That cat sees itself as an exception to a universal law.

Kant, Kant, Kant Kant Kant Kant Kant!



I have an essay to be writing, on Internal Reasons and Williams and Parfit and Reductionism and Michael Smith and... I'm not sure I've ever found a philosophy essay such non-easy going. Maybe it's just a total lack of motivation, maybe it's an overwhelming desire to be watching Battlestar Galactica... I don't know. I suspect that it's just all really vague and unclear and; look, what I want to argue is that...

Parfit has this argument that we shouldn't be Normative Reductionists. We shouldn't try to reduce claims like "X has a reasont to ϕ" to non-normative, purely descriptive claims, like "X has certain desires and natural certain facts are the case and yadda yadda yadda". He argues that any attempt to do so will inevitably leave something out of the picture, something called Normativity. And so what is Normativity? Well, he can't tell us that, because that's ALSO irreducible. So how can we know that it's missing in those earlier cases? Damned if I know.

My point is... This might just be a totally methodological debate. I demand clarity. I demand to know what stuff is. He tells me we can't expect to know, in any more basic terms, what this stuff is. I ask why not, and he tells me that he can't tell me. It's just... You know... Basic.

And all this really annoys me, but at the same time, I realise that we can't be reductionists about EVERYTHING. Some things HAVE to be basic, of course, so they can be the things that other things get reduced to. And maybe there's no particular reason to suspect that there must be only one thing, or some minimal set of things, that all other things are reduced to. So maybe it's just him putting the irreducibility in one place, and me putting it in another. In which case, maybe this isn't purely a methodological issue.

I guess what I'm saying here is that perhaps the reason I'm finding this essay so hard to write, is because I don't have the slightest gorram idea what I want to say. Or how to say it. Or if it's right. BUT I FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT IT.

This kinda sucks. And yet, for some reason I refuse to give up and try something else. Perhaps because I only have, like, a few days to write this thing.

Well, anyway, I better get back to it. Also, I may be totally misrepresenting everything and everyone here, so don't take my word for anything. Actually, that should be a standard disclaimer for this blog. It'd certainly save me a lot of worry.


Edit: Also, yes, to a large degree this essay does feel like me trying to take on one of my philosophical heroes. I have adored Parfit, and his Reasons & Persons, since my first year of university, and still hold him up as a model of clarity, precision, charitability and comprehensiveness, all huge virtues in my idea of philosophical methodology. I just happen to also think that he's totally wrong (and uncharacteristically vague) on this particular point (and a few others). This desire to take on my hero may be blinding me to the fact that the real strength of my essay will probably be in my comments on Michael Smith, and so this should be my focus, rather than, as it will probably end up, a rushed conclusion.