Metaphilosophy – Page 17 – Maverick Philosopher

Should We Abandon the Deep Problems for Problems Amenable to Solution?

UPDATE: London Ed does an excellent job of misunderstanding the following post. Bad comments incline me to keep my ComBox closed. But his is open.

Fred Sommers' "Intellectual Autobiography" begins as follows:

I did an undergraduate major in mathematics at Yeshiva College and went on to graduate studies in philosophy at Columbia University in the 1950s. There I found that classical philosophical problems were studied as intellectual history and not as problems to be solved. That was disappointing but did not strike me as unreasonable; it seemed to me that tackling something like "the problem of free will" or "the problem of knowledge" could take up one's whole life and yield little of permanent value. I duly did a dissertation on Whitehead's process philosophy and was offered a teaching position at Columbia College. Thereafter I was free to do philosophical research of my own choosing. My instinct was to avoid the seductive, deep problems and to focus on finite projects that looked amenable to solution. (The Old New Logic: Essays on the Philosophy of Fred Sommers, ed. Oderberg, MIT Press, 2005, p. 1)

Sommers says something similar in the preface to his The Logic of Natural Language (Oxford, 1982), p. xii:

My interest in Ryle's 'category mistakes' turned me away from the study of Whitehead's metaphysical writings (on which I had written a doctoral thesis at Columbia University) to the study of problems that could be arranged for possible solution.

What interests me in these two passages is the reason that Sommers gives for turning away from the big 'existential' questions of philosophy (God, freedom, immortality, and the like) to the problems of logical theory. I cannot see that it is a good reason. (And he does seem to be giving a reason and not merely recording a turn in his career.)

The reason is that the problems of logic, but not those of metaphysics, can be "arranged for possible solution." Although I sympathize with Sommers' sentiment, he must surely have noticed that his attempt to rehabilitate pre-Fregean logical theory issues in results that are controversial, and indeed just as controversial as the claims of metaphysicians. Or do all his colleagues in logic agree with him?

The problems that Sommers tackles in his magisterial The Logic of Natural Language are no more amenable to solution than the "deep, seductive" ones that could lead a philosopher astray for a lifetime. The best evidence of this is that Sommers has not convinced his MPL (modern predicate logic) colleagues. At the very most, Sommers has shown that TFL (traditional formal logic) is a defensible rival system.

If by 'pulling in our horns' and confining ourselves to problems of language and logic we were able to attain sure and incontrovertible results, then there might well be justification for setting metaphysics aside and working on problems amenable to solution. But if it turns out that logical, linguistic, phenomenological, epistemological and all other such preliminary inquiries arrive at results that are also widely and vigorously contested, then the advantage of 'pulling in our horns' is lost and we may as well concentrate on the questions that really matter, which are most assuredly not questions of logic and language — fascinating as these may be.

Given that the "deep, seductive" problems and those of logical theory are in the same boat as regards solubility, Sommer's' reason for devoting himself to logic over the big questions is not a good one. The fact that philosophy of logic is often more rigorous than 'big question' philosophy is not to the point. The distinction between the rigorous and the unrigorous cuts perpendicular to that between the soluble and the insoluble. And in any case, any philosophical problem can be tackled as rigorously as you please.

Sommers' is a rich and fascinating book. But, at the end of the day, how important is it to prove that the inference embedded in 'Some girl is loved by every boy so every boy loves a girl' really is capturable, pace the dogmatic partisans of modern predicate logic, by a refurbished traditional term logic? (See pp. 144-145) As one draws one's last breath, which is more salutary: to be worried about a silly b agatelle such as the one just mentioned, or to be contemplating God and the soul?

And shouldn't we philosophers who are still a ways from our last breaths devote our main energies to such questions as God and the soul over the trifles of logic?

It would be nice if we could set philosophy on the "sure path of science" (Kant) by abandoning metaphysics and focusing on logic (or phenomenology or whatever one considers foundational). But so far, this narrowing of focus and 'pulling in of one's horns' has availed nothing. Philosophical investigation has simply become more technical, labyrinthine, and specialized. All philosophical problems are in the same boat with respect to solubility. A definitive answer to 'Are there atomic propositions?' (LNL, ch. 1) is no more in the offing than a definitive answer to 'Does God exist?' or 'Is the will libertarianly free?'

Ask yourself: what would be more worth knowing if it could be known?

Arguments and Proofs in Philosophy

London Ed writes:

Philosophers always refer to their arguments as 'arguments' and never as 'proofs'. This is because there is nothing in the entire, nearly three thousand year history of philosophy that would count as a proof of anything. Nothing.

This obiter dictum illustrates how, by exaggerating and saying something that is strictly false, one can still manage to convey a truth. The truth is that there is very little in the history of philosophy that could count as a proof of anything. But of course some philosophers do refer to their arguments as proofs. Think of those Thomists who speak of proofs of the existence of God. And though no Thomist accepts the ontological 'proof,' there are philosophers who refer to the ontological argument as a proof. The Germans also regularly speak of der ontologische Gottesbeweis rather than of das ontologische Argument. For example, Frege in a famous passage from the Philosophy of Arithmetic writes, Weil Existenz Eigenschaft des Begriffes ist, erreicht der ontologische Beweis von der Existenz Gottes sein Ziel nicht. (sec. 53)

These quibbles aside, an argument is not the same as a proof. 'Prove' is a verb of success. The same goes for 'disprove' and 'refute.' But 'argue' is not. I may argue that p without establishing that p. But if I prove that p, then I establish that p. Indeed, I establish it as true.

Why has almost nothing ever been proven in the history of philosophy?

It is because for an argument to count as a proof in philosophy — I leave aside mathematics which may not be so exacting — certain exceedingly demanding conditions must be met. First, a proof must be deductive: no inductive argument proves its conclusion. Second, a proof must be valid: it must be a deductive argument such that its corresponding conditional is a narrowly-logical truth, where an argument's corresponding conditional is a conditional proposition the protasis of which is the conjunction of the argument's premises, and the apodosis of which is the argument's conclusion.

Third, although a valid argument needn't have true premises, a proof must have all true premises. In other words, a proof must be a sound argument. Fourth, a proof cannot commit any infomal fallacy such as petitio principii. An argument from p to p is deductive, valid, and sound. But it is obviously no proof of anything.

Fifth, a proof must have premises that are not only true, but known to be true by the producers and the consumers of the argument. This is because a proof is not an argument considered in abstracto but a method for generating knoweldge for some cognizer. For example, if I do not know that I am thinking,then I cannot use that premise in a proof that I exist.

Sixth, a proof in philosophy must have premises all of which are known to be true in a sense of 'know' that entails absolute impossibilty of mistake. Why set the bar so high? Well, if you say that you have proven the nonexistence of God, say, or that the self is but a bundle of perceptions, or that freedom of the will is an illuison, or whatever, and one of your premises is such that I can easily conceive its being false, then you haven't proven anything. You haven't rationally compelled me to accept your conclusion. You may have given a 'good' argument in the sense of a 'reasonable' argument where that is one which satisfies my first four conditions; but you haven't given me a compelling argument, an argument which is such that, were I to reject it I would brand myself as irrational. (Of course the only compulsion here at issue is rational compulsion, not ad baculum (ab baculum?) compulsion.)

Given my exposition of the notion of proof in philosophy, I think it is clear that very little has ever been proven in philosophy. I am pretty sure that London Ed, as cantankerous and contrary as he is known to be, will agree. But he goes further: he says that nothing has ever been proven in philosophy.

But hasn't the sophomoric relativist been refuted? He maintains that it is absolutely true that every truth is relative. Clearly, the sophomoric relativist contradicts himself and refutes himself. One might object to this example by claiming that no philosopher has ever been a sophomoric relativist. But even if that is so, it is a possible philosophical position and one that is provably mistaken. Or so say I.

Or consider a sophist like Daniel Dennet who maintains (in effect) that consciousness is an illusion. That is easily refuted and I have done the job more than once in these pages. But it is such a stupid thesis that it is barely worth refuting. Its negation — that consciousness is not an illusion — is hardly a substantive thesis. A substantive thesis would be: Consciousness is not dependent for its existence on any material things or processes.

There is also the stupidity of that fellow Krauss who thinks that nothing is something. Refuting this nonsense hardly earns one a place in the pantheon of philosophers.

Nevertheless, I am in basic agreement with London Ed: Nothing of any real substance has ever been proven in philosophy. No one has ever proven that God exists, that God does not exist, that existence is a second-level property, that there is a self, that there is no self, that the will is free, that the will is not free, and so on.

Or perhaps you think you have a proof of some substantive thesis? Then I'd like to hear it. But it must be a proof in my exacting sense.

Literal or Antiphrastic?

Elliot writes,

When I began to read your “Who doesn't need philosophy?” post, I immediately started to think of reasons why adherents of religious and nonreligious worldviews need philosophy as inquiry. Indeed, one can think of many good reasons why such adherents (especially the dogmatic ones) need philosophy.

However, as I continued to read, I noticed the irony of your post (particularly the final paragraph). It seems at least possible that your entry is a dialectic antiphrasis to make the point that we all need philosophy as inquiry, including sincere believers and religious and nonreligious dogmatists. Humanity needs to inquire because humanity needs truth. As Aristotle put it in the first sentence of the Metaphysics, all humans by nature seek to know.

Over the weekend, I found myself wondering whether your post is antiphrastic or literal. Do you really think philosophy as inquiry is unnecessary for the religious person? Or do you think the religious person should philosophize? I think the latter; I am curious to know what you think; either way I appreciate the thought provoking post.

To answer the reader's question I will write a commentary on my post.

Philosophy: Who Doesn't Need It?

The title is a take-off on Ayn Rand's Philosophy: Who Needs It? Rand's rhetorical question is not intended to express the proposition that people do not need philosophy, but that they do. So perhaps we could call the question in her title an antiphrastic rhetorical question.

Who doesn't need philosophy?

I don't approve of one-sentence paragraphs in formal writing, but blogging is not formal writing: it is looser, more personal, chattier, pithier, more direct. And in my formal writing I indent my paragraphs. That too is a nicety that is best dropped in this fast medium.

People who have the world figured out don't need it. If you know what's up when it comes to God and the soul, the meaning of life, the content and basis of morality, the role of state, and so on, then you certainly don't need philosophy. If you are a Scientologist or a Mormon or a Roman Catholic or an adherent of any other religious or quasi-religious worldview then you have your answers and philosophy as inquiry (as opposed to philosophy as worldview) is strictly unnecessary. And same goes for the adherents of such nonreligious worldviews as leftism and scientism and evangelical atheism.

The first two sentences are intended literally and they are literally true. 'Figured out' is a verb of success: if one has really got the world figured out, then he possesses the truth about it. But in the rest of the paragraph a bit of irony begins to creep in inasmuch as the reader is expected to know that it is not the case, and cannot be the case, that all the extant worldviews are true. So by the end of the paragraph the properly caffeinated reader should suspect that my point is that people need philosophy. They need it because they don't know the ultimate low-down, the proof of which is the welter of conflicting worldviews.

(The inferential links that tie There is a welter of conflicting worldviews to People don't know the ultimate low-down to People need philosophy as inquiry all need defense. I could write a book about that. At the moment I am merely nailing my colors to the mast.)

He who has the truth needn't seek it. And those who are in firm possession of the truth are well-advised to stay clear of philosophy with its tendency to sow the seeds of doubt and confusion.

Now the irony is in full bloom. Surely it cannot be the case that both a Communist and a Catholic are in "firm possession of the truth" about ultimate matters. At most one can be in firm possession. But it is also possible that neither are. There is also the suggestion that truth is not the sort of thing about which one side or the other can claim proprietary rights.

Those who are secure in their beliefs are also well-advised to turn a blind eye to the fact of the multiplicity of conflicting worldviews. Taking that fact into cognizance may cause them to doubt whether their 'firm possession of the truth' really is such.

The final paragraph is ironic. I am not advising people to ignore the conflict of worldviews. For that conflict is a fact, and we ought to face reality and not blink the facts. I am making the conditional assertion that if one values doxastic security over truth, then one is well-advised to ignore the fact that one's worldview is rejected by many others. For careful contemplation of that fact may undermine one's doxastic security and peace of mind. (It is not for nothing that the Roman church once had an index librorum prohibitorum.) Note that to assert a conditional is not to assert either its antecedent or its consequent. So it is logically consistent of me to assert the above conditional while rejecting both its antecedent and its consequent.

The reader understood my entry correctly as "a dialectic antiphrasis to make the point that we all need philosophy as inquiry, including sincere believers and religious and nonreligious dogmatists."

In saying that I of course give the palm to Athens over Jerusalem. But, if I may invoke that failed monk and anti-Athenian irrationalist, Luther: Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders.

Blanshard on Santayana’s Prose Style

Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style (Indiana University Press, 1967), pp. 49-50. Originally appeared in 1954. Emphasis added.

The most distinguished recent example of imaginative prose in philosophy is certainly George Santayana. Santayana was no man's copy, either in thought or in style. He consistently refused to
adopt the prosaic medium in which most of his colleagues were writing. To read him is to be conducted in urbane and almost courtly fashion about the spacious house he occupies, moving noiselessly always on a richly figured carpet of prose. Is it a satisfying experience as one looks back on it? Yes, undoubtedly, if one has been able to surrender to it uncritically. But that, as it happens, is something the philosophical reader is not very likely to do. Philosophy is, in the main, an attempt to establish something by argument, and the reader who reads for philosophy will be impatient to know just what thesis is being urged, and what precisely is the evidence for it. To such a reader Santayana seems to have a divided mind, and his doubleness of intent clogs the intellectual movement. He is, of course, genuinely intent on reaching a philosophic conclusion, but it is as if, on his journey there, he were so much interested also in the flowers that line the wayside that he is perpetually pausing to add one to his buttonhole. The style is not, as philosophic style should be, so transparent a medium that one looks straight through it at the object, forgetting that it is there; it is too much like a window of stained glass which, because of its very richness, diverts attention to itself.

There is no reason why a person should not be a devotee of both truth and beauty; but unless in his writing he is prepared to make one the completely unobtrusive servant of the other, they are sure to get in each other's way. Hence ornament for its own beautiful irrelevant sake must be placed under interdict. Someone has put the matter more compactly: "Style is the feather in the arrow, not the feather in the hat."

It seems to me that far too much Continental philosophy is plagued by the same "divided mind" and "doubleness of intent."

Philosophy: Who Doesn’t Need It?

Who doesn't need philosophy?

He who has the truth needn't seek it. And those who are in firm possession of the truth are well-advised to stay clear of philosophy with its tendency to sow the seeds of doubt and confusion.

Philosophize We Must

Philosophize we must and philosophize we will. The only question is whether well or ill.

Would Ortega Have Been a Blogger?

Julian Marias on his master, Ortega y Gasset:

Throughout his life he wrote circumstantial, occasional, studies, in which he went straight to the point, to say something, to communicate to the reader — a very particular reader, whose figure gradually changed over the course of time — certain truths, certain warnings, certain very concrete exhortations. To do so he had to put into play the totality of his philosophical thought . . . . (Julian Marias, Jose Ortega y Gasset: Circumstance and Vocation, tr. Lopez-Marillas, University of Oklahoma Press, 1970, p. 235.)

Via Platonica Versus Via Aristotelis

I have spoken more than once of the fruitful tension between Athens (philosophy) and Jerusalem (Biblical revelation). But there is also a tension, and it is also a fruitful one, within Athens. It is depicted, if such a thing can be depicted at all, in Raphael's School of Athens. Take a gander at the close-up below. Plato points up, Aristotle, the younger man, points down. The Forms are, in a manner of speaking, up yonder in a topos ouranos, in a heavenly place; his star pupil would, again in a manner of speaking, bring them down to earth. In a terminology I do not wholly endorse, Plato is an extreme, while Aristotle is a moderate, realist.

The vitality of the West is due, in part, to the fruitful tension between Athens and Jerusalem. And much of the vitality of philosophy derives from the fruitful tension between the Platonic and Aristotelian ways of thinking, not just as regards the problem of universals, but on a wide range of issues.

On Hairsplitting

As a follow-up to Anti-Intellectualism in Conservatives, here is an old post from the Powerblogs site. A surprising number still languish there in cyber-limbo awaiting their turn to be brought back to life.

………………….

The charge of hairsplitting has always been one of the weapons in the arsenal of the anti-intellectual. One root of anti-intellectualism is a churlish hatred of all refinement. Another is laziness. Just as there are slugs who will not stray from their couches without the aid of motorized transport, there are mental slugs who will not engage in what Hegel calls die Anstrengung des Begriffs, the exertion of the concept. Thinking is hard work. One has to be careful, one has to be precise; one has to carve the bird of reality at the joints. It is no surprise that people don't like thinking. It goes against our slothful grain. But surely any serious thinking about any topic issues in the making of distinctions that to the untutored may seem strained and unnecessary.

Consider the question of when it is appropriate to praise a person.

Should we praise a person who has merely done his duty? Should we praise people who feed, clothe, house, and educate their children? Should wives praise their husbands for being faithful, as I once heard Dennis Prager recommend? Of course not. For this is what they ought to do. We ought not praise them for doing such things; we ought to condemn them for not doing them. Praise is due only those actions that are above and beyond the call of duty. Such actions are called supererogatory. So we have a distinction between the obligatory and the supererogatory. The former pertains to those actions that must be done or else left undone, while the latter to those actions that are non-obligatory but such that if they are done they bring moral credit upon their agents.

Is that hairsplitting? Obviously not. We are in the presence of a genuine distinction. One would have to quite obtuse not to discern it. Clarity in moral matters demands the making of this distinction, and plenty of others besides.

A second example. The phrase, 'the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,' will strike some as containing redundant verbiage. But there are three distinct notions here since one can tell the truth without telling the whole truth, and one can tell the whole truth without telling nothing but the truth. This is not hairsplitting, but the making of necessary distinctions. Necessary for what? Necessary for clarity of thought. Why is that a good thing? Because clarity of thought is required for ethical action and for prudent action.

So what is hairsplitting if this is supposed to be something objectionable? One idea is that it is to make distinctions that correspond to nothing real, distinctions that are merely verbal. The 'distinction' between a glow bug and a fire fly, for example, is merely verbal: there is no distinction in reality. A glow bug just is a firefly. Similarly there is no distinction in reality between a bottle's being half-full and being half-empty. The only possible difference is in the attitude of someone, a drunk perhaps, who is elated at the bottle's being half-full and depressed at its being half-empty.

But this is not what people usually mean by the charge of hairsplitting. What they seem to mean is the drawing of distinctions that don't make a practical difference. But whether a distinction makes a practical difference depends on the context and on one's purposes. A chess player must know when the game is drawn. One way to draw a chess game is by three-fold repetition of position. But there
is a distinction between a consecutive and a nonconsecutive three-fold repetition of position, a distinction many players do not appreciate. When it is explained to them, as it is here some react with hairsplitting!

The truth of the matter is that there are very few occasions on which the charge of hairsplitting is justly made. On almost all occasions, the accuser is simply advertising his inability to grasp a distinction that the subject-matter requires. He is parading before us his lack of culture and mental acuity and his churlish refusal to be instructed.

Too many conservatives are like this.

On the Dictionary Fallacy

A reader inquires:

I am looking into the dictionary fallacy for an essay, and your blog post is the only thing I could find. Do you happen to know some other sources on the fallacy?

As far as I know, I invented the dictionary fallacy, or rather, I invented the label and provided some preliminary analysis of this typical mistake in reasoning. If anyone knows of something similar in the literature, please shoot me an e-mail.

Jaegwon Kim on Reductionism and Eliminativism

I've been studying Jaegwon Kim's Physicalism, or Something Near Enough (Princeton UP, 2005). Here are some notes and questions.

1. It's clear that mental causation must be saved. If Kim is right that nonreductive physicalism is not viable, then by his lights our only hope of saving mental causation is via "physical reductionism." (159). It is of course easy to see how such reductionism, if true, would save mental causation. Surely my desire for a beer together with my belief that there is beer in the reefer are part of the etiology of my getting out of my chair and heading to the kitchen. If beliefs and desires are physical states, then there is no in-principle difficulty in understanding the etiology of my behavior. Reductionism insures the physical efficacy of the mental. What was a thorny problem on dualist approaches is no problem at all for the physical reductionist.

2. At this point some of us are going to wonder whether reductionism collapses into eliminativism. I tend to think that it does. Kim of course must disagree. His project is to find safe passage between nonreductive physicalism and eliminativism. But first I want to concede something to Kim.

3. Kim rightly points out (160) that we cannot assume that the mental cannot be physical in virtue of the very meaning of 'mental.' We cannot assume that 'mental' means 'nonphysical.' The following argument is not compelling and begs the question against the physicalist:

Beliefs and desires are mental
Whatever is mental is nonphysical
Ergo
Beliefs and desires are not physical.

The physicalist finds nothing incoherent in the notion that what is mental could also be physical. So he will either reject the second premise, or, if he accepts it, deny the first and maintain that beliefs and desires are not mental in the sense in which his opponents think they are. It seems clear, then, that one cannot mount a merely semantic argument against the physicalist based on a preconceived meaning of 'mental.'

4. Is my present state of consciousness real and yet reducible to a pattern of electrical activity in a network of neurons? Can we secure reduction without elimination? Reductionist: there are Fs but what they are are Gs. Eliminativist: There are no Fs. There at least appears to be a difference in these two sorts of claims. Kim claims that "There is an honest difference between elimination and conservative reduction." (160) Phlogiston got eliminated; temperature and heat got reduced. Witches got eliminated; the gene got reduced. The reductionist thinks he can secure or "conserve" the reality of the Fs while reducing them to the Gs. In the present case, the physical reductionist in the philosophy of mind thinks that he can maintain both that mental states are real and that they reduce to physical states.

5. Let's note two obvious logical points. The first is that identity is a symmetrical relation. The second is that reduction is asymmetrical. Thus,

I. Necessarily, for any x, y, if x = y, then y = x.
R. Necessarily, for any x, y, if x reduces to y, then it is not the case that y reduces to x.

It is clear, then, that identity and reduction are not the same relation. And yet if particular a reduces to particular b, then a is nothing other than b, and is therefore identical to b. If you think about it, reduction is a strange and perhaps incoherent notion. For if a reduces to b, a is identical to b, but, since reduction is asymmetrical, b is not identical to a! Reduction is asymmetrical identity. Amd that smacks of radical incoherence. This is what inclines me to say that reduction collapses into elimination. For if a reduces to b, and is therefore identical to b, while b is not identical to a, then it follows that there simply is no a. And so if my present mental state reduces to a pattern of electrical activity in a network of neurons, then my mental state does not exist; all that exists is the electrical activity.

6. Kim wants to have it both ways at once. He wants mental states to be both real and reducible. He wants to avoid both eliminativism and dualism. My claim is that it is impossible to have it both ways. Kim thinks that reduction somehow "conserves" that which is reduced. But how could it? If my desire for a beer is nothing other than a brain state, then then it is a purely physical state and everything mental about it has vanished. If 'two' things are identical, then there is only one thing, and if you insist that that one thing is physical, then it cannot also be mental.

7. My present thinking about a dog is intrinsically intentional, intrinsically object-directed. But no physical state is intrinsically object-directed. So, by the Indiscernibility of Identicals, my present thinking about a dog simply cannot be identical to any brain state, and so cannot reduce to any brain state. Kim of course thinks that intentional properties are functionalizable. I have already argued against that view here. Whatever causal role my thinking about a dog plays in terms of behavioral inputs and outputs, causal role occupancy cannot be make makes my thinking intentional. For it is intentional intrinsically, not in virtue of causal relations.

8. Kim speaks of the functional reducibility of intentional/cognitive properties. But surely it is not properties that need reducing but particular meetal acts. Properties are not conscious of anything. Nor are causal roles. It is the realizers of the roles that are bearers of intentionality, and it simply makes no sense to think of these as purely physical.

9. Once one starts down the reductive road there is no stopping short of eliminativism. The latter, however, is surely a reductio ad absurdum of physicalism as I explain in this post on Rosenberg's eliminativism.

A Crisis in Philosophy? How Not to Avert It

Those who make a living teaching philosophy, or are hoping to make a living teaching philosophy, have reason to be concerned. Enrollments are in decline, and as the University of Nevada (Las Vegas) example shows, whole departments are under threat of elimination. Some speak loosely of a crisis in philosophy. But it is more like a crisis for paid professors of it. And perhaps 'crisis' is overblown. So let's just say that philosophy teachers collectively have a problem, the problem of attracting warm bodies. The fewer the students, the less the need for teachers.

Lee McIntyre addresses the problem in the pages of the The Chronicle of Higher Education. He asks who is to blame for "the growing crisis in philosophy." His answer is that philosophers are. Philosophers have failed to make philosophy relevant to what people care about despite having had ages to do so. Yes, he uses that '60s buzz word, "relevant." So the problem is not caused primarily by hard economic times despite their exacerbating effect; the problem is that philosophers have failed to make philosophy "relevant."

What is to be done? "We must recognize what is unique about philosophy . . . philosophy's historical mission, which is not merely to find the truth, but to use the truth to improve the quality of human life." This is hardly unique to philosophy — think of medical science — but let that pass. We are then told that the goal . . . "should be to help students recognize that philosophy matters. Not just because it will improve their LSAT scores (which it will), but because philosophy has the potential to change the very fabric of who they are as human beings."

Sorry to sound negative, but if there is a "crisis," this high-sounding blather is unlikely to "avert" it. I should think that the primary task of philosophy is to understand human beings before going off half-cocked in pursuit of a radical transformation of their "very fabric."

The theme of 'change' having been sounded, the reader is not surprised to hear McIntyre go off on a liberal-left tangent, identifying critical thinking with the espousal of left wing positions. Here is one example:

Similarly, when a 2009 Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 28 percent of the American public—and an alarming number of their elected representatives in Washington—refuse to believe the overwhelming scientific evidence for the existence of global warming, where is the voice of the philosophical community to right the ship on the norms of good reasoning? Personally, I'm tired of hearing members of Congress who couldn't pass an introductory logic class say that they are "skeptics" about climate change. Refusing to believe something in the face of scientific evidence is not skepticism, it is the height of credulity. How delicious would it be for philosophers to claim public venues to rap their knuckles over that?

This is quite astonishing. We are being told that those who raise questions about global warming such as Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are in violation of "the norms of good reasoning"! Just as lefties think they own dissent, they think they own critical thinking too.

Michael Valle's comment on McIntyre's piece is dead on:

Here's how I read this. "We need to make philosophy more politically active. We need to teach our students that conservative and libertarian ideas are wrong and illogical. We need to spread progressive values and political views to our students. Unless we do this, our discipline will fade into obscurity." Yet this is exactly why our discipline isn't trusted. It's because we are allowing ourselves to become pickled in political correctness and leftwing activism. Until the public knows that it will not get progressive preaching in our philosophy classes, we will not be trusted, and for perfectly good reason.

That's exactly right. Contempt for philosophy, and for the humanities generally, on the part of the public is in large part do to the political correctness that infects humanities departments. Tax payers realize that there is no free and open inquiry going on in these venues, no balanced examination of the whole spectrum of opinion on issues, that what is going on is indoctrination.

To sum up. There is no crisis in philosophy. It is alive and well and will continue, funded or unfunded, enrollments up, enrollments down, praised or maligned, suppressed or supported, as it has for 20 centuries in the West and even longer in the East. It will bury its undertakers. At most, those who fill their bellies from it face lean times. Some will no longer be able to fill their bellies from it. Then we will see how seriously they take it and whether they really believe their own rhetoric. We will then discover whether they live for it or only from it.

The problem is not that philosophers are insufficiently engaged in 'progressive' agitation and indoctrination. The problem is due to the fact that times are tough, economically speaking, and that the cost-to-value ratio of a college education has become outrageously unfavorable. It is just plain stupid to incur massive debt to earn a degree in a subject that has no market value.

Nor is the problem that philosophy is not "relevant" to the issues of the day. The purpose of a university education is to elevate people, to give them perspective, to challenge them with difficult texts and ideas. Concern for "relevance" leads to the erosion of standards. As I used to say to my students: I am not going to make philosophy relevant to you; I am going to make you relevant to philosophy.

References

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2011/04/philosophy-under-attack-at-the-university-of-nevada-las-vegas.html

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2011/10/should-one-stoop-to-a-defense-of-philosophy-or-the-humanities.html

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2009/08/does-the-left-own-dissent.html

http://chronicle.com/article/Making-Philosophy-Matter-or/130029/

The Strangeness of the Ordinary

By nature, the philosopher is attuned to the strangeness of the ordinary. By experience, he encounters the hostility of those who don't want to hear about it. "What's the problem?" they ask querulously. I had a colleague who sneeringly dismissed Milton Munitz's The Mystery of Existence by its title alone. He bristled at the word 'mystery.'

There is a certain sort of prosaic, work-a-day mind that thinks that all is clear or can be made clear in short order. Overreacting to the mystery-monger, he goes to the opposite extreme. Recoiling from the portentousness of a Heidegger, he may adopt the silly stance of a Paul Edwards.

Being? Existence? What's the big deal? Existence is just a propositional function's being sometimes true!

For details and polemic, see Paul Edwards' Heidegger's Confusions: A Two-Fold Ripoff.

Justifying ‘No Problem of Philosophy is Soluble’

Earlier, I presented the following antilogism:

1. All genuine problems are soluble.
2. No problem of philosophy is soluble.
3. Some problems of philosophy are genuine.

I claimed that "(2) is a good induction based on two and one half millenia of philosophical experience." The inductive inference, which I am claiming is good, is not merely from 'No problem has been solved' to 'No problem will be solved'; but from the former to the modal 'No problem can be solved.' From a deductive point of view, this is of course doubly invalid. I use 'valid' and 'invalid' only in connection with deductive arguments. No inductive argument is valid. No news there.

Peter Lupu's objection, which he elaborated as best he could after I stuffed him with L-tryptophan-rich turkey and fixin's, was along the following lines. If the problems of philosophy are insoluble, then so is the problem of induction. This is the problem of justifying induction, of showing it to be rational. So if all the problems are insoluble, then we cannot ever know that inductive inference is rational. But if we cannot ever know this, then we cannot ever know that the inductive inference to (2) is rational. Peter concludes that this is fatal to my metaphilosophical argument which proceeds from (2) and (3) to the negation of (1). What he is maintaining, I believe, is that my argument is not rationally acceptable, contrary to what I stated, because (2) is not rationally acceptable.

Perhaps Peter's objection can be given the following sharper formulation.

(2) is either true or false. If (2) is true, then (2) is not rationally justifiable, hence not rationally acceptable, in which case the argument one of whose premises it is is not rationally acceptable. If, on the other hand, (2) is false, then the argument is unsound. So my metaphilosophical argument is either rationally unacceptable or unsound. Ouch!

I concede that my position implies that we cannot know that the inductive inference to (2) is rationally justified. But it might be rationally justified nonetheless. Induction can be a rational procedure even if we cannot know that it is or prove that it is. Induction is not the same as the problem of induction. If I am right, the latter is insoluble. But surely failure to solve the problem of induction does not show that induction is not rationally justified. Peter seems to be assuming the following principle:

If S comes to believe that p on the basis of some cognitive procedure CP, then S is rationally justified in believing that p on the basis of CP only if S has solved all the philosophical problems pertaining to CP.

I don't see why one must accept the italicized principle. It seems to me that I am rationally justified in believing that Peter is an Other Mind on the basis of my social interaction with him despite my not having solved the problem of Other Minds. It seems to me that I am rationally justified, on the basis of memory, that he ate at my table on Thursday night despite my not having solved all the problems thrown up by memory. And so on.

Are All Genuine Problems Soluble? A Metaphilosophical Antilogism

The old questions are still debated. The problems remain unsolved after millenia: there is no consensus among the competent. But what does interminable debate and lack of consensus show? That philosophical problems are genuine but insoluble or that they are not genuine because insoluble? Or something else?

Our metaphilosophical problem may be cast in the mold of an antilogism:

1. All genuine problems are soluble.
2. No problem of philosophy is soluble.
3. Some problems of philosophy are genuine.

Each limb of this aporetic triad lays serious claim to our acceptance. (1) will strike many as self-evident, especially if soluble means 'soluble eventually' or perhaps 'soluble in principle.' (2) is a good induction based on two and one half millenia of philosophical experience. Or can you point to a central or core problem that has been solved to the satisfaction of all able practioners? Give me an example if you think you have one, and I will blow it clean out of the water. (3) certainly seems to be true, does it not? The main problems of philosophy when carefully and rigorously formulated are as genuine as any problem. And yet the triad's limbs cannot all be true. The first two limbs, taken together, entail the negation of the third. So one of them must be rejected.

Think about this metaproblem. Is it not genuine and important?

For every antilogism there are three corresponding syllogisms, and so our antilogism gives rise to the following three syllogistic arguments:

1. All genuine problems are soluble.
2. No problem of philosophy is soluble.
—–
~3. No problem of philosophy is genuine.

1. All genuine problems are soluble.
3. Some problems of philosophy are genuine.
—–
~2. Some problems of philosophy are soluble.

2. No problem of philosophy is soluble.
3. Some problems of philosophy are genuine.
—–
~1. Some genuine problems are not soluble.

Each of these syllogisms is valid. But only one can be sound. Which one? Is there any rational way to decide? The first syllogism encapsulates the view of the logical positivist Moritz Schlick as expressed in his "The Turning Point in Philosophy." His thesis is that the problems of philosophy are pseudo-problems. But if so, then the metaproblem we have been discussing, which of course is a philosophical problem, is a also a pseudo-problem. But if it is a pseudo-problem, then it has no solution. But it does have a solution for Schlick, one that consists in denying (3). So the Schlick solution is incoherent. On the one hand, he maintains that the problems of philosophy are pseudo-problems. On the other hand, he thinks that the metaproblem of whether philosophical problems are pseudoproblems has a solution. Thus his position leads to a contradiction.

Many will plump for the second syllogism. They will be forgiven for so plumping. They are the optimists who fancy that in the fullness of time solutions will be upon us.

I put my money on the third syllogism. I reject (1), thereby maintaining that some genuine problems are insoluble. Indeed, I want to go further. I want to maintain that all genuine philosophical problems are insoluble. I consider the above metaphilosophical problem to be an example of a genuine but insoluble problem. So I am not claiming that my rejection of (1) solves the metaphilosophical problem. If I made that claim then I would be contradicting myself. I would be claiming that philosophical problems are insoluble but that the metaproblem (which is a philosophical problem) is soluble. So what am I saying?

Perhaps what I am saying is that I have no compelling reason to prefer the third syllogism to the other two, but that my preferring of the third is rationally acceptable, rationally supportable, and may well lay bare the truth of the matter.