The philosopher and the religionist need each other's virtues. The philosopher needs reverence to temper his analytic probing and humility to mitigate the arrogance of his high-flying inquiry and overconfident reliance on his magnificent yet paltry powers of thought. The religionist needs skepticism to limit his gullibility, logical rigor to discipline his tendency toward blind fideism, and balanced dialectic to chasten his disposition to fanaticism.
Is Philosophy Bullshit?
Intuitions about the value of philosophy vary wildly. For many it is just bullshit, "bullshitting about any topic" as a particularly benighted student of mine once wrote on a teaching evaluation. (What a joy to be quit of the classroom for good!) But anyone who says this sort of thing understands the nature of bullshit as little as he understands the nature of philosophy. He also does not understand that philosophy is needed to comprehend the nature of that under which philosophy is being subsumed, namely, bullshit. For instruction as to the essence of bullshit we of course turn to a philosopher, Professor Frankfurt. A statement is bullshit if it is
. . . grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth — this indifference to how things really are — that I regard as of the essence of bullshit." (emphasis added)
Exactly right. The bullshitter is one who 'doesn't give a shit' about the truth value of what he is saying. He doesn't care how things stand with reality. The liar, by contrast, must care: he must know (or at least attempt to know) how things are if he is to have any chance of deceiving his audience. Think of it this way: the bullshitter doesn't care whether he gets things right or gets them wrong; the liar cares to get them right so he can deceive you about them.
Now philosophers, the genuine ones anyway, not those who merely fill their bellies from it, care deeply about "how things really are." Only a bullshitter could call philosophy bullshit.
Of course, philosophy's not being bullshit does not render it 'epistemically in the clear,' to cop a phrase Roderick Chisholm uses in another connection. There are other objections one can make to philosophy. We shall review some of them in due course.
George Santayana on the Three Traps that Strangle Philosophy
From Animal Faith and Spiritual Life, ed. John Lachs, Meredith, 1967, p. 168:
There are three traps that strangle philosophy: the Church, the marriage-bed, and the professor's chair. I escaped from the first in my youth; the second I never entered, and as soon as possible I got out of the third.
Perhaps we could call them the theological trap, the tender trap, and the tenure trap. But are they truly traps? That might be disputed.
Nietzsche might be brought in as a witness concerning the marriage trap, not that he had any experience in the matter. Somewhere in his Nachlass he compares the philosopher burdened by Weib und Kind, Haus und Hof with an astronomer who interposes a piece of filthy glass between eye and telescope. The philosopher's vocation charges him with the answering of the ultimate questions; pressing foreground concerns, however, make it difficult for him to take these questions with the seriousness they deserve, let alone to answer them.
But in another place Nietzsche balances this harsh observation by noting that the man without Haus und Hof, Weib und Kind is like a ship with insufficient ballast: he rides too high on the seas of life and does not pass through her storms with the steadiness of the solid bourgeois weighted down with property and reputation, wife and children. The judgments of such a high-rider on matters local and temporal should not be taken too seriously.
Understanding Conservatism and Tradition
An outstanding essay by James Kalb.
The Ambiguity of Islam
James V. Schall here reviews Samir Khalil Samir, 111 Questions on Islam.
Evidence Mounts That Global Warming is a Lot of Hot Air
So far I have been very measured and noncommittal in my comments on global warming. I have contented myself with drawing some elementary distinctions that would have to be observed in any rational discussion of the issue. See here and here.
But having spoken to a climatologist and having read more on the subject, I am now inclining to the view that much of so-called climate science contains a sizeable admixture of leftist, anti-capitalist ideology fueled by grant-funding agencies with political axes to grind who favor those who toe the party line. This WSJ article is a bit more evidence that this is so.
Original and Derived Intentionality, Circles, and Regresses
1. Original/Derived Intentionality. All will agree that there is some sort of distinction to be made here. A map is not about a chunk of terrain just in virtue of the map's physical and geometrical properties. Consider the contour lines on a topographical map. The closer together, the steeper the terrain. But that closer together should mean steeper is a meaning assigned by the community of map-makers and map-users. This meaning is not intrinsic to the map qua physical object. Closer together might have meant anything, e.g., that the likelihood of falling into an abandoned mine shaft is greater.
So some things derive their referential and semantic properties from other things. What about these other things? I draw you a map so that you can find my camp. I use the Greek phi to mark my camp and the Greek psi to mark the camp of a heavily-armed crazy man that you are well advised to avoid. I intend that phi designate my camp. That intending (narrow sense) is a case of intentionality (broad sense). This is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether my intending is a case of original or of derived intentionality.
If the latter, then a regress ensues which appears to be both infinite and vicious. But before discussing this further, I need to bring in another point.
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Brentano and Whether Propositions are Intrinsically Intentional
Franz Brentano, for whom intentionality is the mark of the mental, is committed to the thesis that all instances of (intrinsic) intentionality are instances of mentality. The last post in this series considered apparent counterexamples to this thesis. But there are others. Joseph Jedwab usefully pointed out in a comment on my old blog that propositions and dispositions are apparent counterexamples. Whether they are also real counterexamples is something we should discuss. This post discusses (Fregean) propositions. Later, dispositions — if I am so disposed.
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Brentano, Dretske and Whether There is Intentionality Below the Level of Mind
For Brentano, intentionality is the mark of the mental: (i) all mental phenomena are intentional, and (ii) all intentional phenomena are mental. This post considers whether there is intentionality below the level of conscious mind, intentionality that can exist without any connection, actual or potential, to conscious mind. If there is, then of course (ii) is false.
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Brentano and Three Types of Unconscious Intentionality
We saw that for Brentano, (i) all conscious states are intentional, and (ii) all intentional states are conscious. We also saw that felt pain is an apparent counterexample to (i): to feel pain is to be in a conscious state, a state that is not of or about anything. But there are also apparent counterexamples to (ii). Perhaps we should distinguish three classes of putattive counterexamples:
1. Intentionality without conscious awareness but with an easy transition to conscious awareness.
2. Intentionality with neither conscious awareness nor an easy transition to conscious awareness.
3. Intentionality below the level of mind.
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Brentano on the Mark of the Mental
1. What is the mark of the mental? Brentano took intentionality to be the mark of the mental, the criterion whereby physical and mental phenomena are distinguished. For Brentano, (i) all mental phenomena are intentional, (ii) all intentional phenomena are mental, and (iii) no mental phenomenon is physical. (Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874), Bk. II, Ch. 1.)
2. What is intentionality? ‘Intentionality’ is Brentano's term (borrowed from the Medievals) for that property of mental states whereby they are (non-derivatively) of, or about, or directed to, an object. The state of perceiving, for example is necessarily object-directed. One cannot just perceive; if one perceives, then one perceives something. The same goes for intending (in the narrow sense), believing, imagining, recollecting, wishing, willing, desiring, loving, hating, judging, knowing, etc. Such mental states refer beyond themselves to objects that may or may not exist. Reference to an object is thus an intrinsic feature of mental states and not a feature they have in virtue of a relation to an existing object. This is why Brentano speaks of the "intentional in-existence of an object." Mental states for Brentano are object-directed by their very nature as mental states: there is no need that a particular state's object actually exist for that state to be intentional. It follows that intentionality is not, strictly speaking, a relation. For, necessarily, if a relation obtains, then all its relata exist. In the case of an intentional 'relation,' however, the object-relatum need not exist.
Why Brentano is Important
If Edmund Husserl is the father of phenomenology, Franz Brentano is its grandfather: his Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint, along with his lectures at the University of Vienna were powerful influences on the young Husserl who, though a Ph.D. in mathematics (under Weierstrass on the calculus of variations) abandoned mathematics for philosophy. (2) Brentano's dissertation under Trendelenburg, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle, was a powerful impetus to Heidegger's ruminations on Being. (3) Brentano, as Gustav Bergmann points out, was "the first linguistic philosopher." (Realism, p. 234) Brentano, then, can be said to stand at the source of both the phenomenological and the analytic streams of thought as they developed in the 20th century.
The Supreme Enigma
Paul Brunton, Notebooks II, 4:
Every puzzle that fascinates innumerable persons and induces them to attempt its solution — be it mathematical and profound or ordinary and simple — is an echo on a lower level of the Supreme Enigma that is forever accompanying man and demanding an answer: What is he, whence and whither? The quester puts the problem into his conscious mind and keeps it there.
On Forming Societies at Faint Provocation
Paul Brunton, Notebooks II, 154, #56:
I am not enamoured overmuch of this modern habit, which forms a society at faint provocation. A man's own problem stares him alone in the face, and it is not to be solved by any association of men. Every new society we join is a fresh temptation to waste time.
Well said. Would Thoreau have joined the Thoreau Society? Merton the Merton Society? Would Groucho Marx have joined a club that would have him as a member?
Seriously, there is something dubious about societies. Were I to read a paper the least bit critical of Thomas Merton at the Merton Society, I would receive a hostile response no matter how good the paper was. I would be taken as attacking their man, someone with whom they identify. In a one-on-one exchange, it is not uncommon for an interlocutor to 'get his back up' if one criticizes, however judiciously, something or someone in whom the interlocutor has invested time and energy. But when there is a bunch of these people reinforcing each other, look out! They close ranks and their critical acumen goes to zero.
Merton, Heidegger, Ayn Rand and so many others who inspire a cult-like following need to have their works discussed critically, and that means: not by followers and not by dismissers, but by the independent. But what happens for the most part is that their works get chewed over lovingly in uncritical enclaves while being ignored or dismissed by those outside the charmed circles.
Who Are the Oddballs?
Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, vol. II, The Quest (Burdett, NY: Larson Publications, 1986), p. 24:
We are regarded as odd people because we trouble our heads with the search for an intangible reality. But it never occurs to our critics that it is much more odd that they should go on living without pausing to inquire if there be any purpose in life at all.