ALT Intellectual and moral progress is not a matter of getting closer to an antecedent goal but of surpassing the past. Beaver dams improved over the millennia as gifted beavers did novel things with sticks and mud, things that were then incorporated into standard dambuilding practice. The arts and the sciences improved over the millennia because our more ingenious ancestors did novel things not only with seeds, clay, and metallic ores but also with noises and marks. What we call "increased knowledge" should not be thought of as increased access to the Real but as increased ability to do things—to take part in social practices that make possible richer and fuller human lives. This increased richness is not the effect of a magnetic attraction exerted on the human mind by the really real, nor by that mind's innate ability to penetrate the veil of appearance. It is a relation between the human present and the human past, not a relation between the human and the nonhuman.

ALT On the account of human abilities I am suggesting, the use of persuasion rather than force is an innovation comparable to the beaver’s dam. Like the beavers’ collaboration in getting the dam built, it is a social practice. It was initiated by the novel suggestion that we might use noises rather than physical compulsion to get other humans to cooperate with us. That suggestion gave rise to language. Rationality, thought, and cognition all began when language did. Language gets off the ground not by people giving names to things they were already thinking about but by proto-humans using noises in innovative ways, just as the proto-beavers got the practice of building dams off the ground by using sticks and mud in innovative ways.

ALT On the account of human abilities I am suggesting, the use of persuasion rather than force is an innovation comparable to the beaver’s dam. Like the beavers’ collaboration in getting the dam built, it is a social practice. It was initiated by the novel suggestion that we might use noises rather than physical compulsion to get other humans to cooperate with us. That suggestion gave rise to language. Rationality, thought, and cognition all began when language did. Language gets off the ground not by people giving names to things they were already thinking about but by proto-humans using noises in innovative ways, just as the proto-beavers got the practice of building dams off the ground by using sticks and mud in innovative ways.

ALT On the account of human abilities I am suggesting, the use of persuasion rather than force is an innovation comparable to the beaver’s dam. Like the beavers’ collaboration in getting the dam built, it is a social practice. It was initiated by the novel suggestion that we might use noises rather than physical compulsion to get other humans to cooperate with us. That suggestion gave rise to language. Rationality, thought, and cognition all began when language did. Language gets off the ground not by people giving names to things they were already thinking about but by proto-humans using noises in innovative ways, just as the proto-beavers got the practice of building dams off the ground by using sticks and mud in innovative ways.

ALT On the account of human abilities I am suggesting, the use of persuasion rather than force is an innovation comparable to the beaver’s dam. Like the beavers’ collaboration in getting the dam built, it is a social practice. It was initiated by the novel suggestion that we might use noises rather than physical compulsion to get other humans to cooperate with us. That suggestion gave rise to language. Rationality, thought, and cognition all began when language did. Language gets off the ground not by people giving names to things they were already thinking about but by proto-humans using noises in innovative ways, just as the proto-beavers got the practice of building dams off the ground by using sticks and mud in innovative ways.

ALT To get rid of this cluster of bad ideas we need to think of reason not as a truth-tracking faculty but as a social practice—the practice of enforcing social norms on the use of marks and noises, thereby making it possible to use words rather than blows as a way of getting things done. We need to think of imagination not as the faculty that produces visual or auditory images but as a combination of novelty and luck. To be imaginative, as opposed to being merely fantastical, is to do something new and to be lucky enough to have that novelty be adopted by one's fellow humans, incorporated into their social practices. The distinction between fantasy and imagination is between novelties that do not get taken up and put to use by one's fellows and those that do. People whose novelties we cannot appropriate and utilize we call foolish, or perhaps insane. Those whose ideas strike us as useful we hail as geniuses.

ALT To get rid of this cluster of bad ideas we need to think of reason not as a truth-tracking faculty but as a social practice—the practice of enforcing social norms on the use of marks and noises, thereby making it possible to use words rather than blows as a way of getting things done. We need to think of imagination not as the faculty that produces visual or auditory images but as a combination of novelty and luck. To be imaginative, as opposed to being merely fantastical, is to do something new and to be lucky enough to have that novelty be adopted by one's fellow humans, incorporated into their social practices. The distinction between fantasy and imagination is between novelties that do not get taken up and put to use by one's fellows and those that do. People whose novelties we cannot appropriate and utilize we call foolish, or perhaps insane. Those whose ideas strike us as useful we hail as geniuses.

ALT To get rid of this cluster of bad ideas we need to think of reason not as a truth-tracking faculty but as a social practice—the practice of enforcing social norms on the use of marks and noises, thereby making it possible to use words rather than blows as a way of getting things done. We need to think of imagination not as the faculty that produces visual or auditory images but as a combination of novelty and luck. To be imaginative, as opposed to being merely fantastical, is to do something new and to be lucky enough to have that novelty be adopted by one's fellow humans, incorporated into their social practices. The distinction between fantasy and imagination is between novelties that do not get taken up and put to use by one's fellows and those that do. People whose novelties we cannot appropriate and utilize we call foolish, or perhaps insane. Those whose ideas strike us as useful we hail as geniuses.

ALT To get rid of this cluster of bad ideas we need to think of reason not as a truth-tracking faculty but as a social practice—the practice of enforcing social norms on the use of marks and noises, thereby making it possible to use words rather than blows as a way of getting things done. We need to think of imagination not as the faculty that produces visual or auditory images but as a combination of novelty and luck. To be imaginative, as opposed to being merely fantastical, is to do something new and to be lucky enough to have that novelty be adopted by one's fellow humans, incorporated into their social practices. The distinction between fantasy and imagination is between novelties that do not get taken up and put to use by one's fellows and those that do. People whose novelties we cannot appropriate and utilize we call foolish, or perhaps insane. Those whose ideas strike us as useful we hail as geniuses.

ALT To get rid of this cluster of bad ideas we need to think of reason not as a truth-tracking faculty but as a social practice—the practice of enforcing social norms on the use of marks and noises, thereby making it possible to use words rather than blows as a way of getting things done. We need to think of imagination not as the faculty that produces visual or auditory images but as a combination of novelty and luck. To be imaginative, as opposed to being merely fantastical, is to do something new and to be lucky enough to have that novelty be adopted by one's fellow humans, incorporated into their social practices. The distinction between fantasy and imagination is between novelties that do not get taken up and put to use by one's fellows and those that do. People whose novelties we cannot appropriate and utilize we call foolish, or perhaps insane. Those whose ideas strike us as useful we hail as geniuses.

ALT My hypothesis about why ontology remains so popular is that we are still reluctant to admit that the poetic imagination sets the bounds for human thought. At the heart of philosophy’s quarrel with poetry is the fear that the imagination goes all the way down—that there is nothing we talk about that we might not have talked of differently. This fear causes philosophers to become obsessed by the need to achieve direct access to reality. Direct, in this sense, means “unmediated by language”—for our language, we are uneasily aware, might well have been different. Before we can rid ourselves of ontology we are going to have to get rid of the idea of nonlinguistic access. This will entail getting rid of faculty psychology. We shall have to give up the picture of the human mind as divided into a good part that puts us in touch with the really real and a bad part that engages in self-stimulation and autosuggestion.

ALT My hypothesis about why ontology remains so popular is that we are still reluctant to admit that the poetic imagination sets the bounds for human thought. At the heart of philosophy’s quarrel with poetry is the fear that the imagination goes all the way down—that there is nothing we talk about that we might not have talked of differently. This fear causes philosophers to become obsessed by the need to achieve direct access to reality. Direct, in this sense, means “unmediated by language”—for our language, we are uneasily aware, might well have been different. Before we can rid ourselves of ontology we are going to have to get rid of the idea of nonlinguistic access. This will entail getting rid of faculty psychology. We shall have to give up the picture of the human mind as divided into a good part that puts us in touch with the really real and a bad part that engages in self-stimulation and autosuggestion.

ALT My hypothesis about why ontology remains so popular is that we are still reluctant to admit that the poetic imagination sets the bounds for human thought. At the heart of philosophy’s quarrel with poetry is the fear that the imagination goes all the way down—that there is nothing we talk about that we might not have talked of differently. This fear causes philosophers to become obsessed by the need to achieve direct access to reality. Direct, in this sense, means “unmediated by language”—for our language, we are uneasily aware, might well have been different. Before we can rid ourselves of ontology we are going to have to get rid of the idea of nonlinguistic access. This will entail getting rid of faculty psychology. We shall have to give up the picture of the human mind as divided into a good part that puts us in touch with the really real and a bad part that engages in self-stimulation and autosuggestion.

ALT My hypothesis about why ontology remains so popular is that we are still reluctant to admit that the poetic imagination sets the bounds for human thought. At the heart of philosophy’s quarrel with poetry is the fear that the imagination goes all the way down—that there is nothing we talk about that we might not have talked of differently. This fear causes philosophers to become obsessed by the need to achieve direct access to reality. Direct, in this sense, means “unmediated by language”—for our language, we are uneasily aware, might well have been different. Before we can rid ourselves of ontology we are going to have to get rid of the idea of nonlinguistic access. This will entail getting rid of faculty psychology. We shall have to give up the picture of the human mind as divided into a good part that puts us in touch with the really real and a bad part that engages in self-stimulation and autosuggestion.

ALT My hypothesis about why ontology remains so popular is that we are still reluctant to admit that the poetic imagination sets the bounds for human thought. At the heart of philosophy’s quarrel with poetry is the fear that the imagination goes all the way down—that there is nothing we talk about that we might not have talked of differently. This fear causes philosophers to become obsessed by the need to achieve direct access to reality. Direct, in this sense, means “unmediated by language”—for our language, we are uneasily aware, might well have been different. Before we can rid ourselves of ontology we are going to have to get rid of the idea of nonlinguistic access. This will entail getting rid of faculty psychology. We shall have to give up the picture of the human mind as divided into a good part that puts us in touch with the really real and a bad part that engages in self-stimulation and autosuggestion.

ALT When it comes to Reality, however, there is no such thing as common sense. Unlike the case of trees, there are no platitudes accepted by both the vulgar and the learned. In some circles, you can get general agreement that the ultimate nature of Reality is atoms and void. In others, you can get a consensus that it is God—an immaterial, non-spatio-temporal, being. The reason quarrels among metaphysicians about the nature of Reality seem so ludicrous is that each of them feels free to pick a few of his favorite things and claim ontological privilege for them. Despite the best efforts of positivists, pragmatists, and deconstructionists, ontology is as popular among contemporary philosophers as it was in the days of Democritus and Anaxagoras. Most analytic philosophers still take the question of whether the human mind can get in touch with the really real with perfect seriousness.

ALT When it comes to Reality, however, there is no such thing as common sense. Unlike the case of trees, there are no platitudes accepted by both the vulgar and the learned. In some circles, you can get general agreement that the ultimate nature of Reality is atoms and void. In others, you can get a consensus that it is God—an immaterial, non-spatio-temporal, being. The reason quarrels among metaphysicians about the nature of Reality seem so ludicrous is that each of them feels free to pick a few of his favorite things and claim ontological privilege for them. Despite the best efforts of positivists, pragmatists, and deconstructionists, ontology is as popular among contemporary philosophers as it was in the days of Democritus and Anaxagoras. Most analytic philosophers still take the question of whether the human mind can get in touch with the really real with perfect seriousness.