Smith - Centering and Extending

An Essay on Metaphysical Sense

Steven G. Smith

Cover image: Basket star ( Astroboa nuda ) feeding at night at the Red Sea. Alexander Vasenin, photographer.

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

2017 State University of New York

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Smith, Steven G., author.

Title: Centering and extending : an essay on metaphysical sense / Steven G. Smith.

Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016031460 (print) | LCCN 2017003909 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438464237 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438464251 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Metaphysics.

Classification: LCC BD111 .S5755 2017 (print) | LCC BD111 (ebook) | DDC 110dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031460

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In our long pursuit of sapience, it is not the least of our embarrassments that the metaphysical thoughts we have formed to enlighten our life in the world have often hindered it instead. We embrace the world as a whole and stifle it with monism, reductionism, and determinism; or else we attack those premises and break the world up into bewildering turbulence. Providence or atoms! declared Marcus Aurelius. What seemed an answer to him seems only a dilemma now.

If we are living in a post-metaphysical age, then dilemmas of this kind should no longer arise. But they still do arise: metaphysics ever returns, acknowledged or not, likely working mischief. Serious metaphysical trouble can readily be found today in philosophy of mind, where the basic premise of physicalism forces disabling if not totally destructive construals of experiences, intentions, meanings, and conscious subjects.

Can that premise be questioned and revised in depth? Can we hope to have ontological and cosmological concepts that serve us well at that ineliminable level of sense-making, particularly in relating mental and material kinds of being? I think that by learning key lessons from classical and modern metaphysicians and appropriately adjusting central concepts there is indeed a way to illuminate the being of all kinds of items while avoiding the worst metaphysical pitfalls.

I claim to make the following contributions in this book:

1. I show the coherence and utility of a metaphysical scheme in which centering and extending are the most basic factorsmore basic even than form, which they jointly constitute. This is a process- rather than substance-oriented view, dualized but not dualistic, that neutrally accommodates both mind- and matter-associated requisites of intelligibility. Beyond merely asserting that mental and material items coexist and are coordinated necessarily, the view is supportive of our study of actual mind-matter linkages. It is a proposal about what naturalism should look like, for it fulfills the naturalistic goal of accounting for continuities between mental and material items better than physicalism can. It overcomes the distorting bias of physicalism without incurring the new distortions of the great Whiteheadian and Deleuzian alternatives to it.

2. I show how intellectual determinations of sense and spiritual determinations of meaningfulness can and should be kept distinct, though not divorced; these are the terms on which metaphysics can refrain from functioning as a dubious theology and tend to its own necessary business as part of our pursuit of the fullest possible sense-makingwhich includes recognizing interactions between our sensible construals of the world and our scenes of meaningfulness. To this end I challenge the spiritual agenda of Platonism, I point out strongly positive meaningfulness implications in some forms of Cartesianism, and, as part of repeating Kants move to limit the jurisdiction of metaphysics, I criticize Kants own straying toward spiritualizing metaphysics in his treatment of teleology.

3. I interpret the legacies of Platonism and Cartesianism as indispensable constituents of our metaphysical vision, not overlooking their heavy investment in soul as a basic structure of actualization.

4. Capitalizing especially on Bergsons twist on Cartesian dualism, I show how to solve modern philosophys mind-body problemthe problem that notoriously cannot be solved either by substance dualism or monism, and that is managed in an ontologically blind way by supervenience theory and nonreductive physicalismby construing mental and material actualities as opposite (intensive vs. extensive) but always structurally and dynamically correlated realizations of form, continuous with each other through inversion (as my perceptual image of a chair is an intensive inversion of the physical chairs extended form, or the chair is an extensive inversion of my idea in building it). On this basis, I sketch viable basic interpretations of intentionality, consciousness, and reasons for (as distinct from causes of) action. I show the faultiness of the idea of mental causation.

5. Relating the structure and dynamics of centering and extending to Plotinuss and Nicolai Hartmanns interestingly opposed yet complementary views of levels of being, I give an account of levels of being based on the composition of beings by further centering and further extending. Such an account is ontologically insightful where appeals to complexity and emergence are blind. This addresses the metaphysical part of the task of locating intelligent life in the universe.

6. I establish a concept of eternity that is evaluatively neutral and ontologically fullfull in that it nonreductively centers constituted reality together with constituting actuality and constitutable possibility. As a companion to the Parmenidean concept of being that affirms the common basic positivity of being in all beings, the concept of eternity is a supreme cosmological principle of connectedness of all beings. This is the intelligible platform for whoever wishes to religiously address the All, and it does not force a divine determinism.

My contributions are made not by pretended proof but by pragmatic wrangling of concepts. In my view, this is all that one can expect in addressing the most basic metaphysical issues. Increased perspicuity, not certainty, is the accessible goal. We pursue it because new general ways of making sense can be very helpful intellectually.

The book comprises three main parts. The systematic presentation of the proposed metaphysical scheme is in the middle of the book in ) where metaphysical insight seems to me most urgently needed.

Key Terms. Certain nonstandard understandings of key terms have been found suitable for the present argument and now seem to me generally useful. The reader might like to be advised of them in advance.

I draw a strategic distinction between sense and meaningfulness in . It is a momentous distinction because I put all cognitive construal, including all metaphysical determinations, on the side of sense-making and leave contingencies of motivation and aim (including all issues of what is commonly called value as well as the identification of important beings) on the side of meaningfulness. This distinction does not exactly correspond to the Kantian distinction between the theoretical and practical spheres of reasoning, but it carries a similar programmatic weight.