Philosophy is endless because inconclusive. But how is knotting one's thread with a dogma better than going on endlessly? After all, what we want is knowledge of truth, not the mere fixation of belief.
Category: Metaphilosophy
“Why I Left Academic Philosophy”
Interesting. Take it with several grains of salt and factor in the fact that it is by a 'transwoman.' The following is borne out by my experience:
But ultimately I don't need academic philosophy to do philosophy. My blogging over the past ten years has reached a larger audience than I could ever hope to achieve through the academic journal system.
On a really good day I'll get 3,000 page views. Usually I bump along at about half of that or less. But I reach people and influence them. Proof is the thick manila folder of fan mail I have received.
My humble thanks to all readers of good will.
Popular Conceptions and Misconceptions of Philosophy
Here, with interesting comments.
First Philosophy or Scientism?
I was going to add to this old draft from 15 December 2009, but it looks like I won't be getting around to it. So here it is.
………………………….
Robert Cummins (Meaning and Mental Representation, MIT Press, 1989, p. 12) regards it as a mistake "for philosophers to address the question of mental representation in abstraction from any particular scientific theory or theoretical framework." Thus we ought not naively ask, What is mental representation? as if there is something called mental representation that is common to folk psychology and such theories as orthodox computationalism and neuroscience. "Mental representation is a theoretical assumption, not a commonplace of ordinary discourse."
The right way to proceed, according to Cummins, is to "pick a theoretical framework and ask what explanatory role mental representation plays in that framework and what the representation relation must be if that explanatory role is to be well grounded." In other words, one takes a theory such as orthodox computationalism and then one asks: what must the nature of mental representation be if this theory is to be both true and explanatory?
So the question of mental representation is not a question of 'first philosophy,' i.e., a question to be settled independently of, and prior to, empirical research, but a question in the philosophy of science exactly analogous to the following question in the philosophy of physics: what is the nature of space given that General Relativity is true and explanatory? The properties of physical space are for physics to determine. Philosophy's role is correspondingly modest, that of a handmaiden. To coin a phrase: philosophia ancilla scientiae, philosophy is the handmaiden of science, similarly as it was the handmaiden of theology in the Medieval period. Philosophy becomes the philosophy of science. And according to Quine, who is quoted by Cummins on the fontispiece of his book, "Philosophy of science is philosophy enough."
It ought to be the same, Cummins thinks, with psychology. Whether or not there are mental representations becomes the question whether or not the best theories in cognitive science and psychology posit mental representations, and the nature of the representation relation is to be read off from whichever theory is taken to be true and most explanatory.
But there is a problem with this view. If we want to know about physical space and the nature of matter, we turn to the physicist. And if we want to know about the brain, we turn to the neuroscientist. But if we want to know about the relation of mind and brain, we cannot base ourselves solely on empirical science.
Here is one consideration. The extant empirical theories imply the existence of mental representations. But surely their existence is not obvious. Looking at a photograph of a mountain, I become aware of the mountain and some of its features via the picture. Here it makes sense to say of the picture that it is a representation of the mountain. But when I look directly at a mountain, there is no phenomenological evidence of any epistemic intermediary or representation: I see the mountain itself. I don't see sense-data or representations or any kind of epistemic deputy.
Perhaps I will be told that I am nonetheless aware of an internal image but not aware of being aware of it. Compare the case of walking into a room and seeing a depiction of Hillary Clinton so realistic and convincing that I take it to be Hillary herself. In such a case I am aware of an image, but not aware of being aware of an image. Why couldn't it be the same with outer perception? One crucial difference is that I can come to be aware of the Hillary-image as an image. But I cannot come to be aware of any supposed internal image that mediates my outer perception. This is particularly obvious if the internal image is a brain state. I cannot, while gazing at the mountain, 'focus inwardly' and become aware of the brain state that is supposedly mediating my perception of the mountain. Given this fact, I suggest that it is unintelligible to say that there is an internal image that mediates outer perception. The word 'image is' being misused. An image that I cannot become aware of as an image is in no intelligible sense an image of something.
No doubt the brain and its states are part of the causal basis of perception. And there is no doubt that an organism's brain is in (some) of the states it is in because of what is happening in its environment, e.g., bright light is being reflected from a snow field into the organism's eyes. But to say that some of the brain states represent the environment makes no sense assuming that 'represent' has the sense it has when we attend to the phenomenology of representative consciousness. To speak of material representations literally in the head is to read back into a third person conception of the world notions that make sense only from a first-person point of view.
You may agree with what I just said or not. But the discussion we will have about these matters surely does not belong to any empirical science. It belongs to first philosophy. The question of whether there are mental representations at all, for example, cannot arise within disciplines that presupposes their existence. And the relation between a first- and third-person view of the world cannot be treated within an exclusively third-person point of view. Finally, there is the point that the claim that science alone can clarify these questions is itself unscientific and so an instance of (negative) first philosophy.
Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism
Philosophers contradict one another, but that is not the worst of it. The grandest philosophical conclusion is and can only be a proposition about reality and not reality itself. But it is reality itself that we want.
Can religion help? Its motor is belief. But belief is not knowledge, either propositional or direct. And if an appeal to divine revelation is made, then the question inevitably arises: how does one know that a putative revelation is genuine?
If you certify the revelation by appeal to the authority of your church, then I will ask how you know that your church is the true church. After all, not every Christian is Catholic. Are those stray dogs who refuse Rome recalcitrant rebels who simply reject the truth when it is plainly presented to them? I think not.
The motor of philosophy is discursive reason. The motor of religion is belief and obedient acquiescence in authority. Neither Athens nor Jerusalem seems to be a wholly satisfying destination. Nor is straddling them with a leg in each a comfortable posture.
That leaves Benares.
The motor of mysticism is meditation. Its goal is direct contact with ultimate truth. Direct: not discursive or round-about. Direct: not based on testimony.
So should we pack for Benares? Not so fast. It has its drawbacks. Later.
If I want to be read, I have to be brief.
See here for a richer development of these themes.
Are Any Substantive Philosophical Propositions Epistemically Certain?
I asked our Czech colleague Lukáš Novák for examples of philosophical propositions that he considers to be not only true, but knowable with certainty. He provided this list:
a) God exists.
b) There are substances.
c) There are some necessary truths, even some de re necessary truths.
d) Human cognition is capable of truth and certainty.
e) There are no contradictions in reality.
In this entry I will discuss only the first example.
Is it certain that God exists?
My position is that it is true that God exists, but not certain that God exists. How can a proposition be true but not certain? Logically prior question: What is certainty?
We first distinguish epistemic from psychological certainty. If S is epistemically certain that p, then S knows that p. But if S is psychologically certain that p, i.e., thoroughly convinced that p, it does not follow that S knows that p. For people are convinced of falsehoods, and one cannot know a falsehood, let alone be epistemically certain of it. There was the case not long ago of the benighted soul who was convinced that Hillary Clinton was running a child-abuse ring out of a pizzeria. He was certain of it! This shows that we must distinguish subjective or psychological certainty from objective or epistemic certainty. Epistemic certainty alone concerns us.
But what is epistemic certainty?
On one approach, a proposition is epistemically certain just in case it is indubitable. By indubitability I don't mean a psychological inability to doubt, but a property of some propositions. For example, the proposition I exist has the property of being such that no subject S who entertains and understands this proposition can doubt its truth. There are any number of propositions about one's state of mind at a given time that are epistemically certain to the subject of these states. Examples: I seem to see a tree (but not: I see a tree); I seem to recall first meeting her on a April 2014 (but not: I recall meeting her on 1 April 2014).
The facts about one's mental life are a rich source or epistemic certainties. But there is also a class of truths of reason that are epistemically certain, for example propositions true ex vi terminorum, e.g., every effect has a cause, and formal-logical truths such as a proposition and its negation cannot both be true, etc.
God exists, by contrast with the members of the two classes just mentioned, is not indubitable. One can easily doubt it. Atheists go so far as to deny it. So if epistemic certainty is defined in terms of indubitability, then God exists is not epistemically certain.
We also note that God exists does not record a fact about anyone's mental life, nor is it true ex vi terminorum. So it belongs to neither class of the epistemically certain.
At this point one might respond that God exists, while not indubitable by itself, is indubitable as the conclusion of an argument. Well, suppose you give a valid deductive argument for the proposition that God exists. The conclusion will be epistemically certain only if each premise of the argument is epistemically certain. But is there such an argument?
I don't believe there is. I am, however, quite willing to change my view if someone could present one. Indeed I would positively love to be refuted on this point. After all, I have already announced that I believe it is true that God exists; if it is absolutely epistemically certain, then all the better! To get a feel for the problem, consider the Kalam argument
1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause;
2) The universe began to exist; Therefore:
3) The universe has a cause. (And this all men call God.)
This is a valid deductive argument and the premises are highly plausible. What's more, they may well be true. But they are not both certain. Is (1) epistemically certain? No. Its negation, Something begins to exist without a cause, is not a formal-logical contradiction. Nor is (1) an analytic or conceptual truth.
If an argument is presented for (1), then I will show that the premises of that argument are not, all of them, certain.
Patrick Toner tells me that the "modal ontological argument [is] compelling," and that we can "know God and the soul with certainty through the use of natural human reason." (emphasis added) In Is the Modal Ontological Argument Compelling?, however, I return a negative answer by showing that the crucial possibility premise is not certain.
An impressive argument, no doubt, but not rationally compelling or such as to deliver epistemically certain insight into the truth of its conclusion. The same goes for another powerful argument, From the Laws of Logic to the Existence of God.
What say you, Professor Novak? Can you show me that I am wrong? I would be much obliged if you could.
Reliably Inconclusive
Such is philosophical argumentation. Philosophers arrive at conclusions, but the conclusions they arrive at are inconclusive.
Disagreement in Philosophy: Notes on Jiří Fuchs
That philosophers disagree is a fact about which there is little disagreement, even among philosophers. But what this widespread and deep disagreement signifies is a topic of major disagreement. One issue is whether or not the fact of disagreement supplies a good reason to doubt the possibility of philosophical knowledge.
The contemporary Czech philosopher Jiří Fuchs begins his book Illusions of Sceptics (2016) by considering this question. He grants that the "cognitive potential of philosophy" is called into question by the "embarrassing fact that there is not a single thing that philosophers would agree on." (13) Nevertheless, Fuchs insists that we have no good reason to be skeptical about the possibility of philosophical knowledge. His view is that "Discord among philosophers can . . . be sufficiently explained by the frequent prejudices of philosophers . . . Consequently, the existence of discord among philosophers does not imply that their work is of fundamentally unscientific character." (16)
Besides the prejudices of philosophers, the lack of consensus among philosophers may also be attributed to philosophy's difficulty: "the discord may just be a consequence of the specific challenging character of philosophy."(19)
Fuchs maintains that "consensus has no relation to the core of scientific quality. . . ." (24). The core of scientific quality is constituted by "proof or demonstration." (24) His claim is that interminable and widespread disagreement or lack of consensus has no tendency to show that philosophy is incapable of achieving genuine knowledge, where such knowledge involves apodictic insight into the truth of some philosophical propositions.
There are two main issues we need to discuss. One concerns the relation of consensus and truth; the other the relation of consensus and knowledge. My impression is that Fuchs conflates the two issues. I will argue, contra Fuchs, that while it is obvious that consensus and truth are logically independent, logical independence is not obvious, and is arguably absent, in the case of consensus and knowledge. My view, tentatively held, is that the lack of consensus in philosophy does tend to undermine philosophy's claim to be knowledge.
Consensus and Truth
I maintain, and Fuchs will agree, that the following propositions are true if not platitudinous.
1) Truth does not entail consensus. If a proposition is true, it is true whether or not there is consensus with respect to its truth.
2) Consensus does not entail truth. If most or all experts agree that p, it does not follow that p is true.
3) Consensus and truth are logically independent. This follows from (1) in conjunction with (2). One can have truth without consensus and consensus without truth.
Lack of consensus, therefore, does not demonstrate lack of truth. Even if no philosophical proposition wins the agreement of a majority of competent practitioners, it is possible that some such propositions are true. But it doesn't follow that some philosophical propositions have 'scientific quality.' To have this quality they have to be true, but they also have to be knowable by us. But what is knowability and how does it relate to consensus? To answer this question we must first clarify some other notions.
Truth, Knowledge, Knowability, Cognitivity, Justification, and Certainty
I add to our growing list the following propositions, perhaps not all platitudinous and not all agreeable to Fuchs:
4) Knowledge entails truth. If S knows that p, it follows that p is true. There is no false knowledge. There are false beliefs, and indeed false justified beliefs; but there is no false knowledge. You could think of this as an analytic/conceptual truth, or as a truth about the essence of knowledge.
5) Truth does not entail knowledge. If p is true, it does not follow that someone (some finite mind or ectypal intellect) knows that p.
6) Truth does not entail knowability by us. If, for any proposition p, p is true, it does not follow that there is any finite subject S such that S has the power to know p. There may be truths which, though knowable 'in principle,' or knowable by the archetypal intellect, are not knowable by us.
7) Cognitivity does not entail knowability. Let us say that a proposition is cognitive just in case it has a truth value. Assuming bivalence, a proposition is cognitive if and only if it is either true, or if not true, then false. Clearly, cognitivity is insufficient for knowability. For if a proposition is false, then it is cognitive but cannot be known because it is false. And if a proposition is true, then it is cognitive but may not be knowable because beyond our ken.
8) Knowledge entails justification. If S believes that p, and p is true, it does not follow that S knows that p. For knowledge, justification is also required. This is a bit of epistemological boilerplate that dates back to Plato's Theaetetus.
9) Knowledge entails objective certainty. Knowledge implies the sure possession of the object of knowledge; if the subject is uncertain, then the subject does not have knowledge strictly speaking.
Consensus and Knowledge
Fuchs and I will agree that consensus is not necessary for truth: a true proposition need not be one that enjoys the consensus of experts. But consensus may well be necessary for knowledge. Fuchs, however, seems to conflate truth and certainty, and thus truth with knowledge. A truth can be true without being known by us; indeed, without even being knowable by us. But, necessarily, whatever is known is true. On p. 30 we read:
By denying that the thought processes of philosophers can exhibit a scientific quality simply because of the existence of discord among philosophers, we make consensus a necessary condition for the general validity and potential certainty of scientific knowledge, which is the attribute of science. (Emphasis added.)
On the following page we find the same thought but with a replacement of 'potential certainty' by 'certainty':
. . . the necessary question of whether the consensus of experts is really such an essential and indispensable condition for the certainty and general validity of scientific knowledge. (31, emphasis added.)
When one speaks of the validity of a proposition, one means its truth. ('Valid' as a terminus technicus in formal logic is not in play here.) So it seems clear that Fuchs is maintaining that consensus is necessary neither for the truth of propositions nor for their certainty. He seems to be maintaining that one can have certain knowledge of a proposition even if the consensus of experts goes against one. This is not obvious. Why not?
Knowledge requires justification. Now suppose I accept the proposition that God exists and that my justification takes the form of various arguments for the existence of God. Those arguments will be faulted by an army of competent practitioners, not all of them atheists, on a variety of grounds. What's more, the members of the atheist divisions will marshal their own positive arguments, in first place arguments from evil. Now if just one of my theistic arguments is sound, then God exists. But I do not, by giving a sound argument for God, know that God exists unless I know that the argument I have given is sound. (A sound argument is a valid deductive argument all of the premises of which are true.) But how do I know that even one of my theistic arguments is sound? How can I legitimately claim to know that when a chorus of my epistemic peers rises up against me?
If what I maintain is true, then it is true no matter how many epistemic peers oppose me: they are just wrong! Truth is absolute: it is not sensitive to the vagaries of agreement and disagreement. Justification, however, is sensitive to agreement and disagreement. Or so it seems to me. My justification for considering a certain argument sound is undermined by your disagreement assuming that we are both competent in the subject matter of the argument and we are epistemic peers. You may disagree with what I just wrote, and thus disagree with me about the implications of disagreement, but you ought to grant that I am raising a very serious question here. (If you don't grant that, then you get the boot!)
In a situation in which my justification for believing that p is undermined by the disagreement of competent peers, there is no certainty that p. If knowledge logically requires certainty, and certainty is destroyed by the disagreement of competent peers, then I can no longer legitimately claim to know that p. So, while truth has nothing to fear from lack of agreement, knowledge does. For knowledge requires justification, and justification can be augmented or diminished by agreement or disagreement, respectively.
Interim Conclusion
Fuchs makes things too easy for himself by conflating truth and knowledge. We can agree that consensus is logically irrelevant to truth. Protracted disagreement by the best and the brightest over the truth value of p has no tendency to show either deductively or inductively that p is not either true or false. Truth is absolute and thus insulated from the vagaries of opinion. But truths (true propositions) do not do us any good unless we can know them. It is not enough to know that some truths are known; what we need is to know of a given truth that it is true. But disagreement inserts a skeptical blade between the truth and our knowledge of it.
Disagreement in philosophy undermines her claims to knowledge. As I see it, Fuchs has done nothing to undermine this undermining.
Does Your Disagreement Give Me Good Reason to Question My Position?
In general, no. For you may be foolish or ignorant or otherwise incompetent with respect to the subject matter under discussion. Or you may be morally defective: a bully, a blowhard, a bullshitter, a quibbler, a sophist. But suppose none of these predicates attach to you. Suppose you are my moral and intellectual peer, and what's more, a competent practitioner in the discipline or subdiscipline which is home to the thesis we are disputing. Thus we are both competent, and we are equally competent. And suppose I believe you to be as intellectually honest and as competent as I am.
Suppose further that I have given careful thought to my thesis and have advanced it in respectable, peer-reviewed journals.
If you disagree with me, does this fact supply a good reason for me to question my thesis? Ought I question it? Or would I be justified in ignoring your disagreement?
We note that this is a meta-question that sires a meta-disagreement. This meta-disagreement is between the Conciliationist and the Steadfaster.
I am a Conciliationist. Thus I tend to think that your disagreement with me (given the stipulations above) ought to give me pause. It ought to cause me to re-examine my view and be open to the possibility of either rejecting it or withholding assent from it. It ought to undermine my epistemic self-confidence. I tend to think I would be intellectually amiss, less than intellectually honest, were I simply to dismiss your disagreement. I tend to think I would be unjustifiably privileging my own point of view, preferring it over yours simply because is is mine. This seems wrong to me given that we are trying to arrive at the objective and impersonal truth. Truth cannot be mine or yours.
The Steadfaster stands fast in the face of disagreement. Whereas the Conciliationist allows the fact of disagreement to undermine his epistemic self-confidence, the Steadfaster takes the fact of disagreement to undermine his prior conviction that his interlocutor is as morally and intellectually capable as he initially thought he was. So when you disagree with me, I question whether I am right. But when I disagree with you, you question my competence, rationality, probity, etc.
But now a puzzle arises. If I am a Conciliationist, then my position would seem to require that I question my Conciliationism due to the fact that the Steadfaster disagrees with me. (Assume that the Steadfaster is as morally and intellectually well-endowed as I am and that I believe him to be such.)
It seems that the consistent Conciliationist cannot be steadfast in his Conciliationism given that there are Steadfasters out there who are, and whom he believes to be, his moral and intellectual equals. So what should our Conciliationist do? Should he:
- Suspend judgment and neither affirm nor deny Conciliationism?
- Make an exception for the Conciliationst thesis itself by steadfastly adhering to it ar the meta-level while remaining otherwise a Conciliationist?
- Reject Conciliationism and become a Steadfaster?
- Do something else?
Andrew M. Bailey’s Analytic Philosophy Generator and the ‘Scholasticism Charge’
The AnalPhilGen is a bit of humor from occasional MavPhil commenter Andrew Bailey. I generated the following using Bailey's 'device':
It is a consequence of proper functionalism that polyadic predicates reduce to non-human consciousness.
On the standard Kripkean modal semantics, trope theories supervene on something like Rawls' famous Difference Principle.
Intuitively it seems obvious that both definite descriptions and proper names always lead to zombie arguments.
I came to Bailey's Analytic Philosophy Generator by way of a crappy article that complains about the 'scholasticism' of contemporary philosophy "talking about itself to itself in its own jargon." The article suggests that most of what analytic philosophers write is as meaningless as the above three sentences. The just-quoted phrase suggests that the problems of philosophy discussed by academic philosophers in their narrowly-focused, jargon-laden books and articles are not 'real,' but are merely artifacts of a highly ingrown way of talking.
This is simply not the case.
If you are a philosophy 'insider' you know this; if an 'outsider' then you probably cannot be 'reached.' Or maybe you can. Let someone else try.
Here is the crappy article.
A Quasi-Pyrrhonian Metaphilosophical Puzzle
Some of us are tempted by the metathesis (MT) that every substantive philosophical thesis is such that the arguments for it and the arguments against it are equally plausible and thus 'cancel out.' But the metathesis is itself a philosophical thesis. So if the metathesis is true, then every argument in support of it is cancelled out by an equally plausible argument against it. But then (MT), if true, is such that we cannot have any good reason to accept it.
Is there a genuine problem here for a latter-day quasi-Pyrrhonian who subscribes to the metathesis?
Definitions
D1. An argument A1 for a thesis T cancels out an argument A2 for the negation of T just in case both arguments are equally plausible to the producers(s)/consumers(s) of the arguments, assuming that these individuals are 'competent practitioners.'
Plausibility is relative to an arguer and his audience, if any. Thus plausibility is unlike soundness, which is absolute, like truth herself. Note that there cannot be sound arguments both for a thesis and its negation. For if there is a sound argument for T, then T is true. And if there is a sound argument for ~T, then ~T is true. This is 'fallout' from the definition of 'sound,' see D2 below. But then (T & ~T) is true which violates the Law of Non-Contradiction.
Canceling out is symmetrical: If A1 cancels A2, then A2 cancels A1. It seems to follow that canceling out is also conditionally reflexive, which is to say that if A1 cancels A2, then A1 cancels itself. Right?
A competent practitioner is not the same as an epistemic peer. A number of individuals may be epistemic peers, but all incompetent. I won't try for a crisp definition of 'competent practitioner,' but if Tom is a competent practitioner in the philosophy of religion, say, then he is a a sincere truth seeker, not a quibbler or a sophist; he knows logic and the empirical disciplines that bear upon the arguments he is discussing; he is familiar with the relevant literature; and so on.
D2. An argument is sound just in case it is valid and all of its premises are true.
D3. An argument for a thesis is unopposed just in case there is no argument for its negation plausible to all competent practitioners.
D4. A proposition is rationally acceptable just in case it involves no logical contradiction, and coheres with the rest of what we know or justifiably believe.
Rational acceptability, like plausibility, and unlike truth, is a relative property: That water is an element was rationally acceptable to the ancient Greeks, but not to us.
The Puzzle as an Aporetic Tetrad
1) Every substantive philosophical thesis is such that the arguments pro et contra cancel out. (MT)
2) MT is a philosophical thesis.
3) A philosophical thesis is rationally acceptable only if there is at least one good unopposed argument for it.
4) MT is rationally acceptable.
Solutions
The quartet of propositions is inconsistent. Any three limbs, taken in conjunction, entail the negation of the remaining one. Which should we reject? (2) is not plausibly rejectable: metaphilosophy is a branch of philosophy.
One could hold that the first three propositions are true, but the fourth is false. This implies that a proposition could be true but not rationally acceptable. But if MT is true but not rationally acceptable, what reason could we have for believing it?
A better solution of the tetrad is by rejection of (1). This is the position of the optimist about philosophical knowledge. He holds that some theses are supported by unopposed arguments and that we know what these arguments are.
I accept (1) on the basis of strong inductive evidence which renders it rationally acceptable. Accepting as I do (1), (2), and (4), I must reject (3). Well, why not?
Why can't I say the following?
3*) A philosophical thesis is rationally acceptable just in case there are some good arguments for it accepted by some competent practitioners.
Why Accept the Metathesis?
MT expresses a very bold claim; I imagine most philosophers would just deny it. To deny it is to affirm that there is at least one philosophical thesis that can be conclusively demonstrated. Can anyone give me an example? It has to be a substantive thesis, though, not, for example the thesis that it is contradictory to hold that it is absolutely true that all truths are relative. Here are some examples of substantive philosophical theses:
- There are no nonexistent objects.
- There are uninstantiated properties.
- There are no modes of existence.
- The properties of particulars are tropes, not universals.
- God exists.
- The soul is immortal.
- The human will is libertarianly free.
- Each of us is numerically identical to his living body.
- I am not my living body; I merely have a living body.
- Anima forma corporis.
- Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung.
- Laws of nature are just empirical regularities.
- Truths need truth-makers.
- Only facts could serve as truth-makers.
- There are no facts.
- Relations reduce to their monadic foundations.
- There are no properties, only predicates.
- The predicate 'true' serves only as a device for disquotation.
- Race is a social construct.
- Social and economic inequalities are justified only if they benefit the worst-off.
- And so on.
The Philosophy Paperboy
"This website publishes the latest contents from philosophy journals around the world."
Anecdote. When I taught at Boston College in the '70s I had a nursing student in one of my classes. One day I made mention of a philosophy journal. Sweet Darci said, "You mean they have journals of this stuff?"
David Chalmers and the Purely Theoretical Conception of Philosophy
John Horgan reports in Scientific American on a conversation with David Chalmers. (HT: the ever-helpful Dave Lull)
There is some discussion of the so-called 'hard problem' in the philosophy of mind. The qualia-based objections are supposed to pose a 'hard' problem for defenders of physicalism. The implication is that the problems posed by intentionality are, if not exactly 'easy,' then at least tractable. It seems to me, though, that intentionality is also a damned hard problem for physicalists to solve, so hard in fact as to be insoluble within physicalist constraints and another excellent reason to reject physicalism. I give my reasons here.
But this is not the topic of this entry. What caught my eye was a metaphilosophical item.
Chalmers' is a purely theoretical conception of philosophy:
Does philosophy help him [Chalmers] deal with personal problems? “I’m not sure how deep an integration there is between what I think about philosophically and the way I live,” he replied. “I’d love to be able to say, ‘Here is how the insights I’ve had about consciousness have transformed my life.’… I’ve basically lived my life the way I want to live it without necessarily being all that reflective at the practical level.”
A striking admission. Here we have a philosopher who frankly admits to living his life more or less unreflectively and thus more or less unphilosophically. On such an approach, philosophy has little to do with the life of the "existing individual" to employ a signature phrase from Kierkegaard. This is a widespread attitude among contemporary philosophers for whom philosophy is a purely theoretical discipline aimed at the solution of certain puzzles such as the 'hard problem.'
Well, that is a conception of philosophy one might have. I'll say a few words in its defense. The central problems of philosophy are genuine problems, and the attempts by logical positivists, ordinary language philosophers, and others to show them to be pseudo have failed. Whether or not they are humanly important or socially relevant or such that their solution contributes to human flourishing, they are legitimate objects of inquiry. And a pox upon anyone or any government that thinks otherwise.
But some of us favor a more classical conception of philosophy. For some of us, the signature Socratic saying remains normative: "The unexamined life is not worth living." These are words Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates at Apology 38a:
. . . and if again I say that to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you will believe me still less. This is as I say, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you.
To contrast it with the purely theoretical conception we could call this an 'existential' conception of philosophy as long as we don't confuse it with existentialism narrowly construed. Obviously, one whose approach to philosophy is broadly existential can also have a strong theoretical bent. It might be interesting to attempt a list of some prominent 'existential' philosophers, and then distill the shared attributes that make them such.
Broadly 'existential' philosophers include Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, Epicurus, Stoics such as Epictetus, Pyrrhonian Skeptics such as Sextus Empiricus, Christian Platonists such as St. Augustine, all of the medieval thinkers such as St Thomas Aquinas for whom philosophia ancilla theologiae. Add to them all those whose concerns are religious first and foremost Blaise Pascal being a prominent example, and even Kant.
Kant? Well yes. In the preface to the second edition (1787) of his magnum opus, Critique of Pure Reason, he famously declares that his aim is to "deny reason in order to make room for faith." The highest concerns of humanity are God, freedom, and immortality, and Kant's labors are for the purpose of securing these noble objects.
These 'broadly existential' philosophers have in common a concern for ultimate human well-being that trumps the merely theoretical. I'm with them.
When Politics Becomes Like Philosophy
In philosophy everything is up for grabs. Our politics are becoming like this. There is less and less on which we agree. We can't even agree that nations need enforceable and enforced borders!
Widespread and deep-going lack of consensus in philosophy casts serious doubt on the cognitivity of the discipline, but is otherwise not that big of a deal as long as the controversies of the cognoscenti are confined to the ivory towers. Academic controversies rarely spill into the streets. No one literally gets up in arms over the correct analysis of counterfactual conditionals.
But widespread and deep-going lack of consensus among the citizens of a country can lead to civil war. The USA is now in a state of cold civil war; if it heats up it won't be pretty.
The denigrators of philosophy typically dismiss it as so much hot air. What they don't realize is that many if not most of the hot-button issues that exercise them are philosophical at bottom. To see what I mean, consider a few issues that divide Left and Right:
- For the Left, man is basically good; for the Right, he is not. The answer you give presupposes an answer to question number four on Kant's list: What can I know? What ought I do? What may I hope for? What is man?
- For the Left, (material) equality trumps liberty; for the Right it is the other way around. This is obviously a central question in political philosophy.
- For the Left, the differences between the sexes are socially constructed and therefore malleable; for the Right, socially constructed gender roles are secondary to biological and perhaps even metaphysical differences between males and females that cannot be socially engineered.
- For the Left, abortion is a woman's reproductive right; for the Right, the human fetus, at least in the later stages of its development, is a biological individual with its own right to life.
- For the Left, the purpose of art is to "challenge the status quo and bourgeois sensibilities"; for the Right, "to produce works of beauty and profundity to elevate the individual and society." (I quote from Dennis Prager.) Questions about the nature and purpose of art belong in aesthetics.
These are very deep philosophical disagreements. Time was, when most of us didn't disagree about them or even raise them as serious questions. But now these philosophical disputes are political disputes. In this sense our politics have become like philosophy.
Interesting times up ahead!
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The Self-Murder of Academic Philosophy?
Rod Dreher here exposes the latest lunacy in the precincts of mad-dog feminism. I have no objection to the main body of his post, but his opening sentence, written by a philosophy outsider, will give philosophy outsiders the wrong impression. Dreher asks, "Can somebody please tell me why anybody would choose to go into academic philosophy?"
Short answer: philosophy is a magnificent subject and one of the supports of high culture; it cannot be done well, however, without attention to the work of 'academic' philosophers from Plato on down.
Dreher seems to be assuming that the garbage he uncovers is representative of academic philosophy. Not so. Pee-Cee Unsinn is on the rise, and leftist termites have a lot to answer for in the undermining of the universities, but good work is being done in contemporary academic philosophy, not to mention the work done in decades past.
That being said, the short-term trends are not encouraging. But one cannot live without hope. One reason for hope is that "Philosophy always buries its undertakers" as Etienne Gilson famously wrote. That is the first of his "laws of philosophical experience." (The Unity of Philosophical Experience, Scribners, 1937, p. 306) The undertakers are winning at the moment, but they will taken under in their turn.