Category: Metaphilosophy

The Court of Philosophy

Philoponus makes a fascinating suggestion:
You know, your inquiry into burden-of-proof (BOP) has put the idea in my mind that we could, if we wanted, institute something like a “court of philosophy”.  Bear with me for paragraph—I don’t mean what follows as parody.
 
It would work like a civil action in which a claimant appears before a judge and files his motion: “I believe the following version of the Ontological Argument is sound and I will prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.” The judge examines the claimant's motion and informs him precisely what his BOP will be at trial with respect to each of the key premises of the argument. If the claimant agrees, the judge accepts the case. At this point the claimant must deposit a hefty bond with the court. It will be returned with interest if he carries his motion at trial but otherwise forfeited. The judge appoints a prosecutor/opponent who will argue against the claimant. A trial date is set and a jury of unbiased academics (philos?) seated.  At trial the claimant set out his thesis as the opening statement and the prosecutor attacks it. The claimant gets to respond. The prosecutor gets his redirect. Expert witnesses may even be called on technical points like modal logic. The judge decides when the back and forth has continued long enough and then charges the jury. “You will decide whether the claimant has proven his thesis beyond a reasonable doubt.”  The jury deliberates and reaches a verdict. “We the jury find that the claimant has not shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the Ontological Argument is sound.”
OK, I think we could do something like this. We could structure a philosophical debate like a civil action at law with clear assigned BOPs and a clear winner and loser. The question is, have we compromised anything essential or important about philosophical debate by imposing this kind of structure? Wouldn’t it be interesting to try this format and see what we get?  Accumulated “case” law from these trials might be highly instructive. For example, suppose a dozen people have tried to sustain the Ontological Argument and all have failed at trial.
You have been arguing in several posts that BOP doesn’t belong in philosophical debate as we know it. I agree, but the question I’m now asking you is whether we could do philosophy in the style of a civil action? And if we could, wouldn’t it be useful to try?

One important difference is that the dialectical situation in the court room is practical whereas the dialectical situation in the stoa or seminar room is theoretical.   By a dialectical situation I mean a context in which orderly rational discussion occurs among two or more competent and sincere interlocutors who share the goal of arriving as best they can at the truth about some matter, or of resolving some question in dispute. Legal and philosophical proceedings are both dialectical in this sense, but in the legal context the issue in dispute must be decided and in a timely manner, whereas in the philosophical context there is no need for a decision — a 'verdict' if you will — and also virtually no prospect of one. 

One way decisions are arrived at in the law is via presumptions.  Suppose Peter has one child, Paul, and no wife.  One day Peter vanishes and is not heard from by anyone for years. He leaves behind his house and various other assets.  Paul decides that he should inherit the assets.  But he cannot inherit his father's estate until the man is dead.  There is a question of fact here, the question whether Peter is dead or alive.  But there is no conclusive evidence either way.  The law deals with this via the presumption that a person who, without reasonable explanation, has not been heard from for at least seven years is dead.  Given this presumption, all that Paul or his attorney has to show is that he is Peter's only living heir and that the father has been incommunicado for seven years or more.  One can see from this example that the presumption makes possible the decision, and that without it no definite decision could be arrived at.

In philosophy, however, everything either is or can be called into question.  This is the glory of philosophy — but also its misery.  And so there is no room for presumptions and BOP-assignments in philosophy.  There is no room for judicial fiat of any kind.  One cannot just lay it down that, e.g., an ontology that posits n categories of entity is to be preferred to one that posits n + 1 categories.  In a court of law neither the law itself nor the procedural rules are on trial; but in philosophy, everything is 'on trial' including the most basic principles of logic. And so it comes as no surprise that nothing is ever decided in philosophy: no question is definitely answered, and no problem solved, to the satisfaction of all competent practioners.

And so I suggest that a court of philosophy would not be a court of philosophy.  For what would go on in that court would not be philosophy, but rather a sort of dogmatically  constrained quasi-philosophy.  One would get answers all right, but only because various arbitrary decisions had been made, decisions that would be philosophically questionable.

Two Putative Counterexamples to My Burden-of-Proof Thesis

A reader presents two putative counterexamples to my claim that burden-of-proof considerations have no useful role to play in philosophy:

I agree that BOP’s in the legal sense don’t exist in philosophical argument, but there seems to be something like a BOP in certain kinds of philosophical debate. I’ll give you two examples and let you tell me what you think. (1) A candidate appears before his committee to defend his dissertation. Depending on the topic and the committee, the candidate knows (and he is told) that he has a significant BOP. His dissertation can be rejected if an examiner does not believe that the work is rigorous and credible enough. The candidate needs to persuade all his examiners that his dissertation is good enough or he will be an unsuccessful candidate. (2) A young Ph.D. wants to publish his dissertation with a top press like OUP. He knows the editor of that press (and his referees)  have very high standards respecting clarity and rigor and substance. The young man has a difficult BOP in persuading OUP to accept his work.
I would deny that in these dialectical situations there is philosophical debate strictly speaking.  In philosophical debate assertions are tested and either proven or disproven.  It is about the probing of propositions, not of persons.  But in the dissertation defense the candidate himself is being tested as to his competence and must prove himself.  Or at least that is what dissertation defenses were before they became formalities.
 
Similarly in the publication case.  The person submitting his work to a press is not entering into a debate with the referees of the press about certain philosophical claims which he must establish to get published; he is having the quality of his work evaluated.  After all, he doesn't have to persuade the referees that the claims in his book are true, but only that they meet a certain professional standard of workmanship.  Both the dissertation defender and the submitter to a prestigious press can 'win' without persuading their respective audiences of the truth of philosophical assertions; but in a genuine philosophical debate, the proponent of a philosophical thesis cannot be said to have won unless he has succeeded in persuading his audience.

Miracles and Burden of Proof

0.  I continue my investigation of the role of burden-of-proof considerations in philosophy.  My ruminations are collected in the aptly titled category, Burden of Proof.

1. Consider a dispute in which one party claims that there are miracles and the other claims that there are no miracles.  Where does the burden of proof (BOP) lie?  I am open to the suggestion that both claimants incur an obligation to defend their claims if challenged, simply on the ground of having made a claim or advanced a thesis that cannot count as self-evident or foundational in the way in which the Law of Non-Contradiction is foundational.    But if both have an obligation (dialectical if not moral) to defend their respective claims if challenged, on pain of being deemed unreasonable if they refuse to do so, that is not to say that both shoulder a burden of proof (BOP).  For if I maintain that p and you maintain that ~p, and each of us has a burden of proof, then, given the correlativity of BOP and defeasible presumption (DP) lately explained, there is a defeasible presumption in favor of both p and ~p in the dialectical situation in which we confront each other — and that is absurd.  In the context of a proceeding wherein the goal is to settle whether a proposition or its negation are true it cannot be provisionally assumed both that the proposition and its negation are true.

So we need to distinguish between the (dialectical if not moral) obligation to defend one's assertions, an obligation one incurs whether one asserts or counter-asserts, and burden of proof.  Thus we talk of the burden of proof in a dialectical proceeding.  It presses down on one interlocutor or the other, but not both, if it presses down on either.

What I want to resist, however, is the notion that there is a fact of the matter as to where the BOP lies.  I want to suggest that there is no context-independent fact as to which side shoulders the BOP.  As a consequence, arguing about where the BOP lies in philosophical debates is as pointless and out-of-place as arguing in a court of law whether the BOP is on the prosecution/plaintiff or on the defense.  That the onus probandi lies on the former is constitutive of the courtroom 'game,' at least in the Anglosphere.  As constitutive, it is not up for grabs in the legal context.

2. Some think that whoever who makes a positive claim assumes a BOP.  But we should beware of the ambiguity of 'positive claim.'  Are we referring to the content of a claim, or the claiming of the content?  Are we talking logic or dialectics?   'There are miracles' is logically affirmative while 'There are no miracles' is logically negative.  And this quite apart from the dialectical situation in which alone it is appropriate to speak of presumptions and probative burdens.  The propositions expressed by those sentences are the contents of the respective claims or assertions.  But both the miracle-affirmer and the miracle-denier are making a positive claim in that they are both positively claiming something.  A counter-assertion is just as much of an assertion as an assertion.

If one makes a claim (advances a thesis, asserts something, etc.), then one does so regardless of whether the content of the claim is logically affirmative or logically negative.  So why should the onus probandi rest  on the one who asserts that there are miracles and not on the one who asserts the opposite?  Since both make a claim, both reasonably incur the obligation to defend the claim if challenged.  I am not assuming dialectical egalitarianism according to which, as Michael Rescorla puts it, "every asserted proposition requires defence when challenged by an interlocutor."  There may be propositions that need no defense.  I am only assuming that the propositions we are discussing can both be reasonably challenged.

3. One cannot therefore in general hold that only those who make assertions the content of which is logically affirmative  assume a burden of proof.  This may also be appreciated from the fact that some logically negative propositions entail logically affirmative ones.  If there are no miracles, then there are no violations/suspensions of natural causal laws.  If there are no such violations, then nature is a causally closed system into which nothing enters and nothing escapes.  But 'Nature is causally closed' is logically affirmative.  The naturalist who claims that there are no miracles is also committed to claiming that nature is causally closed.  Clearly, if he bears a burden of proof with respect to the latter proposition then he bears it with respect to the former one as well.

4. So where does the BOP lie if it doesn't lie on the one the content of whose assertion is logically affirmative?  Does it lie on the one who calls into question received opinion?  That cannot be right either, enshrining as it does an extreme inquiry-inimical doxastic conservatism.   The way 'burden of proof' is standardly used, the BOP lies on one party or the other but not both.  But I fail to see why in the miracle case or any other it rests on one side rather than the other.  I suggest, in line with what I maintained day before yesterday, that there is no fact of the matter as to where the BOP lies.  It is a matter of decision, if not by an individual, then by a community.

5. So let's consider the scientific community.  The members of this community are bound together by common goals and methods.  The 'game' of natural science is played according to game-constitutive rules.  One of these rules is that in natural science there can be no appeal to anything supernatural: everything that science explains — everything in nature — is to be explained using only other 'stuff' in nature, smaller 'stuff,' earlier 'stuff.'  Thus the tides are explained in terms of the moon and its gravitational effect; earthquakes in terms of tectonic plate shifts; diseases in terms of viruses, etc.

For one who plays the scientific 'game' and abides by its rules, there is no question but that the burden of proof lies on the one who asserts that there are miracles.  No scientist worth his salt could hold that there is a presumption in favor of the existence of miracles.  It is the other way around: there is an exceedingly strong, if not quite indefeasible, presumption in favor of their nonexistence, and indeed of the nonexistence of anything nonnatural.  But this onus-assignment is relative to the scientific 'game' and partially constitutive of it. 

6.  My point, then, is that BOP-assignments are context- and community-relative and depend on conventions that members of these communities collectively adopt.  In the legal context the BOP is on the prosecution while in the science arena, where methodological naturalism rules, the BOP is on anti-naturalists: those who defend miracles, the existence of God and the soul, the libertarian freedom of the will, etc.  But the science 'game' is not the only game in town.  There is the religious 'game.'  No one who takes the latter seriously could possibly think that science delivers the ultimate metaphysical low-down.  Relative to the religious 'game,' the BOP will be on atheists.

And then there is the moral 'game.'  Most of us play it: we think in moral categories and we cannot imagine not thinking in them.  We speak of right and wrong, good and evil; we hold ourselves and others morally and not just causally responsible for what we do and leave undone.  We judge and we are prepared to be judged.  We praise, we blame, we distinguish among the impermissible, the permissible, the obligatory, and the supererogatory.  We subject our thoughts, words, deeds, institutions and laws to moral evaluation.  Committed as we are to moral responsibility, we are committed to the freedom of the will.  So, from within the moral 'game,' it is clear that there is a presumption in favor of the freedom of the will so that the burden of proof lies squarely and nonnegotiably on the shoulders of those who would deny it.

My suggestion is that it makes no sense to ask where the BOP really lies, on, say, the moralist or on the one who holds that morality and its presuppositions (freedom of the will, etc.) are illusory and without standing in a physical world.  The moral way of thinking brings with it a presumption in favor of the reality of its categories, a presumption which, if defeasible, is just barely so.  The scientistic way of thinking brings with it an opposite presumption.

 So instead of arguing the procedural question as to who has the BOP in a philosophical dispute one should simply get to work and make one's case.

Defeasible Presumption and Evidence: A Confusion in McInerny

A defeasible presumption in favor of proposition p is not evidence for p.  In a legal proceeding there is a defeasible presumption of innocence (POI): one is presumed innocent until proven guilty.  For example, Jones, who has been charged with Smith's murder, is presumed to be not guilty until such time as the presumption is defeated.  But this presumption is not evidence of Jones' innocence.  It is a rule that governs the adducing and evaluating of evidence.  The attorney for the accused does not attempt to prove or provide evidence for Jones' innocence; his task is merely to rebut the positive arguments of the prosecutor.  Thus POI does not play an evidential role but a procedural role: it amounts to a placing of ther onus probandi on the prosecutor.

In Why the Burden of Proof is on the Atheist, Ralph McInerny seems not to be clear about this ; he seems to confuse an argument for theism with an argument for a  presumption in favor of theism. He writes,

I am asking whether the skeptic is justified in calling into question the truth of 'God exists.' Why not put the burden on him? Why not insist that he is attempting to convict of irrationality generations of human beings, rational animals like himself, whole cultures for whom belief in the divine and worship are part of what it is to be a human being? Were all those millions, that silent majority, wrong? Surely to think something against the grain of the whole tradition of human experience is not to be done lightly. It is, need one say it, presumptuous to pit against that past one's own version of the modern mind. This suggests that the present generation is in agreement on things incompatible with belief in God. Or that all informed people now alive, etc. etc. Meaning, I suppose, that all present day skeptics are skeptics.

Is there thus a prima facie argument against atheism drawn from tradition, the common consent of mankind both in the past and in the present time? I think so.

In this passage McInerny appears to be confusing the question whether there is a presumption in favor of theism (so that the onus probandi rests on the atheist) because of common consent with the question whether common consent amounts to an argument for theism.  That God exists is a substantive claim made within the dialectical situation in which theist and atheist confront each other; that the burden of proof rests on the one who denies it is a procedural claim that helps define the dialectical situation.

McInerny begins by speaking of shifting the burden of proof onto the skeptic but ends by speaking of an argument against atheism.  It may be that common consent is a good reason for presuming theism to be true until shown to be false  without being a good reason for the truth of theism.

Burden of Proof: Something to Avoid?

Joshua Orsak e-mails:

I've been following closely your recent discussions on the burden of proof in philosophy, as its been a particular interest of mine ever since I first read Alvin Plantinga. I've been linking to your posts on the matter on my facebook page. Your recent post reminded me vaguely of something my friend Andrew Jeffery once told me. He told me that a philosopher should want the burden of proof in any discussion, he should want the opportunity to expound in detail why he believes  what he believes. He said to me, roughly, 'if someone gives you the burden of proof for a mile, pick it up and carry it two'. That has stayed with me ever since. I thought it was worth sharing with you.
James Cargile expresses a similar thought:
In speaking of the 'burden of proof', we may tend to assume it is something to avoid. But burdens can be of enormous value.  Think of the people who long to have the 'burden' of caring for thier very own child, or otherwise have 'dependents' who rely on them and respond with love to their supportive care.  There is many a lonely philosopher who would love to be burdened with proving something, perhaps to a huge and critical audience, hanging on each step in his argument.  Many would gladly drop their present position and espouse its opposite, if only this would arouse a chorus of 'Prove it! Prove it!'. 'Very well' they would calmly say, stepping with dignity to the podium. ("On the Burden of Proof," Philosophy, vol. 72, no. 279, January 1997, p. 75.)

Burden of Proof in Philosophy?

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

2. I will begin with the observation that the presumption of innocence (POI) in an Anglo-American court  of law is never up for grabs in that arena.  Thus the POI is not itself presumptively maintained and subject to defeat.  If Jones is accused of a crime, the presumption of his innocence can of course be defeated, but that he must be presumed innocent until proven guilty is itself never questioned and of course never defeated.  The POI is not itself a defeasible presumption.  And if Rescher is right that there are no indefeasible presumptions, then the POI is not even a presumption.  The POI is a rule of the 'game,' and constitutive of the 'game.'  The POI in a court room situation  is like a law of chess.  The laws of chess, as constitutive of chess, cannot themselves be contested within a game of chess.  The reason there is always a definite outcome in chess (win, lose, or draw) is precisely because of those nonnegotiable chess-constitutive laws. 

As I pointed out earlier, defeasible presumption (DP) and burden of proof are correlative notions.  The defeasible presumption that the accused is innocent until proven guilty places trhe onus probandi on the prosecution.  Therefore, from the fact that the POI is not itself a defeasible presumption in a court of law, it follows that neither is the BOP.  Where the initating BOP lies — the BOP that remains in force and never shifts during the proceedings — is never subject to debate.  It lies on the state in a criminal case and on the plaintiff in a civil case.

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

4. Now we come to my tentative suggestion.  There is no fact of the matter as to where the BOP lies in any dialectical context, legal, philosophical or any other: it is a matter of decision.  This is because BOP is a procedural matter.  If so, then there must be an adjudicator above the fray (i.e., a judge or arbiter who is not party to the dispute) who makes the decision as to where the BOP lies and has the power to enforce his decision.  There must be an arbiter who lays down and enforces the rules of procedure.  But in philosophy there neither is nor can be an above-the-fray adjudicator  whose decisions are unquestionable and backed by the threat of violence.

For suppose I were to try to play the arbiter in a debate between a theist and an atheist.  I give the following speech:

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

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

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

My tentative conclusion is as follows.  In philosophy no good purpose is served by claims that the BOP lies on one side or the other of a dispute, or that there is a DP in favor of this thesis but not in favor of that one. For there is no fact of the matter as to where the BOP lies.  BOP considerations are usefully deployed only in dialectical situations in which some authority presides over the debate and lays down the rules of procedure and has the power to punish those who violate them.  Such an authority constitutes by his decision the 'fact' that the BOP lies on one side rather than on the other.

It follows from what I have said that if you disagree with me, then neither of us bears a burden  of proving his metaphilosophical thesis.  But this is paradoxical.  For if you disagree with me, then presumably you think that BOP considerations are usefully deployed in philosophy, and that there is a fact of the matter as to where the BOP lies, and that therefore one of us must bear a probative burden.  

Notes on Burden of Proof and Defeasible Presumption

Since I don't understand this topic very well, I blog about it.  Nescio, ergo blogo!  Caveat lector!  The following notes are a blend of what I have gleaned from Nicholas Rescher and Douglas Walton and my own reflections.

1. Burden of Proof and Defeasible Presumption are correlative notions.  If there is a defeasible presumption in favor of not-p, then the burden of proof rests on the one who asserts p.  And if p is such that the burden of proof rests on the one who asserts it, then there is a defeasible presumption in favor of not-p.  BOP and DP are two sides of the same coin.

For example, in Anglo-American courts of law there is a defeasible presumption in favor of the innocence of the accused. One is presumed innocent until proven guilty.  This throws the onus probandi upon the state in criminal cases and upon the plaintiff in civil cases.  The presumption of non-guilt induces the burden of proving guilt.

For a second example consider the practice of safety-conscious gun handlers in non-combat situations. Their presumption is that every gun is loaded; this puts the BOP on the one who claims the opposite.  In a combat situation, or just prior to one, however, it is the other way around: the wise soldier does not presume that his weapon is ready to fire; he checks and makes sure.  There is a defeasible presumption that his weapon is unloaded, and the burden is on him to prove that it is loaded.  Either way we have the correlativity of BOP and DP.

This suggests the context-relativity of judgments as to where the BOP lies.

2.  Presumption that p is true is not to be confused with (high) probability that p is true.  If a gun dealer has just received a shipment of  tactical shotguns from Remington the manufacturer, then the probability is very high that none of these guns is loaded.  And yet his safety-conscious presumption will be that they are loaded.  Similarly in a court of law.  The accused is presumed innocent even when the probability of his being innocent is low  or even zero.  (E.g., Jack Ruby's shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald.)

3. Proof  is a logical concept, but burden of proof is not.  Perhaps we could say that BOP lays down a rule of proper conduct in dialectical situations.  The rule pertains to the 'ethics of argumentation.'  The rule is that he who advances a thesis, by so doing, incurs the obligation to substantiate his thesis by adducing reasons or considerations in in its favor, and by answering objections.

4. Accordingly, there is both a burden of proof and a burden of reply.  The proponent of a thesis has the initial burden of defending his thesis.  This remains constant throughout the dialectical proceedings.  But if his opponent lodges a good objection, then the proponent has the additional burden of replying to the objection.  A further complication is that the opponent in the course of objecting to the proponent's contention may make a claim that itself needs defense, in which case the burden of proof shifts onto the opponent in respect of that claim. 

Bearing this in mind, we see the need to nuance the claim advanced in #1 above according to which the onus probandi in Anglo-American law rests on the state or on the plaintiff.  That is true with respect to the initial allegation, but the defense may assume burdens of proof depending on how it builds its case.

5. Presumptions make up the doxastic status quo.  And so it appears that a certain conservatism is inherent in laying the burden proof on those who would defeat presumptions.  This needs to be explored.

6. Wherein resides the rationality of a presumption?  Rescher claims in his book on presumptions that the rationality of a presumption consists in its conformity to a well-established practive, and that it is not a matter of evidence.  This too needs to be explored.

Burden of Proof in Philosophy: Preliminary Thoughts

A reader asks about burden of proof in philosophy.  I really ought to have a worked-out theory on this, but I don't.  Here are some very tentative remarks.

1. In the law it is clear where the burden of proof lies: on the plaintiff in a civil case and on the prosecutor in a criminal case.  The party bringing the charge must show that the accused is guilty; the accused does not have to show that he is innocent.  One is presumed innocent until proven guilty.  To be presumed innocent is of course not to be innocent.  It is simply false that one is innocent of a crime unless or until proven guilty.  And to be found innocent/guilty is not to be innocent/guilty.  O. J. Simpson, for example, was found innocent of a double homicide.  But I have no doubt in my mind that he was guilty.  I don't mean that autobiographically as a report on my mental state; I mean the S.O.B. really was guilty.  Agree with me on this or not, you must agree that someone found innocent can be guilty and someone found guilty can be innocent. 

We should distinguish between burden of proof and standards of proof.  In the criminal law, the probative standard for guilt is 'beyond a reasonable doubt,' while in civil cases the standard is less demanding: 'preponderance of the evidence.'

2. In philosophy it is not often clear where the burden of proof lies, nor what our probative standards ought to be.  (What the hell did you expect?)  'Proof' can be used in a very strict way to refer to a valid deductive argument with objectively self-evident premises.  But this is not what 'proof' means in 'burden of proof.'  It means something like: burden of argument or burden of persuasion.   It means that some claims need to be argued for, and some don't.  Or perhaps: there is a (perhaps defeasible) presumption in favor of some claims but not in favor of their negations. 

For example, I would say there is a defeasible presumption in favor of the claim that drinking coffee in moderate amounts carries no health risk for most people.  So the burden of proof would be on a researcher who claims that coffee-drinking causes pancreatic cancer.  And because the evidence that coffee-drinking is harmless is so strong,  the probative bar the researcher must clear is correspondingly high.  The researcher needs to give strong evidence for his claim; the rest of us don't need to do anything.

Now consider the Holocaust denier, the 9/11 'truther,' the Obama 'birther,' and the Osama-was-killed-in 2001 kook.  Clearly, the burden lies on them to make their respective cases, and good luck to them.  The appropriate thing to say to those of this stripe is "Put up or shut up."  That 9/11 was an 'inside job' is a claim of such low antecedent probability that the case for it must be correspondingly strong.

A more philosophical example is provided by my present dispute with Peter Lupu about the modal principle that states that if proposition p is necessary, and p entails proposition q, then q is necessary.  He thinks he has found a counterexample to this principle.  Where does the onus probandi lie, and why?  It seem clear to me that the burden lies on Peter since he is controverting a well-known principle of elementary modal propositional logic.  (See. e.g., K. Konyndyk, Introductory Modal Logic, U. of Notre Dame Press, 1986, p. 32.) The burden does not lie on me since I am invoking a well-established, uncontroversial principle. 

Can we generalize from this example and say that whenever one controverts something well-established and long-accepted one assumes the burden of proof?   I doubt it.  Galileo defied Aristotle and the Church when he made certain empirically-based claims about the moon.  He claimed that the moon was not a perfect sphere.  As the story goes, the Church authorties refused to look through his telescope.  But it is at least arguable that the onus probandi rested on the authorities since they were flying in the face of sense perception.

But I hesitate to say that whenever one's case is based on sense perception one can shirk the burden of proof.

3.  I doubt that there is any criterion that allows us to sort claims that need proof or argument from those that don't.  Or can you think of one?  Some maintain that whenever a person make a claim to the effect that X exists, then the burden of proof is on him.  Well, it is in some cases, but surely not in all.  If you claim that extraterrestrial intelligent beings exist, then the burden is on you.  But if you claim that there are Saguaro cacti in Arizona, then the burden of proof is not on you but on the one who denies it.

Others seem to think that whenever one makes an affirmative claim one assumes a burden of proof.  Not so.  'That hillside is studded with Saguaros' said to my hiking companion needs no proof.  I shoulder no probative burden when I make a commonplace observation such as that.

4. Burden of proof and the ad ignorantiam 'fallacy.'  Gun instructors sometimes say that every gun is loaded.  That is plainly false as is stands, but a wise saying nonetheless if interpreted to mean: every gun is to be presumed loaded until proven unloaded.  So if  person A claims to person B that a certain gun is unloaded, the burden of proof is on him to show that it is unloaded; person B does not bear the burden of proving that it is loaded.  Indeed it seems that B would be within his epistemic rights were he to claim that his ignorance of whether or not the gun is loaded is good evidence of its being loaded.  But this is an appeal to ignorance.  It has not been shown that ~p; therefore p gives us the form of the ad ignoratiam 'fallacy.'  But in this case the appeal to ignorance seem nonfallacious.  Safety considerations dictate a defeasible presumption in favor of every gun's being loaded, a presumption that shifts the onus probandi onto the one who maintains the opposite.

The situation is similar to that in a court of law.  The defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty, so the burden of proof rests on either the state or the plaintiff.  In a criminal case the probative bar is set high: the accused has to be shown guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  Here too there is a legitimate appeal to ignorance: it has not been shown that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; therefore, he is not guilty.

There are 'safety' considerations in both the gun example and the law example.  It is because we want to be on the safe side — and not get shot — that we presume every gun to be loaded.  And it is because we want to be on the safe side — and not sentence an innocent person — that we presume the accused to be innocent until proven guilty.

But now what about God?  Don't safety considerations apply here as well? If God exists, then our ultimate happiness depends on getting into right relation with him.  So why can't one make a legitimate appeal to ignorance here?  Now of course from the fact that no one has proven that God does not exist, it does not follow that God exists.  That is an invalid deductive argument.  That would be a truly fallacious instance of ad ignorantiam.  But it is also invalid to infer than a gun is loaded because it hasn't been proven to be loaded, or that a man is innocent because he hasn't been proven to be guilty.  It just doesn't follow in any of these cases.  And yet we reasonably consider the gun loaded and we reasonably find the accused to be innocent.  And so why can't we reasonably presume God to exist on the basis of the fact that he hasn't been shown not to exist?  If the burden of proof rests on the one who claims that gun is unloaded, why doesn't the burden of proof rest on the one who claims that God is nonexistent?  We don't want to get shot, but we also don't want to lose our ultimate beatitude — if ultimate beatitude there be. 

You can't say that that the burden of proof rests on the theist because he is making a positive claim; for there are positive claims that need no proof.  And you can't say that the burden of proof rests on the theist becuase he is making an existential claim; for there are existential claims — I gave an example above — that need no proof.  Nor can you say that the burden rests on the theist because he is controverting the widely-accepted; the consensus gentium is that God exists.

But I suppose you could reasonably say that the burden rests on the theist since he is making a claim that goes well beyond what is empirically verifiable.

Realism and Idealism

An excerpt from an e-mail by Chris C., with responses in blue.

. . . I read your post on Butchvarov's latest paper, and you made clear your argument about the problem with the crucial step in the "idealist" position; then you closed with the assertion that realism has its own set of problems.  Granted that that's obviously true, I was wondering if you had a piece, whether a paper or a blog post, that elucidated your positions on 1) Why, although you think ultimately he is wrong, you also think Butch's position is a serious alternative to realism; and 2) Why, despite its problems, you believe realism addresses those problems adequately.

That post ended rather abruptly with the claim, "Metaphysical realism, of course, has its own set of difficulties."  I was planning to say a bit more, but decided to quit since the post was already quite long by 'blog' standards.  Brevity, after all, is the soul, not only of wit, but of blog.  I was going to add something like this:

My aim in criticizing Butchvarov and other broadly Kantian idealists/nonrealists is not  to resurrect an Aristotelian or Aristotelian-Thomistic theory of knowledge, as if those gentlemen clearly had the truth, a truth we have somehow, post Descartes, forgotten.  My aim is to throw the problems themselves into the starkest relief possible.  This is in line with my conception of philosophy as fundamentally aporetic: the problems come first, solutions second, if ever.  A philosopher cannot be true to his vocation if he is incapable of inhibiting the very strong natural tendency to want answers, solutions, definite conclusions which he can live by and which will provide 'doxastic security' and legitimation of his way of life.    You are not a philosopher if you are out for solutions at all costs.  As Leo Strauss points out near the beginning of his essay on Thucydides, and elsewhere, the unum necessarium for the philosopher, the one thing needful, is free inquiry.  Inquiry, however, uncovers problems, difficulties, questions, and some of these are reasonably viewed as insolubilia.

The philosopher, therefore, is necessarily in tension with ideologues and dogmatists who claim to be in possession of the truth.  What did Socrates claim to know?  That he didn't know.  Of course, to be in secure possession of the truth (which implies knowing that one is in secure possession of it) is a superior state to be in than in the state of forever seeking it.  Obviously, knowing is better than believing, and seeing face-to-face is better than "seeing through a glass darkly." On the other hand, to think one has the truth when one doesn't is to be in a worse state than the state of seeking it.  For example, Muhammad Atta and the boys, thinking they knew the truth, saw their way clear to murdering 3000 people.

Your first question:  How can I believe that Butch's position is untenable while also considering it a serious alternative to realism?  Because I hold open the possibility that all extant (and future) positions are untenable.  In other words, I take seriously the possibility that the central problems of philosophy are genuine (contra the logical positivists, the later Wittgenstein, and such Freudian-Wittgensteinian epigoni as Morris Lazerowitz), important  — what could count as important if problems relating to God and the soul are not important? — but absolutely insoluble by us. 

Your second question:  How can I believe that metaphysical realism, despite its problems, addresses those problems adequately?  Well, I don't believe it addresses them adequately.

I would say your book is pretty much a response to those questions, but what I'm looking for is your understanding of what makes Butch's position so powerful.  What I have in mind is something like what [Stanley] Rosen does in The Elusiveness of the Ordinary, where in a couple of essays he makes clear that there is not going to be a way based on analysis or deduction to adjudicate between the Platonic and the Kantian claims – that is, the claims, respectively, that the "Forms" are external and mind-independent and that they are internal and mind-dependent.  The final two essays in the aforementioned book are Rosen's attempt to provide a way to tip the scales in favor of Plato, and I have to say I haven't really seen a better way to do it.

I haven't read Rosen's book, but I will soon get hold of it.  It will be interesting to see whether he has a compelling rational way of tipping the scales.

The point is that I was wondering if you thought, along those lines, that roughly speaking your form of realism and Butch's form of idealism form a similar sort of "fundamental alternative" in the way Rosen believes Platonism and Kantianism do.  And if so, I would be interested to see your take on what makes Butch's idealism (again roughly speaking) as something that cannot be truly defeated, but rather must be established as something of a less plausible vision of how things really stand.
 
Can any philosophical position be "truly defeated"?  I assume that we cherish the very highest standards of intellectual honesty and rigor and we are able to inhibit the extremely strong life-enhacing need for firm beliefs and tenets (etymologically from L. tenere, to hold, so that a tenet is literally something one holds onto for doxastic security and legitimation of one's modus vivendi.)  Now there are some sophomoric positions that can be definitively defeated, e.g., the relativist who maintains both that every truth is relative and that his thesis is nonrelatively true.  But in the history of philosophy has even one substantive position ever been "truly defeated," i.e., defeated to the satisfaction of all competent practioners?  (A competent practioner is one who possesses all the relevant moral and intellectual virtues, is apprised of all relevant empirical facts, understands logic, etc.)  I would say No.  But perhaps you have an example for me. 
 
Now why don't I think that I have defeated Butchvarov on any of the points we dispute?  Part of the reason is that he does not admit defeat.  If I cannot bring him to see that he is wrong about, say, nonexistent objects, then this gives me a very good reason to doubt that I am right and have truly refuted his position.  It seems to me that, unless one is an ideologue or a dogmatist, one must be impressed by the pervasive and long-standing fact of dissensus among the best and brightest.  Of course, I could be right and Butch wrong.  If he maintains that p and I maintain that not-p, then one of us is right and the other wrong.  But which one?  If I do not know that I am right, or know that he is wrong, then I haven't solved the problem that divides us.  It is not enough to be right, one must know that one is right and be able to diagnose convincingly how they other guy went wrong.
As for Platonism versus Kantianism, see my post on another latter-day Kantian, Milton Munitz, espceically the section on Platonic and Kantian intelligibility.  My Existence book avoids both Kantianism and Platonism by adopting an onto-theological idealism.  If the reality of the real traces back to divine mind, that is reality and realism enough, but it is also a form of idealism in that the real is not independent of mind as such.
 
As I've indicated in previous emails, I have always taken realism as a presumptive truth (in a general way) and I thus place the burden of truth [proof]  on idealism.  Kant impressed me, but he didn't convince me, and consequently I've never understood what it was exactly in realism that made people jump into the idealist camp.  That is, I've never understood that basic shift where someone takes idealism as presumptively true and thus places the burden of proof on realism.  What was so bad about realist arguments that made idealism so attractive as an alternative for these thinkers?
 
Well, this is a very large topic, but you can glean some idea of what motivated Kant to make his transcendental turn from his famous 1772 letter to Marcus Herz, part of which is here.  And then there is the metaphilosophical topic of burden of proof.  How does one justify a claim to the effect that the burden of proof lies on one or the other side of a dispute?  For you there is a (defeasible?) presumption in favor of realism, and that therefore the onus probandi lies on the nonrealist.  But what criteria do you employ in arriving at this judgment?

Why Dennis Prager Didn’t Major in Philosophy

Just now I heard Prager say on his radio show that he didn't major in philosophy because on the first day of a philosophy class he heard the professor say that what would be discussed in the class was whether we exist.  I'll leave it to you philosophy teachers out there to make of this what you can, though I suggest an important moral or two can be extracted from it.

Philosophy Under Attack: An Exercise in Philosophical Apologetics

Philosophy’s place in the world has always been precarious and embattled. The assaults on our fair mistress are of two sorts. I am not concerned on this occasion with brutal ad baculum suppression, but with objections of an intellectual or quasi-intellectual nature. By my count, such objections come from as many directions as there are deadly sins, namely, seven. What are they, and how might we respond? What follows are notes toward an apologia for the philosophical life.

Continue reading “Philosophy Under Attack: An Exercise in Philosophical Apologetics”

Philosophy Under Attack at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Start with this piece by Todd Edwin Jones, chairman of the UNLV philosophy department:  Budgetary Hemlock: Nevada Seeks to Eliminate Philosophy.  The original plan to eliminate the philosophy department entirely has apparently been revised.  See here. Excerpt:

UNLV’s College of Liberal Arts received news Tuesday from its dean of a revised budget-cutting plan that includes the elimination of non-tenured professors in the philosophy, anthropology and sociology departments.

This is a departure from the college’s previously stated plans, which recommended the philosophy department be cut entirely. The women’s studies department, also previously slated for elimination, is still on the chopping block. Women’s studies, philosophy, anthropology and sociology have the least amount of majors within the college, which also includes political science, psychology and English.

Professor Jones' defense of philosophy's role in the university curriculum  takes a familiar tack:  philosophy is useful because it teaches critical thinking.  Jones writes,

. . . people think of philosophy as a luxury only if they don’t really understand what philosophy departments do. I teach one of the core areas of philosophy, epistemology: what knowledge is and how we obtain it. People from all walks of life—physicists, physicians, detectives, politicians—can only come to good conclusions on the basis of thoroughly examining the appropriate evidence. And the whole idea of what constitutes good evidence and how certain kinds of evidence can and can’t justify certain conclusions is a central part of what philosophers study.

Now I don't doubt that courses in logic, epistemology, and ethics can help inculcate habits of critical thinking and good judgment.  And it may also be true that philosophy has a unique role to play here.  So, while it is true that every discipline teaches habits of critical thinking and good judgment in that discipline, there are plenty of issues that are not discipline-specific, and these need to be addressed critically as well.

What I object to, however, is the notion that philosophy needs to justify itself in terms of an end external to it, and that its main justification  is in terms of an end outside of it.  The main reason to study philosophy is not to become a more critical reasoner or a better evaluator of evidence, but to grapple with the ultimate questions of human existence and to arrive at as much insight into them  as is possible.  What drives philosophy is the desire to know the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters.  Let's not confuse a useful byproduct of philosophical study (development of critical thinking skills) with  goal of philosophical study.  The reason to study English literature is not to improve one's vocabulary.  Similarly, the reason to study philosophy is not to improve one's ability to think clearly about extraphilosophical matters or to acquire skills that will prove handy in law school. 

Philosophy is an end in itself.  This is why it is foolish to try to convince philistines that it is good for something.  It is not primarily good for something.  It is a good in itself.  Otherwise you are acquiescing in the philistinism you ought to be combating.  Is listening to the sublime adagio movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony good for something?  And what would that be, to impress people with how cultured you are?

To the philistine's "Philosophy bakes no bread" you should not respond "Yes it does," for such reponses are lame.  (Doesn't Professor Jones' apologia for his way of earning his bread strike you as slightly lame?)  You should say, "Man does not live by bread alone," or "Not everything is pursued as a means to something else," or "A university is not a trade school."

Admittedly, this is a lofty conception of philosophy and I would hate to have to defend it before the uncomprehending philistines one would expect to find on the Board of Regents.  But philosophy is what it is, and if we are to defend it we must do so in a way that does not betray it.

Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism, and Wisdom

Dennis E. Bradford sent me three comments via e-mail on my recent Butchvarov post.  I omit the first and the third which are more technical in nature, and which I may address in later posts.    Bradford writes,

Second, and this separates me from Butch, Larry [Blackman], and you, I reject your assumption concerning the narrowness of philosophy.  You mention a conceptual impasse that is “insoluble on the plane of the discursive intellect, which of course is where philosophy must operate.”  I object to the “of course.”  To be a philosopher is to be a lover of wisdom and who says that our only access to wisdom is via the discursive intellect?   In fact, I deny that.  As far as I can tell, the Buddha was the greatest philosopher and the wisest human who ever lived, and his view was that limiting our examination only to the domain of the discursive intellect prevents one from becoming wise.

Actually, I don't disagree with this comment.  It is a matter of terminology, of how we should use the word 'philosophy.'  For me there are at least four ways to the Absolute, philosophy, religion, mysticism, and morality.  This post provides rough sketches of how I view the first three.  I end by suggesting that the pursuit of wisdom involves all three 'postures.'  (Compare the physical postures in the three pictures below.)

 

Rodin

Philosophy

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. Discursive reason is reason insofar as it articulates itself in concepts, judgments, arguments, and systems of argument. As the etymology of the term suggests (L. currere, to run), discursive reason is roundabout rather than direct — as intuitive reason would be if there is such a thing. Discursive reason gets at its object indirectly via concepts, judgments, and arguments. This feature of discursive reason makes for objectivity and communicability; but it exacts a price, and the price must be paid in the coin of loss of concreteness. Thus the oft-heard complaint about the abstractness of philosophy is not entirely without merit.

Note that I define philosophy in terms of the activity of discursive reason: any route to the truth that does not make use of this ‘faculty’ is simply not philosophy. You may take this as a stipulation if you like, but it is of course more than this, grounded as it is in historical facts. if you want to know what philosophy is, read Plato.  As Ralph Waldo Emerson says somewhere, "Philosophy is Plato, and Plato philosophy."  (I quote from memory!)  And there is this from  Keith's blog. 

The nearest thing to a safe definition of the word "philosophy", if we wish to include all that has been and will be correctly so called, is that it means the activity of Plato in his dialogues and every activity that has arisen or will arise out of that.

(Richard Robinson, "Is Psychical Research Relevant to Philosophy?" The Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume 24 [1950]: 189-206, at 192.)

This is in line with my masthead motto which alludes to the famous observation of Alfred North Whitehead:

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.  I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings.  I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them.  [. . .] Thus in one sense by stating my belief that the train of thought in these lectures is Platonic, I am doing no more than expressing the hope that it falls within the European tradition. (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, The Free Press, 1978, p. 39)

Discursivity, then, is essential to philosophy as a matter of definition, a definition that is not merely stipulative but grounded in a possibility of our nature that was best realized in Plato and what he gave rise to.

Thus Jesus of Nazareth was not a philosopher, pace George Bush. If you insist that he was, then I will challenge you to show me the arguments whereby he established such dicta as "I and the Father are one," etc. I will demand the premises whence he arrived at this ‘conclusion.’ Argument and counterargument before the tribunal of reason are the sine qua non of philosophy, its veritable lifeblood. The truth is that Jesus gave no arguments, made no conjectures, refuted no competing theories. There is no dialectic in the Gospels such as we find in the Platonic dialogues. This is not an objection to Jesus’ life and message, but simply an underscoring of the fact that he was not a  philosopher. (But I have a nagging sense that Dallas Willard says something to the contrary somewhere.)  Believing himself to be one with the Father, Jesus of course believed himself to be one with the ultimate truth. Clearly, no such person is a mere philo-sopher, etymologically, a lover of wisdom; he is rather (one who makes a claim to being) a possessor of it. The love of the philosopher, as Plato’s Symposium made clear, is erothetic love, a love predicated on lack; it is not agapic love, love predicated on plenitude. The philosopher is an indigent fellow, grubbing his way forward bit by bit as best he can, by applying discursive reason to the data of experience. God is no philosopher, thank God!

Agreeing with Bradford that a philosopher is a lover of wisdom, I yet insist that he is a lover and pursuer of wisdom by dialectical means, assuming we are going to use 'philosopher' strictly.  This use of terms does not rule out other routes to wisdom, routes that may prove more efficacious.

Indeed, since philosophy examines everything, including itself  (its goals, its methods, its claim to cognitivity), philosophy must also examine whether it is perhaps an inferior route to truth or no route to truth at all!

Genuflection Religion

Religion (from L. religere, to bind) is not fundamentally a collection of rites, rituals, and dogmas, but an activity whereby a questing individual, driven by a need to live in the truth, as opposed to know it objectively in propositional guise, seeks to establish a personal bond with the Absolute. Whereas philosophy operates with concepts, judgments, arguments and theories, religion proceeds by way of faith, trust, devotion, and love. It is bhaktic rather than jnanic, devotional rather than discriminative.  The philosophical project, predicated on the autonomy of reason, is one of relentless and thus endless inquiry in which nothing is immune from examination before the reason’s bench. But the engine of inquiry is doubt, which sets philosophy at odds with religion with its appeal to revealed truth.  If the occupational hazard of the philospher is a life-inhibiting scepticism, the corresponding hazard for the religionist is a dogmatic certainty that can easily turn murderous. For a relatively recent example, consider the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie. (This is why such zealots of the New Atheism as Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens, Grayling, et al. are not completely mistaken.)

The philosopher objects to the religionist: "You believe things for which you have no proof!" The religionist replies to the philosopher: "You sew without a knot in your thread!" I am not engaging in Zen mondo, but alluding to Kierkegaard’s point that to philosophize without dogma is like sewing without a knot in one’s thread. The philosopher will of course reply that to philosophize with dogma is not to philosophize at all. Here we glimpse one form of the conflict beween philosophy and religion as routes to the Absolute. If the philosopher fails to attain the Absolute because discursive reason dissolves in scepticism, the religionist often attains what can only be called a pseudo-Absolute, an idol.

The reader must of course take these schematic  remarks cum grano salis. It would be simple-minded to think that cold impersonal reason (philosophy) stands in simple and stark confrontation to warm personal love (religion). For philosophy is itself a form of love –- erothetic love – of the Absolute, and without the inspiring fervor of this longing love, the philosopher would not submit himself to the rigorous logical discipline, the mental asceticism, without which serious philosophy is impossible. (I speak of real philosophers, of course, and not mere paid professors of it.) Good philosophy is necessarily technical, often mind-numbingly so. (The reader may verify that the converse of this proposition does not hold.) Only a lover of truth will put up with what Hegel called die Anstrengung des Begriffs, the exertion of the concept. On the other hand, religious sentiments and practices occur in a context of beliefs that are formulated and defended in rational terms, including those beliefs that cannot be known by unaided reason but are vouchsafed to us by revelation. So in pursuit of taxonomy we must not fall into crude compartmentalization. The philosopher has his devotions and the religionist has his reasonings.

Buddha Mysticism

Turning now to mysticism, we may define it as the activity whereby a questing individual, driven by a need for direct contact with the Absolute, disgusted with verbiage and abstraction as well as with mere belief and empty rites and rituals, seeks to know the Absolute immediately, which is to say, neither philosophically through the mediation of concepts, judgments and arguments, nor religiously through the mediation of faith, trust, devotion, and adherence to tradition. The mystic does not want to know about the Absolute, that it exists, what its properties are, how it is related to the relative plane, etc.; nor does he want merely to believe or trust in it. He does not want knowledge by description, but knowledge by acquaintance. Nor is he willing, like the religionist, to postpone his enjoyment of it. He wants it, he wants it whole, and he wants it now. He wants to verify its existence for himself here and now in the most direct way possible: by intuiting it. ‘Intuition’ is a terminus technicus: it refers to direct cognitive access to an object or state of affairs. You should think of the the Latin intuitus as used by Descartes, and the German Anschauung as used by Kant. The intuition in question is of course not sensible but intellectual. Thus the mystical ‘faculty’ is that of intellectual intuition. The possibility of intellektuelle Anschauung was of course famously denied by Kant.

 Wisdom

The ultimate goal for a human being is wisdom which could be characterized as knowledge of, and participation in, the saving truth.  One who attains this goal is a sage.  No philosopher is a sage, by definition.  For a philosopher, as a lover (seeker) of wisdom, is not a possessor of it.  One does not seek what one possesses.  The philosopher's love is eros, love predicated on lack.    At most, the philosopher is a would-be sage, one for whom philosophy (as characterized above) is a means to the end of becoming a sage.  If a philosopher attains the Goal, then he ceases to be a philosopher.  If a philosopher gets a Glimpse of the Goal, in that moment he ceases to be a philosopher, but then, after having lost the Glimpse (which is what usually happens) he is back to being as philosopher again.

At this point a difficult question arises.  Is philosophy a means to sagehood, or a distraction from it?  I grant that the ultimate Goal cannot be located on the discursive plane.  What one ultimately wants is not an empty conceptual knowledge but a fulfilled knowledge.  Some say that when a philosopher seeks God, he attains only a 'God of the philosophers,' an abstraction.  (See my Pascal and Buber on the God of the Philosophers.)  The kernel of truth in this is that discursive operations typically do not bring one beyond the plane of discursivity.  One thought leads to another, and another, and another . . . and never to the Thinker 'behind' them or the divine Other. 

And so one might decide that philosophy is useless — "not worth an hour's trouble" as Pascal once said — and that one ought  either to follow the path of religion or that of mysticism.  That is not my view, for reasons I will need a separate post to explain.

For now I will say only this.  Philosophy is not enough.  It needs supplementation by the other paths mentioned.    Analogy.  You go to a restaurant to eat, not to study the menu.  But reading the menu is a means to the end of ordering and enjoying the meal.  Philosophy is like reading the menu; eating is like attaining the Goal. 

But it is also the case that religion and mysticism require the discipline of philosophy.  There is a lot to be said on these topics, and it will be the philosopher who will do the saying.  The integration of the faculties falls to philosophy, and an integrated life is what we aspire to, is it not?  We seek to avoid the onesidedness of the philosopher, but also the onesidedness of the mystic, of the religionist, of the moralist, not to mention the onesidedness of  the moneygrubber, the physical fitness fanatic, etc.