Abdication of authority. There is no coward like a university administrator.
Month: May 2014
Must Singular Thoughts be Object-Dependent?
What follows are some ideas from London Ed about a book he is writing. He solicits comments. Mine are in blue.
The logical form thing was entertaining but rather off-topic re the fictional names thing. On which, Peter requested some more.
Let’s step right back. I want to kick off the book with an observation about how illusion impedes the progress of science. It looks as though the sun is going round the earth, so early theories of the universe had the earth standing still. It seems as though objects are continuously solid, and so science rejected the atomists’ theory and adopted Aristotle’s theory for more than a millenium.
A final example from the psychology of perception: in 1638, Descartes takes a eye of a bull and shows how images are projected onto the retina. He finally disproves the ‘emissive theory of sight’. The emissive theory is the naturally occurring idea that eyesight is emitted from your eye and travels to and hits the distant object you are looking at. If you ask a young child why you can’t see when your eyes are shut, he replies (‘because the eyesight can’t get out’).
Scientific progress is [often] about rejecting theories based on what our cognitive and perceptual framework suggests to us, and adopting theories based on diligent observation and logic.
We reject ‘eyebeams’. We reject the natural idea that the mental or sensitive faculty can act at a distance. When we look at the moon, science rejects the idea that a little ethereal piece of us is travelling a quarter of a million miles into space. Yet – turning to the main subject of the book – some philosophers think that objects themselves somehow enter our thoughts. Russell writes to Frege, saying “I believe that in spite of all its snowfields Mont Blanc itself is a component part of what is actually asserted in the proposition ‘Mont Blanc is more than 4,000 metres high”. Kaplan mentions, with apparent approval, the idea that the proposition ‘John is tall’ has two components: the property expressed by the predicate ‘is tall’, and the individual John. “That’s right, John himself, right there, trapped in a proposition”. The dominant theory in modern philosophical logic is ‘direct reference’, or object-dependent theories of semantics: a proper name has no meaning except its bearer, and so the meaning of ‘John is tall’ has precisely the components that Kaplan describes.
BV: I too find the notion that there are Russellian (as opposed to Fregean) propositions very hard to swallow. If belief is a propositional attitude, and I believe that Peter is now doing his grades, it is surely not Peter himself, intestinal contents and all, who is a constituent of the proposition that is the accusative of my act of belief. The subject constituent of the proposition cannot be that infinitely propertied gnarly chunk of external reality, but must be a thinner sort of object, one manageable by a finite mind, something along the lines of a Fregean sense.
The purpose of the proposed book is to advance science by showing how such object-dependent theories are deeply mistaken, and also to explain why they are so compelling, because of their basis on a cognitive illusion as powerful as the illusions that underlie the geocentric theory, or the emissive theory of sight.
What is the illusion? The argument for object dependence is roughly as follows
(1) We can have so-called ‘singular thoughts’, such as when we think that John is tall, i.e. when we have thoughts expressable [expressible] by propositions [sentences, not propositions] whose subject term is a proper name or some other non-descriptive singular term.
(2) A singular term tells us which individual the proposition is about, without telling us anything about it. I.e. singular terms, proper names, demonstratives, etc. are non-descriptive. They are ‘bare individuators’.
BV: This is not quite right. Consider the the first-person singular pronoun, 'I.' This is an indexical expression. If BV says, 'I am hungry,' he refers to BV; if PL says 'I am hungry,' he refers to PL. Either way, something is conveyed about the nature of the referent, namely, that it is a person or a self. So what Ed said is false as it stands. A use of 'I' does tell us something about the individual the sentence containing 'I' is about.
Examples are easily multiplied. Apart from the innovations of the Pee Cee, 'she' tells us that the individual referred to is female. 'Here' tells us that the item denoted is a place, typically. 'Now' picks out times. And there are other examples.
There are no bare items. Hence there cannot be reference to bare items. All reference conveys some property of the thing referred to. But variables may be a counterexample. Consider 'For any x, x = x.' One could perhaps uses variables in such a way that there is no restriction on what they range over. But it might be best to stay away from this labyrinth.
One criticism, then, is that there are no bare individuators. A second is that it is not a singular term, but a use of a singular term that individuates. Thus 'I' individuates nothing. It is PL's use of 'I' that picks out PL.
(3) If a singular term is non-descriptive, its meaning is the individual it individuates. A singular term cannot tell us which individual the proposition is about, unless there exists such an individual.
The course of the book is then to show why we don’t have to be forced into assumption (3). There doesn’t have to be (or to exist) an individual that is individuated. The theory of non-descriptive singular terms is then developed in the way I suggested in my earlier posts. Consider the inference
Frodo is a hobbit
Frodo has large feet
——-
Some hobbit has large feet
I want to argue that the semantics of ‘Frodo’ is purely inferential. I.e. to understand the meaning of ‘Frodo’ in that argument, it is enough to understand the inference that it generates. That is all.
BV: 'Frodo' doesn't generate anything. What you want to say is that the meaning of 'Frodo' is exhausted by the inferential role this term plays in the (valid) argument depicted. Sorry to be such a linguistic prick.
What you are saying is that 'Frodo,' though empty, has a meaning, but this meaning is wholly reducible to the purely syntactical role it plays in the above argument. (So you are not an eliminativist about the meanings of empty names.) But if the role is purely syntactical, then the role of 'Frodo' is the same as the role of the arbitrary individual constant 'f' in the following valid schema:
Hf
Lf
——-
(Ex)(Hx & Lx).
But then what distinguishes the meaning of 'Frodo' from that of 'Gandalf'?
Meinongian nonentities are out. Fregean senses are out. There are no referents in the cases of empty names. And yet they have meaning. So the meaning is purely syntactical. Well, I don't see how you can squeeze meaning out of bare syntax. Again, what distinguishes the meaning of the empty names just cited? The obviously differ in meaning, despite lacking both Sinn and Bedeutung.
We don’t need an object-dependent semantics to explain such inferences, and hence we don’t need object-dependence to explain the semantics of proper names. If an inferential semantics is sufficient, then the Razor tells us it is necesssary: Frustra fit per plura, quod potest fieri per pauciora.
BV: You should state explicitly that you intend your inferential semantics to hold both for empty and nonempty names.
And now we see the illusion. The proposition
John is thinking of Obama (or Frodo, or whomever)
has a relational form: “—is thinking of –”. But it does not express a relation. The illusion consists in the way that the relation of the language so strongly suggests a relation in reality. It is the illusion that causes us “to multiply the things principally signified by terms in accordance with the multiplication of the terms”.
That’s the main idea. Obviously a lot of middle terms have been left out. Have at it.
BV: So I suppose what you are saying is that belief in the intentionality of thought is as illusory as the belief in the emissive theory of sight. Just as the the eye does not emit an ethereal something that travels to the moon, e.g., the mind or the 'I' of the mind — all puns intended! — does not shoot out a ray of intentionality that gloms onto some Meinongian object, or some Thomistic merely intentional object, or some really existent object.
You face two main hurdles. The first I already mentioned. You have to explain how to squeeze semantics from mere syntax. The second is that there are theoretical alternatives to the view that intentionality is a relation other than yours. To mention just one: there are adverbial theories of intentionality that avoid an act-object analysis of mental reference.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Obscure ’60’s Psychedelia
How many of these do you remember? If you were too much of the '60s then you probably don't remember anything assuming you still animate the mortal coil; if you were too little of the '60s then you won't remember any of these for a different reason. But among the latter are some very beautiful songs from that amazingly creative time.
Fever Tree, The Sun Also Rises
Fever Tree, San Francisco Girls
Love, Alone Again Or
Jefferson Airplane, Embryonic Journey
Moby Grape, Omaha
Moby Grape, I am not Willing
H.P. Lovecraft, The White Ship
Quicksilver Messenger Service, Pride of Man
Placeholders, Variables, and Logical Form
London Ed refers us to Understanding Arguments: an Introduction to Informal Logic, Robert Fogelin and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and provides this quotation:
Perhaps a bit more surprisingly, our definitions allow 'roses are red and roses are red' to be a substitution instance of 'p & q'. This example makes sense if you compare it to variables in mathematics. Using only positive integers, how many solutions are there to the equation 'x + y = 4'? There are three: 3+1, 1+3, and 2+2. The fact that '2+2' is a solution to 'x + y = 4' shows that '2' can be substituted for both 'x' and 'y' in the same solution. That's just like allowing 'roses are red' to be substituted for both 'p' and 'q', so that 'roses are red and roses are red' is a substitution instance of 'p & q' in propositional logic.
In general, then, we get a substitution instance of a propositional form by uniformly replacing the same variable with the same proposition throughout, but different variables do not have to be replaced with different propositions. The rule is this:
Different variables may be replaced with the same proposition [Ed: Let's call this the London rule], but different propositions may not be replaced with the same variable.
Suppose I am given the task of determining whether the conditional English sentence 'If roses are red, then roses are red' is a tautology, a contradiction, or a contingency. How do I proceed?
Step One is translation, or encoding. Let upper case letters serve as placeholders for propositions. Let '–>' denote the truth-functional connective known in the trade as the material or Philonian conditional. I write 'P –> P.'
Step Two is evaluation. Suppose for reductio that the truth value of 'P –>P' is false. Then, by the definition of the Philonian conditional, we know that the antecedent must be true, and the consequent false. But antecedent and consequent are the same proposition. Therefore, the same proposition is both true and false. This is a contradiction. Therefore, the assumption that conditional is false is itself false. Therefore the conditional is a tautology.
Now that obviously is the right answer since you don't need logic to know that 'If roses are red, then roses are red' is a tautology. (Assuming you know the definition of 'tautology.') But if if Fogelin & Co. are right, and the 'P –>Q' encoding is permitted, then we get the wrong answer, namely, that the English conditional is a contingency.
I am assuming that if 'P–>Q' is a logical form of 'If roses are red, then roses are red,' then 'P –>Q' is a legitimate translation of 'If roses are red, then roses are red.' As Heraclitus said, the way up and the way down are the same. The assumption seems correct.
If I am right, then there must be something wrong with the mathematical analogy. Now there is no doubt that Fogelin and his side kick are right when it comes to mathematics. And I allow that what they say is true about variables in general. Suppose I want to translate into first-order predicate logic with identity the sentence, 'There is exactly one wise man.' I would write, '[(Ex)Wx & (y)(Wy –> x = y)].' Suppose Siddartha is the unique wise man. Then Siddartha is both the value of 'x' and the value of 'y.'
So different variables can have the same value. And they can have the same substituend. In the example, Siddartha is the value and 'Siddartha' is the substituend. But is a placeholder the same as a variable? I don't think so. Here is a little argument:
No variable is a constant
Every placeholder is an arbitrary constant
Every arbitrary constant is a constant
——-
No placeholder is a variable.
A placeholder is neither an abbreviation, nor a variable. It is an arbitrary constant. Thus the logical form of 'Al is fat' is Fa, not Fx. Fa is a proposition, not a propositional function. 'F' is a predicate constant. 'a' is an individual constant. We cannot symbolize 'Al is fat' as Fx. For Fx is not a proposition but a propositional function. If 'a' were not an arbitrary constant, then Fa would not depict the logical form of 'Al is fat,' a form it shares with other atomic sentences.
Here is another argument:
Every variable is either free or bound by a quantifier
No placeholder is either free or bound by a quantifier
——-
No placeholder is a variable.
Here is a third argument:
Every variable has a domain over which it ranges
No placeholder has a domain over which it ranges
——-
No placeholder is a variable.
A fourth argument:
There is no quantification over propositions in the propositional calculus
——-
There are no propositional variables in the propositional calculus
If there are no propositional variables in the propositional calculus, then the placeholders in the propositional calculus cannot be variables
——-
The placeholders in the proposition calculus cannot be variables.
Punchline: because placeholders are not variables, the fact that the different variables can have the same value and the same substituend does not show that different placeholders can have the same substituend. 'If roses are red, then roses are red' does not have the logical form 'P –>Q' and the latter form does not have as a substitutution-instance 'If roses are red, then roses are red.'
As I have said many times already, one cannot abstract away from the fact that the same proposition is both antecedent and consequent.
What one could say, perhaps, is that 'P –> P' has the higher order form 'P –> Q.' But this latter form is not a form of the English sentence but a form of the form of the English sentence.
Ed can appeal to authority all he wants, but that is an unphilosophical move, indeed an informal fallacy. He needs to show where I am going wrong.
On Her Deathbed: “I Fear that There is Nothing on the Other Side”
This from a correspondent:
My grandmother is on her deathbed. My mother flew out to Boston to be there with her when she dies. Of course my grandmother is putting up a good fight; however, they expected her to die yesterday. My mother had a conversation with her while she was lucid. She asked her, “Why are you fighting so hard? Do you fear something?”
My grandmother’s reply, “I fear that there is nothing on the other side.” Here is a woman who has spent eighty nine years of her life devoting herself to the [Catholic] church and her family. Now, when it comes down to death she is clinging on because her entire life is behind her and the only thing that she faces in front of her is the uncertainty of whether there is a heaven awaiting her in the coming days.If you were there at my grandmother’s deathbed and she would convey to you her fears, what would you tell her?
I'm a philosopher, not a pastor, and what a dying nonphilosopher needs is pastoral care, not philosophical dialog. But if I were to play the pastor I would say something along the following lines.
"You have lived your long life faithfully and devotedly in the embrace of Holy Mother the Church. She has presided over central events in your life, your baptism, first communion, confirmation, and your marriage. She has provided guidance, moral instruction, comfort, and community as you have navigated life's difficulties and disappointments. She provided meaning and solace when your parents died, and your husband, and your many friends and relatives. If your faith was a living faith and not a convenience or a matter of social conformity, then from time to time you had your doubts. But through prayer and reflection you have repeatedly reaffirmed your faith. You faith was made deeper and truer by those doubts and their overcoming."
"I ask you now to recall those moments of calm reflection and existential lucidity, those moments when you were at your best physically, mentally, and spiritually. I ask you to recall them, and above all I ask you not to betray them now when you are weak. Do not allow the decisions and resolutions of your finest and and clearest hours to be taken hostage by doubts and fears born of weakness. Your weakness has called forth the most vicious attacks of the Adversary and his agents. You have lived in the faith and now you must remain true to a course of life judged right at the height of your powers. Your doubts are of the devil and they must be put aside. Pray, and remain true to a course judged right."
So that is what I would say to the old Irish Catholic woman on her deathbed. I would exhort her to remain true to a course judged right in the moments of her highest existential lucidity and to bring her life to a successful completion. The hour of death is not the time to grapple with the devil of doubt!
To myself and the others for whom the hora mortis is still a ways off, to those in the sunshine of their strength, physical and mental, I say the following. Now is the time to wrestle with doubts and either defeat them or succumb to them. Now is the time to get serious about The Last Things. It is far better to get serious about them before they get serious about you. Now is the time to face the reality of death without evasion and to prepare for a happy death. Now is the time to realize that you don't have all the time in the world, that as the Zen Master Dogen says, "Impermanence is swift." Now is the time to stop fooling yourself about how you are going to live forever. For "What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." (James 3, 14)
Related: Six Types of Death Fear
Boko Haram and the Kidnapped School Girls
An important piece by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
On the Scientism Front
We defenders of the humanities need to do battle on three fronts against three enemies: scientism, leftism, Islamism. Each is represented by a disturbing number of crapweasels, individuals who won't own up to who and what they are. Thus prominent scientisticists — to give an ugly name to an ugly bunch — will deny that there there is any such thing as scientism. (See my Scientism category for documentation.) And the same goes, mutatis mutandis, for the Pee Cee crowd and the Islamists.
Here are two links so that you may know your enemies.
Thomas Nagel and Stephen C. Myer's Signature in the Cell
Why Neil de Grasse Tyson is a Philistine (HTs: Dave Lull, J. Orsak, W. Chambers, et al.)
Dallas Willard Remembered
Dallas Willard died on this date one year ago. Here is what I wrote at the time.
The Eliminative Materialist
The eliminative materialist is a bit like a man who blows his brains out to be rid of a headache. No head, no headache, no problem!
Are Rednecks People of Color?
If not, why not?
How Reasonable is it to Rely on Reason Alone?
Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, tr. Reinhardt, ICS Publications, 2002, p. 22:
Reason would turn into unreason if it would stubbornly content itself with what it is able to discover with its own light, barring out everything which is made visible to it by a brighter and more sublime light.
Is it unreasonable to rely on reason alone, or is this exactly what reason demands? If the latter, how could reason validate its demand? Reason cannot validate itself by appeal to itself: A circular validation is no validation at all. So it is by a sort of transrational faith that reason relies on itself and accepts only what it can validate by its own lights. But if reason allows transrational faith in justification of itself, then it ought to be open to other transrational or suprarational sources of insight.
Solubility Skepticism, Religion, and Reason
Ruffin Crozat writes,
There is much depth in your short post on religion and reason from 6 May. Here are two points I often ponder about this topic:
First, I appreciate the difficulty of solving philosophical problems, but I wonder about the claim that they are insoluble (I suppose “insoluble” means “insoluble by humans alone”). If the problems are beyond mere human knowledge, how could we know this? One may inductively suspect insolubility by reflecting upon his experience of practicing philosophy, but how could he know the unknowable? If we can’t solve philosophical problems by philosophizing, then it seems we can’t conclude insolubility by philosophizing because this very conclusion would be a philosophical conclusion.
BV: I hold that the central problems of philosophy are most of them genuine, some of them humanly important, but all of them insoluble. And you are right, by 'insoluble' I mean insoluble by us or by beings of a similar cognitive architecture, ectypal intellects in Kant's jargon. Furthermore, pace Nicholas Rescher, I don't count a 'solution' that is relative to some set of background assumptions and cognitive values as a solution. Of course there are solutions in this sense. Nominalists solve the problem of univerals in one way, realists in another, conceptualists in a third, etc. But those are merely intramural solutions. What is wanted are solutions acceptable to all, solutions that hold ouside the walls of self-reinforcing enclaves of the like-minded.
You ask a very important question: How could one know that the central philosophical problems are insoluble? You yourself supplied the clue: by induction from philosophical experience. The best and the brightest have been at this game for thousands of years but not one single problem has been solved during this period, solved to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners. Everything is up for grabs, even the most elementary and picayune topics. Take a look at what is going one as we speak in the thread on logical form. Philosophers can't even agree on the most basic concepts of deductive logic. There is controversy everywhere. This is a plain fact.
The strife of systems and the ubiquity and longevity of controversy need explaining and I offer the insolubility thesis as the best explanation. Why haven't the problems been solved? Because they are insoluble. I agree with Benson Mates on this point. Of course, the following is an invalid argument form: Such-and-such has hitherto not been accomplished; ergo, such-and-such will never be accomplished. But then every inductive argument is invalid. Some inductive arguments, however, do quite reasonably support their conclusions.
But you can and should press your objection. If I maintain that the problems of philosophy are insoluble, then, given that the metaphilosophical problem of whether or not philosophical problems are soluble is a philosophical problem, it follows that the metaphilosophical problem is insoluble. Is this a difficult for my position? Not obviously. I simply 'bite the bullet' as they say. I accept that the meta problem is also insoluble.
In fact, the insolubility of the meta problem is further evidence of my thesis.
In other words, I am not dogmatizing. I am not claiming to know with certainty that the problems of philosophy are insoluble. I am not claiming to have solved the meta problem. I am merely claiming that the insolubility thesis is very reasonably maintained. Not every truth is such that we can know it to be true. With some truths the most we can expect here below is reasonable belief.
Compare God and the soul. I do not claim to know with certainty whether either exists. I claim merely that it it is reasonable to affirm both.
Second, I agree that it’s wise to intelligently practice religion and mysticism — which, by the way, rules out superstition and group-think! Take religion: religious practice does not exclude reason, as Mates’ quote implies. It is a false dilemma to say “One can seek truth either by reason or religion, but not both.” Why not both? If I try to lift a stone and realize I can’t manage alone, this would not entail that I can or should stop lifting. If a stronger person assists me, and I trust his assistance, I can still lift. He may request my help. He may even require that I give it my all, and I may grow from the effort. Likewise, intelligent religion requires reason.
Consider Christianity: The biblical conception of faith is “trust based on good reasons”. This point is clear in passages such as Hebrews 11:1 and 1 Peter 3:15. In the Gospels, Jesus himself reasons and encourages others to do the same. Christian faith calls for the whole self: heart, mind, soul, and strength.
I’d be interested in your thoughts on reason and intelligent religion.
BV: I basically agree with you. Reason in the end must confess its own infirmity. It cannot deliver on its promises. The truth-seeker must explore other avenues. Religion is one, mysticism is another.
Logical Form and the Symmetry Thesis
"The most conspicuous purpose of logic, in its applications to science and everyday discourse, is the justification and criticism of inference." (Emphasis added, Willard Van Orman Quine, Methods of Logic, 2nd revised ed., Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1959, p. 33.
Perhaps the dispute in the earlier thread could be resolved if we all could agree on the following.
1. The most specific logical form of a deductive argument A is the form relevant for assessing whether the reasoning embodied in A is valid or invalid.
2. Every deductive argument has exactly one most specific form.
3. Symmetry Thesis: if the most specific form of A is valid, then A is valid; if the most specific form of A is invalid, then A is invalid.
In case 'most specific logical form' needs explanation, consider the difference between the following valid form from the predicate calculus and the following invalid form from the propositional calculus:
Fa
Ga
——-
(Ex)(Fx & Gx)
p
q
——-
r.
The former is the most specific logical form of 'Al is fat, Al is gay, ergo, something is both fat and gay.' The latter, if a form of the argument at all, is less specific: it abstracts from the internal subpropositional logical structure of the constituent propositions.
Now three examples in illustration of (1)-(3).
Example One. Call the following argument 'Charley':
Tom is tall
——-
Tom is tall.
Although the above display, which is a written expression of the argument and not the argument itself, shows two tokens of the sentence type 'Tom is tall,' the argument consists of exactly one proposition. Anyone who executes the reasoning displayed infers the proposition *Tom is tall* from itself. (I am using asterisks to mention propositions. So '*Tom is tall*' is an abbreviation of 'the proposition expressed by a tokening of the sentence type "Tom is tall".')
It is perfectly clear that the reasoning embodied by Charley is valid and that its form is 'P ergo P.' The reasoning is not from P to some proposition that may or may not be identical to P. Therefore the concrete episode of reasoning does not have the form 'P ergo Q.'
But let us irenically concede that if one wished, for whatever reason, to abstract not only from the content of the argument but also from the plain fact that the argument involves exactly one proposition, one could view the form 'P ergo P' as a special case of 'P ergo Q.' And I will also concede, to keep peace between Phoenix and London, that the argument instantiates the second invalid form, even though I don't believe that this is the case.
Either way, the Symmetry Thesis stands and the Asymmetry Thesis falls. For as G. Rodrigues in the earlier thread pointed out, 'P ergo P' is the most specific form of Charley.
Example Two. Call the following argument 'Kitty Kat.'
If cats like cream, then cats like cream
Cats like cream
——-
Cats like cream.
Please note that there is no equivocation in this example: 'Cats like cream' has the same sense in all four of its occurrences.
Kitty Kat's most specific form is 'P –> P, P, ergo P.' This form is valid. So Kitty Kat is valid, notwithstanding the fact, if it is a fact, that Kitty Kat also instantiates the formal fallacy, Affirming the Consequent: P –> Q, Q, ergo P. By (1) above, the fact, if it is a fact, that Kitty Kat instantiates Affirming the Consequent is irrelevant to the assessment of the validity/invalidty of the reasoning embodied in Kitty Kat.
Example Three. Call the following example 'Massey':
If God created something , then God created everything.
God created everything.
——-
God created something.
This argument fits the pattern of the formal fallacy, Affirming the Consequent:
If p then q
q
——-
p.
But the argument also has a valid form:
Every x is such that Cgx
——-
Some x is such that Cgx.
Please note that if an argument is valid, adding a premise can't make it invalid; this principle is what allows us to disregard the first line.
(Example adapted from Gerald J. Massey, "The Fallacy behind Fallacies," Midwest Studies in Philosophy VI (1981), pp. 489-500)
The most specific form of Massey is the predicate logic form above displayed. Since it is valid, Massey is valid.
Symmetry Thesis vindicatus est.
Is everybody happy now?
The Logic of Buddhist Philosophy
Beyond True and False, by Graham Priest. (HT: Allan Jackson)
A Question for Benson Mates
According to Benson Mates (1919-2009), all the major problems of philosophy are "insoluble though intelligible." (Skeptical Essays, U. of Chicago Press, 1981, p. 13) If true, this would explain why the problems of philosophy have not been solved. But "the rational minds among us are not inclined to give up the struggle, while the rest become religious mystics or philosophical obscurantists . . . ." (p. x)
But why continue to struggle with the problems of philosophy? To better appreciate the insolubility thesis? Apparently, Mates thinks that while the problems can't be solved or dissolved, one ought to keep trying to solve them anyway. But how rational is this? I should think that a "rational mind" should not attempt to do what he has already convinced himself cannot be done. Is it not more rational to seek a path to truth beyond philosophy?
How rational is it to place one's sole faith in reason when one has, by one's own lights, seen the infirmity of reason?
If a certain weight needs lifting, a weight beyond my ability to lift, and known to be such, does it make sense to struggle with it? Or is it more rational to seek assistance? By rejecting out of hand the assistance of religion and mysticism – which he foolishly conflates — Mates shows that his commitment to reason is irrational, as irrational as my pride-driven conceit that I am master of any difficulty that I should encounter.