By emphasizing the practical aspect, optimism is not solely reduceable to the sensibility of epistemic accommodation of corresponding elements, as it was put above, but also what would be classified as irritability by the above distinction: an explicit denial of knowledge-justification in practical decisions under conditions insufficient for continued or sustainable existence. As such, optimism is the counter-valence to likelihood of catastrophe-proximity. as to whether or not the human species will survive another thirty years. So can a consideration of the possibility of many future contributors, rather that the current actuality of the paltry few, constitute a true sensitivity to the forum's situation as a public utility, and therefore be not incorrectly describable as "optimistic" in the traditional sense?Īs the question of optimism has to do with expectations, it can be posed in the most basic of ways, e.g. So how can the present forum-participant express appropriate sensitivity to the relevant state of affairs? Perhaps this would be best expressed by taking note of the fact that participation in the public utility of an intellectual exchange-venue is in principle universal, so that it must be considered a defect where its use lacks a high number of contributors. Regardless of the circumstances, one or the other more or less predominates. It refers to an anthropological approximation to what in a comprehensive context is describable as cosmological knowledge or knowledge of the universe, divisible into various situations where the relationship of sensitivity to the truth of what can be said of a situation, and the irritability to what one doesn't want to hear said about it, can be observed.įurther implied here is that there is no indifference to this distinction, which is formally bi-valent, once the veridical view is assumed. It turns out then that optimism can be given neither an essentialist nor a coherentist reading, but rather a veridical one. Sensitivity is associated with information-input, and therefore sufficiency of judgement-relationship to truth-contents whereas irritability precludes given categories of stimulation, and therefore does not contribute to analysis of more complex levels of experience contents. A better terminology to refer to their objects would therefore be sensibility and irritability, as that would more fully indicate the situation to which one or the other is a response. It appears, then, that the distinction between optimism and pessimism is a superficial one, referring rather to topical responses to particular states of affairs, and playing no detectable role in their outcome. It's something that's found in particular situations, variously describable. As a description of a part of the world rather than a correspondence with it, to describe the coherentist view as a self fulfilling prophecy would be highly over-zealous and inaccurate. Note that this merely describes a combination of an attitude or state of mind with the context of its contents and associations. One is optimistic about something because something better is possible or it's not that bad and it's not that bad and something better is possible because one is optimistic about it. The coherentist account is therefore a vicious circle.
But this "something" turns out to be what one is optimistic about, and not the state of mind which optimism constitutes. And if this is the case, it can refer to nothing which is in itself substantial, but must derive from something which does so refer. Rather a coherentist account is required, where one person's optimism is another person's pessimism. And that's another way of saying that the true Stoic's not really an optimist. This implies that the essentialist view, in this case anyway, can not be correct. Therefore the essentialist account of optimism is Stoicism in its classical form.īut as indicated above, quantitative identity is in truth just the strictest form of qualitative identity, and is not categorically distinct from it. The essential optimist is by this someone who doesn't fall apart when everything around him/her does. Even if this latter can not be established to the exclusion of alternates, it holds categorically by subjective presupposition for purposes of internal coherence.
And identity is usually conceived in two ways: qualitative, which is loose identity on basis of predicate association (obtained by varying degrees of precision), and quantitative, which is strict identity on basis of self-association of the subject. What would an essentialist account of optimism look like? It would have to demonstrate in what way or ways the optimizer is identical with what one is optimistic about.
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