Recovering the Past

But a philosophical outline is not expected to conform to this pattern, if only because it is imagined that what philosophy puts forward is as ephemeral a product as Penelope’s weaving, which is begun afresh every day.

Hegel, Preface, Elements of the Philosophy of Right

This is one of those days when I can only recover the emotional content of my past. I cannot recover any of the intellectual content of my past. Have I completely forgotten it, or was there no intellectual content in the first place?

I think of my mother, who died of complications from Alzheimer’s Disease. I perceived during her illness that she could recover the emotional content of her past long after her intellectual skills eroded and she could no longer recover her intellectual past. She did not know my name, but she knew who I was.

Last night, I was thinking about how Arthur C. Danto tried to explain philosophy and philosophical questions in his book Connections to the World. I’ll try to recover it from memory.

Imagine a world where there is free will and a world that is completely deterministic. Suppose the same events happened in both worlds. There is no way to discover which world you are inside from inside the world.

Or imagine a world where events happen at random and a world governed by causal laws. Once again, all the same identical events happen in both worlds. There is no way to discover which world you are inside from inside the world.

Take the other big questions in philosophy and imagine a similar scenario.

It seems as though to answer philosophical questions one must take a stand outside the world. Knowing matters of fact inside the world will not help you answer philosophical questions.

OK, I have just recovered the memory of a text, but I haven’t recovered the intellectual content of my mind when I was reading it.

About all I can remember of my intellectual past is that it was suffused with naiveté.

Maybe, I was too immersed in the mundane, fulfilling more mundane urges, and not thinking much at all. Thus, there is no intellectual content to recover.

I would almost bet the same thing will happen a year from now when I try to recall today.