrencia. Me parece, sin embargo, que el ataque resulta de una incomprensión de la propuesta. Reconozco, sin embargo, que la incomprensión puede deberse a una mala formulación de la propuesta en cuestión. Defenderé, pués, que es moralmente incorrecto mentir; pero que en ocasiones es moralmente aceptable no hablar con verdad. Para defender esta idea habré de distinguir entre hablar con verdad y ser honesto, tanto como (y aún más importantemente) entre no hablar con verdad y mentir.

Una persona es honesta cuando expresa el contenido de su vida mental y deshonesta cuando lo que dice no corresponde con su vida mental. Si él no la ama y lo dice, entonces es honesto. Si él no la ama y, tras ser cuestionado por ella, afirma amarla plenamente, entonces es deshonesto. Para hablar con verdad, sin embargo, se necesita algo más que sólo ser honesto; se necesita (al menos) tener creencias verdaderas. Él puede no saber que ella no le ama; de manera que al ser cuestionado por ustedes sobre el estado de su relación con ella él afirmar que ambos se aman. De ser así él sería honesto y sin embargo no hablaría con verdad.

Poco más puede o debe añadirse en torno a la relación entre mentira y falsedad. No sólo es posible hablar honestamente y aún así hablar falsamente, sino que también es posible mentir y aún así hablar con verdad. Él puede no saber que ella no le ama, y asumir que sí lo hace. Coincidentemente él puede estar interesado en aquella, quien le pregunta por la relación. Él, quien realmente no ama a ella, responderá deshonestamente diciendo que ella no le ama y que él se siente profundamente herido. Él es deshonesto y sin embargo habla con verdad.

La diferencia entre estos niveles es importante. La verdad o mentira de nuestras afirmaciones depende del mundo y no de nuestra voluntad. La honestidad y deshonestidad de nuestras afirmaciones, sin embargo, depende de nuestra voluntad y, por tanto, de los fines que buscamos. Hablamos honestamente o deshonestamente con el fin de guiar a nuestra audiencia, ya sea para que tengan ciertas creencias o para que actuen de cierta forma. Este comportamiento tiene sentido sólo con base en presuposiciones sobre el mundo. Desde cómo es en general, hasta cómo debe ser, pasando por las creencias que nuestra audiencia tiene.

Con esto en mente podemos comprender el imperativo moral de hablar honestamente. Considérese el caso típico: su amigo es perseguido injustamente por un hombre armado y él decide resguardarlo en su apartamento. El hombre armado llega al apartamento preguntando por su amigo. Pregunta moral: qué debería hacer él? La respuesta correcta, sea cual sea, habrá de afirmar que él no debe informar al hombre armado de la presencia de su amigo en el apartamento. Lo importante es, cómo hacerlo? A mi manera de ver las cosas, es posible dar la respuesta correcta sin exigir de él que mienta.
Recordemos que los actos de habla tienen siempre fines; que hablar con honestidad o no depende de expresar un estado mental; y que hacer lo correcto moralmente consiste tanto en expresar el correcto estado mental como tener el correcto estado mental. En este caso, los presupuestos de la conversación entre él y el hombre armado son en su mayoría morales.

Cabe decir, por supuesto, que un prespuesto moral tiene tanta relación con los hechos en el mundo como un presupuesto epistémico. La diferencia recide en que los presupuestos morales se preocupan por cómo debe ser el mundo de manera que uno tenga los sentimientos correctos y tome las decisiones adecuadas, mientras que los presupuestos epistémicos se preocupan por cómo sea el mundo.

Si él se comporta de manera correcta entonces tendrá los estados mentales correctos y actuará de manera correcta. Es un presupuesto del ejemplo el que el estado mental correcto será aquél que permita proteger al amigo. Un estado mental eficaz en este caso será el de pretensión. Él debe pretender que su amigo no está en casa, porque esa es la manera más eficaz de hacer lo correcto: proteger a su amigo. Cuando el hombre armado pregunta por el paradero de su amigo, el hombre armado le invita a entrar en un diálogo moral, se le exige que responda de manera correcta a la pregunta. Así las cosas, él está obligado actuar moralmente y proteger a su amigo, de manera que expresará honestamente el estado mental propio de tal comportamiento: la pretensión de que su amigo no está en el apartamento. En este contexto sería deshonesto de su parte, además de ir en contra de las presuposiciones morales que forman parte del caso, el hablar con verdad y delatar a su amigo.

El punto central que defiendo es que las reglas conversacionales de honestidad y deshonestidad cambian de contexto en contexto. No son las mismas cuando se trata de una discurso moral que cuando se trata de un discurso científico, legal o económico. No hay ninguna razón para pensar que todos estos discursos tan variados han de tener exactamente el mismo mecanismo, las mismas presuposiciones y mucho menos las mismas metas. De esto resulta que mentir y ser honesto se entenderá de maneras distintas para distintos discursos. Esta distinción aparece ya, creo yo, en Platón quien famosamente distinguió entre la honestidad poética, la moral y la epistémica. En lo que respecta al discurso moral, ser honesto implica siempre expresar lo que uno toma por ser correcto. De manera que si mentir es lo mismo que ser deshonesto, entonces resulta casi un pleonasmo afirmar que es nuestro deber nunca mentir y siempre ser honestos. Eso si, muy distinto será el hablar con falsedad. Supongo, sin decir mucho al respecto, que ningún contexto discursivo presupone hablar con verdad. Tal contexto discursivo estaría en grave riesgo de permanecer en el silencio eterno.

on freedom

My view is this: take a living organism, it will have the capacity of feeling and so it will both affect and be affected by its environment. Endow it with memory and imagination and then you get the capacity of recognizing itself and its own feelings. It will be able to remember and in so doing to have impressions of past experiences. Not only, it will also have the capacity to conceive impressions of experiences that are not strictly remembered. For all I have said, we still have not assumed freedom.

Consider now other equally natural endowments: having drives, instincts, and impulses. That all these are natural, I take it, is proven by the existence of these elements within other living species. The talk about impulse and instincts has always been granted for animals and it might as well be kept for good, since it seems to be a biological primitive: a living organism without a natural impulse that animates it sounds pretty much like a non-living entity. But still, no Freedom around.

There is a good evolutionary reason explaining the presence of all these natural givens: it helps the species in keeping their character in the evolutionary story. A population that is unable to gather information about the environment is a population that is doom to disappear from the story. Giving and receiving information must be part of the natural biological process. The way living organisms do it is by means of impulses, drives and feelings. All these, of course, will have causal power; there is no way around this. Otherwise no communication will be achieved, and no relevance will there be for the information.

But now take all these natural endowments and put them together. In particular, consider an organism that is constantly longing, constantly having impulses towards something; such an individual has also feelings and memory and imagination. This individual will inevitably end up remembering and feeling. It will end up distinguishing past from present experiences and in so doing it will end up making distinctions and, thus, using concepts. For this, of course, there will be another biological account: language and though are biological categories after all. If we can get one more element, freedom will inevitable appear: this element is simple: a natural pull towards preservation. The organism will naturally avoid everything it takes to be dangerous or life threatening, and avoid it. Same thing will happen with the so-called free organisms. They will feel, and remember and imagine, some of this feelings will be taken as life threatening some will not, some will be taken as advantageous, some will not. The important thing is that the organism is naturally able to locate itself in one or the other situation. In a sense, thanks to the capacity of conceiving situations, the organisms in question will be able to locate or re-locate themselves. This is the rough and brute beginning of a very long and complex history of freedom. The more ingredients one gives to the organism (e.g. beliefs, desires, feelings of certainty and doubt, moral emotions and feelings, goals for coordination and needs for satisfaction, preconceptions, taste, prejudices, theories, predictions and more) the more fine-grained the notion of freedom will be.

Freedom might have to be reduced, or extended, to the capacity of determining what to do with your feelings, beliefs, desires, and else. That is, the capacity of picking up feelings, beliefs and desires.

consciousness

We are natural beings in a world with natural processes. Whatever happens to us is a natural process, by necessity. In particular, we are natural beings with consciousness. Some even say we are beings with self-consciousness; but it is not so clear what is it that they mean by that. I think I have an idea of this, perhaps a story or what some would like to call a “theory” of consciousness. This is nothing more than my way of reading Hume.
As leaving things, our constitution is made out to change, constantly. Consciousness seems to be a common feature of living things. It is important to distinguish between living and animate things. The former are properly understood as organisms; the latter more properly understood as mechanisms. All organisms have some or other animation, some or other mechanism. But not all mechanisms have some or other organism, some or other form of life. Think of a computer and a flower. The former is animated but not living, the latter animated and living. Perhaps another way to understand this distinction is to think of it in terms of dependent and independent animation of the thing; the latter being that which is common to living things.
In any case, Consciousness is the property of modifying and being modified by the environment. This perhaps embraces everything, and it might well just be like that. Another way to put it is to consider consciousness as the capacity of feeling the environment. All living things share this capacity; that is what makes of them living things, what makes of them organisms rather than mere mechanisms.
A first glance to this mess gives us this result: self-consciousness is the capacity of feeling one’s capacity of feeling the environment. But this way of putting things is badly confussing: it makes us thing that some special second-level biological system is required for self-consciousness. A second glance to this mess shows us how unnecessary, and perhaps mistaken, this view is. One single capacity of feeling is sufficient for there to be awareness of this. What is needed, instead, is memory. Take memory merely as the capacity of recording feelings. This capacity will only be effective if it allows us to feel-again the same experience. Self-consciousness will usually stem from this: a situation where one is feeling as if x while being in a non X environment, and probably feeling as if Y. A first thing to do here is to consider one feeling as a past one and the other as the actual one. A second thing to do here is to be aware (i.e. feel) of the fact that one is able to have feelings. This second thing to do is self-consciousness in its naïve but true form.
A third thing to do here, is to realize that, in order to make this distinction between past and actual feelings, one must use concepts or, in other words, one must classify the experiences as belonging to different kinds. Without concepts no distinctions would be made and, thus, no self-awareness or self-consciousness. It seems then that a very rudimentary theory of consciousness, as this story purports to be, requires already an account of concepts and, alas, an account of content. Self-consciousness requires concepts; though concepts do not require self-consciousness. That is why there can be conceptual competence without self-awareness; and that is also why – equating rationality with self-conciousness – it is possible to be an organism with conceptual capacities without being rational, i.e. without exercising that conceptual capacity in the relevant way as to exercise self-consciousness.
Furthermore, it is not because of the use of concepts that self-consciousness is achieved. Conceptual competence does not produce self-consciousness. That is why there can be mechanisms with conceptual or linguistic capabilities that are, nonetheless, non-rational. Living organisms with complex systems for consciousness – as Kant famously said – are not born rational but have to become rational.
This story leaves space for something like non-conceptual content; but a very minimal one. It leaves space for the possibility of classifying some or other feeling without rationally classifying it. That is, it leaves space for there to be conceptualization or categorizing of something without there being an awareness of such a classification or categorization. Non-conceptual content, in other words, ends up being some sort of conceptual content. It is just the sort that has not become conscious of its use. Or as I told above, it is the sort of experience that is taken to be as of X without it realizing that it is being taken to be as of X. Perhaps this is what goes on in human experience most of the time.
There is also a sense in which non-conceptual content is not possible. This is the sense in which non-conceptual refers to without any classification. This is not possible because of the very definition of consciousness. According to my story, being conscious is feeling something for being affected by the environment. Think of the things we are talking about here. There is an organism affected, an environment and a relation of affection in which these two stand together. The important thing here is the relation; no matter how the environment affects the organism or the organism the environment, this must be one way in which the affection takes place, no matter how coarse or fine-grained. In any case, for any one way of affecting there is at least one concept (though not necessarily vice versa). In other words, for any feeling (no matter which) there is a way to distinguish it; which means that all feelings (or all experiences) are distinguishable.
This, however, does not give us concepts straightforwardly; for there to be concepts there must be distinctions. An in order to realize that there must be distinctions one has to go back to the biological terrain in which the story got started. There must be distinctions for many reasons, subsistence is perhaps the must important one. Leaving organisms are in the battle for keeping their place within evolutionary history. Evolutionary history, however, is such that for there to be characters in it this must comply with two conditions: have reproductive success within certain selection pressures and it does by means of adaptations. In other words, organisms adapt to a set of selection pressures by adapting and, thus, gaining in reproductive success. In order to keep in the battle for the evolutionary fame, organisms must be able to make crucial distinctions. Thus, for instance, any famous character of the evolutionary story is such that it is able to distinguish between experiencing a situation where there is food available and a situation where there is a predator available. Thus, not only must experiences be distinguishable they must also be distinguished. In this sense, there is no such thing as non-conceptual content. What there might be, although this is something I am not sure of, is consciousness without self-consciousness. Nothing of what I said, though, is inconsistent with the possibility of self-consciousness being as necessary for consciousness as conceptual distinctions are for consciousness. It might be, though more reflection is needed for this to be clearly seen, that all living beings are not only conscious but also self-conscious.
It might be. If so, all of the mythical claims typical of western culture, all of the super-biology endowed for humans and language, and art, and what not, drops down. It is all just a matter of being alive.
Thank you, but nothing more is needed!
This, however, does not make language and art sterile. On the contrary, it turns out that these are all endowed with causal power, for they are all biological categories. Think then how powerful words are and how much we do, in fact, rely on their power; think of the human way of educating each other: is it by words or not? This should not only make us realize how powerful words are. It should also makes us realize how expensive they are; and how easy it is to lose this point of view. This should make me stop and save some power, save some words.

some thoughts on properties

All properties are natural properties. The natural/cultural distinction should be dropped. Still, there are good enough reasons to consider some form of relativism about our theories and the way they are supposed to engage with the world. Why is it that we get difference in taste, moral views and else?

An answer comes from the realization that believing something is a natural function of living organism; together with the claim that living organisms are constantly changing their constitution depending on how they engage with their environment (and of course depending on what environment they live in). Different beliefs and different tastes will naturally appear for different organisms in different environments. What is still left to account for is the idea of sameness of environment.

In a strict sense, no two organisms share the same environment. Getting the environment fine grained enough here will be sufficient to account for that sort of relativism that one was looking for from the very beginning. It can easily do the work that centered worlds are doing in possible-world semantics. What then could be the difference?

Answer: there is no need for a heavy ontological commitment; neither for possible worlds as concreta, neither for universals, nor un-instantiated universals.

Somehow, without thinking about this too much, it seems to me that one gets Lewi’s paradise on a very cheap price.

Note: this does not give place to some protagorian relativism. It is important to keep in mind that the way in which our natural conceptual capacities work relies on the existence of other organisms of the same sort. The central claim here would be that for there to be an organism that comes up with representations of the world, such organism must be able to use concepts in a self-ascriptive way. But for it to be possible to self-ascribe a concept there must be a community of objects within the extension of the concept in use.

Briefly: the claim is that something like a community of objects are required for an organism to be capable of engaging in the linguistic practices that we know to have.

A consequence of this is that all normative systems must be understood relative to communities and not relative to individuals. For such a view it is incorrect to talk about individual moral systems, and the internalization of these systems must be taken care with a lot of detail.