Metaphilosophy – Page 22 – Maverick Philosopher

What is Philosophy? Some Contemporary Views

The question about the nature of philosophy is itself a philosophical question: metaphilosophy is a branch of philosophy. And so one expects and finds a variety of competing answers. Here are some. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the quotations. My comments are in blue. I conclude with a brief statement of my own.

Philosophy is thinking in slow motion. It breaks down, describes and assesses moves we ordinarily make at great speed – to do with our natural motivations and beliefs. It then becomes evident that alternatives are possible [John Campbell, Philosophers]

Nice as a characterization, but does not get the length of a definition. You could say the same about physics.

One comes to philosophy already endowed with a stock of opinions. It is not the business of philosophy either to undermine or to justify these pre-existing opinions, to any great extent, but only to try to discover ways of expanding them into an orderly system. It succeeds to the extent that (1) it is systematic, and (2) it respects those of our pre-philosophical opinions to which we are firmly attached. In so far as it does both better than any alternative we have thought of, we give it credence. [David Lewis, Counterfactuals]

Although I am a conservative across the board (socially, politically, fiscally, linguistically . . .), this characterization I find too conservative. Like a good conservative, I am prepared to say that there is a presumption in favor of pre-existing opinions, but that it is a defeasible presumption. Why shouldn't metaphysics be revisionary as opposed to descriptive, to allude to P. F. Strawson's old distinction? (See the opening sentences of Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, Methuen, 1959.) Included in our stock of "pre-existing opinions" are our modal beliefs. Must we uphold them at all costs? Could it not be that there is no modality in reality, that modality is merely epistemic? And when one considers the absurd lengths to which David Lewis was driven "to expand into an orderly system" our modal opinions, then one could reasonably maintain that it would be better to jettison our ordinary modal opinions if the only suitable truthmakers for them are possible worlds conceived of as maximal mereological sums of concreta all equally real.

If one adopted Lewis's characterization, one would have to deny that F. H. Bradley was a philosopher. For his was a revisionary project: he was not concerned to "expand into an orderly system" "our pre-existing opinions." Quite the contrary: he was out to consign the whole lot of them to the realm of Appearance. And it seems the question whether metaphysics should be descriptive or revisionary, a question which is itself philosophical, would be ruled out if Lewis's characterization is accepted.

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Clarity is Not Enough

This scribbler has penned paragraphs which, upon re-reading, not even he could make head nor tail of. That is often a sign of bad writing. It can also indicate sloppy thinking. But it may also show a noble attempt to press against the bounds of sense and the limits of intelligibility. And if philosophy does not make that attempt, what good is it?

There is, after all, such a thing as superficial clarity. (He said with a sidelong glance in the direction of Rudolf and Ludwig.)

A Battle of Titans: Plato Versus Aristotle

It is sometimes said that there are only two kinds of philosophers, Platonists and Aristotelians. What follows is a quotation from Heinrich Heine which expresses one version of this useful simplification. Carl Gustav Jung places it at the very beginning of his Psychological Types (Princeton UP, 1971, p. 2.)

Plato and Aristotle! These are not merely two systems: they are also types of two distinct human natures, which from time immemorial, under every sort of disguise, stand more or less inimically opposed. The whole medieval period in particular was riven by this conflict, which persists down to the present day, and which forms the most essential content of the history of the Christian Church. Although under other names, it is always of Plato and Aristotle that we speak. Visionary, mystical, Platonic natures disclose Christian ideas and their corresponding symbols from the fathomless depths of their souls. Practical, orderly, Aristotelian natures build out of these ideas and symbols a fixed system, a dogma and a cult. Finally, the Church eventually embraces both natures—one of them entrenched in the clergy, and the other in monasticism; but both keeping up a constant feud. ~ H. Heine, Deutschland

Plato, on the left carrying The Timaeus, points upwards while Aristotle, on the right carrying his Ethics, points either forward (thereby valorizing the 'horizontal' dimension of time and change as against Plato's 'vertical' gesture) or downwards (emphasizing the foundational status of sense particulars and sense knowledge.) At least five contrasts are suggested: vita contemplativa versus vita activa, mundus intelligibilis versus mundus sensibilis, transcendence versus immanence, eternity versus time, mystical unity versus rational-cum-empirical plurality.

Heine is right about the battle within Christianity between the Platonic and Aristotelian tendencies. Trinity, Incarnation, Transubstantiation, Divine Simplicity — these are at bottom mystical notions impervious to penetration by the discursive intellect as we have been lately observing. Nevertheless,"Practical, orderly, Aristotelian natures build out of these ideas and symbols a fixed system, a dogma and a cult." But the dogmatic constructions, no matter how clever and detailed, never succeed in rendering intelligible the transintelligible, mystical contents.

Philosophy is Inquiry not Ideology

(The following, composed 16 February 2005, is imported from the first incarnation of Maverick Philosopher. It makes some important points that bear repeating.)

On the masthead of The Ivory Closet, now defunct: "Life as a Closet Conservative Inside Liberal Academia."

From the post Liberal Groupthink is My Cover:

My dissertation, which I'm still working on, focuses on a contemporary French philosopher who is known in academia primarily as a radical Leftist. Generally speaking, academics seem to just assume that you agree with and share the same views as the figure you focus on in your dissertation. So, everyone just assumes that since I'm writing on a radical Leftist that I must be a radical Leftist. I keep my mouth shut about my conservativism. Often I have to bite my tongue when I hear disparaging remarks about conservatives. But, so long as I manage to do that the liberal bias of academia makes it all too easy to stay in the closet. Everyone just assumes your [you're] a liberal.

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John Gardner on Fiction and Philosophy

John Gardner, On Writers and Writing, p. 225:

. . . at their best, both fiction and philosophy do the same thing, only fiction does it better — though slower. Philosophy by essence is abstract, a sequence of general argument controlled in its profluence by either logic (in old-fashioned systematic philosophy) or emotional coherence (in the intuitive philosophies of say, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard). We read the argument and it seems to flow along okay, make sense, but what we ask is, "Is this true of my mailman?" . . .

Fiction comes at questions from the other end. It traces or explores some general argument by examining a particular case in which the universal case seems implied; and in place of logic or emotional coherence — the philosopher's stepping stones — fictional argument is controlled by mimesis: we are persuaded that the characters would indeed do exactly what we are told they do and say . . . . If the mimesis convinces us, then the question we ask is opposite to that we ask of philosophical argument; that is, we ask, "Is this true in general?"

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An Escape From Reality?

If someone tells you that philosophy is an escape from reality, reply: "You tell me what reality is, and I'll tell you whether philosophy is an escape from it."

The point, of course, is that all assertions about reality and its evasions are philosophical assertions that embroil the objector in the very thing from which he seeks to distance himself.

Neglected Philosophers

It is unfortunate that a philosopher like Heidegger receives a vast amount of attention, and indeed more than he deserves, while a philosopher such as Wolfgang Cramer is scarcely read at all. I have German correspondents who have first heard of Cramer from me, an American. I admit to being part of the problem: I have published half a dozen articles on Heidegger, but not one on Cramer, or on Maurice Blondel, or on Constantin Brunner, or on Brand Blanshard.

Jacques Derrida is another philosopher who has received an excess of attention. (Because he out-Heidegger's Heidegger?) Why read him when you can read Blondel or Blanshard? Just because he has made a big splash and people are talking about him? Are you a philosopher or a fashionista? Form your own opinion. Try this. Set a volume of Derrida side by side with a volume of Blanshard. Read a few pages back and forth. Then ask who you are more likely to learn something from. But being as perverse as we are, we often prefer the far-out, novel and radical, even when incoherent, to the boringly solid and sensible.

Germans as Luftmenschen

Here is a delightful little passage from Brand Blanshard's outstanding essay, "The Philosophic Enterprise," in Bontempo and Odell, eds., The Owl of Minerva: Philosophers on Philosophy, p. 170. Don't take the passage too seriously, especially you denizens of the Land von Dichter und Denker.

It used to be said that to the English had been given the realm of the sea, to the French the domain of the land, and to the Germans the kingdom of the air; this meant of course the stratosphere, where philosophers are supposed to live, and indeed have been living ever since Thales wandered abroad with his head in the clouds and fell into a well.

The Philosopher as Luftmensch

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Penguin, 2002), p. 11:

Philosophy today gets no respect. Many scientists use the term as a synonym for effete speculation. When my colleague Ned Block told his father that he would major in the subject, his father's reply was "Luft!" — Yiddish for "air." And then there's the joke in which a young man told his mother that he would become a Doctor of Philosophy and she said, "Wonderful! But what kind of disease is philosophy?"

Well, to adapt a chess player's expression, better to make Luft than to make war! (One 'makes Luft' in chess by moving a pawn in front of the castled king's position as prophylaxis against back rank mate.)

When Is an Identification an Elimination, and When Not? Idealism and Eliminativism not in the Same Logical Boat

A reader, recently deployed to Afghanistan, finds time to raise an objection that I will put in my own words to make it as forceful as possible:

You endorsed William Lycan's Moorean refutation of eliminative materialism, but then you criticized him for thinking that Moorean appeals to common sense are also effective against standard idealist claims such as Berkeley's thesis that the objects of ordinary outer perception are clusters of ideas. You maintained that there is a crucial difference between the characteristic claims of eliminativists (e.g., that there are no beliefs, desires, intentions, pleasures, pains, etc.) and the characteristic claims of idealists (e.g., Berkeley's thesis just mentioned, McTaggart's thesis of the unreality of time, Bradley's of the unreality of relations.) The difference is that between denying the existence of some plain datum, and giving an account of a plain datum, an account which presupposes, and so does not deny, the datum in question. In effect, you insisted on a distinction between identifying Xs as Ys, and denying the existence of Xs. Thus, you think that there is an important difference between identifying pains with brain states, and denying that there are pains; and identifying stones and physical objects generally with collections of ideas in the mind of God and denying that there are physical objects. But in other posts you have claimed that there are identifications which collapse into eliminations. I seem to recall your saying that to identify God with an unconscious anthropomorphic projection, in the manner of Ludwig Feuerbach, amounts to a denial of the existence of God, as opposed to a specification of what God is. Similarly, 'Santa Claus is a fictional character' does not tell us what Santa Claus is; it denies his very existence.

Now why couldn't Lycan argue that this is exactly what is going on in the idealist case? Why couldn't he say that to identify stones and such with clusters of ideas in the mind of God is to deny the existence of stones? Just as God by his very nature (whether or not this nature is exemplifed) could not be an anthropomorphic projection, so too, stones by their very nature as physical objects could not be clusters of ideas, not even clusters of divine ideas.

It seems you owe us an account of why the reduction of physical objects to clusters of ideas is not an identification that collapses into an elimination. If you cannot explain why it does not so collapse, then Lycan and Co. will be justifed in deploying their Moorean strategy against both EM-ists and idealists. They could argue, first, that idealism is eliminationism about common sense data, and then appeal to common sense to reject the elimination.

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Of Berkeley’s Stones and the Eliminativist’s Beliefs

I lately endorsed William Lycan's Moorean refutation of eliminative materialism (EM). But I disagreed with Lycan on one point. Lycan thinks that Moorean arguments refute Bradley and McTaggart and that there is no essential difference between the characteristic claims of the British Idealists and the characteristic claims of eliminativists in the philosophy of mind: both deny what common sense must affirm. I believe he is wrong about this, and I will now try to show why. It seems that there are three main positions on this issue. To have some handy labels, I will call them R, L, and V.

R. Just as Berkeley cannot be refuted by kicking a stone, the eliminativist cannot be refuted in any simple Moorean manner. Idealist and eliminativist claims are in the same logical boat, a boat that cannot be sunk by Moorean torpedoes.

L. British and other idealists can be refuted in Moorean ways, and so can eliminativists in the philosophy of mind. Idealist and eliminativist claims are in the same logical boat, a boat that is exposed to Moorean attack.

V. The 'same logical boat' assumption made by R and V must be rejected. There is a crucial difference between what eliminativists are doing and what idealists are doing. The idealist does not deny the existence of physical objects, or time, or relations. Berkeley, for example, does not deny the existence of stones and other meso-particulars. He offers a theory of their ontological constitution. His question is not whether they are, but what they are. His answer, roughly, is that stones and trees and the like are bundles or collections of ideas. Thus he gives an immaterialist account of ordinary particulars. They exist all right, but their status is mind-dependent, the ultimate mind in question being God's.

The eliminativist, however, flatly denies the existence of mental items such as pains, desires, and beliefs. It should be obvious, then, that there is an important difference between what idealists do and what eliminativists do. Idealist accounts are not existence-denying, but they do have an ontologically demoting upshot. If physical object are mind-dependent in the Berkeleyan manner, then they cannot exist in themselves, but only in relation to another, God, who exists in himself. Idealism thus reduces the being-status of physical objects from what it would be on a realist approach. The eliminativist, by contrast, is not engaged in ontological demotion, but in flat-out denial. He does not say of beliefs that they are mind-dependent, or mere appearances, or less than ultimately real; what he says is that they don't exist at all. If the eliminativist said that mental items exist as appearances he would be giving up the game. A pain, e.g., is such that to be = to appear. If you admit the appearance of a mental event such as a pain, you admit its reality.

Whatever the objections that can be lodged against Berkeleyan idealism, it cannot be refuted by kicking a stone. But eliminative materialism can be refuted by simply noting that one desires a beer. Moorean arguments are worthless when deployed against the positions of the great idealists, and this for the reason that the prosaic Moore simply did not understand what they were arguing. But when someone denies a plain datum, then he does run up against common sense in an objectionable way.

Wisdom from Putnam on Science and Scientism

Hilary Putnam, Mathematics, Matter and Method (Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. xiii (emphasis added):

. . . I regard science as an important part of man's knowledge of reality; but there is a tradition with which I would not wish to be identified, which would say that scientific knowledge is all of man's knowledge. I do not believe that ethical statements are expressions of scientific knowledge; but neither do I agree that they are not knowledge at all. The idea that the concepts of truth, falsity, explanation, and even understanding are all concepts which belong exclusively to science seems to me to be a perversion . . .

Putnam does not need the MP's imprimatur and nihil obstat, but he gets them anyway, at least with respect to the above quotation. The italicized sentence is vitally important. In particular, you will be waiting a long time if you expect evolutionary biology to provide any clarification of the crucial concepts mentioned. See in particular, Putnam's "Does Evolution Explain Representation?" in Renewing Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 1992).

The Sociology of Philosophy: A PhilPapers Survey

What percentage of philosophers are atheists? What percentage theists? Are there more compatibilists than libertarians when it comes to the freedom of the will? More libertarians than deniers of free will? These are questions in the sociology of philosophy. The general public has wildly inaccurate beliefs in this area, but practicing philosophers also cherish misconceptions. Here are the results of a sophisticated PhilPapers survey.

Mildly interesting, but what does this contribute to philosophy? I was pleased to see that a solid majority favors the analytic-synthetic distinction. But surely I cannot use this merely sociological fact as any part of my justification for accepting the distinction. Or can I?

A Note on Analytic Style

The precise, explicitly argued, analytic style of exposition with numbered premises and conclusions promotes the meticulous scrutiny of the ideas under discussion. That is why I sometimes write this way. I know it offends some. There are creatures of darkness and murk who seem allergic to any intellectual hygiene. These types are often found on the other side of the Continental divide. "How dare you be clear? How dare you ruthlessly exclude all ambiguity thereby making it impossible for me to yammer on and on with no result?"

Ortega y Gasset somewhere wrote that "Clarity is courtesy." But clarity is not only courtesy; it is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition of resolving an issue. If it be thought unjustifiably sanguine to speak of resolving philosophical issues, I have a fall-back position: Clarity is necessary for the very formulation of an issue, provided we want to be clear about what we are discussing.

Fiction and Philosophy: Does Fiction Do it Better?

John Gardner, On Writers and Writing, p. 225:

. . . at their best, both fiction and philosophy do the same thing, only fiction does it better — though slower. Philosophy by essence is abstract, a sequence of general argument controlled in its profluence by either logic (in old-fashioned systematic philosophy) or emotional coherence (in the intuitive philosophies of say, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard). We read the argument and it seems to flow along okay, make sense, but what we ask is, "Is this true of my mailman?" . . .

Fiction comes at questions from the other end. It traces or explores some general argument by examining a particular case in which the universal case seems implied; and in place of logic or emotional coherence — the philosopher's stepping stones — fictional argument is controlled by mimesis: we are persuaded that the characters would indeed do exactly what we are told they do and say . . . . If the mimesis convinces us, then the question we ask is opposite to that we ask of philosophical argument; that is, we ask, "Is this true in general?"

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