the third table

Because of something I had to write I was going over A.S. Eddington’s The Nature of the Physical World (or over the Introduction, anyway, which was the relevant part for my purposes). This Introduction is famous for its discussion of the “two tables”: the scientific table that is mostly empty space and made up of rushing subatomic particles, and the table of everyday life (which Eddington confusingly names the “substantial” table, but never mind that).

I find that I have no sympathy for either of those two tables. The real table is the third table that is neither scientific nor everyday.

Under Eddington’s schema, both tables are dissolved into nearby sets of relations– either into their tiny little components detectable by the sciences, or into their effects on humans. In other words, exactly what I call “undermining” and “overmining.”

The two always require one another. Eliminativism always goes hand-in-hand with a functionalism. The Parmenidean “being is and non-being is not” must always go hand-in-hand with a sphere of doxa.

Everyone wants to destroy that middle zone where real things exist, perhaps because they’re not tangible in the way that tiny elements are, or that effects on humans are. But that’s precisely the point of philosophia. You’re not supposed to have direct access to the real. Otherwise you’d either be a god or a sophist.