Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

non-supernatural version of the soul given in earlier chapters, the source of our values need not, I think, be so mysterious. The sequence given in the previous chapter — Sensation, Perception, Impulse, Image, Symbol — seems to describe our situation with regard to ethics quite closely. It captures the ambiguities in our behaviour and accords well with the distinction between instinctual drives and rational deliberation.

Back in Chapter 2, reference was made to something called the deflationary theory of truth. The key point of deflationary theory is to suggest that we do not need to split the world up into a place where truth, value, meaning and purpose might reside and the instances of these things in the real world. We could, instead, recognise that things just are what they are, and no splits in the world are really necessary. We explored the various splits over the course of four chapters and perhaps got a feeling of how problematic they have been in the development of Western thought.

This idea from deflationary truth can therefore be spread across a variety of different categories.

Thus: There is not a thing called existence, things just exist or they don’t.

And: There is no quality of truth that things can possess — things are either true or they’re not.

And: It’s easy to see that the same applies to aesthetics. Something does not need to possess beauty — rather it can just be beautiful.

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