What is “the world itself”, “the view from nowhere” or the world as seen sub specie aeternitatis?
“[A]ll levels would collapse into one, and thinking about the system would be just one way of working in the system. But it is not that easy. Even if a system can ‘think about itself’, it still is not outside itself.”
— Douglas Hofstadter (as found in his Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid).
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The American philosopher John Heil (1943 — ) states the following words in his paper ‘Are We Brains in a Vat? Top Philosopher Says ‘No’’:
“[A]n externalist might wish to distinguish points of view on the world from the world itself.”
So what is “the world itself”?
Please tell me something about it. Describe it.
It can be suggested here that if you do so, then you’ll immediately be describing something that is, in fact, the world from a point of view — your very own…
But if that last statement isn’t actually correct, then what exactly is being argued by metaphysical realists here?
How can anything be known about “the world itself”? How can anything even be said about the world itself? Indeed what does that phrase “the world itself” even mean?
To use Heil’s words again:
“Even a ‘God’s eye point of view,’ however, is a point of view.”
So what does a “God’s eye point of view” amount to? What on earth is it? Again, describe it to me.
(It can be accepted that a belief in a/the God’s eye point of view needn’t be theistic or religious in nature.)
Is a/the God’s eye point of view every conceivable point of view at one and the same time?…
What does that mean? And what would that view be… like?
So let’s tackle this from a slightly different angle. Firstly:
What is it for the world to be (to use Heil’s words) “a certain way”?
Secondly:
What is it for the the world to be a certain way “independent of any particular point of view”?
Oddly enough, “the world could [indeed] be a certain way independent of any particular point of view” — yet that still wouldn’t be of any help to us. That’s because we could never find out about the world as it is independent of any particular point of view. Indeed we couldn’t even utter a single word about the world as it is independent of any particular point of view.
So all that such metaphysical realists and mystics have, then, is the ability to use the words “the world could be a certain way independent of any particular point of view”. And, after stating that, there isn’t much more they can say. There isn’t much further they can go. Thus such philosophers and mystics have simply stressed and advanced a possibility about which nothing much — or even nothing at all — can be said.
The Ideal: Climbing Out of Our Own Minds
Of course we can happily understand the philosophical ideal of getting to (?) know the world as it is in itself. This ideal may even engender a degree of human humility in that it underplays merely human points of view and stresses the world itself. Yet often those who do stress the world itself (such as Thomas Nagel — see later) actually display the opposite of humility. That is, they proudly tell us — or sometimes merely hint — that they alone have come close to (or that they’ve even reached) a point of view that is the world’s own. And this, in turn, will include a set of statements which purport to show us the nature of the world itself.
Yet, like mystics or religious leaders throughout history and still today, talk of the world itself may simply be (in this case at least) a philosopher’s way of telling us that he is closer to ̶v̶i̶e̶w̶i̶n̶g̶ the world itself than all those other people who merely rely on all-too-human points of view.
So perhaps these (to use Nagel’s word) “transcendent” philosophers and mystics haven’t actually obtained a ̶v̶i̶e̶w̶ of the world itself at all! Perhaps they’ve simply fooled themselves — and fooled others — into believing that they have. Indeed they may only achieve this goal through the sheer emotional force of their poetic, literary and rhetorical prose.
A Brain in a Vat
John Heil then considers something much more specific when he tackles Hilary Putnam’s well-known take on the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment. Heil writes:
“Indeed this is precisely what externalists — and realists — seem to have in mind in insisting that it might be the case that one is a brain in a vat, even though, were this so, one could not entertain the thought that it is so.”
Here Putnam (1926–2016) was highlighting the strong possibility that what we take the world to be may not square with how the world actually is… Yes — this possibility has featured in philosophy for around three thousand years.
Indeed the brain-in-a-vat scenario is — at least partly — a 20th-century version of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the Hindu Maya illusion, Zhuangzi’s “Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly” and the evil demon of René Descartes… And, here in the 21st century, we now have Professor Donald Hoffman’s recent rendition of this old charmer — with his personal addition of such non-philosophical phrases as “mathematical models” and his talk of “icons” (see ‘Reality Does Not Exist’).
But let’s get back to Hilary Putnam.
The brain-in-a-vat thought experiment was one way of graphically highlighting the possibility that a brain in a vat would have no (direct) link to “reality” — or to the physical world outside itself and its simulations. And one main point of this thought experiment is that there’s (possibly) no difference between a brain-in-a-vat’s “view” of the world and our own view of the world.
Of course Putnam went on to stress the possibility that a brain in a vat could never know that it’s a brain in a vat. Yet the broader issue here is that that we could never know that we have the world right or even that we have access to the world at all. (Note: It’s sometimes hard to decipher if Professor Donald Hoffman, mentioned a moment ago, is making the point that we don’t have direct access to the world or that there’s no — physical- world in the first place.)
Spinoza’s Sub Specie Aeternitatis
Of course it was the Dutch 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) who famously discussed — and argued for — viewing the world sub specie aeternitatis.
When translated from the Latin, sub specie aeternitatis means “under the aspect of eternity”. (Or as a character in a Philip K. Dick novel put it: “SSA stands for sub specie aeternitatis; that is, something seen outside of time.”) That translation (i.e., “under the aspect of eternity”) doesn’t seem to be too closely tied to the metaphysically-realist position discussed above. However, another translation, “from the perspective of the eternal”, does seem to be more closely connected. In any case, both translations hint at what’s often been called “the objective point of view”.
Now take the American philosopher Thomas Nagel (1937 — ) again (who was mentioned above).
Nagel’s following words offer us a contemporary (or perhaps not so contemporary) version on Spinoza’s original position. In his essay ‘The Absurd’, Nagel wrote:
“Yet humans have the special capacity to step back and survey themselves, and the lives to which they are committed [] they can view it sub specie aeternitatis [].”
But it was Spinoza himself who offered us the best explanation of his own Latin phrase.
“It is of the nature of Reason to regard things as necessary and not as contingent. And Reason perceives this necessity of things truly, i.e., as it is in itself. But this necessity of things is the very necessity of God’s eternal nature. Therefore, it is of the nature of Reason to regard things under this species of eternity.”
And as put in basic terms, this God’s-eye view (or View from Nowhere), according to Spinoza, involves “[t]he third kind of knowledge, intuition”. And intuition “takes what is known by Reason and grasps it in a single act of the mind”.
To repeat: What exactly is Nagel’s View from Nowhere, the world “under the aspect of eternity” or the world from no point of view?
Describe one or all of these points of view to me.
It can strongly be suspected that this can’t be done.
So what do these grandstanding points of view (i.e., on transcending all points of view) offer us?
Nothing much.
Perhaps nothing at all.
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