{"id":8597,"date":"2013-07-28T16:48:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-28T16:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/07\/28\/on-the-abysmal-depth-of-philosophical-disagreement\/"},"modified":"2013-07-28T16:48:41","modified_gmt":"2013-07-28T16:48:41","slug":"on-the-abysmal-depth-of-philosophical-disagreement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/07\/28\/on-the-abysmal-depth-of-philosophical-disagreement\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Abysmal Depth of Philosophical Disagreement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of the questions that philosophers ask have the form, What is (the nature of) X?  What is knowledge? What is consciousness?  What is the self?  What is free will? What is causation?  What are properties?  What is motion? Time? Existence? . . . <\/span><\/p>\n

These are typical philosophical questions that arise from what appear to be plain facts: we know some things  but not others; we are sometimes conscious; one's uses of the first-person singular pronoun refer to something; things exist and some of these things move and they couldn't move if there weren't time, and some of the moving things causes changes in other things, and there couldn't be change unless things had different properties at different times . . . .  And so on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now it is notorious that philosophers disagree about the answers to these questions.  For example, some say that propositional knowledge is justified true belief, which implies that knowledge includes belief, while others maintain that knowledge excludes belief:  if a person knows that p, then he does not<\/em> believe that p. Still others maintain that knowledge is consistent with disbelief: some of the things people know are not believed by them.  All three positions have been represented by competent practitioners.  But the contending parties, while agreeing that there is propositional knowledge, cannot agree on what it is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Or consider causation.  Philosophers who agree that some of the event sequences in the world are causal and even agree on what causes what, cannot agree on what causation is: there are regularity theories, transfer theories, counterfactual theoris, nomological theories and others.  <\/span><\/p>\n

But you haven't fathomed the depth of philosophical disagreement until you appreciate that the disagreement goes far deeper than perennial disagreement about the answers to questions like the foregoing.  For questions of the form What is the nature of X?<\/em> typically presuppose the existence of X.  When one asks what properties are one typically presupposes that there are some.   For example, what motivates my question about properties might be my encounter with the blueness of my coffee cup.  One cannot ask what causation is unless one has encountered instances of it.  And it is spectacularly obvious that if nothing existed, then there would be nothing to ask about and no one to ask the question, What is existence?<\/span><\/p>\n

The truly awful and abysmal depth of philosophical disagreement is first descried<\/a> when you appreciate that philosophers sometimes disagree about the very existence of what they ask about.<\/span><\/p>\n

To the outsider it might appear that certain of these denials are unserious or sophistical or just plain crazy.  Perhaps some of them are.  But others are motivated and argued.  Some philosophers, for example, deny that there are selves.  They have arguments.  Here is one:  (i) Only that which can be singled out in experience can be rightly said to exist; (ii) the self cannot be singled out in experience; ergo, etc.  I don't buy the argument, but it has some plausibility, and some philosophers swear by it, philosophers who are neither unserious nor sophistical nor crazy. <\/span><\/p>\n

Here is another eliminativist argument that convinces some competent practioners:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. If beliefs are anything, then they are brain states;<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Beliefs exhibit original intentionality;<\/span><\/p>\n

3. No physical state, and thus no brain state, exhibits original intentionality;<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore <\/span><\/p>\n

4. There are no beliefs. <\/span><\/p>\n

I reject this argument by rejecting (1).  I would run the argument in reverse, arguing from the negation of (4) to the negation of (1) via (2) and (3).  But that's not my present point.  My point is to illustrate the depth of philosophical disagreement.   <\/span><\/p>\n

If you deny that there is consciousness, then I will show you the door: you are either stupid or unserious or a sophist or crazy or something equally distasteful.  For consciousness is immediately given.  You experience consciousness by feeling pain or seeing red.  But if you deny that there are beliefs, I will be more respectful.  I occurrently believe that my wife is now at a movie.  But is the belief-state (which is distinct from its content) an introspectible item, a phenomenological datum, in the way a sensory quale<\/em> is?  No.  Do I introspect my self as in the state of belief?  No: the self does not appear to introspection, hence it does not appear in this state or that.    What appears phenomenologically is only the content: that my wife is at the movies.  One goes beyond the given if one maintains that beliefs are mental states.  (For details, see An Argument for Mental Acts<\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

So the eliminativist about beliefs as mental states cannot be as easily given the boot as the consciousness denier.<\/span><\/p>\n

My present theme is the misery of philosophy.  As one my aphorisms has it, "Philosophy is magnificent in aspiration, but miserable in execution."  The magnificence, however, cannot be denied.  For our sinking into the abyss of interminable disagreement is the night side of our noble quest for the light of truth, a light that philosophy strives after, but apparently cannot attain by its own efforts. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/span><\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Has Even One Philosophical Problem Ever Been Solved?<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of the questions that philosophers ask have the form, What is (the nature of) X?  What is knowledge? What is consciousness?  What is the self?  What is free will? What is causation?  What are properties?  What is motion? Time? Existence? . . . These are typical philosophical questions that arise from what appear to … Continue reading “On the Abysmal Depth of Philosophical Disagreement”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metaphilosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}