Many of the questions that philosophers ask have the form, What is (the nature of) X? What is knowledge? What is consciousness? What is the self? What is free will? What is causation? What are properties? What is motion? Time? Existence? . . .
These are typical philosophical questions that arise from what appear to be plain facts: we know some things but not others; we are sometimes conscious; one's uses of the first-person singular pronoun refer to something; things exist and some of these things move and they couldn't move if there weren't time, and some of the moving things causes changes in other things, and there couldn't be change unless things had different properties at different times . . . . And so on.
Now it is notorious that philosophers disagree about the answers to these questions. For example, some say that propositional knowledge is justified true belief, which implies that knowledge includes belief, while others maintain that knowledge excludes belief: if a person knows that p, then he does not believe that p. Still others maintain that knowledge is consistent with disbelief: some of the things people know are not believed by them. All three positions have been represented by competent practitioners. But the contending parties, while agreeing that there is propositional knowledge, cannot agree on what it is.
Or consider causation. Philosophers who agree that some of the event sequences in the world are causal and even agree on what causes what, cannot agree on what causation is: there are regularity theories, transfer theories, counterfactual theoris, nomological theories and others.
But you haven't fathomed the depth of philosophical disagreement until you appreciate that the disagreement goes far deeper than perennial disagreement about the answers to questions like the foregoing. For questions of the form What is the nature of X? typically presuppose the existence of X. When one asks what properties are one typically presupposes that there are some. For example, what motivates my question about properties might be my encounter with the blueness of my coffee cup. One cannot ask what causation is unless one has encountered instances of it. And it is spectacularly obvious that if nothing existed, then there would be nothing to ask about and no one to ask the question, What is existence?
The truly awful and abysmal depth of philosophical disagreement is first descried when you appreciate that philosophers sometimes disagree about the very existence of what they ask about.
To the outsider it might appear that certain of these denials are unserious or sophistical or just plain crazy. Perhaps some of them are. But others are motivated and argued. Some philosophers, for example, deny that there are selves. They have arguments. Here is one: (i) Only that which can be singled out in experience can be rightly said to exist; (ii) the self cannot be singled out in experience; ergo, etc. I don't buy the argument, but it has some plausibility, and some philosophers swear by it, philosophers who are neither unserious nor sophistical nor crazy.
Here is another eliminativist argument that convinces some competent practioners:
1. If beliefs are anything, then they are brain states;
2. Beliefs exhibit original intentionality;
3. No physical state, and thus no brain state, exhibits original intentionality;
Therefore
4. There are no beliefs.
I reject this argument by rejecting (1). I would run the argument in reverse, arguing from the negation of (4) to the negation of (1) via (2) and (3). But that's not my present point. My point is to illustrate the depth of philosophical disagreement.
If you deny that there is consciousness, then I will show you the door: you are either stupid or unserious or a sophist or crazy or something equally distasteful. For consciousness is immediately given. You experience consciousness by feeling pain or seeing red. But if you deny that there are beliefs, I will be more respectful. I occurrently believe that my wife is now at a movie. But is the belief-state (which is distinct from its content) an introspectible item, a phenomenological datum, in the way a sensory quale is? No. Do I introspect my self as in the state of belief? No: the self does not appear to introspection, hence it does not appear in this state or that. What appears phenomenologically is only the content: that my wife is at the movies. One goes beyond the given if one maintains that beliefs are mental states. (For details, see An Argument for Mental Acts)
So the eliminativist about beliefs as mental states cannot be as easily given the boot as the consciousness denier.
My present theme is the misery of philosophy. As one my aphorisms has it, "Philosophy is magnificent in aspiration, but miserable in execution." The magnificence, however, cannot be denied. For our sinking into the abyss of interminable disagreement is the night side of our noble quest for the light of truth, a light that philosophy strives after, but apparently cannot attain by its own efforts.
Or dissolved? Logically prior to the title question is this: What would it be to solve a philosophical problem? Four approaches to the logically prior question come to mind. I'll call them Pluralism, Dogmatism, Skepticism, and Optimism.
A. Pluralism. Solutions and dissolutions are relative to theories and background assumptions such that there is a plurality of solutions and no one absolute and definitive solution or dissolution per problem. If we take this tack, then many problems have been solved and dissolved. The problem of universals, for example has been solved: in one way by Platonists, in another way by Thomists, in a third way by nominalists, and in a fourth way by Kantians. Different schools of thought, different solutions. It is the same with the problem of the meaning of life. Some solve it one way, others another way, and some dismiss it as a pseudo-problem.
On the first approach, then, philosophical problems have solutions but they are theory-relative.
B. Dogmatism. The second approach rejects the relativism of the first by maintaining that philosophical problems have solutions only if the solutions are not relative to theories or background assumptions or schools of thought but are instead absolute and definitive. The second approach also maintains that some problems have been definitively solved, and this despite a lack of consensus among competent practioners as to whether or not definitive solutions have been achieved. Thus a Thomist might insist that Thomism has definitely solved the problem of universals despite the fact that the Thomist solution is rejected by many competent practitioners.
This second approach includes the following claims:
1. There are perennial problems that are essentially time- and system-invariant. Thus there is something called the problem of universals that different thinkers in different epochs and lands wrestled with. This is not obvious inasmuch as one could argue that, for example, the mind-body problem in Descartes is merely an artifact of his system and not identical to any problem addressed by thinkers before or since. (It also goes without saying that 'mind-body problem' is an umbrella term covering a number of distinct but interrelated subproblems.)
2. Some of the perennial problems have solutions. (They are not insoluble by us.)
3. Only a non-relative solution counts as a solution.
4. Some of the problems have been solved.
5. The dissent of competent practitioners is not evidence that a claimed solution is not a solution. Thus dissensus does not give our Thomist a good reason to doubt that his solution to the problem of universals is correct. He can say to the dissenters: "We have solved the problem and if you disdagree, then you are wrong. What's more, our solution is logically incompatible with yours, whence it follows that your solutions are all mistaken."
C. Skepticism. The third approach agrees with the second on points (1) and (3), but diasagrees on the remaining points. Thus on the third approach there are perennial problems and they are soluble only if absolutely soluble. But none of the central classical problems have been solved and it is reasonable to hold that they are insoluble by us. (As a matter of fact, they have not been solved to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners, and the best explanation of this fact is that they are insoluble by us. Why they should be insoluble by us is a further question.) The dissent of competent practioners is very good evidence that a claimed solution is not a solution. A competent practioner is one who is logically astute, apprised of all relevant empirical facts and theories, thoroughly understands the problems, their history, their interrelation to surrounding problems, including all of the relevant arguments and counterarguments, and exemplifies the full range of intellectual virtues, e.g., is intellectually honest, a sincere truth-seeker, etc.
D. Optimism. Optimism is Dogmatism minus (4), the claim that some problems have been solved. The optimist appreciates the force of the skeptic's argument, but refuses to take the fact of intractable philosophical disagreement as warranting an inference to the insolubility (by us) of philosophical propblems. He pins his hopes on future philosophy. And so the optimist replaces (4) with the claim that some problems are soluble in the fullness of time.
None of these approaches is wholly satisfactory. Pluralism seems a cheap way out of the difficulty. If among our background assumptions is the assumption that all meaning is linguistic, then we can dissolve the problem of the meaning of life straightaway by simply pointing out that a life is not something linguistic and so cannot have or lack meaning. But why accept the background assumption?
The problem with Dogmatism is, of course, that it is dogmatic. One can always insist that one is right and the other guy wrong, but claiming such epistemic privilege for oneself ought to bother one's intellectual conscience assuming that the other guy is as competent a practioner as oneself.
In LIFE, one must insist, stand one's ground, not back down, because in life "there ain't no easy way out." But in THOUGHT, insistence is churlish since the impersonal truth is the goal, truth which is not mine or yours, but everyman's. In life egoism and self-privileging has its place, assuming you want to continue in existence; you shoot the thug who is doing the 'pound and ground' on your sorry head, leaving the philosophizing for later. But egoism has no place in the pursuit of the truth, nor does the 'pound and ground.'
If A and B are competent practioners by my definition and B dissents from A, it does not follow that A is wrong . But B's dissent ought to cause A to question whether he is right. For if he is right, what explains B's dissent? And if A has good reason to doubt that he has indeed solved the problem of universals, say, then he has not solved the problem. For a solution, to be one, must reveal itself as indubitably a solution. To solve a philosophical problem is to know that one has solved it, not merely believe that one has solved it. (I admit that this thesis needs defense.)
The weakness of skepticism is that the inference from the fact of protracted diasagreement to insolubuility is inductive and hence shaky. But is it less reasonable than the hope that future philosophy will solve some of philosophy's problems? For that hope seems to rest on nothing more than the mere possibility that problems hitherto unsolved will someday be solved.
I wrote an entry on the main sorts of motive that might lead one who takes religion seriously to take up the study of philosophy. I distinguished five main motives: the apologetic, the critical, the debunking, the transcensive, and the substitutional. But there is also the move away from philosophy to religion and its motives. One motive is the suspicion that philosophy is a snare and a delusion, a blind alley; there is the sense that it cannot be what its noble name suggests, namely, the love of wisdom, and that he who seeks wisdom must forsake Athens for Jerusalem. There is the sense that philosophy is, in truth, misosophy, the hatred of wisdom. An ancient theme, that of the irreconcilable antagonism between religion and philosophy, one traceable back to Tertullian at least. (See Étienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, Charles Scribners, 1938, Chapter One.)
Anthony Flood has been an off-and-on correspondent of mine since the early days of the blogosphere: I believe we first made contact in 2004. I admire him because he "studies everything" as per my masthead motto. As far as I can judge from my eremitic outpost, Tony is a genuine truth-seeker, a restless quester who has canvassed many, many positions with an open mind and a willingness to admit errors. (The man was at one time a research assistant for Herbert Aptheker!) Better a perpetual seeker than a premature finder. Here below we are ever on the way: in statu viae. Tony's views have changed over the years I have known him and it is his present attitude toward philosophy that I wish to examine here. In particular, I will evaluate his claim that philosophy is misosophy. Is this right? Or is it rather the case that religion when opposed to philosophy is misology, the hatred of reason? Is philosophy misosophy or is religion misology? That is a stark, if somewhat inaccurate, was of defining the problematic. I will quote liberally from Tony's position statement and then comment.
The position I've come to has been percolating in my mind for years. It intruded upon my thinking intermittently, but until recently I was unable to remove certain obstacles to my assent. [. . .] The critique of philosophy worked out by Gregory L. Bahnsen . . . however, has at last won my allegiance . . .
[. . .]
The gist of Bahnsen’s critique is that philosophy as it has been practiced is virtually at enmity with Christ, who is the Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24). To the degree that it is op-posed to Christ, to that degree it is misosophy, the hatred rather than the love of wisdom. For the Christian, wisdom is not an abstract virtue, but a divine person. To pretend indifference to Christ is pretend indifference to the only Wisdom worth having; to hate Christ is to hate wisdom, that is, to hate him in whom all the treasures of wisdom are hid (Col 2:3); and to hate wisdom is to love death (Prov 8:36). Christians may continue to use “philosophy” and its cognates, but they reserve the right to qualify that usage. Between the philosopher and the misosopher, covenant keeper and covenant breaker, there is antithesis.
Tony hasn't given us the "gist" of Bahnsen's critique but the conclusion at which he arrives; the gist of the critique would have to contain a summary of the reasons for the conclusion. Setting that quibble aside, I move to a substantive point. While it is true that for a Christian Christ is the source of all wisdom and therefore, in a sense, wisdom itself, saying this is consistent with maintaining that philosophy is the love of wisdom. The philosopher qua philosopher seeks wisdom using his unaided reason, unaided, that is, by the data of revelation. It is not that the philosopher qua philosopher rejects the data of revelation or the very idea that there could be such a thing as divine revelation; it is rather that he makes no use of it qua philosopher. (To save keystrokes I won't keep repeating the qualification 'qua philosopher' but it remains in force.) To borrow a term from Husserl, the philosopher 'brackets' revelation. I see nothing in the nature of philosophy to prevent a philosopher from arriving at the conclusion that wisdom is ultimately a person. So my first question to Tony would be: Why must philosophy be opposed to wisdom when wisdom is taken to be a divine person?
Admittedly, philosophy cannot bring us to Wisdom in its fullness, especially if wisdom is a divine person, but it hardly follows that it cannot serve as a propadeutic to a participation in this Wisdom. Here is a crude analogy. The menu is not the meal. But the menu is not opposed to the meal. The menu provides access to the meal via verbal description, the very same meal that one goes on to eat. It is not as if there are two meals, the meal of the menu writer and the meal of the eater. There is exactly one meal accessed in two ways, the first obviously inferior to the second. If you don't get the analogy, forget it.
There is an important point of terminology that we need to discuss. Tony claims that Christians have the right to use 'philosophy' in their way as meaning the love of Christ. (After all, if wisdom is Christ, then the love of wisdom is the love of Christ.) I deny this right. 'Philosophy' means what it means and that is to be discerned from the practice of the great philosophers beginning with the ancient Greeks. To know what philosophy is one reads Plato, for starters, and not just for starters. Philosophy is what is done in those dialogues and what has arisen by way of commentary on and critique of what was done in those famous discussions. "Philosophy is Plato and Plato philosophy." (Emerson) I characterize philosophy here. The characterization begins with this sentence: "Philosophy is not fundamentally a set of views but an activity whereby a questing individual, driven by a need to know the truth, applies discursive reason to the data of life in an attempt to arrive at the ultimate truth about them."
The Christian, therefore, is not free to use 'philosophy' and cognates in an idiosyncratic way. Or rather he is free to do so but if he does he causes confusion and makes communication difficult if not impossible. 'Philosophy' does not and cannot mean 'love of Christ.' This is not to say that one cannot move beyond philosophy to Christian faith. One can, and perhaps one should. But nothing is to be gained by tampering with the established sense of 'philosophy.'
Tony writes, "Between the philosopher and the misosopher, covenant keeper and covenant breaker, there is antithesis." I object to this sentence because of the misuse of the word 'philosopher.' Tony has decided that the philosopher, in his sense, is a lover of Christ, and that a philosopher (in the proper sense) is a misosopher and thus a hater of Christ. But he has no right to hijack the terminology, nor, as regards the substantive question, has he shown that philosophy is opposed to Christian wisdom.
Autonomy versus Heteronomy/Theonomy
We now come to the crux of the matter: the tension between the autonomy of finite reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith. This is, in essence, the tension between Athens and Jerusalem. Whether this tension is an opposition or contradiction, as Tertullian thought, and as Tony seems to think, remains to be seen, and cannot be assumed at the outset. (I set aside the tension between Athens and Benares, the discussion of which does not belong here, even though that too is a tension between philosophy and a kind of religion.) Finite reason, reason as we find it within ourselves, presumes to judge heaven and earth and everything in between; it would play "the spectator of all time and existence," to borrow a beautiful line from Plato's Republic. But it must be admitted that the results have been meager. Has even one substantive philosophical question been resolved to the satisfaction of all competent practioners in two and one half mllennia? No. What we have instead are endless controversies and the strife of systems. Magnificent in aspiration, philosophy is miserable in execution. Philosophy has proven impotent to provide us with the knowledge we seek, the knowledge of ultimates, and in particular salvific knowledge, knowledge that caters not merely to our theoretical needs but to our deepest existential ones as well, knowledge that does not merely inform us, but transforms us.
To make up for the infirmity of finite reason we must look elsewhere to a source of succor lying beyond the human horizon. And so reason, while remaining within the sphere of immanence and autonomy, raises the question of the possibility of revelation, the possibility of an irruption into the sphere of immanence from beyond the human-all-too-human. The possibility is entertained that the true nomos is theonomos, and that what at first appears as heteronomy is in reality theonomy. The possibility is entertained that the prideful intellect must fall silent and humbly submit to God's Word.
But at this juncture we encounter what Josiah Royce calls the religious paradox or
The Paradox of Revelation. Suppose someone claims to have received a divine communication regarding the divine will, the divine plan, the need for salvation, the way to salvation, or any related matter. This person can be asked, "By what marks do you personally distinguish a divine revelation from any other sort of report?" (Josiah Royce, The Sources of Religious Insight, 22-23) How is a putative revelation authenticated? By what marks or criteria do we recognize it as genuine? The identifying marks must be in the believer's mind prior to his acceptance of the revelation as valid. For it is by testing the putative revelation against these marks that the believer determines that it is genuine. One needs "a prior acquaintance with the nature and marks and, so to speak, signature of the divine will." (p. 25) But how can a creature who needs saving lay claim to this prior acquaintance with the marks of genuine revelation?The paradox in a nutshell is that it seems that only revelation could provide one with what one needs to be able to authenticate a report as revelation. Royce:Faith, and the passive and mysterious intuitions of the devout, seem to depend on first admitting that we are naturally blind and helpless and ignorant, and worthless to know, of ourselves, any saving truth; and upon nevertheless insisting that we are quite capable of one very lofty type of knowledge — that we are capable, namely, of knowing God's voice when we hear it, of distinguishing a divine revelation from all other reports, of being sure, despite all our worthless ignorance, that the divine higher life which seems to speak to us in our moments of intuition is what it declares itself to be. If, then, there is a pride of intellect, does there not seem to be an equal pride of faith, an equal pretentiousness involved in undertaking to judge that certain of our least articulate intuitions are infallible?Surely here is a genuine problem, and it is a problem for the reason. (103)
Is it a genuine problem or not? Can the church's teaching authority be invoked to solve the problem? Suppose a point of doctrine regarding salvation and the means thereto is being articulated at a church council. The fathers in attendance debate among themselves, arrive at a result, and claim that it is inspired and certified by the Holy Spirit. But by what marks do they authenticate a putative deliverance of the Holy Spirit as a genuine deliverance? How do they know that the Holy Spirit is inspiring them and not something else such as their own subconscious desire for a certain result? This is exactly Royce's problem.
The problem, then, is this. Reason is weak and philosophy, whose engine is unaided reason, cannot deliver the goods. The salvific wisdom we seek it cannot supply. It remains an interminable and inconclusive seeking, but never a finding; it remains forever the (erothetic) love of wisdom, not its possession. So we look beyond philosophy to the data of revelation. But how do we authenticate such data? How do we distinguish pseudo-revelation from the genuine article? By what marks is it known? We are thrown back upon our infirm reasoning powers to sort this out.
So, while confessing in all humility the infirmity of reason, we have no option but to rely on it as we do when, by its means, we come to admit the infirmity of reason. Though weak, reason is strong enough to acquire a genuine insight into its own weakness and limitations and the need for supplementation ab extra. But this supplementation by revelation cannot go untested. Tony may be right that we need to "repent" and submit our wills to God's, but what that will is has to be discerned, and there is no way around the fact that it is up to us to do the discerning using the God-given equipment we possess, as infirm as it may be.
But let's hear what Flood has to say:
From 1969, when I first began to read philosophy (as it is commonly called), I had very rarely questioned the presumption of autonomy exhibited by my models in that field, whereby the human mind posits itself as the final judge of what is real, true, and good. I did not question that presumptive stance even when the provisional conclusions I arrived at were professedly Christian-theistic and therefore incompatible with it. The way I approached “God” did not ethically comport with wanting God. I played it safe, hedged my bets, looking for nothing more than a piece of metaphysical furniture to complete the interior design of my latest philosophical mansion. The irony of this discrepancy was lost on me, at least until recently.
What Tony seems to be saying here is that when we approach God via philosophy, i.e., via finite discursive reason, relying only on those evidences that can be validated from within the sphere of immanence, eschewing any such exogenic input as the data of revelation, what we arrive at is not the true God, but 'God,' a mere furnishing in the mansion of immanence, a mansion that is perhaps better compared to a doghouse. Tony thus seems to be sounding a very old theme, that of the opposition of the God of the philosophers to the the God of Sbraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I myself do not accept this opposition for reasons I supply in Pascal and Buber on the God of the Philosophers.
To revert to the crude analogy presented above, there are not two meals, the meal of the menu-writer and the meal of the eater. One and the same meal is 'accessed' in two different ways, via description and via 'ingestion.' What the menu-writer describes, assuming the accuracy of the description, is not something that exists only in his mind, a bit of mental furniture, but something that exists in reality. Similarly, when the philosopher speaks of God , he is not speaking of something that exists only in his mind, but of something that exists in reality. But let's hear some more from Tony:
As I now see it, that loss was not innocent and my present insight is wholly of grace. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10), however, not something tacked on at the end of one’s system. (Part V of Whitehead’s Process and Reality comes to mind. So does Chapter XIX of Lonergan’s Insight.)
Human beings, Christian and non-Christian alike, do know things. They do reason. They do calculate, induct, deduce, plan, accuse, exonerate, interpret. They do write histories, novels, and plays. They do compose symphonies and conduct experiments. They do creatively improvise on canvas, in the sculpture studio, and on the band stand. But their attempts to account for these facts apart from their dependence upon God have been marvelous failures, for they cannot secure the experience-transcending universal claims on which they rely when they engage in any of those activities. They ought to acknowledge the laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, moral absolutes as gifts of God. Unless God grants them the spirit of repentance, however, this they will not do, for it is offensive to their posture of autonomy. But they pay a price for this posture in the coin of rank foolishness.
Ironically, such a critique of philosophy is what one would predict professing Christian philosophers to produce, informed as they are by their awareness of the covenantal relationship they bear to God. Historically, however, what comes under the label “Christian philosophy” is compromised. Christian philosophers have generally given their blessing to pretenses of neutrality and autonomy, content to conjecture how far the human mind can go under its own steam before grabbing the supernatural rope to take them the rest of the way.
They can give that blessing, however, only by suppressing awareness (that they otherwise happily acknowledge) that the human being is a created, covenant-bound bearer of the image of God. That is, Christian philosophers join their enemies in “testing” the hypothesis that Christian theism is at least as “reasonable” as anything else on offer in the marketplace of ideas. As though any inference at all could be reasonable if Christian theism were not antecedently true. As though an impersonal matrix of possibility were Lord of all. I understand why Christianity’s opponents “load” the argument against Christian theism. But why do Christians follow them?
In this last paragraph, Tony raises a couple of fascinating questions. One is whether (to put it in my own way) the necessary truth of the laws of logic presupposes the existence of God. There are those who have argued such a thing, but, if Tony is right, why bother? If Jerusalem supplies all the needs of man, who needs Athens? If reason cannot be relied upon to bring us to any truth at all, then it cannot be relied upon to show that logic presupposes God. The other question concerns the relation between the modal framework, standardly artculated in terms of 'possible worlds,' and God. Analytic theists standardly maintain that God exists in all possible worlds. Does such talk subject God to the modal framework, thereby compromising the divine sovereignty? Is God lord of all, including the modal framework, or is God subject to the modal framework? Or neither?
These questions cannot be pursued here, but one comment is in order, and an obvious one it is: Tony seems merely to beg the question against his opponents. For example, he just assumes that Athens and Jerusalem are irreconcilably anatagonistic and that the whole truth resides in Jerusalem. He is free to make these assumptions of course. No one is compelled to remain within philosphy's smoky rooms. The door is unlocked and one is free to pass throught it. But then one should not attempt to explain or justify one's exit. For any such attempt will entangle on in the very thing one is trying to get away from.
There is of course more to be said — in subsequent posts.
But Jean Piaget, the psychologist, wrote a little book (Sagesse et illusions de la philosophie, 1965) in which he suggested that premature exposure to philosophy could be detrimental to good thinking. According to him, adequate philosophizing presupposes the mastery of a science, and young students in France are encouraged to vaticinate in a void.
Piaget was guilty of scientism, to be sure, but his view has some merit. Bad bad students, or bad good students (i.e. "bright" students who have learned rhetoric but don't really care about thinking), can get intoxicated with words.
That may account in part for French philosophical bullshitting of the Derrida type.
Professor Boisson is on to something. But permit me a quibble. While "vaticinate in a void" has a nice alliterative ring to it, it is not so much that young students in France are encouraged to prophesy but to think in ways that are excessively abstract and verbal and insufficiently attentive to empirical data and scientific method. So I suggest 'ratiocinate in a void.'
The underlying problem, and it is not merely a problem for the French, is that of the "two cultures" to borrow a phrase from a lecture and a book by C. P. Snow, now over 50 years past. There is literary culture and scientific culture and tension between them. Jean Piaget sounds the same theme in his Insights and Illusions of Philosophy (World Publishing, 1971, tr. Wolfe Mays). This is the book whose French title Boisson supplies above. I read it in 1972 but it didn't dissuade me from graduate work in philosophy the next year. I began re-reading it this morning at the considerable temporal distance of 41 years. I hope to dig into and 'blog' some of its details later or perhaps in this very entry.
One of the curious things about the denigrators and opponents of philosophy is that they never hesitate to philosophize themselves when it suits their purposes. But somehow, when they do it, it is not philosophy. It is something worthwhile and important and true! These scientistic denigrators never just stick to their laboratories and empirical research. For example, Piaget's second chapter bears the bold and sweeping title, "Science and Philosophy." He makes all sorts of interesting arm-chair claims and bold assertions about the respective natures of science and philosophy and the relations between them. One wonders how careful, plodding empirical research bears upon these Piagetian pronunciamentos from the arm chair. They are obviously not scientific assertions, though they are the assertions of a scientist.
In doing what he is doing Piaget must presuppose the validity of at least some philosophical thinking, his own. What is annoying is when people like him fail to own up to what they are doing and refuse to admit that it is philosophy. In an unbearably tendentious manner, they use 'philosophy' to refer to something cognitively worthless while posturing as if what they are doing is cognitively worthwhile and so can't be philosophy! Richard Dawkins plays this game in a discussion with Stephen Law. Law made a non-empirical, wholly conceptual point with which Dawkins agreed, but Dawkins refused to take it as evidence of the cognitive value of some philosophy. Does Dawkins think that philosophy is by definition cognitively worthless? If so, then I say that Dawkins is by definition an idiot.
But I digress.
Returning to the "Science and Philosophy" chapter of Insights and Illusions, we observe that Piaget makes bold to speak of the meaning of life, a question his positivist colleagues, wielding their version of Hume's Fork, the dreaded Verifiability Criterion of Cognitive Significance, had consigned to the dustbin of cognitive meaninglessness. He calls it "the most central problem motivating all philosophy . . . the problem of the 'finality' of existence." (Insights and Illusions, p. 42) But then he goes on to say this: "To begin with finality [teleology], this concept is the prototype of those concepts that positivism considers to be metaphysical and nonscientific, and rightly so, since it concerns an anthropocentric idea, originating in a confusion between conscious subjective data and the causal mechanism of action, and involving, under the form of 'final causes,' a determination of the present by the future." (Ibid.)
My question to Piaget: one the basis of which empirical science do you know this to be the case? Or is this just another ex cathedra (literally: 'from the chair') asseveration?
People come to philosophy from various 'places.' Some come from religion, others from mathematics and the natural sciences, still others from literature and the arts. There are other termini a quis as well. In this post I am concerned only with the move from religion to philosophy. What are the main types of reasons for those who are concerned with religion to take up the serious study of philosophy? I count five main types of motive.
1. The Apologetic Motive. Some look to philosophy for apologetic tools. Their concern is to clarify and defend the tenets of their religious faith, tenets they do not question, or do not question in the main, against those who do question them, or even attack them. For someone whose central motive is apologetic, the aim is not to seek a truth they do not possess, but to articulate and defend a truth, the "deposit of faith," that they already possess, if not in fullness, at least in outline.
2. The Critical Motive. Someone who is animated by the Critical Motive seeks to understand religion and evaluate its claim to truth, while taking it seriously. To criticize is not to oppose, but to sift, evaluate, assay, separate the true from the false, the reasonable from the unreasonable. The critic is not out to defend or attack but to understand and evaluate. Open to the claims of religion, his question is: But is it true?
3. The Debunking Motive. If the apologist presupposes the truth of his religion, or some religion, the debunker presupposes the falsehood of a particular religion or of every religion. He takes the doctrines and institutions of religion seriously as things worth attacking, exposing, debunking, unmasking, refuting.
The apologist, the critic, and the debunker all take religion seriously as something worth defending, worth evaluating, or worth attacking using the tools of philosophy. For all three, philosophy is a tool, not an end in itself.
The apologist moves to philosophy without leaving religion. If he succeeds in defending his faith with the weapons of philosophy, well and good; if he fails, it doesn't really matter. He has all the essential truth he needs from his religion. His inability to mount an intellectually respectable defense of it is a secondary matter.
The critic moves to philosophy with the option of leaving religion behind. Whether or not he leaves it behind depends on the outcome of his critique. Neither staying nor leaving is a foregone cnclusion.
The debunker either never had a living faith, or else he had one but lost it. As a debunker, his decision has been made and his Rubicon crossed: religion is buncombe from start to finish, dangerous buncombe that needs to be unmasked and opposed. Strictly speaking, only the debunker who once had a living faith moves from it to philosophy. You cannot move away from a place where you never were.
4. The Transcensive Motive. The transcender aims to find in philosophy something that completes and transcends religion while preserving its truth. One way to flesh this out would be in Hegelian terms: religion and philosophy both aim to express the Absolute, but only philosophy does so adequately. Religion is an inadequate 'pictorial' (vortstellende) representation of the Absolute. On this sort of approach all that is good in religion is aufgehoben in philosophy, simultaneously cancelled and preserved, roughly in the way the bud is both cancelled and preserved in the flower.
5. The Substitutional Motive. The substitutionalist aims to find in philosophy a substitute for religion. Religion, when taken seriously, makes a total claim on its adherents' higher energies. A person who, for any reason, becomes disenchanted with religion, but is not prepared to allow himself to degenerate to the level of the worldling, may look to invest his energies elsewhere in some other lofty pursuit. Some will turn to social or political activism. And of course there are other termini ad quos on the road from religion. The substitutionalist abandons religion for philosophy. In a sense, philosophy becomes his religion. It is in her precincts that he seeks his highest meaning and an outlet for his noblest impulses.
Some Questions
A. What is my motive? (2). Certainly not (1): I seem to be constitutionally incapable of taking the religion of my upbringing , or any religion, as simply true without examination. I can't suppress the questions that naturally arise. We have it on high authority that "The unexamined life is not worth living." That examination, of course, extends to everything, including religion, and indeed also to this very examining. Note that I am not appealing to the authority of Socrates/Plato since their authority can be validated rationally and autonomously.
Certainly not (3): I am not a debunker. Not (4) or (5) either. Hegel is right: both religion and philosophy treat of the Absolute. Hegel is wrong, however, in thinking that religion is somehow completed by or culminates in philosophy. I incline to the view that Athens and Jersualem are at odds with each other, that there is a tension between them, indeed a fruitful, productive tension, one that accounts in part for the vitality of the West as over against the inanition of the Islamic world. To put it starkly, it it is the tension between the autonomy of reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith (cf. Leo Strauss). Jerusalem is not a suburb of Athens.
Nor do I aim to substitute philosophy for religion. Philosophy, with its "bloodless ballet of categories," is not my religion. Man does not live by the discursive intellect alone.
My view is that there are four main paths to the Absolute, philosophy, religion, mysticism, and morality. They are separate and somehow all must be trod. No one of them has proprietary rights in the Absolute. How integrate them? Integration may not be possible here below. The best we can do is tack back and forth among them. So we think, we pray, we meditate and we live under the aegis of moral demands taken as absolute.
Philosophy always buries its undertakers (Etienne Gilson) and resurrects its dead.
There is a semi-competent article in The Guardian entitled Philosophy Isn't Dead Yet that is worth a look. Why 'semi-competent'?
The author characterizes metaphysics as ". . . the branch of philosophy that aspires to the most general understanding of nature – of space and time, the fundamental stuff of the world." That is just wrong. If I were in a snarky mood I would say it is hilariously wrong. For it forecloses on the possibility that there is more to reality than nature, the realm of space-time-matter. You can't define out of existence, or out of the province of metaphysics, God, the soul, unexemplified universals and the rest of the Platonic menagerie. If they aren't metaphysical topics, nothing is.
The author would have done much better had he defined metaphysics as the branch of philosophy that aspires to an understanding of reality. A central question in philosophy is precisely whether reality is exhausted by nature.
Beyond these domestic problems there is the failure of physics to accommodate conscious beings. The attempt to fit consciousness into the material world, usually by identifying it with activity in the brain, has failed dismally, if only because there is no way of accounting for the fact that certain nerve impulses are supposed to be conscious (of themselves or of the world) while the overwhelming majority (physically essentially the same) are not. In short, physics does not allow for the strange fact that matter reveals itself to material objects (such as physicists).
The middle sentence in this paragraph is exactly right. But it is sandwiched between two very dubious sentences. First of all, why is it a failure of physics to accommodate conscious beings? It is undoubtedly a failure of naturalistic metaphysics, but the latter is not physics. Don't confuse physics with a scientistic metaphysics based on physics. Physics cannot be said to fail to accommodate consciousness for the simple reason that that is not the job of physics to do any such thing.. Physics abstracts from consciousness. Conscious beintgs such as me and my cats can be studied from the point of view of physics since we are physical objects, though not just physical objects.
Suppose you throw a rock, a cactus, a coyote, and me off a cliff at the same time. Rock, cactus, coyote and man will fall at the same rate: 32 ft per sec per sec. (Ignore my arm-flailing and the resultant wind resistance.) The foursome is subject to the same physical laws, the same physical constants, the same idealizations (center of mass, center of gravity, etc). Physics abstracts from reason, self-consciousness, intentionality, qualia, animal life, vegetative life. To expect physics to "accommodate" life, consciousneness, self-consciousness, agency, intentionality and all the rest is to tax it beyond its powers.
In his third sentence, the author tells us that ". . . physics does not allow for the strange fact that matter reveals itself to material objects (such as physicists)." This is an inept and confused way of making an important point. The important point is that matter is known: Our physics gives us knowledge of the physical universe. It is indeed a strange and wonderful fact that matter reveals itself to us, that it possesses an inherent intelligibility that we are in some measure able to discern. The author spoils things, however, by adding that matter reveals itself to material objects. Of course, physicists are material beings; but it is to the minds of these material beings that matter reveals itself.
The author is making an absurd demand: he is demanding that physics explain how knowledge is possible. But it is actually worse than that: he is demanding that physics explain how knoweldge of the material world is possible by wholly material beings. Good luck with that.
We are also told that current physics "mishandles time." Smolin is mentioned. Really? Why demand that physics accommodate the full reality of time? Physics, I would argue, does well, for its limited purposes, to abstract from the A-series. The B-series is all it needs. (See "Why Do We Need Philosophy?" below for an explanation of the distinction.) Physics can't account for temporal becoming? Why should it? One possibility is that temporal becoming is mind-dependent and not part of reality as she is in herself. Another possibility is that physics simply abstracts from temporal becoming in the way it abstracts from life, consciousness, self-consciousness, intentionality, etc.
The author is right, however, to smell "conceptual confusion beneath mathematical sophistication" when it comes to attempts by Lawrence Krauss and others to explain how the universe arose ex nihilo from spontaneous fluctuations in a quantum vacuum, as if theose fluctuations and that vacuum were not precisely something.
If all's well that ends well, the author ends well with a paragraph that earns the coveted MavPhil stamp of approval and nihil obstat:
Perhaps even more important, we should reflect on how a scientific image of the world that relies on up to 10 dimensions of space and rests on ideas, such as fundamental particles, that have neither identity nor location, connects with our everyday experience. This should open up larger questions, such as the extent to which mathematical portraits capture the reality of our world – and what we mean by "reality". The dismissive "Just shut up and calculate!" to those who are dissatisfied with the incomprehensibility of the physicists' picture of the universe is simply inadequate. [. . .]This sounds like a job for a philosophy not yet dead
The long views of philosophy are not to everyone's taste. If not bored, many are depressed by the contemplation of death and pain, God and the soul, the meaning or meaninglessness of our lives. They prefer not to think of such things and consider it best to take short views. If as Thomas Nagel maintains, the contemplation sub specie aeternitatis of one's daily doings drains them of seriousness, one is under no obligation to take the view from nowhere.
Is it best to take short views? Sometimes it is. When the going gets tough, it is best to pull in one’s horns, hunker down, and just try to get through the next week, the next day, the next hour. One can always meet the challenge of the next hour. Be here now and deal with what is on your plate at the moment. Most likely you will find a way forward.
But, speaking for myself, a life without long views would not be worth living. I thrill at the passage in Plato’s Republic, Book Six (486a), where the philosopher is described as a "spectator of all time and existence." And then there is this beautiful formulation by William James:
The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man. (Pragmatism, Harvard UP, 1975, p. 56)
I wrote above, "speaking for myself." The expression was not used redundantly inasmuch as it conveys that my philosopher’s preference for the long view is not one that I would want to or try to urge on anyone else. In my experience, one cannot argue with another man’s sensibility. And much of life comes down to precisely that — sensibility. If people share a sensibility, then argument is useful for its articulation and refinement. But I am none too sanguine about the possibility of arguing someone into, or out of, a sensibility.
How argue the atheist out of his abiding sense that the universe is godless, or the radical out of his conviction of human perfectibility? If the passages I cited from Plato and James leave you cold, how could I change your mind? If you sneer at my being thrilled, what then? Argument comes too late. Or if you prefer, sensibility comes too early.
One might also speak of a person’s sense of life, view of what is important, or ‘feel for the real.’ James’ phrase, "feel seriously," is apt. To the superior mind, ultimate questions "feel real," whereas to the shallow mind they appear pointless, unimportant, silly. It is equally true that the superior mind is made such by its wrestling with these questions.
Maximae res, cum parvis quaeruntur, magnos eos solent efficere.
Matters of the greatest importance, when they are investigated by little men, tend to make those men great. (Augustine, Contra Academicos 1. 2. 6.)
Of course, with his talk of the superior and the shallow, James is making a value judgment. I myself have no problem making value judgments, and in particular this one. Evaluate we must.
Although prospects are dim for arguing the other out of his sensibility, civil discussion is not pointless. One comes to understand one’s own view by contrast with another. One learns to respect the sources and resources of the other’s view. This may lead to toleration, which is good within limits. For someone with a theoretical bent, the sheer diversity of approaches to life is fascinating and provides endless grist for the theoretical mill. If the theoretician is a blogger, he has blog-fodder for a lifetime.
As for the problem of how to get along with people with wildly different views, I recommend voluntary segregation.
Why do we need philosophy? There are several reasons, but one is to expose the confusions and absurdities of scientists and science journalists when they encroach ineptly upon philosophical territory. This from science writer Clara Moskowitz in Controversially, Physicist Argues Time is Real:
NEW YORK — Is time real, or the ultimate illusion?
Most physicists would say the latter, but Lee Smolin challenges this orthodoxy in his new book, "Time Reborn" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, April 2013) . . . .
Time is an illusion? And this is supposed to be orthodoxy? But don't the cosmologists tells us that the universe began in a Big Bang some 12-13 billion years ago? If time is an illusion, then that statement and statements like it cannot be true. For if time is "the ultimate illusion," , then it is never true that event x is earlier than event y, that y is later than x, or that x and y are simultaneous (whether absolutely or relative to a reference-frame). But surely the Big Bang is earlier than my birth, and my blogging is later than my having had breakfast. If time is an illusion, however, then the so-called B-relations (as the philosophers all them) cannot be instantiated. The B-relations are: earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with. Physics cannot do without them. If time is an illusion, then it cannot be true that the speed of light is finite (in a vacuum, approx. 186, 282 mi/sec). But it is true, and because of it, sunlight takes time to arrive at Earth (about 8 min 19 sec). It arrives later (temporal word!) than it started out. Therefore, time cannot be an illusion.
My first point, then, is that the physicists themselves presuppose that time is not an illusion by the very fact that they employ such phrases as 'earlier than,' 'later than,' 'simultaneous with,' and a host of other temporal words and phrases. Suppose two cosmologists are discussing whether the universe began 15 billion years ago or 12 billion years ago. Debating this point, they presuppose that time is precisely not an illusion. The past-tensed 'began' and the little word 'ago' make it clear why. Reading on we come to this:
In a conversation with Duke University neuroscientist Warren Meck, theoretical physicist Smolin, who's based at Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, argued for the controversial idea that time is real. "Time is paramount," he said, "and the experience we all have of reality being in the present moment is not an illusion, but the deepest clue we have to the fundamental nature of reality."
Time is paramount? No doubt! No time, no physics. All of reality is in the present moment? So what happened in the past is not part of reality? When we inquire into what happened, whether as historians or as cosmologists, what then are we inquiring into? Unreality? Mere possibility? Fiction? Do you really want to say that all of reality is in the present moment? There is a deep confusion here (whether it is chargeable to Smolin's account or the science writer's, I don't know): It one thing to affirm the doctrine of presentism according to which only the temporal present and its contents are real; it is quite another to affirm, as Smolin seems to be doing, that time is not exhausted by the B-series, the series of events ordered by the above-mentioned B-relations.
Smolin said he hadn't come to this concept lightly. He started out thinking, as most physicists do, that time is subjective and illusory. According to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, time is just another dimension in space, traversable in either direction, and our human perception of moments passing steadily and sequentially is all in our heads.
We now see what is really going on here. Smolin is not opposing the claim that time is an illusion, but the claim that time is exhausted by the B-series, where the B-series (this term from McTaggart) is the series of events ordered by the B-relations. Clearly, there is a difference between saying that time is real, but exhausted by the B-series, and saying that time is unreal. There is nothing particularly controversial about maintaining that time is real. What is controversial is to maintain that real time involves not only the instantiation of the B-relations but also the (shifting) instantiation of the irreducible A-properties, pastness, presentness, and futurity.
As we ordinarily think of it, time passes, flows, indeed 'flies.' Tempus fugit! as the Latin saying goes. We think of events approaching us from the future, getting closer and closer until they become present, and then receding into the past becoming ever more past. Thus, as a natural man, I think of my death as approaching, becoming less and less future, and my birth as receding, as becoming more and more past. This belief in the reality of temporal becoming (as some philosophers call it) is part and parcel of our ordinary view of the world. But physics, pace Smolin, needn't concern itself with it.
Now it is not unreasonable to think of temporal passage or temporal becoming as a mind-dependent phenomena such that, in reality, there is no temporal becoming, and no (shifting) exemplification of the A-properties. All there is are events ordered by the B-relations. But this is not to say that time is an illusion but that real time is exhaustively analyzable in terms of the B-relations. Note also that if temporal becoming is mind-dependent, it doesn't follow that it is an illusion. Phenomenal colors are m ind-dependent but not illusory.
There is more, but it doesn't get any better, and I have exposed enough confusions for one day. To sum up:
1. One ought not confuse the claim that time is an illusion with the claim that time is exhausted by the B-series.
2. That time is real is presupposed by both common sense and the practice of physicists.
3. One ought not confuse presentism, the view that only the temporally present exists, with the claim that there is more to time than the B-series.
4. One ought not confuse the claim that temporal becoming is mind-dependent with the claim that temporal becoming is an illusion.
5. One ought not confuse the claim that temporal becoming is an illusion with the claim that time is an illusion, or the claim that time is real with the claim that temporal becoming is real.
Your procreation argument for heterosexual marriage is consistent with polygyny, so if it is sound, it may rule out homosexual marriages, but be of great use to defending polygynists since it maximizes procreation and the perpetuation of the state quantitatively. What is the state's interest in monogamy?
I was afraid my argument could be misinterpreted as promoting increased procreation. But I took no stand on that. My argument does not "maximize procreation." It says nothing about whether there should be more procreation or less. Here is what I wrote: "The state has a legitimate interest in its own perpetuation and maintenance via the production of children, their socializing, their protection, and their transformation into productive citizens who will contribute to the common good." Let me break that down paratactically.
We collectively need some offspring; they need to be socialized and instructed in the rudiments of our culture; they need to be protected; they need to be educated to the point where they can function as productive citizens. No one of those coordinate clauses, or their logical conjunction, entails that levels of procreation should be increased, let alone that the state should have a hand in such an increase.
Is my argument logically consistent with countenancing polygyny? I suppose it is as it stands; but that is only because my argument was restricted to only one aspect of this multi-faceted issue. I was just assuming that marriage is dyadic in order to focus on the question of why the state shouuld recognize opposite-sexed dyadic unions but not same-sexed dyadic unions. The issue of the 'adicity' of marital and quasi-marital unions was not on the table. One cannot talk about everything at once.
Why should the state have an interest in monogamy over polygamy (whether polyandry or polygyny)? I have no answer to that at the moment. I have only started thinking hard about these questions recently and I have an open mind on them.
As a conservative, I of course subscribe to the quite general principle that there is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional ways of doing things. But I am open to the possibility that the presumption in favor of traditional marriage (dyadic, between humans only, permanent, exclusive, opposite-sexed, open to procreation) can be defeated. For while I am a conservative, I am also a philosopher, and you can't be a philosopher (in the strict sense!) if you simply assume dogmatically this or that.
I should also add that I play for a draw, not for a win. It sufficies to 'neutralize' the liberal-left arguments. All I have to do is show that they are not compelling. I don't have to refute them. There are precious few refutations in philosophy, and none of them pertain to 'hairy' issues like same-sex 'marriage.'
Beloved of cyberpunks and Internet infidels, the 'One God Further' meme invites generalization. Although it is not an argument but an assertion, the Dawkins attribution suggests an argument. The argument it suggests to me is the following:
1. All gods are on a par with respect to credibility.
2. All of us find most gods incredible.
Therefore
3. Consistency demands of us that we make a clean sweep and reject all gods, including the Judeo-Christian god.
The implict claim is that believers in the Judeo-Christian god refuse to apply their principle of god-rejection across the board, but instead make an irrational exception in the case of their god.
Suppose we generalize the argument and see what happens:
1G. All Xs are on a par with respect to credibility.
2G. All of us find most Xs incredible.
Therefore
3G. Consistency demands of us that we make a clean sweep and reject all Xs.
Now hear the speech of an anti-philosopher addressed to philosophers:
We reject all the philosophical theories you do, but we take it a step further by rejecting your pet theories as well. We reject all philosophical theories. So we do exactly what you do except that we do it consistently, applying the principle of philosopheme-rejection across the board. We make a clean sweep whereas you irrationally and inconsistently make an exception in favor of your pet theories.
And then there is the speech of the anti-idealist:
We reject all the ideals you do, but we take it a step further by rejecting your pet ideals as well. We reject all ideals. You distinguish between true and false ideals and reject those you take to be false such as the ideals of National Socialism. You are not consistent. You ought to make a clean sweep and reject all ideals.
Further examples of the argument schema can be provided, but you get the drift. The history of science is littered with hypotheses that didn't pan out. But of course it would be irrational to infer that one ought not propose hypotheses. Same with ideals. There are no doubt false ideals. But it doesn't follow that there are no true ideals. And the same goes for philosophical theories.
So if Dawkin's puerile meme is intended as a truncated argument, it is unsound. But if is a bare assertion, then it is true but uninteresting.
In philosophy, appeals to the obvious don't cut much ice because, as Hilary Putnam says somewhere, "It ain't obvious what's obvious." And as Spencer Case, MavPhil Cairo correspondent, points out, ". . . in contemporary academic philosophy there is a perverse incentive to deny the obvious." One who denies what counts as obvious to the vulgar comes off as a learned sophisticate while the one who invokes the obvious is cast in the role of rube or bigot or intransigent fool.
This raises the question whether there are obvious truths the denial of which would be perverse and sophistical. The answer is obviously in the affirmative. For example, it is obvious that normal post-natal human beings have two legs, that if they live long enough they learn to walk upright upon them, etc. Examples are easily multiplied ad libitum in the Moorean manner. More interesting is the question whether there are obvious truths that competent, academically accredited philosophers have denied either directly or by implication. I asked Spencer for examples. Here is part of that he said:
As far as more serious philosophers go, certain pro-choice hardliners at the University of Colorado deny that it is wrong to kill small children in fairly mundane circumstances. In addition, I believe every emotivist and expressivist theory of semantic content of moral statements denies the obvious. It's obvious that when I say "eating meat is morally wrong" I do not mean "eating meat (Boo!)" or anything of the sort. I am the one formulating the statement, and I know damn well what I intend to say. Extreme materialism in philosophy of mind, and David Lewis' ideas about modality also seem like good examples to me. Then there's Graham Priest who denies the law of non-contradiction. (But you might have already noticed the hedging in "I believe" or "seem like.")
Let's consider three examples. I expect Case to agree with me about the first two and disagree about the third.
1. Infanticide. I argue this way: "Infanticide is morally wrong; there is no morally relevant difference between late-term abortion and infanticide; ergo, late-term abortion is morally wrong." But of course the argument can be run in reverse with no breach of logical propriety: "Late-term abortion is not morally wrong; there is no morally relevant difference between late-term abortion and infanticide; ergo, Infanticide is not morally wrong." For details, see here.
Both arguments are valid, but only one can be sound. Which one? The first, say I. I am tempted to say that is just obvious that killing infant humans is morally wrong in the vast majority of circumstances, and that if you say the opposite, then you are denyng the obvious. I think Spencer will agree with me on this. So here is a case where it is obvious what's obvious. Even if it is not blindingly self-evident that killing infant humans, for convenience say, is morally wrong, it is more obvious than the opposite.
Of course, much more can be said in elaboration of the basic point, and to soften up my opponent. But if he remains intransigent, then I am well within my epistemic rights in writing him off as morally blind and showing him the door. What is both subjectively and objectively self-evident to me is not subjectively self-evident to him — but that is due to a defect in his cognitive apparatus: he is just morally obtuse.
2. Extreme Materialism. One form of extreme materialism about the mind, the most extreme, is eliminative materialism. I trust Spencer will agree with me if I simply dismiss it as a lunatic philosophy of mind despite its having been espoused by some brilliant people. For argument, see my Eliminative Materialism category. Brilliance is no guarantee of truth. (David Lewis goes wrong brilliantly and most creatively.) My dismissal of eliminative material is a dismissal of its claim to be credible. It is incredible. (By its own lights there are no beliefs, which also supplies a reason for its being unbelievable). But I am not saying that one shouldn't study it. After all, pathology can be very instructive, whether one studies diseased tissue or diseased thinking.
Less extreme is identity materialism which I argue collapses into eliminativism. I am within my epistemic rights in simply stating that it is obvious that my present thinking about the Boston Common is not identical to a complex state of my brain. Of course, I am not saying that one should not be prepared to give detailed arguments and to answer objections. But all that is merely in the service of what really ought to be obvious. The arguments merely articulate the position one finds obvious, situating it within the space of reasons.
3. Berkeleyan Idealism. Can it be dismissed in the same way, as involving a denial of the obvious? As I said in an earlier post (December 2009) responding to Case:
I think it is clear that someone who identifies God with an anthropomorphic projection simply denies the existence of God. This putative identification collapses into an elimination. You are not telling me what God is when you tell me he is an anthropomorphic projection, you are telling me that there is no such being. Same with felt pains. A putative identification of a felt pain with a brain state collapses into an elimination of felt pains. For a felt pain simply cannot be identical to a brain state: it has properties no brain state could possibly have. But an identification of a physical object with a cluster of items such as Berkeleyan ideas or Husserlian noemata, items that exist only mind-dependently, does not collapse into an elimination, the reason being that there is nothing in the nature of physical objects as we experience them that requires that such objects exist in splendid independence of any mind. I just located my coffee mug on my desk, and now I am drinking from it. There is nothing in my experiential encounter with this physical thing that requires me to think of it as something that exists whether or not any mind exists. And so I am not barred from the idealist interpretation of the ontological status of stones and coffee cups and their parts (and their parts . . .). Nor does the meaning of 'coffee cup' or 'physical object' constrain me to think of such things as existing in complete independence of any mind. Neither phenomenology nor semantics forces realism upon me. There is nothing commonsensical about either realism or idealism; both are theories.
Neither a realist nor an idealist interpretation of the ontological status of physical objects can be 'read off' from the phenomenology of our experiential encounter with such things or from the semantics of the words we use in referring to them and describing them. Only if realism were built into the phenomenology or the semantics would an identification of a physical thing with a cluster of mind-dependent items collapse into an elimination of the physical thing. For in that case it would be the very nature of a physical thing to exist mind-independently so that any claim to the contrary would be tantamount to a denial of the existence of the physical thing. The situation would then be exactly parallel to the one in which someone claims that God is an anthropomorphic projection. Since nothing could possibly count as God that is an anthropomorphic projection, any claim that God is such a projection amounts to a denial of the existence of God. But the cases are not parallel since there is nothing in the nature of a physical thing as this nature is revealed by the phenomenology of our encouter with them to require that physical things exist in sublime independence of any and all minds.
Of course, one could just stipulate that physical objects are all of them mind-independent. But what could justify such a stipulation? That would be no better than Ayn Rand's axiomatic declaration, Existence exists! What Rand means by that is that whatever exists exists in such a way as to require no mind for its existence. But although that may be true, it is far from self-evident and so has no claim to being an axiom.
In sum, token-token-identity theory in the philosophy of mind collapses into eliminativism about mental items. As so collapsing, it is refutable by Moorean means. The identitarian claims of idealists, however, do not collapse into eliminativist claims, and so are not refutable by Moorean means.
My claim, then, is that Berkeleyan idealism does not deny the obvious in the way that the eliminative materialist does. Indeed, it shows a lack of philosophical intelligence if one thinks that Berkeleyan idealism or its opposite is obvious. St. Paul displays the same lack of philosophical intelligence when he claims, at Romans 1:18-20 that the existence and nature of God are obvious from nature. See Is Atheism Intellectually Respectable? On Roman 1:18-20.
Nature can be reasonably interpreted both as divine handiwork and as the opposite in the same way that the tree in the quad can be interpreted Berkeley-wise or the opposite. But my current headache or my present thoughts about Bostion cannot be reasonably interpreted as identical to material states. It is obvious that they are not material states given the understanding of 'material 'supplied by current physics.
There is charm to reading a philosopher who confesses to finding things bewildering. But I regret the appearance of this book. It will only bring comfort to creationists and fans of “intelligent design”, who will not be too bothered about the difference between their divine architect and Nagel’s natural providence. It will give ammunition to those triumphalist scientists who pronounce that philosophy is best pensioned off. If there were a philosophical Vatican, the book would be a good candidate for going on to the Index [of prohibited books].
The problem with the book, Blackburn states at the beginning of his piece, is that
. . . only a tiny proportion of its informed readers will find it anything other than profoundly wrong-headed. For, as the title suggests, Nagel’s central idea is that there are things that science, as it is presently conceived, cannot possibly explain.
Blackburn doesn't explicitly say that there ought to be a "philosophical Vatican," and an index of prohibited books but he seems to be open to the deeply unphilosophical idea of censoring views that are "profoundly wrong-headed." And why should such views be kept from impressionable minds? Because they might lead them astray into doctrinal error. For even though Nagel explicitly rejects God and divine providence, untutored intellects might confuse Nagel's teleological suggestion with divine providence.
Nagel's great sin, you see, is to point out the rather obvious problems with reductive materialism as he calls it. This is intolerable to the scientistic ideologues since any criticism of the reigning orthodoxy, no matter how well-founded, gives aid and comfort to the enemy, theism — and this despite the fact that Nagel's approach is naturalistic and rejective of theism!
So what Nagel explicitly says doesn't matter. His failing to toe the party line makes him an enemy as bad as theists such as Alvin Plantinga. (If Nagel's book is to be kept under lock and key, one can only wonder at the prophylactic measures necessary to keep infection from leaking out of Plantinga's tomes.)
Blackburn betrays himself as nothing but an ideologue in the above article. For this is the way ideologues operate. Never criticize your own, your fellow naturalists in this case. Never concede anything to your opponents. Never hesitate, admit doubt or puzzlement. Keep your eyes on the prize. Winning alone is what counts. Never follow an argument where it leads if it leads away from the party line.
Treat the opponent's ideas with ridicule and contumely. For example, Blackburn refers to consciousness as a purple haze to be dispelled. ('Purple haze' a double allusion, to the Hendrix number and to a book by Joe Levine on the explanatory gap.)
John of the MavPhil commentariat drew our attention to the analogy between presentism and actualism. An exfoliation of the analogy may prove fruitful. Rough formulations of the two doctrines are as follows:
P. Only the (temporally) present exists.
A. Only the actual exists.
Now one of the problems that has been worrying us is how to avoid triviality and tautology. After all, (P) is a miserable tautology if 'exists' is present-tensed. It is clear that no presentist thinks his thesis is a tautology. It is also clear that there is a difference, albeit one hard to articulate, between presentism and the the various types of anti-presentism. There is a substantive metaphysical dispute here, and our task is to formulate the dispute in precise terms. This will involve clarifying the exact force of 'exists' in (P). If not present-tensed, then what?
A similar problem arises for the actualist. One is very strongly tempted to say that to exist is to be actual. If 'exists' in (A) means 'is actual,' however, then (A) is a tautology. But if 'exists' in (A) does not mean 'is actual,' what does it mean?
We seem to have agreed that Disjunctive Presentism is a nonstarter:
DP. Only the present existed or exists now or will exist.
That is equivalent to saying that if x existed or exists or will exists, then x presently exists. And that is plainly false. Now corresponding to the temporal modi past, present, and future, we have the modal modi necessary, actual, and merely possible. This suggests Disjunctive Actualism:
DA. Only the actual necessarily exists or actually exists or merely-possibly exists.
This too is false since the merely possible is not actual. It is no more actual than the wholly future is present.
We must also bear in the mind that neither the presentist nor the actualist intends to say something either temporally or modally 'solipsistic.' Thus the presentist is not making the crazy claim that all that every happened or will happen is happening right now. He is not saying that all past-tensed and future-tensed propositions are either false or meaningless and that the only true propositions are present-tensed and true right now. The presentist, in other words, is not a solipsist of the present moment.
Similarly wth the actualist. He is not a solipsist of this world. He is not saying that everything possible is actual and everything actual necessary. The actualist is not a modal monist or a modal Spinozist who maintains that there is exactly one possible world, the actual world which, in virtue of being actual and the only one possible, is necessary. The actualist is not a necessitarian.
There is no person like me, but I am not the only person. There is no place like here, but here is not the only place. There is no time like now, but now is not the only time.
In sum, for both presentism and actualism, tautologism, disjunctivism, and solipsism are out! What's left?
To formulate presentism it seems we need a notion of tenseless existence, and to formulate actualism we need a notion of amodal existence (my coinage).
We can't say that only the present presently exists, and of course we cannot say that only the present pastly or futurally exists. So the presentist has to say that only the present tenselessly exists. I will say more about tenseless existence in a later post.
What do I mean by amodal existence? Consider the following 'possible worlds' definitions of modal terms:
Necessary being: one that exists in all possible worlds Impossible being: one that exists in no possible world Possible being: one that exists in some and perhaps all possible worlds Contingent being: one that exists in some but not all possible worlds Merely possible being: one that exists in some possible worlds but not in the actual world Actual being: one that exists in the actual world Unactual being: one that exists either in no possible world or not in the actual world.
In each of these definitions, the occurrence of 'exists' is modally neutral analogously as 'exists' is temporally neutral in the following sentences:
It was the case that Tom exists It is now the case that Tom exists It will be the case that Tom exists.
My point, then, is that the proper formulation of actualism (as opposed to possibilism) requires an amodal notion of existence just as the proper formulation of presentism requires an atemporal (tenseless) notion of existence.
But are the atemporal and amodal notions of existence free of difficulty? This is what we need to examine. Can the requisite logical wedges be driven between existence and the temporal determinations and between existence and the modal determinations? If not then presentism and actualism cannot even be formulated and the respective problems threaten to be pseudoproblems.
Without a doubt, the philosophy of time. The philosophy of mind is a piece of cake by comparison. According to a story, possibly apocryphal, Peter van Inwagen was once asked why he didn't publish on time. "Too hard," was his reply. If it is too hard for van Inwagen, it is hard. According to Hugh McCann, "Few subjects in philosophy are as difficult, as exasperating even, as the subject of time, for few elements in our experience are so inherently enigmatic." (Creation and the Sovereignty of God, p. 68)
This puts me in mind of perhaps the stupidest commercial of the '80s: "Man invented time. Seiko perfected it." Stupid but stimulating: how many fallacies can you spot?
The magnificence and misery of philosophy is but a reflection of the magnificence and misery of its author man, who, neither animal nor angel, is the tension between the two.
