Metaphilosophy – Page 11 – Maverick Philosopher

Inconclusive

The conclusions of the philosopher are — inconclusive.

Is the Christian the True Philosopher?

Steven Nemes makes two main points in his Christian Life as Philosophy. The first I agree with entirely: Jesus Christ is not a philosopher. The philosopher is a mere lover of wisdom. His love is desirous and needy; it is eros, the love of one who lacks for that which he lacks. But Jesus Christ lacks nothing; he is is the fullness of wisdom, "The Wisdom of God embodied," as Nemes accurately puts it. So Christ is no lover of wisdom in the strict sense in which Socrates is a lover of wisdom. Divine love is not erotic but agapic.

The wisdom of Socrates was largely the wisdom of nescience: he knew what he did not know. In stark contrast, Christ claimed not only to know the truth, but to be the truth in the via, veritas, vita passage at John 14:6: "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me." Ego sum via et veritas et vita; nemo venit ad Patrem nisi per me.

Here is Nemes' second point:

So Christ falls into the category of god or sage (or both), rather than that of philosopher. On the other hand, the Christian — the person who desires to learn of Christ, and who finds in him the fount of all wisdom — is the true philosopher. The Christian admits that she lacks wisdom, yet she desires it. So she goes to the source of all wisdom, which is Christ, in order to learn from him.

Christian life can therefore be understood as philosophy: a desirous effort to learn wisdom from Wisdom Itself, embodied in the person of the Godman Jesus Christ.

I disagree with this second point. A philosopher is not only one who, lacking wisdom and desiring it, seeks it, but also one who seeks the truth in a certain way, by a certain method. It is characteristic of philosophy that it is the pursuit of truth by unaided reason. 'Unaided' means: not aided by divine revelation. (It does not mean that the philosopher does not consult the senses.) The philosopher operates by reason and seeks reasons for what he believes. The philosopher relies on discursive reason as he encounters it in himself and accepts only what he can validate by his autonomous use of reason. Qua philosopher, he accepts no testimony but must verify matters for himself . The philosopher is like Doubting Thomas Didymus at John 20:25: "Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."

That is the attitude of the philosopher. The philosopher is an inquirer into ultimate matters, and doubt is the engine of inquiry. Where's the evidence? What's the argument? What you say may be true, my brothers, but how do you know? What's your justification? You say our rabbi rose from the dead? That sort of thing doesn't happen! I want knowledge, which is not just true belief but justified true belief. You expect me to believe that Jesus rose on no evidence but your testimony from probably hallucinatory experiences fueled by your fear and hunger and weakness ? Prove it! W. K. Clifford takes it to the limit and gives it a moral twist: "It is wrong always and everywhere to believe anything on insufficient evidence." Presumably the testimony of a bunch of scared, unlettered, credulous fisherman would not count as sufficient evidence for Thomas Didymus or Clifford.

The Christian, however, operates by faith. If Reason is the faculty of philosophy, Faith is the faculty of religion. The philosopher may reason his way to the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, but he cannot qua philosopher arrive at the saving truth that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14) by the use of reason. The saving truths are 'known' by faith and not by reason. It is also clear that faith for the Christian ranks higher than reason. As Jesus says to Thomas at John 20:29: "Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen and have believed."

The attitude of the believer who is also a philosopher is fides quarens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. But what if no understanding is found? Does the believer reject or suspend his belief? No. If he is a genuine believer, he continues to believe whether or not he achieves understanding. This shows that for the believer, reason has no veto power. The apparent logical impossibility of the Incarnation does not cause him to reject or suspend his belief in Jesus as his Lord and Savior. If he finds a way to show the rational acceptability of the Incarnation, well and good; if he fails, no matter. The Incarnation is a fact known by Revelation; as an actual fact it is possible, and what is possible is possible whether or not we frail reeds can understand how it is possible. The believer in the end will announce that the saving truths are mysteries impenetrable to us here below even if he does not go to the extreme of a Tertullian, a Kierkegaard, or a Shestov and condemn reason wholesale.

The attitude of the philosopher who is open to the claims of Revelation is different. He feels duty-bound by his intellectual conscience to examine the epistemic credentials of Biblical revelation lest he unjustifiably accept what he has no right to accept. This attitude is personified by Edmund Husserl. On his death bed, open to the Catholic faith, he was yet unable to make the leap, remarking that it was too late for him, that he would need for each dogma five years of investigation.

There is a tension here and it is the tension between Athens (Greek philosophy) and Jerusalem (the Bible), the two main roots of the West whose fruitful entanglement is the source of the West's vitality. As Leo Strauss sees it, it is a struggle over the unum necessarium, the one thing needful or necessary:

To put it very very simply and therefore somewhat crudely, the one thing needful according to Greek philosophy is is the life of autonomous understanding. The one thing needful as spoken by the Bible is the life of obedient love. The harmonizations and synthesizations are possible because Greek philosophy can use obedient love in a subservient function, and the Bible can use philosophy as a handmaid; but what is so used in each case rebels against such use, and therefore the conflict is really a radical one. ("Progress or Return?" in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, University of Chicago Press, 1989, p. 246, bolding added.)

So is the Christian the true philosopher? Only in the sense that philosophy points beyond itself to something that is no longer philosophy but that completes philosophy while cancelling it. I am tempted to reach for an Hegelian trope while turning it on its head: if Christianity is true, then philosophy is aufgehoben, sublated, in it. If Christianity is true, then the Christian arrives at the truth that the philosopher at best aims at but cannot arrive at by his method and way of life, the life of autonomous understanding. To achieve what he aims at, the philosopher would have to be "as a little child" and accept in obedient love the gift of Revelation. But it is precisely that which he cannot do if he is to remain a philosopher in the strict sense, one who lives the life of autonomous understanding.

The Christian life is not the philosophical life. It lies beyond the philosophical life and, if true, is superior to it.

Continental Philosophers I Respect and the ‘Continental-Analytic Divide’

From the mail bag:

I'm a new reader of your blog and about two years into my own layman's study of philosophy. By that I mean I'm just reading whatever strikes my fancy as best as I can and building up a sort of mental repertoire. It's equally exciting and frustrating. Are there any so-called 20th century Continental philosophers you like?

Although some commentators would consider some of the following philosophers to belong to the 19th century, they and their influence extend into the 20th. Here then is my list of (some) 20th century Continental philosophers who are well-worth close study.

Franz Brentano, Alexius von Meinong, Kasimir Twardowski, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Edith Stein, Roman Ingarden, Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Nicolai Hartmann, Gabriel Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus.

What is a Continental Philosopher Anyway?

Note that the above are all Europeans. But that is not what makes them 'Continental.' Otherwise Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Rudolf Carnap would have to be lumped in with them. And of course there are Continental philosophers who do not hail from Europe. So what makes the above authors 'Continental' as opposed to 'analytic'?

It is not easy to say, which fact supplies a reason to not take too seriously talk of 'Continental' versus 'analytic.'

Note that all of the Continentals I mentioned engage in analysis, some in very close, very careful analysis. (Ever read Husserl's Logical Investigations?) And please don't say that they don't analyze language. Ever read Brentano? Gustav Bergmann accurately describes Brentano as "the first linguistic philosopher." (Realism, 234) Roderick Chisholm's paraphrastic approach was influenced significantly by Brentano.

Will you say that the Continentals mentioned didn't pay close attention to logic? That's spectacularly false. Even for Heidegger! Ever read his dissertation on psychologism in logic?

Perhaps you could say that the Continentals did not engage significantly with the ground-breaking work of Frege, undoubtedly the greatest logician since Aristotle. I think that would be true. But does it suffice to distinguish between Continental and analytic? I don't think so: there are plenty of philosophers who write in a decidedly analytic style who do not engage with Frege, and some of them oppose Frege. Take Fred Sommers. You wouldn't call him a Continental philosopher. And while he engages the ideas of Frege, he vigorously opposes them in his very impressive attempt at resurrecting traditional formal logic. And yet he would be classified as analytic.

A Matter of Style or a Matter of Substance?

According to Michael Dummett,

What distinguishes analytical philosophy, in its diverse manifestations, from other schools is the belief, first, that a philosophical account of thought can be attained through a philosophical account of language, and, secondly, that a comprehensive account can only be so attained.

[. . .]

On my characterisation, therefore [Gareth] Evans was no longer an analytical philosopher. He was, indeed, squarely in the analytical tradition: the three pillars on which his book [The Varieties of Reference, Oxford, 1982] rests are Russell, Moore and Frege. Yet it is only as belonging to the tradition — as adopting a certain philosophical style and as appealing to certain writers rather than to others — that he remains a member of the analytical school. (Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Harvard UP, 1993)

For Dummett, then, what make a philosopher analytic is not the style in which he writes: clear, precise, careful, explicitly logical with premises and inferences clearly specified, free of literary pretentiousness, name-dropping, rhetorical questions, and generally the sort of bullshitting that one finds in writers like Caputo and Badiou. Nor is it the topics he writes about or the authorities he cites. What makes the analytic philosopher are the twin axioms above mentioned.

The trouble with Dummett's criterion is that it is intolerably stipulative if what we are after is a more or less lexical definition of how 'analytic' and 'Continental' are actually used. An approach that rules out Gareth Evans and Roderick Chisholm and Gustav Bergmann and Reinhardt Grossmann and so many others cuts no ice in my book. (How's that for a mixed metaphor?)

A Matter of Politics?

I don't think so. Look again at my list. Sartre is a decided leftist, a Stalinist in his later phase. And Camus is on the Left. But everyone else on my list is either apolitical or on the Right. Latter-day Continentals, though, definitely slouch Leftward.

A Matter of Academic Politics?

This may be what the Continental versus analytic split comes down to more than anything else. As Blaise Pacal says, with some exaggeration, "All men naturally hate one another." To which I add, with some exaggeration: and are always looking for ways to maintain and increase the enmity. If you are entranced with Heidegger you are going to hate the Carnapian analytic bigot who refuses to read Heidegger but mocks him anyway. Especially when the bigot stands in the way of career success. Although so many Continentals are slopheads, there is no asshole like an analytic asshole.

A Matter of Religion?

No, there are both theists and atheists on my list. And of course there are plenty of analytic philosophers who are theists.

A Matter of Attitude toward Science?

This has something to do with the split. You can be a Continental philosopher and a traditional theist (von Hildebrand, Edith Stein, et al.) and you can be a Continental philosopher and a conservative (Ortega y Gasset), but is there any case of a Continental philosopher who is a logical positivist or who genuflects before the natural sciences in the scientistic manner? I don't think so.

Interim Conclusion

Talk of 'analytic' and 'Continental' philosophy is not particularly useful. It would be better to speak of good and bad philosophy. But what are the marks of good philosophy? That's a post for another occasion.

Why a Philosopher Should Meditate and Why it is Difficult for a Philosopher to Meditate

If a philosopher seeks the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters, then he should do so by all available routes. Qua philosopher he operates in the aether of abstract thought, on the plane of discursive reason, but he cannot consistently with his calling ignore other avenues of advance. It is after all the truth that is sought, not merely the truth as philosophically accessible. There is surely no justification for the identification of truth with philosophically accessible truth.

Meditation is difficult for intellectual types because of their tendency to overvalue their mental facility and cleverness. They are good at dialectics and mental jugglery, and people tend to value and overvalue what they are good at. Philosophers can become as obsessed with their cleverness and gamesmanship as body builders with muscular hypertrophy. Indeed, it is not too much of a stretch to say that the typical analytic philosopher suffers from hypertrophy of the critical/discursive/dialectical faculty. He can chop logic, he can mentally and verbally jabber, jabber, jabber, and scribble, scribble, scribble, but he can't be silent, listen, attend. He would sneer, to his own detriment, at this thought of Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace, tr. Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 107):

The capacity to drive away a thought once and for all is the gateway to eternity.

Compare this striking line from Evagrius Ponticus (The Praktikos and Chapters of Prayer, tr. Bamberger, Cistercian Publications, 1972, p. 66, #70):

For prayer is the rejection of concepts.

In a Philosophical Conversation, Three’s a Crowd

Yesterday I wrote:

When philosophy is done with others it takes the form of dialog, not debate. It is conversation between friends, not opponents, who are friends of the truth before they are friends of each other. Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.

Ideally speaking, of course. Pushing a bit further into the Ideal:

In a face-to-face philosophical discussion, three is a crowd. As a rule, if not always.

If Al and Bill are talking philosophy, the first thing that has to occur, if there is to be any forward movement, is that the interlocutors must pin each other down terminology-wise. Each has to come to understand how the other is using his terms. It is notorious that key philosophical terms are used in different ways by different philosophers. This terminological fluidity, though regrettable, is unavoidable since attempts to rigidify terminology will inevitably beg key questions.

The following is a partial list of terms used in different ways by different philosophers: abstract, concrete, object, subject, fact, proposition, world, predicate, property, substance, event. Take 'fact.' For some, it is a matter of definition that a fact is a true proposition. But as I use the term, a fact is the truth-maker of a true proposition. Suppose you use 'fact' as interchangeable with 'true proposition.' Then I can accommodate you by distinguishing between facts-that and facts-of. Thus, the fact that Bill is blogging is made true by the fact of Bill's blogging. But we must sort out these definitional questions if we are to make any progress with the substantive issues. A substantive question would be: Are there facts? Obviously, we cannot make any headway with this until we agree on how we are using 'fact.' For more on this topic see Three Senses of 'Facts' and other entries in the Facts category.

And of course we can't stop here. If you say that a fact is a true proposition, then I will ask you how you are using 'proposition.' Do you mean the sense of a context-free declarative sentence? Are propositions for you abstract objects? But now we need to get clear about 'abstract' and 'object.' Do you use 'object' and 'entity' interchangeably? Or can there be objects that are not entities and entities that are not objects? (An hallucinated pink rat counts for some philosophers as an object that is not an entity, and a being that has never been the accusative of any intellect might count as an entity that is not an object.) Someone who uses 'object' in such a way that there is no object without a (thinking) subject is not misusing the word: that is a traditional use. But equally, a person who uses 'object' to mean entity is not misusing it either. So the use of 'object' needs clarification.

And then to add to the bloody mess there are those who use 'object' to mean entity belonging to the category of individuals.

One might use 'abstract' and 'concrete' as follows: X is abstract (concrete) iff X is causally inert (causally active/passive). But I know of at least one name philosopher who uses 'abstract' interchangeably with 'nonspatiotemporal.' On this usage, God would be an abstract object, while on the first definition God would be concrete.

Note that an abstract entity on either of these two definitions can be a substance (another word with about ten meanings!), i.e., a being capable of independent existence. But 'abstract' is used by philosophers as diverse as Hegel and Keith Campbell (the Australian trope theorist) to refer to non-independent objects. And indeed, their use is the classical, and etymologically correct, use.

Talk of 'abstract objects' is Quinean, not classical.

There are philosophers who think that 'Cambridge' changes and real changes are mutually exclusive. Thus they think that if a change is Cambridge, then it is not real. This is a mistake if we go by the terminology as it was originally introduced by Peter Geach. Real changes are a proper subset of Cambridge changes. See here for details.

A word or phrase catches on and then people start using it idiosyncratically.

And then there is 'bare particular,' a phrase that can be and has been used in about four different ways. (See second article referenced below.)

How about de dicto and de re? I am not in the mood to touch that terminology with an eleven-foot pole, which is the pole I use to not touch something I won't touch with a ten-foot pole.

And so it goes. Suppose Carla is present at Al and Bill's discussion. Will she help or hinder? Experience teaches that, for the most part, three's a crowd: the third interlocutor, in her zeal to contribute to the discussion will only interfere with the protracted preliminary clarification that Al and Bill need before they can get to work on the substantive questions that interest them.

Note 1: The above applies to face-to-face discussions, not to on-line exchanges. Note 2: I seem to recall Roderick Chisholm making the 'three is a crowd' remark. So I may have picked up the thought from him.

Can Philosophy be Debated?

Can philosophy be debated? In a loose sense, yes, but not in a strict sense.

Debate is a game in which the interlocutors attempt to defeat each other, typically before an audience whose approbation they strive to secure. Hence the query 'Who won the debate?' which implies that the transaction is about attacking and defending, winning and losing. I don't deny that debates can be worthwhile in politics and in other areas. And even in philosophy they may have some use. Someone who hears William Lane Craig debate some atheist will come away with some idea of what sorts of issues philosophers of religion discuss. What he won't come away with is any understanding of the essence of philosophy.

Why is philosophy — the genuine article — not something that can be debated?

Philosophy is fundamentally inquiry. It is inquiry by those who don't know (and know that they don't know) with the sincere intention of increasing their insight and understanding. Philosophy is motivated by the love of truth, not the love of verbal battle or the need to defeat an opponent or shore up and promote a preconceived opinion about which one has no real doubt.

When philosophy is done with others it takes the form of dialog, not debate. It is conversation between friends, not opponents, who are friends of the truth before they are friends of each other. Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.

There is nothing adversarial in a genuine philosophical conversation. The person I am addressing and responding to is not my adversary but a co-inquirer. In the ideal case there is between us a bond of friendship, a philiatic bond. But this philia subserves the eros of inquiry. The philosopher's love of truth is erotic, the love of one who lacks for that which he lacks. It is not the agapic love of one who knows and bestows his pearls of wisdom.

There is nothing like this in a debate. The aim in a debate is not to work with the other towards a truth that neither claims to possess. On the contrary, each already 'knows' what the truth is and is merely trying to attack the other's counter-position while defending his own. Thus the whole transation is ideological, the two sides of which are polemics and apologetics. Debate is verbal warfare. This is why debaters never hesitate or show doubt or admit they are wrong. To show doubt is to show weakness. To prevail against an enemy you must not appear weak but intimidating.

There is no place for polemics in philosophy. To the extent that polemics creeps in, philosophy becomes ideology. This is not to say that there is no place for polemics or apologetics. It is to say that that place is not philosophy.

Discussions with ideologues, whether religious or anti-religious, tend to be unpleasant and unproductive. Ideologues see everything in terms of attack and defense. If you merely question their views they are liable to become angry or flustered. I once questioned a Buddhist on his 'no self' doctrine. He became hostile. His hostility at my questioning of one of the beliefs with which he identifies proved that his 'self' was alive and kicking despite doctrinal asseverations to the contrary.

Some Philosophical Positions Valuable Only as Foils: Extreme Nominalism and Eliminative Materialism

By a philosophical foil I mean a view or position that contrasts with other positions in such a way as to highlight the often superior qualities of the other positions. Foils are useful for mapping the spaces of theories and as termini of theoretical spectra. Consider the spectrum of positions stretching from extreme nominalism to Plato's Theory of Forms. The end points are reasonably viewed as foils. It seems to me that some philosophical positions are valuable and worthy of study only as foils and not as serious candidates for the office of 'true theory.' Here are two of several examples. Since everything in philosophy is controverted, I expect these will be too. The foil of one is the truth of another. Ain't philosophy grand? But I like the following examples, and I am the man whose intellectual and spiritual exigencies I am most interested in satisfying.

Extreme Nominalism. This is the view that there are no properties. If you tell me that there are no properties, I will be inclined to 'show you the door.' Of course there are properties. The only reasonable questions pertain to their nature. Are they universals or particulars? Can they exist unexemplified or not? Are they constituents of the things that have them or not? Is there a property for every meaningful predicate? Are there disjunctive properties? And so on. The reasonable question is not whether there are properties, but what they are.
Eliminative Materialism. This is surely a lunatic philosophy of mind. An eliminative materialist is a bit like a person who blows her brains out to be rid of a headache. No head, no headache, no problem! Too quick you say? Perhaps. So let me expatiate further.

The most obvious objection to eliminative materialism (EM) is that it denies obvious data, the very data without which there would be no philosophy of mind in the first place. Introspection directly reveals the existence of pains, anxieties, pleasures, and the like. Suppose I have a headache. The pain, qua felt, cannot be doubted or denied. Its esse is its percipi. To identify the pain with a brain state makes a modicum of sense, at least initially; but it makes no sense at all to deny the existence of the very datum that gets us discussing this topic in the first place. But Paul M. Churchland (Matter and Consciousness, rev. ed. MIT Press, 1988, pp. 47-48) has a response to this sort of objection:

The eliminative materialist will reply that that argument makes the same
mistake that an ancient or medieval person would be making if he insisted that
he could just see with his own eyes that the heavens form a turning sphere, or
that witches exist. The fact is, all observation occurs within some system of
concepts, and our observation judgments are only as good as the conceptual
framework in which they are expressed. In all three cases — the starry sphere,
witches, and the familiar mental states — precisely what is challenged is the
integrity of the background conceptual frameworks in which the observation
judgments are expressed. To insist on the validity of one's experiences,
traditionally interpreted, is therefore to beg the very question at issue. For
in all three cases, the question is whether we should reconceive the
nature of some familiar observational domain.

Even if we grant that "all observation occurs within some system of concepts," is the experiencing of a pain a case of observation? If you know your Brentano, you know that early on in Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint he makes a distinction between inner observation (innere Beobachtung) and inner perception (innere Warhnehmung). Suppose one suddenly becomes angry. The experiencing of anger is an inner perception, but not an inner observation. The difference is between living in and through one's anger and objectifying it in an act of reflection. The act of inner observation causes the anger to subside, unlike the inner perception which does not.

Reflecting on this phenomenological difference, one sees how crude Churchland's scheme is. He thinks that mental data such as pains and pleasures are on a par with outer objects like stars and planets. It is readily granted with respect to the latter that seeing is seeing-as. A medieval man who sees the heavens as a turning sphere is interpreting the visual data in the light of a false theory; he is applying an outmoded conceptual framework. But there is no comparable sense in which my feeling of pain involves the application of a conceptual framework to an inner datum.

Suppose I feel a pain. I might conceptualize it as tooth-ache pain in which case I assign it some such cause as a process of decay in a tooth. But I can 'bracket' or suspend that conceptualization and consider the pain in its purely qualitative, felt, character. It is then nothing more than a sensory quale. I might even go so far as to abstract from its painfulness. This quale, precisely as I experience it, is nothing like a distant object that I conceptualize as this or that.

Now the existence of this rock-bottom sensory datum is indubitable and refutes the eliminativist claim. For this datum is not a product of conceptualization, but is something that is the 'raw material' of conceptualization. The felt pain qua felt is not an object of observation, something external to the observer, but an Erlebnis, something I live-through (er-leben). It is not something outside of me that I subsume under a concept, but a content (Husserl: ein reeller Inhalt) of my consciousness. I live my pain, I don't observe it. It is not a product of conceptualization — in the way a distant light in the sky can be variously conceptualized as a planet, natural satellite, artificial satellite, star, double-star, UFO, etc. — but a matter for conceptualization.

So the answer to Churchland is as follows. There can be no question of re-conceptualizing fundamental sensory data since there was no conceptualization to start with. So I am not begging the question against Churchland when I insist that pains exist: I am not assuming that the "traditional conceptualization" is the correct one. I am denying his presupposition, namely, that there is conceptualization in a case like this.

Most fundamentally, I am questioning the Kantian-Sellarsian presupposition that the data of inner sense are in as much need of categorial interpretation as the data of outer sense. If there is no categorization at this level, then there is no possibility of a re-categorization in neuroscientific
terms.

What is astonishing about eliminative materialists is that they refuse to take the blatant falsity of their conclusions as showing that they went wrong somewhere in their reasoning. In the grip of their scientistic assumptions, they deny the very data that any reasonable person would take as a plain refutation of their claims.

Philosophy as High Ground

Philosophy is the high ground from which to survey the dismal and contentious scene, the bellum omnium contra omnes. One retreats to the high ground for three reasons. To contemplate and understand the passing scene, to escape from it, and to be in a position to transcend toward what is neither passing nor a scene.

The Task of Philosophy: To Conceptualize the Absolute

Wolfgang Cramer, Gottesbeweise und Ihre Kritik, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann 1967, p. 19:

So lange noch gewusst wird, was Philosophie ist, solange Philosophie noch ist, wird sie die Aufgabe, einen gesicherten Begriff vom Absoluten zu entwickeln, nicht zur Ruhe kommen lassen.

The task of developing a secure concept of the Absolute will never come to rest as long as philosophy is and is appreciated for what it is. (tr. BV)

Philosophy Bakes No Bread, but Man does not Live by Bread Alone

This from a reader:

I wanted to bring to your attention a passage I came across in Nicholas Rescher’s Philosophical Standardism (Pittsburgh, 1994):

“The old saying is perfectly true: Philosophy bakes no bread. But it is also no less true that we do not live by bread alone. The physical side of our nature that impels us to eat, drink, and be merry is just one of its sides. Homo sapiens requires nourishment for the mind as urgently as nourishment for the body. We seek knowledge not only because we wish, but because we must. The need for information, for knowledge to nourish the mind, is ever bit as critical as the need for food to nourish the body.” (p. 67)

I was struck by what I believed was the distinctively Vallicellan retort, “But it is also no less true that we do not live by bread alone.” I’m curious: Is this a well-known retort among philosophers? If not, did you get that from Rescher, he from you, or is this just an instance of great minds thinking alike?

None of the above. Here is what I wrote in 2012:

To the philistine's "Philosophy bakes no bread" you should not respond "Yes it does," for such responses are patently lame. You should say, "Man does not live by bread alone," or "Not everything is pursued as a means to something else," or "A university is not a trade school." You should not acquiesce in the philistine's values and assumptions, but go on the attack and question his values and assumptions. Put him on the spot. Play the Socratic gadfly. If a philistine wants to know how much you got paid for writing an article for a professional journal, say, "Do you really think that only what one is paid to do is worth doing?"

I wouldn't say that the not-by-bread-alone retort is standard among philosophers, especially not now when Christianity is on the wane and one cannot assume that philosophers have read the New Testament. Professor Rescher, of course, knows the verse at Matthew 4:4.

I didn't get the retort from Rescher: Philosophical Standardism is not a book of his that I have read. The retort occurred to me independently as I am sure it has occurred independently to many of a certain age and upbringing.

And of course Rescher did not get the line from me since his book was published in 1994 long before the blogosphere.

And it is not a case of great minds thinking alike since neither of our minds are great. It is more like above-average minds thinking alike, though I concede his to be more above-average than mine.

Is there anyone in philosophy more prolific than Rescher? Here is a list of just his books. Forty years ago I heard the joke about the Nicholas Rescher Book-of-the-Month Club. And he is still happily scribbling away. Here is another Rescher joke:

A student goes to visit Professor Rescher. Secretary informs her that the good doctor is not available because he is writing a book. Student replies, "I'll wait."

Peter van Inwagen on Burden of Proof in Philosophy

Andrew Bailey sends the following quotations for our delectation:

"(When a philosopher says, "The burden of the proof lies on you", he means, "You must deduce your conclusion from the truths of immediate sensory experience by means of an argument that is formally valid according to the rules of elementary logic; I on the other hand may employ any dialectical tactic I find expedient".)"

-PvI, An Essay on Free Will, p.18

"Where does the burden of proof lie in a philosophical debate? In a debate of the type we are imagining, the answer is clear–in fact, trivial. The burden of proof lies on the person who's trying to prove something to someone."

-PvI, The Problem of Evil, p.46

Notice that the thesis encoded in the second is a little different (and much more plausible) than "he who asserts must prove".

I'd have to examine the context, but the second quotation seems to support what I was saying yesterday, namely, that burden-of-proof considerations have no non-trivial role to play in philosophical discussions.

It is quite otherwise in the law, which is where we get the notion of burden of proof (BOP) and the correlative notion of defeasible presumption (DP). As N. Rescher remarks (Presumption and the Practices of Tentative Cognition, p. 13), both are at root legal conceptions dating back to Roman law. Now court-room proceedings are essentially both practical and adversarial: what is in dispute is not a matter of theory, but a matter bearing upon such things as a person's wealth and liberty. Thus it makes perfect sense that the BOP should be placed on the plaintiff in a civil case and the state in a criminal case, which is equivalent to granting to the accused a defeasible presumption of innocence. The onus probandi rests on those who make allegations. Thus it makes sense within the law to maintain that

Necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui dicit non ei qui negat.

The need for proof lies with him who affirms, not him who denies.

Now to my way of thinking, philosophy-as-inquiry is never adversarial, and is primarily theoretical. This is part of my reason for thinking that the fundamentally legal notions of BOP and DP ought not be imported into philosophy-as-inquiry. It strikes me as very clear that one who makes an accusation bears the burden of proof. But it is not so clear that one who makes an assertion bears a burden of proof.

Indeed, it is either false or meaningless. For if van Inwagen asserts that there are no modes of being, and I assert that there are, then we both make assertions. So if he who asserts bears a burden of proof, then we both bear the burden of proof — which trivializes the very notion of BOP.

So I am skeptical about the importation of the fundamentally legal concept of BOP from that essentially adversarial and practical dialectical context into philosophy-as-inquiry. But this is a complicated topic. I'll say some more tomorrow.

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Are Burden-of-Proof Considerations Relevant in Philosophy?

1. The question this post raises is whether it is at all useful to speak of burden of proof (BOP) in dialectical situations in which there are no agreed-upon rules of procedure that are constitutive of the 'game' played within the dialectical situation. By a dialectical situation I mean a context in which orderly discussion occurs among two or more competent and sincere interlocutors who share the goal of arriving as best they can at the truth about some matter, or the goal of resolving some question in dispute. My main concern is with dialectical situations that are broadly philosophical. I suspect that in philosophical debates the notion of burden of proof is out of place and not usefully deployed. That is what I will now try to argue.

2. I will begin with the observation that the presumption of innocence (POI) in an Anglo-American court of law is never up for grabs in that arena. Thus the POI is not itself presumptively maintained and subject to defeat. If Jones is accused of a crime, the presumption of his innocence can of course be defeated, but that the accused must be presumed innocent until proven guilty is itself never questioned and of course never defeated. The POI is not itself a defeasible presumption. And if Rescher is right that there are no indefeasible presumptions, then the POI is not even a presumption. The POI is a rule of the 'game,' and constitutive of the 'game.' The POI in a court room situation is like a law of chess. The laws of chess, as constitutive of chess, cannot themselves be contested within a game of chess. In a particular game a dispute may arise as to whether or not a three-fold repetition of position has occurred. But that a three-fold repetition of position results in a draw is not subject to dispute. The reason there is always a definite outcome in chess (win, lose, or draw) is precisely because of the non-negotiable chess-constitutive laws. These laws, of course, are not inscribed in the nature of things, but are conventional in nature.

As I pointed out earlier, defeasible presumption (DP) and burden of proof are correlative notions. The defeasible presumption that the accused is innocent until proven guilty places the onus probandi on the prosecution. Therefore, from the fact that the POI is not itself defeasible in a court of law, it follows that neither is the BOP. Where the initating BOP lies — the BOP that remains in force and never shifts during the proceedings — is never subject to debate. It lies on the state in a criminal case and on the plaintiff in a civil case. If you agree to play the game, then you agree to its constitutive rules. Since these rules are constitutive of the game, they cannot be rejected on pain of ceasing to play the particular game in question.

3. But in philosophy matters are otherwise. For in philosophy everything is up for grabs, including the nature of philosophical inquiry and the rules of procedure. (This is why metaphilosophy is not 'outside of' philosophy but a branch of same.) And so where the BOP lies in a debate between, say, atheists and theists is itself a matter of debate and bitter contention. Each party seeks to put the BOP on the other, to 'bop' him if you will. The theist is inclined to say that there is a defeasible presumption in favor of the truth of theism; but of course few atheists will meekly submit to that pronunciamento. If the theist is right in his presumption, then he doesn't have to do anything except turn aside the atheist's objections: he is under no obligation to argue positively for theism any more than the accused is under an obligation to prove his innocence.

Accused to accuser: "I don't have to prove my innocence; you have to prove my guilt. I enjoy the presumption of innocence; you bear the burden of proof."

Theist to atheist: "I don't have to prove that God exists; you have to prove that God does not exist. Theism enjoys the presumption of being true; atheism bears the burden of proving that theism is not true." (This assumes that BOP and DP are legitimately deployed within broadly philosophical precincts — which I am denying.)

Note that if the theist invokes the above presumption he needn't be committing the ad ignorantiam fallacy. He needn't be saying that theism is true because it hasn't been proved to be false. Surely the following deductive argument is invalid:

No one has ever proved that God does not exist
ergo
God does exist.

Just as the presumption of innocence does not entail that the accused is innocent, the presumption of truth does not entail that the proposition presumed true is true. So the mere fact that I have the presumption on my side does not amount to an argument that what I am presuming is true. If I have the presumption on my side, then my dialectical opponent bears the BOP. That's all.

4. Now we come to my tentative suggestion. There is no fact of the matter as to where the BOP lies in any dialectical context, legal, philosophical or any other: it is a matter of decision and agreement upon what has been conventionally decided. In chess, for example, the rules had to be decided and the players have to agree to accept them. No one thinks that these rules are inscribed in rerum natura. The same goes for BOP and DP. It had to be decided that in court room discourse and dialectic the accused enjoys the DP and the accuser(s) the BOP.

In philosophical discourse, however, there are no procedural rules regarding DP and BOP that we will all agree on.

For example, according to Douglas N. Walton, ". . . the basic rule of burden of proof in reasonable dialogue is: He who asserts must prove." (Informal Logic, p. 59) That is clearly false. If I assert that that you left the door open, there is no need for me to prove my assertion. A proof is an argument having premises and conclusion. Surely there is no need to argue for matters evident to sense perception. In fact, it would be unreasonable to do so. Or suppose I assert the Law of Noncontradiction. There is no way I can (non-circularly) prove it. So I cannot be under any epistemic obligation to prove it. 'Ought' implies 'can.'

And how would this work in a dispute between theist and atheist? I assert that God exists and you assert that God does not exist. We both assert. So we both bear the BOP, and we both enjoy DP? But then BOP and DP have no application in this area.

I have heard it said that the BOP lies on the one who makes a positive (affirmative) assertion. But surely both theist and atheist make positive assertions about reality. 'Reality is such that God exists.' 'Reality is such that God does not exist.' Both propositions are logically affirmative.

Suppose our atheist denies God by saying 'God is an unconscious anthropomorphic projection.' Logically, that is an affirmative proposition. Will you conclude that the BOP is on the atheist?

Some say that presumptions are essentially conservative: there is a presumption in favor of the existing and the established and against the novel, the far-out, and what runs contrary to prevailing opinion. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Suppose I give the following speech:

There is a presumption in favor of every existing institution, long-standing way of doing things, and well-entrenched and widespread way of belief. Now the consensus gentium is that God exists. And so I lay it down that there is a defeasible presumption in favor of theism and that the burden of proof lies squarely on the shoulders of the atheist. Theism is doxastically innocent until proven guilty. The theist need only rebut the atheist's objections; he needn't make a positive case for his side.

Not only would the atheist not accept this declaration, he would be justified in not accepting it, for reasons that are perhaps obvious. For my declaration is as much up for grabs as anything else in philosophy. And of course if I make an ad baculum move then I remove myself from philosophy's precincts altogether. In philosophy the appeal is to reason, never to the stick.

The situation in philosophy could be likened to the situation in a court of law in which the contending parties are the ones who decide on the rules of procedure, including BOP and DP rules. Such a trial could not be brought to a conclusion. That's the way it is in philosophy. Every procedural rule and methodological maxim is further fodder for philosophical Forschung. (Sorry, couldn't resist the alliteration.)

My tentative conclusion is as follows. In philosophy no good purpose is served by claims that the BOP lies on one side or the other of a dispute, or that there is a DP in favor of this thesis but not in favor of that one. For there is no fact of the matter as to where the BOP lies. BOP considerations are usefully deployed only in dialectical situations in which there is an antecedent conventional agreement on the rules of procedure, rules that constitute the dialectical 'game' in question, and that are agreed upon by the players of the game and never contested by them while playing it.

What Drives Your Philosophizing?

Is it a purely theoretical interest? Or is it an existential need? And if an existential need, is it one that is also a religious need, or one that is secular?

Gustav Bergmann, Blaise Pascal, Albert Camus.

A Reader Poses Some Political-Philosophical Questions, Part I

From a reader:

I have been and continue to be an avid reader of your wonderful blog ever since I stumbled upon your post on Wittgenstein’s anti-philosophy some years ago. And I must say that your assorted musings and reflections – even your polemical jabs – have given me many valuable lessons, even if I do not necessarily agree with every point and detail. For all that, you have the gratitude and admiration of this humble correspondent and junior fellow-traveler in philosophy (male, hailing from the Philippines, partly of Chinese descent through my father).

Now even though we do not stand on the same side with regard to several matters of value and praxis — as I am far to your left and you are far to my right -– I nonetheless wish to civilly discuss some topics surrounding the more heated disputes. Specifically, there are some nagging political-philosophical questions in my mind that I happily share with you, and your thoughts on them (either as brief responses to each query or perhaps a sustained post or series of posts on a cluster of selected issues) would be very much appreciated. Pardon if it took me so long to reach the heart of the matter, of if I seem to ramble on too much, but here goes:

1. To what extent can one extend hospitality, generosity, or charity to the arguments and premises of one’s opponents or rivals in polemical situations? It seems to me that apart from the unflinching commitment of many of the parties involved to their respective positions despite the absence of perfect justification, there is also the issue of mutual misunderstanding and misrepresentation (unintentional or otherwise), exacerbated by the fog of war. For instance, many conservatives, libertarians, and socialists appear to be rarely acquainted with the intricacies of each other’s theoretical standpoints and values, even as they dispute about practices and proposals.

MavPhil: How far extend hospitality, etc. in a polemical situation? Not very far if the situation is truly polemical and one's interlocutor is an opponent or adversary. I make a sharp distinction between polemical discourse and strictly philosophical discourse, and I engage in both. I engage in both because both are needed in the world as it is. It is a mark of the conservative that he deals with the world as it is without illusions or evasions or escapes into u-topia (no place). In a phrase of Richard M. Weaver, the conservative stands on the "terra firma of antecedent reality," a reality logically and ontologically antecedent to one's hopes, dreams, wishes, and desires.

As I see it, philosophy ceases to be philosophy when it becomes polemical. That goes for political philosophy as well which ought not be confused with political discourse in general, most of which is, of course, polemical.

Philosophy is inquiry. It is inquiry by those who don't know (and know that they don't know) with the sincere intention of increasing their insight and understanding. Philosophy is motivated by the love of truth, not the love of verbal battle or the need to defeat an opponent or shore up and promote preconceived opinions about which one has no real doubt and refuses to examine. When real philosophy is done with others it takes the form of dialog, not debate. It is conversation between friends, not opponents, who are friends of the truth before they are friends of each other. Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.

What I have described above, however, is rare in this fallen world of contention and strife. No philosophy without spectatorship, but here below we are embattled spectators. Hence the necessity of self-defense in several forms, from verbal polemic to shooting wars. The spaces of civility, wherein philosophy, science, the arts, humane living, and everything civilized flourish have always been encircled by evil forces against which one must be prepared to deploy violent remedies. Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war. (Cf. Plato, Laws, 628d) Civility is for the civil only. One must oppose and in extreme situations kill the enemies of civilization. Last century, Nazis among others; this century, radical Muslims.

But why not stick to one's stoa and cultivate one's specialist garden in peace and quiet, neither involving oneself in, nor forming opinions about, the wider world of politics and strife? Why risk one's ataraxia in the noxious arena of contention? Why not remain within the serene precincts of theoria? For those of us of a certain age the chances are good that death will arrive before the barbarians do. Why bother one's head with the issues of the day? Many of us will most likely collapse before the culture that sustains us does.

We enter the arena of contention because the gardens of tranquillity and the spaces of reason are worth defending, with blood and iron if need be, against the barbarians and their witting and unwitting leftist enablers. Others have fought and bled so that we can live this life of beatitude. What has been passed on to us, we must passon. And so though we are not warriors of the body we can and should do our bit as warriors of the mind to preserve for future generations this culture which allows us to pursue otium liberale in peace, quiet, and safety.

Genuine Inquiry and Two Forms of Pseudo-Inquiry: Sham Reasoning and Fake Reasoning

In Philosophers Who Compartmentalize and Those Who Don't, I drew a distinction between

1. Philosophical inquiry pursued in order to support (defend and rationally justify) an antecedently held thesis or worldview whose source is extraphilosophical

and

2. Philosophical inquiry pursued in order to support (by generating) a thesis or worldview that is not antecedently held but arrived at by philosophical inquiry.

But we need to nuance this a bit inasmuch as (1) conflates the distinction between

1a. Philosophical inquiry pursued in order to support (defend and rationally justify) an antecedently held thesis or worldview whose source is extraphilosophical, a thesis or worldview that will continue to be maintained whether or not the defensive and justificatory operations are successful

and

1b. Philosophical inquiry pursued in order to support (defend and rationally justify) an antecedently held thesis or worldview whose source is extraphilosophical, a thesis or worldview that will continue to be maintained only if the defensive and justificatory operations are successful.

Alvin Plantinga may serve as an example of (1a). I think it is fair to say that his commitment to his Dutch Reformed Christian worldview is such that he would continue to adhere to it whether or not his technical philosophical work is judged successful in defending and rationally justifying it. For a classical example of (1a), we may turn to Thomas Aquinas. His commitment to the doctrine of the Incarnation does not depend on the success of his attempt at showing the doctrine to be rationally acceptable. (Don't confuse rational acceptability with rational provability. The Incarnation cannot of course be rationally demonstrated.) Had his amanuensis Reginald convinced him that his defensive strategy in terms of reduplicatives was a non-starter, Thomas would not have suspended his acceptance of the doctrine in question; he would have looked for a defense immune to objections.

There are of course atheists and materialists who also exemplify (1a). Suppose a typical materialist about the mind proffers a theory that attempts to account for qualia and intentionality in purely naturalistic terms, and I succeed in showing him that his theory is untenable. Will he then reject his materialism about the mind or suspend judgment with respect to it? Of course not. He will 'go back to the drawing board' and try to develop a naturalistic theory immune to my objections.

The same thing goes on in the sciences. There are climate scientists who are committed to the thesis that anthropogenic global warming is taking place. They then look for evidence to buttress this conviction.

According to Susan Haack, following C. S. Peirce, the four examples above (which are mine, not hers) are examples of pseudo-inquiry:

The distinguishing feature of genuine inquiry is that what the inquirer wants is to find the truth of some question. [. . .] The distinguishing feature of pseudo-inquiry is that what the 'inquirer' wants is not to discover the truth of some question but to make a case for some proposition determined in advance. (Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate, University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 8)

Haack, again following Peirce, distinguishes within pseudo-inquiry sham inquiry and sham reasoning from fake inquiry and fake reasoning. You engage in sham reasoning when you make "a case for the truth of some proposition your commitment to which is already evidence- and argument-proof." (8) Characteristic of the sham 'inquirer' is a "prior and unbudgeable commitment to the proposition for which he tries to make a case." (9)

There are also those who are indifferent to the truth-value of the thesis they urge, but argue for it anyway to make a name for themselves and advance their careers. Their reasoning is not sham but fake. The sham reasoner is committed to the truth of the thesis he urges; the fake reasoner isn't: he is a bullshitter in Harry Frankfurt's sense. I will not be concerned with fake inquiry in this post.

The question I need to decide is, first of all, whether every case of (1a) is sham inquiry. And the answer to that is No. That consciousness exists, for example, is something I know to be true, and indeed from an extraphilosophical source, namely, introspection or inner sense. Those who claim that consciousness is an illusion are frightfully mistaken. I would be within my epistemic rights in simply dismissing their absurd claim as a bit of sophistry. But suppose I give an argument why consciousness cannot be an illusion. Such an argument would not count as sham reasoning despite my mind's being made up before I start my arguing, despite my "prior and unbudgeable commitment to the proposition" for which I argue.

Nothing is more evident that that consciousness, in my own case at least, exists. Consider a somewhat different case, that of other minds, other consciousnesses. Other minds are not given in the way my own mind is given (to me). Yet when I converse with a fellow human being, and succeed in communicating with him more or less satisfactorily, I am unshakably convinced that I am in the presence of an other mind: I KNOW that my interlocutor is an other mind. And in the case of my cats, despite the fact that our communication does not rise to a very high level, I am unbudgingly convinced that they too are subjects of consciousness, other minds. As a philosopher I want to know how it is that I have knowledge of other minds; I seek a justification of my belief in them. Whether I come up with a decent justification or not, I hold fast to my belief. I want to know how knowledge of other minds is possible, but I would never take my inability to demonstrate possibility as entailing that the knowledge in question is not actual. The reasoning I engage in is genuine, not sham, despite the fact that there is no way I am going to abandon my conviction.

Suppose an eliminative materialist claims that there are no beliefs or desires. I might simply dismiss his foolish assertion or I might argue against it. If I do the latter, my reasoning is surely not sham despite my prior and unbudgeable commitment to my thesis.

Suppose David Lewis comes along and asserts that unrealized possibilities are physical objects. I know that that is false. Suppose a student doesn't see right off the bat that the claim is false and demands an argument. I supply one. Is my reasoning sham because there is no chance that I will change my view? I don't think so.

Suppose someone denies the law of noncontradiction . . . .

There is no need to multiply examples: not every case of (1a) is sham inquiry. Those who claim that consciousness is an illusion or that there are no beliefs and desires can, and perhaps ought to be, simply dismissed as sophists or bullshitters. "Never argue with a sophist!" is a good maxim. But deniers of God, the soul, the divinity of Christ, and the like cannot be simply dismissed as sophists or bullshitters.

So now we come to the hard cases, the interesting cases.

Consider the unshakable belief held by some that there is what William James calls an "unseen order." (Varieties of Religious Exerience, p. 53) Some of those who have this belief claim to have glimpsed the unseen order via mystical experience. They claim that it lies beyond the senses, outer and inner, and that is also lies beyond what discursive reason can grasp. And yet they reason about it, not to prove its existence, but to show how it, though suprarational, is yet rationally acceptable. Is their reasoning sham because they will hold to their conviction whether or not they succeed in showing that the conviction is rationally acceptable?

I don't think so. Seeing is believing, and mystical experience is a kind of seeing. Why trust abstract reasoning over direct experience? If you found a way out of Plato's Cave, then you know there is a way out, and all the abstract reasoning of all the benighted troglodytes counts for nothing at all in the teeth of that experience of liberation. But rather than pursue a discussion of mystical experience, let's think about (propositional) revelation.

Consider Aquinas again. There are things he thinks he can rationally demonstrate such as the existence of God. And there are things such as the Incarnation he thinks cannot be rationally demonstrated, but can be known to be true on the basis of revelation as mediated by the church's teaching authority. But while not provable (rationally demonstrable), the Incarnation is rationally acceptable. Or so Thomas argues. Is either sort of reasoning sham given that Aquinas would not abandon belief in God or in the Incarnation even if his reasoning in either case was shown to be faulty? Russell would say yes:

There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. (Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy, Simon and Schuster, p. 463)

It is easy to see that Haack is a sort of philosophical granddaughter of Russell at least on this point.

In correspondence Dennis Monokroussos points out that "Anthony Kenny had a nice quip in reply to the Russell quotation. On page 2 of his edited work, Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays (London, 1969) (cited in Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 19), he says that the remark “comes oddly from a philosopher who took three hundred and sixty dense pages to offer a proof that 1 + 1 = 2.”

Exactly right. This is yet another proof that not every instance of (1a) above is an instance of sham reasoning or sham inquiry.

It is certainly false to say that, in general, it is unphilosophical or special pleading or an abuse of reason to seek arguments for a proposition antecedently accepted, a proposition the continuing acceptance of which does not depend on whether or not good arguments for it can be produced. But if we are to be charitable to Lord Russell we should read his assertion as restricted to propositions, theological and otherwise, that are manifestly controversial. So restricted, Russell's asseveration cannot be easily counterexampled, which is not to say that it is obviously true.

Thus I cannot simply cite the Incarnation doctrine and announce that we know this from revelation and are justified in accepting it whether or not we are able to show that it is rationally acceptable. For if it really is logically impossible then it cannot be true. If you say that it is actually true, hence possibly true whether or not we can explain how it is possible for it to be true, then you beg the question by assuming that it is actually true despite the opponent's arguments that it is logically contradictory.

It looks to be a stand-off.

One can imagine a Thomist giving the following speech.

My reasoning in defense of the Incarnation and other such doctrines as the Trinity is not sham despite the fact that I am irrevocably committed to these doctrines. It is a question of faith seeking understanding. I am trying to understand what I accept as true, analogously as Russell tried to understand in terms of logic and set theory what he accepted as true in mathematics. I am not trying to decide whether what I accept is true since I know it it to be true via an extraphilosophical source of knowledge. I am trying to understand how it could be true. I am trying to integrate faith with reason in a manner analogous to the way Russell sought to integrate arithmetic and logic. One can reason to find out new truths, but one can also reason, and reason legitimately, to penetrate intellectually truths one already possesses, truths the ongoing acceptance of which does not depend on one's penetrating them intellectually.

What then does the Russell-Haack objection amount to? It appears to amount to a rejection of certain extraphilosophical sources of knowledge/truth such as mystical experience, authority, and revelation. I have shown that Russell and his epigones cannot reject every extraphilosophical source of knowledge, else they would have to reject inner and outer sense. Can they prove that there cannot be any such thing as divine revelation? And if they cannot prove that, then their rejection of the possibility is arbitrary. If they say that any putative divine revelation has to validate itself by our lights, in our terms, to our logic, then that is just to reject divine revelation.

It looks to be a stand-off, then. Russell and his epigones are within their rights to remain within the sphere of immanence and not admit as true or real anything that cannot be certified or validated within that sphere by the satisfaction of the criteria human reason imposes. And their opponents are free to make the opposite decision: to open themselves to a source of insight ab extra.