Philosophy for beginners - Resources http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/ Thu, 17 May 2012 08:27:25 +0000 43200 Introductory essays on many aspects of philosophy. 9. Political Philosophy http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/9-political-philosophy-r81 Paul Newall (2005)

In this article we'll discuss Political Philosophy, from what we mean by the term and what it's good for, through some historical ideas and perspectives, to the common divisions employed today. We'll also consider some of the philosophical issues behind politics, including the approaches used or assumed before we even get to arguing which party is dragging us to hell in a hand cart quickest.

What is Political Philosophy?

There are many questions studied by political philosophy that come up so often that we hardly notice that philosophy is involved at all when considering them. What should be the relationship between individuals and society? What are the limits of freedom? Is freedom of speech a good idea, or freedom of action between consenting adults? When may government act against the will of a citizen, and when should a citizen act against his or her government? What is the purpose of government? What characterises a good government? And so on. Not everyone is interested in these things, of course, but they'll be answered in one way or another—affecting us all. Everyone has a political philosophy, we could say, whether it is thought out in detail or not.

Political Philosophy is the study of these and other matters, more generally the first—the relationship between individuals and society. Sometimes the subject is nicely encapsulated in the question "how are we to live?" That is: given that few people live entirely alone, we may ask how best to govern our interactions. What responsibilities do we have to each other? Can we do as we please? Is society more important than the individuals that make it up? Political philosophy doesn't exist in a vacuum, though; the answers we might give will depend in turn on our ethical ideas, as well as what kind of world we think we live in and what we may consider the purpose of our time here, if any.

Historical considerations

There have been so many political theorists and theories over the years that we cannot hope to cover them all here. Instead we'll look at a few representative and important notions that vexed wiseacres of the past.

When kings enjoyed absolute (or near-absolute) rule and used their positions of authority to dress like girls and sleep with their sisters, a major concern was how to check or limit the power of sovereigns. It could be a good thing to have someone above or beyond the law to ensure that everyone else was held accountable for their actions, but quis custiodet ipsos custiodes? That is, who guards the guardians themselves? It was realised that power could corrupt those who wield it and hence that there should be a means of ensuring it did not, or at least minimising the possibility of abuse.

A way to address this (and other abuses) was to advocate the rule of law, not of men. In that case, it would not merely be left to the whim of a king or magistrate to do as they pleased; instead, they would be accountable to laws—a well-known contribution being the Magna Carta. One benefit of codifying expected conduct was that it would show clearly when violations had occurred and hence the contempt of the ruler for the ruled. Some thinkers suggested that any form of government could only exist with the consent of the governed, so even kings realised that they would have to regulate their behaviour according to law or potentially lose their heads.

It is interesting to inquire how societies developed in the first place. One model proposed that men exist in a state of nature until they decide to join together based on the greater productivity of the division of labour; that is, more can be accomplished together than by individuals acting alone. In order to secure such an arrangement, it would be necessary to develop some form of agreement whereby people respect each other's person and (perhaps) property to improve their lot through co-operation—a kind of social contract. Another possibility mooted is that the political apparatus—rather than the society itself—is the result of the conquest of one group by another.

A contrast could also be made between the desire to formulate a civil law or constitution—defining and demarcating the nature and scope of government and the rights to be enjoyed by people living under it—and the practice of amending laws and societal arrangements on a case-by-case basis, as some countries did according to common law. More generally, an important question was (and still is): can we achieve the benefits of setting down rules to describe what will and will not be acceptable in relations between people while at the same time taking into account the ever-changing content of and influences on those relations?

A final issue to look at here is the understanding of what makes a society or political circumstance good or bad. Is strong state control important to safeguard the people, or is that government best which governs least? What middle ground may be found?

Types of Freedom

What do we mean by freedom? In a famous lecture of 1958, Isaiah Berlin proposed that freedom could be understood in two senses: positive and negative. By negative freedom, he meant freedom from intervention; while positive freedom is the freedom to do something. In the first case we are unfree insofar as other people can prevent us from doing what we otherwise might want to, while in the latter we are unfree insofar as the opportunity exists to do something but we lack the capacity to achieve it.

The best way to understand and criticise these conceptions is by examples. Negative freedom, then, would be leaving consenting adults to do as they please in the privacy of their own homes; that is, they would be free from any intervention from government (or anyone else, for that matter) since their activities are no-one else's business. They would be unfree in this sense if, say, a law had been passed making homosexuality illegal even in these circumstances. Notice that we would be unfree in this context even if we are not homosexual, or prefer to watch the rugby on a particular day; the machinations of government have restricted our freedom, whether we choose to exercise it or not.

Another example would be an unscrupulous landowner blocking access to a public right-of-way. This would be another restriction of our negative freedom because we could otherwise take a stroll and muse on whether philosophy makes the sunset any prettier, whether or not (again) we actually decide to go or prefer to stay in and watch the rugby repeat.

Berlin explained negative freedom as follows:

Quote

The extent of a man's negative liberty is, as it were, a function of what doors, and how many are open to him; upon what prospects they open; and how open they are.

Thus we see that if certain of these doors are closed to us—perhaps because of our sex, religious opinions, colour, and so on—then our negative freedom is the less. A door is not closed to us if there is no way we could actually go through it: for instance, if door 1 is marked "fly to the North Pole with the sole aid of a red cape", our freedom is not restricted by its barring because we do not appear to be able to fly. Note that this negative sense of freedom is what people often mean when they use the word.

Moving on to positive freedom, Berlin described it in these terms:

Quote

The 'positive' sense of the word '[freedom]' derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master. I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. [...] I wish, above all, to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for his choices and able to explain them by reference to his own ideas and purposes.

It could be, then, that we want to master philosophy but there is just too much rugby to watch; that would mean that our inability to discipline ourselves and stick to the task at hand that we want to complete means we are not our own master. Any similar circumstances where we feel let down by being unable to attend to a goal because other desires that we cannot control get in the way (sometimes people refer to a distinction between their "higher" and "lower" selves in this regard) would represent a restriction of our positive freedom.

A lack of freedom in the positive sense is thus associated with a disparity between what we truly want and what we actually end up with, thanks to a failure to become our own master. Berlin went on to discuss the history of these two concepts of freedom and noted that in the past the positive sense has led to forms of oppression and tyranny more often than the negative, calling this the misuse of positive freedom. The argument runs as follows:

First it is noticed that there is a difference between the higher and lower selves that may make sense to those afflicted. Presently, though, groups with some form of political power may decide that they know what represents higher and lower better than particular individuals and take it upon themselves to insist upon definitions and impose them on those who disagree. It does no good to complain that in fact we want something other than what we are told we want because this is the result of our lower selves opposing what is actually good for us, and so on—a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even if we fight with every fibre of our being against the imposition of the better or more reasonable idea, this still only represents our lower selves struggling; the truth is that forcing us to think otherwise is going to help us in the long run and hence intervention is not only justified, but in our best interest; in the long run, we will learn to appreciate what has been done for our benefit.

Berlin's survey of the history of ideas suggested to him that positive freedom had been abused more than negative, but there are criticisms that can still be made of the latter. For example, it could be that medical care is available to everyone irrespective of any distinctions and hence people are free to use it; however, if such care is prohibitively expensive, this freedom is beneficial to only a few. The others are not their own masters because even though the door to healthcare is open, they cannot go through it; the door is wide open and no one is blocking their path, but their financial situation prevents them. It may even be that these circumstances are no-one's fault, but the beggar still cannot go through even though he may have chosen to be a beggar and hence his negative freedom in this context is worthless.

Is there any way of reconciling the two or preventing the abuse of either? Berlin did not think so and considered the bringing together of the myriad goals people have to be an impossible task.

Methodologies

There are several ways we can approach political philosophy and they have an effect both on how we perceive problems and how we propose to solve them. A metaphysical decision is taken as to what to study, as well as an epistemological choice as to how to go about it. There are also ethical ideas that contribute, whether explicitly or as implicit assumptions.

Holism and Individualism

In the first case, then, we can distinguish between individualists and holists: a methodological individualist is concerned with the individuals that make up a society or group, while a methodological holist (also called collectivist) considers the whole greater than the sum of its various parts. Suppose, for example, we take a statement like "it would be good for society to do x"; to a methodological individualist, this would make no sense at all unless it was understood as "it would benefit the members of society if x was done".

What is the best way to approach political problems? The answer is not clear and it appears difficult to reduce either of these methodologies to the other. On the one hand, any ideas we have or decisions we take are going to effect individuals—not a collective noun like Danes (although some of the individuals may have the particular merit of being Danish); on the other, we might want to use such terms to describe trends or actions—especially since a general theory of how individuals behave would no longer be general, as well as being a tall order in any case.

The point at issue is whether a society (or any other grouping) is made up of its parts (the individuals) or greater than their sum. We can try to find explanations that refer to what individuals did, or groups did; perhaps more helpfully, though, we could use both approaches to see what they suggest.

Rationalism in political philosophy

Another (epistemological) question to consider is the extent to which reason is (or should be) involved in political philosophy. Should we search, for example, for an account of how we should behave that everyone would have to submit to, or do the sometimes irrational desires that people have get in the way? To what extent do people employ reason in their political (and other) thinking in any case? Are they instead more inclined to listen to their passions, their social groupings, cultural or religious ideas, and so on?

The difficulty for a reasoned political philosophy is thus to take note of all those apparently unreasonable things we do. Some thinkers have worried that too much theorising about how to construct a rational utopia could lead to forcing people into a framework that doesn't allow for the subtle or overt differences between them and hence to a form of tyranny. Others have pointed to the diverse ways of living that have developed throughout history all over the world and wondered if it is fair or meaningful to judge them from the point of view of only one of them—for example, the so-called Western way.

From Berlin's analysis, we could be concerned that if we suppose there to be only one correct manner of living—whatever it is—we might also be more inclined to support the idea of enforcing it on others, ostensibly for their own good. John Stuart Mill recognised this possibility and suggested that what he called "experiments in living" should be supported. In his work On Liberty, which we have already touched upon elsewhere in this series, Mill said:

Quote

As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so it is that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when anyone thinks fit to try them.

He justifies his position in the following way:

Quote

That mankind are not infallible; that their truths, for the most part, are only half-truths; that unity of opinion, unless resulting from the fullest and freest comparison of opposite opinions, is not desirable, and diversity not an evil, but a good, until mankind are much more capable than at present of recognizing all sides of the truth, are principles applicable to men's modes of action not less than to their opinions.

Here he is noting that one form of life (a rationalist utopia, perhaps) is only superior to others insofar as anyone was and is free to try another way and show by example whether it betters the former or not. This is quite a subtle point: consider, for example, the statement "it is better to live in England today than in Australia"—however we choose to define "better" (it could be by reference to drop goals). If we remove the second part—leaving "it is better to live in England"—then it no longer makes any sense: better than what? When we add the reference to Australia, it only supports the statement if we have some kind of information to go on; perhaps we lived there for a time, or know someone who has. Without performing the experiment of living there, though, we have no idea if it is better or not—a kind of certainty through ignorance. Even appealing to measures of some kind is based on the same thing.

According to Mill, then, it is only by testing a way of life against others that we can appreciate whether one is preferable to another for whatever purposes we might have. If, on the other hand, we believe that it is possible to find criteria by which to judge which experiment in living is superior that no-one can reasonably argue with, then we may after all be able to discuss utopia and bringing it to our world. These criteria, of course, are what have been argued over for many centuries.

Environmentalism

In much political discourse the question is the same one that we began with: what is (or should be) the relationship between individuals and society? However, recent work in ethics (along with older perspectives) has suggested that we should not leave our environment out of our considerations: what about the relationship between individuals and their world, or societies and the world that supports them? Perhaps we have obligations to our fellow humans, but do we have similar responsibilities to our environment?

Generally speaking, then, environmentalism invites us to take account of more than just human concerns when deciding on a political philosophy. We need to search for that arrangement of our affairs that is most beneficial to humans and those others areas that some thinkers consider to have rights or intrinsic value. The problem lies, of course, in just how to achieve that: is there a political system that can be adapted, and an economic one? Can the world remain largely as it is? Some environmentalists, for instance, have suggested that we need to return to a more basic form of existence—sometimes called "primitive", although it need not mean running around naked and clubbing each other. Critics say nothing of the kind is possible; adjusting to such a lifestyle would result in the deaths of very many people that can only be supported by our modern methods that are supposed to cause environmental issues in the first place.

Behind much of environmentalism lies the ethical work that treats of what rights animals and other non-human life have; this will be discussed in a later article.

The Harm Principle

Again in On Liberty, Mill suggested his famous Harm Principle in the following terms:

Quote

[T]he only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

Using Berlin's terminology, this is a negative conception of how free we should be. The principle states that we may do as we please as long as we do not harm anyone else. By way of example, then, we may get a tattoo if we choose to because it harms no-one else. If the strain of reading still more Holblingian prose gets too much, we could also take flight from a tall building. Although in both cases we do ourselves a (differing somewhat) measure of physical harm, no-one has the right to stop us; by the same token, the immorality or otherwise of our actions is no reason to step in either.

Although at first glance the principle may seem plausible and is similar to what many people have in mind when they think of how we should interact with each other, it is not difficult to draw out some criticisms. The main problem is what we mean by harm: where do we end and others start when we are considering the harm done by an action? Depending on what tattoo we get, for instance, we could cause a great deal of offence to some people and it is not at all obvious that this shouldn't count as harm. Alternatively, we would probably cause a lot of harm to our family and much strain on the members of the emergency services who have to pick what's left of us off the pavement after our swan dive, assuming that gravity applied on this occasion.

The general point is that it is not so easy to split the world up into discrete individuals who exist separate from one another; instead, every action, however small or apparently insignificant, has an effect of one kind or another. How are we to determine whether something harms someone else in any case, excepting by his or her own testimony? If someone says "all this philosophy is making my head hurt", who are we to say otherwise? Similarly, how do we decide which claims of harm are genuine and thus require action to prevent?

In spite of these difficulties, can we salvage anything from the harm principle? We can if we are not so concerned with concepts like harm standing up to close scrutiny and prefer instead to employ them on the basis of intersubjective agreement (that is, an agreement between those using the term as to what it means on different occasions, rather than a fixed definition), then we can say that an action causes harm by considering cases on their individual merits. When we propose to do something and someone else reports that it will (or later does) result in harming them, we can talk it over, investigate a little and decide if in this instance any harm has been caused, even if in the final analysis there may be some people who vehemently insist that it has and others that it hasn't. Thus a more charitable interpretation of the principle leads to something that can be used in everyday life, which is probably what Mill intended.

Political Philosophies

There are a wide variety of political philosophies, of which we can only consider a few here. Although many of them may be familiar, we can apply the concepts discussed above to them and perhaps see them in a new or different light. Below, then, we'll look at some of the philosophical aspects only. The standard division runs as follows:

Socialism

A great many political ideas may come under the broad banner of socialism, but generally speaking there is an economic decision that the ownership and planning the use of the means of production should be held centrally and publicly in some way, rather than privately. Often this is based on a critique of capitalism, but the idea is that the former method is more ethical or beneficial to people living under such arrangements. It is important to remember that not all socialists have a red hue and live under the beds of decent, right-thinking people.

There are degrees to which socialism is preferred to some form of market economy. Given the failure of some attempts to control economies centrally, some have instead opted to allow a market to operate while maintaining control of certain areas that may be seen as fundamental, such as health services, travel networks and so on.

The principle philosophical difficulty for socialism is how to distribute resources fairly. If we hope to give to people according to their needs, what do we mean by a need? How do we distinguish between true and false claims of need from people? Moreover, if we don't continue to impose controls on the distribution of these resources, wouldn't they eventually become unequally distributed?

In the face of such problems, it is often useful to ask what we're aiming at with a political philosophy: if the answer for socialism is a more just or fair world then even if these concepts prove impossible to attain, we may still choose to at least try.

Liberalism

A distinction is often made between modern and classical liberals, owing to the change in meaning that occurred during the nineteenth century. Before that time, liberalism was concerned with—as the word suggests—liberty; that is, providing for toleration of ideas and ways of life, as well as granting as much freedom as possible. This was a negative understanding of freedom, but more recently some liberals began to pay more attention to the notion of positive freedom and sought to provide for fairness and justice. By way of analogy, we could say that early liberals wanted to ensure a level playing field while their heirs wanted to see that everyone had the chance to get a game. Some classical liberals suggest that these latter are not liberals at all, since their plans call for intervention on the part of government.

Despite their differences, the liberal hope in general is to provide that form of government that best allows people to work towards their goals and adopt the form of life that they choose. What do we mean by "best" here, though? How do we provide the most level playing field when it seems that a purely negative conception of freedom is problematic, as we saw earlier? If we want everyone to get a game, it seems that some people will need more help than others. How much help should they be given before we are being unfair to others who could perhaps use the time and resources to excel or to address some other issue?

Conservatism

If it ain't broke, don't give it to Hugo—or so runs the ancient wisdom and any handbook to a modern appliance. Conservatives note that many of our political (and other) ideas have developed over time; those that didn't work or were no longer of any help tended to fall out of use on their own accord. As a result, they are generally reluctant to accept change for the sake of it and want to know why a new notion is going to be of benefit to us.

There are now—like all of these overview positions—very many variants of conservatism that disagree amongst themselves but similar criticisms made be found. It is not obvious that political institutions survive because they work or have proved their mettle over time; on the contrary, they may have been imposed on people in the first place or too few alternatives considered. How long should we give a new idea to establish itself before the conservative finds it worth defending? Conversely, how long should we wait if the idea is too important to delay?

Anarchism

Although often used in a pejorative sense, anarchism means a political system without a hierarchy—not a lawless free-for-all of Durdenesque proportions. That does not imply a complete lack of social structures, though; instead, people may voluntarily choose to live according to certain rules or ideas and may similarly choose to do otherwise at a later date.

Anarchists have the difficulty of determining which structures are natural and which are imposed, a fact which need not be readily apparent. There is also the question of security: how does the anarchist society protect itself against those states that do not share its ideas and would conquer or otherwise oppose it?

There are lots of forms of anarchism, of course—some more radical than others. The easiest way to learn the content and differences is to try the experiment of telling several of them that their ideas are ridiculous and then discovering rapidly that they are not.

Economic issues

Many of the issues in political philosophy now turn or are dependent in many ways upon economic analyses—the best way to provide and allocate resources being an example. Nevertheless, these may themselves have been influenced by political and philosophical ideas, so there is interdependence at play between them. To ignore either is problematic: we need to know the best way to achieve our aims, but we also have to decided what to aim for in the first place and what forms of solution we are inclined to accept.

In summary, political philosophy is central to everyone and effects our lives whether we like it or not, and whether we play a part or take an interest in political ideas or not. Asking questions of how we should interact with each other and our environment occurs in all cultures and at all times, and is probably far too important to leave to the politicians.

Dialogue the Sixth

The Scene: Our philosophical friends are back at table, where Steven is hoping to discuss more philosophy with Jennifer—touching on aesthetics a little, perhaps.

Jennifer: (To Trystyn...) Jeremy is up at the bar. (She motions with her head...)

Trystyn: (Looking...) Oh dear. (Someone waves at him from across the room and he is forced to smile weakly and wave back.)

Steven: Who's Jeremy?

Jennifer: I went to school with him. He's training to be a politician, apparently.

Steven: Training? How do you do that?

Trystyn: Just start talking and don't stop to catch a breath or a thought.

Anna: Here he comes now.

Steven: (Looking longingly at Jennifer...) What's his problem? Why can't this character leave us alone? We want to talk about philosophy, not politics. (He sighs dramatically.)

Anna: I'm not so sure there's a separation.

Trystyn: Let's find out... (Glancing up...) Hello, Jeremy.

Jeremy: Greetings to all. I spy potential voters.

Jennifer: What are you standing for?

Jeremy: Well, you haven't offered me a chair.

Steven: Look... we were kind of having a discussion...

Jeremy: (Extending a hand...) Well met, friend—and who might you be? Have you voted? (He pulls up a chair and sits down.)

Jennifer: This is Steven... and Anna; friends of ours. They're both studying at the physical sciences campus.

Steven: Voted for what?

Jeremy: A good question, Mr. Steven, and well asked: President of the Student's Union, of course. You'll have read my position paper, no doubt. The other candidates have all but conceded. I don't envy them—it was an impossible task. The gracious thing would be to bow out now.

Trystyn: Still honing the rhetoric, I see.

Jeremy: At least I know I can count on you to do the right thing, dear Trystyn. There are no sidelines when it comes to the issues facing students today.

Anna: What issues are they?

Jeremy: Tuition fees, funding, interest on loans...

Anna: These are all financial matters...

Trystyn: Students are hard done by.

Jeremy: As a matter of fact, they are; in any case, students are the future of this country. We don't have time to worry about where the next meal is coming from—students need to be free to exercise their intellect as it takes them.

Trystyn: You can see that there are a lot of poor students out drinking tonight.

Steven: (Quietly) Please leave.

Anna: I don't understand. Why should we be free to do that? Don't we have responsibilities to the people paying for our education, or providing the opportunity for us to have one with their taxes?

Jeremy: Nonsense. Students are the future.

Jennifer: You already said that. How about addressing Anna's point? Students aren't a class of superior beings, to be supported by the underlings. If they want financial assistance with their studies then they have responsibilities to those paying.

Anna: What do you mean by freedom in this context anyway? Why should we be free to waste taxpayers money on useless courses?

Jeremy: Yikes! More philosophy... (He looks at Trystyn.)

Jennifer: These are philosophical questions because you bandy around concepts like freedom without any understanding of them, and political because they concern the interactions between people and society. If you want votes then you'll have to address them.

Steven: Or you could just leave... (He is looking at Jennifer.)

Jeremy: Of course I've thought about them, but we need action—not mere words. Students want a fair deal.

Anna: What's a fair deal? What makes a deal unfair?

Jennifer: You haven't answered Anna's question about freedom.

Jeremy: (To Trystyn...) Help me out.

Trystyn: You should know better.

Steven: I heard the couple at the next table talking about voting...

Jeremy: Look—students need to be free from interference—whether it be financial intrusion or some moralistic nonsense. We all know what I'm talking about.

Anna: Financial intrusion?

Jeremy: Some people are suggesting that we should pay for our education—all of it.

Trystyn: It's preposterous...

Jeremy: Exactly! (He rubs his hands together and appears to be ready to launch into a monologue.)

Jennifer: What moralistic nonsense?

Jeremy: Eh? The point is that students must be free of any interference. Would you want anyone telling you what you can or can't study?

Anna: Suppose that we have this freedom you're talking about—what then? It doesn't mean we'll achieve anything; in fact, if we can do as we please then probably many of us will do as little as possible and come out with a qualification all the same.

Jennifer: How can you ensure that removing any restrictions will lead to a positive result?

Trystyn: Instead of leading to the bar...

Jeremy: This is just talk. I don't see how this philosophical mumbo-jumbo has any point at all.

Steven: I guess you could leave, then.

Anna: What about some positive incentives for us to get the most out of our time? Staying in bed all day is just a waste of time and money.

Jennifer: Perhaps paying for our education might prompt us to take an interest in getting more from our time? The removal of restrictions alone doesn't imply that studies will go any better for us.

Anna: It seems just as plausible as your "students save the world and make it home in time for tea" notion that allowing students as much money as they like won't have any positive effect at all.

Jennifer: You haven't answered the other point yet, either. What is the relationship between students and the rest of society, or what should it be? You seem to be taking us in splendid isolation, but we have obligations like everyone else. What's your position on this?

Trystyn: Perhaps this is just more talk?

Jeremy: It is indeed. While you all sit around musing, someone has to act to help people.

Anna: You don't get it, do you? Acting without giving your ideas a basic critique is going to leave you acting on bad advice or achieving the opposite of what you want. There's no separation between thought and action anyway: we act because of what we think and we amend what we think as a result of our actions.

Jennifer: Meaning there's more to politics than just rhetoric. Relying on people not having enough time to vote against you is all you have, though.

Jeremy: So are you going to vote or not?

Steven: No.

Jeremy: It's as I thought. Consider this, though: for every principled objection or person critical of whatever ideas I or anyone else may have, there are others who vote and decide for you. Any of you can think what you like about me, but come the weekend you'll have a new president all the same. Are you going to have a say in it or not?

(Silence.)

Maybe I should leave now...

Steven: Well, I already said...

Jeremy: (To a girl walking past the table...) Excuse me, friend—have you voted? (He moves away.)

Curtain. Fin.]]> Sat, 12 Jun 2010 20:20:49 +0000 c6e19e830859f2cb9f7c8f8cacb8d2a6 21. Rhetoric http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/21-rhetoric-r38 Paul Newall (2005)

In this essay we look at rhetoric, introducing the subject and some of its traditional divisions before providing a guide to common rhetorical figures and their uses. As we progress, we will see why rhetoric is of crucial importance in understanding philosophy and indeed any area of inquiry.

What is Rhetoric?

There have been many different definitions of rhetoric over its long history, which stretches back to the Ancient Greeks and Romans in particular. However, it is generally understood as the study of writing and speaking effectively; that is, to appreciate how language is at work when we write or speak it and employ any lessons learned in making our own writing and speaking better. What we mean by "better" is itself up for debate, of course, and it is here that the negative conception of rhetoric comes into play - that of rhetoric as the art of persuasion, where convincing others is seen as the hand-waving and sophistry that is used in place of reasoned argument.

This distinction between content and form - what is said and how we say it - was emphasised by Aristotle as logos and lexis, or what is communicated and how respectively. Ultimately, though, this distinction proved untenable, based on a view of language as little more than the means by which we share our thoughts and failing to take into account the inseparability of ideas and the language used to express them. Indeed, how we say things is precisely the way in which we ensure that our desired meaning has been transmitted to others, so there can be no passing on of ideas without also taking into account lexis.

The Divisions of Rhetoric

Rhetoric has been studied for very many years as a result of its crucial importance, and a number of divisions have been made. The first was a tripartite distinction between the appeals that are possible when speaking or writing, namely:

  • Logos, or the appeal to reason;
  • Pathos, or the appeal to emotion; and
  • Ethos, or the appeal to character.
Notice that here we can immediately see why the complaint that an argument is "mere rhetoric" is misguided: an argument can contain more or less reasoning and a lot or little emotive language, but both are rhetoric intended to convince. For ethos, Aristotle considered an appeal to character to be any attempt on the part of the speaker or writer to establish his or her knowledge of the subject under discussion and their benevolence towards the audience, both providing credibility for what would follow.

This brings us to the next division, also three-way, of rhetoric in the larger sense. We distinguish between:

  • Kairos, or the occasions for speech;
  • Audience, or who will hear or read it; and
  • Decorum, or fitting words and subject together.
Kairos includes considerations like the contexts for a speech or piece of writing, while audience looks at where a discourse may take place. Traditionally oratory was split again into three: judicial (or forensic), deliberative (or legislative) and epideictic (or ceremonial). Different requirements like these would and do occasion different rhetorical approaches. Decorum, lastly, deals with making appropriate use of rhetoric, depending on both kairos and audience.

There were also five canons of rhetoric:

  • Invention, or coming up with something to say in the first place;
  • Arrangement, or the order of a discourse;
  • Style, or how it is said;
  • Memory, or how the orator recalls information; and
  • Delivery, or the way in which the discourse in performed.
Some of these are straightforward but others are quite subtle. Arrangement, for example, involved the study of how to put together a speech of piece of writing. Should we start with the conclusion or only give it at the close? Do we provide counterarguments separately or include them in the main body of our own argument? Do we need to set the scene, as it were, or should the discussion be formal and move straight to the meat of it? And so on. Likewise memory included not just the powers of recollection of the speaker (after all, do we use notes or try to remember all the content, which often looks much more impressive?), but also estimates of how much the audience would be able to keep in mind. Is it necessary to point listeners to remarks made earlier, for instance, or can we assume they would recall them unaided? When in the discourse should reminders be placed? And so on again. Lastly, the delivery of a speech has a great deal to do with its reception, as anyone familiar with comedians will know. Does a situation call for a serious approach, or would some jokes be welcome? Will a dead-pan voice work or should stress and emphasis be placed on words, phrases and particular ideas? If so, which and when?

All these things have their role to play in speaking and writing, hence the importance of the study and rhetoric. For our purposes, rhetoric is involved in philosophical arguments and discussion just as it is inevitable in all other areas, as we said. With that in mind, we can now analyse specific rhetorical devices that have occurred often enough that their use and effect is well understood.

A Guide to Rhetorical Devices

In no particular order, the following guide gives copious instances of rhetorical devices at work and attempts to explain both how they work and why we should be interested. By the end we should have increased our ability to spot them in the speech or writing or others and hence determine how well they have be employed, as well as learning how to use them ourselves.

Expletives

We tend to think of expletives as synonymous with swear words but the latter are just one example of this rhetorical device. An expletive is a word or short phrase that we use to lend emphasis to words on either side of it. Compare these two sentences, for example:

  • What we find is that the new tax law is fundamentally unjust.
  • What we find, then, is that the new tax law is fundamentally unjust.
Both impart the same information but notice that the expletive in the second (the word "then") signals to the reader that a summation of prior discussion is coming, or that a conclusion is to be given. The contrast is even more apparent if we speak them aloud: in the second, again, the expletive provides the emphasis and actually forces us to slow down as we say the words, providing a cue for any listener to note that the important point has been reached.

Sometimes an expletive can occur at the start of a sentence:

  • In brief, you should be more careful.
On other occasions, although less often, it can be placed at the end:

  • The result was to be expected, of course.
In both the expletive adds a power to the statements that would otherwise be lacking (to test this, try repeating them aloud as before). The apparently superfluous "of course" in the second makes the statement emphatic and suggests to the listener or reader that it was so straightforward as to hardly be worth investigating, while the first lets us know that a précis is to follow.

Expletives are typically used in printed dialogue so often that we barely notice:

  • "What I meant", he said, "was that you should do something about it."
If we experiment with the placement of the expletive we can see how easy it is to ruin the effect, or even make the line difficult to read at all:

  • "What I meant was that", he said, "you should do something about it."
  • "What I", he said, "meant was that you should do something about it."
  • "What I meant was that you should", he said, "do something about it."
And so on. Once we understand how expletives work and how to use them, we can begin to spot them everywhere - in your humble narrator's musings, for example. We should expect to find them whenever a writer is trying to lead us through a chain of reasoning, say, but perhaps be more wary when we observe them in a political speech.

Similes, Analogies and Metaphors

One of the most familiar devices in rhetoric, a simile involves comparing two things that share a resemblance in at least one way - usually in vividly descriptive terms:

  • Their passing cut through the defence like a rapier.
  • Her smile was like sunshine, warming me to the core.
  • He was as silent as a church mouse.
  • As the rock stands fast, so was his will resolved.
There are so many examples of similes that it would be impossible to list them all here, but they often involve words such as "like", "as" or "does", and their negations. The danger is using them is that sometimes the comparison may not be close enough or accurate at all:

  • We need academic consensus like the very air we breathe.
  • As the crusaders were shackled and bound, so are the guardians of the freedom of speech today.
Emotive similes can have a considerable effect but overdoing them can result in incredulity, especially when images of warfare or a struggle against oppression are invoked. They are closely related to analogies (and indeed these may be employed together), which also invite a comparison but use it to explain a difficult concept or idea by reference to a simpler one:

  • The man who keeps silent in the face of tyranny is as guilty as him who notices a fire and fails to raise the alarm.
The difficulty to be avoided, however, is offering false analogies, which can be fallacious. Nevertheless, a speaker or writing hoping to sway opinion may resort to these and hence the question we must ask ourselves is: are the two (or more) things compared actually analogous?

When instead we believe that two situations are so close as to be identical, we can appeal to metaphors:

  • The lack of subtlety is this discussion is killing all possibility of compromise.
  • This debate is a war and we must use all weapons at our disposal.
  • Nature is beautiful to behold but seldom gives up her secrets easily. She must be wooed and approached with caution and reverence.
Like similes and analogies, metaphors are very common but the choice of terms has important consequences for how they will be understood by listeners or readers. For example, consider the effect of these alternatives:

  • This silly idea is becoming more popular.
  • This silly idea is starting to infect public opinion.
  • This silly idea has become an infestation.
  • This silly idea is a cancer on our society.
The implications for action here differ in strength and the emotive appeal of describing ideas as diseases is one that many writers have relied upon. However, the language used often has far more to do with the opinions of the author than the reality of the situation. Thus while selecting an appropriate metaphor (or analogy or simile) requires careful consideration, we also need to ask whether those chosen by others are accurate to their purpose or not.

Other forms of metaphor include metonymy and personification. The first involves a metaphor where the comparison is with something associated with but not identical to the target of discussion:

  • The crown brought the prosecution against her.
  • The state cares little for my concerns.
Plainly no prosecutions are brought against people by the kind of crown a monarch would wear; instead "the crown" is understood it its wider role as synonymous with the workings of government. Similarly, we appreciate that "the state" is not really a person who does or does not care but a metaphor for what we mean.

Personification, on the other hand, is where we ascribe human characteristics to objects or situations (or even animals, which is typically called anthropomorphism):

  • The legislation is fighting me on this issue.
  • This steak is still kicking.
  • That tackle was unforgiving.
  • I've known more trustworthy cats than people, alas.
  • Truth is no respecter of hopes.
  • Even the very air around me cried out in protest.
Over doing this can result in strained descriptions, of course, but personification allows us to recast a potentially difficult idea in human terms and hence grasp it more easily. Even though it may make no sense in actuality to refer to the sea as a fickle master, say, those with minimal experience of maritime conditions will easily understand what is meant.

Hyperbole

Sometimes we overstate things for rhetorical effect:

  • There were millions of people at the bus stop today.
  • It took me forever to finish the essay.
  • This political measure will mean the end of civilisation as we know it.
This intentional exaggeration is obviously not to be taken literally and is usually restricted in scope to one aspect of the sentence. Hyperbole is easily the most common rhetorical figure but can lose its impact if overdone. In particular, too much hyperbole can lead to readers or listeners not taking a piece seriously at all.

Understatement

The use of understatement is something that satirists have a mastery of, but as a rhetorical device we can use it to try to persuade someone by rewording a sentence in less offensive terms. For example, suppose we believe a person's idea to be in error and wish to point this out:

  • I think there may be some additional factors that you may not have accounted for.
  • Your analysis is far too simplistic.
  • No one will take such an idiotic theory seriously.
There are many other alternatives we could use, but consider that if we want to convince the person that they are mistaken then we need to pitch our objections accordingly. Perhaps the idea really is idiotic in our opinion and we wonder if the proponent is actually bipedal or has grazed his or her knuckles, but is saying as much likely to incline them to change their opinion? For the second suggestion, it may depend on who we are talking to: a friend, say, may welcome the criticism but a stranger may not appreciate his or her thought being called simplistic, even if it is. Some people might still take offence at the first version, but the determining influences include what we want to achieve and whom we are talking to or writing for. How likely is a person to listen to our critique if they suspect we are talking down to them or dismissing them?

Sadly there are others who like to indulge in invective, particularly since the advent of the Internet and the risk-free nature of much commentary (that is, we can say just about anything without fear of actual retaliation), and write for a specific audience of those who apparently enjoy the feeling of superiority that comes from joining a group that insults another for whatever reasons. Although the term rhetoric is often applied to such behaviour, in the negative sense we discussed above, this is more a psychological issue than a philosophical one.

Litotes

A litote is an understatement formed by the denial of an opposite. This sounds confusing but is actually quite straightforward and a common rhetorical device. For example:

  • Performances like that from the All Blacks are not uncommon.
Here "not uncommon" denies "uncommon" and therefore implies the opposite - "common". However, compare this with the plainer version:

  • Performances like that from the All Blacks are common.
Although this imparts the same information, there is no understatement - it just reports the situation, and no more. On the other hand, the litote in the first suggests that more could be said and that by describing the performances as "common" we were actually understating the matter somewhat.

Questions

The use of questions can take several forms, with different effects depending on what the writer or speaker wishes to achieve. Consider this example:

  • What of the possibility that social factors are to blame for the collapse? This criticism is misguided because...
Here a question is asked and then answered, which can have several benefits: on the one hand, it allows us to raise issues that the reader or listener may have in mind - anticipating objections, for instance; on the other, we can maintain interest in the discussion and keep the attention of readers and/or listeners with well-placed queries. This latter is a technique teachers often use, since by posing a question and pausing before nominating someone to answer, all the students have to think about it in case they are the one eventually asked. This device is called hypophora.

Some other possible uses include the following:

  • How can we address the economic difficulties in which we find ourselves? Firstly, we can look to...
  • What are the consequences of such an approach to history? There are several, of which the most important is...
In the first hypophora is used to change the scope or direction of the discussion, while in the second it allows the setting out of implications that the reader or listener may not have considered or understood.

A question that is asked but deliberately does not require an answer is called rhetorical (or erotesis). It can be used to state the obvious, as it were:

  • What kind of person would bet against the sun rising tomorrow, though?
Alternatively, it can be employed to create a favourable or unfavourable impression of an idea or argument:

  • This kind of thinking requires that we give up our sovereignty. Is that what we want?
In examples like this the rhetorical question can help to gloss over an implication (giving up sovereignty, in this case) that may not follow; moving from a questionable claim to demanding a response ("is that what we want?") can put the reader or listener on the back foot, requiring that they deny a conclusion rather than argue that the reasoning to get to it was unsound.

Another possibility is that a rhetorical question needs no answer because the preceding discussion has already covered it:

  • You know that a vote for my opponent would cost you your job and that you cannot afford to be out of work. Will you support him, then?
A potential problem with instances such as this, which is common in political debates, is that they can (deliberately or otherwise) simplify matters in an attempt to force the reader or listener to act in a specific way. For example:

  • Do you really want pseudoscience taught in science classes? Do you not care about our children's education at all? Do you want religion in the schools?
This kind of rhetorical device thus allows us to link a series of complex issues via loaded questions. Instead of inviting debate on what constitutes pseudoscience, the ends to which education should aim or state intervention in schooling, potential discussion is reduced to yes/no and either/or false dilemmas that strip away any subtlety. These tactics are increasingly common, unfortunately, but can be noted easily enough with practice.

Lastly, procatalepsis is when questions are asked and answered by the writer or speaker, usually by anticipating objections:

  • It is typically suggested that this team will lack the strength in midfield to cope with the opposition, but this neglects the experience gained in the recent tour against...
  • It is often thought that the only way to address poverty is via governmental initiatives. However, I would advocate a greater role for...
Possible counterarguments can be presented in their strongest form or as straw men; usually this depends on how charitable the writer or speaker is being to the ideas he or she is trying to improve on, and plainly a meaningful critique relies upon charity far more than a swift and flawed description offered just for knocking down.

Asyndetons and Polysyndetons

Consider the following sentence:

  • The All Blacks have power, grace, speed, strength.
Reading it, we might expect it to have the ending "speed and strength", but this conjunction ("and") is missing. It has the effect of making it seem that the list could have gone on. Another might be as follows:

  • I wasted my afternoon reading, writing, thinking, dreaming.
In like fashion, it almost forces us to skip through the sentence in expectation of more to come. These are examples of asyndetons, when conjunctions are left out to achieve this sense of diversity, or even add emphasis by what seems like an afterthought:

  • Spencer was a wizard, a master.
  • Spencer was a wizard and a master.
Of these two, the first conjures up (excuse the pun) an image of the writer's thought process, as though he or she is struggling to describe Spencer and settles on "wizard" before rethinking at the last moment and amplifying with "master".

The opposite of asyndetons are polysyndetons. This time instead of leaving out conjunctions they are all put in:

  • The All Blacks have power and grace and speed and strength.
Now the rhetorical effect is one of trying to put into a few words something that is far bigger and too complex to capture in a single sentence. The best place to look for examples of polysyndetons is the Bible, especially the King James version, but we can use it whenever trying to create the impression of describing or explaining something while barely scratching the surface.

Parallelism and Chiasmus

Consider the following sentence:

  • When the day is over and the deal is done, let me know.
Here we have a balanced structure, where the first part ("day is over") is paralleled by the second ("deal is done"). This is called parallelism and helps to show a reader or listener that the parts of a sentence have equal import. It can be used particularly to aid with longer, more complicated statements. For example:

  • Due to the speed of their passing; because of the lines of their running; owing to the pace of their attacks; and thanks to the structure of their defence, the All Blacks played beautifully again.
Here the similarity between the way each of the reasons is given allows us to recognise that they are parts of a list and keep a grip on where the sentence is going, even though it is long (and could be still longer).

The converse is chiasmus, sometimes called reverse parallelism. Instead of the parallel structure ("day over" and "deal done"), the latter is reversed:

  • It was a long day but the night was short.
The expected parallel ("long day" and "short night") is altered, with the effect that the emphasis is different. Compare:

  • It was a long day but a short night.
In the former it seems as though a specific contrast is being made, pointing to some significance about the night, while the latter reads rather flat. Chiasmus can be made more complex, involving many layers, and the question of when to use it in place of parallelism is often one of judging how a sentence feels or sounds.

Apophasis

Sometimes a writer or speaker will deliberately mention something while claiming not to:

  • Luckily we need not discuss my opponent's marital infidelities when evaluating his claim to hold the moral high ground.
  • I would call you a liar and a cheat if you weren't my best friend.
The allusions or references here are called apophasis (or sometimes occupatio) and involve bringing up an issue (usually a damaging one) while maintaining a pretence of ignoring it, with considerable rhetorical effect. We can notice immediately that the first instance is ad hominem tu quoque while both are intentionally disingenuous. Compare these examples:

  • I do not mean to imply that a policy of aggressive intervention should be pursued; rather, I advocate...
  • I'm sure I don't need to remind you, madam, that there is no smoking allowed on this aircraft.
Here the purpose is not to cast aspersions but to clarify: in the former, to explain exactly what is being argued; and in the latter, to gently call attention to a transgression without causing too much embarrassment. Both sets of examples are quite easy to spot but instances like the earlier pair are typically found in satires and are often fallacious.

Enthymemes

Consider these sentences:

  • Great teams need loyal players, which is why ours is always struggling.
  • Since she lost the case, she must have been guilty.
  • There are only two options available to us and we have seen that the first failed.
An enthymeme is an informal syllogism in which one of the premises or the conclusion is missing. In the above examples, the major and minor premises and conclusion respectively are left out. Enthymemes are used when the omissions are assumed to be both understood and accepted by the reader or listener, in which case they read as or sound gently understated when compared to a formal syllogism. When a missing premise is not agreed, however, they become unsound; or when the absent conclusion does not follow they turn into non sequiturs. When used skilfully is the wrong way (or right, depending on your perspective), they enable slight of hand in argument because faulty premises can be concealed behind enthymemes - without detection, too, if delivered quickly.

Metanoia

If we want to clarify or expand upon a statement, particularly to widen its scope, we can use metanoia (also called correctio):

  • Carter is already the best five-eighth of the modern era - no, of all time.
  • Your proposal will effect everyone is this area, or even the entire region.
  • You fail to realise the impact of these measures - or at least you have not considered the consequences in enough depth.
The additional information can read or sound like an afterthought or as part of the discussion depending on how this device is used. It may seem quite close to the slippery slope fallacy, but only the second case above is a possibility. When the speaker or writer seems to urge us into concluding more than is actually implied, or else moves from a moderate to a bold claim using metanoia, then we should be wary of this error in reasoning.

Aporia

A rhetorical device used to express uncertainty or irrelevance is aporia:

  • I am not convinced that the argument for gun ownership has yet been made in a credible form, but what is clear is that...
  • I have not been able to come to a decision about the new policy, since there seem to be good arguments both for and against it.
  • While I accept that my opponent has offered excellent criticisms of this proposal, this has no bearing on my own suggestions for...
As we can see from these examples, typically the doubt indicated is of a reserved form and can be employed to move a dialogue forward by admitting indecision or steering clear of areas with no bearing on it.

Hyperbatons

When writing or speech involves moving away from the expected word ordering, we say that hyperbatons are used. For example, delayed epithets involve placing an adjective after the noun it is describing:

  • His were motives indefinable.
Not all possibilities sound "right", though, and hence delayed epithets are a tricky device to use. Compare:

  • That was a movie good.
This is a matter of judgement: there is no difference between the two other than that one "works" while the other does not.

Another form of epithet is the divided, in which two adjectives are separated by the noun they describe:

  • It was a bloody war and brutal.
  • It needs a warmer month, less chilly.
Once again, this hyperbatonic style is a matter of feeling that we have the correct usage, since if overdone it can seem false, affected or needlessly poetic.

The last instance is parenthesis, in which another phrase or term is inserted parenthetically (hence the name) into a sentence:

  • My main concern - and this, at last, is the crux of the matter - is that this proposal does away with the final vestiges of personal responsibility.
  • There are times (this may be one of them) when excuses are just not enough.
These devices are, again, ones used extensively by your humble narrator. Notice, however, that there is a slight difference between the examples: the parentheses (or brackets) are slightly less pronounced as an interruption than the dashes. The latter do violence, as it were, to the flow of the discussion, halting it abruptly to make another, perhaps more important point, while the brackets suffice for short asides. The effect of either is even more dynamic and arresting in speech, since they give the impression of spontaneity - suddenly coming up with a new idea or objection that cannot wait. Often the speaker has actually been working towards such a statement but uses parenthesis to introduce it more dramatically.

Concluding Remarks

In summary, then, there is no such thing as "too much rhetoric". We can try to criticise a speaker or writer for including too much pathos at the expense of logos, or vice versa, but the effectiveness of a discourse depends on many other things such as location, audience and style. If a person fails to be convinced by our arguments, it is altogether too quick to assume them to be a textbook example of idiocy on rollerblades; instead, we may have misjudged any number of rhetorical aspects, including focusing too much on reasoning and not taking sufficient account of the many other facets of rhetoric. By familiarising ourselves with the many rhetorical devices we can come to understand why some speeches or pieces of writing persuade while others do not, as well as to notice when others try to use these same devices to influence us.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:58:30 +0000 7bcdf75ad237b8e02e301f4091fb6bc8 20. Epistemology 2 http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/20-epistemology-2-r37 Paul Newall (2005)

In our earlier discussion of epistemology we looked at what the term means, some basics of the historical development of the subject, the idea that knowledge could be defined as justified true belief and some problems with this, the problem of induction and some possible ways to come by knowledge. In this second instalment, we will expand on some of these areas and consider the problem of skepticism in particular as means to appreciate why epistemology is important, both in philosophy and everyday life.

The Problem of Skepticism

As we noted before, there are several problems in epistemology. We could identify the main ones as follows:

  • What can we know, if anything; and
  • How can we know it?
We can further divide the first into two questions: can we know anything at all and, if so, what can be known? Put this starkly, the answers seem obvious: we know plenty of things, and presume many of them before we can wonder about these issues in the first place. Indeed, this seems so commonsensical that doubting it can strike us as academic and/or pointless. Nevertheless, there were apparently plenty of straightforward notions we had in the past that turned out to be mistaken, so we can at least take a look at the matter.

Before we do so, of course, we need to at least have an understanding of what we mean by knowledge. The best known meaning, as we said, is justified true belief, and we considered some of its potential weaknesses. Notwithstanding these, the justification of beliefs has typically been the most important aspect of any claim to have knowledge. Suppose, for example, we take an ordinary belief:

  • I am reading this essay on my computer.
This is apparently quite straightforward, so how could we doubt it? There are times, however, when obvious beliefs turn out to be in error. In the past, for example, it was as plain that the Earth does not move as we now consider it to be that it does. What about optical illusions, too, or mirages and hallucinations? A common experience for most people, for instance, is seeing someone we know in the distance, only to find when we get closer that we were mistaken. Likewise, sometimes a bush or a tree can look like an animal or person at first glance. Another problem, often referred to by philosophers, is dreaming. We seem to have vivid dreams in which events that seem real turn out to not be when we wake up (although this basic story can become even more complicated when we ask how we know when we are awake and when we are dreaming). And so on.

If we wish to be skeptical, then, we can doubt the ostensibly ordinary belief in lots of ways. Perhaps we are dreaming the experience, or else hallucinating it? Notice that the response"if you're not sure, just reach out and touch the thing" is defeated by these possibilities. We could say that there are ways to test for both, such as by the traditional pinch, but why should this work when we can usually "feel" things in our dreams? We might claim that a good pinch has always sufficed before (the kind usually dispensed on the first of the month by overzealous people with good memories for dates), but why should what happened before continue to happen in the same way in future? (This is the problem of induction in one of its forms, of course.)

Can we know anything if we keep on in this fashion, always questioning what we claim to know when it appears to rest on other pieces of knowledge that can themselves be doubted, and so on forever? We seem to be trapped in an infinite regress, so how can we escape it? Historically there have been two main answers: we break out either via experience (the road taken by empiricism) or by our reason (the path of rationalism). Skeptics, in turn, have been critical of both. We will look at these after we consider some initial objections to skepticism itself.

Arguments against Skepticism

Why should we pay any attention to skepticism at all when it seems to run counter to what we assume on a day-to-day basis? There are several basic arguments against skepticism that are usually the first levelled against it.

Is skepticism self-refuting?

Having all these doubts about knowledge, we could just say "well, we can't know anything". Suppose we consider the proposition "nothing can be known", though: isn't it self-refuting? This is perhaps the oldest of charges against skepticism; namely, that it defeats itself. After all, if we know that nothing can be known then surely this is one thing that can be known, and hence skepticism is false?

There are two responses to this criticism. On the one hand, the skeptic can say that nothing can be known except that nothing can be known, which is remembered in Socrates famous dictum that he knew only that he knew nothing. This was sometimes called academic skepticism and probably seems like an evasive rejoinder, but it still works. If there is one piece of knowledge, though, then why not more? Although academic skepticism defeats the self-refuting problem, then, it raises the question of how we come to know that there is one and only one thing that can be known and can feel unsatisfactory.

The second possibility for the skeptic is to simply admit that even the claim "nothing can be known" can also not be known, which is consistent with his or her skepticism and again answers the difficulty. This is Pyrrhonian skepticism, named after its principle exponent. We now say that nothing can be known, including that nothing can be known. If we cannot show that this is the case, though, why should we be worried about it? The skeptic can answer that just as we prize our arguments to show that knowledge exists, we can equally well use similar arguments to show that it does not – so we use the tools of opponents of skepticism against them. This need not commit us to actually believing that arguments can establish knowledge, even though we use them, particularly if we use reductio ad absurdum tactics. Moreover, even if we reject total (or global) skepticism, it does not mean we are any closer to answering the problems associated with knowledge and our ordinary beliefs, as we considered above.

Lastly, the skeptic can use the theory of descriptions to rewrite the claim, as we discussed in our initial look at epistemology and, in more detail, in our investigation of analytic philosophy.

The impracticality of skepticism

Even if we accept that skepticism cannot be dismissed outright, is it not a highly inconvenient – if not downright impractical – position to hold? Suppose we have to make our way to the top floor of a building and are thoroughgoing skeptics. We could take the lift, but how do we know it will work? Shouldn't we climb up instead? Then again, how do we know climbing will work, or even that the building is there at all? What about when we want to get down again? Isn't jumping just as sensible an option as taking the lift or stairs, given that we don’t really know anything?

These are the kinds of questions that were and still are raised to skeptics, and they are usually intended to be reductios just like the ones skeptics use themselves. It seems like a ridiculous idea to jump rather than use the stairs, but the suggestion is that this kind of impractical (if not absurd) idea is what skepticism leads to. How can we answer it?

This is a difficult objection and few people have led consistently skeptical lives. It is said that Pyrrho did, and stories are told about him getting into all kinds of scrapes because of his refusal to "know" anything (usually he was rescued by his followers and – amazingly, perhaps – respected for his dependable behaviour). We would probably be skeptical ourselves, though, that he was truly consistent, since a decision to fall into a ditch is somewhat different from walking off a high cliff.

Those skeptics who were or are not quite like Pyrrho tend to say that they merely act in accordance with tradition and familiar patterns of conduct. In that case we try to avoid walking out in front of cars or not eating because we were taught these things as children before we began to think about skepticism. When we eat, then, it is not so much because we know that food or some form is required to sustain life but because we have fallen into the habit, or else because it tastes good and is enjoyable. After all, do we really involve knowledge when we go to a restaurant or make a sandwich? Opponents of skepticism would probably say that we do, since how do we know the sensations of eating will be the same as they were, that the food even exists at all or even that we should do as others (and we) have always done? A skeptic might say, in response, that we eat because our stomachs start to rumble and that we do not jump off buildings because we become afraid, not because of any claim to know anything about either. Why be afraid, though, unless we know what might result?

In more recent times these criticisms have been used against the idea that all notions are equally true. Nevertheless, notice again that even though these concerns may seem to count against skepticism about everything, they once again do not answer the problems we identified before we straightforwardly claiming to have knowledge. Not worrying ourselves about global skepticism does not mean that these problems go away, so we have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Is skepticism irrelevant?

If skepticism seems impractical and self-refuting, though, and only of concern to people analysing their knowledge claims in depth, why should we care about it at all? What relevance does it have to everyday life? The usual answer to this query is to say that skeptics do not form inquisitions (although this relies on a somewhat inaccurate conception of what the famous inquisitors actually did); that is, the effect of skepticism is to undermine confidence in certainties. People who are sure of themselves are sometimes keen to impose their ideas on others, but those who doubt are usually rather less determined – after all, what certainties would they advocate if they are not convinced that they really know anything? The same goes for events like wars, typically fought on behalf of ideals or political goals that were dogmatically held by their advocates. Although we could object that this is a simplistic understanding of why battles happen, especially since there are more factors involved, the principle involved is clear enough. In general, as Russell said, skepticism can help us avoid extreme positions.

Another way that skepticism is relevant, however, is when we consider the possibility of error. Suppose we cannot come by certain knowledge, as skeptics claims; how, then, can we explain the occurrence of mistakes? Theories of error seem to implicitly rely on dogmatism, since only those who believe we can know have to explain why we often miss the target. Skeptics, on the other hand, can just remark that of course we would expect errors, since we don’t really know in the first place.

The philosopher of science Karl Popper mocked what he called "conspiracy theories of error", in which the blame for mistakes is laid at the feet of people making them. If we know something, that is, and someone makes a blunder all the same, it must be due to their carelessness, refusal to face the facts or outright stupidity. We hear hints of this notion wherever someone declares that "ignorance is sin" or that we have no business dissenting from majority opinion. However, why should the thought of lots of people conspiring to make similar mistakes be any more plausible than skepticism?

Appearance and Reality

If we grant that skepticism is something worth discussing, we can return to our earlier example. How do we know that there is a computer in front of us (or paper if you printed this) on which we are reading this essay? The obvious answer is that we can prove it: we can see the computer and reach out and touch it – in short, we can rely on our senses. There are three major objections to their reliability, though – we might be deceived by:

  • Dreams;
  • Illusions; or
  • Hallucination.
There is an easy response to these: if our senses are functioning normally, then what we see, hear, touch, taste or smell is real; if not, we can be deceived. What we see in the latter event is just an appearance, not the reality behind it. This distinction was crucial in epistemology, but it gave rise to other problems. What is "normal" function, for example? How do we know that what the "normal" person sees is reality while the other possibilities are mere appearances? If we hallucinate, say, and see a goblin in the corner of the room muttering about whether or not he can trust his senses, we might bang our heads against the nearest wall and find that it disappears. However, why should the reality of the situation be determined by cranial trauma? After all, that there is no goblin in reality is precisely what we are supposed to be showing, not presuming it to do so and hence beg the question. Why should the experience that occurs least often be assumed to not be the reality? That we can interact with "reality" is no guide, since we do fine in our dreams. We can appeal to scientific explanations but these have epistemological issues of their own, as we have discussed elsewhere.

What all this means is that our commonsense or naïve form of empiricism is untenable. We cannot distinguish between true and false experiences solely on the basis of our senses, but need to use other knowledge to help us. The question is: where did this knowledge come from and how certain can we be of it? Francis Bacon’s solution to this problem was to try to look upon the world free of preconceptions, claiming that "the understanding must be completely cleared and freed" of them. Can this be done? Unfortunately for empiricism, this tabula rasa (or blank slate) approach cannot be achieved due to theory-ladenness.

The sense-datum theory of knowledge

As a result of the difficulties posed by the skeptics, philosophers interested in epistemology made a subtle move: instead of arguing that the sense could tell about reality, they claim that they provide us with knowledge of appearances. Notice what this seems to achieve: we couldn’t rely on our senses for accurate knowledge of reality, but surely what appears to them is – obviously – what appears to them and hence we have certain knowledge of these appearances, even if we can say nothing about the reality we suspect to be underlying them? After all, if we are only talking about how things appear to be, how can we err?

This means that our earlier example has to change to something like:

  • It appears that a computer exists, on which an essay may be found.
What this also does is resolve any contradiction between conflicting appearances. If we have an apparent hallucination that includes the goblin and another experience that suggests it wasn't real, the two are consistent with having certain knowledge of appearances:

  • It appears that now there is a goblin in the corner;
  • Now it appears that there is not.
These describe successive appearances and hence cannot be contradictory, so dreams, hallucinations and illusions are no longer the problems they were before. We can still make errors, of course, but now these are mistakes in interpreting the appearances rather than in the knowledge itself.

We can take a further step by making concrete these appearances so that they are experiences we are aware of:

  • I am having an experience of the appearance of a computer.
Although this may strike us as a clumsy way of expressing what is going on, it reifies the situation and makes no reference to the real existence of the computer or even being aware of it. This is helpful because it clears up many of the difficulties associated with skeptical arguments. If we say that we are aware of the appearance of the computer, for instance, this is not certain if there actually is no computer; but if we just say that we are having the experience of its appearance, this no longer depends on the existence of the computer at all. This is the sense-datum theory of knowledge, developed by Locke, Berkeley and Hume and persisting until its eventual defeat in the twentieth century. It holds that what we are aware of is not real objects but sense-datum in our minds that we experience, so we have:

  • I am experiencing a visual sense-datum of a computer.
Notice that this analysis is consistent with more recent scientific accounts of perception, wherein we "see" things because of light entering the retina and resulting in brain activity. As a result, the sense-datum theory seemed to be confirmed and to answer the objections of the skeptic.

There are some objections to this new account, however. Suppose, firstly, that we experience a sense-datum of a computer and then moments later experience another of a television – in brief, that we were mistaken about the former and later realised the error. This suggests that even though the knowledge of the computer was certain, it only lasted a short time. What is the use of a theory of knowledge that has an unspecified duration?

Secondly, when we first notice the computer there is a delay between the experience and the sense-datum report, even if it only takes as long as the lapse from sensing something to having the input processed by the brain. There is then another delay before we can say something about the experience. How can we be sure, then, that we have remembered the experience correctly between having it and commenting on it?

These may seem like splitting hairs, but a more important criticism is that this sense-datum theory avoids skepticism only at the price of accepting the distinction between appearance and reality, and conceding that we can only ever know the former. Can we get past this demarcation? Can we discover anything about reality via sense-data? We can if we adopt idealism, the view that only sense-data and the minds experiencing them exist. This deals immediately with the problem of skepticism but at the cost of the external world, which is why many philosophers and laymen alike have rejected it.

The Problem of Induction

We discussed reasoning from particular instances to general ones in our earlier look at epistemology so there is no need to repeat the issue here. Nevertheless, we can note the huge problem that induction poses for empiricism, wherein we are supposed to be deriving knowledge from our experiences. If we cannot reason in this way, are we not being irrational in claiming to know anything inductively?

One suggestion for avoiding these difficulties is to adopt induction as a basic principle if we want to reason at all. We cannot justify it, but we also cannot do without it. After all, if we try to imagine a situation in which we were refused to make any inductive inferences, it quickly becomes ridiculous – some might say the limit of skepticism. This almost leaves us caught between a rock and a hard place: induction can apparently not be justified, so we would be irrational to use; but if we do not we are crippled and cannot reason anyway, which is no less irrational a position to be in.

Rationalism Instead

Given these problems associated with empiricism, it should be little wonder that some thinkers either rejected it to begin with or looked elsewhere for a basis for knowledge. The alternative, of course, was rationalism. What knowledge of our world can we gain from reason alone?

Rationalists drew their inspiration from mathematics, looking to the way Euclid was apparently able to build an entire structure of proofs on the foundation of a few, apparently self-evident propositions, and in general the way mathematicians seemed to be able to arrive at certain knowledge in this way. Famous theorems like that being Pythagoras' name could be deduced in a straightforward fashion, and when we look back to the groundwork that is needed to get started then we find assumptions that look, on the face of it, to be self-evident.

Skeptics, however, were not convinced: what does self-evident mean? Who decides whether something is self-evident or not? After all, there were plenty of things about the empiricist approach that seemed obvious but later turned out to be far more complex. The rationalist can respond that there are plenty of propositions that people consider to be self-evident, but the skeptic wants to know why these provide us with knowledge – why, for instance, must something self-evident be true? What if it were false, in spite of how many consider it plain? Some rationalists replied that it is impossible for something self-evidently true to be false, but notice the subtle sleight-of-hand involved here: the rationalist has made truth a criterion of something being self-evident, but it was precisely the question of whether being self-evident implies truth that the skeptic was criticising, and hence this is unsatisfactory. Other rationalists appealed to the notion of an ideally rational being (much as some economists were to do later in developing their theories), but this is fraught with the same difficulties as the "normal" experiences of the empiricist we looked at above.

Descartes tried to find a way around these issues by using a method of systematic doubt, according to which he would try to doubt everything until he came upon certainties that could not possibly be question and hence would provide the bedrock for knowledge – arriving at his famous cogito ergo sum as a result. His general principle was given in part four of his Discourse on Method as follows:

Quote

I decided that I could take it as a general rule that the things we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true.


Descartes consider the possibility that he might be mistaken about this, though – that instead of a just God there might be an "evil genius" who constantly deceives him and causes his clear and distinct conceptions to be false. He tried to counter this by proving the existence of a true God who was not a deceiver and who would ensure that his faculties functioned correctly, but his argument was criticised as circular by Antoine Arnauld. Although there were other objections, Arnauld's was perhaps the most damaging: he noted that Descartes relied upon his criterion of truth (quoted above) to demonstrate that God existed, and then used the existence of this God to show that he could not be deceived by an evil genius and hence could rely on his conception of truth to show further truths, which seems to be circular reasoning. Arnauld could thus accept everything that Descartes argued subsequently but undercut the very basis for it to begin with.

There are other problems with Descartes' methodology, including a variant of the more general problems with rationalism that self-evidence is no guarantor of truth, but it is generally agreed that his epistemology ultimately failed. A subsequent attempt, far too deep and detailed to enter into here, was due to Kant. It is difficult to say exactly what Kant argued and held, since the interpretation of his writing is varied and still disputed, but he considered the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge (terms we discussed in our look at analytic philosophy, concluding in his Prolegomena (after much detailed investigation) that "nature and possible experience are the same", so that "the understanding does not draw its laws from nature, but prescribes them to nature".

Kant was particularly concerned to counter the work of Hume and thought that we would always fall prey to his arguments if we continued to conceive of the mind and its experiences as distinct. Instead, we should give up knowing anything about things-in-themselves (even though he accepted that this reality existed) and note that our minds are involved in organising our experience via categories, and hence that our knowledge is limited to things-as-they-are-experienced – or the realm of appearances again. The difference is that Kant’s philosophy, which he conceded was a form of idealism but argued strongly that this transcendental idealism was different from Berkeley's, falls victim to the same problems we identified before – except that Kant did not believe these were problems at all. He argued that the role of reason was and is only to give structure to our experience of reality, not to try to go beyond it. This appears to answer the skeptical objections we noted but to limit us in a way that Kant accepted but we might not. Kant was also not a complete rationalist and recognised that we gain many of our beliefs from experience, and hence his philosophy is often held to be a compromise between empiricism and rationalism.

Some of the synthetic a priori truths that Kant found, such as Newton's laws in physics, were (as we know realise) not the complete picture. Non-Euclidean geometries were elaborated by mathematicians like Gauss and Lobachevsky, which showed that the certainty of reasoning from self-evident propositions did not have the domain the rationalists had thought. In particular, they knocked over the rationalist argument that we could have synthetic a priori knowledge of the world on the basis of Euclidean geometry. Although this defeat of rationalism did not imply that empiricism was the victor in the quest for a secure epistemology, it led mathematicians to inquire into the nature of their own discipline and its foundation. Logicists like Frege and Russell tried to prove that mathematics could be derived from logical truths, but ultimately failed in their efforts; Platonists argued that mathematical abstractions like numbers really exist; and intuitionists like Brouwer hoped to start mathematics anew via intuitive proofs (hence the name). These are all the domain of the philosophy of mathematics and hence are beyond the scope of this discussion, unfortunately.

The Fallibilist alternative

The sense-datum theory of knowledge collapsed in large part due to theory-ladenness when it was advanced by N.R. Hanson, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, while rationalism struggled to cope with developments in science and mathematics. Is there no answer to skepticism, then? Philosophers, particularly philosophers of science, wondered if there was an alternative – one that differed from rationalism and empiricism while retaining their insights about how we reason.

The key to their efforts is to realise that all the preceding attempts to derive knowledge were based on searching for certainty, or justifications that could not be doubted. Instead of these, though, fallibilists (who sometimes refer to themselves as criticial rationalists or critical realists, depending on other slight differences) recognised skeptical objections that we cannot be sure of our knowledge and hence called it provisional. We can approach potential knowledge from two directions: we can try to justify a belief or we can criticise it. For the fallibilist, a belief that has withstood serious scrutiny (hence critical rationalism) is a reasonable one to hold as provisional knowledge. We might learn in future that further criticism shows it to be mistaken, but we can hold it for now. A belief that has not been criticised, on the other hand, has little value to the fallibilist and is not a reasonable one to hold.

Notice that this is not to say that a belief is justified if we have criticised it and failed to find any flaws; on the contrary, it just means that we are justified in believing it. Successfully standing up to scrutiny does not imply truth, not least since many beliefs in the past have met this criterion but still been rejected ultimately, but only that we are able to believe them to be true provisionally. This, then, is a fallible epistemology that does not fall victim to skepticism: the justified true belief account of knowledge is modified slightly so that the justification is not of the claim itself but that we are justified in believing it. Fallibilism also dodges the unreliability of the senses by accepting that we cannot use them to attain certainty, but only reasonable beliefs. This means that the fallibilist trusts his or her senses unless there is good reason to doubt them, again not insisting on certainty and conceding that mistakes are possible. Moreover, it is consistent with an evolutionary account of knowledge in that if our senses provided us with false information then we would expect this trait to be a disadvantage, whereas if the information were accurate then it would plainly be advantageous and hence be propagated via natural selection. However, this is potentially a circular argument in that evolutionary theory is itself justified by a fallibilist epistemology and hence cannot then be appealed to in order to justify this epistemology.

If fallibilism seems an improvement on both empiricism and rationalism, does it have any weaknesses of its own? Unfortunately, perhaps, it does. Why we should adopt fallibilism itself? As we have seen, it seems to withstand criticism quite well, so we can reasonably adopt it as a justified belief. However, this means we are using fallibilist standards to justify our usage of fallibilism as an epistemological standard – or arguing in a circle again. There does not appear to be any way around this: if we appeal non-fallibilistic justifications then fallibilism is incomplete and we are back where we started from. Some philosophers have responded that expecting a non-circular justification was too high a demand and we have to settle for less, but this leaves the fallibilist in a rather uncomfortable and – for some – unconvincing position.

Can we know anything?

We have seen, then, that epistemology is a deep and subtle area of philosophy with a long heritage. It starts from very basic certainties but finds that they collapse quickly under inspection. Many epistemological questions are still open but it is easy to see that they have not remained the same over the years as philosophers built upon the work of their predecessors and developed new objections or proposals. The advent of science has also had a considerable impact, which shows us that philosophy is not cut off from other areas of inquiry. Can we be sure of these things, though? Well, that's the point.


Dialogue the Sixteenth

The scene: Several months later, Trystyn and Steven are deep in conversation at Anna's place. She and Trystyn are now an item.

Steven: So why is this a big issue for anyone other than philosophers?

Trystyn: Well, tell me something you know and we’ll see.

Steven: (Loudly) Okay: I know that Anna is a better cook than you.

Anna: (From the kitchen) Thank you! You get extra!

Trystyn: Funny how you think with your stomach. (He winks) Anyway, how do you know that she is?

Steven: I've sampled the evidence, and let me tell you that it wasn’t always pretty. Your roast tastes like an offering to the god of charcoals.

Trystyn: Ah, you didn't say you'd become a believer…

Steven: Sure, but (raising his voice…) your cooking still doesn't compare to our host's.

Anna: (From the kitchen again) You can stay…

Trystyn: Okay, so you base your opinion on past experiences?

Steven: Unfortunately, yes.

Trystyn: Well, how do you know you remember the experiences accurately?

Steven: Oh, it's my own personal tragedy that I remember it all…

Trystyn: Heh. Still, you base your knowledge of my cooking on your memory of it. How do you know your recollections are accurate?

Steven: I suppose I could've embellished the details slightly due to the requirements of mocking you constantly.

Trystyn: And I'm not likely to forget that, eh? Or maybe you're letting one offering colour your thinking?

Steven: Do you have a particular one in mind? My money's on that roast.

Trystyn: (Ignoring him) Still, you can see the problem: how can we know that our memories are accurate?

Steven: I might have dreamt it, you mean?

Trystyn: That's a possibility.

Steven: Why would I dream that roast and not that you're a great cook?

Anna: (From the kitchen) He has a point…

Trystyn: (Ignoring them both) It's a basis of trials these days that so-called "eye-witness" testimony is generally unreliable. Let several people watch the same events unfold and they can give inconsistent accounts of what happened, even down to mutually exclusive interpretations.

Steven: Yeah, I read that somewhere.

Trystyn: So why is your memory a reliable guide?

Steven: I guess I could remember things not quite as they were, but still pretty close.

Trystyn: Ah, well that's the question: what can we say about these memories? Are they pretty close to reality? What relationship do they have to things as they really happened?

Steven: I heard something about this before. Next you're going to tell me we Kant know reality but have to be content with appearances.

Trystyn: What a wit. (He groans)

Anna: (Coming into the room, bearing coffee) I thought it was funny.

Steven: So we have to be content with the appearances – is that what you were going to say?

Trystyn: Well, that's what I was asking you. Are your memories a reliable guide to what happened? If not, what can we say about them?

Steven: I guess not. There’s always a distortion: events happen but I interpret them at the time, then forget about them. When I dredge them up again later I probably reinterpret whatever I can recall on the basis of what I'm currently thinking, too, so the pure events as it was is lost. (Trystyn nods) Even then I suppose I could've made mistakes.

Trystyn: How so?

Steven: Well, I'm assuming my senses are reporting the event to me accurately. Are they? If I’m drunk I might see things differently to a sober guy. I might be dreaming, like you said. I might be hallucinating, I suppose. Quite often I see your culinary exploits and imagine I've finally found the holy grail – something I can eat without holding my nose. (Anna laughs)

Trystyn: Many have searched for it but it was well hidden and is safe yet… (Everyone laughs; Steven spills coffee on himself)

Steven: (Cleaning himself off) Thanks for that. Anyway, the trouble is that I only have my senses to go on. If I can't rely on them then what am I supposed to do?

Trystyn: Well, notice that your senses can only deceive you if you're hoping to get at reality. If you're satisfied with appearances, or reality as it seems to you, then the problem disappears. Things get slightly more technical, of course, but it works. It's a heavy price to pay, though.

Anna: Because we give up on knowing anything about reality, which is what we mean when we talk about knowing something in the first place.

Steven: I guess it depends on what you're aiming for. Some physicists have said much the same thing: that we can never know reality, but only how it appears to us. Some even say that this is unavoidable, because when we perceive it we have to realise that we are involved in the very act of looking, not just passive observers.

Trystyn: That's probably a subject for another day.

Steven: Probably. (To Anna) So how come he gets you to do the cooking?

Anna: Skepticism only goes so far, you know. His cooking is awful.

(Curtain. Fin.)]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:56:04 +0000 5ea1649a31336092c05438df996a3e59 19. Metaphysics 2 http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/19-metaphysics-2-r36 Paul Newall (2005)

In this discussion we’ll look again at metaphysics, covering (in more depth) some of the same ground as the previous instalment but also considering some new aspects. In particular, we’ll study metaphysics insofar as it is the attempt to investigate Being – especially those categories into which philosophers have suggested everything that exists must fall. What are these categories, though? How do we distinguish between them? How should we characterise them? These are the kinds of questions we’ll examine, alongside classical and contemporary metaphysical problems.

Being

Since the Ancient Greeks, Being has not been considered the same as existence. The former was understood to include not just those things that exist but also the various categories that such a thing could have: being tired or being scared, for example. Perhaps the most famous treatment of Being was in the dispute between Parmenides and Heraclitus in Plato’s dialogues. According to the former (in Kenny’s translation):

Quote

What you can call and think must Being be
For Being can, and nothing cannot, be.

From here a simple argument with devastating consequences could be developed. Being had to be, by definition. Likewise, non-Being could not be. These agreed, what of change? If Being were to change, it would have to become non-Being – which cannot be. The conclusion had to be that there is no change. (A similar but later version of this argument would be used in theology: if there were a perfect being, such as God or the Absolute, how could He/it change? After all, a change from perfection would have to be to non-perfection.) We even find this problem in everyday life when asking someone “what are you thinking about?” and receiving the answer “oh, nothing”. It was relied upon by philosophers then and now asking about creation: how can nothing be? If we agree that it cannot, how can something come from nothing? Some, like Aristotle, relied on a version of this thinking to argue that the universe had to be eternal and uncreated.

These were – and remain – difficult arguments to counter. The basis of it all, Being as fixed, was opposed by Parmenides contemporary Heraclitus, who insisted to the contrary that the fundamental nature of the universe was change: everything is forever in flux. This was famously stated as “you cannot step into the same river twice”. These two positions formed a metaphysical battleground for subsequent philosophers. Plato tried to reconcile them, firstly by separating the universe into a realm of ideas which was timeless (or Parmenidian) and a realm of the senses which was in flux (or Heraclitan). This was the Theory of Ideas, subject to critique in the middle dialogue called Parmenides and separating the ideal (“Good”, for example) from its approximations in the intelligible world (such as conduct we call “good”). It was eventually superseded by the theory of forms, found in the Sophist, which added to Being four additional forms: same, difference, motion and rest. The second of these allowed the possibility of avoiding Parmenides metaphysical straightjacket: when we talk of that which is not, we do not speak of non-Being but instead something that differs from what is. The collection of all “non-x”s, such as non-righteous, non-circular, and so on, give us non-Being, which is (by construction) just as real as the set making up Being. This clever solution nevertheless provided ample scope for continued study of Being, not the least of which was the status of universals.

The Problem of Universals

Suppose we take a proposition like the following:

  • Hugo is wise. (1)
Suppose further that (1) is true. Recalling our previous discussion, the subject of (1) is “Hugo” and the predicate is “wise”. Moreover, we say that “Hugo” refers to something: the subject, Hugo. What about “wise”? Does it refer to anything and, if so, what?

Universals

Although there are many species, the basic contention of metaphysical realism is that the predicate “wise” also refers. In other words, the truth of (1) results from a match between a linguistic (the proposition) and non-linguistic (the way the universe is) arrangement, the proposition in (1) picking out the circumstance that Hugo really is wise. Following on from this, we can straightforwardly say that there must be something called “Hugo” in the world for (1) to be true. Likewise, suggests the metaphysical realist, there must be something corresponding to what we describe by “wise”.

This is not quite the full story, however. Suppose we take another proposition:

  • Paul is wise. (1*)
Since the structures of (1) and (1*) are the same, the metaphysical realist concludes that both are pointing at the same thing: the quality of “being wise” that is present in both Hugo and Paul. Indeed, it is because of the existence of this quality that (1) and (1*) are true. However, what is it that the predicate in these propositions is referring to? The word “wise” does not name a referent (the thing it is pointing to) because what is actually at issue is a more general concept: wisdom. In that case, (1) should be read as

  • Hugo typifies wisdom. (1a)
The way to understand propositions like (1), then, is to adjust them slightly in this fashion and read them as stating a match (or approximation, perhaps) between the subject and predicate. Since we want to be able to say and make sense of propositions like (1), we are committed to the metaphysical machinery that allows us to – and that, says the metaphysical realist, involves accepting that “wisdom” and other concepts actually exist.

There are many qualities that might take the place of “wisdom” in (1a) – such as folly or ineptitude, to give some more realistic examples – and these are what we term universals. A universal can be a property (as “wisdom” functions in (1a)), but there are other possibilities. Consider:

  • Hugo is a male. (2)
  • Hugo is the father of Trystyn. (3)
(2) matches the subject (“Hugo”) with a kind (“male”, “human” or “rugby player”, for instance) while (3) gives a relation (“teacher”, “son” or “team mate”, say). For (3) to be true, are we committed to the existence of “fatherhood”? This is the question asked by the problem of universals and which metaphysical realists answer in the affirmative.

A major criticism of this account, however, is that it leads to an infinite regress. For (1) to be true, we agreed that (1a) had to also be true; that is, that Hugo typify wisdom (in the literature this is sometimes called exemplifying or epitomising). This suggests that for (1a) to be true we further require another universal – typification – as a relation, leading to another proposition:

  • The typification in (1a) is a relation. (1b)
(1b) checks whether (1a) enters into the correct kind of typification, but to be sure that (1b) is true we would need a (1c), and so on: an infinite regress. This seems to commit us to an ontology of universals piled upon universals, which is unsatisfactory even to many realists.

There are several ways around this objection. One is to bite the bullet and accept that it must be so, rather than lose the ability to make sense of propositions. Another is to deny that there is any infinite regress by saying that the initial analysis is all we need to understand what propositions mean. The subsequent levels, then, need not commit us to the existence of anything else because the process of typification does not require additional levels. This is tantamount to saying that the metaphysical realist’s account does not apply everywhere, so it has a restricted domain of validity. A third option is to suggest that (1a) is just another way of saying (1), so that the difference is only grammatical and does not require a separate round of analysis.

An altogether different complaint against the metaphysical realism we have so far considered is to ask about predicates like “married” and “unmarried”. Suppose we take the following propositions:

  • Hugo is unmarried. (4)
  • Hugo is married. (5)
If (4) is true then (5) is false, and vice versa (unless we adopt dialetheism from our discussion of logic). Why, then, do we need both “married” and “unmarried” to be universals to make sense of a proposition like (4)? If we agree that some universals are superfluous, however, how do we decide which ones are necessary and which are not? Some metaphysical realists (who are usually also scientific realists, which we will come to later) claim that the predicates we require are those needed for a final physical theory, but the objection made by Hempel’s dilemma (considered in our look at the Philosophy of Mind) makes this problematic.

Because of its association with several of Plato’s dialogues, metaphysical realism is also often called Platonism. An area of disagreement among realists is whether all universals necessarily exist; that is, are there universals that might have existed but do not, or do all universals exist regardless of whether we come across them in our universe? For example, take a proposition like:

  • Hugo is a married bachelor. (6)
Although we might say that (6) is false (or indeed meaningless – see our discussion of Analytic Philosophy) because there can be no such thing as a “married bachelor”, our metaphysical realist reading of (6) seems to imply that “Hugo” as subject and “married bachelor” as predicate must exist and not match. We arrive at what Aristotle called a two worlds ontology wherein some universals are typified by particular instances and some are not, and we can ask how we can ever know anything about the latter or, more importantly, how there can be any connection between the two. Thoroughgoing Platonists suggest in response that we can learn about those universals that are not typified from our experience with those that are.

Nominalism

The problem of universals has a long and distinguished pedigree, having been studied by philosophers through the ages. Those who have rejected universals have traditionally been called nominalists (from nominal, meaning “name”), the most famous being William of Ockham. This historical link provides us with the main objection raised against universals by nominalists (in addition to some of those already considered): the principle now known as Ockham’s Razor.

According to the nominalist, we can understand propositions like those we have considered above solely by reference to particulars. Although the realist account employing universals may seem convincing, too, it requires additional entities: universals. The role played by these in explaining propositions like (1) may be interesting but is inessential. Since universals represent a metaphysical theory and Ockham’s Razor enjoins us to accept the most parsimonious theory, universals are eliminated by nominalists.

Nominalism, then, involves a claim that a metaphysical theory is possible which only involves particulars; and this is a claim that needs to be justified. At this point the nominalists part company in offering differing accounts. An austere form suggests that the realist’s story does not achieve anything and that propositions like (1) are irreducible. “Hugo is wise” is true because Hugo is wise. To claim that (1) holds because it can be understood as (1a) does not achieve anything, since “Hugo typifies wisdom” means only that Hugo is wise. This apparently trivial reading is all that is required, says the austere nominalist, and the appeal to a universal is no less so.

Problems with this approach arise as soon as we consider a proposition containing abstract concepts, such as:

  • Honour is praiseworthy. (7)
Here the nominalist may wish to translate (7) to make sense of it other than by appealing to universals. Suppose we do so and take the new proposition to be irreducible:

  • Honourable people are praiseworthy. (7a)
The nominalist may presume that (7a) requires no further analysis, so that it is true because honourable people are praiseworthy. However, we could imagine a person who is honourable but also a murderer, say – a quality we would likely agree is not at all praiseworthy. Thus it is possible for (7) to be true while (7a) is not; so (7a) cannot be an accurate translation of what we mean by (7).

Another possibility is the following:

  • Other things being equal, honourable people are praiseworthy. (7b)
This is easy to understand but much harder to clarify: these “other things” are precisely those the nominalist is proposing to eliminate as superfluous. How can this austere approach be simpler, then?

Another approach takes the discussion so far to be mistaken in supposing that propositions are talking about non-linguistic entities; instead, they are just linguistic expressions that we employ to talk about sentences having similar forms. This, it turns out, is much the same as the view held by Roscelin, Ockham and Abelard in the twelfth century, according to which it is only names that can be universal – not predicates (whence nominalism). A recent form of this meta-linguistic nominalism was detailed by Wilfred Sellars, according to which the discussion of a universal is really only talk about linguistic expressions. For example, the use of “wise” in (1) should properly be understood as saying that all instances of this predicate are adjectives, describing a particular characteristic of Hugo. The correct way to analyse them is by their use in language, not by reference to universals. However, critics have noted that the function of “wise” in English is the same as (translated) terms in other languages and therefore have suggested that Sellars’ account would commit him to the existence of “linguistic roles” as universals.

Much of modern nominalism derives from the insights of Wittgenstein and the suggestion that words gain their meaning from their use, as hinted at above. The realist insists that a proposition like (1) requires the existence of “wisdom” in order to make sense of it, but the nominalist can disagree and say that we know what (1) means because we learn to understand terms like wise. To declare that Hugo is wise, then, is just to remark that his behaviour resembles that which we have come to call wise, and nothing more. The debate continues, which is why the problem of universals has held a fascination for thousands of years.

The Problem of Realism

Since the development of science, the problem of universals has taken on a new aspect. Faced with an array of scientific theories that apparently work extremely well (insofar as they make correct predictions or allow us to control phenomena), philosophers of science have asked why this is so. Explaining this success is a genuine challenge, one possible response to which is to say that it is due to our theories accurately getting at reality.

In basic terms, there is a division between those who believe that this reality exists independently of us and those who are not so sure. According to the realist, an explanation of planetary orbits invoking gravity works because there really are planets and a force we call gravity; and, moreover, that this is so whether we are here to notice and remark on it or not. They account for this conception by a theory of meaning much the same as that we have already covered, whereby true statements about the universe work because they get at real things – like quarks, aardvarks and philosophers.

Anti-realism

It is important to realise that opposition to scientific realism does not consist in the denial that reality exists. This suggestion is a straw man of a complex set of arguments and it is hard to see why it should be worth considering. Instead, anti-realists maintain that what we refer to as reality is made up at least in part by our perceptual apparatus or the way in which we experience it. They do this in a variety of ways, from the idea that esse est percipi (“to be is to be perceived”) from Bishop Berkeley’s idealist account to the more recent semantic anti-realism of Hilary Putnam and Michael Dummett. The instrumentalist form relates more specifically to the philosophy of science and will thus be covered in our next essay, particularly its connection with nominalism.

The realist account relies on the principle of bivalence, according to which the reality described by a statement either obtains or it does not. This is so regardless of our epistemological capabilities: if we say that bodies are attracted according to a law of gravitation described by a certain equation, then this is either true or false in the final analysis, whether or not we can ever know it to be so. The combination of this principle and the metaphysical apparatus discussed above in the section on universals is what the realist uses to ascertain the meaning of a statement.

By contrast, the anti-realist employs a theory of meaning according to which we know the meaning of a statement insofar as we have a warrant for it; that is, we know what it would take for the statement to be considered true or false. The obvious corollary, however, is that a statement which is impossible to justify in principle would thus violate the principle of bivalence. The rejection of this principle thus characterises the anti-realist – at least according to Dummett.

Although this excursion into the philosophy of language may seem like hair-splitting, it is easy to find propositions to illustrate the difficulty. For example, consider the following:

  • Plato enjoyed whistling. (8)
For the realist, either (8) obtains or it does not. If true, its meaning is plain: Plato did enjoy whistling. This type of statement, however, is just the kind of (apparently) undecidable one that might be expected to cause us trouble. Its meaning is seemingly straightforward, but how can we say that Plato did (or did not) enjoy whistling when this is unjustifiable? We know its meaning implicitly, says the anti-realist, but we cannot do so explicitly unless we assume its truth beforehand (thereby begging the question) or becoming trapped in an infinite regress (as before with universals).

Another version of anti-realism relies on the inscrutability of reference. Suppose we take a word from a new language which we are trying to translate into our own. If we point to the thing we believe it to denote, say, the speaker may nod enthusiastically but the precise meaning of the word is under-determined. This is because the native speaker may understand us to mean the object as a whole, the collection of its parts, the general concept it embodies, and so on; just as if someone indicated a tiger and said “cat?”

The point of this for the anti-realist is that it suggests that a direct translation between language and reality is impossible, and that some kind of mediation is required. If this is so, we would have to give up the idea of a mind-independent reality. Realists respond by saying that if there is an inscrutability in talking of reference in realist terms, the same must apply to anti-realist conceptual schemes. The realist can also remark that the under-determinancy of reference might apply to some terms but not necessarily all. A distinction like this is made in the philosophy of science, which we will return to later in this series. Being the modern counterpart of the problem of universals, the problem of realism continues to be debated.

Particulars

Whatever the status of universals, another issue for metaphysics is the make-up of the particulars relied upon by both realist and nominalist alike.

Bundle and Substratum Theories

Particulars are, as we have said, “things” (people, objects, critters and the like), but what can we say about their structure? One ontological theory holds that a particular is constituted by the many properties we associate with it and an underlying substratum, existing independently of the properties overlaying it. Bundle theorists, however, who have tended to be empiricists, disagree that any substratum exists and suggest that particulars are no more than “bundles” of their properties, arguing that substrata have no empirical content (being beyond the reach of any experience in principle) or that there is no need to posit a substratum to explain particulars.

There have been interesting objections made to bundle theories. Firstly, suppose that a particular changes. If we believe that the particular was but a bundle of its attributes then the changed particular would no longer be identical with itself. That is, the Hugo of tomorrow is not the Hugo of today. We will return to this difficulty shortly in considering time. Secondly, however, consider a list of propositions describing Hugo:

  • Hugo is cowardly. (9)
  • Hugo is slow. (10)
  • Hugo is boring. (11)
  • (etc…)
We have discussed above the question of what exactly each of the predicates here are picking out (“cowardice”, “slowness”, and so on), but what about Hugo, the subject? If Hugo is no more than a collection of his attributes then we can recast each of the propositions as tautologies – “A cowardly, slow, boring … thing is cowardly” in (9), for instance; and are thus not really saying anything about Hugo. What we require, according to the substratum theorist, is something underlying all these propositions about Hugo in order to make sense of them at all.

The bundle theorist can respond that this is as much a difficulty for an account relying on substratum. Since nothing can be said about this fundamental character of a particular, beyond its attributes, we are no closer to understanding (9). Moreover, why should we presuppose that we need to know everything about a particular in order to describe it via propositions like (9) – (11)?

Another criticism of bundle theories relies on the identity of indiscernibles. If two particulars share all their attributes then this principle states that they must be identical. In that case, if Hugo and Paul alike satisfied the propositions above we would be forced to accept that they were not distinct individuals unless we allow that there is something additional about them – their substrata. This is a much more difficult objection, one which has led to much recent work in metaphysics. Nevertheless, the bundle theorist can ask what the substratum beyond attributes can be, since it has no attributes. How can we describe it, then? We appear stuck between an inability to discern individual particulars sharing the same attributes or the impossibility of characterising the supposed substratum that distinguishes them.

To avoid this dilemma, Aristotelians have attempted to demarcate kinds from properties. The former are what particulars belong to (so Hugo is a human, or a man) while the latter are what they have (Hugo being cowardly, and so on). We could then have several instances of the same kind (Hugo and Paul), sharing the same properties but nevertheless being distinct. Although it is difficult, perhaps, to see why this should solve the problem, the claim is that membership of a kind is what individuates particulars. While humans share properties, it is membership of a kind that marks them out as distinct. The elaboration of the full Aristotelian account, however, is beyond the scope of this introduction.

Time

The subject of time throws up a host of metaphysical questions, even before we get to the physics associated with its study. Does the future already exist, along with the past? Do we “live for the moment”, as many a romantic has suggested while crooning below a balcony? If the universals we considered above really do exist, do they do so forever? What about particulars, if we happen to be nominalists: when do they come into existence and subsequently pass away? Are we the same person as we were yesterday? If not, what happened to that person?

Presentism and Eternalism

There are typically taken to be two theories of time, upon which differing ontologies are based. Presentism is the view that only the present exists: the past has gone and the future is still to come. This kind of thinking is implicit in figures of speech, like saying “tomorrow has yet to pass”: it passes the now and thereby becomes the past, the point at which it does so being the present. It asks how “the past” and “the future” can meaningfully be said to exist as we do now.

The alternative view is called eternalism and denies that there is anything (ontologically) special about “now”. When we talk of the present, we merely provide a reference point to help us say that one event happened before another; and so Galileo exists just as surely as we do, only within a different context.

Endurantism and Perdurantism

Typically associated with these theories of time are two theories of the persistence of particulars. Endurantists hold that the Hugo of yesterday is identical with the Hugo of today and hence the two Hugos are the same, persisting (or enduring) over time. Conversely, the perdurantist believes the Hugos to be different, often talking of stages or of yesterday’s Hugo as a part of his temporal development. The consequences of these pairings of theories is significant: for the endurantist only the now truly exists and hence talk of possible worlds or states of affairs is just that. The perdurantist, on the other hand, grants no metaphysical privilege to any specific time and so possible worlds (of the past, the future or our imagination) are equally as real as the one we find ourselves in now. If there are any number of possible worlds, however, each slightly (or considerably) different to this one, what does that mean about the Hugos in them? Does it imply that each of them is real or perhaps that they are all aspects of a universal Hugo?

Since perdurantism is contrary to our commonsense view of the world, arguments against endurantism are required. They take the form of either an appeal to a four-dimensional view of existence drawn from physics, according to which existence is across time as well as space; or the suggestion that endurantists cannot account for change, especially when it involves the loss of a part of a whole. Perdurantists ask whether a person who has lost a leg in an accident, say, is the same person they were beforehand. If so, the suggestion is that this commits the endurantist to explaining why having legs mattered in the first place; and so on until little is left.

Whatever ontology we find tempting, the nature of time is so problematic that perhaps the search for its nature is mistaken to begin with? Even so, it is easy to see the relationship between these investigations of time, the metaphysical problems introduced above and the old Parmenides/Heraclitus dispute in Ancient Greece, which is why many philosophical questions are considered timeless (to employ an awful pun).


Dialogue the Fifteenth

The scene: Anna and Trystyn are sat in the park, talking quietly.

Anna: It’s amazing how much hurt we do unintentionally.

Trystyn: Sometimes the truth takes us places we don’t want to go, I guess.

Anna: (Shaking her head…) That’s not what I mean. We talk to one another but the translation is never quite right. We misunderstand, it gets amplified, and people get hurt.

Trystyn: Can it be otherwise?

Anna: Well, I wonder if there really is anything at base, grounding these things we struggle with.

Trystyn: At base?

Anna: I said you were wrong before – dishonest with Steven. Now I wonder what I was getting at.

Trystyn: I thought it was for the best at the time.

Anna: Maybe you didn’t think at all? (She sighs.) Anyway, what is dishonest? I invoked a match between your conduct and something I called “dishonesty”, but where is it? In my head or in the world?

Trystyn: I don’t follow.

Anna: Suppose that it really was wrong – what you did – and not just my opinion. Where are these things? “Right conduct”, I mean – which is what some call it, I think. When I call you dishonest, is it the same dishonesty as when I charge it of someone else?

Trystyn: You mean a match between someone – me – and what you say about them?

Anna: I suppose so.

Trystyn: There’s a correspondence, they reckon, between the world and what we can say about it. Some insist that when you say “Trystyn was dishonest” you are just making a specific remark; but others that you hit on something universal – “Dishonesty” with a capital “d”, perhaps. What a person does when they’re dishonest is but a particular manifestation of a fundamental characteristic of the universe.

Anna: But where are these universals?

Trystyn: You want to test for them?

Anna: Hardly.

(There is a silence.)

Trystyn: This is partly why they say there is no science without philosophy – or without metaphysics, really. We can say that something exists or doesn’t exist on the basis of experiment but why does experiment decide such things and what does existence mean in the first place?

Anna: Does dishonesty exist? That’s what I’m asking.

Trystyn: Sure, but the other question is prior. If dishonesty exists, where is it? If it is just an attribute we give to certain conduct, what makes it up? What attributes does it have? If existence is a collection of these properties, what’s left when we take them away one by one? Maybe this universal dishonesty you’re thinking of is the sum total of behaviour we would describe by the terms that make it up? And so it goes.

Anna: I don’t know the answer to these questions. Stop trying to tie me in knots.

Trystyn: (Quietly…) You asked.

Anna: So say you don’t know.

Trystyn: It’s not me. I got it wrong, but you don’t need an ultimate justification for saying so. If you want to hang me from that tree then you’ll have to be prepared to see the ground fall away beneath you.

(Another long silence.)

Anna: So what do you suggest?

Trystyn: Hold on to something.

Curtain. Fin.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:52:23 +0000 65658fde58ab3c2b6e5132a39fae7cb9 18. Philosophy of History http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/18-philosophy-of-history-r35 Paul Newall (2005)

History may not seem to have much to do with philosophy but—just as we have already seen with science, politics and art—it relies on philosophical assumptions and concepts as much as any other subject. In this discussion we'll introduce some of the philosophical issues within history and hence try to gain a deeper appreciation of it. First, however, we need to know what we're dealing with.

What is History?

This may seem like a straightforward question but often an equivocation is made between two distinct uses of the word:

  • History as the past; and
  • History as an account of the past.
These are quite different. The first is what we mean when we say "it's all history now", which becomes obvious if we just rephrase it as "it's all in the past now". The second, on the other hand, is implied when we talk of the history of the Great War, say, or the history of science. This distinction is sometimes quite subtle: when we refer to the history of a period or event we mean not just what happened (the past) but also how and why. Some thinkers have suggested that a way to clear this up definitively is to use history for the second meaning and simply call the past the past.

What is history, then? In the first instance, the past would seem to be just the past: what happened before, whether in a specific period or just generally before now. (An interesting related question is to ask whether the past exists or not.) The problem arises when we try to decide what history is in the second sense. According to the historian Elton:

Quote

The study of history ... amounts to a search for the truth.

As a consequence of this perspective, we could say that history is the true account of the past. We have already seen that there are different understandings of truth, but in this case we are speaking of a correspondence between what actually happened in the past and an account of it. Later we will look at whether this conception of history stands up to scrutiny and, if not, what could replace it.

Another question we could ask is "what is the purpose of history?" That is, what is it for? Why do we study history in the first place? There are several possible responses:

  • For its own sake;
  • To find out the truth about the past;
  • To try to understand where we came from;
  • To try to understand why a particular event happened;
  • To find historical laws;
  • To justify actions in the present.
We will consider difficulties with some of these below.

What is the Philosophy of History?

The philosophy of history is concerned with the concepts, methods and theories used in history; on the other hand, historiography is the study of the writing of history. When we analyse these we can begin to say something about what history is, as well as what it is not or cannot be. A distinction is generally made between two branches of the philosophy of history: speculative and critical. The latter is concerned with investigating those things already mentioned, while the former tries to find a pattern behind historical events—hidden from sight, as it were, until the historian discovers it.

To appreciate where the philosophy of history differs from and expands on history itself we can refer to Hayden White's explanation:

Quote

The principal difference between history and philosophy of history is that the latter brings the conceptual apparatus by which the facts are ordered in the discourse to the surface of the text, while history proper (as it is called) buries it in the interior of the narrative, where it serves as a hidden or implicit shaping device...

Although this may seem confusing, the important part is the emphasis on "conceptual apparatus": according to White, the philosophy of history brings to light the implicit assumptions that historians rely on and that - more importantly, perhaps - have consequences for their accounts. We shall examine some of these now.

Whose History?

If we go into the history section of a good bookshop and look around, we tend to find plenty of titles on the same familiar subjects: wars, revolutions or other so-called defining moments. In a large or particularly high quality store we can see that there are histories of all sorts of things and all kinds of people (although we search in vain for a copy of the much sought after academic volume Funny Things Hugo Said). However, we do not see all of history: people, places, events and periods are left out—as they must be, given that there are only so many historians, so much time and so many records to look to. This to say that history is always less than the past. After all, who is writing the history of what we are doing right now?

How do we decide which histories are written, then? Obviously there are commercial considerations to bear in mind, but the academic papers that tend to be the basis for the more popular accounts are not so constrained. How do historians choose what to write about (and how to do it - historiography), apart from the straightforward criterion of something that interests them? For some historians this is an easy question: they work on significant issues from the past. Why the French Revolutionaries decided to act is significant, while what they ate for breakfast is probably not.

An objection raised in recent times, especially by so-called postmodernists, is to ask who decides what is significant: who or what is worth the historian's attention? Although the example above may seem trivial, they say, not everything is so clear-cut and the allocation of significance is a value judgement. In particular, some groups are very much underrepresented—such as women and minorities. Indeed, given the sheer number of women who have lived in the past, it is hard to argue with feminist claims that women have been excluded from history in almost systematic fashion.

Already, then, we can see that some of the high aspirations for history may not be so easy to maintain. Nevertheless, there is another issue that follows immediately: how do we address this imbalance in history, deliberate or otherwise? Feminist historians, for example, are trying to reappraise the role of women in the past; but this means that they are writing with a purpose in mind. Some philosophers of history suggest that this is not limited to marginalised perspectives but that ideological positions are inevitable. Later we'll consider some of the arguments for why this is so, but for the time being we can note that it would imply that our original "what is history?" becomes "what is the aim of a particular history?"

Explanation and Description

Another distinction made in the philosophy of history is between history as description and history as explanation. Those advocating the former suggest that the role of history is only to describe what happened in the past - this much and no further. Others say that history does (or must) do more: it must go beyond description and explain why an event happened as it did (or at all). Thus an account of what occurred in (and before) the French Revolution is not enough—it also has to explain why the Revolution happened at all, not least because there appears to be no contradiction or impossibility in supposing that it might not have.

According to some such thinkers, history as description is like bookkeeping; but someone else has to come along and check the figures to see what the sales mean and to understand why people bought one thing and not another. Although the entries (or "what happened") are vital, they are not enough to be history.

Historical Causes

If we take it as given that the historian has to provide an explanation for an historical event, does it make sense to talk about historical causes? As we saw in our thirteenth discussion, causation is a difficult concept with many associated philosophical problems. Even so, one place we can start is to distinguish between necessary and sufficient causes via the more general notion of necessary and sufficient conditions.

A necessary condition is one that must be satisfied before we can say that something belongs to a class. Much like a guessing game, then, if someone is thinking of an animal that happens to be a horse, we could ask lots of questions that give us the conditions that are necessary for something to be a horse. For instance, a horse has:

  • Four legs;
  • Hooves;
  • A mane;
... and so on. If an animal is to be a horse, these conditions must be satisfied. An animal without hooves cannot be a horse (unless some notorious wit is thinking of a seahorse). A question like "does it have a mane?" answered in the negative would tell us that the animal cannot be a horse (or a male lion, and so on) because a necessary condition for being a horse is having a mane.

A sufficient condition, on the other hand, is one that is enough to conclude immediately that we have—in this example—a horse. If someone asks, say, "does the animal compete with rider in show jumping?" and receives an answer in the affirmative, we know it must be a horse without any need for further questions. Thus this answer suffices to conclude that we have a horse.

This is a simplistic instance because we do not say that a horse with only three legs is no longer equine. In general, a necessary condition for x to be a y is one of potentially very many that have to be satisfied before we can say "x is a y", while a sufficient condition is one that includes all the necessary conditions and is enough on its own.

To return to historical causes, how far back do we need to go and how wide do we need to look before we can speak of what caused an event to happen? Suppose we take an example like the advent of science and ask, "what caused the rise of science?" Historians of science say that this is a vague question, but necessary causes would take the form of a list of things that were, in the judgement of the historian, required before science could develop. A sufficient cause, however, would be a single event that could bring about science on its own. Almost immediately we can see that the latter course is too ambitious: historical events, it would seem, are complex; that is, they are the result of many different factors, so that to look for just one as a cause is perhaps a mistake (although we might speak of more or less important factors).

Nevertheless, another problem with historical causes is that the notion of causality has been brought into history from science and some philosophers of history feel that this was a mistake. The main difference, they say (apart from the epistemological problems we will come to later), is that the actions, motives and other foibles of people are involved in historical events, unlike causal chains in science. When we say that an illness was caused by a virus, for instance, we mean that there was a link between the two that did not depend on the political opinions or upbringing of the person getting sick, say. If, on the other hand, we want to say that the French Revolution was caused by Royal excess, it doesn't explain much. Why did Louis XIV act in one way and not another? What was the influence of his childhood, or his advisors? What of all the other people involved? And so on. The causal chain is rendered far more complex by the involvement of the human factor, or so the argument goes.

Since history (or, more accurately, the past) is continuous, when can we stop and say that a cause has been found? The difficulty lies in ending the quest for causes in a way that is not arbitrary or according to the whim of the historian. One response is to suggest that we have a cause (or set of causes) when we have enough to offer an explanation of an event. The philosopher of history R.G. Collingwood proposed that a necessary cause in historical investigation is one such that without it the subsequent actions would make no sense. Similarly, a sufficient cause is one that would make the course of events that followed considered "rationally required". That means, for example, that a necessary cause of the Boer War would be one any explanation of the war must include to be convincing; while a sufficient cause would be one that, once it happened, would seem to make the war inevitable.

Historical Laws

Expanding on the question of historical causes and continuing the parallels with science, some historians and philosophers of history have claimed that it is possible to find historical laws, meaning much the same as we do when we talk of scientific laws. An historical law might take the form "whenever x happens, y is bound to follow"; so that, for instance, it could be claimed that "states always turn to war when their resources are insufficient for their population" is an historical law. For those who suppose that it is meaningful to talk of such laws, historical investigation would be the way to check the claim.

Several objections have been made to the very idea of historical laws, of which Popper's The Poverty of Historicism is perhaps the most famous (historicism being, in this case, the belief that historical laws exist). We have already seen that some philosophers find laws to be problematic. Another complaint is to say, with Oakeshott, that history is always concerned with the particular, not the general. In reply, it is said that occurrences in science are no less unique; but what is sought is the general case that can be described with general concepts. Since history uses these just as science does—with terms like "revolution", "conflict", and so on—there is no reason to suppose that the search for laws must fail.

A further criticism is to say—again—that history is concerned with the actions of people and that hence an historical law would have to account for the reasons why a person acted as they did. In response it is said that laws have the form "a person, acting in a rational way in situation A, will invariably do B". In this way A and B constitute the reasons for acting and the action itself. This is not to say that an irrational person may not do otherwise or that other reasons may change the situation, but only to generalise empirically.

Karl Popper took a distinct line of attack. The error in supposing historical laws to exist, he suggested, lies in supposing history to be similar to science when it differs in one crucial respect: scientific laws apply to closed systems, whereas history—composed of the actions of individuals—is neither closed nor even a system at all. Moreover, the growth of scientific knowledge added to this point: since knowledge has an effect on human behaviour and hence history, we can only predict history via laws if we can also predict the growth of knowledge. If we could do that, however, we would already know it. As a result, there can be no historical laws.

Facts in History

Given the importance of "what really happened" to history, it makes sense to ask if matters are as clear-cut as perhaps some people (including historians) suppose. Here we'll look at the uses that facts in history are put to and if we can say that there are such facts in the first place.

Facts and Interpretation

It seems a commonplace that we have historical facts to work with, such as "there was a world war between 1939 and 1945". Even so, these apparently simple facts are not the business of history; instead, it is their combination as explanations that we have seen is taken (usually) to be the historian's task. However, a question asked by philosophers of history is how much of history is fact and how much interpretation? Since facts themselves are silent, goes the argument, the historian must interpret them to understand their meaning. This interpretive dimension is unavoidable and is added by the historian—it is not "already there", like the facts are supposed to be. This suggests that we can never get past interpretation to the ultimate meaning or definitive account of the past.

Generally speaking, working historians tend to be unaware of this concern or remain unconvinced by its import. Although interpretation goes on, they say, most facts are not disputed or subject to contention and there is wide agreement about the majority of historical issues. When debate takes place amongst historians, it is at the margins—around a central core agreed by (almost) everyone. For example, most of the facts about the Second World War are known, with discussion not really calling much of this body of knowledge into doubt.

The difficulty with this response is that it overlooks a glaring assumption: namely, that this centre is fixed. Instead, it lies on a spectrum of possible interpretations of the same facts. An example given by Jenkins is that of historical accounts in the old Soviet Union, in which the facts about the Second World War were interpreted from an agreed centre that differed significantly from the centre used by Western European historians. The mistake lies in supposing that a particular centre is the only possibility. The problem of interpretation comes up again on another level when we ask how one centre comes to dominate historical discourse, rather than another.

Historical Facts

A difficulty of an altogether different order arises when we begin to look closely at historical facts. To begin with, the term "facts" is loaded: what historians are actually confronted with are fragmentary accounts or traces of the past that are subsequently organised into facts. As we saw in our sixth discussion, facts are theory-laden; and for historians they are doubly so, as it were. The historian constructs an account of the past from other accounts, the evidence he or she refers to consisting in the accounts left by others. These accounts record not facts but what people in the past considered important, selected, interpreted and given from their particular perspective.

We will dwell on this area because of its importance. Consider:

  • The records we have of the past are incomplete and must always be so.
  • People in the past did not record everything, any more than we do today.
  • The historian relies on the observation and memories of others in the past for the accuracy of these records.
  • The past has gone and hence cannot be recalled to check the accuracy of our accounts of it.
  • The past is studied from a modern view, using contemporary concepts and understandings.
Several of these are specific concerns that we will return to later.

The problem for the historian is that there is no way around this epistemological issue. If he or she tries to check the truth of an account by it correspondence with "what actually happened", this appeal is found to be empty. Unlike science, where reference is made to reality, there is no historical reality within reach: all we have are traces of the past, accounts of others that may or may not be accurate. In the absence of any way to say whether they are or not, can it be meaningful to speak of historical truth? We will come to this question below, but for now we can note that the only way to check an historical account is by comparison with others. Thus the historian is forced, as it were, into retreating to a coherence theory of truth. The traces we have can function as limits to interpretation, such than any history has to take them into account (whether by incorporating them or discounting them, with reasons for both), but they cannot determine which of a multiplicity of possible histories within the boundary provided is more accurate. In a sense, then, we have the problem of under-determination from the philosophy of science that we studied before, only much worse.

Language in History

These philosophical concerns may be all very well, but do they really impact on history in a significant way? One way to see that they do is to look at the language used in historical accounts and ask if it possible to use a neutral, value- (or theory) free language to discuss the past. The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is no: the words we use reveal perspectives because of the epistemological problems identified above.

A well-known example is the adage that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". Should an historian call the crossing of an army from one state to another in the past a war, a disagreement, a liberation, or any number of other possibilities, none of which are theoretically neutral? Is an internal conflict an uprising, an insurrection or a revolution? Is calling it a conflict already to prejudge it? Even something as apparently straightforward as a World War is only obvious to those that share the interpretive framework and may not have the same meaning for everyone—Bushmen, for instance. We can say that the historian describes the event in a way enjoined upon him or her by the evidence, but—as we said before—the records from the past are silent and do not insist on any particular reading. Moreover, the same problem was present for those who recorded events in the first place.

The historian can try to tread a fine line, attempting to avoid describing events from the past in loaded terms, but the very act of composing an account reveals choices made. Consider, for instance, an art historian: by deciding to give the history of a painting, he or she presupposes implicitly that the work is art—not trash. We have seen in our seventh piece, however, that deciding what is or is not art is far from simple. As soon as the historian opens his or her account, decisions are made about what to include or exclude. This leads us, then, to the question of historical method.

Historical Method

According to Hayden White:

Quote

... the so-called 'historical method' consists of little more than the injunction to 'get the story straight' (without any notion of what the relation of 'story' to 'fact' might be) and to avoid both conceptual overdetermination and imaginative excess (i.e., enthusiasm') at any price.

In this section we'll look at the situation within history and see if it is as bad as White insisted.

What Method?

When we look for the historian's method we are faced with the same problem as the similar quest for the scientific method: an overabundance of choices. Jenkins makes this painfully clear when he asks:

Quote

... would you like to follow Hegel or Marx or Dilthey or Weber or Popper or Hempel or Aron or Collingwood or Dray or Oakeshott or Danto or Gallie or Walsh or Atkinson or Leff or Hexter? Would you care to go along with modern empiricists, feminists, the Annales School, neo-Marxists, new-stylists, econometricians, structuralists or post-structuralists, or even Markwick... to name but twenty-five possibilities?

Each of these (and more besides) is an example of a methodology that is consistent, gets results and is profitable for its users. Unfortunately, however, the epistemological difficulties identified above make a choice between them a tricky matter: what criteria should we use to decide which, if any, is the "best" method? We cannot compare their accuracy in getting at the past because there is no such beast.

Unlike science, then, where we can at least try to say that experiment is better than guesswork by reference to something like reality, with history we have nothing to appeal to but other accounts. We might propose that the structuralists explain something better than the feminists, say, but that can only mean that the explanation accords with most or all of the available records of the relevant past and that the account "makes sense", explaining matters satisfactorily. None of these terms ("accords with", "makes sense" or "satisfactorily") can be given a rigorous definition precisely because a history can only convince subjectively within the boundary set by the traces of the past we have. It can never go beyond them and invite comparison with "what actually happened."

In summary, there are historical methods but no historical method. The same goes for science and hence this should probably not be surprising, reflecting the breadth of history rather than a shortcoming.

Ideologies

Sometimes we hear the complaint that an historian is not ideologically neutral. What we can learn from the discussion of method, however, is that there is no neutral position from which to do history. It may be the case that an historian distorts (or outright lies about) his or her sources, thus going beyond the boundary set on his or her account by the records of the past, but otherwise history from one perspective is no closer to the past than from another. The complaint that a particular history is based on ideology is rather hollow, then.

Perhaps a less ambitious understanding of the role of ideology in history is to note that people—not just historians—use history as a means to ground or legitimate themselves? Where we have come from can tell us where we are going or justify claims we want to make in the present. We see this practice often enough in attempts to validate the assertion that a country (or crown) justly belongs to one group and not another, or even in the popularity of family trees.

We might want to call a Marxist history of Europe ideological, but why are the alternatives any different? Each seeks to understand the past from within an inevitable framework. As we touched on above, the choice of one word ("invasion", say) instead of another ("liberation") only makes sense within a perspective that leads us to choose one and not the other. Rather than dismiss certain ideologies, then, perhaps it would be better to examine them and hence try to counteract the unavoidable influence of our own?

Empathy

The historian has a potential way out of these concerns, however: empathy. By studying his or her sources in great depth and at length, it is said, the historian can begin to empathise with his or her subject(s) and gain an understanding from their perspective. This is the historical skill or tool that helps avoid many of the epistemological and other difficulties and grants the historian a privileged ability to say what motivated people in the past and why they acted as they did.

There are several reasons why philosophers of history find this wholly unconvincing. The first is the general philosophical problem of other minds, in which it is asked how we can ever know the content of another mind; that is, what someone else is (or was) thinking. This is compounded by the distance between the past and the historian. Another objection is revealed by Croce's dictum that "all history is contemporary history", which is to say that although historical sources are from the past they must nevertheless be read in the present. This makes the historian a translator of meaning, but he or she has to do so from his or her own perspective that—as we have seen—is never neutral. In like fashion, Dewey wrote that "all history is necessarily written from the standpoint of the present". Given that the historian is using contemporary concepts, methodologies, epistemological assumptions, modern understandings of words, and so on, how can these be fully (or partially) shed to empathise with those in the past?

Anachronism

A charge often made against historical accounts in criticism is that they are guilty of anachronism. Perhaps the best way to appreciate what this means is to use an example.

Some historians of science point to the work of Newton and note that, in addition to his work on mechanics, mathematics and other areas for which he is famous, he also spent the better part of his time studying alchemy and biblical prophecy. According to some, this is at best a shame and at worst a tragedy: imagine what Newton could have achieved if he had not wasted his time on the latter subjects, putting all his efforts into the former.

The problem here is that contemporary ideas or values are projected backwards: although we may think that alchemy is a hopeless endeavour (or we may not), that is not to say that Newton did. A similar question asked in his time ("think you alchemy a waste of time, sir?") may or may not have been answered differently, but since we do not know what he thought (except insofar as we could guess that his efforts suggest he would not agree) we cannot say that he should have acted otherwise without being anachronistic.

From the discussion of empathy we can see that a certain amount of anachronism is unavoidable. Nevertheless, the value judgement that alchemy is worthless is not forced upon the historians by the records he or she has of the past, hence the objection that to say so is anachronistic.

Truth in History

At this point in our discussion, the notion of truth in history seems to have taken a battering. Now we'll look at possible ways to save it and see if we can breathe life back into it.

Truth as a goal

Earlier we learned that some historians consider their task to be the search for the truth. In spite of the apparent impossibility of ever achieving that, they still maintain that it is worth aiming for. However, if—as we have seen—the truth is not a meaningful concept in history, how can striving for it fare any better?

Thinking back to our long look at truth in our tenth piece, what we see is that these historians are employing a correspondence theory—trying to match up the past and our accounts of it. Whatever we think of correspondence (or semantic) theories in general, it is at least clear that they are inappropriate for history. Instead, the realisation that the only way to test historical accounts is by comparison with others suggests that history requires a coherence theory, with Joyce, Appleby and Hunt calling for "well-documented and coherently argued interpretations that link internally generated meanings to external behaviour".

Given that the historian is faced with nothing but traces of the past, combined and recombined into accounts but never any more than that, he or she can try to construct a new account that coheres with what is available. As further sources are found, the process begins anew and some previous accounts may be shown to be false. As we found when discussing truth, this gets the historian no closer to "what actually happened", but what it does do is follow the way he or she works with the available material.

Critics of this understanding suggest that the historian is actually working with a pragmatic theory of truth. History is linked, like truth, to power, with accounts serving to support or undermine dominant or marginalised histories. On this view, truth and falsity serve to shut down interpretations that do not accord with what is useful for a society or group.

Bias

Another important concept in history is bias, the idea that traces of the past or accounts of it can be intentionally distorted to serve the purposes of the historian. However, bias only makes sense alongside the similar existence of unbiased accounts; that is, with the assumption that true stories exist that correspond to the past and from which biased versions differ. Since this has been thoroughly undermined, there being no neutral position from which to judge the degree of difference, where does it leave bias?

In some sense, as we said, we can identify where an historian has gone beyond the limits of interpretation given by his or her sources. However, histories that do not rely on a correspondence theory of truth can speak of failing to cohere with other accounts or say that using history in different ways need not be biased but just a difference in goals or methods. In general, if the problem of bias is present within all histories then—again—perhaps a diversity of approaches can help appreciate what historians can achieve instead of striving after correspondence?

Philosophies of History

In our final section we come to speculative philosophies of history—attempts to find patterns in or a structure to history. We'll consider two general approaches to take to history and then look at two classes of theory in the philosophy of history.

Historical Realism

The notion of historical realism is analogous to its scientific counterpart and supposes that the concepts and theories employed in history get at reality—in this case, historical reality or "what really happened". In particular, the past exists independently of what we think of it. It relies, as we might expect, on a correspondence understanding of truth: even if a particular theory (or account) may not be true, it is more or less accurate by comparison and the aim of historians is (or should be) the truth.

As we have seen above, and as a survey of the scholarly literature within historiography would show, historical realism is a thoroughly discredited position, often disparaged as naïve realism (in the pejorative sense). Nevertheless, there are still very many historians who adopt it and some philosophers of history have lambasted their unwillingness to face up to the failings of realism. However, still others advocate a much-reduced conception of the kind of objectivity that is possible ("defined anew as a commitment to honest investigation, open processes of research, and engaged public discussions of the meaning of historical facts" for Joyce, Appleby and Hunt) and point out that few practising historians today ever believed in this kind of realism in the first place.

Historical Anti-representationalism

In opposition to the realists, having accepted the criticisms given, historical anti-representationalists contend that the correspondence theory of truth within history has to be given up and the constructs of historians understood as fictions, not closer and closer approximations of the past as it happened. They may suggest that a coherence theory of truth is more appropriate or that talk of truth should be dropped completely, "what actually happened" being ultimately meaningless within history since it is forever inaccessible. Historians' accounts are to be read as attempts to organise the available traces of the past in a coherent way, not to latch on to something that cannot be found.

Much work is still to be done in responding to anti-representationalist ideas, particularly with questions relating to the ancient world. Anti-representationalists hope that a history that can come to terms with its limitations will provide us with more interesting and significant accounts of the past.

Linear Theories

Some philosophers of history, most notably Hegel, have proposed that history proceeds in a line—hence linear—and so is directional, or "going somewhere". For those holding to a linear theory, history is a process that unfolds towards a final goal. This is a progressive view in which what came before was in a sense more "primitive" than now, while what will follow will be an advancement, until such time as the limit is reached. A quote from Hegel that gives a nice example is his remark that:

Quote

... the Eastern nations knew only that one is free; the Greek and Roman world only that some are free; while we know that all men absolutely (man as man) are free.

On this view, then, the development of the notion and application of freedom is an instance of a linear advancement.

Although the concept of teleology (discussed in our fifteenth piece) has come in for much criticism when applied to life, many people do seem to feel that we can justifiably say that we have progressed from the past and, moreover, that this is likely to continue into the future. For linear theories this is an inevitability—the playing out of historical laws or plans—which is separate from the idea that progress is contingent: it has occurred but need not have. A further distinction is to ask whether we should say that progress is strictly linear or whether a civilisation (or history in general) can advance and regress, showing a pattern of progress overall but not necessarily in all specific periods. The objections made to historical laws also apply to any speculative philosophy of history.

Cyclical Theories

Another class of theories holds that history proceeds in cycles. The philosopher of history most commonly associated with cyclical theories is Toynbee, who suggested that all civilisations showed a similar pattern of growth, dominance and decay. Using examples from ancient history, he divided the past into several complete civilisations and tried to demonstrate that they each arose through responding to challenging circumstances, developed into fully-fledged societies before eventually crumbling. He used these case studies to look for patterns and hence derive historical laws.

In criticising his work (which, at ten volumes, is far too extensive to effectively summarise here), it was pointed out that it is unreasonable to suppose that general laws could be found on the basis of at most thirty-two examples. Another, more significant problem is that civilisations—not clearly defined by Toynbee—do not exist in isolation and continuation between them is not accounted for in positing their demise. Perhaps the most damning aspect to his work, however, was his refusal to announce the doom of our own civilisation when his studies—if we accept their conclusions—pointed to that conclusion with no likelihood of reprieve.


Dialogue the Fourteenth

The Scene: Trystyn, Steven and Peter are still deep in discussion, having moved to the park.

Steven: So are you part of an order of some kind?

Peter: I am. I could tell you about it, but...

Steven: ... then you'd have to kill me? You swore an oath of silence? Meaning goes beyond the bounds of language?

Trystyn: Heh.

Peter: Actually, I was just going to say it'd be pretty boring.

Steven: Maybe not. History is always interesting. Your order must have a story behind it, surely?

Peter: It does, but there's quite a bit of dispute about it. There aren't many of us, few records from the old days, and we didn't come into contact much with other groups.

Steven: Still, you could reconstruct the past from what you've got—as near as possible, anyway.

Trystyn: No. History doesn't work that way.

Steven: I thought it was pretty straightforward: to find out what the past was like you go to the documents and other sources and piece it all together?

Trystyn: Well, lots of people tend to imagine it that way but it falls apart rather quickly under analysis.

Steven: That accursed word again!

Peter: (He wags a finger, grinning...) I told you so.

Trystyn: Let's see how it unravels. Take this conversation we're having now and suppose that an historian is trying to give an account of it many years hence.

Steven: Ah, you mean our inevitable biographers. I guess I'd better say something clever soon.

Trystyn: Why break a habit? (He grins, too.) In any case, the historian could conceivably have several different records to use—let's say each of us wrote something in a journal about the talk and what happened.

Steven: So I could make my contributions look weightier after the fact?

Trystyn: Well, that's the point entirely: we would each remember different things and, unless we had exceptional memories, would record our individual perspectives. Perhaps I'd remember that you tried to avoid paying—again—while you would recall my asking far more "but what does that mean?" questions than I actually did. In any case, the historian would have distinct sources to work from, although all apparently describing the same event.

Steven: What else?

Trystyn: Next, there may be other sources available—perhaps fragmentary recollections from others here, written down long after the fact.

Peter: After you've become famous, he means.

Steven: Of course.

Trystyn: The problem for the historian is to put together what actually transpired from these pieces, but at no stage can he or she compare what's been decided to what actually happened because the past has gone.

Steven: What if all the accounts bar yours say "and then Steven said something incredibly witty that had everyone in stitches"? Isn't it reasonable to conclude that you were just bitter and distorted your version?

Trystyn: Sure, but this is still an interpretation of the accounts—a coherent version of what they describe, based on other internal factors.

Steven: Internal how?

Trystyn: Internal, as in coherent with other accounts—like a diary entry in which I said "Steven is just not funny at all" and multiple entries from you saying, "I just can't fathom why he doesn't laugh at my jokes. It's probably because I keep beating him at pool."

Steven: Ah.

Trystyn: So the historian can call his or her version coherent, or say that it lies within the boundaries imposed on any interpretation by the documents to hand, but calling it a true account of what transpired is meaningless because it's never possible to compare them—as you might compare a scientific theory by testing it.

Peter: Essentially, this opportunity of testing a theory isn't available to the historian.

Trystyn: What's more, as we said, the sources are never "the facts" about what happened but always someone's view of it. This means that the historian is doubly damned, as it were: first, he or she can't compare what they come up with to what actually happened to test it; and second they can't do that either for the sources they have to rely on.

Steven: So it's like theory-ladenness twice?

Peter: Pretty much.

Trystyn: Not only these...

Steven: Uh oh.

Trystyn: ... but the historian is also working backwards, bringing his or her own perspective unavoidably into play.

Peter: He means that if they were a disciple of yours by then, they would read events differently than if they were one of his followers.

Steven: Would anyone be so foolish?

Trystyn: As hard as it may be for you to compute, the issue here is that our historian of the future would have to view the past through contemporary glasses, if you like. His or her assumptions would colour the issues, as would the way in which he or she understands terms we use that may have changed in meaning or that may have been given a special meaning by us. And so it goes on...

Peter: In brief, the epistemological problems are too great. No matter how hard they try, historians are trapped insides these limitations.

Steven: So they should just give it up and play rugby?

Trystyn: It depends on how you view these difficulties. Are they unfortunate, something to be avoided or ignored or somehow worked around; or are they liberating instead? After all, when you realise that everyone has their own perspective and that there's no neutral one to pour scorn on yours from, so long as you're not making things up as you go that aren't within the bounds of what you have to work with, it seems more like history is something people do for a reason—to justify their place in life, where they've come from and where they're going.

Peter: Thus the history of my order is not uniquely determined by the records we have, so we have a certain leeway to write it such that it provides us with opportunities for the future instead of trapping us in the past.

Steven: What about my biography?

Trystyn: I'll write it.

Curtain. Fin.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:50:20 +0000 33e8075e9970de0cfea955afd4644bb2 17. Analytic Philosophy http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/17-analytic-philosophy-r34 Paul Newall (2005)

Just like philosophy as a whole, explaining what analytic philosophy is (and isn't) unfortunately isn't straightforward. To help us understand the matter we'll begin by looking at some historical considerations before moving on to examples of analytic philosophers and the contributions they have made to philosophy.

Historical background

Although the earliest analytical philosopher is typically taken to be Frege (of whom more below), the history of analytical philosophy is largely a twentieth century story. As scientific approaches continued to yield results (even if they usually consisted in better ways for people to kill each other), some philosophers towards the end of the nineteenth century wondered if it would be possible to learn a lesson from the sciences and "do" philosophy in a similar way. In 1903, Moore's Principia Ethica spoke of analysis being vital in understanding (and answering) moral problems, and between 1910 and 1913 Whitehead and Russell published their Principia Mathematica, in which one of the aims was to reduce mathematics to logic.

As we saw in our fourth piece, the rigour of logic appeals to some people and it was perhaps to be expected that philosophy would eventually have its turn under the microscope. Indicative questions asked included:

  • Can philosophy be done in the way that science is (whatever that is)?
  • Can more rigour be introduced into philosophy by proceeding in a logical fashion?
  • Can philosophy be reduced to logic?
From what we learned in our sixth discussion, the first of these seems unlikely; nevertheless, we can appreciate the appeal that the clarity of logic and mathematics had for those philosophers who hoped to apply it to the problems they were studying. If philosophy had to be remodelled, however, what would become of it?

What is philosophy for?

Some people think or claim that philosophy is useless, a waste of time (and taxpayers money) or just worthless. Even with the small selection of areas we've covered in this series so far, however, we've seen that questions of value like this one are philosophical: they rely on philosophical assumptions, concepts and arguments, although they are not always explicit. A few philosophers have suggested that even if no ultimate justification can be found, it may be instead that the search for answers is what is important, not the answers themselves.

Even if the rejection of philosophy is itself philosophy, though, and if this unavoidable circularity is perhaps the point, we can leave this puzzle aside for the moment and yet still ask what precisely philosophy is for; that is, what is the province of philosophy, what kinds of questions can we ask and what use can we put it to? As we noted above, and with the development and apparent success of science in mind, some thinkers suggested that whatever philosophy is, it cannot be the attempt to find out about the universe because that is the task of science. Historically many different answers to this issue have been suggested, of which some are of interest to us here:

  • Philosophy deals with questions of value, not of what is; that is, philosophy and science are distinct.
  • Philosophy analyses the concepts used in science (and indeed everything else); that is, philosophy is fundamental to science, supporting (or extending) it but covering a different area.
  • Philosophy provides us with non-scientific truths; that is, science and philosophy are distinct but the latter can tell us facts about the universe.
The first two remind us of scientism, the idea that only science can lead to knowledge. Another related question would be to ask what philosophy ought to do: is it something we do, an activity to engage in, or should it instead be concerned with proposing and developing theories about the universe? The latter is obviously related to the third option above.

These are the kind of issues that early (and later) analytic philosophers were concerned with initially, taking a variety of positions on them—so much so that it isn't possible to state a clear, "analytic" answer. What is analytic philosophy, then?

Analytic Philosophy

Discussing metaphysics, H.L. Mencken wrote:

Quote

A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what by two, what by makes, and what by four.

Although Mencken was a master of satire, this remark is perhaps on the mark: we can understand analytic philosophy as the attempt to address philosophical questions through analysis, looking at the language and concepts used and drawing out their meanings as clearly as possible before trying to provide any answers. The basic principle is the eminently reasonable one of not wanting to tackle a problem until we know exactly (or insofar as possible) what it is.

To take an example, and also to use Mencken to help us, suppose someone asks, "can we know what happened before time began?" To unpack the problem before we jump into responding, we could ask further questions:

  • What do we mean by knowledge (a question introduced in our fifth discussion)?
  • What do we mean by time?
  • Does it make sense to ask about before time?
  • Even if the answer is yes, does it make sense to ask about events happening before time?
  • Did time begin at all?
And so on. No doubt this practice is where philosophy got its reputation for answering questions with still more questions, but responding without a clear appreciation of what the issue is seems unhelpful at best. In many instances, of course, this can lead to the inquirer being told that their question was flawed to begin with, which can be a deeply unsatisfactory response even when accurate. Is it better to encourage others to analyse their questions more before asking them or does the analytic approach encourage "ivory tower" stereotypes when philosophers should perhaps try to engage people in other ways?

The trouble with explaining analytic philosophy in such terms, however, is that there is no agreed method of analysis. The example is one approach; British empiricists tended to adopt an analogy with chemistry and try to break philosophical concepts (like knowledge, truth or existence) into their constituent parts, while still others used metaphors or skirted around an issue to try and gain a feeling for what was going on. Although it was contrasted with Continental philosophy (so called because analytic philosophy tended to be adopted by Anglo-American philosophers while those in Europe went in other directions), analytic philosophy is scarcely any easier to characterise than postmodernism—as we saw in our twelfth discussion. In much the same fashion, philosophers we might call analytic disagreed (and disagree) amongst themselves, leading some to consider it "hopeless" to try to define it.

Philosophical logic

As we touched upon above, some of the early analytic philosophers had two main aims:

  • To show that mathematics could be reduced to logic; and
  • To show that the resulting (mathematical) logic is an ideal language.
The first was called the logistic thesis and was the goal of Whitehead and Russell in their Principia Mathematica. Of more interest to us, perhaps, is the second: if true, it would mean that the imprecision and other difficulties associated with everyday language could be eliminated in favour of a formal mode of expression defined by logical rules. This was an attractive proposition to some philosophers; after all, it would mean that philosophical questions could be translated into the ideal language and addressed by applying the rules of logic. A question that was poorly thought out, or fallacious in some way, would then be exposed as such by logical analysis.

Although beyond the scope of this discussion, Goedel's first theorem—a famous result in mathematics—showed that this ideal language would be incomplete; that is, it would not be possible to find a language that could do everything the philosophers hoped. In spite of this, attempts at this new language was able to make important contributions, most notably the theory of descriptions. This will be considered later.

Logical atomism

A metaphysical theory that grew from this work was logical atomism, the idea that the structure of reality is essentially the same as that of mathematical logic. It followed, of course, that the study of the latter would thus tell us about the former. Some philosophers thought that the universe consisted of atomic facts that combined to form propositions according to the rules of logic. Analysis of a proposition, then, would consist in translating it into the ideal language, breaking the result up into its constituent atomic facts and checking if they have been combined in a meaningful way.

Technical criticisms of logical atomism meant that it was soon rejected, in part due to the advent of logical positivism. As we learned in our sixth discussion, too, there are and can be no such facts on which to base logical atomism. Even so, it was part of the development of analytic philosophy and can help us understand what was to follow.

Logical positivism

Positivism tends to be associated with the principle of verification, which we will come to shortly, but it traditionally had three strands. The first concerned analytic and synthetic propositions.

Recalling our fifteenth discussion, an analytic proposition (also called a priori or necessary) is one that is true by virtue of its definition, the typical example being "all bachelors are unmarried". There is no need to know anything about the world to conclude that this proposition is true because the term "bachelor" means someone who is unmarried. On the other hand, a synthetic proposition (also called a posteriori or contingent) is one that seems to be true but need not be, an example this time being "all men are mortal". All our experience points to men being mortal, but it could conceivably be the case that some future medical advance will mean otherwise. The point, of course, is that we have to refer to our experience of the world to decide whether the proposition is true or not.

To return to the point, the logical positivists first claimed that all propositions are either analytic or synthetic, but not both. This has interesting consequences: to begin with, the rationalist hope of learning truths about the universe via reason had to be rejected wholesale. After all, the results of reasoning had to be analytic propositions, but these do not tell us about the world. Next, whatever truths could be discovered had to be uncertain, since only synthetic propositions tell us things about the universe and they are always tentative. This is because circumstances may change, as in the example of men being mortal, or we may not be sure of what our senses tell us, or we may refer back to the problem of induction (as discussed in our fifth piece). Synthetic propositions are the business of science, of course, which acknowledges these skeptical restrictions on what we can know, so the logical positivists advocated science as the only tool to learn about our world.

Thinking back to our look at the philosophy of religion, we can see that an obvious criticism of this element of logical positivism would be to point to propositions that seem to be neither wholly analytic nor synthetic, such as "God is just" or "the universe is purposive". Responding to this objection, and thus giving their second tenet, the positivists appealed to the principle of verification, according to which only those propositions that can conceivably be verified are meaningful. Different forms of what "verified" should mean were tried, but the basic idea was that a person should be able to state an experiment that would make him or her accept or reject a proposition. Since this cannot be done (or so it was supposed) for most of the humanities—but especially metaphysics and theology—it followed that any claim made by these disciplines was cognitively meaningless. (That is, it might still have meaning insofar as it had emotive import or to act as inspiration, but not with regard to what is or is not real.) Note also that a proposition need not be verified, but it was necessary that it could in principle be verified at some time—like the theory that there was life on Mars or that there is life elsewhere in the universe.

The third aspect of logical positivism was called the reductive hypothesis, which spoke of the relationship between a synthetic statement and the observations that would verify it (or otherwise). The positivists held that this relationship could always be reduced to observation statements; that is, a statement about sense experience (also called a sense-datum).

As we said above, there were many attempts to state the principle of verification in a way that responded to the critique it was faced with but it is widely agreed that they all failed. One objection was to ask if the principle is analytic or synthetic: if analytic, it says nothing about the universe; but if synthetic it would have to verifiable. However, what could possibly count as an observation showing it to be either true or false? This means it is self-defeating. A second problem was identified by Hempel, who demonstrated in ingenious fashion that the principle could be used to make any proposition verifiable.

The distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions was challenged by Quine (of whom more below) via consideration of the example of a solidly analytic statement like "all bachelors are unmarried". This is true by virtue of the definition of "bachelor", of course, but how, asked Quine, do we know what "bachelor" means? Usually we know because we were taught it, or learned it from observing its use in conversation, or by looking it up in a dictionary, but all of these rely on experience. In that case, the separation of analytic and synthetic would have to be rejected.

Quine also addressed the reductive hypothesis, pointing out that terms or propositions do not retain their meaning when taken in isolation; that is, they often depend on the context of their use. Moreover, and as we saw in our sixth discussion, it was (at least in part) because observation is theory-laden that the sense-datum theory of knowledge was rejected, although in recent years it has begun a rehabilitation, especially in the philosophy of mind.

As a result of these and other criticisms, logical positivism was shown to be untenable.

Analytic Philosophers

Sometimes the best way to understand an aspect of philosophy is to look at a selection of the important thinkers therein, since a consideration of the questions they concerned themselves with can help us appreciate the overall areas within which they worked, as it were. This is especially so here because it's difficult to say exactly what analytic philosophy is. Although there is only space to touch on a selection of ideas and problems, they should make clearer the range and scope of what goes by that name.

Frege

Gottlob Frege lived from 1848 to 1925 and was probably the first analytic philosopher. He was not well known—even to other philosophers—until Carnap's writing made his ideas more widely available. His diary surprised his readers when it showed him to have been a virulent racist and anti-Semite. Even so, he set the ball rolling, as it were, by considering the ancient problem of the nature of identity (that is, what does it mean for two things to be identical?) in a new way.

Consider the following statements:

  • Wellington = Wellington (1)
  • Wellington = Capital of New Zealand (2)
Both are true (the first trivially so) and both express identity, insofar as we say that one side of the equality is identical with the other. Nevertheless, (1) doesn't seem to tell us anything new; whereas (2) gives us information about the world. If both are identity statements then there should be no difference between them (after all, if a = b and a = c then we say that b = c); and yet there seems to be something going on that we miss by calling them the same.

Frege's contribution was to realise this and formalise it. It is the new description of "Wellington" that makes (2) have a significance that (1) does not. He wrote that words (or indeed sentences) may have either or both a Sinn and a Bedeutung. These German words are translated in various ways (both being ways of saying "meaning") but the first implies a "concept" while the latter is a "referent". In our example, then, "Wellington" is a concept that is trivially identical with itself, but in (2) it also has a referent; that is, it refers to something in the world—the capital of New Zealand. The difference between (1) and (2) is thus that (2) has a referent that (1) lacks, hence (2) being significant while (1) is not.

This can be applied to many other examples. The sentence "the most beautiful sunrise", for instance, has a Sinn but no Bedeutung because although it means something to those who use it, it does not actually refer to anything. If we amend it slightly to "the most beautiful sunrise I have seen" then it takes on a different meaning because it now refers to a specific instance, in this case a particular judgement where the previous version was a general conception. Frege used to insight to build an entire philosophy of language.

Russell

As we noted above, Bertrand Russell was responsible for the theory of descriptions that we will return to later. He lived from 1872 to 1970 and was a prolific author on a wide variety of subjects, not limiting himself to philosophy. He was jailed for his opinions on several occasions and also received the Nobel Prize for literature. With Whitehead, he wanted to place philosophy on a firm logical basis and it is perhaps this aim that has been his lasting influence on a significant number of philosophers ever since.

Moore

Highly respected by his contemporaries, G.E. (George Edward) Moore lived between 1873 and 1958. Moore was a moral realist and developed an argument against the possibility of understanding ethics in natural terms. This was the naturalistic fallacy, discussed in our eleventh piece. He was also the author of a vigorous critique of idealism, which we'll consider later in this series, and tried to show that skepticism is self-contradictory.

He was perhaps most famous for his defence of common sense, that much maligned target of philosophical objection. In particular, his proof of the existence of the external world—which consisted in part in simply raising his hand—occupied Wittgenstein in the latter part of his life. He argued that although it is possible to be unsure of the correct analysis of some propositions, it is not possible to doubt their truth. These are the kind of propositions that everyone understands unmistakably, such as "this is a hand" (which he illustrated by raising his own). He dismissed the notion that a question such as "do you believe the earth has existed for many years past?" (to use another of his examples) requires a philosophical analysis in the Menckenian fashion before it can be answered with "yes", "no" or "I'm not sure".

There is an important distinction to appreciate here. The point is not that the proposition is easy to analyse (that is, we can still ask what existence means, what the nature of belief is, and so on), especially since—as we said before—there is no agreement about what analysis is, but rather that it is easy to answer the associated question.

Critics of Moore explained that he had begged the question. Saying "I know that x is so" does not make it so; in part, it is the evidential basis for the claim, its coherence with other beliefs, and so on, which convinces us. Indeed, rather than saying "I know" on the basis of his common sense argument, it would perhaps be better—and more accurate—to say "it is certain for me". This was part of Wittgenstein's great insight into the issue (one of many) that we'll come to shortly.

Carnap

A group of philosophers used to meet in the Vienna of the early twentieth century, known as the Weiner Kreis (or Vienna Circle) and of which Rudolf Carnap was probably the central figure. He lived from 1891 to 1970 and his works are also too numerous to meaningfully summarise. His thinking was largely positivistic but he arrived at his ideas in interesting ways. In particular, he developed the notion of a constitutional system, consisting in a set of definitions of concepts and theorems that cover their relationships, all making up a logical framework. This was another example of the importance placed on ideal (logical) languages.

Carnap used this view to look at the analytic/synthetic distinction in a different way. He thought that the questions we ask concern either the structure within which we understand them (that is, the boundary or the outside of the constitutional system) or matters inside. For example, "is Wellington the capital of New Zealand?" is a question about the world around us, whereas "does the world around us really exist?" is something we could ask before we even get that far—a foundational question, as it were. Carnap called the former external questions and the latter internal, identifying them respectively as synthetic and analytic. Although subject to vigorous critique by Quine, this changed the debate about the distinction between the two.

Wittgenstein

It is widely agreed that Ludwig Wittgenstein was a genius, in the strongest possible sense of the word. He had such a deep influence on philosophy and many other areas that it would be impossible to do justice to him here. Born in Austria but spending much of his working life in Britain, he lived from 1889 to 1951, fighting at the front in the First World War (by his own request, one that he struggled for some time to have granted) and composing the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in the trenches. The only work published in his lifetime, it was to become—along with his later Philosophical Investigations—one of the most famous philosophical works in recent history. Both these and his other writings changed philosophy significantly, not least in their effect on other philosophers who felt that everything they had done was called into question by his brilliance. Returning from the war, he committed what was described "financial suicide" by insisting that his enormous wealth (inherited from his father, a successful industrialist) be transferred to the other members of his family, subsequently living in near-poverty himself in order to better dedicate time to his work. By all accounts, this intensity of purpose characterised him throughout his life.

Wittgenstein's philosophy is generally split into two parts: the earlier period, with the Tractatus; and a later period roughly based around the Philosophical Investigations. The former was used by the logical positivists to support their ideas but most critics agree that this was based on a misunderstanding of the work and in particular only by ignoring its metaphysical aspects, which can roughly be termed logical atomism. He also expounded what is called the picture theory of language, according to which language latches on to reality, so to speak, by means of propositions that are "pictures" of reality—much like a musical score can be viewed as a "picture" of a piece of music, to use one of Wittgenstein's examples.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Wittgenstein's early philosophy is an area that he continued to write on later in his life, namely the possibility of science (or indeed philosophy) touching on the important "problems of life". Let us take some examples:

Quote

The sense of the world must lie outside of the world.... In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value. If there is value, which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world for otherwise this would again be accidental. It must lie outside the world.

Here Wittgenstein was speaking of what he would later call "running up against the barriers of language". The truly important questions of life can be shown but not said, he suggested, and if we could say them they would for that reason not be important. They transcend the world and hence lie beyond language. He applied this understanding to ethics, aesthetics, God and the mystical at various times. In this way, the solutions to these ultimate problems must lie outside of the domain of science and he wrote as much:

Quote

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.

The last remark was the basis of what became understood as the therapeutic value of Wittgenstein's work: if the important questions in life lie beyond the world and our ability to express them—precisely because that is the point—then it is "perfectly hopeless" to try to get at them with language. "The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem." In that case, we can show what these problems are but they cannot be addressed in language because they lie beyond it. This approach was seen as mystical because many mystics claim likewise.

Wittgenstein ended the Tractatus with the most famous passages:

Quote

The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e., the propositions of natural science, i.e., something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would be unsatisfying to the other—he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy—but it would be the only strictly correct method.

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognises them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder after he has climbed up on it.)

Here we return to the question we raised above: what is the purpose of philosophy? For Wittgenstein at this stage, it was therapeutic insofar as philosophy consisted in analysing propositions and showing that those in the domain of metaphysics are running up against and over the boundaries of what can be said and hence must be "climbed over". He does not say that they are worthless, but only that by asking them we are trying to put into words things that cannot be said. Elsewhere in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein explained in a different way:

Quote

Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false but senseless.

It is easy to see how this comment could be interpreted as supportive of positivism, which is indeed what happened. Nevertheless, the questions were only senseless in that they tried to use language to go where it cannot.

In his later philosophy, Wittgenstein defended the independence of philosophy rather than its therapeutic worth. He implicitly (never stating it in plain terms because it was in principle not possible to do so) explained that philosophical problems are a complex of presuppositions, ideas, theories and concepts, jumbled together. To make sense of them and address the issue it would first be necessary to untangle them. However, to tackle the problem requires a method that recognises this muddled beginning, coming at it from many different perspectives and hence getting a wider sense of it. Consequently, the Philosophical Investigations consists in aphorism after aphorism, replete with rhetorical questions posed in Socratic fashion that he sometimes only returned to after a lengthy discussion of some other aspect that eventually proved to shed light on the earlier part. Wittgenstein was not looking to explain problems but to describe them from multiple angles and thereby gain a deeper understanding.

Wittgenstein saw value in the older, traditional way of doing philosophy but believed that it had limitations. By imposing a model on the world it is often possible to see regularities or patterns that might otherwise be missed, but it also forces an array of particular instances into a general picture and hence cannot provide an accurate representation of all the smaller details. The more general we attempt to be, the more subtle distinctions are missed. In this way, we can become trapped by our picture of the world or a specific problem and hence not able to get beyond it.

Perhaps the best-known part of Wittgenstein's new method is what he called language games. He changed his earlier view of language such that meaning is to be understood as determined by use. When we want to understand a term, then, we should ask, "how is it used?" In this way the philosopher looks at how people behave within the language, rather than trying to think it out for themselves. His maxim became "Don't think. Look!"

A problem that Wittgenstein considered in two interesting ways was the question of whether we can know that an external world exists or not. The first was his celebrated private language argument, in which he asked if it would be possible for a person to know and use a language if they were the only person in existence. He concluded that they could not, since language—like games (hence language games)—is governed by rules; otherwise we would not know (or be able to say) if we had used a word or an expression correctly. However, if there was only a single person in existence, there could be no such rules; there would be nothing to refer to in order to call a usage correct or incorrect. Only by supposing that words have come to take their meaning publicly can we make sense of right or wrong usage, and thus there can be no private language. As a result, the external world must exist.

His other approach was given in his last work, On Certainty. Here he wrote that acting was the foundation of all language games. Statements such as "the external world exists" are neither true nor false but instead hinge propositions; that is, they are those presuppositions that we cannot do without. For example, it is not possible to ask, "does the external world exist?" without assuming that it does. After all, who are we asking? How did we learn to ask questions, or the language to pose them in? Even in asking the question we already defeat ourselves. Nevertheless, to call hinge propositions "true", "absolutely certain" or something similar is to miss the point: for something to be true it must have been possible that it could be false, but it is meaningless to talk of hinge propositions as having been otherwise. With this solution, Wittgenstein hoped to have shown that skepticism is self-defeating.

Ryle

Gilbert Ryle lived from 1900 to 1976 and worked at Oxford with Austin, doing much to bring the ideas of the Cambridge philosophers (such as Russell and Moore) to that institution. One of his distinguishing features as a philosopher was his total lack of any pretension in his work. He was renowned as a writer of great clarity and insight who was able to explain difficult concepts in plain language—being in particular master of metaphor—hence making his writing accessible to a wide audience.

One of his main philosophical concerns was the philosophy of mind, specifically Cartesian dualism, which he attacked with much vigour. He held that dualism—or the idea that there is a ghost in the machine, as he termed it—is a mistake based on a category error. He used a nice story to explain the problem:

Quote

A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks "But where is the University?" [...] His mistake lay in his innocent assumption that it was correct to speak of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum and the University; to speak, that is, as if "the University" stood for an extra member of the class of which these other units are members. He was mistakenly allocating the University to the same category as that to which the other institutions belong.

Anyone who has visited either can perhaps sympathise with the plight of the unfortunate tourist in this example. By analogy, however, Ryle insisted that it is an error to speak of the mind existing as the body does; "the mind" is here in the same situation as "the University" and the confusion of dualism lies in taking it to exist separately as the visitor does the University. The approach, then, was again to show that terms in language have been used incorrectly; and hence to demonstrate that the confusion in the philosophical problem disappears, as it were, when we employ language in a more logical fashion.

Although Ryle's analysis was immediately popular and discussed by many, it was soon passed over in favour of Wittgenstein's. Even so, he helped to bring the philosophies of mind and language together, such that modern work in these is almost invariably intertwined.

Quine

W.V.O. (Willard Van Ormond) Quine was born in 1908 and has had a varied philosophical career, too much so to effectively summarise here. We have already considered briefly above his objections to the analytic/synthetic distinction and he called this one of the "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", the title of perhaps his most famous paper. The second was the reductive hypothesis, which he also tackled.

Having made his criticisms, Quine then proposed "empiricism without the dogmas"—his own account of how empiricism should properly be understood. An important example of his ideas (which we'll take in sections) is as follows:

Quote

The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most causal matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field.

Here we have a form of holism, wherein Quine takes knowledge as a whole and assigns a much-reduced importance to experience (or experiment). Rather than a single idea being disproved or falsified by experiment, say, as some philosophers of scientists had supposed, knowledge for Quine is a web of ideas, notions and assumptions, some of which may be considered synthetic while others are presuppositions but all of which hang together. If a "conflict with experience" should occur, then (that is, experience reveals the opposite of or something different to what we expect), it occasions a change within the field of beliefs—not an abandonment of it. Moreover:

Quote

... Having re-evaluated one statement we must re-evaluate some others, which may be statements logically connected with the first or may be the statements of logical connections themselves. But the total field is so underdetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to re-evaluate in the light of any single contrary experience.

Here we run up against the problem of under-determination that we discussed in our sixth piece. Changes in beliefs may take place across the field he describes, in turn influencing others, but it is a mistake—according to Quine—to suppose that empiricism alone can decide matters for us. Furthermore:

Quote

... If this view is right, it is misleading to speak of the empirical content of an individual statement—especially if it is a statement at all remote from the experiential periphery of the field. Furthermore, it becomes folly to seek a boundary between synthetic statements, which hold contingently on experience, and analytic statements, which hold come what may. Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. Even a statement very close to the periphery can be held true in the face of recalcitrant experience by pleading hallucination or by amending certain statements of the kind called logical laws. Conversely, by the same token, no statement is immune to revision.

Now Quine addresses the analytic/synthetic distinction, claiming that it cannot hold because no statement is held to be true or false in isolation. Instead, being a part of a system of beliefs it may be amended as the whole changes, or it may be rescued by suitable alterations within the system. The distinction is thus revealed as too simplistic to account for the way in which beliefs are actually held. It is also a mistake, says Quine, to judge statements on their empirical content (that is, how well they are supported by evidence) because no statements are held solely with reference to experience.

Later Quine modified his opinions, calling for a more moderate holism and allowing that there could be a pragmatic use for the analytic/synthetic distinction, but he continued to maintain that beliefs are not held in isolation. Indeed, the other factors inside the systems that make up our knowledge might influence where and what kind of experience we look for or to in the first place. Nevertheless, his ideas (these and many others) have been subject to critique. In particular, it is argued that Quine did not remove the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements at all but merely replaced it as one of degree, not kind.

Austin

J.L. (John Langshaw) Austin was yet another British philosopher of this period (along with Russell, Moore, Ryle and still more not covered here), born in 1911 and dying of cancer in 1960. His best-known contribution to philosophy is speech act theory, discussed below, but it is reckoned that he would have had a far greater impact if his life had not been cut short.

Austin employed a methodological principle that is almost unique in philosophy, which he characterised as follows:

Quote

... the abnormal will throw light on the normal.

This approach is also found in Feyerabend and supposes that by studying the extreme or unusual case we will discover something about what typically obtains. Below we consider his investigations on performatives instead of the more usual propositions, for example.

Austin also used two further principles that Stroll calls the first word and ontological applicability principles. The former notes that language has a long history and the distinctions we find in it—like good and bad, true and false, free and un-free, and so on—have served a purpose (or purposes) in being employed and handed down to us. The latter extends this observation by claiming that such distinctions get at actual features of the universe. Although he acknowledged that exceptions exist, he thought that as a rule the (lengthy) existence of a distinction suggests that it tells us something rather than being arbitrary. In particular, he applied these to the problem of free will and used them to conclude that there are both free and un-free actions.

The multiplicity of analytic philosophy

In summary, by briefly looking at the work of these representative thinkers we can see the diversity of approaches, arguments and positions and hence why it is so difficult to characterise analytic philosophy. It is perhaps interesting to note that during this period (that is, the early twentieth century) it was still possible for individual philosophers to have a definitive impact on the rest of the (philosophical) world; nowadays, however, the sheer number of philosophers working in institutions around the world and the focus on current issues rather than the traditional (and largely unresolved) concerns of the past mean that the era of "superstar" philosophers may be past. As strange as this description may seem, some of those discussed above were famous in their time in a way that we now reserve for sportspersons, musicians and movie stars.

Analysing philosophical questions

In this last section we'll look at two of the most significant theories developed by analytic philosophers.

The theory of descriptions

Russell's theory of descriptions is recognised as having lasting import in philosophy. Consider the following propositions:

  • God does not exist (1)
  • The present king of France is not bald (2)
An objection frequently heard against (1) is that the atheist presupposes God's existence in making such a statement; that is, if He does not exist, then whom are we talking about in the first place? (2) is the standard example that Russell used, which presents us with a slightly different problem: given that republican France no longer has a monarchy, is (2) true, false or perhaps meaningless? If we say "true" then it would seem strange: after all, there is no king of France; conversely, if we say "false" then are we in fact implying that he has suffered undue stress from paying restaurant bills on trips to his capital? The technical term for such statements is to say that they lack a referent—the thing they refer to.

The theory of descriptions helped to clear up the confusion in these and other instances of language seemingly gone wrong. In the case of (2) to begin with, there are two ways we could read the proposition that have different consequences:

  • There currently exists a king of France who is not bald.
  • It is not the case that a king of France currently exists who is also not bald.
The first interpretation assumes that a king of France does worry about his hairline in Versailles, but the second avoids the problem by denying that anything exists that we could describe both as "king of France" and "not bald". This is because the denial applies only to the baldness in the first, but to the entire statement in the second.

We can go further, however, by splitting (2) into three separate propositions:

  • At least one thing is currently king of France (i)
  • At most one thing is currently king of France (ii)
  • Whomever is currently king of France is not bald (iii)
If there is a king of France with hair, each of (i), (ii) and (iii) are true and hence (2) holds. On the other hand, if any one of (i), (ii) or (iii) is false then (2) is also false: for example, (i) fails to hold if there is no king of France (as in a republic)—lacking a referent again; (ii) is false if there is more than one king (another circumstance that could potentially render (2) problematic); and (iii) is false if said king is lacking a full head of hair. Either way, this re-description in a more logical fashion has resolved the ambiguity.

Returning to (1), we can see another way in which the theory of descriptions uses logical clarification to remove the difficulty caused by (1) lacking a referent—according to the atheist in our example, at least. Russell's insight was to realise that the term "God" is not a name for something we assume exists but an abbreviation of a detailed description. Depending on the kind of God we have in mind, this might be "just, all powerful and all knowing", such that (1) now reads:

  • There is nothing that is just, all powerful and all knowing.
Now we have the sense of the proposition without any need to suppose that God exists beforehand.

By analysing propositions in terms similar to that we have done for (1) and (2) we are able to make sense of claims about things we take to be non-existent, like Father Christmas, Patrick Bateman or the character of Hugo Holbling.

In closing, we can remark on a famous instance of using the theory of descriptions in criticising a philosophical argument. Recalling our discussion of the ontological argument in our fifteenth piece and the argument above, when someone says "God exists" it is tantamount to stating that "something is just, all powerful and all knowing". In this rendering, the word "something" does not describe a property possessed by God and hence, or so Russell concluded, existence is not a property. This means that the basic step in the ontological proof of asserting that God must have the property of existence is faulty, since the whole argument can be recast with the theory of descriptions to remove any talk of existence. Russell's analysis of the ontological proof has found wide acceptance.

Speech Act theory

Sometimes called performative utterances, speech acts were considered by Austin in part as a counter-argument to logical positivism. Consider, say, a Christening ceremony in which a baby is named; the minister presiding might say, "I name you Hugo", for example. We could ask if this statement is true or false, but that would be to miss the point completely: the utterance performs a function—in this case naming—but does not make any claim that could be true or false. Since such a statement cannot be verified, it would have to be ruled meaningless according to the principle of verification. The problem with that, however, is that everyone appreciates the meaning of the statement (except, perhaps, baby Hugo).

Austin called such statements speech acts and developed his theory of them to include distinctions between many different types. His larger point was that language has far more uses than allowed by the early analytic understanding, particularly the view that language expressed propositions that could either be true or false. The set of speech acts that are meaningful to those using them but nevertheless neither true nor false he called performative. His work has since been extended by others and plays an important part in the philosophy of language, which we will consider in a future discussion.

Analytic Philosophy today

In spite of the concerns raised at the work of its early exponents, today analytic philosophy is active in many areas, particularly the philosophy of mind. Generally speaking, analytic philosophers reject Cartesian dualism and support either functionalism or eliminative materialism, all of which we discussed in our fourteenth piece. Questions of what we can call meaningful, how we find out about the world and what kind of facts (if any) it is composed of occupy philosophers just as surely as they did in the past. Indeed, some suggest that the questions of old have timeless relevance and hence need to (and ultimately will) be studied today and in future.


Dialogue the Thirteenth

The Scene: It's the following day and Trystyn has arranged to meet up with Brother Peter. The former is waiting in The Drunken Bishop with Steven.

Steven: Will he turn up?

Trystyn: Sure. Why not?

Steven: Maybe we put him off yesterday?

Trystyn: He seemed genuinely interested in us.

Steven: In you. What do you think he is? Some kind of theologian?

Trystyn: Could be. (He looks up.) Here he is.

(Brother Peter shakes hands with both, greeting them warmly.)

Peter: Hello again. How was your talk?

Steven: Pretty funny. I'd never realised the philosophical depths of rugby, for sure.

Peter: There's nothing more important, some say.

Steven: Apparently the angles at which Cullen would hit the line were enough to make mathematicians swear beauty is number. It was all Greek to me, however.

Trystyn: Touch .

Peter: Indeed. (He laughs.) Well, what shall we discuss?

Trystyn: My friend here wants to know what you do.

Steven: Er...

Peter: Of course. I'm an analytic theologian.

Steven: A what?

Peter: It's like I told you yesterday: I'm interested in religion, but I also want to bring philosophical analysis to bear on the questions that vex me.

Steven:What does "philosophical analysis" consist in, for you? I can guess...

Trystyn: No one really agrees what analysis is, although lots of people have suggested methods.

Steven: Why doesn't that surprise me?

Trystyn: You're always ahead of the game, like Cullen.

Peter: Like Trystyn says, it's hard to speak definitively. The easiest way to think of it is making clear all the terms in a question before trying to answer it. That way you can—hopefully, at least—decide if the question can be answered at all.

Steven: Is this where you take a question like "what's for breakfast?" and start asking (... he puts on a professorial air...) "but what do you mean by 'for', may I ask?"

Trystyn: That's it! (He laughs.)

Peter: It's true: you've already mastered the subject, I see.

Steven: Go on, please.

Peter: Well, sometimes this process can help us see where a question has resisted an answer because the terms were incorrectly understood. Other times it might be that the terms just made no sense, or were used wrongly. Occasionally it turns out that the way the question was phrased has caused the confusion, so if we ask it in a different way we can find an answer.

Steven: Give me an example.

Peter: Suppose one of my fellow theologians were to say to me that "God is unknowable."

Steven: (Interrupting...) I would ask him how he knows that.

Peter: Or she; but you're right. Do you see, though, that before we can even ask the counter question there is this issue of knowledge: what do we mean by knowable?

Trystyn: (Grinning...) Here we go.

Steven: Quiet, you. What do we mean by knowable?

Peter: That's the point. Perhaps the fellow who said that meant a different thing by it to me, or to you? Most likely he also had a different idea in mind to what my grandmother would say, and so on.

Steven: What would your grandmother say?

Peter: Probably something about finishing vegetables or "haven't you grown?"

Steven: Nothing about philosophy?

Trystyn: That'd be mine.

Steven: He's not joking, you know.

Peter: Still, if my friend is using an understanding distinct from my own then we're all but speaking different languages.

Steven: So it would be better if you could translate one into the other?

Peter: Exactly.

Trystyn: Or both into a clearer language altogether.

Steven: Like what?

Peter: Like logic. As he says, this is what philosophers tried to do during the early part of the twentieth century: you find an ideal language governed by logical rules and translate questions into it. Then, by applying the rules, you solve the question, find errors in the reasoning or show that it didn't make sense.

Trystyn: Except that it didn't work.

Peter: It turned out that it couldn't be done, but you can see why the idea was worth working on.

Steven: So how does this help us with your example?

Peter: Well, go back to it: "God is unknowable." We ought to ask...

Steven: ... what we mean by God? Oh no.

Peter: Unfortunately, yes. The problem is that "God" is here being used as a name or description of something else, a being with definite (or not so definite) characteristics from one or other religion. If we replace the name with a more accurate description—in particular, the one my friend is using—we can make sense of the claim. Suppose, for instance, that my friend is one of those theologians that defines God as unknowable; then all he has said is "an unknowable being is unknowable", or "x is unknowable, where x is an unknowable being." We would agree that his claim is uncontroversial because this analysis has cleared it up, making it transparent.

Steven: Fair enough.

Peter: This is a simple example, but that's one way of understanding philosophical analysis: the breaking down of a problem into its clearest possible form. There are others.

Steven: Why are you applying these analyses to God?

Peter: I want to know if it makes sense to talk about Him in various ways, or even if we can talk at all.

Steven: Is there much call for this kind of discussion these days?

Peter: I guess most people want to talk about rugby.

Trystyn: Angles and angels, you see. It all comes to the same thing in the end.

Curtain. Fin.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:46:23 +0000 c399862d3b9d6b76c8436e924a68c45b 16. A Guide to Logical Fallacies http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/16-a-guide-to-logical-fallacies-r33 Paul Newall (2005)

Expanding on our fourth discussion, we'll now look at the kinds of moves—rhetorical or otherwise—that can be made when setting out or defending an idea and countering others. We'll also consider some common errors in reasoning that come up in philosophical arguments from time to time, like anywhere else. The purpose of this piece is to provide a toolbox of concepts to use or refer back to when reading through and evaluating pieces of philosophy.

Making an argument

Although often we make arguments to try to learn about and understand the world around us, sometimes we hope to persuade others of our ideas and convince them to try or believe them, just as they might want to do likewise with us. To achieve this we might use a good measure of rhetoric, knowingly or otherwise. The term itself dates back to Plato, who used it to differentiate philosophy from the kind of speech and writing that politicians and others used to persuade or influence opinion. Probably the most famous study of rhetoric was by Aristotle, Plato's pupil, and over the years philosophers have investigated it to try to discover the answer to questions like:

  • What is the best (or most effective) way to persuade people of something?
  • Is the most convincing argument also the best choice to make? Is there any link between the two?
  • What are the ethical implications of rhetoric?
Although we might take a dim view of some of the attempts by contemporary politicians to talk their way out of difficult situations with verbal manouevrings that stretch the meaning of words beyond recognition, hoping we'll forget what the original question was, nevertheless there are times when we need to make a decision and get others to agree with it. Since we don't always have the luxury of sitting down to discuss matters, we might have to be less than philosophical in our arguments to get what we want. This use of rhetoric comes with the instructional manual for any relationship and is par for the course in discussions of the relative merits of sporting teams.

In a philosophical context, then, we need to bear in mind that arguments may be flawed and that rhetorical excesses can be used to make us overlook that fact. When trying to understand, strengthen or critique an idea, we can use a knowledge of common errors—deliberate or not—found in reasoning. We call these fallacies: arguments that come up frequently that go wrong in specific ways and are typically used to mislead someone into accepting a false conclusion (although sometimes they are just honest mistakes). Although fallacies were studied in the past and since, as was said previously, there has been something of a revival in recent times and today people speak of critical thinking, whereby we approach arguments and thinking in general in a critical fashion (hence the name), looking to evaluate steps in reasoning and test conclusions for ourselves. Hopefully this guide will help in a small way.

Fallacies

As we discussed above, some mistakes in reasoning occur often enough that we now have almost a catalogue of them to consider. Here we'll look at those that turn up in everyday situations, whether uttered by politicians hoping to win our votes or the guy at the bar selling his theory as to why his team lost again as a result of poor refereeing. We already looked at a sample in our fourth discussion, so some of the content should be familiar.

There are two kinds of fallacy: formal and informal. If we look back to the introduction to Logic, a formal fallacy is an argument wherein the structure reveals the flaw, while an informal fallacy is one wherein the structure may seem fine but the content is somewhere in error.

The plan of this treatment will be as follows:

  • An example of the fallacy
  • An explanation as to what's wrong
  • Another example
  • A more technical explanation, where possible
Hopefully by the end of the discussion these fallacies should be easier to spot and will probably be found all over the place. Although there is a certain amount of skill in noticing and countering them, they may also give us a grudging respect for those master rhetoricians who employ them with such cunning.

Argumentum ad hominem

This is a fallacy we studied before but it bears repeating, not least because it's perhaps the most frequently charged and least understood, in spite of its relative simplicity. Consider the following example:

Quote

You say that the conservatives' tax plans would leave the health service under-funded, but you're a liberal and would get rid of health care altogether.

Now, whether or not the characterization of the so-called liberal's beliefs is accurate (that question will be asked when we look at another fallacy to come), the point is that it isn't relevant: either the plans really will leave the health service under-funded or they won't (or, perhaps, the situation may be considerably more complex), but the political persuasion of the person making that criticism doesn't impact on the claim itself. That means that the complaint against the liberal is against him or her, not the claim; and that is what the Latin phrase means: an argument against the man (or woman—more accurately, "argument to the person"), rather than an actual counter-argument. In general, there are three kinds of ad hominem:

  • Abusive—the person is attacked instead of their argument
  • Circumstantial—the person's circumstances in making the argument are discussed instead of the argument itself
  • Tu Quoque—the person is said to not practice what he or she preaches
Notice what the ad hominem is not: it doesn't say that the political beliefs of the liberal don't motivate his or her criticism in the first place, or that he or she wouldn't want to remove health care altogether (although it doesn't seem likely), but only that these things are not relevant to the point at issue. For this reason it is usually grouped as one of the fallacies of relevance. It also is not equivalent to an insult, as many people seem to suppose.

Consider now some other examples:

Quote

Some politicians claim we should raise taxes, but they are just greedy opportunists trying to gain more of our money to spend on themselves.

This is an ad hominem abusive, since it attacks a (perceived) quality of the claimant(s) instead of the claim itself. It has the form:

  • P1: A claims B;
  • P2: A is a C;
  • C: Therefore, B is false.

Quote

You say we should lower taxes, but you are living beyond your means and so you would be expected to say that.

This is an ad hominem circumstantial, since it brings in the circumstances of the claimant when they are not relevant to the claim at issue (even if they might explain his or her interest). It has the form:

  • P1: A claims B;
  • P2: A is in circumstances C;
  • C: Therefore, B is false.

Quote

You say people should learn to live within their means, but you are in debt yourself and make no effort to get out of it.

This is an ad hominem tu quoque, since it draws to our attention an inconsistency in the argument: if the claim is true, then the claimant should either change his or her ways or admit that the claim doesn't have to apply to everyone after all. It has the form:

  • P1: A claims B;
  • P2: A practices not-B;
  • C: Therefore, B is inconsistent with A's actions.
Note that this differs from the first two examples in that they are instances of formal fallacies while the third is sometimes an acceptable move to make in any argument. Pointing out an inconsistency in someone's thinking does not show their position to be mistaken but it may show their advocacy of it to be hypocritical. If we change the form slightly, it becomes fallacious:

  • P1: A claims B;
  • P2: A practices not-B;
  • C: Therefore, B is false.
That someone may be a hypocrite, of course, does not show their ideas to be false. The first form of tu quoque is fine but the latter is fallacious.

In summary, then, the ad hominem fallacy brings irrelevancies to a discussion and distracts from the real point at issue.

Argumentum ad populum

This is another instance of a fallacy of relevance. For example:

Quote

You say that raising taxes will result in better public services, but hardly anyone believes that these days.

The problem here is that the number of people believing in an idea has no impact on its truth. An interesting other example shows this nicely: a common presumption, it seems, is that people in the past almost universally believed the earth to be flat, while we now know that it isn't. The fact that so many people allegedly believed that it was flat didn't change the shape of the earth accordingly, and if someone in those days had asserted that "everyone says the earth is flat" in defence of that claim then we would say that this didn't make it so: no amount of belief in a false idea can make it true. The irony is that historical inquiry teaches us that this example is also false, even though plenty of people seem to believe it: the belief in a flat earth was not widespread and the studies of historians have overturned this myth, even though many still hold to it.

The general form is as follows:

  • P1: A is claimed;
  • P2: x many people believe that A is false, where x is large;
  • C: Therefore, A is false.
Reading beyond this argument, we can see that there are hidden assumptions to do with the ability of people to determine the truth of such questions on their own. For example:

  • P1: A is claimed;
  • P2: A majority of people is able to judge questions outside their area of expertise or knowledge with a high degree of validity;
  • P3: It is possible to accurately gauge the collective opinion of people on such matters;
  • P4: x many people believe that A is false, where x is a majority;
  • C: Therefore, A is false.
Even here there are still presuppositions that remain implicit and could be drawn out by further analysis. Appealing to the masses—which is what the Latin term means—is irrelevant to the truth or otherwise of the claim. There are more complicated examples we could consider, like this one:

Quote

You shouldn't use racist language because almost everyone thinks it's wrong to do so.

Here a normative moral claim ("you shouldn't use racist language") is justified by appealing to the number of people who agree with it. Is this an argumentum ad populum, though? As we saw in our discussion of ethics, some moral thinkers suggest that issues of right and wrong are decided by intersubjective agreement; in that case, the claim would actually read something like this:

  • P1: Moral issues are decided by intersubjective agreement;
  • P2: Intersubjective agreement suggests that racist language is wrong;
  • C: Therefore, it is wrong to use racist language.
Put in this form, it seems like a reasonable argument to make. For those who disagree about intersubjective agreement, however, P1 would be disputed and the attempt to justify the conclusion by appealing to P2 would be regarded as fallacious.

A slightly different version of this fallacy is the appeal to tradition, where reference is made not to the number of people who hold a belief but the (alleged) fact that it has been believed for so long (or that the belief is an integral part of a society or culture) that to question it is folly. For example:

Quote

You say we should no longer have a nuclear deterrent, but there has always been war and always will be and we need to be able to defend ourselves.

Here the traditional belief among a significant number of people that war is a reality of life is used to justify a claim about defence requirements. However, this is not obvious and needs to be argued in turn; the fact (even if true) that people have always believed war to be an inevitability of life does not make it so, nor does the number of people who might believe it now or in the future. Once again, though, the matter is much more subtle: this could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, since if a majority of people feel war to be inevitable then they may be less likely to avoid it than those who are convinced just as surely that there is always a peaceful solution to any potential conflict. Appealing to tradition may be a reasonable thing to do if the tradition is true.

In summary, the argumentum ad populum uses numbers to support claims when an inductive justification is insufficient to prove them.

Argumentum ad vericundiam

This is a move in argument that may or may not be fallacious, depending on the circumstances. It means an appeal to authority, an example of which could be thus:

Quote

You say philosophy is important, but Professor X says it's a waste of time.

Here the speaker refers to the authority of the professor to counter the claim that philosophy is important. The problem is that the presumed authority may or may not be relevant: if the professor is (or was) a lifelong student of philosophy and decided after years working in the field that it really is a waste of time, then perhaps we should look into his reasons for saying so? On the other hand, if he is a professor of mineralogy, say, then—on the face of it—his opinion bears no more or less weight than anyone else's. It may be that additional factors are important: perhaps this professor has also studied philosophy or is known to us to be a particularly trustworthy and astute individual whose opinion we have come to value?

In short, appealing to authority where the authority does know (or is expected to know) what he or she is talking about is a legitimate move in argument, but when the authority's expertise is not relevant then it is fallacious—indeed, a fallacy of relevance, as before.

Matters are not always so clear-cut, though. Even if the authority in question really is an authority in the field, it may be that the question under consideration is one of much controversy among his or her fellow academics. In our example, other philosophy professors may be found who say that philosophy is important, so that appealing to authorities on one or other side or an argument does no more than appraise us of what they think. Take another instance:

Quote

Professor Y, a highly respected biologist at a prestigious university, says that the likelihood of live evolving on Mars is so small that, for practical purposes, we can assume it didn't; therefore spending money on searching for life on the red planet is a waste of valuable resources.

Here the implicit idea behind the criticism is that with only a finite amount of money to go around and other deserving causes in need of support, why should we support a quest that academics like Professor Y agree is very likely to fail? Is this argument fallacious? It depends: we would need to know more information, such as whether the professor is an expert in the appropriate area of biology and if there is any controversy among similar experts. If the professor's opinion is indicative of the relevant biological community, then perhaps this is information we should keep in mind when forming an opinion on the issue? On the other hand, if the professor is something of a maverick and the weight of biological opinion goes against him or her, then appealing to him or her as an authority could be seen as fallacious, distracting us from the point at issue. In general, we need to be careful in assessing the value of expert testimony, as well as its relevance.

Argumentum ad baculum

Consider the following argument:

Quote

You had better vote for an increase in taxes or the country will fall apart.

Here an appeal is being made to the consequences of not accepting the argument for raising taxes. The fallacy itself means an appeal to force (although here we consider also the argumentum ad consequentium, since they are so similar), and here the claimant is implying that a consideration of what will (allegedly) follow from not raising taxes ought to force us to accept the proposal. That means the general form is thus:

  • P1: Not doing A will result in B;
  • P2: B is undesirable;
  • C: Therefore, we should do A.
The fallacy occurs when the threat is in fact not related to the proposed action; in this formation, that would be challenging P1. In our example, perhaps not increasing taxes really would lead directly to the country falling apart (whatever that means), but it isn't obvious. Indeed, it sounds more like a rhetorical tactic to discount all the alternatives. What we want to know is if P1 is true; if not, then the argument is fallacious.

Take another instance:

Quote

If you don't exercise your right to vote, extremist parties will take advantage of your apathy and gain more power. Is that what you want?

Here, once again, the force of the undesirable consequences is intended to make us accept the argument that we should vote. Is this fallacious, though? If we were to put it into syllogistic form, this time P1 would seem much more plausible. The important point is that the threat appealed to must be relevant to the issue at hand.

Argumentum ad misericordiam

This fallacy is concerned with an appeal to pity, usually for the circumstances of the claimant. Consider this example:

Quote

How can you reject my thesis? I worked on it for three years.

The problem here is that a bad idea is so whether the result of five minutes or five decades of effort; the fact that someone may have spent a great deal of time coming up with it says nothing at all about its truth or otherwise, so asking someone to take account of the particular factors that went into it and the disencouraging thought of so much time wasted is simply irrelevant. One way we could set this out is as follows:

  • P1: If A is false, all the work put into it would have been wasted;
  • P2: Wasted effort is to be avoided;
  • C: Therefore, A is not false.
When we look at it this starkly, it seems obvious that the conclusion does not follow.

Now take another example:

Quote

How can we not donate aid to those countries less fortunate than our own?

Although this is close to another fallacy we'll consider later, we can see that here an appeal to pity (for the less fortunate countries) is intended to distract from the fact that there are other ways to help people, some or all of which may be better than donating aid. That some people may be in unfortunate circumstances does not imply that aid is the best way to help them, and indeed the fact that people elsewhere are in need of help is irrelevant to the question of whether aid is a good strategy, except insofar as it provides the problem in the first place. It may seem heartless to note this, but that is precisely what the appeal to pity intends to do: by hoping that we will want to avoid appearing overly concerned with the logic of argument instead of the people affected, the existence of alternatives is ignored.

In general, then, we once again have a fallacy of relevance.

Argumentum ad ignorantiam

The argument from ignorance usually involves assuming that something is true because it has not yet been proven false. For example:

Quote

You say that faeries don't exist, but you can't prove that they don't.

The implicit idea at work is that since the existence of faeries has (allegedly) not been disproved, it follows that they do exist. This is not relevant, however: that this disproof has not been forthcoming says nothing about actual existence or otherwise. Even if nothing disproving faeries ever comes about, this cannot form the basis of a proof of their reality.

To see some of the issues involved in the argument from ignorance, we can also look at a more involved example:

Quote

Evolution is false because it can't explain how life could evolve from non-life.

Here the assumption is made that for evolution to be a successful theory it must be able to explain how life itself came about in the first place; since it is supposed that no one can do this at the moment, it follows (allegedly) that evolution fails. We can try to put this in syllogistic form:

  • P1: A successful explanation of life must be able to account for the development of life itself;
  • P2: Evolutionary theory cannot do so;
  • C: Therefore, evolution is not a successful explanation.
We can agree that P1 seems reasonable, but the problems lie with P2. It may be that evolutionary theory can provide an explanation, but that this is insufficiently understood by the person making the argument and hence thought to be unsuccessful. However, even if we suppose for the purpose of discussion that P2 does hold, the conclusion still need not follow. What we require is an additional premise, to the effect that evolutionary theory currently cannot provide an explanation and, moreover, that we have good reason to believe that it never will be able to.

Here we arrive at the crux of the matter: even if evolutionary theory cannot help us at the present time, it may be that tomorrow, next week or in several years with more research and study that the hoped-for explanation can be found. That we are ignorant of such an explanation now is no reason to suppose that we always will. In the syllogism, then, we might have:

  • P1: A successful explanation of life must be able to account for the development of life itself;
  • P2: Evolutionary theory currently cannot do so;
  • C1: Therefore, evolutionary theory can never do so.
  • C2: Therefore, evolution is not a successful explanation.
Viewed like this, we can readily see that C1 does not follow from P2. We would require another premise, such as:

  • P3: There are strong reasons to suppose that evolutionary theory can never do so.
This, of course, is just the kind of premise that would be disputed and it would require a good argument of its own. The argument, without this expansion to understand what is going on, relies on current ignorance to justify a conclusion about the future.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc

This Latin term means "after this, therefore because of this" and the fallacy involves mistaking a subsequent event for a consequent event. For example:

Quote

I lost my lucky hat and my team started a losing streak. When I found it again their fortunes improved. It just goes to show that my lucky hat works after all.

There are plenty of other sporting superstitions like this one we could look at. Although one concern here is that if the lucky hat didn't "work" we might attribute the run of losses to something else, the main issue runs thus: after I found my lucky hat the losing streak stopped; therefore, it was because of it that the team started doing well again—post hoc, ergo propter hoc. We have two subsequent events—the finding of the hat and the ending of the losing streak—that are assumed to be consequent, the former causing the latter. There are plenty of other ways to account for events, though: perhaps the team was missing several key players, or playing away from home? The objection is to note that it need not follow that two subsequent events mean that one caused the other.

Take another example:

Quote

The government increased the amount of benefits it provides and the level of immigration went up. This proves that people come here for the free hand-outs.

The argument here is that people are motivated to migrate to one country rather than another because of the assistance it can provide them with; the fact that the number of immigrants went up after the amount was increased is supposed to prove this theory. If we set it out clearly, we can see what is going on:

  • P1: Benefit levels went up;
  • P2: Immigration levels then increased;
  • C: Therefore, immigrants chose which country to migrate to on the basis of benefit levels.
In fact, we would expect the matter to be far more complex, with potential migrants—both those who chose to leave their home country and those who are forced to by circumstances—to weigh up many factors. What is missing, then, is another premise—something like:

  • P3: All other factors remained the same.
If we take P1 and P2 as given, P3 still requires a strong argument of its own, especially since—on first inspection—it's hard to see how such dynamic factors could remain constant long enough to make this assessment.

In general, the picture we have is as follows:

  • P: B follows A;
  • C: Therefore, A caused B.
We could replace A and B with all manner of instances to see how plainly this argument fails; we would need that crucial additional premise that all other factors remained the same if we want to talk about causation. Since it assumes too much, this fallacy is usually called one of presumption.

False dilemma

This fallacy typically involves asking a question and providing only two possible answers when there are actually far more. It seems to be a favourite of politicians, especially when trying to win support for a none-too-plausible policy. Take this classic example:

Quote

You're either with us or against us.

The implicit argument here is that two possible positions exist with regard to the matter at hand: in favour or opposed. If we are not in favour, then, it follows that we must be opposed; and vice versa. The use of such tactics often give us the opportunity of appreciating fine—if overblown—rhetoric, too, like "do you support this war to defend our way of life or are you a cowardly, treasonous blackguard?" To expose the question as a false dilemma, all we need do is show that an alternative response exits. Other names for the same thing are the black and white fallacy, which immediately calls our attention to the shades of grey that are ignored, or the bifurcation fallacy.

Take another example:

Quote

Either you support lowering taxes or you're content to see this country go to hell in short order.

The person presenting such a choice presumably advocates the lowering of taxes and is offering us a choice of two options. Since the second one seems unpalatable, he or she assumes we will lend our support to the policy. Taking the best possible reading of this situation, we might have the following:

  • P1: We can lower taxes or the country can go to the devil;
  • P2: No other options exist;
  • C: Therefore, a person not agreeing with lowering taxes is content to see the country fall apart.
Even this does not precisely address the statement as given; for instance, we could hold no opinion at all on the matter, or be insufficiently informed to do so sensibly. These are alternatives, so the choice given is a false dilemma. In the above formulation we could challenge P2, since it seems unlikely that only one policy has been proposed. A single alternative would again make the choice a false dilemma. As before, this is a fallacy of presumption.

Slippery slope

This fallacy occurs when a person is too quick with what they suppose to follow from various stages in their argument. Take this example:

Quote

If we accept restrictions on free speech then opponents of freedom will soon be asking for more restrictions elsewhere and before we know it we'll be living under a totalitarian regime.

The slippery slope is supposed to run from the acceptance of restrictions on free speech to the arrival of a totalitarian regime, so that once we start on this road there is (allegedly) no turning back—totalitarianism would be inevitable.

To check if the argument is fallacious we need to look at the initial premise and the conclusion and see if the latter follows. In our example this would give:

  • P: Freedom of speech is to be restricted;
  • C: Therefore, totalitarianism is inevitable.
Put so starkly, it doesn't seem very convincing. Moreover, it is by no means obvious that the premise need lead to anything other than what it states; to show otherwise, the person making the argument would need to add more detail in the form of additional premises, explaining why the conclusion necessarily follows. Without that, the fallacy lies in claiming that a slippery slope exists where it doesn't.

Complex question

This fallacy occurs when two or more questions are asked at the same time as though they are related, when in fact they need not be. For example:

Quote

Do you agree that we should lower taxes and increase prosperity?

Here we are asked two questions ("do you agree that we should lower taxes?" and "do you agree that we should increase prosperity?"), but they are linked together as though reducing taxes and increasing prosperity are the same thing. Sometimes, of course, that is the point: the questioner wants to say that lowering taxes will lead to increased prosperity, so the question is actually asking if we agree that one follows the other. Instead, we can separate the two and perhaps agree with one and not the other. For instance, we might want to increase prosperity but disagree that lowering taxes is the way to go about it.

Often the rhetorical purpose of a complex question is to associate a proposed course of action that might be rejected with a desirable consequence, suggesting that the latter depends on the former. This challenges the reader/listener to reject both, which would be hard to do without accepting the loss of the desirable part. The way around this strategy is to separate them. Take another example:

Quote

Do you want to study philosophy and waste your time?

There are again two questions being asked here: "do you want to study philosophy?" and "do you want to waste your time?" The implication we are supposed to draw is that studying philosophy is a waste of time, but we can ask if it is possible to answer "yes" to one question and "no" to the other. In this case, we can: we might think that studying philosophy is not a waste of time, but agree that wasting time is something to be avoided. In that case, we can give the "yes" and "no" answers and hence we have a fallacy of complex question.

In general, then, a complex question involves being asked something in the form "do you believe/agree with/disagree with A and B (and C, etc...)?" and realizing that the question can be separated into "do you agree with A?"; "do you agree with B?"; and so on. If A and B are related, then there may be no fallacy; but if it is possible to answer the separate questions with different answers, then a complex question has been used fallaciously.

Accident

The fallacy of accident is sometimes also called a sweeping generalization and this latter name for it gives an indication of what is going on. It occurs when a general rule is misapplied to a particular situation. Take an example:

Quote

The Bible says, "thou shalt not kill", but every time you eat you're killing something.

Here the argument is intended to show that the Biblical injunction is mistaken, since killing is unavoidable if we hope to survive. To untangle it and find where the error lies, we look for the general rule and try to see if it has been correctly applied or not. In this case, the rule is easy to spot: "thou shalt not kill". Next we need to ask where (or to whom) the rule is supposed to apply, and here we find the error: it is clear from the context that the rule is for humans and prevents them from killing other humans. Since it's possible to survive without needing to kill other people (although much of world history tends to suggest otherwise), to extend the rule to animals or plants, say, is to misapply it—to make a sweeping generalization that goes far beyond the original intent in an effort to defeat it.

If we fill in the implicit suggestion and put the argument into a syllogism it immediately becomes clear:

  • P1: Thou shalt not kill (other humans);
  • P2: We need to kill other animals and/or plants to survive;
  • C: Therefore, following the rule "thou shalt not kill" would prevent our survival.
The conclusion simply does not follow.

Consider now another example:

Quote

You say that we should not kill others, but that means you wouldn't raise a hand while someone tried to murder you.

Here the person is taking the same general rule and applying it to the particular situation in which (it is implied) we must "kill or be killed". Thus we have the same rule and the application seems to be reasonable, but this time the sweeping generalization lies in supposing the rule "thou shalt not kill" to read something like "thou shalt never kill, under any circumstances". By taking an uncharitable reading of the principle, the person has over-generalized the rule and applied to areas not included in its original formation.

In summary, the fallacy of accident usually involves trying to disprove a generalization by finding a particular example to the rule and assuming that the rule was supposed to apply universally. It occurs when we move too quickly from the general to the specific.

Hasty generalisation

This fallacy is often called the converse accident because it is the opposite to the fallacy of accident above; that is, it involves moving too quickly from the specific to the general. For example:

Quote

Some murders are committed by men, so if we locked away all males there would be no more murders.

If we replace "murder" by any other social ill and "men" by a minority group, we can see that we have the kind of argument that has historically been used to justify organized or individual violence against them. The fallacy lies in making a general rule of a few particular cases, hence the hasty generalization. In this case, we need only find a single counter-example to show that the general claim is false, such as a murder by a female.

Another example could be as follows:

Quote

My friend lied to me, so it just goes to show that you can never trust anyone.

As before, the single specific instance of a friend lying has been used to justify a general rule that all friends (or indeed anyone at all) are liars. One or more friends who are not liars would serve as counter-examples to defeat the claim. To avoid the hasty generalization we have to be careful not to come up with a general rule from too few particular cases.

Red herring

This is not an obscure delicacy but a fallacy that involves bringing irrelevant ideas to a discussion as though they can add to it. For example:

Quote

You say that prisons are ineffective, but what about those who thought the streets were safe for them now? How will they feel when they see the person who robbed them going unpunished?

Even though we could say that by suggesting that prisons are currently ineffective we are not saying that they should just be closed down and everyone inside let out (that would be another fallacy—a straw man), the point is that none of this is relevant to the issue at hand: if prisons do not work as they are, then that is so whether or not we have in mind some improvements, a better idea or are just making a criticism of an imperfect system. By introducing this objection, attention is drawn away from the prison question and onto something entirely different.

In general, if a claim about A is countered by referring to B, the important question is to ask whether B is relevant to A. If so, it may be an objection worth considering; if not, the objection is a red herring.

Straw man

This fallacy takes its name from the image of someone stuffing some clothes with straw and then beating seven bells out of the resultant opponent, supposing thereby that they have somehow won a fight. The fallacy occurs when an argument is countered by taking a weaker form of it and showing where it fails, assuming that this means the original argument has also been defeated.

Take an example:

Quote

You say we should invest more in public health services, but taking everyone's money off them and deciding what they should spend it on for them is nothing less than totalitarianism.

We could render this as a syllogism as follows:

  • P1: Investing more in public services is equivalent to taking everyone's money and deciding how it should be spent for them;
  • P2: This is equivalent to totalitarianism;
  • P3: Totalitarianism has been refuted previously;
  • C: Therefore, the idea of investing more in public services is refuted.
Even if we accept P2 and P3, which we needn't, the important point is that P1 is false and does not accurately describe what was originally claimed. By making two different ideas equivalent the argument becomes easier to address but, since the refutation deals with one idea and the argument with another, nothing is actually accomplished. The argument is mischaracterized or misrepresented in order to make it easier to tackle, but by doing so it isn't tackled at all.

Another example could be this:

Quote

You advocate the death penalty but I doubt that anyone will accept televised hanging of people on meat hooks.

Here the idea of what the death penalty involves is mischaracterized (we would hope) by supposing that anyone advocating it is actually asking that people be publicly hung on meat hooks. Since (again, we would hope) this measure would not be accepted, the argument is considered defeated. A simplistic and deliberately repugnant version of the death penalty is used to discredit the idea when the person suggesting it probably said nothing of the sort; as a result, the refutation is unsuccessful.

This fallacy is unfortunately very common and some politicians tend to be adept at its use. It can be used in humour but perhaps the most important lesson to learn from it is not to unwittingly or otherwise make straw men of other people's ideas ourselves.

Equivocation

The fallacy of equivocation occurs when an important term in an argument is used in two (or sometimes more) senses. An example might be:

Quote

Why is it okay to kill time but not to kill people?

Here the word "kill" is being used in two different ways: the first time it is employed as a figure of speech, where "killing time" means to use up some spare moments in one way or another; in the second it takes on a more specific meaning, the kind we normally associate with it. The person asking the question has confused these, so that something else we could ask with the word would mean different things depending on which sense we adopted. For instance, we could inquire, "how did you kill time?" and "how did you kill the person?" The first would give us a reply that describes an action and could be all manner of things; the second, though, would have to specifically be about the way in which someone was murdered. Asking the question, then, shows a misunderstanding in the use of the word.

In general, we can tell if someone has equivocated by finding a term used in two or more contexts, such that its meaning in one is different than in the other(s). Take another instance:

Quote

My school is supposed to provide free tuition but I've seen restrictions in the lessons I've attended.

This time the word "free" has been implicitly equivocated, with it meaning "free of charge" in the first instance but "free of restrictions" in the second, resulting in a confused argument. If we set it out again, this time removing the problematic term and replacing it with synonyms, we might get the following:

  • P1: Tuition at my school does not cost students any money;
  • P2: There are restrictions on course content, etc;
  • C: Therefore, the tuition does cost money after all.
The conclusion does not follow and the error is plain to see. Rewriting an argument in this way is sometimes the best way to note (or to demonstrate) that an equivocation has occurred.

Affirming the consequent

This is a fallacy we looked at in our sixth discussion, an example of which might be:

Quote

If it is raining then I would get wet; I am wet, so it must be raining.

The problem here is that there is an implicit assumption that the only way to have gotten wet is via the rain, when instead we could think of many other possibilities. For instance, suppose I had fallen into a swimming pool on a sunny day and, in order to give the impression that I was not embarrassed at all, I decided to start musing philosophically by making the above claim. We can immediately see that there in another reason for being wet, so the argument fails.

The general form taken by affirming the consequent is as follows:

  • P1: If A then B;
  • P2: B;
  • C: Therefore, A.
This fails because, as with the example, we might have another possibility:

  • P1: If A then B;
  • P2: If C then B;
  • P3: B;
  • C: Therefore, A.
The fact that we have B fails to tell us if we should suppose that we have A or C also, so we cannot make the decision either way on the basis of the information available. There could be more than two possibilities, of course. When someone makes an argument that seems to suffer from affirming the consequent (assuming they are not doing so deliberately) they are assuming an extra step, namely that there is only one possibility:

  • P1: If A then B;
  • P2: Only A can cause B;
  • P3: B;
  • C: Therefore, A.
Unless P2 is sound, though, the fallacy of affirming the consequent has occurred. A typical example from politics might be someone taking the credit for some positive news:

Quote

Since my policies were implemented, unemployment has gone down; therefore, my policies were a good idea.

The apparent claim here is that the policies were responsible for the lowering of unemployment, so we have:

  • P1: If my policies are an effective measure for tackling unemployment, unemployment should go down;
  • P2: Unemployment went down;
  • C: Therefore, my policies were effective.
As we know from experience, however, there are many factors at work in the economy and there could be several possible reasons for the change in employment figures; but a quick-thinking politician can perhaps hope that we are not paying attention and use the fallacy of affirming the consequent to take the plaudits.

The opposite to this fallacy is affirming the antecedent and is a sound argument. This takes the form:

  • P1: If A then B;
  • P2: A;
  • C: Therefore, B.
In the context of our example, this would be like saying "if my policies are effective, unemployment will come down. My policies are effective, so they will lead to a lowering of unemployment." In Latin, it is known as modus ponens.

Denying the antecedent

This fallacy looks similar to affirming the consequent. An example might be:

Quote

All tomatoes are red; but that isn't a tomato so it can't be red.

The error here is immediate: the "thing" under discussion could be anything at all and is perhaps red; the fact that it isn't a tomato doesn't tell us anything about its colour, but only about one thing that it cannot be. We have:

  • P1: All tomatoes are red;
  • P2: This isn't a tomato;
  • C: Therefore, it isn't red.
The item being considered could be a UK postbox, say: the premises would both be true but the conclusion would be false. That suggests we have a formal fallacy. In general:

  • P1: If A then B;
  • P2: Not A;
  • C: Therefore, not B.
To use the political example above again, we could have another instance of the same thing:

Quote

If my policies are effective then unemployment will go down; but my policies are not effective, so unemployment won't go down.

As we discussed, there could be several other reasons why unemployment does go down in spite of the bad policies, so the argument fails and is an example of denying the antecedent.

The opposite to this is denying the consequent, a sound argument that takes the form:

  • P1: If A then B;
  • P2: Not B;
  • C: Therefore, not A.
For our example, this would give us something like "my policies will lead to a lowering of unemployment, but unemployment didn't go down so my policies were not effective." In Latin this is called modus tollens.

Begging the question

Sometimes people use the conclusion of their argument to prove it, whether accidentally or not. For example:

Quote

Theft is illegal because if it wasn't then it wouldn't be against the law.

This is called begging the question, or assuming what is to be proven in order to prove it. In Latin the fallacy is known as petitio principii. For this example, the question we could suppose was asked might be "why is theft illegal?" The person inquiring could be wondering why it is wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed him- or herself, for instance. The reply states that theft is against the law, and hence illegal, which amounts to saying, "it's against the law because it's against the law"; so the conclusion (that theft is illegal) is used to answer the question ("why is theft illegal?").

Another example could be:

Quote

I know my friend is reliable because I trust him.

Here, once again, the conclusion (that my friend is reliable) is assumed beforehand (I trust him). There is no attempt to show why my friend is reliable, other than—ultimately—to say that he is reliable, so we end up with "my friend is reliable because he is reliable". In general, if we can recast an argument in the form "A is so because A is so" then we have reasoning that goes around in a circle and hence begs the question.

Unfortunately the phrase "begging the question" is frequently misused, particularly to mean "but this raises the question that..." This is something to be aware of and hopefully avoid.

Composition

The fallacy of composition occurs when the whole is assumed to have the same qualities as a part. For example:

Quote

My favourite team has bought great players, so we will win the league next year.

As many sports fans know, a team full of world class players does not make a world class team; often they simply cannot play together, or don't get along. The mistake lies in supposing that the qualities of the individual players will be carried over to the team composed of them. Another example could be:

Quote

We cannot drink hydrogen or oxygen, so we cannot drink a combination of them.

As we all know, we can drink water and so this argument fails. It does so because it assumes that a quality shared by the two separate elements will be retained by their composition. Sometimes it happens that such qualities are carried over when a collection of individual facts is made into a group (for instance, individual racehorse owners typically have more horses than non-racehorse owners and we might expect the total number of horses owned to be higher for the grouping of the former than the latter), but there needs to be a convincing reason why the step can be made. Without justification we find the fallacy of composition.

To conclude, there are many pitfalls to be on the lookout for when reading, writing or discussing philosophy, politics and other subjects. As we learn to recognise them and realise that they share a structure or form we can understand, however, they become easier to notice and address.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:44:42 +0000 df877f3865752637daa540ea9cbc474f 15b. Philosophy of Religion, Part 2 http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/15b-philosophy-of-religion-part-2-r32 Paul Newall (2005)

(... continued from part 1...)

Other issues in the Philosophy of Religion

Wittgenstein

An interesting current in the philosophy of religion concerns the philosopher Wittgenstein and how some of his remarks and ideas might apply to religion. Later in his life he suggested a conception of meaning via "language games", according to which the meaning of a term is decided by the use to which we put it within a given context. The word takes its meaning from this and so we have to be careful to appreciate which "game" we are playing when using a particular term. He wrote that:

[indent]...while we can ask questions about justification within a language game it is a mistake to ask about the justification of "playing" the game in question...[/indent]Suppose, then, that we ask the question "does God exist?" The answer we give depends which game we are playing and what the terms mean within them. Similarly, if we ask, "was Jesus God?" we would get a different answer from Christians, Jews and Muslims, as well as others. Even non-theists sometimes mean different things by the term "God" and we need to understand how it is being employed before we can make sense of the question. Likewise, if we say, "where is the evidence for God?" we have to remember that not everyone means the same thing by "evidence" or evaluates the same "facts" in an identical fashion.

Philosophers taking a Wittgensteinian perspective argue that asking for justification of a religious belief can only be done from within the language game, since each game has its own standards for deciding what we can or cannot say, as well as what is meaningful or rational. It would be a mistake to apply the methods of the natural sciences to a religious proposition, then. In opposition, many people feel that religious claims do say something about the universe, irrespective of what language game we are playing. That would suggest that the question "Is there a God?" should be answered "yes" or "no" (or possibly "don't know" or "I'll tell you next week"), as well as understood to be making a claim about the universe, much like "there is a limit to how much of Hugo I can take"; and hence not avoided by saying that it means different things to different people.

Prayer

According to Jim Morrison, "you cannot petition the Lord with prayer." Nevertheless, many people do. Some pray for good health for themselves or others, or for world peace, or perhaps for the strength to cope with some particular adversity. However, the traditional understanding of prayer gives rise to several philosophical problems.

Some claim that prayer requires a miracle on each occasion that something is prayed for, but that is not obvious. We discussed above the idea that miracles are impossible; nevertheless, many of the things people pray for do not require a large-scale intervention in the laws of nature (if we suppose there are any). A second concern is that if God already knows what we might pray for, as well as whether He will or will not bring it about, then what is the point of prayer? One way responses to this difficulty have gone is to say that God is outside of time. In that case, it makes no sense to say that He has determined a course of action before the prayer. A counter to this is to ask how God can have an effect within time if He is outside of it, to which a rejoinder could be to simply ask why not?

Perhaps the most serious objection to prayer, though, is to wonder why we should pray at all to a God who is supposed to be benevolent? If God is good, as well as all-powerful, why would he create a world that is deficient in goodness to such an extent that people have to pray that it be made better? We can see that this objection is related to the problem of evil: if the prayer could make the world worse then He would not grant it; if it would make it better then why was His creation deficient? A possibility that has been suggested is that prayer bridges the distance between us and God, achieving something that even an all-powerful God could not otherwise manage: the good that comes from personal relationships with His creations.

The Plurality of Religions

It appears to be an empirical fact that there are many different religions. Indeed, not just separate religions, like Christianity, Judaism and Islam, but distinctions even within these such that two Christians, say, may disagree about many aspects of their faith. This plurality of belief leads to a problem: which of the forms of religious belief is the correct one?

This difficulty is an important one. If Catholicism in its current form is true, for example, then every other belief, past and present, would seem to be straightforwardly wrong, whether wholly or in part. Nevertheless, most religions make their own truth-claims and no more than one of them can be correct in so doing (or so we would usually say, with the alternatives and what truth means considered in our tenth discussion). In general, people have a whole host of religious experiences that differ and diverge widely; can these possibly be the basis for believing that any of them actually gets at reality?

One answer to this question is to say that it is rational to trust our experience of the world except for where we have reason not to, and that religious experience comes under this rubric like anything else. Thus, if we happen to have experiences that are explained by supposing Christianity to be true, then it is reasonable to suppose that it is and act accordingly. However, by exactly the same argument it would be reasonable for others to suppose that conflicting religious beliefs are also true if that is what their experience enjoins upon them. This is a severe problem for the idea that a given religion can be considered properly basic, or that it is rational to hold particular religious beliefs.

To respond that it is reasonable to stick with the religious beliefs we have because they form a guide to the world and can be expected to continue to do so is undermined by the fact that it would follow that religious experience for almost everyone else (that is, anyone not sharing our religious perspective) gives rise to false beliefs. We would start by insisting that it is reasonable to trust our experiences, and hence our religious experiences, too, and finish by saying that actually we should only trust those that fit our religious perspective and distrust those that do not. To take an example, it would be reasonable to be a Christian because our experience can be characterised that way, but we only know that such experiences are to be trusted because they can be called Christian and not something else—those other characterisations that are not to be trusted. That this strange situation arises is indicative of how troublesome this problem provided by plurality is.

Several thinkers have, over the years, provided a rejoinder to this difficulty in various forms, each having a similar structure. According to this, there is only one true religion after all but many circumstances combine to give the appearance of plurality. There is an esoteric (or "hidden") core to religions that is ultimately the same, but the exoteric (or "outer") forms differ because cultural concepts, practices and other factors mean that each of us interprets this reality in his or her own way, sometimes incompatibly so, even though the reality itself is actually the same. In this case, then, the conflict due to pluralism does not come about because each form of religious belief is just a different way of seeing the same thing.

To conclude this discussion, we can see that why people believe is often as interesting as what they believe. Although disagreements on religious issues continue to feature significantly in contemporary politics and society, perhaps a philosophical approach has some value after all?

Dialogue the Twelfth

The Scene: Trystyn, Steven and Anna are walking to the university campus to hear a talk entitled "Is rugby more important than God?" A vocal minority is protesting the event and our intrepid philosophical threesome is accosted by a serious-looking individual in a habit who seems to be observing the protest but playing no part in it

Steven: Here we go...

Brother Peter: Hail, friends. Are you going to listen to the talk in yonder building?

Trystyn: We were considering it.

Brother Peter: Do you think questions of religion are best tackled in this fashion? Look at the protest it's drawn.

Steven: It's an interesting proposition. I understand the same guy has already proved rugby to be more important than sex.

Anna: Sadly that's far too easy to believe. You men are too long on rhetoric and not...

Brother Peter: (Cutting her off...) If I may... You're rather missing the point. This talk mocks beliefs that people hold to be very important. You can see that lots of local folk have taken offence to it. Why should our Lord be subject to ridicule in this way?

Steven: Well, shouldn't we hear what he has to say first?

Brother Peter: Perhaps. Do you believe in God, friend?

Steven: No.

Brother Peter: Do you mean that you just don't believe or that you've determined there is no God?

Steven: I don't believe, but I don't say it's impossible. In any case, how come you're here? Are you protesting, too?

Brother Peter: No; I'm just watching. I thought it might lead to a chance to discuss religious ideas. You can see from my garb that I rather make a hobby of it.

Anna: How is it that you came to believe?

Brother Peter: That's an interesting question. For me, personally, it isn't because of any one specific thing I can point to. I've read all the arguments for and against God, of course, and disputed them with others until I'm blue in the face. Still, you must understand that belief is something you come to, gradually as it were but then all of a sudden, as though it makes sense of everything else.

Steven: What about all that's wrong in the world? Why does God let bad things happen—earthquakes that kill thousands, diseases, wars and famines that kill millions? Why does he let innocent children or animals be murdered? For what?

Brother Peter: I appreciate what you're saying, friend, but that would be to misunderstand. I don't believe in denial of these things, but in spite of and because of them; because I seek to make sense of them and fathom whether the world can ultimately be a just and good one, even though we seem to make such a mess of it each day and even though it often seems so far away from how I feel it could be. Do you see how these things can lead to a person seeing the world in a different way?

Trystyn: I can.

Anna: Don't you take it all a bit too seriously if you worry about a talk like this, though? I mean, surely God exists of not irrespective of whether some harmless fun is taken seriously or not?

Brother Peter: Of course I take your point, and it may seem a triviality. Even so, I feel as though I would be helping others in showing them what I have found in the way I now see the world.

Steven: Aren't you presuming to tell others what to think? What business of yours is it whether people turn up here tonight or not?

Brother Peter: No—that is to miss the point entirely. Do you see the dilemma someone like me is placed in? I feel as though I've caught a glimpse of a profound truth that seems as though it would make the lives of others incalculably richer. At the same time, I want to respect their decisions and I hope that they can come to a similar realisation on their own. That leaves me trapped between a respect for your privacy and right to do as you choose, within reason—rights I very much accept as a member of society—and a desire to see everyone get the most they can out of this life, which—for me—includes helping them to understand God.

Anna: Can we understand God? I seem to remember reading about uncertainty in this area.

Steven: (Indicating Trystyn...) Probably heard it from him, I'll bet.

Brother Peter: I was too quick there, friend, and you are quite right to pick me up for it. Insofar as I can know or be certain of anything, I feel that God exists. This belief is basic to me, and to my experience of the world. Even though I appreciate that there are problems with my understanding, and that any intellectual arguments I may call upon can fail to convince you, nevertheless my belief is somehow more than the sum of these parts that we might say make it up. (He pauses.) I guess it's hard to explain.

Trystyn: Isn't that the point? If you could explain it, I rather suspect it would fall short.

Brother Peter: (He is smiling.) I think you know exactly what I mean, friend.

Steven: Shall we go and see this guy talk or are you stopping here, Trystyn?

Anna: (To Brother Peter...) Would you mind?

Brother Peter: Of course not. Perhaps I'll speak to you about it afterwards and go and see it myself. I just hope you think about what we've discussed, as I shall think about you. I hope we can learn from one another.

Steven: Amen.

Curtain. Fin.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:37:17 +0000 298f95e1bf9136124592c8d4825a06fc 15a. Philosophy of Religion, Part 1 http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/15a-philosophy-of-religion-part-1-r31 Paul Newall (2005)

In this discussion we'll look at the philosophy of religion, along with some aspects of theology. The importance of this area of philosophy needs little introduction: people have struggled for very many years to understand what religious ideas and experiences mean or do not mean, and this is so today just as surely as it was in the past and likely for the foreseeable future. Later in this series we'll look at so-called Eastern philosophies. So there will be an inevitable focus here on Western religious ideas.

Philosophy of Religion

The philosophy of religion looks at God and the gods, philosophical arguments for and against them and analyses of them as concepts. It also considers the meaning of religious ideas and experiences as well as what we can say about them. Claims about God are traditionally split into two areas: natural theology, according to which we can use reason to argue for the existence of God; and revealed theology, which holds that statements about God are revealed to us in religious experiences or scriptures. Sometimes there is an overlap, but this is a useful distinction to bear in mind.

In this section we'll examine belief in God and its justification, looking at some of the main approaches to this issue.

The justification of belief

As we saw in our discussion of truth, there are many ways to approach the question of whether a particular religious belief is true or not. We can try to refer to evidence that suggests a positive answer, or other evidence that speaks to the contrary; we can set out arguments that do likewise; and we can seek to explain why a belief coheres with what we already think we know, or why it makes sense of our other beliefs and provides a framework for them. We can also make a distinction between showing something to be categorically so and arguing that it is reasonable to believe it, even though there may still be good objections. Another alternative is to ask how likely a belief is to be true, based on the probability of it.

Later in this discussion we'll consider some of the arguments for the existence of God, together with one of the most important that suggests otherwise. One thing it's important to understand, however, is that the philosophy of religion is far more subtle in its study of such arguments than some critics of religion appear to suppose: none of the potential justifications of belief in God are taken (or intended) to be proof; instead, religious beliefs are a complex interaction of ideas and to suppose that a single argument could ground them all is not only unreasonable but contrary to the way in which we decide questions in everyday life. Thus the modern justification of belief is cumulative and complaining that a particular argument fails to make the case for the entire network of beliefs is to miss the point. Indeed, although there is general agreement that the five main arguments fail to prove the existence of God, some philosophers of religion claim that this is not what should be aimed at; instead, their combination makes it more likely than not that God exists.

Should belief be justified by proofs at all? When it comes to religion, some argue that it need not be. There are three main suggestions as to why it might be better to think otherwise:

  • The rationality of belief
  • Belief and faith
  • The meaning of "God"
In the first case it is asked what it means to say that an argument (or arguments) for the existence of God should convince a rational thinker. After all, what is a "rational person"? How do we determine what is rational and what isn't? Some philosophers, particularly Wittgenstein, have proposed that rationality depends on what we use as criteria for making decisions about ideas and arguments, noting that these can differ from person to person. Indeed, we saw in our sixth discussion that the theories we hold can affect how we interpret evidence, so the framework we approach a religious concept from can have an important influence.

The second view objects that if we were to believe because of arguments, or even if we could show that the existence of God were certain or rationally justified, there would be no room left for faith. Religious belief is to be taken not as something that can be proven or disproven but instead as a boundary condition or principle through which we interpret life and our experiences. Critics of this perspective note that we do pay attention to experiences or arguments that purport to count against belief, so there must be some measure of considering the evidence and arguments for and against and deciding on the balance of probabilities. It is also suggested that God would not make it unreasonable for us to believe in Him, so there must be some value in the proofs of His existence, whether or not we find them convincing. Some take a probabilistic view in that belief in God is more likely than not (or vice versa) after considering the arguments and evidence for and against, with the result that discussion focuses on how best to evaluate and understand this probability.

The third idea is that coming to believe in God adds nothing to our store of facts about the world but instead involves a different way of seeing the same things. That is, the existence of God is not a fact to be proven like other entities we take to exist, but a new way of understanding the universe. In that case, trying to prove existence is missing the point; when we say "God exists" we are not saying "x exists" but rather changing our way of thinking about everything else.

Evidentialism

A still-popular current in the discussion of religion is evidentialism, the seemingly plausible epistemological idea that we are only justified in believing things we have evidence for. The most extreme form was set out by Clifford in 1879 when he famously asserted that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence", so that not only would religious belief be unjustified, but it would also be wrong—a failing that (presumably) ought to be punished in some way. In fact, Clifford was not directing his arguments at religious belief, but plenty have since done so.

Not many philosophers of religion take Clifford or evidentialism seriously these days. One way to see why is to ask what evidence we would need to believe that we should do as Clifford said; that is, evidentialism seems to be self-refuting. Another is to look at trust, which poses very difficult questions for evidentialism: do we need evidence that a trusted person is trustworthy before we can justifiably trust them? More importantly, perhaps, we believe things every day without evidence and if we extend the insistence that only propositions for which we have evidence may be believed from religion to our wider experience of the world then there will be few things left to believe.

None of these objections mean that no evidence is required to believe something, but instead that we need to ask whether "where's your evidence?" is even the appropriate question all the time, or whether the absence of evidence is a decisive refutation of an theory. For religious ideas, the way in which people justify their beliefs may be very different from the manner in which we interpret the results of an experiment. As the philosopher Alvin Plantinga wrote:

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[W]hy ... must there be a good argument for the existence of God if belief in God is to be rationally acceptable? After all, hardly anyone thinks you need a good argument for the existence of the past if you are to be rational in thinking you had breakfast this morning.

We'll look at where this question leads next.

Properly basic beliefs

A relatively new current in the philosophy of religion is reformed epistemology, originating with the writings of Plantinga, Wolterstorff and Alston. It objects to the foundationalist view in epistemology (covered in our fifth discussion) and its application to the question of whether or not it is rational to believe in God. On that view, a properly basic belief is one that is held in an immediate, basic way; not on the foundation of other beliefs but because it is certain for us. An example would be the belief that "it feels to me as though I am in love". Note that this is so whether or not the unlucky victim actually exists, if I am confusing love with some other emotion or if—as targets of Hugo's affections invariably claim—there is no such thing as love. The belief is different from "I am in love with her" or "there is a girl with whom I am in love", both of which rely on other beliefs or assert things that are not immediate.

In the past it was held that a belief—such as belief in God—was rationally justified only if it could be justified on the basis of evidentialism and other beliefs. For instance, if the arguments for the existence of God (covered below) were found to be stronger than the counter-arguments, or the arguments against His existence, then it would be rationally justified to be a theist; and vice versa.

Reformed epistemology challenges this perspective by saying that belief in God can be properly basic. It does this in two ways: firstly, by disputing the claim of evidentialists like Clifford that we have a duty to not believe without sufficient evidence; and secondly by asking how a person who believed in God—after considering the matter at length and perhaps taking into account significant religious experiences—could possibly not be following their duty to only believe what they feel is justified? After all, if a person holds basic beliefs in God and finds evidence of him (such as religious experiences, moral order, or purpose) all around them, there could hardly be anything strange in their being rationally justified in believing. We might dispute the soundness of their experiences, of course, but it makes little sense to say that he or she is mistaken in their belief on that basis.

The further condition that Plantinga found important in arriving at justified beliefs is warrant. When is a belief warranted? He identified four conditions that a warranted belief had to satisfy; namely, it would have to be:

  • Produced by cognitive faculties (like memory and perception) that are working properly;
  • Produced by these same faculties working in the proper environment;
  • Produced by aiming at true beliefs; and
  • Successfully reaching their target, or at least with a high probability of having been successful.
The difficulty lies in evaluating these conditions. Suppose we assume that there is a God; in that case, we would have to assume that He has created us (whether via evolution or special creation, say) such that our faculties work correctly, thus enabling us to learn that He exists. It would seem to follow, then, that belief in God is warranted. Conversely, suppose God does not exist; then any perceptions, memories of religious experiences, and so on, would be mistaken, perhaps due to delusions or a failure of our faculties to work correctly. Belief in God would then not be warranted. Reformed epistemology points to the influence of our prior decision on the existence of God in this assessment: belief in God seems to be warranted/unwarranted if and only if it is true/false. While this means that we cannot say it is straightforward that belief is or is not properly basic, it appears that it can be for individuals.

Forms of religious belief

People believe many different things about God, with some saying they do not believe at all. In this section we'll look at some of the attempts to say things about Him, including if we can say anything at all.

In the first place, how can we know God? If He is ineffable or indescribable, then how is it that people have sought to give accounts of Him within religious texts throughout the years? One answer is to say that we can take a negative approach and only say what God is not. To some, God is even too holy to be named; and perhaps He is beyond human language and its limits? Others suggest that God could be known from His effects, hence talk of His being all-powerful, just, all knowing, as well as the converse of these. More recent answers include calling religious language symbolic, such that it is not to be understood in the normal sense but as evocative of deeper meaning; as metaphor, so that we talk of God through metaphor; and myth, perhaps giving timeless insights into the human condition but often through the interpretations and context of a particular age. As we saw in our discussion of truth, it could be that religious language is intended to correspond to the world and hence tell us something about it; or instead that it coheres with our experiences and hence makes sense of them.

The basic form of belief is theism, the belief in God as traditionally understood in the monotheistic (that is, single-God) religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Pantheism takes a different perspective in that God is identified with the universe, so that they are identical. Opinion is divided as to whether this makes pantheists true theists or atheists (see below): if God is no more and no less that the sum total of nature, then can we say that God exists or not as theism does? Polytheism holds that there are many gods, whether as a pantheon as in Ancient Greece or otherwise. Deism takes there to have been a God who created the universe and, as it were, "set it to running", but who otherwise plays no further part in it. Panentheism is perhaps best understood as taking God to be to the universe as the soul is to the body—more than equal to the sum of its parts. We assume here that enough is known about particular forms of belief that they can be briefly introduced before passing to philosophical analysis.

Theologies

There are several different theologies that provide unique perspectives on some of the problems within the philosophy of religion. One of the most significant in contemporary theology is process theology, which comes from the work of A.N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. According to process theologians, God and the universe are interdependent: anything that happens is a result of cooperation between God and His creation. Although process theology tends to look nothing like the traditional understanding of God and His relationship with the world, it avoids issues like the problem of evil (see below) because He is considered to already be intervening as best He can, such that evil cannot be prevented further.

Another possibility is postmodern theology, which is obviously related to the issues we considered in our thirteenth discussion. It tries to take theology beyond the metaphysical and other assumptions we looked at there, which some so-called postmodernists find untenable.

Liberation theology is both an approach to theology and a social movement—primarily within Latin America but also elsewhere throughout the world—that attempts to understand and expand on the implications of Christianity for personal and public life. It seeks to ask how the Church can be relevant to everyday life and get involved in liberating people from poverty and oppression.

Feminist theology tries to seek out any biases in religious stories and texts, trying to understand if their relevance is to all people or in fact at the cost of women. In particular, issues such as the ordination of women within Christian churches or the role assigned to them in Islam are major concerns, with more emphasis—in general—being placed on liberation than being saved.

The phenomenology of religion asks whether religious phenomena can be distinguished from others in a meaningful way. What is it—if anything—that makes them different? Even if we perhaps cannot ultimately answer religious questions definitively, we need to be as clear as possible what it means to be religious if we are to choose one of the many religious ways of life.

Atheism

Not everyone believes in God. The etymological roots of the term show that atheism was originally understood as the denial of the existence of God; that is, a positive assertion. It was also historically used to denote believers in a different God. Another perspective, however, has come to prominence in more recent times according to which it is taken as a negative statement—merely an absence of belief in God. Often these two meanings are called strong and weak atheism respectively. The latter includes, say some atheists, those people who have never heard of or used the concept of God.

As it stands, weak atheism would be little more than autobiography; saying "I don't believe in God" seems much like declaring "I don't believe in true love" or—to take a more important example—"I don't believe Carlos Spencer has an equal". To make it mean more, then, weak atheists tend to understand it in terms of the burden of proof. Much like the way in which a defendant in a court case is—or is supposed to be—innocent until proven guilty, the weak atheist suggests that a person would not believe in God until a convincing argument (or arguments) has been made. After all, we wouldn't convict someone on a lack of evidence or with reason to suppose them guilty (although this statement may unfortunately appear naive in the "modern" world), so why—asks the atheist—would we do otherwise when it comes to belief in God?

As we have seen, we may criticise this approach via the idea that belief in God is properly basic. If philosophers in the reformed epistemology tradition are correct then belief requires no justification before it can be rationally presumed. If faced with a potential argument that would defeat their belief, such as the problem of evil (covered below), the believer would have to meet this challenge in order for their belief to remain justified. This defensive approach would only be required when a defeater is offered, however. Whether the atheist can maintain that the burden of proof is on the theist in the face of the challenge of reformed epistemology is the subject of much discussion.

Strong or positive atheism makes the claim that God does not exist and hence offers reasons as to why we should reject Him. These might be the problem of evil, criticisms of specific (or general) theological ideas, or claims that the concept of God is meaningless, unsupported by evidence, a psychological flaw or simply unnecessary. Notice that the failure—if we judge it that way—of arguments for the existence of God to prove it does not lead to strong atheism, just as failing to prove guilt means the defendant is presumed innocent—not that they actually are. Whether we should accept it or not depends on how convincing we find these positive arguments.

On the face of it, there is no reason why an atheist should be any more or less rational than a theist, or indeed anyone else. Nevertheless, in order to give some content to atheism other than the absence of belief discussed above, many atheists hope to view their perspective within a larger scheme of taking a skeptical and critical approach to claims about the world. Thus, they say, atheism should be characterised more by the way in which they attempt to find out about the world and not concerned solely with the issue of God. Theists, of course, can just as easily—and generally do—advocate much the same things, and some suggest that a joint effort in this regard can best marginalise those who consider it irresponsible to believe/disbelieve in God and would tell others what they should or should not believe.

Agnosticism

The earliest known agnostic was Protagoras, who wrote that:

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Concerning the gods, I am unable to know either that they exist or that they do not exist or what form they have.

The term itself literally means "without knowledge" and was coined in the 1880s by T.H. Huxley. Discussing his position on matter theological, he described his difficulty in summarising it for others:

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When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis,"—had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.

As a result, he decided to call himself an agnostic to draw attention to the fact that he did not have knowledge of whether God existed or not.

Some people misunderstand agnosticism to be a "middle way" between theism and atheism: where one is supposed to say that God exists and the other that He does not, agnosticism is said to represent the thinker who has become tired of the struggle between two opponents battering each other when the bell shows no sign of ringing any time soon, deciding instead to offer a shrug of the shoulders and the honest response "I don't know". However, a theist and atheist alike may take the position that we cannot know whether or not God exists but that, on the balance of probabilities and the various arguments for and against, we can make an educated guess. Even a strong atheist or the most certain religious believer may admit that they cannot be absolutely certain of anything but that the possibility of error strikes them as small. It is perhaps better, then, as well as more accurate, to understand agnosticism as an epistemological position rather than something distinct from belief or non-belief.

Arguments for the existence of God

Although, as we've seen above, some thinkers do not believe that the existence of God can or needs to be justified, there are five traditional arguments that seek to do just that, some or all of which can be called upon by the believer to explain why he or she decided that God does indeed exist. We'll look at each in turn.

The Ontological argument

This argument was first propounded by St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury in his Proslogion of 1077-78. It is considered by some that he intended it for those who were already theists, not necessarily for convincing atheists. This distinction is important because his goals for the argument tell us how it was supposed to function: if it was meant for theists, to provide a rational basis for already-existing faith and hence work as a cumulative argument (as discussed above), then we might judge it differently than if it was supposed to prove definitively the existence of God. Anselm himself wrote:

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I have written the following treatise [as] ... one who seeks to understand what he believes...

Given this context, we can now look at the argument itself. In basic form, it states that the definition of God entails His existence. For example:

  • P1: God is the greatest possible being, one whom nothing greater than can be conceived of;
  • P2: If God is just a concept and does not exist in reality then a greater being can be conceived, one that exists both as a concept and in reality;
  • C1: This being would be greater than God, contradicting P1;
  • C2: Therefore, God is not just a concept and must exist in reality.
Thus the fact that we define God to be the greatest possible being means that He must exist, or else He would no longer be the greatest. Another way to understand the argument is to distinguish between a necessary being (that is, one that necessarily must exist) and a contingent one (that is, one that may or may not exist, depending on the circumstances); according to the ontological argument, then, it would be greater for God to exist as a necessary being than as a contingent one. Notice that this argument depends only on the definition, not any facts about the world. It is perhaps for this reason that many people find it unsatisfactory at first glance, since it doesn't seem right to be able to define God into existence. However, saying what is wrong with it has historically proved rather more difficult.

There are several criticisms that can be made of the ontological argument. In the first instance, does the notion of a "greatest possible being" make sense? Just as we wouldn't speak of the greatest possible morning or the greatest possible number, should we define a being in this way? Plantinga refined the argument in a way that hopes to avoid this issue by calling God "maximally excellent", meaning He has all the traditional attributes like being all knowing and all-powerful.

Another approach is to challenge P2 and say that existence is not a quality that should make up "greatness". This was the line taken by Kant when he claimed that existence is not a predicate; that is, it does not tell us anything about an object or entity, but only that it is or is not. If we compare, say, two coins (as Kant did), one of which exists and one that does not, is anything added to the concept of the coin in the one case and not the other? In recent times, some thinkers have answered in the affirmative, saying that the existing coin has the property of purchasing power, while those non-existing conceptual coins do not. Whether we buy this argument or not is another thing.

To return to the idea that we shouldn't be able to define something into existence, in Anselm's own time another version of his argument was offered by Gaunilo, a monk who used it to show that a greatest possible island must exist. The point of his criticism was to say that if the ontological argument could be used to prove the existence of God from His definition then we could do likewise for anything. Anselm responded that islands are contingent and hence do not have necessary existence as part of their definition, unlike God. In general, the objection is that while we might be able to go from a concept of what we imagine to exist to a concept of what actually exists, we cannot go from the former to saying what really does exist. Others challenge this by saying that we can say something about the non-existence of concepts like square circles or married bachelors, so why should we discount the possibility that we can also speak of the existence of a concept like God from the definition itself?

The Cosmological argument

According to Plato in his dialogue the Timaeus,

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... everything that comes to be or changes must do so owing to some cause; for nothing can come to be without a cause.

This is the idea behind the cosmological argument, which infers the existence of God from the apparent fact that the universe and the phenomena in it exist when it seems that they need not do so (hence the question that occurs to many people, philosophers or not: "why is there something rather than nothing?"). The argument was later formulated in different ways by Aristotle, Aquinas and Leibniz, the idea being to note that the universe cannot account for its own existence—so it is claimed—and thus a cause is sought outside of it to explain the brute fact of existence.

St. Thomas Aquinas used varying forms of the cosmological argument in three of his famous "Five Ways", these being proofs of the existence of God in his work Summa Theologica. The first runs as follows:

  • P1: Everything that moves is moved by something else;
  • P2: An infinite regress (that is, going back through a chain of movers forever) is impossible;
  • C: Therefore, there must exist a first mover (i.e. God).
The second proceeds in a similar fashion:

  • P1: Every effect must have a cause;
  • P2: An infinite regress (as before) is impossible;
  • C: Therefore, there must be a first cause (i.e. God).
These two seem much the same but the slight distinction is that the first focuses on the fact that things are moved by agents acting in the world while the second discusses the actors causing these things to happen.

Several criticisms have been made of Aquinas' assumptions, as we would expect given the length of time since he first proposed them. As we saw in our fifth, tenth and thirteenth discussions, philosophers have challenged the idea that events are linked in a "chain" from one to the next, each resting, as it were, on those below. Another telling objection is to ask why there could not be more than one first cause/mover? Why could the chain not lead back to several ultimate causes, each somehow outside the universe? Not only that, but these two arguments could just as easily lead to two different Gods.

The other argument Aquinas offered runs thus:

  • P1: Contingent beings exist;
  • P2: If a contingent being exists then a necessary being must also exist;
  • C: Therefore, a necessary being exists (i.e. God).
We discussed necessary and contingent beings above, but the idea here is that if everything in the universe was contingent then there must have been some time when there were no contingent beings at all. In that case, how could the universe have come into being, since contingent beings would require a cause? This means that there must be some necessary being, which we take to be God.

The problem again is that this third argument might be taken to imply another God, different from the other two. Others object that matter or energy are not contingent (although still others question this assumption), or that the contingency could run backwards in time as far as we like and "end" in the future.

Leibniz reformulated the cosmological argument in terms of the principle of sufficient reason. According to this principle, every fact or truth must have a sufficient reason to explain it. As we touched on above, the universe seems to fail to account for its own existence with no sufficient reason within it, so Leibniz inferred that there must be a God to do so. In opposition to this it has been argued that the existence of the universe is just a brute fact, not in need of any explanation—it just is. Both Hume and Russell complained at moving from every event having a cause to the claim that the collection of events having a single cause. On the other hand, if we ask "why?" of individual events then why not the universe, too?

Another form is called the Kalam cosmological argument after the school of Islamic philosophy of the same name. In its basic form it claims that since the universe came to exist at some time, it follows that it must have a cause for its existence. That cause, of course, is God. However, it could instead be that the universe has always existed, either eternally in some form or expanding and contracting as some scientists suggest. Moreover, even if God did "start" the universe, the argument doesn't say He needs to have continued to exist.

As with the ontological argument, the cosmological argument does not appear to be intended to convince non-theists that they should become theists but instead suggests the existence of God as a possibility, or an explanation of the brute fact of the existence of the universe. How convincing it is depends, apart from the opinions we might hold of the content of the argument, on whether we feel this fact is in need of explanation or not.

The Teleological argument

This argument points to the existence of purpose and order in the universe and supposes that if we see signs of design then there must have been a designer. Indeed, the word "teleology" comes from the Greek telos, meaning "purpose", "goal", or "end". Sometimes it is called the argument from design, or more properly the argument for design.

Perhaps the most famous version of the argument is due to William Paley, who argued by analogy. Imagine finding a watch abandoned on a deserted island, say. We examine the watch and its workings, and from the fact that it appears to be designed with a purpose in mind we infer that it must have had a designer. In particular, even if we were not familiar with watches at all the complicated structure and the way in which the parts worked together to achieve a specific function indicate that it could not have come about by chance. Although it is often supposed that he intended his argument to convert non-theists, in fact it seems from his own testimony that he wanted to clarify the issue for those who already believed.

The idea behind this argument by analogy is that effects that are analogous have analogous causes. That means that when we see evidence of design in the watch and in the universe and reason that the two circumstances are analogous, the fact that we infer a designer for the watch leads us to analogously infer a designer for the universe. Hume was critical of this approach, saying that we know that man-made structures were designed because we have seen them being built or heard about it. How can we be sure that the analogy holds? Moreover, why should the similar effects (that is, the appearance of being designed) not follow from different causes?

Another objection made forcefully by Hume was that certain events in the world, such as natural disasters, would—if we follow the analogy—suggest that God didn't do a very good job of designing the universe. Indeed, if a watchmaker offered us similar workmanship, he suggested, we would reject it. In more recent times further scientific studies have made this complaint still more powerful, with many areas of the human body and natural world alike seeming to be very badly designed, if we want to maintain that they were designed at all. The success of evolutionary theory has also provided an alternative explanation as to where the order we see has come from, with the caveat that there is apparently no need to invoke purposive behaviour to account for it. This is not necessarily an objection against design, however, since many theists now suggest that evolution is the means used by God to achieve His goals.

With developments in science continually suggesting new angles to view the argument from, as well as refinements that point to the amount of beauty in the universe as opposed to just design, the teleological argument rumbles on and it perhaps once again depends on the perspective from which it is viewed. Some feel that the purported design can be explained in other ways, while others consider it not a proof of God's existence but again suggestive of the likelihood, explaining a quality of the universe that they see around them.

The Religious Experience argument

Perhaps the most interesting argument for the existence of God comes from the fact that very many people have experiences they characterise as religious. These tend to have different forms, but there is enough common ground to list a few of them that have been distilled as a result of work by people like William James and David Hay:

  • The experience is hard (if not impossible) to describe.
  • It is a feeling of oneness with God.
  • It can also be a sense of being dependent on God.
  • It may sometimes call attention to a painful separation from God.
  • It can be experienced anywhere, in everyday situations.
  • It can provide insight into otherwise inaccessible truths.
  • The experience tends to be transient.
There are other descriptions, of course, and the experience itself seems to be largely personal. The issue, then, is to explain these religious experiences in a satisfactory way. The religious experience argument, again, does not seek to prove that God exists but instead that it is reasonable to believe that He does because of the direct experience of Him. Moreover, the argument gives a motive for non-believers to also believe unless they can explain the experiences (which they may have for themselves) in another way. Indeed, we could say the argument is an inference to the best explanation:

  • P1: People have religious experiences;
  • P2: The existence of God explains these experiences;
  • C: Therefore, God exists.
There are several ways we could challenge this argument. Firstly, we could contest P1 and say that the experiences are not religious; rather, they are interpreted that way by religious people and differently by non-religious (or even those of another religion). However, can we find some way to determine what the true experience is supposed to be? It could just as easily be that the interpretations are different (even among believers in the same religion) because they are interpretations.

Another potential criticism is to admit that many people do have religious experiences but point out that many others do not. The implicit suggestion here is that God would want us all to have such experiences, especially if He wanted us to become believers eventually. In reply, it could be that something like faith is required, particularly since it isn't obvious—either from religious texts or a little thought—that a non-believer should expect to undergo religious experiences with the same frequency as a believer.

We could also look at P2 and say that there are other explanations for religious experiences. For example, the experiences could be deceptive; but for all those testifying to them to be unreliable witnesses is perhaps less credible than assuming they all are not. Alternatively, we could try to posit a naturalistic or psychological explanation. Either would need to also account for the sheer number and depth of the religious experiences, however, as well as showing why they are better explanations.

In summary, the argument from religious experience does not prove existence definitively and depends in good measure on what our prior opinions of such experiences are. Nevertheless, it provides an explanation for a widespread phenomenon.

The Moral argument

The general idea behind moral arguments for God is given by Ivan and several other characters in Dostoevsky's masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov as "without God, everything is permitted"; or something similar; that is, God provides the basis of moral order. Many people think or feel that such a moral order is—or should be—a fundamental aspect of our universe, not an incidental one that has come about but need not have done so. The idea that without God there would be no moral sanction to stop us doing as we pleased is explored in that work, along with possible rejoinders.

Moral arguments have been overlooked by many thinkers, partly because of the misunderstanding discussed above according to which they fail to justify the existence of a God with specific attributes, as required by certain religious beliefs. The character of moral arguments is such that what is shown—if the argument is successful—is not "it is likely that God exists" but "it is likely that I ought to believe that God exists".

One form of the moral argument is to point to the experience we have of their being moral actions, right and wrong. Although not everyone agrees about what should be right or wrong, many do accept that these terms have meaning independently of us. Some understand this as implying that there is someone we are responsible to for our conduct, or that concepts like guilt only make sense if we have someone by whom our conduct is judged. Can there be moral laws without someone making them?

The main criticism of this approach is to target the idea of morals existing independently of us. As we saw in our eleventh discussion, many thinkers have questioned this view and we looked at some alternative explanations for the existence of morals and the feeling that some things are right or wrong. To say that no other account of moral responsibility can be given is controversial and fails to justify God's existence.

Another moral argument is due to Kant and suggested that being moral was a categorical imperative, according to which an action would be moral if we would wish it to be applied universally and immoral if the contrary. Noting that we experience moral obligation and that we desire to bring about the summum bonum or "highest good", Kant argued that ought must imply can: if there is no way that something can be achieved then it makes no sense to say that it ought to be. Since it is beyond our power to ensure that this highest good can be reached, it must be that God exists to make it so.

This argument has been attacked from several directions, firstly criticising the move from ought implies can to the actual existence of what can be. Why should something necessarily have to be, just because we decide it both ought and can? Secondly, why should it have to be God in particular that brings about the higher good? We can also argue against deontological theories, as we saw in our earlier discussion of ethics. Note that Kant's argument was not that no moral order is possible without God, but only that He was required to achieve the summum bonum.

Miracles

In the early seventeenth century, the Friar Marin Mersenne was keen to advocate the new mechanistic philosophy that was taking hold at that time because he believed that a good account of natural law was necessary in order that miracles—over-riding or influencing what we would ordinarily expect to happen—could occur. Many believers hold that miracles can, have, and do still happen, the most important and famous of which tend to be the resurrection or the parting of the Red Sea. Still others say that miracles are nonsense and do not—or cannot—occur.

As we have touched on previously in our discussions, not everyone agrees that there are such things as natural laws in the first place. However, even if we suppose that there are then it is still important to understand what a miracle is supposed to be. Often they are understood as violations of natural law, but this formulation is problematic: natural laws, by definition, are intended to account for events with natural causes, so it makes no sense to call an event with a supernatural or non-natural cause a violation of natural law. A better way to understand miracles, perhaps, is as events contrary to natural law. This would mean that an event with a non-natural cause might be noted as an exception to natural law, rather than as an instance that is supposed to refute it.

The best-known argument against miracles comes from Hume but it has been subject to much recent philosophical critique, not least because he seems to use the understanding we rejected above of a miracle as a violation of natural law. Here we will try to understand the basics behind the argument. According to Hume:

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no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish....

The idea here is that we only have experience of natural events and causes. If we were told of a miracle happening and asked for justification for it, any evidence or argument analogous to what we experience everyday would lead us to suspect that there might have been a natural cause for the incident, and so it wouldn't be a miracle after all. Indeed, any attempt to justify it by reference to non-natural causes would be to explain the miracle via other miracles.

Hume gives an example of what he means by saying that if it were told to him that the sky went dark across the earth for six whole days, with travellers and people from other countries testifying that the same event happened everywhere, he would have to believe it. Even though such an event would seem extraordinary, he thought it was sufficiently analogous to similar events (an eclipse, say) that it could reasonably believed on the basis of so much testimony. On the other hand, he notes that if Queen Elizabeth the First was agreed by all historians with an equal degree of testimony to have died and subsequently risen from the dead, he would not believe it. He reasoned that this latter case could not be seen as analogous to anything else we experience.

Why accept the one and not the other? As the quote above explains, Hume thought we were never justified in supposing a miracle to have taken place because we experience natural events and hence have to look for natural causes. Even if something apparently supernatural were to occur, we would have to identify it via natural phenomena (for instance, water turning into wine) and hence are constrained by Hume's empiricism to look for natural causes. That is to say, as we only have past experience of natural phenomena to go on, along with testimony from witnesses and evidence, thus we have to make a decision about the likelihood of a miracle occurring on this basis alone.

The problem with this, as some thinkers have identified, is that if Hume were to have stood watch over the water at the wedding in Cana in such a way that he could be sure no one had interfered with anything, and moreover that he had no reason to doubt his faculties, he would still have to deny that he had seen a miracle. We can make the same reduction of his argument to absurdity with any other example of an alleged miracle. Just when could it be said that a miracle had occurred?

What we see from this is that there apparently could be no such thing as a miracle, even when well-attested and where there is no reason to doubt what we are experiencing. In short, we cannot assume that everything occurs due to natural processes and then claim that any exceptions that cannot be dismissed are in fact still natural events that will eventually be explained in natural terms. Indeed, it is almost as though the argument begs the question; that is, assumes what is to be proven in order to prove it. If we take it that all supernatural events are either examples of errors in testimony or our faculties, or—where these cannot be claimed—say that we cannot call these miracles because no supernatural event can be justified on the basis of natural phenomena, then we have defined the supernatural out of existence and miracles with it.

In summary, philosophers of religion have shown that it is not irrational to believe in miracles, and that it is not impossible that one should happen. To say that a particular event could not have happened because it is contrary to natural law is to assume that there are no such exceptions, but that is what was supposed to be proved. Convincing someone who was not there to see it, however, is another matter.

The Problem of Evil

The traditional form of the problem of evil is due to Epicurus:

Quote

God either wishes to take away evils and he cannot, or he can and does not wish to, or he neither wishes to nor is able, or he both wishes to and is able. If he wishes to and is not able, he is feeble... If he is able to and does not wish to, he is envious... If he neither wishes to nor is able, he is both envious and feeble and therefore not God. If he both wishes to and is able to, ... whence, therefore, are there evils, and why does he not remove them?

In short, why does evil seem to happen if God is both good and capable of stopping it? This is considered by many people the most formidable objection to the existence of God, with some suggesting that it provides an argument for why a benevolent God does not exist. In one form, it amounts to considering the following two propositions logically inconsistent:

  • P1: God exists and is omnipotent, omniscient and good.
  • P2: Evil exists.
This is known as the logical problem.

It is important to point out that the problem of evil is by no means conceded to be prima facie a problem at all. To begin with, there are axiological difficulties: firstly, we note that the claim that God would disallow the existence of the intrinsically evil can only be justified within the context of a moral theory—such as consequentialism, as we discussed in our look at ethics—which may (with good reason) be rejected by a theist. The second complaint, indeed, is that any axiological version of the problem of evil must necessarily be incomplete because it cannot make explicit the move from noting that an evil state of affairs is not prevented to concluding that God has acted morally wrongly. Once again, the standard way to formalise this step is by reference to other ethical ideas that are anything but uncontroversial. The problem, at base, is the assumption of problematic (axiological) concepts such as goodness and desirability.

To return to the argument, it has been suggested that P2 is not at all obvious. If we perhaps understand evil as what ought not to exist, particularly from the perspective of humans, we could ask if it can be said to have meaning distinct from human valuations, or indeed if it makes any sense at all to consider a world without evil as being more perfect than the one God is supposed, by the problem of evil, to be bound to bring about. According to Aquinas, for instance:

Quote

... many good things would be taken away if God permitted no evil to exist; for fire would not be generated if air was not corrupted, nor would the life of a lion be preserved unless the ass were killed. Neither would avenging justice nor the patience of a sufferer be praised if there were no injustice.

Aquinas' point is that it isn't necessarily clear that the world would be more perfect in the absence of evil; in fact, many of the concepts we might like to claim for a perfect world—such as justice, kindness or fairness—only have the prestige we attach to them because we imagine that other circumstances could have replaced them at each observed instance.

Another remark on evil that should be made concerns the so-called Unknown Purpose Defence, which notes that although Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov could declare it absurd that the salvation of the world should cost the life of one young girl, human (epistemological) limitations might not permit us to guess the motivations of God, especially if, as some argue, He cannot be known directly, as we touched on above. Indeed, these thinkers suggest that the situation we find ourselves in—not knowing why evil should exist—is precisely that which we would expect to be in, given theism. Rowe proposed restricted standard theism as a counter-argument, in which all we say is that God has the properties defined in P1 above. However, this does not seem to refer to God as most people understand Him.

As a result of these and other difficulties, it is generally conceded by philosophers of religion that the logical problem of evil has been laid to rest.

Another version of the problem of evil is called the empirical problem, which comes from Hume and claims that:

Quote

...if people did not have a prior commitment to believe the contrary, their experience of the world and its evils would lead them to atheism.

In spite of the (empirical) fact that people do see evil in the world and yet believe in God, sometimes even converting from atheism or another religion, we could set out this argument as follows:

  • P1: Evil exists;
  • P2: Person x holds no theological beliefs;
  • C: Therefore, x will be an atheist.
That is, the sight of the many evils of the world would lead a person to think, "Well, a God who is good and all-powerful cannot exist." We could object to this by saying that instead it might be that the apparent senselessness of some evil might force a person to seek an explanation for it, which might be God. Indeed, that would seem to be why a significant proportion of people believe, at least in part (as we saw in our discussion of the moral argument above). It seems that what we want to say is:

  • P3: Persons holding no theological beliefs will be inclined by the existence of evil to adopt atheism.
Unfortunately this assumes what is to be proven.

Another approach to the problem is called the probabilistic argument from evil and is taken to be a positive argument for the non-existence of God. According to this argument, going back to our original propositions again, P2 counts as evidence against P1. In criticising this idea, Plantinga noted that the meaning of this claim depends on the probabilistic theory we hold to, the soundness of which is a question for the philosophy of mathematics. Each of the alternatives have difficulties associated with them, and so we cannot charitably assume them valid if we are going to also hold it against the moral argument that not everyone agrees that morality exists independently of us.

A different way to address the problem of evil is to present a defence of God, called a theodicy This is to accept that evil exists and that God is both good and able to remove evil but seek to explain why he does not. A well-known example is the free-will defence, according to which it was not possible for God to create a world with good but no evil because good could not exist without freedom, much like the quote from Aquinas suggested above. One form of the free-will defence might be thus:

  • P1: God's purposes for the universe require humans to have free will;
  • P2: Humans with free will may act in an evil manner;
  • P3: Evil exists;
  • C: Therefore, God is not responsible for evil.
In criticising P1, some argue either that the concept of free will is itself incoherent (which we considered in our twelfth discussion) or that God could just as easily have made the world such that we freely choose to be good all the time. Counter-arguments reply that we come back to Aquinas again: in such a world there could be no virtue, fairness or compassion, for these qualities exist only in contrast to their absence. Since these things are what we consider to be the very best human traits, it follows that this world would be no utopia at all.

Another criticism seeks to strengthen P3 by saying that although we may accept that some evil is necessary to contrast with the good, there is still a disproportionate amount of it, especially if we point to the horrific wars and genocides of recent times. To many people, this seems a decisive point: why would God need millions of people to be killed at a time? Although it is hard to see why it should be any better that a single child should be murdered for the sake of everyone else, as Ivan Karamazov objected, other thinkers respond that we simply have no basis for comparison and hypothetical speculation can hardly be expected to settle the issue satisfactorily.

Still another argument in this area concerns animals: given that God is good and omnipotent, why does He allow the suffering of animals? Free will is not an issue here, since it is generally assumed that animals do not have it. Since this is a deeply problematic area for many people, responses have again suggested that the purpose of such suffering may be unknown or that most of it occurs when we remove animals from their natural surroundings. Alternatively, it could be that we have the free will to try to do something about it.

In summary, some formulations of the problem of evil are stronger than others and the difficulties it poses depend at least in part on the perspective we adopt towards evil and whether we view it as a decisive objection to the existence of God or something to weigh against the other arguments for and against.

(... continued in part 2...)]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:20:42 +0000 0fcbc61acd0479dc77e3cccc0f5ffca7 14. Philosophy of Mind http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/14-philosophy-of-mind-r30 Paul Newall (2005)

The philosophy of mind has been a hot topic for several thousand years and over that time almost every philosopher has had something to say about it, for better or worse. The central issues it is concerned with are ones that most of us think about from time to time, even if we don't always use the same terminology. In this article we'll try to see why the subject has had held such a fascination for thinkers over the years and what we can learn from their efforts.

The mind/body problem

It seems clear enough what we mean by a body: we see it, we understand it and we take out life insurance for the day it gives up on us. Whether this notion of body represents our own, or one we might prefer to have thanks to aggressive advertising, we have a general conception of what we mean when we talk about it. What is it that we call mind, though? We say things like "it's on my mind", "I've half a mind to", along with countless other examples, and are traditionally talking about somewhere that thinking goes on, together with deciding, musing, writing bad poetry on Valentine's day, and so on—the place where consciousness, the intellect and other assorted characters are supposed to reside. Descartes noted that if he cut off his foot, his mind did not seem to be affected. If we lopped off our heads instead, would we still have a mind? On either answer, we can still ask where it went as the axe fell—even in the absence of volunteers.

The mind/body problem, in one of its aspects, concerns the relation between the two. Some people have thought that the mind and body are one and the same, the mind being just one aspect of the body and located in or identical to the brain (excepting those instances when our bodies seem to be governed by our stomachs or other regions): these are called monists (i.e. mind and body are one). On the other hand, some consider that they must be separate, either wholly or significantly, with the mind not being equivalent to the brain: these are called dualists (i.e. there are two things at work). These definitions are very basic, though, since we could ask "one (or two) kind(s) of what?" We'll look at some of the possible responses when we come to study both in more detail below.

In addition to wondering how mind and body are related, there is the question of the influence of mind on how we observe our world. Is there a world at all, independently of our perceiving it? How much does mind shape what we see? How do we know that our memories reflect what really happened? Pain is another problematic issue, and not just for doctors or rugby players: if a hypochondriac says he or she is in pain, how can we know if they are or not? If we can find no problem with their body, does it follow that there is no pain? How is it that some people appear to be able make themselves ill, especially around the time of examinations, and how is it that tough decisions can make people ill when there appears to be nothing at all wrong with their bodies? What about the problem of other minds? Can we ever know what other people are thinking, or how it feels to be them? Later we'll also come to the matter of changing our mind about something and ask how much choice we have in it, or if it instead it is determined by circumstances beyond our control (much as we discussed in our previous look at the issue of free will). All of these are aspects of the same problem, hence the attention paid by philosophers today and throughout our history.

Monism

As we said above, monism (from monas, a Greek word meaning "one") tries to respond to the mind/body problem by saying that the two are not distinct after all. This is all very well, but that could mean that in fact there is only body, as we often suppose, or that there is only mind. The consequences of the two are quite different and there are several understandings of each, so we'll consider some examples.

Physicalism

To state it in plain terms, physicalism is the idea that everything is physical. This is not to deny that there are other aspects to our world, like morals and bad jokes, but only that, ultimately, these are physical (for the former, perhaps the result of our evolution, as we discussed in the eleventh essay). In the past, physicalism was identified with materialism, but it became difficult to call certain supposed physical features of the world "material" (like the force binding particles in a nucleus together). Physicalism is a metaphysical notion, although it is often associated with the so-called scientific approach.

It's clear both that physicalism is an example of monism and that it provides a suggestion for how to approach the mind/body problem: if everything is physical, then it is probably in physical theories that we'll find the answers. However, there are several different forms of physicalism that approach this issue in different ways. In the first place, we have type/token physicalism, and the best way to understand the distinction is via an example. Consider these three terms:

  • Auckland Blues, Auckland Blues, Auckland Blues
In that line there are three references but only one thing referred to; or, in the words of every supporter, "there's only one Auckland Blues". We call the "Auckland Blues" a token, of which there are three, but only one type of thing is mentioned. More generally, a token is some physical object, process or occurrence that represents an object, process or occurrence, whereas a type is some physical property that represents a mental property.

Another example will help us understand the difference in usage: if we take a rugby ball and point at it, we could say that the ball is a token, physically identical with what we mean when we say "give this ball a kick". On the other hand, what physical token can the Auckland Blues be identical with? We could say the stadium played at, but the club is more than that. If we add the players, we don't quite have it; likewise for the supporters. If instead we understand it as a type, then we don't have quite the same problem of trying to find a single physical thing with which it is matched. The distinction is important because, as we said above, if we want to say that everything is physical then we need to explain what that means; type and token physicalism are two possibilities.

A difficult concept in physicalism is the notion of supervenience. Consider two pictures on a computer screen: both are composed of pixels, and if they are different in any way then we know that they must differ somewhere in terms of the pixels that make them up. We say, then, that the pictures supervene on the pixels; the higher-level picture is a consequence of the arrangement of the pixels, but not the same. Somehow the levels are different: if we zoom in to see what makes up the picture, we then lose sight of what the picture was of, just as if we get too close to a painting to observe the brushstrokes we can no longer take in the whole scene. Thus the painting depends on the brushstrokes, but is not identical with them—it supervenes on them.

This brings us to reductive and non-reductive physicalism: the former says that every mental concept can be reduced, somehow or other, to a physical concept, while the latter relies on supervenience. Instead of trying to reduce the mental to the physical, we can say that the mental supervenes on the physical.

An interesting problem for physicalism is Hempel's dilemma, in which we ask what physical means. If we want to define the term via contemporary physics, then it would appear that physicalism is straightforwardly false, since physics today is incomplete and very few people would claim it gives us the whole truth, if at all. On the other hand, if we instead try to define it by reference to what physics may become, some time in the near or distant future, then are we saying anything at all? No-one knows what form physics might take in the future and the history of science doesn't give us much confidence in saying what will be retained from what we have today.

Identity theory

This theory is easy to understand: it states that mental states and brain states are identical. This, if we feel a pain somewhere then this is tantamount to say that the appropriate activity is going on in the brain; likewise, feeling love for someone is just the same as a certain brain state. This is an attractive proposition for those arranging blind dates or dentists, but critics have asked what brain state is identical to the experience of a colour, say. If we experience a grey sky, does it mean the brain state is grey also? That hardly makes sense. Furthermore, other animals can experience the same grey sky but their brains are not identical to ours. Which brain state is the experience identical to?

Functionalism

A popular branch of the philosophy of mind is functionalism, in which the question is less "what is the mind?" (i.e. what kind of thing?) and more "what does it do?" Another way to make the same inquiry is to wonder what the function of the mind is, and to distinguish it from the body by saying that this function is different from those performed by the body.

Consider, for instance, a bridge. Many different things can serve as a bridge, from the complex structure connecting downtown Auckland to the North Shore to a series of planks laid across stones that will get us from one side of a stream to the other. What's common here is the function: a bridge is defined by what it does, not its shape, design or what it's made of (although we may recognise common traits)—we can identify a bridge because of what it's used for.

According to functionalism, we can think of the mind—or mental states—in this way while avoiding the earlier criticism of identity theory; indeed, functionalism was originally suggested to solve such difficulties. Functionalists claim, then, that mental states can be identified with the function they have on behaviour. Instead of worrying about what a mental state is (i.e. what it's composed of, or where it is), we call it mental because of what it does.

Eliminativism

To understand eliminativism (often called Eliminative Materialism) it useful to compare it to what the philosophers Paul and Patricia Churchland have called folk psychology: in the same way we call the collection of remedies built up by tradition and old wives' tales "folk medicine", we mean by folk psychology that similar group of pronouncements we make on questions of psychology to explain why people behave the way they do. When trying to give such explanations we often refer to factors like people's hopes, fears, upbringing, influences, problems at work, their local team having lost again, the price of petrol going up, and so on, all adding up to an elaborate system by which we describe what we suppose Carlos Spencer will do next, or other matters of lesser import.

Eliminativists claim that folk psychology is hopelessly flawed and will eventually be replaced (eliminated) by an alternative, usually taken to be neuroscience (the study of the brain and nervous system). Eliminative materialism dates back to the 1960s and perhaps earlier, with Paul Feyerabend arguing via analogy with the history of science and Quine suggesting a physicalist approach, but the Churchlands have been its modern champions. To better understand the issue here, let's take an example.

In seeking to explain why Hugo failed to arrive on time for an appointment and was instead seen in the company of a young lady, we could say that he has been known in the past to forget completely what he was thinking about or in the process of doing if a pretty girl passes by, and moreover that his chat-up lines consist entirely in philosophical witticisms that only he finds amusing; as a result, he missed the appointment because he was chasing after the unfortunate girl who was running away as quickly as possible.

Now this theory may be wrong (Hugo could have met-up with a cousin who needed help more urgently), but it is a theory nonetheless. Advocates of folk psychology claim that such theories function much like those in the sciences; after all, they explain behaviour, can be falsified and tested, and offer predictions—even novel ones. Thus the factors we described above, like hopes, fears and susceptibility to the fairer sex are simply the mental states we use in such theories, even if they perhaps cannot actually be observed and so claimed to really exist in that way.

By contrast, eliminativists might agree that folk psychology "works" to a certain satisfaction, but they claim it will be (gradually or otherwise) replaced. For instance, the existence of malevolent spirits was invoked to explain some mental disorders in the past, but now we usually say that this account has given way to psychological and other explanations. Thus we generally note that malevolent spirits turned out not to be real after all. In a similar way, notes the eliminativist, the folk psychologist's theories will give way soon enough because mental states do not exist.

Eliminativists typically argue that folk psychology is untenable for one reason or another. Some have suggested that it is stagnant, or a "degenerative research programme" in our earlier terminology (cf. our sixth discussion), but others reply that this is no reason to assume it false or even hopeless. Another objection is that it fails to account for things like dreams, memories, some mental illnesses and consciousness (see below), but the rejoinder is that technical concerns about its completeness don't outweigh the fact that people use folk psychology all the time and it is successful. Indeed, a counter-criticism made against eliminativism is that it ignores just how successful folk psychology is.

Idealism

A form of monism that differs significantly from all those we've seen so far is idealism, in which it is supposed that instead of all mental concepts being actually physical, in whatever way, in fact the converse holds: only minds and mental concepts exist, with the physical being explained in terms of the mental. The most famous idealist was perhaps Bishop Berkeley, but there have been many people who were or are idealists and some suggest that if we took a headcount over history it would probably come out as by far the most popular theory in the philosophy of mind. That proves nothing, of course.

Idealism solves the mind-body problem with ease: there is only the mental, so the problem of the interaction between mind and body is not a problem at all. Many of the counter-arguments advanced against idealism failed, and one of the interesting rejoinders that Berkeley provided was to note that idealism was at least as parsimonious (cf. our sixth discussion) as physicalism, saying that anything that could be explained on the assumption of the physical could just as easily be explained by reference to mental concepts only. Many people object to idealism on the grounds that it doesn't feel right, but—quite simply—it does feel right to lots of others, so this is not much of a complaint. Idealism is the subject of much study today.

Criticisms of monism

There are many critiques of monism, or physicalism in particular, including those we have already noted incidentally. However, there are two that are referred to often and so we'll look at them in more detail.

The knowledge argument

There are several forms of this famous argument, but the most common—due to Jackson—involves a scientist called Mary. For some reason, Mary has spent her life trapped in a room in which the only colours are black and white. She has access to television, computers, and so on, but the monitors are all also black and white. As a result, she has never seen another colour. She is able to get all the information there is via her computer and has thus studied the eye, light, what happens when light of different wavelengths arrives at the retina, what happens when we speak, and so on, so that when she says "the sky is blue" she has all possible information about what it means to say that.

One day Mary is released from her room and she actually sees that the sky is blue (or some other colour, if she is unlucky and lives somewhere it always rains). According to the knowledge argument, Mary thus learns something new, namely what it's like to see the colour blue (indeed, we can relate this to the discussion of qualia below). Thus we have:

  • Mary had all the information about the physical before she was released
  • Mary learned some new information after she was released
We conclude that not all information can be physical, and hence we have—seemingly—a strong objection to physicalism. There are plenty of other ways we could understand this problem: for instance, someone could know everything there is to know about rugby, including the rules, tactics, details of all past games, the physics of how the ball or human players could perform in all possible conditions, but they wouldn't know what it's like to play the game for themselves. The general form of the argument, in its strongest form, is thus:

  • P1: A person x has all physical information about y before release;
  • C1: Therefore, x knows all physical facts about y prior to release;
  • P2: There are news facts about y that x learns on release;
  • C2: Therefore, x did not know all facts about y before release;
  • C3: Therefore, there are facts about y that are non-physical
Some thinkers deny that new facts are learned on release. Although this is done in various ways, one basic idea is that it is possible to infer what it would be like to experience y from the information x has. Others deny C2 by saying that although new knowledge is gained, it is actually composed of old facts—precisely those that x already knew. Nevertheless, the interpretation of this argument and the objections to it are still keenly debated and now highly technical.

Qualia

A term used often by philosophers of mind is qualia (from the same root as "quality"), by which we mean the introspective character of an event; that is, what it is like to have an experience of something, whether it is a pain, bad poetry for Valentine's Day or a hospital pass. Since not many people deny that there are qualia, whatever they might be ultimately, we'll look at what mental states can be said to have qualia and what the nature of qualia might be, if anything.

What states can be said to have qualia? We could consider a list of indicative examples:

  • Seeing a blue sky
  • Hearing a loud noise
  • Cutting a finger on a knife
  • Feeling tired
  • Falling in love
  • Grieving
  • Feeling bored
  • Smelling a rose
What, then, are these qualia? Are they physical or non-physical, reducible or non-reducible? Some philosophers suggest that qualia are not new information; they can be derived from the physical facts we already have (as we saw with Mary above). A problem with this idea, though, is given by a thought experiment involving a zombie (whether or not zombies actually exist is not the issue here): when we look at a blue sky, we might feel happy at the nice weather, disappointed that the garden won't get the rain it needs, or any number of other experiences. An identical zombie may do likewise but has no experiences, even though it is the same in all other respects physically. How can the physicalist explain what is going on without supposing that qualia are non-physical? However, if qualia aren't physical then what are they?

Dualism

As we noted, and in contrast with monists, dualists suggest that mind and body are not the same. The idea dates back to Plato and we find it wherever the soul is distinguished from the body; more modern versions tend to originate with Descartes. There are several forms of dualism, though, so we'll begin by looking at the ways in which it can be stated before moving on to more specific issues.

Forms of dualism

Dualism is commonly divided into three forms:

  • Predicate dualism
  • Property dualism
  • Substance dualism
When we said that dualism involved two "things", we put off saying what kind of things we meant. The different forms taken by dualism fill in this information in different ways. Predicate dualism, to begin with, is the claim that more than one predicate is required to make sense of the world. A "predicate" in logic is what we say about the subject of a proposition (see the fourth and tenth parts in our series); thus "Hugo is boring" has "boring" as a predicate. Can the (psychological) experience of being bored be reduced to a physical predicate, such as one explaining in it terms of brain states, say? If not, we have predicate dualism.

There are plenty of candidates for predicates that cannot be so reduced, like almost all psychological experiences (as we saw with the knowledge argument above), suggesting dualism. We could try, for example, to consider how we feel about learning philosophy at this very moment, and wonder if a description in physical terms could capture it. To many people, it seems unlikely.

Property dualism is stronger, asserting that whatever there is in the world, it must have more than one property (such as the property of being physical, say). Perhaps, for instance, there really is only the physical; nevertheless, we may still be unable to account for the properties of what we find in purely physical terms. As before, the troublesome areas are psychological—especially the question of consciousness (see below).

Stronger again is substance dualism. Substances are intended to be those things—whatever they are—that have properties. The mind, then, is perhaps not just thoughts, emotions and mental states, but that which has them. If psychological properties are non-physical, does that mean the mind experiencing them must be, too? If we suppose that it is, then we have substance dualism. On the other hand, if we think that all this goes on in the brain, then we don't—the substance would be the same, even if we still think the properties are dual.

Bearing in mind these possibilities, we'll now consider the main problem for dualism and some attempts to avoid it.

Interactionism

If mind and body are separate, how is it that they interact? Most people would agree that there is some form of interaction: thinking in a negative way apparently influences the way we behave, while an experience in the world can change the way we think. How is it, then, that two separate or distinct things like mind and body, either as properties or substances, can interact as they seem to? If the body is physical but the mind is something else, where do they meet?

Descartes thought that the pineal gland was the answer. In more recent times, philosophical issues with causation have come to the fore: how can the mind cause a change in the physical? If we suppose that there are laws of physics (a problematic issue in itself, as we saw previously), then we know that energy is conserved therein. If something outside of the physical brings about a change, then, what does this mean for the assumption of conservation? If physical laws are closed, as it seems, then surely interference from outside would contradict this? Some interpretations of the quantum theory have made this situation even more complex, but for now we'll look at a few of the suggestions that claim to escape the difficulties of interactionism.

Epiphenomenalism

The denial of interaction from the mental to the physical is called epiphenomenalism, in which it is supposed that although the physical can influence the mental (like the Auckland Blues in full flow giving rise to fear), it doesn't work the other way around; this avoids the worry about physical systems not being closed, but does it really help?

The first objection is to point out that it certainly seems as though the mental can affect the physical: what about depression causing us to loll around in bed and write still more bad poetry, or fear of snakes stopping us from becoming intrepid archaeologists? Moreover, why would the mental have come about at all, if it does nothing? Lastly, what of the possibility of explaining how we act by reference to our mental states? To say "I know it didn't rhyme, but in my defence I was feeling upset about the row we had" might invite our valentine to reply with "causation in that direction is disallowed by epiphenomenalism, my sweet."

Occasionalism

Some of Descartes' followers, like Malebranche and Geulinex, agreed that the posited interaction was impossible, so that on every occasion in which it occurred the intervention of God was required to explain it—hence occasionalism. Whatever our views on religious questions, it seems hard to believe that every instance of interaction should be credited to a miracle, so this idea has lost much credence. Nevertheless, some historians of science believe it may help to explain why science arose in those cultures that disallowed it, since the search for laws in nature is somewhat confounded by God interfering all the time, whereas a belief that He set everything in motion and subsequently left it all alone could encourage us to wonder what rails it is running on.

Parallelism

A solution adopted by Leibniz but of little use outside a theological perspective is parallelism, according to which the mental and physical don't interact at all, running—so to speak—in parallel. Obviously we could ask why it seems as though they do interact, but the only possible answers are that some kind of pre-established harmony between the two makes it look that way, or that it's just a coincidence that the world appears like they do. The problem with both is that they don't seem to explain anything or give us a chance to learn anything else.

Criticisms of dualism

As we mentioned above, the main criticism of any dualist theory is to ask how the mind and body are supposed to interact if they are distinct. Another problem is to explain the apparent unity of the mind; that is, it seems as though the mind is a unity, but how does that come about if it is a collection of properties? Alternatively, if it is a unity then what substance explains this?

Other issues

There are myriad other aspects related to the philosophy of mind that we may consider briefly here.

The explanatory gap

We have a fair idea what goes on in the physical world, even if it is incomplete, and we also have a fair idea what it is like to have experiences. Nevertheless, there seems to still be quite a distance between the two that is called the explanatory gap, and some claim it can never be bridged. This is a tricky problem for philosophers because it isn't yet clear how this gap comes about, if it must remain a chasm or what it means for our theories of mind.

Consciousness

This term derives from the Latin conscius, meaning to "know something with others", and is understood in different ways. To try to appreciate what we mean by it, we can consider how we use it: when we say, for instance, "I was conscious that I wasn't paying attention", we refer to a kind of self-awareness—almost a kind of catching ourselves doing something other than what it appears we are doing. Sometimes we experience this kind of situation while driving: suddenly we realise that we weren't concentrating on the road because we were perhaps thinking intently about something else, almost driving on autopilot. Then we might say we weren't conscious of the driving, that we became conscious of this, and so on.

What does it mean to be conscious, then? We could say it is to be aware of our own mental states. In that case, what kinds of thing can be conscious? Can animals, for example, be conscious or self-aware? What about computers, either now or in future? How is it that consciousness seems to be a unity (like mind, above), so that we are conscious of lots of things at once? To take but one of these issues, we'll ask if computers can become conscious as so many science fiction stories presuppose.

Artificial intelligence

The idea that computers can become intelligent or possess intelligence has been the subject of much research, especially with the famous victories over chess masters. Does this mean that the computer actually understands chess, though, and that it demonstrates intelligence, or is it just following a program unthinkingly, without any possibility of self-awareness? Some philosophers and scientists have thought that as technology increases computers will become as intelligent as humans, perhaps more so, or at any rate that there is no objection to this possibility in principle. Others have wondered if the kind of understanding a computer could have must differ fundamentally from what we call intelligence or becoming conscious.

The mathematician Alan Turing proposed a test for whether or not we might say a computer can be said to be thinking, in which we would ask questions of x and y, housed in another room. x would be a person while y is a machine, or vice versa, and the object of the game would be to use our questions to try to determine which is which. If we cannot tell the difference, can we say that the computer is genuinely intelligent? Are we, in fact, just biological machines that can think, just as computers will eventually be able to?

An objection to the possibility that machines could think lies in the requirement of some philosophers that the machine should be able to do things like writing a bad poem on Valentine's Day because of falling in love; until this kind of thing can be done, they say, machines cannot be said to think. Turing replied that he would be satisfied if we merely had as much reason to suppose the machine to be thinking as we have in supposing other people to think. Another problem is to say that thinking machines ought to be able to do many of the things we can, like have a sense of humour, make mistakes or get angry, but are we right to expect a thinking machine to think the same things as we do?

One philosopher opposed to this idea of artificial intelligence is John Searle, who proposed another famous argument know as the Chinese Room argument. According to this thought experiment, a person knowing no Chinese is working inside a sealed room with Chinese symbols and an instruction manual for using them. As Chinese messages are passed in, the person follows the instructions and passes more Chinese symbols out. Unknown to this person, the messages coming in are questions and those going out are answers to them. Thus, says Searle, the person is able to understand Chinese by Turing's test but in fact understands no Chinese at all. Searle concludes that, in a similar fashion, a computer does not possess intelligence merely because if its ability to use and manipulate programs and data.

Strictly speaking, what Searle was actually hoping to do was provide an argument against so-called "strong AI", which is the idea that computers may genuinely understand languages and have other capacities that we humans have. He didn't deny that computers think, because he considers that our brains are actually machines and yet think just fine. His thought experiment was designed to show that running a program does not equate to understanding.

There have been many replies to Searle's argument, but one of the main criticisms is to say that the person in the room functions just like the CPU of a larger computer; in that case, although the person may not understand Chinese, the system does. After all, this system, comprising the room and everything in it, takes questions in Chinese and answers in Chinese. Doesn't that mean that the system understands Chinese after all? Searle replied that the person could memorise all the instructions and symbols, using them even outside the room, but still not understand any of it. Several philosophers have found this unconvincing. Another objection is to ask how we know that anyone understands Chinese, if not by asking them questions in that language and getting sensible replies back. In that case, the person would understand Chinese as well as anyone else.

As with the other issues we've discussed already, this argument, criticisms of it and rejoinders to them are still very much the subject of contention—like many areas of the philosophy of mind.

Intentionality

The philosopher Franz Brentano revived this term from its medieval origin (the root is intendere, meaning to be aimed at a goal or purpose) to call attention to what he felt was a distinctive characteristic of mental states. He noted that such states are always about something; for instance:

  • I am mad about injuries to key Blues players
  • I am in love with rugby
  • I am hopeful that next year will be better
... and so on. Without the additional information, these don't make much sense; after all, if someone said "I'm mad" and responded to the question "what about?" with "I'm just mad", we would probably be forced to leave the conversation by offering our congratulations and going on our way. According to Brentano, then, all mental states are characterised by being intentional. What this means for the philosophy of mind was covered in his work and that of several others influenced by his ideas.

Mind what you say about mind

To summarise our discussion, then, we have seen that there are many aspects to the philosophy of mind and many approaches to follow in tackling it, all of which have a certain plausibility on the surface but which present interesting problems when we probe deeper. Since there are complex philosophical issues involved and important questions to be answered that have a relevance to all of us, it seems this area will continue to be the focus of considerable work and argument. Whether the last person you spoke to was a zombie, an android, a rugby player or a Chinese speaker is perhaps something to bear in mind.


Dialogue the Eleventh

The Scene: Trystyn and Anna have met for coffee. They are sat across from one another.

Anna: The thing that strikes me as a result of yesterday's farce is that you can never really know what someone else is thinking or feeling. You can guess, or just stumble on ahead without worrying much, but people can get hurt as a result.

Trystyn: How can you know they get hurt, then?

Anna: Don't try to be clever, Trystyn.

Trystyn: (He sighs.) I'm not. The point is that if you can know that they get hurt, however you manage that, then you can probably make a fair stab at it the rest of the time.

Anna: How?

Trystyn: How do we do anything like this? We observe people, use what we know about their character, their ideas and influences, their mood, and so on. It all leads to a picture of them from which we make predictions or take explanations.

Anna: So all these things correspond to a mental concept, like sadness?

Trystyn: Not exactly, but we can infer that the person is sad. Usually we say they are sad about something, though, not that they're in some "state of sadness".

Anna: Maybe, but people are wrong sometimes, or they misjudge.

Trystyn: There are alternatives.

Anna: Like brain states?

Trystyn: So they say. Being sad corresponds to some physical state of the brain, the firing of neurons and so on. When we say, "I'm sad about what happened with so-and-so", we're saying no more than that at a certain time our brain is in a certain state.

Anna: That doesn't tell us anything, though, about how to deal with anyone.

Trystyn: Well, perhaps they will in the future, with more research, but this is why people are so reluctant to give up the tried and tested old ways: they work.

(A long silence. Anna seems reluctant to say something.)

Anna: So what does it mean to say that you're in love with someone, or attracted to them?

Trystyn: What do you think? (He is avoiding looking directly at her.)

Anna: A biological urge, I suppose—or so Steven would probably say if he was here.

Trystyn: (He looks up suddenly.) I wouldn't be so sure.

Anna: (Not really listening...) It seems to me that there's more to it; that it somehow misses too much, or fails to capture what it feels like. It's as though even if you were able to state the position of all particles in the universe, the laws governing them, the processes that occur physiologically, the biological origins, and so on, you still wouldn't know what it's like to fall for someone...

Trystyn: ... or fall out of a tree. (Anna laughs.)

Anna: Exactly. So there's information missing somehow.

Trystyn: Maybe not. What if you were actually using the information you already had and just seeing it in a different way or context? Kind of like saying, "ah, so this is how it all fits together." That way you'd have learned something new, in one way of thinking about it, but you'd only have used the facts you already had.

Anna: Don't you think that it would truly be new information? That the whole is greater than the sum of its parts? Something would still be missing.

Trystyn: You mean the way the light changes when you're in the room?

Anna: What?

Trystyn: It's from a song.

Anna: Oh.

(Silence. Trystyn looks at Anna, but she looks away. He smiles. She looks back; he looks away. Silence again. She frowns.)

What are you thinking?

Curtain. Fin.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:11:22 +0000 d64a340bcb633f536d56e51874281454 13. Free will and Determinism http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/13-free-will-and-determinism-r29 Paul Newall (2005)

In this article we'll consider the problems associated with free will and determinism, starting by explaining the terms involved, the difficulty (if there is one), and then trying to understand the proposed solutions. The importance of the topic is plain enough: it comes up often, in many contexts, and is one that people can easily understand the relevance of; which is only to say that it isn't just for the philosophers.

The terms

What do philosophers and laymen mean when they start worrying about whether we have free will, or what the consequences of determinism must be? We'll begin by making sure we know what is at issue before we worry about the implications.

Determinism

The idea of determinism is easy enough to explain in a simple fashion but considerably more complex if we want to use it to make an argument about free will, whatever that is. Initially, then, we'll define it in the common sense fashion: determinism states that the way things will be is a result of how things are and the work of natural laws. That is only to say that if we know exactly how things are at the present moment and the laws that govern how the world (or the universe) works, then we can derive how things will be at some future time. Bearing in mind that we've skirted over some problematic issues that we'll come back to, let's consider some examples.

Take a simplistic case first. We know that denizens of Auckland are keen on their rugby, and moreover that if their team wins then they are going to be happy. Conversely, if they lose then they are going to be morose in the special way that only rugby fans can be when the finest attacking side on the globe somehow manage to undo themselves yet again. Add to this the fact that Auckland have just won a game, and we can say that Aucklanders will be happy. We use the way things are (that Auckland have won again), together win the law (that Aucklanders are happy if their team wins), to determine that the Aucklanders will be happy again, at least until they throw another cross-field pass under their own sticks for the umpteenth time.

Now consider something that many people hope eventually to achieve, namely that all the laws of physics, or of nature, have been discovered and understood, along with the (hypothetical) situation wherein we know the position and other characteristics of all fundamental particles (whatever they may be) in the universe. We can then apply the laws to (again) determine how everything that follows for these particles will play out over time. (Whether this is possible in light of certain other theories in physics and elsewhere is not important for the purposes of our example.)

In general, then, we have an iterative process: we take the state of the world at some time t, a formula (or law) that tells us how to get from t to t+1, and hence we know how the world will be subsequently. In these simple terms, it is little different from figuring out how much money we'll have in our savings account at the end of the year by knowing how much we had and how to work out how it will change over the period of investment.

Now we'll look at tightening this definition. We said that determinism involved several aspects:
  • The way things are;
  • Natural laws;
  • The way things will be.
Taking the first, what do we mean by "the way things are"? We can say that we are concerned with the state of the entire world, or universe, but why not take only a small portion instead? That would give us, say, determinism for a small region (or even particle) based on knowledge of how it will behave in future—a decidedly less ambitious endeavour. The problem here, though, is restricting the domain in this way: can we even do so at all? Although it may seem plausible initially, there are myriad factors that might influence the area we're looking at, especially if we're talking about laws of nature that are presumed to apply everywhere.

Let's look at our examples again. If we try to restrict our concerns to Auckland only, we fail to acknowledge that news from elsewhere is coming in, affecting the mood of Aucklanders. We also assumed—quite reasonably—that rugby is the only important thing to Aucklanders (indeed, the entire world), but there may yet be some people who have failed to heed the gospel and want to consider other matters, too, for their sins. It seems that our attempt to determine the mood of Aucklanders is doomed to fail because our restriction was impractical.

Now take our second example. If we want to consider only a portion of the universe—say the earth, or an area of it—we need to bear in mind that the laws of physics will apply everywhere. If we look at a law like gravity, for instance, we suppose that it applies everywhere, such that the other particles, planets, stars, and so on, in the universe will have an effect, however small, on the earth or the region we've taken. How can we determine the future behaviour of a restricted area like this if we explicitly discount the influence of the other regions of the universe?

In general, once again, we seem to be forced to take the whole of the universe in order not to miss the impact of whatever we leave out. That means that determinism will have to apply everywhere.

Looking now at natural laws, we can first say that there are some objections that can be made to the very possibility, which we'll come to later. For now, what do we require of these laws such that determinism makes sense? For one thing, it won't help to have natural laws that only hold for a certain length of time: if Auckland eventually becomes populated by people who don't appreciate their rugby, our attempts to determine their mood following games will be useless. To take a less horrifying prospect, if it so happens that the laws of physics only apply until, say, ten years in the future, at which point dropped items float in the air and tourists are no longer annoying, then our efforts to determine the future behaviour of the universe will be dashed. Plainly, then, we require these laws to hold at all times.

Secondly, suppose that our observations on Aucklanders only apply to those from Ponsonby; that would render a prediction (based on our determinism) for someone from Parnell useless (we simplify the actual rugby circumstances somewhat here). Similarly, if the laws of physics work well enough on earth and in regions nearby, but behave in a completely different fashion in some far away galaxy (perhaps a region of the universe in which all politicians are honest), then our determinism will fail. The moral of the story here is that we require the laws to hold everywhere.

To summarise, then, we want the natural laws under consideration to be universal (as befits the first part of our tale), applying everywhere and always. We also want the laws themselves to be deterministic: it wouldn't help much if they weren't, since a well-determined present plus indeterministic laws would make the future state indetermined, too.

Lastly, consider what we mean by "the ways things will be". One thing we could ask is why the determinism has to function only in one way? Why not, for instance, require that if we know the laws of nature and the way things are then we can also determine the way things were? Is the past not as fixed as the future under these circumstances? If so, it would seem that taking the "arrow of time" in the direction we're accustomed to is moot: if the past, as far back as we care to consider, is determined, then it seems trivial that what follows will be also. Quite often we find that talk of determinism ignores or minimises this notion.

This brings us to the question of how long the universe need be determined for: if we take it, say, that the way things are, together with natural laws, determines how the universe will be for perhaps the next five hundred years but no further, it seems that although the universe is not truly deterministic, it is for the time we'll be alive to think about it. It would appear, then, that we don't need to have a deterministic universe forever, although this is generally what we're thinking about when we worry about the implications for free will.

To conclude our study so far, we have the idea of determinism as being able to give the future state of the universe from its present state and the laws of nature governing it. Note, however, that although this has thus far been an epistemological issue, but determinism is very much metaphysical; determinists hold that the kind of thing we've been discussed about fixed laws determining the future state of the universe even if we don't know about it and perhaps can't know. If we knew the required information about the state of the universe and the laws governing it, then we could determine the future state, but that state is still determined in the same way even if we don't.

Let's now take a look at free will, so we can begin to appreciate the problem that will arise.

Free will

Much like determinism, what we mean by free will seems obvious enough (which is usually a good reason to suppose that it isn't). Take some examples:
  • If I live in Auckland, I choose whether to support their rugby team or not
  • If I'm interested in philosophy (or not), I choose whether I read this article or not
  • It's up to me what my favourite colour is
  • I choose what to pick from the menu (my finances notwithstanding)
We could expand such a list ad nauseum; in general, the decisions we make are ours to make in the first place: we choose according to our will. Obviously there are pressures put upon us (from our peers, our upbringing, our circumstances, and so on), but ultimately the choice is ours.

Alas, the matter is not so simple. To start with science fiction (or not, depending on our stage of paranoia), what if our decisions are influenced by others? We could, for example, be swayed by the wrath of Khan, some kind of government mind control designed to make us vote Republican (an implant of sorts) or else an alien influence. Are the choices we make then still examples of our free will? It hardly seems reasonable to say so. What, though, of the impact of the pressures we considered above? Some people are well able to ignore the advice of their parents and lose their teenage years in a fog of alcohol, as though they're the first and only ones to think of so doing, but various culture-specific (and other) influences are not so easy to escape. Take the following hypothetical list of circumstances:
  • Everyone I know supports Auckland
  • Everyone I know thinks that to support anyone else is tantamount to asking to be institutionalised
  • My parents and grandparents support Auckland
  • The few people I know who don't support Auckland are ridiculed endlessly
  • I was brought up to support Auckland
If I then decide to support Auckland, was it really an expression of free will? (We could just as well ask the same question if I decided not to.)

Clearly we've been concerned here with the extent to which a freely willed decision is really ours. It does no good to say that free will is what we have when we choose one direction instead of the other possibilities when beyond the influence of such circumstances, because situations like that are few and far between (indeed, we could argue that they don't exist at all). What we want to say, then, seems to be that insofar as we can, free will is when we are able to choose more than one option and do so by our own volition.

Consider now, though, not just external influences but those from "within". If I have a sweet tooth and choose candy instead of an apple, did I exercise my free will? What if someone who suffers from kleptomania steals something? (To hint at what will come, was it my fault, or theirs, respectively?) The issue here is whether such decisions can be called examples of free will.

We can add to these the various desires we often have that are referred to (although not by everyone) as "base", such as opting to watch more television instead of studying for a test, or choosing to eat a forbidden food when on a diet. As we discussed in the ninth article, some thinkers want to discount such choices and consider free will to be what we would decide on if we were in full possession of the facts and, as it were, our own masters. The problem, as before, is to ask if we're ever in such a situation: when can I say my choice was freely made? We can approximate it, but when are we truly free of base desires and influences that would lead us to choose wrongly? More importantly, perhaps, how do we determine in the first place which is the "right" choice?

Although there are many more angles we could take, to draw these strands together we can look at the definition of free will that Aristotle advanced many years ago:

[indent]...when the origin of the actions is in him, it is also up to him to do them or not to do them.[/indent]Based on what we've considered above, can it ever be the case that we're in a situation simplistic enough to satisfy this? If not, what does it mean for the notion of free will before we've even reached the problem?

Compatibility

Regardless of the difficulties we've considered above, we now come to the issue of compatibility, Here we have a fair idea of what's at issue: we talk of couples being incompatible if there's something about them that will make quarrels inevitable, say, or of supporting Auckland being incompatible with supporting North Harbour: that is, the one excludes the other, or the one circumstance must lead to the failure of the other. In the context of this discussion, we have two concepts: free will and determinism. Compatibilism suggests that the two can coexist; incompatibilism that they cannot.

The problem

Hopefully the problem should by now have become obvious, assuming it wasn't already known of beforehand: how can we have free will if everything is determined? Conversely, if everything is determined, how can we have free will? Still another version is to start with free will and ask how, then, can determinism be true?

Often this problem is framed in an ethical context: if the kleptomaniac we considered above steals something, we usually attribute blame and, if we catch him or her, we assign some form of punishment; at the very least, we generally take a dim view of theft. If the future state of the universe if determined by its past and the laws of nature, though, then the kleptomaniac was surely bound to steal; can we then blame him or her for so doing? It hardly seems fair to complain at something that had to happen, besides bemoaning that it did. After all, were we to fall from a tall building and find ourselves plummeting to the ground rather too quickly (assuming, of course, laws such as gravity), we may utter a good many things, mostly remarking on the unfortunate circumstances, but it would scarcely make any sense to declare "how strange that I am falling down instead of floating; who is to blame for this?"

Another aspect of the problem concerns accomplishment: suppose that someone has tried unsuccessfully to achieve some dream—like playing for Auckland, to take a realistic example. By dint of sheer effort, perpetual practice and—ironically enough—a great deal of determination, they eventually manage it and turn out at Eden Park. Similar stories abound and we hear about them every day in one context or another; usually we agree, readily, that the person is due our praise and congratulations. What, however, of determinism? If their achievement was bound to happen, on account (again) of the past and the inevitable laws of nature, then why pat them on the back at all? Why not, instead, say "so what? You could hardly have done otherwise?"

This problem is one that cuts against our common beliefs both that crimes should be punished (in some way or other) and that accomplishments (and many other things) should be praised. We can extend it to cover others, especially with a fertile imagination, but one area in which it has traditionally been of great importance is theology, where the question of how much freedom we can have if God is all-powerful and all knowing has caused much debate. To what extent are we free to sin or not to sin, say, if God already knows what we'll decide and has made it so in the first place? Rather than take this issue specifically, we'll cover it in the general case.

Arguments for incompatibilism

The basic form of argument for incompatibilism seems straightforward enough from the above examples, but it's important to note that neither compatibilists nor incompatibilists dispute the fact that we make decisions: the first issue lies in whether we cause our choices to come about in the right way; i.e. if we determine them for ourselves sufficiently (as we discussed above when looking at free will) or not. The second way to look at the matter is (as we also remarked on before) to wonder if determinism takes something away from us—namely, the power to choose one way or another, and hence the issues of moral responsibility that go with it.

One popular and easily understood argument is a form of the moral problem from before: suppose we've robbed a bank dressed in a particularly bad costume, leading to an embarrassing arrest; at the resulting trial, we're being defended by Lionel Hutz, the famously inept lawyer. Instead of mounting any kind of defence or providing a reasonable plea, he maintains instead that, as a result of determinism, we had no free will and hence no choice but to do otherwise. The syllogism here runs as follows:

  • P1: We are only guilty of (or responsible for) robbing the bank if we chose to do so;
  • P2: We could not have chosen otherwise, because of determinism;
  • C: Therefore, we are not guilty (or responsible).
It's not clear that this is an argument for incompatibilism, since it rather suggests that there can be no such thing as responsibility at all—we could replace the bank robbery with any other action and get the same result—but that is hardly what most incompatibilists want to imply. Moreover, and even with strengthening the syllogism somewhat, we run again into the problem of defining free will: when, exactly, are we ultimately responsible for a choice, given all the influences and factors playing a role?

Another incompatibilist argument is to wonder about what we could have done in the past. We can rue our decisions where we now think we went wrong, but in the absence of a time machine we can seemingly do very little about it. If the past is fixed, though, and the future is determined from it on the basis of natural laws, then can the future be "open" at all? On the face of it, it would seem not.

The difficulty here is that causation—a very troublesome and mysterious subject in itself—appears to only run in one direction, from past to future. In that case, there is nothing that we can do to change the past, irrespective of determinism. The choices that we make may end up determining the future, but they can never have an influence on the past. What's going on here is very subtle: the past is closed because causation only works forwards, and for that reason the future is not.

This may not be convincing, so we can strengthen the incompatibilist position: take the decision to read through this article, and consider the propositions:
  • I decided to read this article.
  • I decided not to read this article.
Since we're reading, it seems that (1) is true. Now according to determinism, we have the past state of the universe and extant laws of nature to account for why (1) occurred and not (2)—we had no choice but to read. If we wanted to say that we had the possibility of choosing (2), then we would be suggesting that either we could alter the past state of the universe or the laws of nature, both of which seem rather beyond our meagre powers. Does this mean the incompatibilist is right?

Perhaps not; surely the compatibilist is not suggesting that the possibility of choosing otherwise requires a miracle every time we suppose we've done so? What the compatibilist is instead saying is that if we chose differently then either the past state of the universe or the laws of nature must have been different also. Once again, this is quite subtle, but all we're saying is that we might have done otherwise if the circumstances had not been as they were: we chose to read the article, but if the state of the universe had been slightly different at the time, we might have not. This is not merely a clever way to absolve your narrator of blame for boredom, of course.

A much easier way to argue for incompatibilism is to show that determinism is false, or that indeterminism must hold. Below we'll remark briefly on the prospects for both by considering the evidence and our physical theories to date. It won't help much, however, to find determinism on shaky ground if the notion of free will is in as much trouble.

Arguments for compatibilism

Taking now the other possibility, what of arguments for compatibilism? In our discussion immediately above, we've already seen some of the ways in which compatibilism appeals by answering the incompatibilist's ideas, as we'd expect: if it isn't obvious that the two concepts are incompatible, then we would invite some kind of justification to that effect. That said, the problem does seem to have something to it, even if we aren't yet convinced by the arguments.

One suggestion was advanced by Hume when he said that some kind of determinism is required if we want to have free will. After all, if we want to be free to decide for ourselves and hence make plans and choices, we expect the same action or cause to lead to the same result or effect each time—otherwise what use is free will if we never know what will come of our decisions?

Another way to think of compatibilism is to question the assumption of the past being "fixed" in some way, since some results in the sciences seem to cast it into doubt. Some physicists, as well as some so-called eastern philosophies, have suggested instead that determinism may be a relationship wherein every aspect of the universe has an influence on (or determines) every other part, with the links being more like a web than a chain.

Problems with the problem

We've already seen that there are a good many difficulties with defining free will in the first place. What other problems are there?

Natural laws

Several philosophers are skeptical of the existence of natural laws and have given some very powerful arguments against them, including particularly Bas van Fraassen, John Dupré, and Nancy Cartwright. How, for instance, would we prove that a proposed law was in fact what it claimed to be? Many such "laws" in the past have been found to be mistaken, so maybe the same will happen to what we suggest nowadays—does that follow? Not really (cf. our fifth article), but it should perhaps at least give us caution. If we want to assert that such laws exist, though, we might want to explain how we know this and why they should—a difficult task, to say the least.

Another aspect to this problem, which some might consider even more important, is saying what these laws are. An obvious candidate would be the laws of physics as we currently understand them, but that isn't entirely helpful. As we noted above, what if they're wrong? Once again, theories in the past that seemed virtually certain have proven to be mistakes, and the theory that many physicists take to be our best yet (the quantum theory) is said to be indeterministic (although that is open to severe critique in itself). If we could say that we're approaching some "final theory" that some people aim or hope for, then perhaps we could base an argument for or against determinism on the form it takes (for example, something similar to the quantum theory), but where does that leave us now?

Determining determinism

There is a major epistemological issue with determinism. As we said above, some physicists (and others) interpret the quantum theory to be indeterministic, which, if it turns out to be the final theory or closely related to it, would cast much doubt on determinism. Advocates of determinism respond that this interpretation is doubtful (indeed, we could argue that such a reading is methodologically untenable), and that, even if it wasn't, the universe on a larger scale (i.e. not the microscopic quantum level) behaves deterministically enough. Indeterminists are not convinced. Other theories give support to determinism, but in general we can say that it is as yet far from clear what physics tells us about the deterministic nature of the universe or otherwise.

Back to the start

To conclude our discussion, then, the issues of free will and determinism, along with their relationship, are thorny ones. They have vexed philosophers for many thousands of years and involve considerations from other areas of philosophy and science alike. More important, perhaps, is the question of whether you decided to read this article yourself or not.


Dialogue the Tenth

The Scene: Trystyn and Steven have met for coffee and are discussing the events of the previous evening.

Steven: You know, all this has got me thinking.

Trystyn: How so? You seem to have calmed down a good deal anyway, whatever the reason.

Steven: Well, it occurred to me this morning that much of that stuff was pretty much bound to happen.

Trystyn: "Bound" how? Which parts of it?

Steven: (Takes a sip of coffee before replacing his cup carefully.) Think of it this way: you're a quiet guy, almost all the time. I should've guessed that you wouldn't just blurt anything out, and I shouldn't have expected it. Hell, I doubt you would've, even if you'd wanted to, right? (He doesn't stop for an answer.) Similarly, I always act like an idiot when I first meet someone—I don't stop to think, or to look from a different perspective. It never really occurs to me to wonder about what other people might want, I guess, so I blunder on regardless.

Trystyn: Even supposing that's all true, why does that mean it was bound to happen?

Steven: I'm sure I don't know or understand the philosophical ins and outs of it, but it seems to me that most of the decisions we make aren't really ours after all; at least a good part of them are already decided by other factors.

Trystyn: Like what?

Steven: Like your upbringing, or your social circle, or the way you behaved as a kid. If you didn't say much when you were little, you probably won't grow up to be the sort of guy who volunteers information; far more likely that you'll only talk when someone asks you something, at least until you get to know them better or become more confident. What's more, it doesn't seem fair to blame, say, you for not telling me something; after all, if I couldn't really have expected anything else, then it doesn't make much sense to get annoyed at you for acting just as I should've supposed you would—in fact, in the way that made you my friend in the first place.

Trystyn: Similarly, then, I can't really complain at you knocking books out of my hand?

Steven: Heh, not really. If I'm an idiot then you've just got to get used to me, I suppose. You see my point, though?

Trystyn: Sure, but how much of it is decided beforehand? Surely we still have some kind of responsibility?

Steven: Well, that's what I was thinking about this morning, instead of wondering what I'd have for breakfast. If it was all decided for you, I don't see how we could hold anyone accountable for whatever they did, however wrong it may seem. That's the end of the line for jails, or so it seems.

Trystyn: It'd be the same for whatever they did right, too.

Steven: Huh? How's that?

Trystyn: It's just the same thing in reverse: if I can't blame you for screwing up because you had to, neither can I praise you for doing well—you had to do that as well.

Steven: There goes my dissertation—don't tell my professor.

Trystyn: We'll keep it between the two of us—we'd have to.

Steven: Heh—fair enough. I don't see any way around it all, though.

Trystyn: There are several ways we could try.

Steven: It figures that you'd say that.

Trystyn: Of course. The first is to ask whether there really is a problem: if everything is determined, does it follow that we have no choice in any matter?

Steven: It seems clear enough that we don't.

Trystyn: All the more reason to suppose that we do, then. (He winks.) If everything is fixed in advance then things had to turn out the way they have; nevertheless, if they'd been fixed in a different way then they'd have turned out differently just the same. When we say that we chose differently, it just means that we could've done differently if the facts had been otherwise, but they weren't.

Steven: Um... what?

Trystyn: It took me some time to figure that out myself—just mull it over. If I wasn't so quiet, I might've spoken up; but I'm not, so I didn't. If the circumstances had been different, I'd have chosen differently.

Another way is to say that either the concept of free will is in trouble, or determinism itself, or both. There are some good arguments for either.

Steven: In trouble how?

Trystyn: Take free will: given that "no man is an island"—with there being so many different influences on us, our thoughts, feelings, ideas and behaviour, all the time—can any decision we make really be said to have been a "free" choice, of our own volition? On the other hand, if everything is determined by what came before, how is it that they're determined? You yourself probably know that scientific laws are not so clear-cut...

Steven: Alas, we're usually wrong.

Trystyn: Right (he winks again), and some people say the quantum theory is indeterministic while others insist to the contrary.

Steven: Don't let's start that off again. (He looks around the café...)

Trystyn: We could just wonder if this purported incompatibility really exists at all. It could be that every action influences and is influenced by every other, making things a whole lot more complicated—and beautiful—than all this talk allows.

Steven: I want to know if this means you're buying me lunch.

Trystyn: Only your horoscope knows...

Curtain. Fin.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:08:48 +0000 37f0e884fbad9667e38940169d0a3c95 12. Postmodernism http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/12-postmodernism-r28 Paul Newall (2005)

In the study of philosophy we eventually come up against postmodernism, however hard we may try to avoid it. Typically the context is someone uttering the familiar refrain "that postmodern nonsense", but sometimes it can be heard as a description of art or society. In this piece we'll try to get a grip on what it means, what we can use it for, what we can learn from it and why some people are want to insist that only troglodytes partake of it.

What is Postmodernism?

The first place we run into trouble when discussing postmodernism is in defining the term itself. The thinkers and ideas often referred to as postmodern disagree amongst themselves —usually significantly—as well as with dictionary versions, while opponents may not always be fair in their characterisations. With this in mind, can we even speak of postmodernism in the first place? To try to make sense of it, we can attempt several approaches.

The word itself

The term "postmodern" is a recent one, as we might expect. The furthest it has been traced is to 1932 or thereabouts, when it was used to describe the contrast in Hispanic poetry between Borges (and others) and newer work that seemed to be a reaction to modernism (or ultramodernismo, as it was called). Toynbee called the period from 1875 to the present (in 1940, when he wrote) "postmodern", while poets and artists began to employ it to talk of challenges to modernism. Some writers prefer to distinguish between two senses of the word: on the one hand, we have post-modern (with a hyphen) to denote the continuation of modernism, perhaps in new directions (hence the post-modern, or after modernism); on the other, postmodern (with the hyphen gone) signifies something different (postmodern, or after modernism and separate from it—replacing it).

Modernism

Given that all this talk involves modernism in some way, we need to understand this notion if we hope to appreciate what came after or replaced it. The difficultly—yet again—is that this term is itself used to denote a wide spectrum of directions, tendencies and influences in literature and art, as well as a philosophical idea; indeed, it also appears to differ in meaning in many countries, even if only slightly. Before we get any further, then, we can say that one of the main problems with postmodernism is that not everyone means the same thing by it: it could be a person rejects a claim characterized as postmodern when the listener does not even think of it as such. Perhaps the proper response, then, to someone who exclaims " not more postmodern rubbish!" is to ask "what do you mean by postmodern?" It may be worth ducking if the rejoinder is a swift clip around the ear, though.

In order to attempt a rescue of this situation, we can focus not on the many specific differences in understanding but on the general tendency described by Jürgen Habermas and others whereby modernism is synonymous with or much the same as the Enlightenment project; that is, those ideas that came about (roughly) at the time of the Enlightenment (the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), often also called the Age of Reason. This was when the first encyclopedias were being compiled and thinkers were critical of forms of traditional knowledge or authority, especially religious or political ones. Broadly speaking, the hope was that the search for truth by means of reason and the natural sciences would replace superstition, irrationalism and fear and lead to an ordered world in which men thought for themselves instead of following custom or the beliefs that had been held unquestioningly for generations. Kant offered a motto as defining the Enlightenment, saying "Sapere aude: have courage to use your own understanding." Goya rendered this as "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos", or "the sleep of reason produces monsters".

While it is easy to see where the attraction in the progressive enlightening that would follow the march of reason, Weber called it the "disenchantment of the world"; many of the religious ideas, superstitions and folk tales that provided explanations or comfort of one kind or another would not stand up to scrutiny, but the rational picture that replaced them could seem cold, impersonal and just as imprisoning. Habermas' opinion is that although this process may be flawed in some ways, it is not yet finished: although much has been accomplished, the potential in this approach has still to be realized. Postmodernism, then, is on this view rather an anti-modernism that would give up this reasoned effort in favour of an irrational one that is skeptical of the very possibilities encouraged by the Enlightenment.

Whether we accept this characterization or not, we could say that postmodernism is skeptical of theoretical viewpoints that are foundational (as we discussed in our fifth article) or grounded in some way, and critical of theory in general. Sometimes a distinction is made along the following lines:
  • Affirmative postmodernists: theory needs to be changed, rather than rejected
  • Skeptical postmodernists: theory should be rejected, or at least subject to severe critique
There are other ways to appreciate what postmodernism involves by looking at some of the ideas and understandings proposed by various important thinkers, as well as by comparing some of the trends in modernism with how they have become viewed in a postmodern context. This what we'll do shortly below.

After modernism?

Before we get to some of the characteristics of postmodernism, it would be meaningful to ask if any of them are new or radically different from anything that came before. Is postmodernism really after modernism? The answer to this question appears to be in the negative: all the features we see below have been spoken of or held before in ages past. We could try to insist that never before have thinkers assumed them in a systematic fashion, but that is also not the case today—as we said previously.

Some writers have suggested that the very notion of defining periods (as "modern", "postmodern" or anything else) is merely a rhetorical device: a means of comparing the present to something different (usually to show the more recent in a favourable light) by constructing some other time in history that was perhaps not so enlightened as our own. For example, we have already seen the contrast between so-called "traditional" ways and modernism or the rise of the Age of Reason. Were traditional times really as backward as they are sometimes portrayed, though? If not, then it seems fairer to say that succeeding views brought to light those features that were already there but perhaps neglected or ignored. As we saw in earlier pieces, some of the "new" ideas proposed by philosophers and others have in fact been little different from (or the same as) those in the past; the only change might be that circumstances became more favourable to their acceptance.

Comparing the two

Bearing these remarks in mind, we can now contrast modern and postmodern thinking on some illustrative areas and questions, taking each respectively. Although we must be careful to over generalization or oversimplification, opposing modern to postmodern we have:
  • Structure opposed to anarchy
  • Construction opposed to deconstruction
  • Theory opposed to anti-theory
  • Interpretation opposed to hostility toward definite interpretation
  • Meaning opposed to the play of meaning or a refusal to pin down
  • Metanarratives opposed to hostility toward narratives
  • The search for underlying meaning opposed to a suspicion (or certainty) that this is impossible
  • Progress opposed to a doubt that progress is possible
  • Order opposed to subversion
  • Encyclopedic knowledge opposed to a web of understanding
Some of these will be considered in greater depth as we continue.

Elements and influences

Metanarratives

One of the most important thinkers on postmodernism, referred to often, is Jean-François Lyotard. In discussing postmodernism, he wrote:

[indent]I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives..."[/indent]

Now some people are not too convinced about Santa's existence either and may be incredulous toward him (hence explaining the lumps of coal in their stockings), but at least we know what we mean by him. What are metanarratives?

A narrative is usually another way of saying a "story" or a description of some turn of events, so a metanarrative (sometimes also called a Grand Narrative, with capitals for effect) is a narrative that explains (or perhaps contains) all others. For example, there are various narratives all over the world that explain the creation of the universe and everything in it; if a particular story is claimed to be the ultimate one that explains properly or accurately, it could be characterised as a metanarrative. The Enlightenment narrative that we have discussed above, to take another instance, says that reason and the natural sciences will help to free the world from superstition and ignorance, bringing us to (or closer to) true knowledge of our universe. Metanarratives can and are used to translate other narratives into their own form, subsuming them as they must if they are to explain all other accounts in their own terms.

According to Lyotard, then, postmodernism is at least skeptical of this tendency, if not outright "incredulous" at the very possibility of finding one story that explains the world and all others. It is easy to see where this suspicion could come from: we could make the argument that since all attempts so far (that we know of) to find a grand narrative have failed, it follows that the thing just cannot be done. That does not follow, of course, as we saw in our fifth article, but it might at least incline us to be doubtful of the chances of success.

Some critics have suggested that in talking of the "death" or failure of all metanarratives, we are merely offering yet another metanarrative in their place, one that talks of this universal failure and tells us we have to accept it as the final story. Another point of objection concerns those narratives that have not yet failed; for Habermas, as we saw, modernism has not fulfilled its potential, while other cultures have their own narratives that cannot easily be dismissed just because Anglo-European ones are said to be doomed.

Another way to look at this issue is by way of foundationalism, which we considered in our fifth article on epistemology. The search for a metanarrative, according to Gianni Vattimo, is much the same as the quest for a foundation underlying our knowledge; this assumption that we require a foundation, though, is called into question. Instead, Vattimo suggests the metaphor used by Jorge Luis Borges in his famous story The Library of Babel, in which the universe is described an infinite library. When we wander though it looking at the books, we find that they each refer to other books—never an external authority, or the "catalogue of catalogues", as Borges terms it. Rather than appealing to foundations, then, or something else to ground our knowledge, we instead have to be satisfied with the library, or an interlocking web of ideas and beliefs.

A philosopher who has looked at this question in much depth is Richard Rorty, who is very critical of foundationalism (see our fifth article) and much of classical epistemology. In his early work he opposed the notion that knowledge somehow "reflects" or "mirrors" the world around us. If that is so, then it would make more sense for us to give up looking for an overarching language or narrative to understand all others in and instead just translate between them, much like Vattimo. Antifoundationalism is a rejection of the earlier ideas in favour of other understandings of knowledge, some of which we considered previously. Rorty suggests that we employ our concepts as tools to accomplish whatever goals we have, not as a means of hooking onto the world as it really is.

Another epistemological perspective that has seen much activity in recent years and which often comes up in the context of postmodernism is constructivism. According to this idea, we don't receive knowledge through our senses or through discussion; instead, we build it up for ourselves from these and other inputs—we construct knowledge, rather than discover it. A slightly different way to say this is that we adapt our knowledge to organize what we experience, as opposed to using it to explore an external reality. This is quite a contrast with foundationalist approaches; according to some constructivists, we come up with many models to guide us toward whatever goals we have and all that reality can do is help us accept or reject those that are unsuccessful. We could say that we're devising better and better maps to get us where we're going, not exploring the territory.

An obvious criticism of constructivism is to ask how it can select between alternative models if not by reference to a world that already exists and is not just constructed by us? Can we really say that we built up the fact that we can't breathe underwater, or was it instead forced upon us by the way the world happens to be? We find in our everyday experience that not every model is as good as any other when trying to accomplish a specific task, so many constructivists point to coherence or pragmatic concerns (cf. our tenth article) instead of verifying ideas by testing them against the world.

The notion of metanarratives and their rejection or acceptance thus involves many aspects, including epistemology and metaphysics. If Lyotard's definition of postmodernism is anything to go by then our opinions of these issues can go some way to determining how we view the subject.

Power and knowledge

In our sixth piece we looked at the power that can be associated with terms like "knowledge" and "truth". Some thinkers characterized as postmodern worry about this and feel that some legitimate areas or methods of inquiry—or indeed modes of life—could be restricted. To take a simple example, if it is known that a certain method of farming is known to most efficient, it may be that some people insist that everyone adopt it—after all, there are a lot of hungry people. Nevertheless, should we allow this knowledge to force others to live in a way they do not wish to?

On another level, some people consider that "primitive" groups should be civilized for their own benefit, but critics say that this assumes that what is good for one is good for everyone. This is partly a question of ethics (see the previous piece), of course: should we point to the successes of a particular way of doing something or insist that others adopt it to, say, increase their health or life-span? The concern is that the sanction of calling something the truth endows it with a power that makes it easier to force people to do or accept things they otherwise might not.

Another example of this kind concerns madness or insanity, the history of which was studied by Michel Foucault and others. According to a certain understanding of this phenomenon, popularized by a group known as the anti-psychiatrists, it is very difficult indeed to define what we mean "insane", say, unless by comparison to "normal" behaviour; what, though, is normal? Nowadays more complex methods are used in this process but it is clear that in the past it would be a relatively easy matter to define conduct that we disapprove of as abnormal or insane and legislate for the (forcible) treatment of people displaying it. If a certain group has the power to decide who is mad and who isn't, then their actions could have terrible consequences, as we have seen throughout history with the sterilization of so-called simpletons in the US or the concentration camps in Germany.

The principle behind these and other instances is to be aware of the power and influence associated with defining terms or making distinctions between people; the way we understand concepts has consequences—the pen being mightier than the sword on occasion—so we have to be aware of this and act accordingly.

Poststructuralism

A term that comes up often in discussions of postmodernism or thinkers associated with it is poststructuralism. Much like our opening remarks on postmodernism, this is also a difficult concept to define and involves the same notion of after-structuralism, so we need to look at this as well. Structuralism, then, is sometimes described as the attempt to bring all our attempts to understand the human condition under one model or structure, with a single methodology, all derived from the linguistics (the study of languages) of a Swiss theorist called Ferdinand de Saussure. There are many other influences but this is often said to be the main one.

Much work and controversy is associated with Saussure's studies and that which followed, but the important and basic is that language is conceived of as not just a way of expressing our needs and ideas but something required before we can even think or have social interaction. The meaning of a story, say, is thus to be found in its structure; by analysing this and the language used, we can come to understand it.

As structuralism became more important, particularly in Europe, poststructuralism emerged as a challenge to it. Is the meaning of a word really fixed or is it instead, to consider an alternative, actually defined by the use we want to put it to? What if the words we employ to refer to some fixed structure in fact miss their mark and never quite provide us with a bedrock structure to base everything on? Poststructuralism suggests instead that meaning is always unstable; when we use a word to point to a concept, it never quite gets there—reaching instead to another word, and thence to another, and so on. This is another challenge to the possibility of metanarratives and the Enlightenment ideas in particular.

Interpretation

When we read a story, we sometimes take it for granted that the author is explaining to us what happened to the characters, what they thought about and—often—what the moral of the tale is. We could think of it as a fireside chat, in which the writer talks and we listen; in some detective stories, say, we are hoping to find out who did it, how and why. In some books, though, the moral isn't so obvious, and with poetry or movies it can be even worse; sometimes two people can see the same film and understand it in completely different ways. In that case, the issue is one of interpretation: who has appreciated the point of the piece most accurately?

One way to answer this would be to ask the author, if he or she is still alive. Having said that, why should they necessarily be the one to decide? If we have a favourite poem that we read to have a particular meaning to us, should we allow that there are more authoritative ways of approaching it? Given that there may be very many understandings of the same piece, some of which may seem a lot more sophisticated than what the writer apparently intended, can it make sense to call one legitimate and the others not?

Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, named according to some after the Greek god Hermes (Mercury in the Roman pantheon), the patron of interpreters (among other things) who also lent his name to hermeticism. In the past it was associated with the interpretation of scriptures; some holy books warn against over-interpretation while others attribute many distinct layers of meaning to the same text, particularly in some Judaic works and the Hermetic oeuvre. Works by Homer, Dante or Shakespeare have been studied on many levels, but the prime example remains the religious texts: commentaries on commentaries had so much become the standard that in the fifteen hundreds Luther declared his famous maxim sola scriptura (or "by Scripture alone"), intending to strip away all the interpretations that had gone before and hence influenced the reader and instead start anew.

In more recent times, Jacques Derrida declared "il n'y a pas de hors texte"—there is nothing outside the text. One way to understand this is to take it that there are is no guidance or adjudication to be found when considering a piece save within it; thus, when we try to decide what the correct interpretation of a poem is, we can only use the poem itself and not point to something external that would settle the matter for us. Indeed, one writer (Dilthey) said that the purpose of hermeneutics is "to understand the author better than he understood himself"; perhaps the writer unconsciously included aspects or influences in a text that he or she is not aware of and that can only be brought to light by interpretation by others? This led some to proclaim the "death of the author", but at the very least we have the author, the text itself and the reader all having an input into how the text is read.

Deconstructionism

One form of interpretation or analysis of texts that is associated with Derrida and the so-called Yale school of Paul de Man, Harold Bloom, Hillis Miller and Geoffrey Hartman is deconstruction. It has had more of an impact on philosophy and literary theory in Continental Europe, but its influence has been felt widely. It can be traced back to Nietzsche but the problem with explaining or understanding it is that its proponents often insist that there is no deconstructionist method; that is, it isn't just another systematic approach to be applied that can be defined by explicit steps or principles. Even so, we can list some general guidelines that will help:
  • Add nothing to the text: The piece (it could be anything) under consideration should fall apart from its own flaws without needing to look outside it.
  • Look for unstated assumptions: By reading closely, we may be able to find presuppositions that the author relies on implicitly but doesn't argue for or explain; by pointing these out and criticising them, the purpose of the text may fail.
  • Reverse the terms: It may be that by changing some of the terms in a piece to their polar opposites, exactly the reverse argument is made. For example, a racist text may be just as sound (or otherwise) with "white" swapped for "black" (or vice versa); but if it applied to any group, it wouldn't be making a point at all.
  • Look for multiple interpretations: Rather than allowing one reading of the text to be privileged, try to find others—particularly those that may contradict or be entirely opposed to others. If a piece can support so many, perhaps its conclusions or premises should be called into question?
  • Look for limitations: What can the text not include or describe? What has been explicitly or implicitly excluded from it in order to make the points or arguments therein?
A major criticism levelled at deconstructionism is that its proponents seldom attack their own work in the same way; why not deconstruct a deconstruction, for instance? There are also obvious limitations to which texts can be deconstructed: although some think it can apply to anything, it is hard to see how it can address mathematical or (some) scientific papers without the knowledge of these areas that most deconstructionists lack or without tackling the philosophical problems associated with them first.

Another objection to deconstruction comes from a different perspective on language. According to Wittgenstein, rather than representing a correspondence between propositions and reality (cf. our tenth article), language is a series of games or practices that enable us to achieve whatever goals we have in a situation; thus, as we said earlier, meaning is defined by use. On these terms, deconstructionism is simply beside the point: language adapts to its use and pulling a text apart fails to take account of this.

Queer and feminist theory

"Queer" was originally a derogatory mode of address for homosexuals but was adopted in a positive sense in the 1990s by some militants. Based partly on Foucault's writings on sexuality, queer theory is concerned with sexual identity and particularly the idea that fixed categories (such as "masculine" and "feminine") are insufficient to describe the diversity we see in our world. Foucault noted that a vague grouping of actions were replaced by a group of sexual categories and questioned whether this was justified or meaningful; is it enough to speak of heterosexual and homosexual or is this binary either/or not enough to account for the varieties of human behaviour? Even if we add other designations, the same question remains: are we describing divisions that actually exist or instead forcing individuals into moulds that they do not fit? What are the consequences of the latter, especially for those questioning their sexuality? Queer theory studies these and other similar questions.

In a similar way, feminist theory considers the role and influence of gender and of ideas defining the role of women in society. For instance, is knowledge asexual? Some propose a radical feminist epistemology wherein knowledge claims depend on who is making them? Did biological differences determine, wholly or in part, the historically restricted role of women or were social and other prejudices to blame? Does the portrayal of women in the media, art or literature have a positive effect or does it merely reinforce old stereotypes? Should women work for equality or the celebration of difference? Whatever the answers to these questions, the main point raised by feminist theory is that the relationship between the sexes is not one of fairness and equal standing but instead a narrative of oppression and inequality. Whether this is so, who or what is to blame and how to remedy it is still the subject of much discussion today.

Postcolonial theory

Although influenced by Edward Said's early work, postcolonial theory is relatively recent and seeks to study those cultures affected by colonialism. One way to define it is as those political, economic, social and cultural practices that evolve as a result of or response to colonialism. A potential problem for any look at a former colony is seeing it from a Western perspective and judging accordingly; when people from within the culture decide to describe it for themselves, why should they adopt this perspective instead of their own? What is the effect of using the former colonial language, say, as opposed to the native tongue(s)? Does self-description come naturally or is it a reaction or resistance to being discussed on another's terms? How did the interaction between coloniser and colonised affect both?

One consequence identified related to the Western use of the term "Orient" (or, today, the "Middle East"); according to some theorists, this had the connotation of "exotic" or different and hence instilled a view whereby other parts of the world were talked of as "us and them" or "here and there", a practice that continues today and which prevents or makes it difficult for the "us" to understand "them". In addition, "they" might have had to alter their feelings of identity as a result of the pressures of colonisation. Postcolonial theory looks at these issues and tries to increase our appreciation of our history and its impact on our ability to learn about others if we implicitly suppose them to be different before we even start.

Criticisms

Postmodernism (and its related aspects) is not without its critics, of course. Several different complaints have been raised, the importance of which depend on how a particular idea has been stated:
  • Although postmodernism focuses on irrational tendencies and appears to celebrate them, it still uses reason as a tool.
  • Postmodernists mock the inconsistencies of modernism but are not consistent themselves.
  • Rejecting criteria for judging questions is not enough; alternatives have to be provided.
  • Postmodernists call for interdisciplinary work and not taking subjects in isolation, but they do this themselves in their own criticisms and fail to learn enough about other subjects to be in a position to do so.
The first three are often forms of ad hominem tu quoque, a logical fallacy in which an argument is questioned because the proponent doesn't seem to hold him or herself to it; if the positions are explained carefully, though, there is no requirement for a postmodernist to be consistent if his or her objective is only to show that an idea is flawed. One way to think of this is as a substantial shrug of the shoulders: if someone demands to know what we have to offer instead of their suggestions, we can say "I don't know, but yours are still wrong"; afterwards we can ask what we need to conclude from this (for instance, is it better to have bad ideas than no ideas at all?). There are some thinkers, of course, that do offer explicit statements that can be addressed by the above criticisms (such as saying "we should not use reason to decide things" and then offering argument in support), but our discussion in the eighth article entreats us to be careful and not to avoid interesting postmodern ideas that are not beaten so easily.

The remark that much of postmodernist thinking demonstrates a lack of knowledge of other disciplines—leading to weak criticisms thereof—is one we could make about most subjects but has more importance in this context. Is it sensible to complain at the relationship between power and knowledge, say, without knowing how physicists and biologists claim to come by the latter, particularly given the diversity of approaches even in these (cf. our sixth piece)? A situation to be avoided if possible is one in which no-one really knows what anyone else is doing but criticises them all the same. The problem of realism that we looked at before is very significant to the kinds of ideas postmodernists have put forward, which is why we find it being addressed by some of them. Opponents of postmodernism find it doubtful that the search for facts or truth need oppress anyone; although it is possible to use knowledge as power, they say, this has nothing to do with the facts themselves and everything to do with interpretation and the people doing the interpreting.

Another telling criticism is to note that to be anti-theory is still to have a theory; that is, the theory that we shouldn't have a theory. Rejecting the need for criteria (whatever their purpose) is still a criterion. Is it possible to be as playful as some suggest, not holding beliefs or methodological approaches and instead refusing to define or pin down narratives? How lightly can we hold our ideas before we end up either holding nothing at all or become certain of them without realising it?

One point raised against postmodernism concerns the language used in many works, which can seem tangled and obtuse at the best of times. Are long, complicated words being used as part of a specialist language or because postmodernists have nothing of consequence to say and want to hide this fact behind their rhetoric? Often the answer is a matter of opinion, or of saying that even a difficult writer can sometimes offer a comment clearly enough to raise an eyebrow before plunging back into a thicket of terminology. Since a key assumption of this series is that anything worth saying can be said clearly, it may be that some people are reluctant to wade into postmodernist thinking for fear that their time will be wasted; unless the writer is composing his thoughts merely for the amusement of himself and a few select friends, this is a difficulty that still restricts the impact that postmodern ideas can have.

The limits of interpretation

One thinker critical of the idea that meaning is forever deferred or that interpretation can go on and on without ever reaching an end is the semiotician Umberto Eco. In his work Interpretation and Overinterpretation he asked if instead there are limits to how much interpretation we can do with a given text. For example, suppose we take Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov, the tale of a father's murder, apparently by his own son, and with much discussion of philosophical and theological issues. We can each read it in a different way, understanding some lines, sections or characters in disparate ways and maybe even disagreeing vehemently about the moral of the story (if any); however, it seems ridiculous to say that we could interpret it as a manual explaining how to survive on Mars in the event of a global shortage of apples—some readings are too far beyond the text to be able to claim much (or any) support from it.

In addition to apparently baseless interpretations, we can also overinterpret and see things that aren't there. An especially rich source of examples can be found in conspiracy theory, wherein the search for links between events and the hidden motivations of individuals or groups can result in speculations that, while they have some basis in fact, go too far. We see this also in the hunt for codes in Shakespeare and Marlowe: the former is believed by some to have left clues to the real authorship of his work while the latter was a spy and peppered his writing with anti-masonic comments. Eco himself gives the instance of the "Followers of the Veil" who read Dante's erotic references as coded criticism of the Church. Too much interpretation can lead us to see what we want to, rather than the (sometimes) quite specific intention of the author.

Eco's main point is not that a text can tell us how it should be read but that it restricts what we can say. Even if we can take an infinity of different understandings, they are not equal: some of them will be supported by the text while others will not. In this respect, his remarks are much like the criticisms that were raised against older forms of empiricism (cf. our fifth and sixth pieces): we can't just appeal to our own ideas of what there is in the world but neither can we test them against that world without further ado; instead, we have to accept that our assumptions, goals and hopes can influence what we see but we still check our thinking to see if it has any support in the very thing we are trying to understand. Thus we can accept that there may be no final reading or fact to be found without giving up the possibility that some readings are more "far-fetched" than others. In terms of metanarratives, it may be the case that none of the possibilities yet or to come can succeed entirely, but we can still say that some are better than others.

To summarise, postmodernism is made up of too many elements and thinkers who very often disagree with each other to permit any simplistic assessment of it. We have to take each idea as it comes and treat it on its own merits, even while it remains fashionable to employ "postmodern" as a synonym for muddleheaded.

Dialogue the Ninth

The Scene: The next day. Trystyn and Steven are walking beside the river, discussing the previous night's events. Both seem down.

Steven: Why didn't you tell me she was already taken?

Trystyn: She isn't "taken".

Steven: What? Of course she is.

Trystyn: You should think about the consequences of the words you use, even when upset. She's not an object; she's in a relationship.

Steven: Which you failed to tell me about.

Trystyn: What could I have said? It's not for me to define what she has and what she means by it. Perhaps she views it differently to me, or to you?

Steven: You know very well what I mean.

Trystyn: Perhaps, but not what she means.

Steven: (Exasperated...) What? Meaning is fixed.

Trystyn: No, it isn't. Lots of people use words in different way, or understand them differently to how you might. Meaning is flexible this way, according to how you want to use a word. Maybe her relationships are flexible, too?

Steven: Mine are not. In any case, if you intend to use a word in conversation or anything else—if you want to communicate—then it has to be the same or nearly the same as the other party. I'm sick and tired of this postmodern nonsense where people avoid any kind of responsibility by claiming that there are just too many interpretations to call any of them valid. If you talk to someone then you have to consider what they'll think or feel; look at their behaviour, the situation you're in and the circumstances. It's just like taking a bunch of theories and testing them; it's not enough to take your own interpretation and call it equally valid to any other, or better because it's yours.

Trystyn: You can see, though, that she might've assumed you knew?

Steven: Why would I? How easy it'd be if we all accepted that nothing can be known at all; we can't pin meaning down because it always eludes us or remains indeterminate. You know who does that? People who are afraid to say "this is what I mean, and nothing else". You can read a book any way you like but there are boundaries to it forced upon you by the author's intentions, the characters and their goals, possibilities in the story; you can add to it, but the structure is already there to build on. If you move too far away from the context then you're just talking to yourself, making yourself look ridiculous.

Trystyn: I guess the point of it all is to prevent one perspective from gaining power over others, or to stop it from being considered correct at the expense of all others. We know what happens when people are certain of themselves and decide to convince everyone else.

Steven: (Shaking his head...) This kind of tyranny isn't associated with everything. I just wanted to walk her home. An author pens a story and doesn't necessarily intend to subvert the human condition or hide his motives so that some guy with no knowledge of his subject can pull it to pieces and coin a few words while he's at it. The way around problems with meaning isn't to render everything meaningless.

Trystyn: Wow.

Steven: (Under a full head of steam...) Of course I know that perceptions differ; that meanings vary between theories; that sometimes pinning something down can kill it. What's the solution? We have to be a lot more careful. We can take account of the problems and try to be clearer, or more cautious, but what we can't do is take our toys and go home. What does that achieve?

Trystyn: Not much, I guess.

Steven: Suppose it can't be done—that we can't find all the answers. Suppose even that every attempt to do so is tainted by our biases or the use we hope to make of it, or even that meaning will forever elude us. Won't we still try?

Trystyn: I'm sorry I didn't.

Steven: I didn't expect to know her mind, or for her to fall at my feet. It just wasn't too much to ask that you both pay some attention to me—after all, I'm hardly the most complicated of fools—and consider the consequences of what I would find meaning in.

(Silence.)

Curtain. Fin]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:06:59 +0000 f4be00279ee2e0a53eafdaa94a151e2c 11. Ethics http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/11-ethics-r27 Paul Newall (2005)

In this installment of our series we'll consider ethics, looking at what we mean by this term, what use we have for it and thereby attempting to understand why this aspect of philosophy is so important to everyone. Along the way we'll examine some of the philosophical assumptions made or that need to be considered when constructing or deciding upon an ethical system and finish by looking at some contemporary problems that may be approached with the benefit of the perspectives introduced.

What do we mean by ethics?

In simple terms, morality is the right or wrong (or otherwise) of an action, a way of life or a decision, while ethics is the study of such standards as we use or propose to judge such things. Thus abortion may be moral or immoral according to the code we employ but ethics tells us why we call it so and how we made up our minds. As a result, ethics is sometimes called moral philosophy; we use it to criticise, defend, promote, justify and suggest moral concepts and to answer questions of morality, such as:

  • How should we live and treat one another?
  • What are right and wrong?
  • How can we know or decide?
  • Where do our ethical ideas come from?
  • What are rights? Who or what has them?
  • Should we coerce one another?
  • Can we find an ethical system that applies to everyone?
  • What do we mean by duty, justice and other similar concepts?
There are many such issues that are typically studied according to the separation of ethics into three sub-branches:

  • Metaethics: the study of where ethical notions came from and what they mean; in particular, whether there is an ethical system independent of our own opinions that could be applied to any situation at any time or place.
  • Normative ethics: the search for a principle (or principles) that guide or regulate human conduct—that tell us what is right or wrong. A norm is just another way of saying "standard", so normative ethics is the attempt to find a single test or criterion for what constitutes moral behaviour—and what does not.
  • Applied ethics: the study of specific problems or issues with the use or application of moral ideas investigated in normative ethics and based on the lessons of metaethics. Applied ethics may sometimes coincide with political or social questions but always involves a moral dimension.
The distinctions between these will become clearer by example as we consider them each in turn. For the time being, we could note that the question "what do we mean by good?" would be metaethical, "what should we do to be good?" would be in the domain of normative ethics, while "is abortion moral?" would be the province of applied ethics.

Why study ethics?

Of all the areas of philosophy, ethics is the one that seems most pertinent to us and it is no exaggeration to say that everyone is engaged in ethical thought at most times in their lives, knowingly or otherwise. Moreover, it is quite mistaken to suppose that philosophers have a monopoly on deep ethical ideas while the rest of us bumble along, blissfully unaware of the import of the questions we suggested above; instead, a glance at the newspapers, television, internet, as well as books, films, plays, together with conversations on every street corner or in public houses and cafés, shows that each day we are confronted with ethical problems and have to make ethical decisions.

We discuss these matters all the time, then; in this piece, we'll try to see how a philosophical treatment can aid us in this endeavour. How well do the ideas we currently use hold up to scrutiny? Are they based on sound assumptions, or could we think otherwise? Are we applying them correctly, or as best we could? Perhaps most importantly, are there alternatives we have not yet considered?

Some historical perspectives

If ethical thought is universal as we suggested above then it should come as no surprise that there were many thinkers in the past who put forward their ideas and tried to improve on what came before them. Many conceptions of ethics in the ancient world were based on or influenced by the Greeks, particularly Plato and Aristotle. The former thought that people were inclined to be good and desired happiness; the problem was to know what would bring about that good in the first place. If they acted wrongly, it was due to not understanding how they should go about achieving happiness in the best way—not because they wanted to act wrongly or badly. In that case, ethical difficulties were epistemological ones; wrong came from error, not intent.

Plato also suggested four virtues: wisdom, courage, justice and temperance; Aristotle agreed but added others, like generosity, truthfulness, friendliness and prudence. However, Aristotle went further than his former tutor and said in his Nicomachean Ethics that goodness is in the actor, not the action; that is, an act is virtuous because of the manner in which a person has chosen it—having done so through sound knowledge and by holding oneself in a kind of equilibrium, making the decision for specific reasons and not at a whim—and thus not because the act is good in itself. This is an important distinction to grasp: the idea was that something we do is virtuous because we choose it when calm and collected, aiming for the best, as opposed to anything specific about the deed. That would mean that one answer to the question "how shall we live?" could be "by being good", instead of "by doing good".

Another point of note is that neither Plato nor Aristotle specified what we would now call a normative ethic; it is one thing to say "acting in such and such a manner, you will choose the good", but quite another to be able to say exactly what that good consists in. Nevertheless, this was a common trait in the ancient world: in the Homeric epics and the stories and plays thereafter, the virtues were displayed practically. Concepts like honour or courage were defined by their use, showing a character being honourable and courageous but also demonstrating when these became foolhardy or even failings. Once again, this was what we might consider a fairly loose explanation of ethical conduct; a hero was honourable because he acted in a way called honourable, not because honour was defined and his conduct matched the description. Moreover, even the gods made mistakes and these showed that virtue was to be lived, not explained.

From the point-of-view of normative ethics, the Greek ideas lacked explicit rules by which to discern how to live and answer moral questions. Various religious texts were able to provide these but were open to different interpretations. Given the acceptance of whatever sanction was claimed, though, a guide for conduct was provided; even then, however, they were not as free from ambiguity as we might suppose and required application by both religious and legal authorities.

In spite of the increasing sophistication of ethical ideas and the legal precedents that were often based upon them, from roughly enlightenment times onwards a great deal of moral theorising took place. According to Berlin, this was due in large part to the resurfacing of three old assumptions:

  • that to all genuine questions there is one true answer and one only, all others being deviations from the truth and therefore false, and that this applies to questions of conduct and feeling, that is, to practice, as well as to questions of theory or observation—to questions of value no less than to those of fact;
  • that the true answers to such questions as these are in principle knowable;
  • that these true answers cannot clash with one another, for one true proposition cannot be incompatible with another; that together these answers must form a harmonious whole...
The result of such assumptions was for some the building of ethical systems, often elaborate but occasionally simple that would tell us the true way to govern conduct because, as Berlin's points note, the perfect ethical system both exists, is knowable (that is, we can find it) and—much like the Highlander—there can be only one. Some thinkers used God as their foundation, others reason and still others both, but the trend throughout was that the aim was achievable.

In the meantime, there were a few skeptics like Bayle and Huet who were casting doubt on the whole enterprise and—especially for the former—influencing generations to come. They criticised these assumptions and doubted the efforts of the system builders and theorists like Descartes and Hobbes. Vico was also opposed to some enlightenment ideas and criticised the possibility of finding the nature of anything, man or good included. The history of this time is too complex for our purposes here and Schneewind's study is more than enough; suffice to say that this trend continued: thinkers explicitly or implicitly convinced by the three assumptions tried to construct systems while those who were not opposed them, sometimes with other suggestions. An understanding of right and wrong based on duty came to be contrasted with one based on consequences, alongside evolutionary ideas and some new applications of Aristotle; we shall look at these below after first considering the metaethical questions that they all rely upon.

Metaethics

As we remarked above, in metaethics we look at the principles that underlie ethical systems and their applications. If we take a question like "is it wrong to be mean to Hugo?" for instance, the metaethical aspects we would first need to clear up might be to ask:

  • What do we mean by wrong?
  • How do we determine it?
  • Who does it apply to?
  • Is the definition of wrong at our discretion or does it apply according to a fixed standard independent of our opinions?
  • What does a correctly identified wrong action imply, if anything?
As we pass through some of the areas of metaethics below, we'll see how each of these questions could be answered.

Where do ethics come from?

It seems unlikely that storks also bring ethical ideas with them, perhaps slipped in as reading material for a baby bored with waiting on a doorstep; instead, we could expect some kind of foundation or justification of a rule or suggestion such that we are both inclined to accept it and appreciate why we should. There are several possible candidates:

  • From God.
  • From an abstract world where concepts exist in some way.
  • From agreement between people.
  • From a consideration of duty, or virtue.
  • From a consideration of the consequences of various actions.
We may be able to think of others. At this early stage we can make an initial distinction by suggesting two general answers to our question: on the one hand, ethics are already decided but need to be discovered—whether they be created by someone or something, or just "waiting" to be found; on the other, they are not set in stone but are discussed in one way or another and arrived at through agreement, with due regard for practicalities. We'll now consider each element of these in turn.

To what or to whom do ethics apply?

The answer to this question is not at all obvious. Over the course of history, ethical systems have been presumed to be relevant only to free men and not slaves, or to white men and not black, or civilised men and not savages, or to men and not animals and environments. Sometimes there were such codes for all these groups, but they were different or separate. Why should there not be a single system for all? On the contrary, though, why should there be?

One way to view this issue is via the concept of rights, which are subject to much the same criticisms. Typically a right is granted by a government or authority and represents some principle that—one way or another—is to be considered inviolable or not to be taken away, such as the right to life. Some people think rights are decided upon, perhaps by suggesting that everyone should be entitled to live without perpetual fear of being murdered for no particular reason; others think these rights are the consequences of eternally existing ethical codes discovered by reason or granted by God. Of course such a right does not imply that no-one will try to hit Hugo a glancing blow about the head, but only that doing so will have consequences.

Should such rights apply equally to everyone? Although the egalitarian spirit would seem to suggest so, in fact matters are complicated every day by circumstances—particularly dilemmas like kill or be killed. In that case, perhaps we should be more sophisticated in our use of ethics?

Some people think that there is little or no justification for seeking and applying ethical codes to humans and not to animals. On the contrary, say others, animals do not understand the concepts of ethics and rights and hence cannot take part in a society employing them. If that were so, says the counter-argument, neither could they be granted to infants and the mentally incapacitated. One reason for proposing a wider use of ethics to cover animals too is the idea that rights can in principle belong to anything—even an environment.

Clearly the question of who or what can have rights or ethical value has consequences for the codes we may draw up. Some argue for the attribution of value of the basis of it being self-evident that people (or animals) have, for example, the right to live in decent conditions; others that there is a practical justification for so doing.

Ethical realism and anti-realism

As we discussed in the sixth article and have seen above, there is much dispute and disagreement as to whether ethical values exist independently of human ideas; for example, would it be wrong to steal even if there is no-one around to do so or nothing to take? If we answer "yes" to such questions then we are ethical realists, holding values to be a part of reality (or cognitive claims about it) in some way; if we respond "no" then we are ethical anti-realists (or non-cognitivists), supposing to the contrary that—whatever they might be—they are not.

Objective, subjective and intersubjective

An issue that tends to come up frequently in debates on ethics concerns the objectivity or otherwise of moral laws or values; in fact, this is another way of understanding the question of ethical realism. There are three usual positions advocated; ethical values could be:

  • Objective: depending only on the object of inquiry, and hence independent of what we think, hope or expect to find.
  • Subjective: Depending on the subject doing the inquiring.
  • Intersubjective: Depending on agreement between subjects.
Like most things, the best way to gain an appreciation of what these distinctions mean and imply is by way of examples. Suppose we take the proposition "it is wrong to hit Hugo" and try to understand it from each position: according to the objective reading, the proposition is true or false whether or not we approve of it (a reasonable point of issue), and even if no-one but Hugo was around (another typical circumstance). Indeed, we could interpret it as saying that it would be wrong to hit Hugo even if he did not yet or ever exist; the important thing is that the truth or falsity is not dependent on what we think of Hugo, what time of day it is, how we are feeling and whether it is raining, but only on the facts or reasoning—whatever they may be—that decide the truth value.

On the subjective reading, the truth or otherwise of the proposition rests in part or wholly on the judgement of the subject suggesting it. In this case, the wrongness of hitting Hugo would be decided by the moral ideas the subject had happened to decide upon, according to his or her conscience, often because the notion of an objective choice on the matter has been rejected or criticised.

For the intersubjective version, it might be that an agreement to agree can be reached—in whatever way—whereby it is decided that the proposition will be considered true or false. This is not objective, because it depends initially on the opinions of those concerned and hence is not independent of them—the same group may choose to say otherwise at another time, for instance; neither is it subjective, since the decision is taken as an ethical standard to apply across the group, not just individually.

Another example could be the adoption of a declaration of rights, whether it be that of the French in 1789 or the more recent United Nations version. An objective critique might say that not all the rights claimed can actually exist or be supposed to be independent of us, while a subjective opposition might view the notion of rights as meaningless in the first place; nevertheless, an intersubjective agreement between governments could effectively say "we are going to take it as given that these rights exist and act accordingly". That, of course, is what we generally do—the best we can, while taking into account philosophical arguments.

A significant problem in ethical debate occurs when participants employ either objective or subjective understandings of morality and are using different assumptions before they even lock horns properly. A person who does not believe in the possibility of objective ethical values would find it difficult to achieve any common ground with someone who does; it may be that there is no way to reduce the one to the other. This, we might suppose, is often the attraction of intersubjective reasoning. Generally speaking, though, subjective and intersubjective ethical ideas are often mistaken.

Here again we see one of the cautions of the philosophical approach: the person we are speaking to may not share our starting point-of-view, so we need both to examine it and try to see our own ideas from their perspective if we hope to get the most from our discussion.

Relativism and pluralism

Aristotle wrote in his Nichomachean Ethics:

Quote

Fire burns both here and in Persia, but what is thought just changes before our very eyes.

According to Protagoras:

Quote

Man is the measure of all things.

These are the beginnings of relativism in ethics: ethical relativism takes note of the apparent fact that ideas about what conduct we call good and bad, or acceptable and unacceptable, has varied across time and between societies—in short, that some people call things "wrong" that others do not have any problem with.

Individual relativism is the idea that people create their own moral codes, separately from anyone else; this is found in Nietzsche, and also the character Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment who wrestles with the notion that great men—like Napoleon, in his example—are not subject to the same rules as the rest of us but decide their own. Cultural relativism holds that moral values are relative to the cultures they are found in. Support for the latter is found in studies comparing societies or just from the simple experiment of travel: some countries are tolerant or approve of homosexuality, polygamy, dressing provocatively or prostitution; others are not. Some countries employ the death penalty within a prison environment while others do so publicly and still others refuse to consider the possibility of such a punishment. In some nations of Europe, not partaking of a coffee after a meal is tantamount to declaring oneself to be a barbarian, while others do not judge so harshly.

Given the wide diversity of these positions, relativists ask if it can make any sense to suppose that ethics can be everywhere and at all times the same; instead, they vary relative to the circumstances and period in which they arise and are employed. It is important to realise that this does not imply that "anything goes"—a misunderstood methodological point—but rather that values are not independent of the many factors that impact upon their use.

Pluralism is not the same as relativism; it was advocated by Mill and we looked at some of his arguments in the eighth part of this series. Berlin described it as follows:

Quote

There are many objective ends, ultimate values, some incompatible with others, pursued by different societies at various times, or by different groups in the same society, by entire classes or churches or races, or by particular individuals within them, any one of which may find itself subject to conflicting claims of uncombinable, yet equally ultimate and objective ends.

Thus it may be that—as with relativism—many different cultures advocate different ethical ideas, but—unlike relativism—they may each see their ideas as objective and it may not be possible to compare them and decide which are true and which are not. In that case, perhaps it is as well that many attempts are being made and that there is a variation in ethical systems? After all, Mill's advice was to allow people to live as they choose in order that we learn by experiment what works and what does not. Pluralism, then, takes note of these circumstances and suggests that we build around them—allowing people to live according to the values they decide upon so long as they do not harm others in so doing. It values tolerance and diversity, whether because they are believed to be important in themselves or because of their consequences.

Moral skepticism

Hamlet was not convinced of the existence of objective moral guidelines or principles and expressed his doubt thus:

Quote

[T]here is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so...

The epistemological claim that we can know nothing of the existence or nature of such principles is called moral skepticism, which sometimes also includes the ontological claim that there can be no such thing. The moral skeptic asks where these guidelines are—in some abstract realm? If so, then:

  • how can we know anything about them?
  • how are we supposed to interact with something separate from us?
These questions are powerful arguments against objective principles. The first questions the second of the three assumptions Berlin noticed that we looked at before; the other asks about the seemingly strange world that objective ideas presumably inhabit. Another argument points out the wide range of ethical ideas that people have had before and have today in different parts of the world; where do these come from if in fact there is only one true set of rules to be found? A possible answer could be that the correct rules have been distorted by our attempts to try to find them when starting from such diverse positions and within different cultures, but skeptics do not find this very convincing.

Metaethical problems

There are other difficulties that arise in metaethics that we can consider here. The first is the is/ought problem, according to which we ask how a statement about what we ought to do can ever be logically derived from a statement about what is. For example, suppose we consider the proposition "we ought to do more about people who do not have enough to eat"; in the form we studied in the fourth introduction, this would read:

  • P: Some people do not have enough to eat;
  • C: Therefore, we ought to do something about it.
The first line (the premise) talks about what is, namely the unfortunate fact that some people go hungry every day; the second (the conclusion) says that we ought to act in some way. We can see the aspect of such arguments that the is/ought problem identifies quite clearly here, because premises are missing:

  • P1: Some people do not have enough to eat;
  • P2: People not having enough to eat is a bad thing;
  • P3: Bad things should be acted upon to make them better;
  • C: Therefore, we ought to do something about it.
The second premise is implicit in the first argument, but not stated; the conclusion does not follow without it, because all we are doing is connecting an is statement with an ought without offering any reason or justification. Note that the transition from the second to third premises is also subject to the is/ought problem.

The basic point at issue is that is/ought statements appear to involve unstated ethical ideas that do not make the step from what is to what ought to be any more valid, unless we assume that the ethical ideas are true in the first place—but that is precisely what we are supposed to be showing. In our example, the sheer number of hungry people alters nothing about the logical step involved.

Another example could be the so-called "problem of evil", in which it is asked how a good and all-powerful God could allow the existence of evil, or sometimes a specific case that is supposed to be unproblematic—like the death of a small child. The same is/ought difficulty is at work here:

  • P1: God is good and all-powerful;
  • P2: Evil exists;
  • C: God ought to prevent or remove evil.
The premises talk about what is, while the conclusion addresses what ought to be; however, the implicit premises are missing again: even if we made a long list of every evil thing we could think of, it would still not follow that we can say what God ought to do with presupposing the ethical point we are trying to make.

(There are other aspects to this problem—the supposed logical conflict between the two premises and the question of whether our ethical ideas are close to or a necessary approximation of God's—that we shall consider in the philosophy of religion introduction to come.)

The is/ought problem is a major one for ethics and leads some to think that the derivation of an "ought" from an "is" simply cannot be achieved. Others suggest that facts about our world and about human nature can lead to a resolution, as we shall see below.

Another issue to look at is the naturalistic fallacy, proposed by the philosopher G.E. Moore as a criticism of naturalist or evolutionary approaches to ethics (see below also). He claimed that "good" is a simple property, in that it cannot be defined by reference to anything more simple or broken down further. The attempt to do so is called the naturalistic fallacy.

To see how this is used, suppose we are trying to find a way around the is/ought problem and look at some feature of the natural world to help us—the sociability of groups, say, or cooperation. We could say that since we have evolved to be social animals, an action that promotes or develops cooperation is good while one that does otherwise is bad; unfortunately, according to the naturalistic fallacy, "goodness" is not the same as "sociability" and so the effort fails. Other examples would do likewise. It is easy to see that a way to criticise Moore's thinking would be to address his claim that "good" is a simple property in the first place, and that is what many thinkers have done.

Another metaethical topic that bears considering is the motivation behind an action: according to ethical egoism, all acts are selfish in intent; we may help people, for instance, but ultimately it is to make us feel better. Altruism, on the other hand, suggests that unselfish actions are possible whereby we are solely intent on some benefit for others with no concern for ourselves. Some thinkers argue that all purportedly altruistic deeds are in fact reducible to egoistic motivations, while altruists point to problematic instances like a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save his comrades or a mother sacrificing herself for her child.

A last problem to study here concerns moral dilemmas, a situation in which we are faced with two possible courses of action where both seem to violate whatever ethical ideas we may hold. For example, we might know that a woman is very likely to die in childbirth, but that the only other option is to abort the baby; in that case, we would be faced with the unenviable choice of whether to allow the death of the mother or the baby, both of which seem wrong. Alternatively, we might allow a person to believe something about our feelings for them that is actually mistaken, or different; then we could either allow them to continuing believing a lie or tell them and perhaps upset them. This latter is a moral dilemma that comes up often. Lastly, we might be asked to support a war or conflict in which civilian casualties will occur but will remove some kind of purportedly greater evil; do we go along with it, knowing that innocents will perish, or oppose it and allow the evil to persist?

Some situations may of course be more complex and have more than two solutions, but cases like these are common enough. How do we resolve the dilemma, if it can be done at all? One answer could be to say that no such genuine dilemmas exist, since we can always analyse them and find a solution. Along similar lines, if we think that there can only be one correct judgement to be made in all cases of moral difficulties, then one of the options must be true and the other false. The problem with both is that it is not always clear how a dilemma can be resolved and to assert that they always can be means that a methodology for so doing is needed.

On the other hand, we could say that dilemmas can be resolved but not by picking the true course of action; instead, we have to go with making the best of a bad situation and trying to find some kind of accommodation between the two. However, if we deny that all dilemmas can be decisively resolved then we imply that the idea of a moral certainty in action is open to challenge: what of the notion of duty, or obligation, then, if there is no true or correct way we should act in a given circumstance? Some of the possibilities as to how to judge between alternatives when it is not obvious which would be best will now be considered.

Normative ethics

We come thus to the systems themselves, or the search for them. In this section we'll look at some of the ideas that have been put forward to guide our conduct and help us determine right or wrong, as well as whether or not we should throw a snowball at a defenceless Hugo.

The Golden Rule

Variations on this famous ethical principle have been proposed at many different times, perhaps most memorably by Jesus; simply put, it states that we should do unto others as we would have others do unto us. Thus, before we decide to launch a blizzard of grit-filled snowballs at Hugo, we ask "would we like Hugo to do the same to us?" If the answer is "yes", then fire away; if "no", then perhaps we should hold off? This example is flawed because the chance to bury Holblingian rhetoric may prove too tempting and lead to the rejection of the golden rule, but we can think of many more: for instance, shall we break into a home and steal the treasured jewellery of the occupants? Probably not, since we would not approve of them doing likewise to us; and so it goes.

Notice, though, that there is a slight conflation of the rule in these instances. To avoid it (and demonstrate the point at issue) we can distinguish between two forms of the rule:

  • The positive golden rule: do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
  • The negative golden rule: do not do unto others as you would not have them do to you.
The negative form, then, is what we appeal to when we say "I won't hit Hugo because I wouldn't like him to hit me"—in an alternative universe where this kind of prospect would actually scare us; the positive, on the other hand, is what we employ when we muse "I'm going to be nice to Hugo because I want him to be nice to me".

The golden rule, in either form, is easy to apply and provides a guide by which we can all live without needing to use any special kind of reasoning or understanding, hence part of its attraction. How can we criticise it?

Firstly, the golden rule tells us nothing of how we should treat animals, or babies, or the mentally incapacitated, since none of these can do as we would have them do, or not as we would have them not. Secondly, how do we know if we are not asking too much of others? Thirdly, what if we would like others to treat us in particular ways? Using our fertile imaginations, we could come up with certain practices that we might enjoy but should we then do likewise to others who may not be of a similar disposition? Fourthly, we could find problematic instances: we would like it if a lottery winner gave us half of their winnings, so should we give them the same amount of money, or do we have to win as well first? Perhaps we would like a friend to give us their new car; shall we give them ours? Fifth, what of limitations? Suppose someone is unable to treat us as we expect, but does the best they can all the same? Shall we treat them equally, or do the best we can instead? What of a person trapped in some kind of self-critical circle, wherein they are hard on themselves constantly, and pathologically. Should they turn this on everyone else?

A general complaint at the golden rule is that it is wholly subjective—it depends upon what the subjects wants or would not want. We can try to get around some of these difficulties by saying that we should do as others ought to do to us, but then we rely on other ethical standards to determine what that "ought" implies.

In summary, the golden rule is a useful tool and easy to implement, but we need to be careful not to be too simplistic when adopting it and bear in mind its limitations.

Deontological theories

The term "deon" comes from Greek and means duty, so in the general sense a deontological theory is concerned with our duties, obligations and responsibilities to others. In that case, moral conduct consists in following the normative guide provided by those duties; the problem would be in finding out which duties are the correct ones.

By way of an example, it could be that it is our duty to not steal from others, even if we are hungry and cannot afford to eat; indeed, if it were the duty of others to help those in need, we would not starve. A network of such duties could conceivably allow for us all to get along tolerably well, even where we disagree about important matters like who should play at first five-eighth for the All Blacks.

Deontological theories have a long history through thinkers like Grotius, Pufendorf, Locke and Kant to the present day where some people still refer to the notion of "things one just does not do". Part of their appeal lies in the apparent fact that some things seem "self-evident", such as to not go around killing people or hurting children.

Kant offered a slightly different suggestion for how we should act, called the categorical imperative. This was based not on what we might want or desire but a single principle that he thought should apply at any time or place. He gave several versions of it, but the two most important are:

  • "Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature."
  • "Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end."
The first tells us to examine a possible course of action and say "what would happen if everyone were to do this?" In the case of murder, then, society would probably fall apart in short order; for giving charity, it might become a better place for all. In particular, if we take to insulting Hugo and everyone else was to join in, life might become not worth the effort for him.

The second entreats us never to employ other people as mere tools for our own ends; in short, not to use them. If we make friends with a person, say, not because we value their company or conversation but solely to help our career progression in some way, then we are treating them as something we use to get somewhere and not as a person just like us, deserving of the same dignity.

The main issue to contend with when looking to criticise deontological theories is how we come by knowledge of what our duty is: how do we know we have the true or proper duty, instead of a false one? Such theories are usually in one sense or another foundational—that is, ultimately based on some supposition or other that is at the base of our structure of knowledge. In other words, when we try to justify our ideas we eventually have to stop somewhere; at this point, we have our assumptions upon which to build everything else and hence they cannot be explained further.

The first problem with such trivially obvious propositions, then, is that what is self-evident has differed through the ages and between cultures and individual people today. Who is to say which of the many duties are the right ones to adopt? At one time it was considered a duty to not condone suicide, for instance, but now it is gaining wider acceptance. Another is how to decide between duties that may conflict—if two people are deserving of our charity but we only have enough to help one, which do we choose?

An answer to the second point is often given in terms of intuition; in times of such conflict, we will somehow know or feel which is the stronger and hence act accordingly. Alternatively, or additionally, we must use our judgement of the circumstances and specific factors to help us. Whether this is a convincing reply is another matter.

Consequentialist theories

The are several ethical theories that may be broadly called consequentialist, meaning that the morality or otherwise of an action is determined by its consequences. A division is usually made according to the answer we give to the question "consequences to whom?" and runs as follows; an action is morally sound for:

  • Utilitarianism: if the consequences are positive for everyone;
  • Ethical Altruism: if the consequences are positive for others;
  • Ethical Egoism: if the consequences are positive for the individual.
Clearly the important issues here are what we mean by positive (or a similar term) and how we decide when consequences are to be so described. Part of the attraction of such theories, though, is that they appeal to experience to justify our ethical ideas, instead of something more vague like intuition or duty.

Suppose that one evening we are sat comfortably, enjoying reading a copy of How to make your snowballs hurt people, when we hear a ruckus outside; upon investigation, it turns out that someone is being beaten up by a gang of youths. We could call the police, but by the time they arrive it may be too late—what would be the right thing to do?

If we wade in to help, we may find only that another person takes a pounding; from an ethical egoist point-of-view, then, it may be best to stay out of it (unless we have studied under Seagal). On the other hand, that is not going to help the victim—and we should be concerned at the consequences for him or her if we are ethical altruists, as well as those for the offenders. Even if we get battered in short order, at least it will give the victim a break while perhaps someone else calls the police. As utilitarians, we ought instead to somehow add up all these considerations and decide what to do.

How do we decide, then? According to early formulations of utilitarianism, we take each case individually—act utilitarianism—and measure the pleasure against the pain involved in an act (hence the name); to be charitable, the understanding of these terms should be broad. Later the measure was benefit to society or some similar concept. The problem here was that taking an afternoon nap, for instance, does not contribute as much to society as a few hours of voluntary work in the local community—hence the nap is wrong. This does not seem to make much sense to the well-fed post-Christmas armchair pilot. An alternative is rule utilitarianism: this time we consider whether the implementation of an action as a rule would be beneficial to society. Killing someone, for example, would be catastrophic for society if turned into a rule.

There are several criticisms we can make of consequentialist ideas, or utilitarianism in particular. A typical example of a problematic issue is slavery: if a small proportion of the population was used to support the majority, perhaps a great benefit could accrue to society overall as a result? However, slavery still seems wrong to many people; act utilitarianism appears to fail. Even as a rule we could possibly have two separate rules for slaves and non-slaves. Another similar point concerns a situation in which the current circumstances are unfair or undesirable but no change is proposed; in that case, a bad system could perpetuate. Rule utilitarianism does not necessarily help us because there may be two or more possible rules that seem equally good; how are we to choose between them if their consequences do not differ in any significant way? Consequentialism is also said to fall victim to the naturalistic fallacy.

There are other aspects to attack but perhaps the most important and difficult to deal with is the epistemological question: how do we know what the consequences are or will be? Usually we can make an educated guess, considering as many factors as possible, but everyone is aware of guesses that missed the mark or were completely wrong—like the weather forecasts. Is a best approximation enough to allow an action or rule that may be wrong when its consequences have played out? What about those affected while this process is ongoing?

In recent times a new perspective has been added to consequentialist ideas in the form of cost-benefit analysis and consists in part in applying some economic ideas to ethical and political actions by weighing the perceived benefit of an action or policy against its expected costs. This has some obvious quantitative attraction but has drawn criticism insofar as such a method seems to ignore the kinds of decisions made by people for ethical reasons. The building of a mall, say, may be subject to such an analysis but does not appear to many people to address their valuation of the area more as open fields or with local shops. No matter how clear the benefit in such a situation may be, the people in a community may still claim that they prefer to buy their newspaper from the same store, the proprietor of which they may have known for very many years. How do we judge this on the basis of consequences?

Indeed, another sense in which consequentialism seems to just not feel right to many people is the way in which it operates: do we really judge actions by their results? Sometimes, perhaps, but we also say beforehand what we think. For example, if someone talks of the consequences of hurting a child and on that basis calls it wrong, there appears to be something strange about even considering the matter in this way; that is, it does not take into account the psychological process going on when someone says "hurting children is wrong". Consider, for instance, how we would react to someone offering the proposition "hurting children is wrong because the consequences of this act as a rule for society would be undesirable". It may be correct, but it somehow misses the point entirely.

Virtue theories

Virtue ethics dates back to Aristotle and beyond, as we saw above. Instead of defining ethics by rules that ought to govern our conduct, virtue theorists prefer to advocate the learning and development of character habits. The Greeks noted that a kind of middle way was possible; a self-respecting man, for example, could become vain if he had too high an opinion of himself, just as he could become desperate if he lacked the trait completely. The same could apply to prudence in financial matters, where too much could lead to living like a pauper in the midst of riches while too little could result in genuine poverty.

Although this seems to reflect the way we often think or talk about ethical conduct, there are a number of shortcomings. Firstly, habits of character or admirable traits do not tell us how to deal with moral dilemmas or those instances of applied ethics that come up regularly, like abortion or the death penalty. It is unclear how we are to deal with lapses in conduct; suppose a normally brave soldier is cowardly once—how should we judge this? What, also, of specific acts like the murder of a child? Should we pass over a temporary period of failure in the hope that a person's conduct will improve in the long run? Is there any sense in saying we have found the true habits of character that should be advocated, or do they differ and depend on circumstances? Lastly, what of the wide variety of cultures and the different modes of conduct they each value?

Evolutionary ethics

Some of the insights gained from evolutionary theory have led to the consideration of ethics from this perspective, with E.O. Wilson coining the term "socio-biology" for the "study of the biological basis of social behaviour". If we use our intellect to determine ethical conduct and this intellect (and its physical seat in the hypothalamus and limbic system, as Wilson notes) has evolved, then it makes sense to ask what this insight can tells us about our ideas of right and wrong.

Take, as a standard example, a society in which all the individuals are selfish and concerned only with themselves. It seems fair to say that such a society would not last long unless some kind of cooperation developed. In that case, notions like helping others, honesty and of course cooperation would be likely to be selected while the converses would not; that is, these traits would have a biological explanation.

This means that the question "why do we behave ethically" can be answered by saying that we have evolved to be that way. The other—perhaps more important—matter of what we mean by good is not addressed, though, but it may not necessarily need to be. If we ask "is it right to hurt people for no reason?", we could consider the question in evolutionary terms and reply that we have, say, evolved to in general not do so; that tells us that we are going to be inclined to think—and act—as though it is not, regardless of some ultimate answer to the question. It could be, then, that the issue is not "what is good?" but rather "why do we act as we do?"

Reflective equilibria

The late John Rawls is considered by some to be the most important political thinker of the last century, and with good reason—not least his Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. His ideas have a bearing on our studies here because the fount of all his work is the notion of justice as fairness, which he explains thus:

Quote

[F]irst, each person participating in a practice, or affected by it, has an equal right to the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all; and second, inequalities are arbitrary unless it is reasonable to expect that they will work out for everyone's advantage, and provided the positions and offices to which they attach, or from which they may be gained, are open to all.

The first point says, in part, that if anyone is going to be free, they can only be so free as everyone else may also be—fairness; the second remarks that if there are going to be inequalities then we must expect something good to come of them eventually that is of benefit to everyone—fairness, again.

How, then, are we to determine what is fair? Rawls proposed a methodology for so doing that he called the veil of ignorance, meaning the attempt to investigate a possible action as if we knew nothing of our own or others' circumstances. Take, for example, the idea that a minority of people should work as slaves for the majority; for simplicity, suppose there are three of us—living on a desert island, perhaps—and one will be the slave. Under the veil of ignorance we do not include any information we might have to hand, such as which one of us is going to be the slave; if we knew that, we could easily be swayed in our decision by reflecting on the consequences for us personally. Thus, out of the three of us, one will be a slave. This does not seem fair at all—it could be us, for no reason other than picking the short straw.

Clearly we do have personal biases and other information to help us decide such things, and to help us deal with these Rawls offered what he called the reflective equilibrium; that is:

Quote

how well the view as a whole articulates our more firm considered convictions of political justice, at all levels of generality, after due examination, once all adjustments and revisions that seem compelling have been made.

This means that we study an idea under the veil of ignorance to try to understand what the fair response should be, before opening it to further arguments and comparing it with what we already think about justice. After this process, we have reached a kind of balance or equilibrium, but we nevertheless continue to reflect on it and use whatever new information or circumstances comes along. Hence, we have a constructivist ethical approach—one that is built up and, like a house, open to adjustment while still remaining grounded in the concept of fairness.

Rawls expanded on this outline at great length but it will be useful for us to consider an example here of how we can apply this basic insight. Suppose that we look at restricting the freedom of speech: under the veil of ignorance, it could be proposed that some of us not be allowed to speak as we choose while others are, even if they use that freedom to babble about philosophy instead of Frisbee. This hardly seems fair, and we can see no reason as yet why this unfair application would result in benefit for all somewhere down the line, nor why the liberty to speak as we choose should not be extended to all.

Now we reconsider this decision in the light of other information. Should freedom of speech be unrestricted? Apparently not, given the strong arguments to the contrary that are available elsewhere—so the "level of generality" is very much an issue. What have we learned from previous times when freedom of speech was or was not restricted? And so on. We eventually arrive at a decision that represents a balancing of all available factors but which acknowledges that things may yet change and have to be looked at again.

Applied ethics

Earlier we said that applied ethics is the study of those issues we see every day with the application (hence the name) of the ideas we have looked at above. The key feature of an applied ethics problem is that it concerns something controversial and undecided; we do not, for instance, look at whether killing children is good because everyone agrees that it is not, regardless of how they come to it.

Topics to consider

By listing some of the ethical issues recently or still under debate, we can understand the importance of this area of philosophy and why all the techniques we have seen to date in our series have a bearing on our everyday lives. Consider:

  • Should we permit stem cell research?
  • Should we allow abortion (whether at all or at different times)?
  • Should we keep information confidential?
  • Should we tell the truth to worried relatives or dying patients?
  • Should parents be allowed to decide what education their children receive?
  • Should religious beliefs overrule doctors when choosing treatment?
  • Should we stop people from committing suicide if we can, or discourage it?
  • Should we allow or support assisted suicide?
  • Should we allow animal research?
  • Should we allow capital punishment?
  • Should we support marriage as an institution?
  • Should people be monogamous?
  • Should we allow gun ownership?
  • Should we act pre-emptively against potential criminals?
This is just a sample of the matters we can see in the news or hear about while queuing in the post office and wondering about the morality of bending someone's ear when they only want a stamp or two.

Philosophical techniques

We can use the advice we saw in our second and eighth essays when approaching ethical issues, as well as the understanding of terms gained throughout the series so far. In particular, if someone proposes an argument for or against some action and we find it to be flawed, we may still be able to improve it or learn something from it. We can now finish our discussion by looking at an example of a way we could approach an issue—not the only way, though.

An example

Consider the matter of interaction on the internet. Since many people have had access to the wide and diverse community provided by internet resources, we have had to adjust to a new way of dealing with others. How should we behave towards those we meet online?

There are probably as many possibilities as there are people, but we could look at some of them. For example, we could behave:

  • As we would do in person.
  • With greater care, since we cannot use body language or emphasis to clarify what we mean.
  • However we choose, thanks to the anonymity.
And so on. In these and other cases, we could ask why we ought to act in one way and not another. Instead of trying to see the issue from one perspective only, we can use those we studied above and see if we can arrive at any kind of conclusion as a result. Note that we assume some kind of idea about how to treat people in person and are asking how to extend it (or if we should) to interactions on the internet.

Take first a duty-based approach: we have a responsibility to behave in a certain way towards others, whether it be due to a religious moral code, the categorical imperative or a stiff-upper-lipped injunction as to what a gentleman should or should not do; should it be extended? Suppose we say no; in that case, an injunction to act in the specified manner no longer holds simply because of the distance between people. After all, it could be that the person at the other end of the connection is halfway around the world, but they could be in our town, or in the next room. Does our duty to them alter as they move further away? That seems like a difficult claim to justify.

Now suppose we say yes; are the duties we have magnified by the additional difficulties we face or do they remain the same? The latter appears to be a little simplistic, since we rely on many additional levels in our everyday interactions other than what we write. Indeed, we could think of it as akin to composing a letter to someone; we have to bear in mind how our words may be interpreted and be more careful than we would if speaking to them—especially if we are trying to make something clear or get across some important information (a dear John letter, perhaps).

Secondly, we could adopt a consequentialist approach: what would be the result of each possibility? In this case, it very much depends on the goal we are aiming at and which form of consequentialism we employ. If we want to use the anonymity we are afforded to be free of some of the ethical constraints we might otherwise face, we have to consider whether what follows from this would be desirable for us, for others, and for society as a whole. The same would apply to the alternatives.

A virtue perspective would follow closely the remarks we made for duty theories. If there are certain habits of character that are to be followed or encouraged, then the distance between people hardly seems like a good reason to abandon them. We do not necessarily know how to behave at particular moments, but the general advice would apply for the same reasons as before.

The other areas we studied above can also help us here; indeed, the golden rule in both its forms would seem to be excellent advice and we would do well to bear in mind that different cultures have different ideas about how we should act. As a result of these considerations, we can come to a tentative conclusion about how we ought to act based on each of the methods. All of them may be open to further criticism and may change if and when other information comes to hand. Rather than choose between normative codes, though, we can see that looking at a problem from all angles (or as many as we can manage) is a useful way to approach applied ethics.

This is a basic discussion and can be made a lot deeper with more thought and application. Already there are many such studies available (on the internet, no less) that try to understand how ethics apply to new situations like this one that arise as our world changes. The questions we ask about how to relate to one another in circumstances that are rarely—if ever—the same ensure that this aspect of philosophy will remain relevant to us all.

Dialogue the Eighth

The Scene: Trystyn and Anna are walking home, having left Steven and Jennifer. They appear to be proceeding at leisure, not taking the shortest route.

Anna: How do you think Steven is doing?

Trystyn: Not so good.

Anna: Why not? They seemed to be getting on well.

Trystyn: Perhaps some other time, but she's already involved.

Anna: Oh. (An uncomfortable pause.) Does he know?

Trystyn: I don't think so.

Anna: And you didn't tell him?

Trystyn: (Quietly...) No. (Another pause.)

Anna: Why not? (She doesn't sound very happy.)

Trystyn: I guess I didn't think of it.

Anna: Did you think he'd figure out for himself eventually?

Trystyn: I thought she'd tell him.

Anna: When? You could see he liked her. It's a bit late to leave it until he makes a move and gets shot down. You knew it wasn't possible but said nothing.

(Trystyn sighs.)

It was pretty obvious what would happen and you could have prevented it. That's wrong, whichever way you look at it.

Trystyn: What ways are there? He's not a fool; I can't hold his hand. I didn't tell him how to feel and I didn't even introduce them.

Anna: Nonsense. You had plenty of opportunities to have a quiet word.

Trystyn: I guess so.

Anna: There's no guessing about it. The consequences of allowing him to believe he had a chance were pretty clear at the outset. You wouldn't want him to do the same to you, so why do it to him? Don't you think you have some kind of duty to your friends to keep them from being upset if you can? What if everyone acted this way?

Trystyn: I had other things on my mind.

Anna: What difference does that make? Questions of how to treat people don't come along at convenient times so that you can deal with them when you have a spare moment. We have to think about these things all the time, not suspend our principles when we feel like it.

Trystyn: Does it matter what I was thinking about instead?

Anna: No, not really. If people are intending to slaughter the next village you can't sit around and say "sorry, but I'm working on a cure for cancer".

Trystyn: Maybe the cancer cure will save more lives?

Anna: Maybe it will, or maybe the killing will continue to the next village, and the next, until there are none left to die of cancer. Moral decisions are important now and every time we have to make one.

Trystyn: Surely we have to weigh up the possibilities, though?

Anna: Sometimes, but meanwhile people die. Why should we even discuss it? Killing people is just wrong and so we would have to do something.

Trystyn: It isn't necessarily; some instances are more complex and can't be captured by an appeal to what's self-evident. In any case, some things are obvious to some people that aren't to others. Different people have different ideas about what ought to be done.

Anna: I'm aware of that, thank you. I realise ethical ideas are complicated, and that many factors have to be considered. None of this changes the fact that you could have used any standard of right or wrong you liked and figured out that you should have prevented a friend being upset if you could have prevented it.

(Silence.)

Trystyn: (Looking over his shoulder...) It's too late now to do anything.

Anna: (Sternly...) No kidding.

(More silence.)

Trystyn: I'm sorry.

Anna: I'm not the one requiring an apology.

(Trystyn sighs deeply. More silence.)

Tell me what was such a big deal that you couldn't think of anything else, even your friend?

Trystyn: You. Only you.

Curtain. Fin.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:03:15 +0000 13f320e7b5ead1024ac95c3b208610db 10. Truth http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/10-truth-r26 Paul Newall (2005)

The notion of truth comes up in many contexts, not just philosophical, but very often a discussion can come to a grinding halt when it becomes apparent that differing understandings of the term are being employed and the dreaded question rears its genuinely ugly head: what is truth? Pilate found that no-one could provide him with an answer and, as we shall see, the answers we may give have consequences for both how we may tackle problems of wiseacring and what we are ultimately aiming at when wondering in the first place.

What is truth?

Before we can move on to consider the various theories of truth offered, we need first to look at the basic aspects any version relies on and some of the initial difficulties that turn up. To begin with, we have truth values: the truth or falsity (or otherwise) of something. Here we mean "value" in the same sense as in a sum of how many times we've given up on a debate as soon as truth was mentioned. A truth value could thus be "true" or "false", but other options exist in different logics (as we saw in the fourth article in this series) or the value could be "indeterminate"—like saying "don't know" in response to "true or false?", or even "can't know".

What kind of things can be true?

There are many options we could consider when asking what exactly has a truth value; for example, beliefs, statements, sentences, propositions and theories. These are all candidates but some have proven problematic; take sentences or beliefs, for instance. When we ask if a sentence or belief is true, do we mean a specific instance or a general one?

In the first case, we could have a remark like "Hugo is dull", which is most certainly a candidate for being true, but what if there is no-one around to make up such sentences? The same would go for a comment like "philosophers cannot fly"; it seems like the kind of thing we might want to say is always true, but if there are no philosophers or skeptics around to compose the sentence or utter the belief (or if no-one chooses to do so) then it cannot bear a truth value. Another problem potentially could be that there are (presumably) far more true sentences or beliefs than could ever be stated or written, leaving us falling well short.

In the general case, the concern lies in the very generality itself. If we want to say "I think Hugo is duller than a winter graveyard" then it may be true for some people when they take the place of the "I", as in "I, Count Duckworth-Smedley of Ditchwater, agree with the aforementioned sentiment", but not others—Hugo's mother, hopefully.

In order to get around these issues, some people have suggested instead that propositions are what we assign truth values to. One benefit of this is that several sentences in different languages all end up describing the same proposition, instead of being distinct statements, sentences or beliefs. The hope for propositions is that they express something outside of time and not dependent on the existence of human (or other) observers; thus, "the earth orbits the sun in just over 365 days" would be true (or later false, in the event of some cosmic occurrence) whether or not people exist to think of or write down this particular notion, whereas "honestly, Hugo really takes the cake" depends on the existence of several persons and their valuations.

Problems and paradoxes

Propositions are subject to some of the same criticisms as we saw above and some thinkers find them deeply problematic, but they are typically employed in discussions of truth and so we shall do likewise to get any further in our analysis. In order to do so, though, we need to give a little more thought to the distinction between what is or is not a proposition.

Usually we separate declarations, instructions and questions, saying that the former (declarative statements like "it was raining when Wilkinson dropped the winning goal") express propositions while the latter (imperative comments like "please land that drop goal" or interrogative remarks like "what was the weather like when Wilkinson kicked it?") do not. However, some famous examples of difficult declarative statements that may or may not do so have led to some disputes and paradoxes.

Suppose a proposition employs a term that does not refer to any extant circumstances. The oft-used example is Russell's "the present king of France is bald"; there is no king of France today, so can we still say that the proposition is true or false, or is it meaningless? We could find other similar instances, like the properties of (supposedly) mythical creatures: can the propositions "griffins have bad tempers" and "pixies are helpful" have truth values? Some thinkers argued that these do not give us propositions, while Russell thought that they did—only false ones.

Another issue studied by Russell (and others) concerned the liar paradox and similar "liar sentences" in general. If we consider the proposition "I am lying to you", we run into difficulties when we try to assign a truth value: if true, it would imply that the speaker is lying about lying and therefore telling the truth, rendering the statement false; if false, it means that he or she is in fact telling the truth, which would imply that he or she is lying to us, rendering the statement true. This is a paradox that seems to trap us every way we look at it.

Although much ink has been spilled on this issue, one way around it that we have already touched on is simply to say that the original statement was not a proposition after all. Another could be to note when paradoxes come up but still use the approach where it works for the vast majority of cases.

A third area to look at concerns ethical or aesthetic statements, such as "it is wrong to use animals in medical research" or "Beethoven's symphonies are more valuable than Elvis' work". Do these express propositions? Can we assign truth values? Some thinkers have argued in the negative, insofar as such remarks merely tell us the opinions of the person saying so. On the other hand, those who consider that ethical or aesthetic values can be determined in some way (for example, moral realists—as we saw in the sixth article and will touch on again soon) suggest to the contrary; after all, if we can decide what is right and wrong (to also be discussed in the next piece) then it will be a relatively simple matter to compose ethical propositions that are true or false.

Lastly, what of propositions concerning those events that may or may not have happened in the past or might happen in the future? We glanced at this matter in the fifth article of our series, but for now we could consider the proposition "Caesar sneezed when crossing the Rubicon", or something similar: what can we say about its truth value? It's trivially apparent that if he did sneeze then it's true, or false if he didn't; what, though, if we don't have access to the information to help us decide? Short of a time machine, it's hard to see how we could come by anything to help us.

Much the same occurs when talking about the future: take the proposition "Hugo will be more interesting tomorrow than he is today"; how can we know whether this will be the case or not? It certainly seems unlikely, but that doesn't help us assign a truth value—unless we are happy with "indeterminate" or something along those lines.

One way around this is to note the way we actually reason about future events. We might say: if it rains tomorrow, we had better do the washing today; moreover, we have reason to believe that it will rain—a weather forecast, for instance. If someone then asks "why are you doing the washing today?" we could reply with the proposition "[because] it will rain tomorrow". This seems like a valid argument (and one that we use often enough in a similar form) but the proposition may not have a determinate truth value; it seems folly, though, to discard the argument on these grounds.

Forms of truth

So far we have discussed truth values and what may be true (or false), but what do we mean by truth itself? There have been many versions of truth put forward, each subject to critique in general terms or in favour of another that purports to address these shortcomings. We cannot cover them all, but in this section we'll take some possibilities and consider their strengths and weaknesses, trying to understand why we might choose one or more of them.

The correspondence theory

Many people use a form of the correspondence theory when speaking of truth: a proposition is true if it corresponds to the facts, or reality, or how things actually are. There is a subtle difference here, though: are "facts" and "how things actually are" the same thing? If we look at how we would state that a proposition is false, we can see the distinction: in the first case, the proposition would be false if it does not correspond to any fact; in the second, it would be false if it corresponds to how things are not. In the latter, then, we have a kind of comparison to something that doesn't exist—the way things are not.

Although there is some dispute on this issue, we won't consider it in any further depth here. What, though, are facts? Looking back to our third article, we could ask what the ontological status of facts is supposed to be: take a proposition, say, like "England beat Australia in the 2003 World Cup Final"; is this a fact? If so, is it a fact consisting in a fact? If so, does it correspond to the same fact as the proposition "Australia were beaten by England..."? If so, does it correspond to the facts that "[team x] were not beaten by England", for any other team x? And so on. When we consider instead "the ways things are", we have other difficulties. If we say that a proposition corresponds to "the ways actually are", surely there is only one way, to which all propositions must correspond. This doesn't appear to say much beyond a triviality.

Another objection could be to question the nature of the correspondence relation itself, which seems mysterious. It hardly seems likely that the words in a proposition correspond to the facts, but rather the entire proposition does. In and of itself, the correspondence theory doesn't appear to say much until we expand on it and note what it means: in our example, we want to say both that the propositions means what it says and that England actually did beat Australia. Lastly, is the correspondence theory true itself and, if so, what does it correspond to?

The semantic theory

In 1944, Alfred Tarski proposed his semantic theory as a successor to the correspondence theory, expanding on it somewhat but dropping the problematic concepts of facts and correspondence. He suggested that a proposition is true if and only if a claim about the world holds. Thus, the proposition "Hugo is dull" is true if, in fact, Hugo really is dull; conversely, if Hugo is dull then the proposition "Hugo is dull" is true. More generally, we have "p is true if and only if p", where p represents some proposition. A similar rendering would apply to falsity.

This is an improvement on the correspondence theory because we can write the condition as follows:

  • The proposition ("Hugo is dull") is true (1)
  • if and only if (2)
  • Hugo is dull. (3)
In this layout, only (1) is talking about truth, while (3) is a claim (which may or may not be accurate) about the world; any reference to facts or correspondence is gone. Note that we are not saying "Hugo is dull if and only if Hugo is dull", which is trivially so (a tautology) but says nothing about truth. Tarski was concerned to separate what he called the object language (the part in quotations, describing the object of discussion) and the metalanguage (the rest of the sentence, containing the object).

The semantic theory is a good deal more complex and involved than this sketch explains, but one of the other issues considered is that of contingent and non-contingent truths: the former are those that may or may not be true, while the latter are necessarily true. Examples could be the proposition we looked at before, "Australia were beaten by England..." which may or may not have been so, contrasted with "twice two is four" which must be (leaving aside certain special number systems). Can the semantic theory account for non-contingent truths, which appear to be true by definition?

It seems that a distinction between these two may be drawn insofar as we can imagine a world in which Australia beat England (for instance, one in which Wilkinson was born in Perth), but twice two seems the kind of thing that must be four in any world—or all possible worlds, as the terminology often goes. How we go about finding out whether a proposition is true in each case differs slightly (i.e. we need not appeal to experience to justify mathematics, or so some thinkers say) but it does not follow that there is a differing form of truth at work. Moreover, the semantic theory is not telling us anything about how to go about such things, but only that the success of non-contingent truths like those of mathematics or logic may be due to their accurately describing our world.

The coherence theory

The main contender to the semantic theory of Tarski is the coherence theory. In general terms, the theory says that a proposition is true if it coheres (or agrees) with other propositions we already hold to be true.

The easiest way to appreciate what this means is to consider an example: suppose a person drops an expensive vase when browsing in an antique shop and is asked to pay for it. Instead, the person offers the explanation or proposition "I dropped it because an African elephant knocked it from my grasp, since we were arguing over who should buy it". Why might we not accept this story?

  • African elephants are not known to talk.
  • African elephants are not known to be patrons of antique shops.
  • African elephants are not found in this part of the world.
  • No elephant was known to be within a certain number of kilometres of the shop.
  • No-one else in the shop saw the elephant.
And so on. Each item in the list is some other proposition we already hold to be true, or approximately so. Given, then, that the person's claim conflicts (or fails to cohere) with the set of propositions we have previously accepted, we reject it and call it false.

Note that this is much the same way as we usually come by knowledge, especially on a day-to-day basis. Moreover, this has nothing at all to do with Ockham's Razor or the likelihood of different explanations; indeed, it seems that when people appeal to Ockham they are usually employing a coherence theory instead.

To make the coherence theory general we say that "a proposition is true if and only if it coheres with x"; the problematic aspect of the theory—and the resulting critiques—come from what to use in place of x and what we mean by "cohere". The first—and obvious—objection, though, is that a proposition may still be true (in another sense) even if it fails to cohere; perhaps the propositions we already accept are mistaken and need to be rejected in favour of the new one? This has happened very many times in the history of ideas, as we saw earlier in the series, and often we need to see common facts in a new light in order to reinterpret or discard them altogether in favour of a different approach. Insisting on a coherence theory in this way, then, would be poor methodological advice and would have halted some of the changes in our knowledge that we now tend to regard as progress.

Now we come to the question "cohere with what?" If we answer "those things we already know" then who decides what we already know? After all, there is hardly agreement about lots of things, least of all what truth and knowledge mean in the first place. What if individual people have conflicting sets of beliefs or ideas that they hold to be true and against which they compare new propositions? For instance, the claim "Australia lost because they had a bad game" might cohere with the prior proposition "Australia are too good to lose to England unless they have a bad game" which is accepted by one person (Campese, perhaps) but not another; in that case, we would have a proposition which is true for one and false for the other, which hardly makes sense if we want to maintain the notion that a proposition is either true or false.

We could say instead that we mean cohere with the majority of people's ideas, or the judgement of experts, but why should we expect either to be a good choice? Moreover, many people believe contradictory things—like some of those we saw in the aesthetics introduction—and the idea of coherence with a group of propositions that are themselves contradictory scarcely makes any more sense. We could try suggesting that we use those propositions that are consistent and believed in by the largest number of people, but those people may still be wrong. Alternatively, we could say the same thing but with the caveat that the propositions accepted are those that would be arrived at when the limit of inquiry has been reached, a position put forward by Hilary Putnam; of course, we then have to decide how we know when this limit has been reached. Another approach could be to appeal to the set of propositions that we would accept if we were omnipotent, or which would be used by an omnipotent being, but we have the same difficulty. If we do not agree that this set—even if it is unattainable—is the one we must be aiming at, then we have to reject the idea that a proposition is, in the final analysis, either true or false.

Lastly, what do we mean when we use the term "cohere" in this way? We could respond that it means "agree" or "consistent with", but what then do these mean in the context of truth? We want to avoid having to say that two propositions cohere because they may both be true together, since then we already assume the concept of truth in trying to define or explain it. In general, does the coherence theory help us to answer the question "what is truth?" or does it just give us a way to test for it?

The pragmatic theory

The principal proponents of the pragmatic theory were William James and C.S. Pierce; according to this version of truth, a proposition is true if it is useful to believe it. Another way of putting this is to say that those propositions that best justify what we do and help us to achieve what we are aiming at are true.

For example, many people wonder if there is a God—however they understand the idea—and are want to insult one another on the subject rather than discuss it. Instead of throwing toys and running around the playground calling each other names, though, we could say that it is useful for some (indeed, many) people to believe in God; perhaps they want to make sense of their lives, or justify a moral code, or understand why a loved one has been lost. In this case, the proposition "God exists" would be true. Alternatively, they might choose to explain the way they live their lives or the goals they hope to attain on the basis of God's existence, much as an artist might; then, also, it could be true that God exists.

One difficulty with this conception is that not everyone finds it useful to believe in God, for whatever reason. This would mean that some people find the notion useful while others do not, rendering the proposition both true and false—a disagreeable prospect just as before. Another criticism is to note that a belief we know to be false could still be useful: for instance, we could tell a dying patient that she is going to get better, or anything at all that might help ease her passing. This renders a false belief true, which is absurd. Lastly, and as with coherence, the pragmatic theory gets us no closer to understanding what truth is.

The deflationary theory

Another version of truth having been advanced or defended by many recent thinkers is the deflationary theory. It has many forms that differ slightly from one another, such as the disappearance, redundancy, minimalist and disquotational theories, but the basic idea is that we can deflate the notion of truth: to say that a proposition like "Australia were beaten by England" is true is just to say "Australia were beaten by England", and no more.

Some deflationists consider that our attempts to puzzle out the nature of truth are never going to get anywhere because they are based on the assumption that such a nature exists; in fact, truth is just another piece of conceptual baggage that adds nothing to our understanding. Others say that the theory is to be favoured because it shows that a great philosophical problem can have the air taken out of it, so to speak, showing that there was no puzzle after all.

It is easy to see the appeal of the deflationary theory. When we say that the proposition "twice two is four" is true, we just mean that twice two is four—there is no need to talk about truth at all, it seems. It is also useful, though, insofar as we can use it to make general a whole series of specific propositions. For example, suppose we want to say that the current England side will beat any opponent; to do this in propositional form, we would have to say something like "if England played France, England would win; and if England played Australia, they would win; [etc...]", which is much the same as "the proposition ‘England would beat France' is true, and the proposition ‘England would beat Australia' is true, and [etc...]". For some such propositions, we would be at the task for a very long time, especially if the intention was to involve an infinite number of teams (for instance, any team past or in the future).

On the contrary, the deflationary theory allows us to reduce this to the common sense (and as we would actually say it) proposition "the current England side would beat any opponent". Moreover, it tells us the total content of the proposition without having to write it all out and without needing to involve any notion of the nature of truth.

One way of formulating the deflationary theory is via a schema, so-called:

  • x is true if and only if y
where x is a name for y; that would reduce to "y is true if and only if y"—for instance, if x was "two plus two is four" and y was "twice two is four". This would imply that we could describe falsity in a similar fashion:

  • x is false if and only if x is not true; or
  • x if false if and only if not x is true.
A strong objection to the deflationary theory arises from these and concerns those problematic areas we looked at earlier, particularly the possibility of propositions that lack a truth value. Take an ethical proposition, say, that does not have a truth value; that is, it is neither true nor false. In that case, following the schema above, the proposition is neither true nor not true, which is a contradiction. To avoid this we could dispense with the deflationary version of falsity, but it hardly makes sense to accept the deflationary account of truth while so doing. There are other difficulties for the deflationary theory that are still being investigated.

Other theories

Some of the many additional theories under study include the revision theory, the identity theory and various versions of the deflationary theory. We have considered the main ones and some of the arguments for and against them, but work in this field continues to advance our understanding of what we mean by truth and what we can do with the concept, if anything.

Postmodern perspectives

Later in this series we'll look at postmodernism, so-called, but for now we may consider one of the points made on the subject of truth by thinkers associated with this area that has since become known as postmodern.

It has bothered some people that the notion of truth tends to have a kind of power to it, insofar as it could be interpreted as saying "this is true; your ideas are not". That is to say, truth is power just as much as knowledge is. This would be important politically and socially if one or more groups intended to supplant the ideas of another, or force their own on them; the sanction of truth being applied to them may make this easier, or at the least give the groups a justification for their actions that may convince them to be less than scrupulous. Alternatively, the ideas of certain experts or people of influence may have a prestige attached to them that may not be due to their merits. Thus the acceptance of what is true depends on many social and other factors; moreover, what we accept and hence becomes the consensus is what is true: if everyone believes that we are and always have been at war with Eurasia then who cares if an omnipotent being would know otherwise?

The main criticism aimed at this thinking is that it is a good deal more plausible in certain areas than others. It seems easy to agree, for instance, that a thinker with many vocal supporters who shout down or ridicule their opponents may come to enjoy a greater standing in the intellectual community than a fair appraisal of their ideas might otherwise permit, or even that areas of research were chosen at the expense of others because of factors like envy, dislike, friendship with those controlling funding, and so on, leading to a true theory being neglected for study of a false one; however, this does not imply that we cannot fly simply because jealous academics have prevented the study of superhero properties in individuals. The standing of an idea in the social sciences, say, is a lot more likely to be due to factors other than its truth than one in physics or biology.

Truth as a goal

What is the goal of our efforts to learn about our world, in whatever way we choose to do so? Are we aiming for the truth after all? Perhaps instead we could try for useful ideas, or just those that help us get by according to the notions we happen to hold at a particular time?

As we saw in our discussions of epistemology and the philosophy of science, there is by no means an agreement on this issue amongst philosophers, scientists or most other investigators. Our theories may be only approximately true, if they are not actually false anyway and shown to be so somewhere down the line. If we can in fact be content with usefulness, or theories that are adequate for the purposes we have, then should we worry about truth or finding true theories? This question is not easily answered and appears to depend on the valuations of the answerer.

Truthlikeness

Even if truth is problematic to define or explain, or even not really required, we still have the vague idea that some theories are better than others—closer to the truth, whatever it is, or less wrong. This is what we mean by truthlike, or stating the degree of truth rather than truth or falsity of a theory; in Popper's terminology, as we saw previously, it is called verisimilitude.

Consider the problem of discovering the temperature at which water boils at sea level, along with two estimates: 105 and 150 degrees. The propositions "the boiling point is 105 degrees" and "the boiling point is 150 degrees" are both false, but it seems that this doesn't say enough; in fact, 105 is a better guess, and so to be preferred (we would think). Can we find a way to analyse this in a way that makes it a meaningful tool to use in our studies?

The approaches taken towards this issue by various thinkers have generally been too complex to go into here, but we can understand how to go about attempting to answer this question. An immediate problem would be that in order to say how far away from the truth a given suggestion is, would we not first need to know the truth itself? If so, we would have no requirement for truthlikeness anymore. On the other hand, if we do not (and perhaps cannot) know the truth, then how are we to measure the difference between it and the suggestion?

Several possibilities have been considered that use mathematics to model the situation and to try to describe the notion of getting closer to the truth without necessarily knowing what it is. It was mooted in the past that a discussion of the content of two theories could help decide which was the better, but this is now recognised to be insufficient. Much work today is ongoing in the study of truthlikeness and it appears to be demonstrating the manner in which various disciplines such as mathematics, science and philosophy are interdependent.

In summary

As we said at the beginning, truth is a concept that comes up more often than we may suppose and upon which many a philosophical ship has foundered. Although, like most important ideas, it is subject to dispute and its nature is far from clear (if, indeed, it has a nature at all), it is one of those terms that we use all the time even in everyday speech and hence is sure to be the focus of much analysis for the foreseeable future. That proposition, of course, is quite true.

Dialogue the Seventh

The Scene: Now outside The Drunken Bishop, Steven has offered to walk Jennifer home. Trystyn and Anna head off in the opposite direction.

Steven: Whereabouts do you live?

Jennifer: Over by the Ferris wheel. It's a long walk.

Steven: I don't mind. (He is looking at her awkwardly on occasion, trying to avoid her noticing.)

(A short silence.)

Jennifer: How do you think those two will get on?

Steven: Pretty good, I guess; she was curious about him before they even met.

Jennifer: Oh? How's that? Would it have anything to do with you?

Steven: I don't know what you mean...

Jennifer: He's my cousin, remember.

Steven: Well, he doesn't do much of anything except reading those books.

Jennifer: ... so you decided to give him a helping hand?

Steven: I guess so, but it's up to them. She's nice girl; maybe they'll hit it off.

Jennifer: ... and fall in love, do you think?

Steven: I don't know about that—I doubt he even believes in it.

Jennifer: Love? I don't follow you.

Steven: All that bunkum about "true love", I mean.

Jennifer: You don't believe in it, then?

Steven: (Sighing...) I can't see any reason to, but all the same I hold out hope.

Jennifer: What's true love anyway?

Steven: The real deal; the genuine article. I'm sure you know.

Jennifer: Perhaps I think I do, but that usually means I don't. How do you know when it's true love, and when it's just love? What makes it the real deal, as you say?

Steven: I guess you just feel it; sometimes it's accompanied by the swelling of the score, if you're in a movie.

Jennifer: (She smiles.) Surely "feeling it" isn't much help, though; suppose the other person doesn't feel it—then you'd have one person saying "this is true love" and the other saying "I assure you it isn't", or something. Those statements are contradictory, so they can't both be true.

Steven: I guess it depends on what you mean by "true", then. (He shrugs.)

Jennifer: Probably. What do you mean?

Steven: Hmm. I'm learning not to take you philosophical types on when it comes to questions like that. What options do I have?

Jennifer: Well, you could say it means something that accords well with what you already know, or think you know. That way, when you say "it's true that I love you" you're saying that the love is consistent with what you already have—like respect, admiration, devotion; that kind of thing.

Steven: Okay. What else? (He is still stealing furtive glances.)

Jennifer: You could say that truth is an agreement with the facts, whatever they might be. This time, then, you say "it's true that I love you" because the fact is that you really do love the person; that means the statement is true by virtue of agreeing with this fact.

Steven: It seems that I'd rather just say "I love you"; what's the point of the additional worry about the truth of it if I mean it and say so?

Jennifer: That's a possibility too, and a pretty plausible one. In that case, then, truth would have nothing to do with it.

Steven: It'd just be a rhetorical flourish.

Jennifer: Exactly.

Steven: Still, it might make you feel better, or even both of you...

Jennifer: Sure: if a philosophical analysis fails, it doesn't mean some mean-spirited academics are likely to turn up at your door every time you use a word they say is meaningless or flawed in whatever way.

Steven: I guess I'd be a mute if that ever happened.

Jennifer: (Smiling...) All of us, probably.

Steven: What else?

Jennifer: You could say that truth is determined by the circumstances, or the use you want to put something to. That's often what people have in mind, I think, especially when it comes to love.

Steven: So I'd define true love for myself?

Jennifer: Right. Otherwise we have the difficulty of distinguishing between love, true love and somewhere-in-between-but-not-quite-there love. What measure or test are we going to use? Take true love, which someone presumably knows the definition of, and compare yours to it to find out if you have the real deal, a close approximation or just a poor imitation—common or garden love.

Steven: It defeats the object of it and kills the notion, I think.

Jennifer: You're right, I'd say; people aren't talking in such terms when they say "I love you" or "it's true that I love you". Probably you have an idea in mind of what you mean when you say "this is true love" and it becomes the truth by being in accordance with the use you have for it, or the circumstances in which you're going to employ it.

Steven: What if the significant other has a different idea in mind?

Jennifer: That's the problem, isn't it? Do you say something and risk the other person having a completely different idea of what you see in your relationship, or do you take a chance on it? What are you aiming at anyway? Do you have to have exactly the same idea, or is there a compromise to be made? Perhaps your version of the truth is close enough to theirs to be compatible, and that will suffice?

Steven: It's quite a step to take, though: what if you both have completely different understandings but you talk about true love as though you're speaking the same language—when, of course, you aren't?

Jennifer: That's probably part of the attraction of the very idea of truth in the first place: no grey areas, or dispute, or uncertainty—this is the truth, and none other. In the context of relationships, it's quite comforting to think that there's a match out there somewhere, that one other to complete you. It's far less romantic to suppose there are plenty of people who'll do the job.

Steven: No kidding.

(Silence.)

Jennifer: Here we are.

Steven: Oh. Well, what do you think of all this?

Jennifer: We never really talk about it.

Steven: We?

Jennifer: (She sighs.) I should've said something.

Steven: Oh. (A pause.) Nevermind. Thanks for talking to me tonight; maybe I'll see you again sometime.

Jennifer: Sure; I hope so.

Steven: Goodnight. (He turns and walks away quickly.)

Curtain. Fin.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:01:31 +0000 85422afb467e9456013a2a51d4dff702 8. Reading Philosophy http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/8-reading-philosophy-r25 Paul Newall (2005)

In this article we'll expand on the second discussion in our series on Doing Philosophy and take a look at reading. Although we can all presumably already read tolerably well, it is well-known that some philosophical writing is so dense as to seem impenetrable and requires a great deal of patience to tackle, let alone understand. With that in mind, then, we'll explore the different tools and tactics we can employ when faced with a philosophical text or argument and see how they can help us get the most out of a piece, as well as improving our own work. It goes without saying that everything below should be obvious, but it's all too easy to find frequent instances of it all being thrown out the window (and not just to test if gravity applies to rhetoric).

Reading Philosophy

Ploughing through a piece of philosophical bluster may seem little different from any other reading and often it isn't; however, we assume that the point of reading philosophy—at least in part—is to learn something, even if we only discover that your narrator is not convincing anyone. Perhaps some people hope to belittle their opponent in a debate or win an argument at all costs, but what else is gained from refuting a position that we know (or suspect) could be made stronger and altogether more interesting?

Skimming

Much like trying to beat the English at rugby in recent years or trying to win the heart of a reluctant other, charging ahead regardless of circumstances may not be the optimum strategy to employ when faced with a piece of philosophy. There are, for example, several questions we could ask of a passage before we even set to reading it:

What is the author's subject?
What are the author's conclusions?
What arguments does the author employ?
What is the purpose of the piece?

The importance of these is that they provide a context for our reading that may aid our understanding. To that end, the first thing we could try is to skim the text with these considerations in mind, looking for answers to them. The first two should be easy to find, even if the writer is so obtuse that the answers scarcely make sense. The third may be more difficult, but we can gain a fair idea of the points of attack, or where they most strongly support the conclusions. The last is somewhat more subtle: perhaps the arguments made will eventually be found to stand up to scrutiny, but if they do not have any bearing on the purpose for which the piece was written then we may not even need to spend any time on it at all.

Fallacies

Having established a framework for the text under consideration, we can now read through it in greater detail. As we pass along, we may spot remarks that seem fallacious (using the resources we discussed earlier and will cover again in more detail later); in that case, we could make a note of them to return to later. However, the existence of fallacies need not end our investigations, especially if we hope to take anything from the experience.

The Principle of Charity

In conjunction with its two companions (see below), the principle of charity is perhaps the most important tool to master in any situation where we are approaching an argument (or arguments) critically. It's a method: a way of working with philosophy that tells us to proceed in certain ways if we hope to get the most from a piece; it advises us to take the fairest, most plausible and reasonable interpretation that we can. It could apply to the questions we looked at above as follows:

1. The subject: If the topic is one we have no interest in, or which we have strong opinions on, we may be inclined to not read the author as carefully as we could, or as someone not so disposed. In such circumstances, we need to make an effort to employ the principle of charity in order that we not dismiss decent arguments; without it, an opportunity to learn something may be lost.

2. The conclusions: In a similar fashion to the subject, we may find the results of a discussion distasteful or in conflict with what we think we already know. It may be, however, that the author has a new argument to present, or else that a deeper flaw can be found that will work with other similar positions. The principle of charity should apply as before.

3. The arguments: An uncharitable approach to arguments may result in weak criticisms or—alternatively—not developing them as far as they could be.

4. The purpose: Dismissing an argument because we don't approve of what we assume it will later be used for isn't very charitable, nor much of a criticism; a sound argument doesn't become flawed by virtue of being used for nefarious ends.

The idea is not to foster some kind of emotional detachment, but rather to keep in mind that we already have ideas before we look at an argument and because of that try to minimise (not exclude) their influence. A reading that employs the principle of charity will not dismiss an author because he or she makes what seem like huge errors, or because the point argued for appears to be futile; instead, we can make early steps to avoiding the possibility of rejecting an author's work unfairly. The principle, then, is a methodological one, whereby we realise that we can only criticise an argument when we have adequately understood it.

Author's Advocate

The next step on from trying to read an author charitably is to attempt to advocate his or her ideas for ourselves, along with the converse (to be covered next). Suppose an interesting point has been raised but in an unclear way; how, then, can we clarify it? Perhaps the author's argument is flawed; is there any way we can strengthen it, or build on implications that may have missed?

The idea here is to think through and dispute the point on behalf of the author in order to provide ourselves with the strongest possible case to counter. Moreover, we can continue the process: we may try to rebut the newly constructed position and then adopt the author's perspective again, and so on. The question to ask at all times is: how would the author respond to this? In this way we arrive at the most detailed understanding of both the conclusions and arguments leading to them, which is a long way from throwing out a notion just because of a minor error.

Advocatus Diaboli

The Devil's Advocate was a device used by the Church to argue against the beatification or canonisation of saints, ensuring that every possible objection was heard before agreeing that the procedure could go ahead. When reading philosophy, we use much the same approach to provide the converse of the author's advocate. It may be, for example, that in employing the principle of charity we have been too kind to the author, or else that we agree too much with what he or she is saying to be properly critical of their arguments; if so, we play Devil's Advocate and look for any detail, however large or small, that may prove to be a flaw or error in the author's writing.

Once again, our aim is to end up with the situation we may learn the most from. We can use the two advocacy methods to do this: first, by asking "how can we make this argument better?"; second, by responding with "how can we critique it?"; third, by wondering "how can we reply and salvage the argument?"; and so on. In this way we improve both the author's ideas and our own counterarguments at each turn and give ourselves the opportunity to understand how convincing the former are by viewing them in their best light.

Examples

To understand how these remarks apply to reading and doing philosophy, we'll now look at two pieces and try to apply what we've learned and see what difference it makes. In the first we'll break everything down and over-emphasise the process, while in the second we'll try to approach the text as we would normally.

1. Mill's arguments for proliferation

Consider the following excerpt from Mill's On Liberty:

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First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common.

This is only the first paragraph of an extended section, but the first thing we need to do is skim the piece, looking for answers to our four questions. Thus:

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... the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common.

Looking at the sections in bold, then, we have:

What is the author's subject? Mill seems to be discussing the freedom of expression and the possibility of silencing it.

What are the author's conclusions? Mill appears to be asserting strongly that any silencing of opinion is a bad idea and to be opposed.

What arguments does the author employ? Mill is offering here some of the points he will later expand on: if we try to stop a viewpoint from being heard, it may turn out to be true; people are not certain to be right and so may well be wrong; being sure about something as far as we are concerned is not the same as being absolutely sure of it; and so on.

What is the purpose of the piece? It seems Mill is intending to make some political points and wants to show, in particular, the folly of stopping people from expressing an opinion.[/list]These give us a context for the rest of the piece, and for studying the arguments therein. Now we can try to read through this section again, continuing to the following passages; starting with the one we already have, we can also employ the methods we looked at above.

One of the first things to consider is our initial attitude to the subject matter at hand; do we have prior opinions on the suppression of ideas? Your humble narrator does, and is inclined to be overly charitable to Mill. If we take one paragraph at a time, we can see how each of our methods can be applied.

The first point, then, is that any opinion we decide to silence may in fact be true. To put this point into a more recent focus, we might want to prevent creationism being taught alongside evolution in schools, but we should note—on this argument—that the former may be true; if so, it would appear to be a bad idea to exclude it. Playing devil's advocate, though, we all know—don't we?—that creationism has been shown to be a hopeless notion, while evolutionary theory is one of the most successful we have, after the quantum theory; it would be folly, then, to suppose that creationism has anything to offer.

In the next line, Mill responds to just such a point: those people who have decided that creationism is untenable could still be wrong, and even if they aren't they still have no right to decide the matter for everyone: why shouldn't I, for instance, have my children taught creationism if that's what I want? To oppose him again, the question could instead be to ask what right I have to insist on my children being taught ridiculous ideas? Shouldn't I prefer that they be taught the best ideas we have available, and if I want to keep them ignorant then perhaps the education of my children shouldn't be my business? Have i any right to insist that my idiocy in all matters be preserved for future generations?

Mill suggests we are conflating (or confusing) two different versions of certainty here: the fact that all the work done to date suggests one theory over another does not imply an absolute judgement that the one is better than the other, or will always be. If we prevent creationism from being heard in schools, we are assuming that our own certainty is absolute certainty. To counter him, though, we could note that it must always be borne in mind that children have to be educated now, doing the best we can for them; it may be that what we teach them turns out to be wrong, while the excluded topics or theories are later shown to have been right after all, but we don't have time to wait around for absolute certainty—we have to teach them today what we think are the best ideas.

How would Mill respond to this criticism? Perhaps he would say that the important point he is making here is only that we should not assume our ideas to be infallible; of course we have to teach something, but why not try teaching why we judge creationism to be not worth our while, and the contrary for evolution? In this way, we would be showing children how to learn for themselves, rather than instructing them in what they should learn as facts and what they shouldn't.

Acting again as devil's advocate, we could say that learning facts may not be the only thing to education but it's still important, and that some facts are so far beyond doubt—as far as we can tell—that they ought to be taught as such. On the other hand, we could say that children may benefit from the alternative approach, but they would have to be old enough first to cope with it; in the meantime, they need to be taught the best information we have to hand, even if it we acknowledge that it could be flawed.

Mill could say that the first point is just an opinion, while the second is not obvious and relies on information we don't have to hand here. We could look at what teachers' experience tells us about the prospects for this idea, or else investigate it further.

Let's now move on to the next paragraph, which is a lot longer and will be easier if we split it up:

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Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgment, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable. [...]

What point is Mill making here in this lengthy sentence? It seems he is noting that while most people admit that in theory an opinion may be wrong—even one of their own—they in practice rarely allow for the possibility. Excluding your narrator, is that a fair characterisation? From the devil's advocate perspective, it seems uncharitable; perhaps we don't spend all our time bearing in mind that our opinions could be mistaken, but we still take precautions to avoid it. Moreover, who is to say when and how often we have such thoughts in mind?

How could Mill answer? He could say that it isn't obvious that people pay much attention to this problem, but it isn't any more obvious that they don't—we're at something of an impasse and comments here seem to be largely rhetoric. On the other hand, he could have been speaking generally, but that carries little weight in a philosophical argument. It seems hard to do anything more with this passage.

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Absolute princes, or others who are accustomed to unlimited deference, usually feel this complete confidence in their own opinions on nearly all subjects. People more happily situated, who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and are not wholly unused to be set right when they are wrong, place the same unbounded reliance only on such of their opinions as are shared by all who surround them, or to whom they habitually defer: for in proportion to a man's want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibility of "the world" in general. And the world, to each individual, means the part of it with which he comes in contact; his party, his sect, his church, his class of society: the man may be called, by comparison, almost liberal and large-minded to whom it means anything so comprehensive as his own country or his own age. [...]

Here Mill declares first that those who rarely find their opinions challenged are unlikely to worry about the possibility of their being wrong. Is that a charitable reading of him? He does temper his statement by saying "usually", but it seems to be an extension of his previous comments. If we oppose him again, we could say that many examples speak to the contrary: there were and are mathematicians, say, whose work can only be understood by a few other people in the world, meaning that contrary opinion would be hard to come by; nevertheless, they still have their doubts about their ideas. The same applied, for example, to Aurelius: he was a very powerful man, but he still spent the better part of his time musing on matters, questioning himself and his understanding of the world. What of those who are at the very top of their chosen field, to whom others defer? It hardly follows that they are any less concerned at their fallibility than the rest of us.

Can we advocate Mill's position against these criticisms? We could clarify this argument and make it more plausible by saying that people whose opinions are not tested regularly are less likely to consider them fallible than the converse; that, it seems, is the sense of his following sentences. This appears stronger, but we could still raise the same objection that it doesn't necessarily follow, particularly for examples we could find. A way around this could be to add the remark ceteris paribus—all other things being equal (we add it in Latin here because that is how we sometimes find it in texts): thus, someone whose opinions are not tested regularly is, all other things being equal, less likely to question them than if they were. This is now a general argument, but apparently a good one; although particular counter-examples exist, it does suggest that subjecting our ideas to frequent criticism is a way to avoid stagnation in our thinking.

We can now use the more charitable interpretation so developed as we proceed. The other argument Mill makes in this section is—in the terms we have established above—that we are less likely, other things being equal, to question those ideas supported by the vast majority of those in similar circumstances to us—whether it be our political party, class, church, workmates, and so on—than those that are not. To support Mill further, we could say further that this seems to be one of the reasons that communities form in the first place: shared ideas are of course less likely to be subject to challenge than new or unfamiliar ones. However, this is no reason to suppose them less fallible, so we should be on our guard the more against those commonalities that are rarely—or unwillingly—called into question.

Since it is a general point, as before, it is not as easy to find reasons to oppose Mill here. We could counter that he assumes the truth of an opinion more important than the society that excludes it: why should we adapt our needs to the truth, rather than the other way around? This is a deep question, though, that is better left to another time.

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Nor is his faith in this collective authority at all shaken by his being aware that other ages, countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have thought, and even now think, the exact reverse. He devolves upon his own world the responsibility of being in the right against the dissentient worlds of other people; and it never troubles him that mere accident has decided which of these numerous worlds is the object of his reliance, and that the same causes which make him a Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin. Yet it is as evident in itself, as any amount of argument can make it, that ages are no more infallible than individuals; every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd; and it is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present.

In this section, Mill is making two very important arguments that have applications elsewhere. The first is that what we believe—and how we came to believe it—is often influenced by the circumstances of our upbringing and the environment it occurred in. It does not mean that the truth is decided by such things (although that is a subject of much discussion in philosophy today), but rather that some of the ideas we hold to be self-evident are not at all obvious to those in different cultures, and vice versa. The second is that most of the beliefs held in the past have turned out to be mistaken, so it could be that those we hold today may go the same way.

Let's try to take the most charitable readings of these points and render them in their strongest form. For the first, it would be a weak criticism to say that just because other people believe other things, it doesn't necessarily mean our beliefs are wrong; that is one way of understanding Mill, but we can do better. We could also note that he is unfair with his remark "it never occurs…", but - again—we want to avoid dismissing him too quickly. Suppose, then, that we read the argument as saying that the fact that different cultures believe different things should make us more cautious in accepting our own as the truth of the matter; not only does this provide us with something to consider (i.e. not everyone can be right), but it also offers advice (i.e. we should remember that other factors influence what we believe, not just whether they're true or not).

How can we criticise Mill here, having taken a more charitable version of his comments? He doesn't insist that the existence of contrary views renders ours more or less likely to be wrong, or that we must be cautious, but only that the multiplicity of ideas should give us pause. We could say that this is too general to be of any use, but is it? By acting as author's advocate, we have improved the passage considerably and made it a good deal more interesting.

For the second point, we could note that this argument is inductive: many ideas have been wrong in the past; therefore, most (if not all) of ours today will probably go the way of the dinosaurs also. Given that inductive arguments are problematic (as we've already seen earlier in the series), we could call this unimpressive and leave the matter here; that would violate our principles, though, so let's try to understand it in another way. We could say, for example, that the fact of most other notions having been replaced suggests the possibility that many current ones will have to be also; this, again, would be to provide methodological advice: be careful not to assume we've finally got to the truth of the matter, since we could be wrong like everyone else was. We could also say that the historical failings would lead us to believe that today's ideas are less likely to be true than if we had a better record in the past.

The second rendering is open to severe criticism because probabilistic moves in epistemology have been fraught with (philosophical) danger, and it would need a lot more argument to make this convincing—argument that Mill doesn't provide. It could be a topic for further discussion, but we'll concentrate on what we have in the text here. Instead, we could take the first version and note that it says something similar to the other point; combining them, we get more succinct and stronger advice: different people in different cultures have believed different things, both now and throughout history, so we should perhaps be more cautious in assuming the accuracy of our own ideas today.

Mill himself considers some possible counter-arguments in the next paragraph:

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The objection likely to be made to this argument, would probably take some such form as the following. There is no greater assumption of infallibility in forbidding the propagation of error, than in any other thing which is done by public authority on its own judgment and responsibility. Judgment is given to men that they may use it. Because it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that they ought not to use it at all? To prohibit what they think pernicious, is not claiming exemption from error, but fulfilling the duty incumbent on them, although fallible, of acting on their conscientious conviction. If we were never to act on our opinions, because those opinions may be wrong, we should leave all our interests uncared for, and all our duties unperformed. An objection which applies to all conduct, can be no valid objection to any conduct in particular. It is the duty of governments, and of individuals, to form the truest opinions they can; to form them carefully, and never impose them upon others unless they are quite sure of being right. But when they are sure (such reasoners may say), it is not conscientiousness but cowardice to shrink from acting on their opinions, and allow doctrines which they honestly think dangerous to the welfare of mankind, either in this life or in another, to be scattered abroad without restraint, because other people, in less enlightened times, have persecuted opinions now believed to be true. Let us take care, it may be said, not to make the same mistake: but governments and nations have made mistakes in other things, which are not denied to be fit subjects for the exercise of authority: they have laid on bad taxes, made unjust wars. Ought we therefore to lay on no taxes, and, under whatever provocation, make no wars? Men, and governments, must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life. We may, and must, assume our opinion to be true for the guidance of our own conduct: and it is assuming no more when we forbid bad men to pervert society by the propagation of opinions which we regard as false and pernicious.

We note here that Mill is not satisfied with providing only his own thoughts; he adds a lengthy list of remarks that could be made against him, playing devil's advocate for himself. Some of these we have covered, and others not, but we could easily draw a list from the passage:

1. Public authorities are no more or less likely to be wrong when disallowing bad ideas than in any other decision.

2. We have to act now - not when all argument has ceased—so, fallible or not, we have to do the best we can with the information we have.

3. Stopping, say, creationism from being taught is not assuming that we know what is true and what isn't; rather, it's doing what we are duty-bound to do—trying to do the best for our children, even though we may be completely wrong.

4. If we never act until we are absolutely sure, we would never act at all.

5. Since we are never going to be certain of our ideas, we must do the best we can—even though our best may have failed in the past and may yet fail again.[/list]We could extend the list, or else come up with further points of our own, but Mill has done just what we explained at the start of this article: put forward his own ideas, then criticise them. He then attempts to answer these, and so make his arguments the stronger for having withstood the best objections he could find:

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I answer, that it is assuming very much more. There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.

Since we cannot study all of Mill's subsequent discussion, this answer may not read as convincingly as it could; nevertheless, it's a very interesting remark indeed: disallowing any idea prevents it from subsequently showing its worth, whereas supposing another to be true because all objections to date have failed is a working hypothesis—not the end of the matter. To use creationism again to put this into context, there's a significant difference between the quite reasonable assumption that creationism is false because it's failed to convince us to date, having had many opportunities to explain why it's superior to evolution as an explanation, and preventing it altogether from having the opportunity to do any better. This doesn't only apply to education: if people vocally insist that only imbeciles could possibly believe in creationism these days, the prophecy is likely to be self-fulfilling (and include your narrator). In Mill's conception, we can of course teach evolution; what we cannot do is bar creationism from being taught or studied, because then it has no opportunity to develop.

Acting as devil's advocate, we could say that Mill's advice is interesting but not convincing: just how long are we supposed to give ideas that fail on every occasion they're tried? We only have so much time and so many resources to devote to education, investigation and the like, so why waste any energy on ventures like creationism? Isn't there a practical limit here to how much failure we're prepared to put up with? Isn't Mill also advocating a freedom from intervention that is itself open to critique?

How could Mill reply? He does so in the succeeding sections, which we'll leave to further study for those interested (the whole piece can be found here), but one way pursued by later thinkers was to point to other ideas that took a very long time to develop—recall our example in a previous article of atomism, which needed around 2000 years. One of the reasons why Mill's On Liberty has been referred to as "immortal" by some thinkers is that it leads to so many other questions like this. Your own study may turn up other avenues, or else be critical of this preliminary one.

2. Hobbes' ideas on our natural condition

As a second example, let's consider a few paragraphs from chapter thirteen of Hobbes' Leviathan, found here, in which he discusses "the Natural Condition of Mankind as Concerning Their Felicity and Misery". This time we'll use less detail but still try to draw out the salient points using the methods we used before:

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Hereby it is manifest that, during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man. For ‘war' consisteth not in battle only or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known, and therefore the notion of ‘time' is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain but in an inclination thereto of many days together, so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is 'peace.'

Although we join the chapter mid-way through, this passage sets the scene. Hobbes is discussing what follows from living without authority to enforce laws—what would life be like without laws and rules? He concludes that we would be at war with one another, and offers the argument that in the absence of political power of some kind we live with the possibility of conflict hanging over us. His wider purpose in writing appears to be political: if the consequences of life without government can be shown to be undesirable, it would seem to follow that some form will be necessary—and that Hobbes has an idea or two about it. This is our context.

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Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time or war where every man is enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

What points are being made here? Firstly, Hobbes says that if we live without any security other than what we get from our own strength—or lack thereof—it is the same as being at literal war with each other. Is that a fair interpretation? Hobbes is apparently quite explicit: "the same is consequent", he says. Can we oppose him? On the face of it, it doesn't follow at all that just because we don't have an over-arching political power to govern our interactions with each other, we are all at war. Plenty of people get by without the saving grace of security from afar—what about people in an actual war-zone, for example, who might be beyond the reach of any enforcement of laws but who still get along without communities or relationships disintegrating? Consider also two people marooned on a desert island—must they be at war with each other? They could be, but it hardly seems likely.

How could Hobbes respond? He could say that he didn't intend his comments to be taken literally; rather than implying that everyone would be at each other's throats, he meant that they have no reason not to go back on any agreement they could make, save for the strength of the other party—that without a political power to enforce laws, there would be no reason why we shouldn't obey them one moment and not the next. We could counter again that even with laws, we have no-one standing by at every instant to ensure we follow them; they act as a deterrent, not a guarantee. How could Hobbes reply to this?

Hobbes makes another point here: he says that in the unfortunate circumstances he describes, there would be no efforts made to improve the conditions of life because the outcome would be uncertain, and that as a result there would be no arts, crafts, sciences and so on. Are we being charitable in this rendering? He is again quite emphatic—no knowledge, no arts. Let us try instead to critique him, then, and thus to improve his position as a result.

Does it follow that the lack of certainty in an endeavour implies that no-one would try it? The argument looks like this:

P1. There is no certainty in doing x;
P2. People only act when certain of the results;
P3: Only government can secure the results of our endeavours;
C: Therefore, no-one will act (in the ways he describes) without government to secure their efforts.

It seems that all the premises here are open to severe doubt. Perhaps instead we could back off slightly and recast his intentions as to note that people might be less likely to invest their time in such endeavours if they have no guarantee of their lives other than what their strength provides? Does this help? It appears better than before, but we could find counter-examples again: didn't Wittgenstein write philosophy while huddled in the trenches of the Great War, when he could've been killed at any moment? Don't marooned people build rafts to escape from their island without any guarantee of their venture's success? How can we help Hobbes now?

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It may seem strange to some man that has not well weighed these things that Nature should thus dissociate and render men apt to invade and destroy one another; and he may therefore, not trusting to this inference made from the passions, desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by experience. Let him therefore consider with himself, when taking a journey, he arms himself and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to sleep, he locks his doors; when even in his house, he locks his chests; and this when he knows there be laws and public officers armed to revenge all injuries shall be done him; what opinion he has of his fellow-subjects when he rides armed; of his fellow-citizens, when he locks his doors; and of his children and servants, when he locks his chests. Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions as I do by my words? But neither of us accuse man's nature in it. The desires and other passions of man are in themselves no sin. No more are the actions that proceed from those passions, till they know a law that forbids them; which, till laws be made, they cannot know, nor can any law be made till they have agreed upon the person that shall make it.

In this passage, Hobbes offers an instance that he intends as justifying his point by example. Doesn't the fact that we lock our doors, or arm ourselves (in Hobbes' time, or in some countries today), or travel in groups rather than alone, imply that we are suspicious of our fellows? Suppose further that it does: can we then say that no-one will be inclined to call an action wrong until a law has been made to declare it?

We could argue against Hobbes here by counter-example: many communities still exist that do not lock their doors—especially in his time and particularly in the countryside. Alternatively, we could say that we lock our doors because there is a minority of people who will steal our belongings if given the chance—not because we distrust everyone. In this case, as in others, general behaviour could be the result of specific problems, not widespread or universal fear and suspicion.

How can we help Hobbes now?

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It may peradventure be thought there was never such a time nor condition of war as this; and I believe it was never generally so over all the world, but there are many places where they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small families the concord whereof dependeth on natural lust, have no government at all, and live at this day in that brutish manner as I said before. Howsoever, it may be perceived what manner of life there would be where there were no common power to fear, by the manner of life which men that have formerly lived under a peaceful government use to degenerate into, in a civil war.

Here Hobbes offers a criticism of his own and then answers it: he notes that it could be objected that the situation he envisages has never in fact existed; in response, he says that although he is willing to concede that it isn't the case everywhere, there are still many examples to refer to—like the "savage" peoples of America. This is an empirical argument: is his characterization accurate? If not, his claim is unsupported. To advocate for Hobbes here, then, we would need to check; the result would give us the information to argue for or against him.

A second empirical point is made by Hobbes: we can see what would happen to people who survive under no laws by looking at the history of what happened to those who lived through civil wars. Hobbes is suggesting that an investigation would show that society degenerated without the influence of government, but if we found the contrary then we would be able to play devil's advocate and insist that the claim be restated in a more plausible way.

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But, though there had never been any time wherein particular men were in a condition of war one against another, yet in all times kings and persons of sovereign authority, because of their independency, are in continual jealousies and in the state and posture of gladiators, having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another, that is, their forts, garrisons, and guns, upon the frontiers of their kingdoms, and continual spies upon their neighbours: which is a posture of war. But because they uphold thereby the industry of their subjects, there does not follow from it that misery which accompanies the liberty of particular men.

Now Hobbes mentions that independent kingdoms and principalities (or other arrangements nowadays) may maintain the lives of their citizens, but they nevertheless are perpetually at risk of war. Is this a fair reading? Apparently so, since he actually employs a great deal more rhetoric. Can we oppose it? We could ask why this has to be the case at all: why may not agreements between nations be made? Why should the potential for war be the default, when it could just as easily be that peace reigns unless something happens to end it? This is a general point to be made against Hobbes throughout: could he not have argued instead that without the security of government people are inclined to live together in peace, with the ambitions of governments being largely responsible for the conflict he saw everywhere? Perhaps this idea is flawed, but in order to make his case stronger Hobbes could have been a better devil's advocate himself and offered it as best he could, thereby demonstrating its flaws and why his own understanding is to be preferred. This, then, would be a way for us to tackle the issue and employ our methods still further.

Hobbes work was very influential in his time and after, but already in this short extract we can see points of attack in his arguments that were seized upon by others. It shows us that time spent on criticising and hence adapting our own ideas is perhaps as important as working on our initial justifications.

In summary

The point of these exercises is not to argue for or against any particular opinion, but only to demonstrate how we can approach philosophical pieces and some methods for getting the most out of them. Any of the remarks made or criticisms raised could be the starting place for a more detailed discussion or attempt to refute an idea, but that is for another article at another time.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:59:37 +0000 69421f032498c97020180038fddb8e24 7. Aesthetics http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/7-aesthetics-r24 Paul Newall (2004)

In this article we'll look at Aesthetics, starting with what it is and why it should concern us before moving on to some historical ideas put forward and the notions that are discussed today. The subject is a very broad one and so we won't be able to cover everything, but hopefully we'll get an indication of why it still fascinates people (and not just philosophers).

What is Aesthetics?

Aesthetics is often understood as either the theory of beauty or the philosophy of art, or more generally as both. For a long time the latter was concerned with definition, asking and trying to answer the question "what is art?" The former addresses similar problems, wondering what we mean by beauty (and other similar or contrasting terms that we use, like sublime, ugly and so on), as well as how we would justify an assertion like "this painting is simply magnificent" or "Hugo's writing is pretty awful".

It seems more obvious in the case of aesthetics why we would bother with a philosophical investigation than many other subjects. Consider the frequent discussions most people find themselves in from time to time when an aesthetic concept is being used or argued: "the Dutch play the most beautiful soccer", "Beethoven's music is more important than a one-hit wonder", "modern architecture is boring", "Juliette Binoche is the best actress alive", and so on.

An example that comes up often these days is the art exhibition with, say, a fifteen-foot canvas painted in some shade of red before which two patrons of the gallery are arguing. The first might say "'tis truly a marvellous work, dear fellow. The deepness of the colour symbolises both man's passions and his madness, co-joined for the most fleeting of moments with his struggle to grasp a rational temperament and bring order to the chaos that seizes him at every turn. The brush strokes, alternately violent and subdued, remind us that the vicissitudes of childhood and the agony of death are tempered by the calm recognition of our fate that we may attend to in our middle years. How wonderful!" In reply, the second might remark, "um... it's just a plain red canvas. It symbolises only two things: firstly, that you shouldn't sit down or you'll have to stop talking out of your ass; and secondly, that I'm even more of a chimp for paying to see it."

The point, of course, is that both judgements involve, implicitly or explicitly, a definition of art or a theory of beauty. Even the familiar refrain "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is just more of the same; after all, why should it be? It isn't obvious that we shouldn't be able to come up with some kind of conception that allows us to say "this is beautiful but that isn't", but neither is it immediate that the task will be an easy one because we see disagreements like that above every day.

Standing in the Louvre it can appear that there's something very different going on to much of so-called modern art, but plenty of critics wax lyrical about works that the guys at the pub assert could be bettered by their three-year-olds in a finger-painting class, with some on the carpet for good measure. Listening to Bach it can feel as though losing this music would be that much more of a tragedy than the premature death of yet another dance-floor classic. Gazing up at a Dutch townhouse can strike us as a world away from a drab and dreary tower block, while the concretisation of open spaces can seem like a crime—even without the environmental and ethical considerations. However, what reasons do we have for preferring the one to the other, or deciding what goes in the gallery?

We see, then, that we can't get away from aesthetic judgements of one kind or another. Many thinkers in the past tried to understand art, beauty and what they consist in, some studies saying that aesthetics proper started in 1712 with Addison's series in the early Spectator issues. Long before then, however, the Egyptians and Greeks were investigating such things. Let's look at some of the opinions offered and the history of the subject.

What is art?

Early history—the separation of art

The term "art" comes from the Latin ars, this itself deriving from the Greek techne, meaning skill. The idea was that all pursuits or endeavours requiring a degree of skill—whether it be leading an army, sculpting a statue, building a house or using rhetoric to win an argument—was an art. Any such skill involved an understanding of rules, so there could be no art without an appreciation of those underlying the discipline. Neither the ancient Greeks nor the later Scholastics considered poetry an art, for instance, because it relied on inspiration (to the former, usually from the Muses) and hence was the very opposite of art.

Thus it was that both the employment of skill and the mastery of the associated rules gave a much wider definition of art than we use today. A distinction was made between those arts that involved only mental effort (the liberal arts) and those needing physical too (the vulgar—meaning "common"—arts). In the Middle Ages, the former were further divided to include grammar, rhetoric and logic, known as the trivium ("three roads"), and arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music, called the quadrivium ("four roads"). Reading this article, for example, would make it an attempt at a vulgar art form because effort is required both to make sense of the writing and stay awake while so doing.

In this list, only music is what we would today consider an art. In those days, though, music was the study of harmony, not how we might think of it. Poetry remained separate from the arts until 1549, when the first Italian translation of Aristotle's Poetics was completed by Segni and people became persuaded by the arguments therein and the explanations of the rules of tragedies. During the Renaissance another development took place: what we now know as the fine arts (painting, sculpture, architecture) became distinguished due in large part to social circumstances. Beauty—whatever it is we mean by that term—had become valued more highly and the proponents of these skills thought of themselves as higher than mere craftsmen. Painting originally, and later sculpture, became a valuable commodity and at least as good an investment as other ventures, raising the profiles of their creators.

Dividing the fine arts from science as it came to be was a more tricky matter. Those involved in the former chose to consider themselves scholars rather than artisans because of the social consequences and used the old ideas of what constituted art to study laws and rules. It was then difficult to say that they weren't engaged in science as it was understood then; in painting, for example, men like della Francesca, Pacioli, Piero, Leonardo (and also Poussin and Dürer, along with others) were either writing on perspective and proportion or using their work to study them. Only late in the Renaissance did a distinction arise, thanks to the assertion that whatever art could achieve, it couldn't do the same as science. This point was made particularly forcefully by the master Galileo, again combining philosophy with science.

Defining art

If we look at dictionary definitions we typically find that the concept of art is either undefined or uses the older versions that have been given up today because they were so unsatisfactory. However, it's interesting to look at the evolution of meaning over the years and note that, once again, philosophical analysis has played a part in the progression of our understanding.

Back in Greek times there was already a distinction made between original and imitative art but it was lost over the succeeding centuries. For some twenty-one hundred years until the fifteen hundreds, the notion we considered before was in general use; that is, producing something by means of accepted rules. The next two and a half centuries saw an evolving of new ideas as the separation of science and crafts from art was mooted and then asserted, until around 1747 when Charles Batteux coined the term "fine arts" and listed them as sculpture, painting, music, dance and poetry. With the addition of a further two—architecture and eloquence—this list of seven became dominant, as did Batteux's conception of these fine arts having in common the imitation of nature. From approximately this time, art was understood as the production of beauty; however, this definition was problematic, so we'll look briefly at why it was given up.

What is beauty?

It may seem perfectly obvious what we mean by the term beauty, but even in everyday conversation it's employed in many different senses. Compare, for example, the following statements:

  • That was a beautiful sunrise.
  • That was a beautiful poem.
  • He/She is a beautiful man/woman.
  • That was a beautiful goal.
  • That was a beautiful moment.
  • It's a beautiful day when Hugo doesn't post.
Although there's a similarity to each, we don't mean quite the same thing in our use of the word. Can we clarify it in such a way as to have each make sense? Perhaps: according to popular definitions, beauty is that which is pleasing to the senses; that would certainly explain each of the options above. Unfortunately, though, it isn't much help to our efforts to define art; it then becomes "the production of things pleasing to the senses", but that puts us back where we started: Beethoven is pleasing to some, but some people take pleasure in the karaoke warbling of rugby players, so how can we call his work art and not the post-match celebrations also?

Another aspect to this question concerns the division of the crafts from the arts. On the face of it, it seems that a finely balanced sword could easily be considered a masterpiece, or a well-prepared meal, or some exquisite brickwork, or a patchwork quilt put together over generations, and so on. What about carpentry resulting in a simple rocking chair that sends the weary incumbent to sleep as surely as Holblingian prose? Why shouldn't a thatcher call his efforts a work of art?

A more sophisticated notion of beauty is Cardano's suggestion that it's harmony, a kind of elegance, simplicity and equilibrium of whatever medium is being employed. However, this restrictive sense doesn't seem to capture Baroque or Gothic art, or later on—say—Picasso. As a result, it was rejected too and beauty remained a troublesome aspect of the philosophy of art.

The failure of definitions

Both the older classification of art as the production of beauty and the separation of the fine arts from the crafts and sciences began to come unstuck with the advancing years. The advent of photography and later cinematography, along with other areas like landscape gardening, were outside the scope of the older fine arts and often did not produce beauty in the same sense; can a photograph create beauty, or is it already there and the photographer merely records it? However, it seemed ridiculous to exclude these from any definition of art and hence the understanding of the term had to evolve again. The possibilities put forward included the following:

  • Art imitates or reproduces nature: Leonardo considered that the best painting was that which "is in greatest accordance with what it represents", but as we alluded to above, imitation is victim of much the same difficulties as beauty. How do we judge the success of an imitation, in any case? What of music, or painting in more abstract forms?
  • Formalism: According to this idea, art is the creation of form; that is, shaping or constructing things. It goes back (as do most ideas) to Aristotle but the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a lot of work from theorists in rigorously applying it, Zamoyski declaring that "art is all that which has arisen out of a need for shape". The problem here is that the definition is—as the term suggests—too formal, and intentionally so: the formalists wanted to disallow certain areas of art that they considered should not be. Also, we can quite easily say that the sciences and crafts are creative and there are many people who consider their products beautiful, especially in the former case.
  • Art is expression: This is Croce's definition and is one of the conceptions that tries to take account of the intentions of the artist; the painter, for example, has a purpose behind his work that goes beyond merely filling a space on a wall, whereas the armourer only plans to make a sword. Even if the latter is fair and accurate, though, we can still find a sword beautiful or call it a work of art. By expression, then, we refer to the artist's intention to show us some feeling, thought or idea through a medium. This, unfortunately, doesn't account for constructivism in art (that is, combining art, science and technology in an experimental way), or the way a photograph or painting, for instance, can evoke different reactions in different people according to their own ideas and not just (or at all) those of the artist.
  • Art is that which produces a certain effect: Instead of looking at what the artist had in mind, we could look at the result for those experiencing a piece. What effect, though? We could say that art produces a kind of exhilaration, or shock, or prompts reflection, but—again—the same opera, say, can prompt myriad responses, from tears to blank faces to remarks like "I hope the fat lady sings pretty damned soon". What is the "correct" effect? It's hard to see how the question can be answered in a satisfactory way.
We see, then, that the situation with defining art is somewhat analogous to that of defining science or scientific method as we saw in the last article. A number of suggestions have been made and each of them seems to have something to it, but they all have their difficulties too and don't quite capture what actually goes on. This led some thinkers to take the view that the task was impossible in the first place, with Weitz asserting in no uncertain terms that "it is impossible to propose any necessary and sufficient condition of art; therefore, any theory of art is a logical impossibility, and not merely something difficult to achieve in practice".

Defining art again

It's tempting to fall victim to this idea but it smacks of something that the philosopher Illka Niiniluoto calls the "all-or-nothing" fallacy. Perhaps we're just setting the bar too high, asking for something that will provide us with absolute certainty when we really need more complex schemes to deal with art, science and life in general? To go back again to our analogy with science, perhaps we can instead use a list? That is, something like "art is expression, or something that makes you feel awed, or sad, or inspired, or it's giving form to an idea you have, or trying to capture nature..." and so on. This seems a little rambling but that's because we have to take into account so many different factors to get at what we mean by art, and because concentrating on only one of them to the exclusion of others has failed. The Polish thinker Tatarkiewicz did just this when he gave this definition:

Quote

Art is a conscious human activity of either reproducing things, or constructing forms, or expressing experience, if the product of this reproduction, construction, or expression is capable of evoking delight or emotion or shock.


Here we see again the evolution and increasing sophistication of philosophical thought and still today efforts continue on this important question. Tatarkiewicz was subject to critique, too, with the Institutional Theory of Dickie coming to the fore (art is defined more by the conferral of status as a piece of art by the artworld, or the community making it up), while still others have suggested (referring to some ideas of Wittgenstein) that the concept of art, like so many others, is defined by its use; to try to do otherwise is to miss the point and misunderstand the way in which all definitions are continuously subject to challenge by the artists themselves.

Questions in Aesthetics

Apart from the difficult problem of defining art, there are other areas of aesthetics that we'll say a few words about here. The subject is so large today that it would require a separate series to cover everything that's been written on or thought about art over the years, as we'd expect given the importance most people attach to it in one form or another.

Experiencing art

One question studied by aesthetics is the experience of art: is there a correct way to watch a movie, look at a painting, or listen to a piece of music? Do we get more out of the Mona Lisa if we know the history of it, for example, or how it was painted? Is the feeling it invokes in an artist deeper or more meaningful than that in a tourist, or just different? Do we need to know the intentions of an author, say, or what the poem was supposed to mean to appreciate them to the same degree as an English graduate might? Alternatively, does too much education on these things actually dull the senses?

Judging art

Everyone is capable of making judgements about art, whether it be graciously, cursing or the simple teeth-clenched retort of "philistine". However, are some opinions more important than others? We are not considering the experience that two pictures may bring about, but instead the classification "that one is best", or something similar. Does expertise make a judgement more worthy of our consideration, as before? On the other hand, can we just say that it's all "in the eye of the beholder", as the saying goes, and hence confidently skirt around remarks like "face it, Holbling: your writing sucks as much as your thinking"?

Art and Society

What is the relationship between art and society? In particular, do artists have social responsibilities in their work or can they almost do as they choose?

In recent years such questions have had an impact on philosophy, especially with discussion of Heidegger and the influence on his thinking — if any — of his Nazism. What of art? Does a photographer in a war zone have a moral obligation of some kind to bring the horrible truth to the public, or does distorting it a little have minimal impact on his or her art? Does a painter who sketches dead bodies with the assistance or a mortuary worker need to worry about what the deceased's family might think? Should an artist seek to have a positive impact on society, or is it "art for art's sake"? There are many ways in which art and society interact and much work in aesthetics is concerned with them.

We see, then, that aesthetics is a diverse and important subject with roots stretching back thousands of years but which is far from finished and with the same relevance to us today as when the first caveman said "that doesn't look like a mammoth to me."

Dialogue the Fifth

The Scene: Still in The Drunken Bishop, Anna and Jennifer have gone to the bar and are talking to a friend of the former, having done so to "let the boys have a few minutes to themselves". Steven is trying to look at Jennifer without making it too obvious while Anna is pointing out Trystyn to her friend.

Steven: (Eyes slightly glazed...) Wow. Where did you find her?

Trystyn: At my uncle's house.

Steven: (Not really listening...) Your cousin is hot.

Trystyn: (Deadpan...) So am I—they should open a window.

Steven: (Blinking...) Um, I mean she's nice.

Trystyn: She's a good person, for sure.

Steven: What? (He punches Trystyn lightly.) You suck. She's beautiful, I mean.

Trystyn: What do you mean by "beautiful"?

Steven: (Exasperated...) Here's an idea: close your eyes; remember that I'm not paying you to be an idiot, so you're working for free tonight; then open them and take another look.

Trystyn: She's my cousin...

Steven: So?

Trystyn: It's not something I've thought about.

Steven: You're a saint, to be sure.

Trystyn: No doubt. (He pauses.) Anyway... I've been studying aesthetics recently and it's quite interesting. What do you mean by "beautiful"?

Steven: It figures that a philosopher would study putting people to sleep.

Trystyn: Aesthetics, you dolt. Philosophy of art; theory of beauty; that kind of thing.

Steven: There's a theory? Don't you guys ever leave the library?

Trystyn: (Conspiratorially...) We get girls there too...

Steven: (He turns sharply to look at Trystyn.) Really? (Pause. He looks back at Jennifer as before.) "I knows what I likes and I likes what I sees."

Trystyn: Okay: what is it that makes her beautiful?

Steven: (Misty-eyed...) Her mind. (Pause.) She has the beating of me, for sure. (Another pause.) Her eyes, and how they narrow when she's about to speak. The way she's holding that glass.

Trystyn: (Serious.) Wow. I think I'm going to cry. (Pause.) You've only just met her.

Steven: Weird, huh?

Trystyn: Hmm. Do you think other guys mean the same things when they say a girl is beautiful?

Steven: Probably not. Most guys only have one thing on their mind: does she have a father or brother big enough to hurt me?

Trystyn: (Laughing...) Fair enough. Is it the same as when you say a painting is beautiful, though, or a sculpture?

Steven: How do you mean?

Trystyn: Well, are you saying "this painting is beautiful" because you think it's got something about it that makes you feel as though it's special in some way, or worth something; or are you commenting on some technical aspect of it, like the method? Are you referring to the way the painter has achieved whatever aim he or she had in mind? And so on. (Pause.) These aren't the same.

Steven: I see. (He looks at Jennifer more intently.) When I look at your cousin, I don't really care what anyone else thinks about her, and I suppose it's that way with paintings sometimes too. Then again, I can see what you're getting at: if I watch a movie and I can appreciate how difficult a scene was to make or how hard it was to get across a certain emotion with just a glance, I might think of the director or actress and say "that was beautiful".

Trystyn: Right—and you'd expect there to be something about it that others could notice too.

Steven: I suppose so. It should be there for all to see. Then again, not everyone does.

Trystyn: Right. Then we can ask another question: is that a failing on their part?

Steven: A failing?

Trystyn: Is there a "correct" way to watch the movie or is any interpretation as good as another? Also, suppose a scene makes you feel sad but someone else views it differently—satirical, say. Is that a failing on either part, or is there no "correct" way to feel about a scene?

Steven: I guess I've never thought about it this way. You just assume that what you feel or think about a movie is the right way and hardly give it another thought.

Trystyn: Sure, but suppose it could be shown that there is a correct way to understand a movie and yours is different; you could watch it again with this in mind and maybe get something else out of it. On the other hand, if it were shown that it just can't be done, then it might say something about critics.

Steven: That they're useless parasites, you mean?

Trystyn: (Laughing...) Sort of.

Steven: I see your point. They should just say "here's my take" and not "this movie is lame and if you disagree you're evidently some form of troglodyte."

Trystyn: That's it, I suppose. Even if we don't give aesthetics the time of day, we're still using it.

Steven: The important point is: can I use it on your cousin?

Trystyn: Better ask her—her she comes now. (The girls are returning.)

Steven: (Worried...) What should I say? Pretend we were talking about something interesting.

Trystyn: That's a tall order for me, as you know. (He winks.) Just be yourself; otherwise she'll see through you, beautiful or not. (Thoughtfully, looking at Anna...) Strange creatures—mesmerising, really.

(Steven is not listening.)

Curtain. Fin.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:57:11 +0000 ba2fd310dcaa8781a9a652a31baf3c68 6. Philosophy of Science http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/6-philosophy-of-science-r23 Paul Newall (2004)

In the last article we looked at the sources, scope and—in general—the theory of knowledge. Given that much of the information we have about our world today has come from science in one way or another it makes sense to look next at the philosophy of science. As usual, we'll investigate the subject by looking at some of its history initially before moving on to some of the interesting topics being discussed today. First, though, we need to understand what the philosophy is concerned with and why it should bother us at all.

Why study the Philosophy of Science?

It's possible to give technical justifications for our studies, but let's instead start from the very beginning. Suppose, like Galileo, we stand near the top of the leaning tower of Pisa and drop simultaneously balls of differing weights of roughly the same size. What, before we let go, is the point of this experiment? It's intuitively obvious that the heavier will hit the ground first, so why do it in the first place? Indeed, it may be at least partly because it was (and usually still is) so obvious that few people actually checked. Even so, what does this first theory ("the heavier will land first") mean?

  • The heavier piece will land before the lighter piece of the same size if both are dropped at the same time from the leaning tower of Pisa.
  • The heavier piece will always land before the lighter piece of the same size if both are dropped at the same time from the leaning tower of Pisa.
  • The heavier piece will always land before the lighter piece of the same size if both are dropped at the same time from anywhere.
  • The heavier piece will always land before the lighter piece of the same size if both are dropped at the same time and under the same conditions from anywhere.
  • The heavier piece will always land before the lighter piece of the same size if both are dropped at the same time and under the same conditions from anywhere and at any time.
Already we can see that the meaning of our theory is not immediately clear and that even these few alternatives are very different. Also, they tell us what we expect to happen if we actually tried the test (that is, they predict), but not why (that is, they don't explain). Here we have another question to ask of science before we go any further: what are we aiming at? That is, what goal do we have in mind, excluding the remark "just throw things at Hugo"?

  • A theory that tells us what to expect and hence allows us to predict the consequences of our actions.
  • A theory that tells us why one thing should happen instead of another.
  • A theory that describes what happened but says nothing about what might happen in the future, or why.
  • Some combination of the above, or something else.
Again, these aren't the same at all. The first reminds us of the practical person who says "I don't care how it works; I just want to know how to use it." The second seems to be looking deeper, but it of course depends on the context—after all, what do we want the theory for in the first place? The third manages to capture what happened in a description but tells us nothing further. It seems, at this stage, that a little of all would be a better prospect.

Galileo—to get back to the story—had different ideas. He proposed a different theory, according to which both would land at the same time. In fact, the Aristotelian thinking he was opposing was very complex indeed and to check his theory he decided to try the test that was supposed to give an obvious result: he climbed the tower and started dropping things. He found, of course, that they did land at the same time, so we have two theories, a test and some results. What can we say now?

  • Galileo's theory is correct.
  • The first theory is wrong.
  • Both of the above.
  • Galileo's theory is correct under certain conditions but may still be wrong under others.
  • The first theory is wrong under certain conditions but may still be correct (or useful) under others.
  • Galileo's theory is more likely to be correct than the other.
... and so on again. The conclusion we're entitled to make is not so obvious; perhaps Galileo cheated to prove his idea, meaning we'd be wrong to reject the first idea? Alternatively, perhaps he was right after all but still cheated in his experiment? What could we say then? It could also be that the test was flawed in some way, such that although Galileo was honest in his approach he in fact didn't show anything. Moreover, perhaps the theory is a good one for Pisa, but are we justified in claiming that it'll work anywhere? Here we are up against the problem of induction again.

Some people are aware that what Galileo actually found was a good deal more complicated. On some occasions the heavier object fell slightly quicker, striking the ground just before the lighter. At other times the lighter fell quicker, a result also obtained by Borro using lead and wood. Galileo was not inclined, however, to reject his theory because he thought there may be ways to account for the puzzling results that weren't quite as he expected. Indeed, a recent paper by Settle has managed to solve this mystery: it's actually impossible to release two objects from the hands at exactly the same time; instead, and without meaning to, an experimenter will invariably let the heavier one go first. Thus we see that the experiment when taken literally seems to be confusing without some notion of how to interpret it; we have to be very careful when asking what it all means. Galileo used experiment to test his theory, but when it didn't quite work out he nevertheless kept his theory because of some still more theoretical reasons. It's about time, then, that we looked at how science is supposed to proceed—the scientific method—and what philosophy has to say about it.

The Scientific Method

Why do we need to worry about what we mean by scientific method? It's true that your humble narrator is inclined to talk to himself on the matter, but what difference does that make? Well, suppose we look at the history of science, particularly those episodes that—with the benefit of hindsight—we consider to have contained good ideas or decisions, such as supposing that theories should be tested by experiment or that the earth isn't flat. Are there any features in common that could account for the success? If so, we could perhaps say something like "if you want to find a good theory, you should do x", or at least "... you shouldn't do y". This way, both good and bad moves made in the past can inform us today. On the face of it, this seems like a good idea, so let's see what suggestions for methods were offered historically.

Induction

It's often held that early scientists didn't approach their work with the same sophistication as we do today, but we've already seen that Galileo was both doing experiments and considering what the implications were for knowledge. In the early seventeenth century, on the other hand, Bacon was advocating for science an inductive method: the idea was to gather as much data as possible about the world and infer general theories therefrom, all the while taking care not to allow any assumptions or theories to influence the finding of information in the first place. We already know about some problems with the former; the latter we'll come to in more detail soon, but for the time being we can at least note that stopping ourselves from having any prior thoughts on what we expect to find is a tall order. Lakatos also pointed out the logical impossibility of deriving a general law from facts.

Hypothetico-deductive

Although he didn't call it so, this method was conceived by Newton late in the seventeenth century. The principle is as follows: first, we have an idea or suggested theory (the hypothesis part) that we come up with for some reason or other; then, we try to figure out what the consequences of it would be (the deduction part). The final stage is to test for these expectations and, by so doing, verify whether the theory is a good one or not. In this method it doesn't matter where the theory comes from, but only how well it's confirmed by experiment.

Unfortunately there's a significant problem here that becomes clear when we set the method out in logical form, as we saw in the earlier article. We want to say:

  • P1: If theory T is true, then we would expect to see a set of facts or results F;
  • P2: We see F;
  • C: Therefore, T is true.
This is a logical fallacy called affirming the consequent; the flaw is that although T may be true, F might instead be due to something else entirely. Look at this argument, for example:

  • P1: If rain dances are effective, we would expect to see rain after a dance;
  • P2: Rain is found to follow rain dances.;
  • C: Therefore, rain dances are effective.
In fact, it could be that the rain is caused by something other than the dancing (we would say that it is) and the dance leader has a fair idea of what signs to look for, only starting a dance at such times. If that's so, no amount of wiggling is likely to open the floodgates. Hence, the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. The flaw in this argument is a difficulty for the hypothetico-deductive method.

Abduction

The generally overlooked philosopher C.S. Peirce wrote a good deal on this method that dates back to Aristotle. It's often called inference to the best explanation and reasons thus:

  • P1: Facts of the form B have been observed;
  • P2: The statement, "If A, then B" can explain B;
  • C: Therefore, A.
This is much the same as the previous method but the important distinction for Pierce was that A is the best explanation for B and therefore is the probable explanation. In our example of the rain dancing, then, it would seem that this isn't the best explanation of the rain, unless your dancing is quite something.

One problem with this theory is what we mean by the "best" explanation. Another is how it can cope with Hume's problem (it can't). A third is that making a statement like "A is the most probable explanation" has proved very difficult indeed and prompted a great deal of (highly technical) work in inductive justification.

According to the philosopher Hilary Putnam, however, it would be a miracle if a false hypothesis was nevertheless as successful as some of our scientific theories are and many people consider this a decisive objection. Of course, it isn't; one of several objections is that this scheme uses inference to the best explanation to justify inference to the best explanation—a decidedly unsatisfactory situation.

Falsification

Before he became the butt of philosophical jokes, Karl Popper claimed to have conceived the method of falsification that in fact—again—dates back to Aristotle. It took several forms (naïve, methodological and sophisticated) as it proved very difficult indeed to stick up for and was battered by a succession of brutal critiques. In its basic form it was an attempt to avoid the problem of induction by suggesting that science could instead proceed in a deductive fashion: scientists would propose theories and then try to falsify them (i.e. show them to be wrong). A theory that had stood the test of many such attempts is a good one but may still be wrong; a theory that is falsified is discarded. On the other hand, a theory that cannot be falsified at all is thereby not scientific.

An uncharitable way to look at Popper is to ask if—in common with many philosophers of science—he neglected to check how scientists were actually working, but in fact he was suggesting a new way in which science was to be understood. Unfortunately his ideas were taken to task because very often theories are proposed that don't specify what would falsify them (perhaps they're at an early stage), or else are falsified but still clung to by scientists (Einstein is the paradigmatic example of both)—and why not? It may be that an experiment discovers an anomaly, not a falsification; also, what if the experiment was in error somewhere, or its consequences misunderstood? What if the theory was wrong but by clinging to it scientists found a way around the difficulty and thereby made it stronger? None of the possibilities that take place throughout the history of science are accounted for by Popper's ideas and hence falsification was eventually treated with some hostility.

Who needs method?

As a result of these difficulties, some philosophers began to wonder if the prospect of a unique scientific method was such a good one after all. (Meanwhile, other philosophers worried that such thinking would swiftly send the world to hell in a hand basket.) Research found that in fact the many sciences were not unified at all and employed different methodologies (for example, compare particle and condensed matter physics, or molecular and organismic biology), very often even within the same field (compare Einstein or Dirac to Ehrenhaft). Nowadays this disunity of the scientific enterprise is gaining greater recognition and scientists and philosophers alike are less keen to hold forth on the scientific method. Moreover, studies in the history of science have shown that no methodological account seems to be able to take in all the twists and turns made by individuals.

The demarcation problem

Perhaps none of this is such a big deal but many people want to distinguish between science and non-science (or pseudo-science), usually to disparage the latter. In that case, we may not be too concerned at the lack of a distinct method but it would help if we could say "this is science" and, similarly, point out what isn't; sometimes we see "scientific" used as a word meaning "you should accept this", so if it's wrongly applied then people could be deceived. This became especially important to debates on funding (who gets the little money available to try all the ideas out there?) and education (how do we decide what goes in the curriculum as science?), the latter particularly with regard to creationism. Thus the demarcation problem: what factors characterise science?

It seemed that the ideal solution would state that science consists of x, y and z but creationism (or whatever) doesn't; therefore, creationism isn't science and shouldn't be on the curriculum. Some philosophers, though, warned either that this wasn't possible (Lakatos and Feyerabend in particular) or that it would backfire (Laudan). Due to the former, the latter is what happened: science was defined according to a few flawed criteria, leaving creationists the task of adapting their ideas to fulfil them and hence giving birth to creation science, so-called.

There have been several attempts to propose criterion that would solve the demarcation problem but they were either subject to severe critique (usually by Lakatos) or proved to have no uncontroversial analysis. This led Laudan to declare "the demise of the demarcation problem" and indeed many thinkers have decided to try for something less ambitious.

What can we say about science?

A description of science today is likely in some quarters to consist in a non-prescriptive list. For example, a scientific theory is one that has some or all of the following factors:

  • It makes testable predictions.
  • It is falsifiable.
  • It predicts new facts.
  • It unifies already existing ideas.
  • It is consistent with what we already know.
  • And so on...
However, the point of it being non-prescriptive is that even a theory that doesn't succeed in meeting one of the criteria may be a good or useful theory; we need only be a little cautious about those that fail to meet any or only a few.

Imre Lakatos used this understanding to develop his methodology of scientific research programmes that made an effort to take into account both the philosophical difficulties we've seen so far and the history of what happened to various ideas and the thinking proposed by scientists and philosophers over the years. He wanted to appreciate just when it would be appropriate to finally discard a theory or, conversely, whether we should be reluctant to ever do so. This was sparked, at least in part, by some historical cases.

For example, Atomism was proposed back in classical Greek times, in particular by Leucippus and Democritus. Since that time it was mooted, supported, refuted or rejected on several occasions until some two thousand years later it finally became a scientific theory, even though in the early part of the twentieth century it was still looked upon with some scorn. This being so, how can we be sure in eliminating a shaky theory that we won't be making a mistake in so doing? If the answer is that we can't, how can we instead minimise our chances of error or giving a similar idea every chance to impress us again?

Mill gave a thorough and quite beautiful argument in his On Liberty in favour of methodological pluralism, the notion of giving even apparently crazy theories a chance and using them to aid our work with others. It can be found here. Feyerabend showed with many examples how such pluralism is indispensable and that very often only another method can illuminate flaws or strengths in one we may support. In combination with the tenacity in the face of difficulties that is the lesson of the history of ideas, Lakatos thought he could take these into account with his two concepts of firstly a negative heuristic, being the core parts of a theory that we are reluctant to give up (this is what Kuhn looked at in his famous work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions), and secondly the positive heuristic, being the additional or auxiliary ideas that try to defend the theory against the anomalies and new information that may come up.

He suggested, then, that the distinguishing characteristic of a progressive, scientific research programme is that it makes new predictions or discovers new facts; a degenerating, pseudo-scientific research programme does not. Nevertheless, the latter case is no reason to reject a theory and we may ask just how new facts are to be found unless we employ a methodological pluralism in the first place and devote time and energy to alternative hypotheses. Lakatos was criticised on such grounds but his terminology has become widely-used today in both science and philosophy.

In the philosophy of science, then, we have seen progress; we've learned that a simplistic understanding of science won't suffice and that myriad factors need to be taken into account.

Some concepts in the philosophy of science

It may be useful in closing this article to look at some of the terms that come up often in discussion that are from or related to the philosophy of science. By doing so, we may begin to understand just what the hell your narrator is talking about in the majority of his blustering.

Ockham's Razor

With the exception of the argumentum ad hominem, parsimony is probably one of the least understood concepts around. Philosophers and scientists alike are very sceptical of its application and with good reason. The idea is usually given as "do not multiply entities unnecessarily", or that the theory with the least assumptions is to be preferred. Technical analyses of this suggestion can be made, but the general point is that we are very rarely, if ever, in a situation where two theories have exactly the same consequences and content, except for one having more assumptions. A point made with much force by Bohr is that these consequences of the additional assumptions that we're supposed to reject are never clear before the fact; they have to be investigated to see if they tell us anything extra, either in the area being looked at or outside. Once they've been studied in any depth the issue of which theory to choose usually ends up being decided by other reasons, but even when we think we have considered everything it may still be that at a later date something further comes up. Thus it makes little sense, especially given the many examples from the history of science and ideas we could adduce, to reject a theory on the basis of parsimony unless it meets the very unlikely conditions for use.

The under-determination of theories

In the last article we looked at the example of finding white sheep and asking how reasonable it would be to adopt the theory that the next sheep found will be purple. Given that the already available evidence supports equally this hypothesis and an alternative that the sheep would be white, we couldn't say that one was any more reasonable than the other. This is generally called the under-determination of theories: the evidence we have to hand fails to pick out one theory when all are equally supported, as in this example. One way around this difficulty is to note that we're rarely faced with an infinity (or even just several) competing theories and when we are (as in this case) there are other reasons why we accept the one and not the other (for example, some information on the possible pigmentation of wool). Nevertheless, and in light of our comments on pluralism, perhaps we should view it as a failing if we don't have rival theories to choose between?

The theory-ladenness of terms

A much more difficult proposition is given by the idea that the appeal to evidence made by many people is all but empty. In its most extreme (and common) form, the conception is of theories that are tested against the facts that somehow sit in the world awaiting our comparison. Instead, these facts themselves depend on other theories in order to be understood, and they on further facts that are interpreted by other theories, and so on. Theories, therefore, go all the way down: there is no evidence free of any theory to appeal to. Another way of saying this is that there's no way to make an observation without relying on theory in some way.

What are the consequences of this strange situation? Well, early (naïve) versions of empiricism were killed because the experience to be referred to is infected by theory. Also, the comment "I don't see any evidence" is to be more carefully considered; if our observations rely on theories then Lubbock was at least partly correct that "what we see depends mostly on what we look for". There are other more technical points that we won't consider here.

Verisimilitude

When Popper began to look at the possibility of comparing a theory to the truth, in the sense of "what there really is", he conceived the notion of verisimilitude: essentially, a measure of how close to or far from the actual truth a theory is. This would be especially useful if two (or more) theories have the same consequences or are both known to be incorrect because we may still care to know which is closer to the truth. Unfortunately this is a notoriously difficult idea to make satisfactory and, as is the sport, Popper came up against some very serious criticism from the likes of Lakatos and Oddie. In recent times Niiniluoto, Tuomela and others have offered more stringent versions but they require a good deal of mathematics to appreciate so we won't cover them here.

The problem of realism

The main concern in the philosophy of science today is the problem of realism, which deals with the interpretations of theories. Suppose, for example, that we have a theory that explains in a satisfactory way why an apple dropped outside Notre Dame in Paris falls to the ground, using some form of theory of gravity. Since we can't see or observe gravity with our own senses except by what we suppose to be its effects, should we say that gravity is real (i.e. that it really exists)? Later on the theory might become more successful, in which case we might be even more tempted to say that it is so because the gravity referred to really does exist, although we need to be wary of making the same logical flaw that we saw earlier of affirming the consequent. However, on many occasions in the past our theories have turned out to be wrong, replaced by others. Should we, then, not be a little more careful when declaring what exists and what doesn't?

This debate has grown into many threads and even realism is no longer easily defined. Niiniluoto gave six different areas we could be realists about, along with the type of questions we could ask:

  • Ontological: Which entities are real? Is there a mind-independent world?
  • Semantical: Is truth an objective language-world relation?
  • Epistemological: Is knowledge about the world possible?
  • Axiological: Is truth one of the aims of inquiry?
  • Methodological: What are the best methods for pursuing knowledge?
  • Ethical: Do moral values exist in reality?
Some of these areas we haven't yet covered, but we can see that the problem is wide-ranging and the questions important. If we answer "no" (or similar) to any, we call ourselves anti-realists with respect to them. Note that we could be realists on some issues but anti-realists on others: for example, we could believe that the world really does exist and can be known more or less, but also that there are no moral values other than those we create for ourselves. Presently the discussions are at something of an impasse on traditional fronts but new perspectives are being tried by many thinkers. Perhaps the most famous case of realist versus anti-realist interpretation is that of the Quantum Theory. At a later date much more will be said on this vibrant and impassioned area of study.

There is one significant problem in the philosophy of science to be avoided: poor philosophical ideas may hold back the practice of science. Unfortunately, rather than this being a concern for philosophers (although sometimes it has been), often the guilty parties are scientists who employ uncritical philosophical assumptions in their work without appreciating their basis and their consequences. This has very much been the case with the Quantum Theory, where philosophical decisions made deliberately or unthinkingly have influenced the course of subsequent work—some (including the scientists involved) saying negatively so. Thus it is that whatever our feelings on the philosophy of science, it cannot help but remain relevant and important.

[For more on the philosophy of science, follow the links given above or visit the History and Philosophy of Science section of the site.]

Dialogue the Fourth

The Scene: Still in the Drunken Bishop, Anna has learned that the mysterious girl is in fact Jennifer, Trystyn's cousin on his mother's side and also a philosophy student. As a result, Steven has a new-found desire to continue the discussion of the subject.

Steven: So tell me, Jennifer: which area of philosophy are you interested in?

Jennifer: (She looks at Trystyn, who nods.) Realism mostly; the problem of realism.

Steven: There's a problem?

Trystyn: It depends who you ask...

Jennifer: Look at this table. (She knocks on it.) Is it real?

Steven: Of course it is. (He knocks also.) Is this a trick question?

Trystyn: It depends who you ask...

Jennifer: It certainly seems real enough. (She knocks again.) Kinda solid, really. We also have a picture, though, that says the table is composed of particles in some way, mostly empty space. Are these particles real? If so, which picture is really real; the ordinary one or the technical one? Perhaps both?

Anna: Maybe it doesn't matter? (Trystyn smiles.)

Steven: Hold on—I don't think we should minimise the importance of philosophy here. (He knocks the table for good measure. Trystyn has rolled his eyes so far they do not appear to be coming back.)

Jennifer: Of course it matters. The whole point of science, after all, is to find out what the world is really like, so if we have conflicting ideas about what's real or how sure we can be about any such claims, we ought to be worried about it.

Anna: (Indicating Steven...) I thought you said science aimed only at explaining what had happened and predicting what might?

Steven: (Quietly, through clenched teeth...) Did I? I don't recall. (To Jennifer...) Tell me some more about the problem.

Jennifer: Well, we can see and feel the table here; other theories about sub-atomic particles and the like aren't so obvious and even experiments have different interpretations. Not so many people are inclined to doubt the existence of the table...

Steven: (Nodding at Trystyn...) Make I present exhibit A? This fellow will argue for or against anything.

Jennifer: The scientific picture is slightly different, though. We had ideas in the past about what's real and what isn't that turned out to be wrong, so we need to be careful that they aren't again. Think about it: many times before we've come up with theories that explain something on the basis of the existence of something else - like the ether, phlogiston or the power of sympathy - but they turned out to be poor theories and now we say those things don't exist after all. Why should we agree, then, that the latest round of similar declarations should fare any better?

Anna: What's the alternative?

Jennifer: There are several. We could say that our theories only have instrumental value; that is, we use them as instruments to explain or predict but say that their successes prove nothing whatsoever about what exists or doesn't.

Steven: Of course. (He nods.) Anything else is the business of head-in-the-clouds types like... (He trails off.)

Trystyn: (Grinning...) Like...?

Steven: (Ignoring him...) What else?

Jennifer: We could say that the point of our theories is to enable us to model our world and that the truth or otherwise of them is beside the point; in fact, it might even be meaningless.

Anna: That seems to me like an excess of skepticism.

Trystyn: How so?

Anna: Just because we can't be sure of our ideas, it doesn't mean talking about them being right or wrong is meaningless or that we should give up trying to find the model that most closely fits reality. (Jennifer smiles at Trystyn.)

Steven: I think I can see the point here. Many scientists have a basic idea that they're trying to find out "the way it really is", while others don't think that makes any sense and just want successful models, along with the other positions you said there are. In either case, what we can find is limited or defined by the philosophical ideas we start with. Separating philosophy and science doesn't make much sense, I guess.

Anna: Bravo. (She smiles.)

Trystyn: My turn to buy, I think.

Steven: (Deep in thought...) I'm going to ask around my colleagues and see what they make of this.

Jennifer: You could be a Bohr instead of a Feynman.

Trystyn: I've always found him an interesting fellow.

Steven: (Motioning towards the bar with a tilt of his head...) I'm thirsty...

Anna: (To Trystyn) Come on—I'll go with you. (They leave, conspiratorially.)

Steven: Tell me how you got into philosophy, Jennifer. Start at the beginning.

Curtain. Fin.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:54:53 +0000 2bb232c0b13c774965ef8558f0fbd615 5. Epistemology 1 http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/5-epistemology-1-r22 Paul Newall (2004)

In this section of our series we'll consider epistemology, starting with an outline of what we mean by the term and moving on to look at some of the ideas proposed to answer the questions that arise in this area of philosophy. There has been much recent work in the subject so we'll have a lot to cover.

What is epistemology?

The word itself derives from the Greek epistéme ("knowledge" or "science") and logos ("speech" or "discourse"). In English, then, we render it as the theory of knowledge, concerned with the nature, sources and scope of knowledge. Interestingly enough (or not, as the case may be), in both French and Italian epistémologie and epistemologia respectively actually mean the philosophy of science, but we'll concern ourselves here with the general subject of ertkenntnistherorie and move on to scientific epistemology later; not so far down the line, though, as to disappoint those readers looking to jump on your humble narrator if he should mention Feyerabend.

Epistemology, then, is concerned with the following:

  • The nature of knowledge: what is knowledge? What do we mean when we say that we know something?
  • The sources of knowledge: where do we get knowledge from? How do we know if it's reliable? When are we justified in saying we know something?
  • The scope of knowledge: what are the limits of knowledge? Are there any in the first place?

We'll look at each of these in turn and try to get a grip on them via the efforts of philosophers or the past and present. First, though, we'll take a glance at some historical developments that led to these problems in the first place.

The beginnings of epistemology

The early Greeks were studying and trying to determine the properties of reality. They were initially, generally speaking, quite sure of themselves and pronounced in one way or another on its nature. Heraclitus, for example, thought that change was constant; Parmenides, on the other hand, allowed that reality could not change. His argument ran that if Being were to change, it could only become not-Being, which is absurd. Such speculations involved a certainty as to what could or couldn't be said about reality that led others to questions whether we can be so sure of ourselves to make such declarations, hence leading to the birth of skepticism with the Sophists. However, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle still thought that the mind could reach truth and certitude but they considered instead the conditions under which we can say something is valid. Plato thought that knowledge was the attempt to get at universal ideas or forms, and, while Aristotle placed more emphasis on logical and empirical ways of so doing, he still accepted the basic idea that universal principles were to be sought.

It was recognised early that our senses are sometimes unreliable: for example, most of us have experienced the strange phenomenon of seeing someone far away who looks just like a friend but upon closer inspection proves to be a stranger. Some thinkers nevertheless supposed that we could arrive at knowledge by using our intellect to go beyond the information given by our senses and arrive at general or universal notions and ideas. The question then was what we could say about these universals; do they exist, or are they just a product of our thinking? This led to a great deal of controversy during the Middle Ages between the realists, who thought that these universals existed independently of whether anyone was around to think about them, and the nominalists who held that they did not. (Like most philosophical disputes, the matter was actually not so clear-cut.) Another question brought up by the fallibility of our senses is to wonder why we nevertheless arrive at understandings that seem to work.

Most people have heard of Descartes and his famous cogito, ergo sum. His method was to try to doubt everything and see what remained standing, believing this would lead to ideas that were certain. The empiricists thought that knowledge could only be gained from experience; the rationalists considered instead that reason could reveal it to us. These two give us the oft-heard phrases a posteriori, meaning "after the fact", and a priori, meaning "before the fact". Of course, it seems strange to insist that we choose one or the other.

Partly in response to Hume (whom we'll consider later), Kant proposed to provide a synthesis of these two and proposed the following categories for what we could find in the world: phenomena, or things as they appear to us; and noumena, or things as they are in themselves. He suggested that we could have knowledge of the former, but not the latter. Of course, it could be that the two are not so far apart—close enough for government work—and that this explains why our senses still give us useful information. With Kant we reach some of the modern problems that are still vexing epistemologists today, but before moving on to the specific areas we'll lastly consider the pragmatism of recent years.

Pragmatism is this context may be explained as considering something knowledge if it is useful to some end. The attendant questions of whether an idea is true or gets at reality are sometimes considered meaningless or at least not important; what matters is that a given model helps us to solve problems. Does it matter where we get our knowledge from if it works? This trend has led to some interesting epistemological avenues of investigation that we'll consider later on.

The nature of knowledge

The first thing we need to consider is the question of what knowledge is. A popular classical account held that knowledge is justified true belief (JTB): we say we know x if, and only if,

  • x is true (1);
  • We believe that x (2);
  • We are justified in believing that x (3).

Let's take a specific example: suppose we want to say that we know it's snowing outside. According to this account of knowledge, to know that it's snowing we must have:

  • It's true that it's snowing outside (1);
  • We believe that it's snowing (2);
  • We're justified in believing that it's snowing (3).

In the first case, it could be the case that it is snowing; in the second, we need only believe it; and in the third, we could be justified in so believing because we can see the snow falling and children are praying (religious or not) that school will be cancelled. This seems straightforward enough.

Unfortunately a paper by Edmund Gettier pulled the rug out from under this conception. He suggested that we could infer a true circumstance from a false one and then find (2) and (3) satisfied. In that case, we would've made our way to knowledge from a false claim, making the road to this truth something of a fluke. This would be a strange kind of knowledge.

Looking at our example, then, it could be that we say "the thermostat went up, so it must be snowing". In fact, it may have been that the temperature didn't change and we in fact imagined it; then we would've arrived at justified true belief that couldn't be considered knowledge. The so-called "Gettier Problem" frustrated attempts to counter it and many epistemologists gave up on this account of knowledge.

Sources of knowledge

Let us consider, then, some other ways of arriving at knowledge. We could use our senses, our memory, testimony or reasoning. However, any or all of these could be flawed, so there are several theories for how we use them to get at knowledge.

Reliabilism

One alternative to the JTB account is reliabilism, in which we say that we are justified in believing something if, and only if, we arrived at it via a reliable cognitive process. For example, in the past our senses have been very reliable (barring the few exceptions we touched on before), so we may be justified in saying "I know there's a computer in front of me". The difference between this account and JTB is the removal of condition (3). Unfortunately the Gettier problem is a difficulty here too and there is the issue of what makes a process reliable in the first place.

Foundationalism

One way of explaining where we get our knowledge from is to start with certain ideas or statements as our foundations and build on them, which is called foundationalism. This is much the same way as we can proceed in mathematics—starting with some axioms and building up a system based on what we can get from them. An obvious question to ask, of course, is where we get our foundations from in the first place: are they justified? Some thinkers propose that the choice of such foundational concepts doesn't need to be explained because they're so obvious; perhaps denying them makes no sense at all, for instance, like questioning if the universe really exists. In more recent times some philosophers have called such fundamental assumptions properly basic, meaning that they require no justification at all and can be held by any reasonable person without argument. The trouble then, though, is debating which ideas can be so called.

Coherentism

Some people don't think there are any foundational beliefs; instead, they think that our ideas hang together (or cohere, hence the name) and support each other, like bricks in a building. In that case, for example, we might reject the claim "Hugo is interesting" because it doesn't fit with all we already know about how dull he is; on the other hand, if someone said "Hugo is as mad as a clown's trousers" we might be inclined to accept it because we already have a long list of instances that have given an inkling of that theory.

The difficulties with coherentism are several: firstly, how do we know which ideas a new one has to agree with? Secondly, how do we tell the difference between a true idea and a false one, given that the latter may still agree with a lot of what we already think we know? Lastly, it seems that some of our thinking is more certain than the rest and therefore has greater importance, like the foundations in the brick building; can we account for this feeling?

Empiricism

As we noted above, empiricism proposes that our knowledge comes from experience. One of the attractions of this idea is that we might be able to avoid false superstitions with no basis in the world, but there are problems all the same. Many people—not just philosophers—have wondered how logic, mathematics or even ethics could be based on experience: isn't twice two four whether our earth exists or not? If so, how can we account for these (and other) areas from experience alone? On the other hand, we do seem to take a lot of our ideas from our experiences in the first place and when we come on to consider scientific epistemology later we'll see that empiricism has a large part to play with some further (theoretical) difficulties as well.

Rationalism

On the other side of the coin, we have the notion that much of our knowledge comes from reason, or the act of reasoning. In particular, we might be looking for knowledge that must hold, irrespective of circumstances, like mathematics or logic (again). The overuse of reasoning, though, can lead to being accused of piloting an armchair; no matter how well you can fly it, you won't leave the lounge and see what the world outside can tell you. It makes sense to think that empiricism and rationalism can tell us a good deal together.

Naturalism

In epistemology, naturalism refers to the idea that knowledge can be studied as a science and involves a relationship between sense inputs and cognitive (or mental) outputs. In that case, psychology, sociology and biology can tells us a lot about how we come to our beliefs and further investigation may show how our experiences influence what we end up thinking. We can also apply evolutionary ideas to our questions above.

There are more possibilities to consider here, but they make sense best in a specifically scientific context. To that end, we'll save them for the later discussion.

The scope of knowledge

Perhaps the many and varied difficulties we have seen so far could lead to the suggestion that no knowledge at all is possible, or that at the very least it's a tricky business? Can we know anything for sure?

Fallibilism

Some thinkers have suggested that no matter how hard we try or how successful our efforts, there always remains the possibility of error. Even when we feel absolutely sure of something, we could still be wrong. Fallibilism is the idea that all knowledge is provisional and could have to be revised at any instant. Essentially, then, it involves the notion that perfect certainty is impossible.

Skepticism

Being traced back to the Greeks (again), skepticism has a long history. We've seen that the conditions required for knowledge are strict and perhaps they may never be satisfied. Some skeptics take this "alas, it doesn't seem that it can be done" attitude, while others are quite sure that knowledge is impossible. (Another usage of the term refers to withholding judgement.) Generally speaking, fallibilism can lead to skepticism.

An argument heard often against skepticism is given by the question "how do you know that nothing can be known?" The implication here is that the skeptic contradicts him- or herself, knowingly (pun intended) or otherwise. In fact, the skeptic can get around this using an interesting idea from Bertrand Russell, wherein the claim "nothing can be known" is rewritten as, for example, "there is no x such that x matches the description of knowledge". This means that the skeptical challenge is a powerful one but the impossibility of certain knowledge may only mean that we have to be satisfied with what we can get.

As noted, we'll move on to study some of these notions in more depth when we consider scientific epistemology.

Some common topics

We'll finish this discussion by looking at a few subjects that come up frequently and investigate them a little.

The tree in the woods

Many of us have heard the question "if a tree falls in the woods and no-one is there, does it make a sound?" (Indeed, Bart Simpson employed it to his benefit while playing golf.) This conundrum here is based on the idea of verificationism: a claim is justified only if it can be verified in some way. In the case of our tree, then, we seem to know from past experience that falling trees make a noise; however, if there's no-one there to hear it, it can't be verified—hence the confusion. In fact, if we leave a tape recorder behind we can soon answer the question.

The problem can be extended by disallowing any such monitoring device but this shows—quite clearly—that the epistemological ideas we adopt influence what we can say.

Induction

In his writings, Hume (amongst other things) expressed what is now called the problem of induction: we ask whether a finite number of particular cases can ever justify a general conclusion. For example, suppose that we visit a farming district and see very many sheep that are all white. Can we then assert from the hundreds of sheep we saw that all sheep are white? It turns out that we would be wrong to do so, or else there'd be no nursery rhyme. How many white sheep would we need to see before we can justify saying that all sheep are white, though? To look at this further, let's lay out the information we have in a logical form using what we learned in the last article:

  • Premise 1: The first sheep was white.
  • P2: The second sheep was white.
  • ...
  • P501: The five hundredth and first sheep was white. (And so on.)
  • Conclusion: All sheep are white.

The problem is that none of the premises contain the conclusion and all of them are moreover the same in form, so we're relying on a kind of brute force of numbers. Suppose we saw another thousand sheep, all of which were also white. Are we justified then? Again, apparently we aren't because in fact some sheep aren't white? Is there any way around this difficulty?

One thing we can do is recast the problem: instead of asking when we're justified in saying that all sheep are white, we can wonder instead when it would be reasonable to assume it. In this light, the matter takes on a much different hue. If we see but one white sheep, it seems unreasonable to insist that all sheep are white. However, once we've seen several hundred of the walking sweaters we may be reasonable in supposing that they all are. The subsequent finding that some sheep are black doesn't change the fact that we were justified in supposing them to be white.

In recent times, Goodman has posed what is called the "new riddle of induction". Rather than using his example, let's stay with the sheep and reconsider what we have. Our observations of hundreds of white sheep has led us to propose the theory that all sheep are white. Suppose now that we offer another theory: all sheep until some time T in the future will be white, but the next one will be purple. The evidence we have to date supports our theory, but it also fits this new (but silly-sounding) theory too. How do we decide which is the more reasonable, given that both are equally well grounded? Moreover, we could create plenty of other theories of the same form, involving sheep of all the colours of the rainbow and more besides. We can't say that we have to go with the white theory because we've only seen white so far because that is assuming what is to be proven; i.e. that we expect to see new sheep that are also white. This interesting and perplexing problem is notoriously difficult to escape. In scientific terms it's called the underdetermination of theories and we'll see it again when we come on to scientific epistemology and the philosophy of science. Look for these topics next. Later in our series we'll return to epistemology again for a further discussion.

Dialogue the Third

The Scene: Our intrepid philosophical adventurers have moved on to a public house of ill repute called The Drunken Bishop, having acquired its moniker following an incident involving an atheist in fancy dress who, unable to hold his liquor, passed out while the owner was discussing a change of image for the establishment. A hastily painted picture of the unfortunate fellow adorns the sign outside. Our friends are, as if by coincidence, discussing Hume.

Steven: So tell me about this so-called problem that we're all supposed to be worried about. I read about it in one of these "science is just another tool" polemics. (He is drinking a real ale.)

Anna: What did it say?

Steven: The gist of it, my dear, is that those who don't think we can justify a claim that's been found to hold time and time again are not so full of themselves as to test it by throwing themselves out of a window instead of using the lift.

(Anna looks to Trystyn, who is himself counting the number of occasions that the phrase "you know?" comes up in the conversation of the couple on the next table.)

Trystyn: If I had a pound for every time I heard this you'd still be buying the drinks but I'd have a warmer coat.

Steven: If you want another you can tell me where I'm missing the point. Why are philosophers so poor anyway? Your talents are under-appreciated, no doubt.

Anna: Not by her, apparently. (She nods in the direction of a girl who is trying to get Trystyn's attention.)

Steven: (Smartening himself up...) Be quick, Socrates, before I make my move.

Trystyn: Okay, Don Juan. The general point we want to make is that on previous experimenting we've found that throwing something out of a window has resulted in it falling to the ground. If it was a grand piano, we of course had comedy potential below, especially if we had an anvil to follow it. Even more generally, we posit the existence of a force—gravity—that explains why it should happen that way. In particular, we noted that unfortunate or deluded pseudo-supermen who opted to fly downstairs also failed to fight crime another day.

(He pauses to drink some of the red wine he is sharing with Anna.)

We want to conclude from this finite number of specific cases that throwing ourselves out of a window is not such a good idea, the more so if we have business to attend to at ground level.

Steven: Where's the problem, then? (He is looking at the girl, who is still looking at Trystyn, who is looking at his wine while Anna alternated between glaring at him and the girl.) The moral of the story is: don't throw yourself out the damned window.

Anna: I think the point is that no number of cases is enough to justify the inference...

Steven: So if I launch myself from my cousin's slide head-first into the garden each day for a year and twice on Sundays, you'll say I can't justify my cousin supposing I'm an idiot?

Trystyn: (Smiling) You must know I'll disagree with you whatever you say, but at least this time we have an interesting point to draw out.

Steven: ... that my four-year old cousin is smarter than all of us, you mean?

Trystyn: You may be right. Okay—here we go:

(He clears his throat in dramatic fashion. Anna is glaring at the girl now and the latter has caught on.) Try to imagine a situation in which we throw ourselves out of the window and in fact don't fall; perhaps we fly all the way to Krypton instead. Ask yourself if there's anything that smacks of the impossible about the idea of it. You can't really refer to gravity making the suggestion ridiculous because we could ask the same thing: what, before the fact, is so impossible about the idea that gravity might not apply at some particular time?

The obvious response, of course, is to say "well, it always has; why should today be any different?" Even so, that hasn't answered the point at all: how are we to go from the fact that everyone to so far don the red cape has failed to the assertion that everyone must do so, given that the idea doesn't seem impossible to conceive?

Now take the fellow not bothered by such matters who challenges the philosopher to jump. In the first place, the philosopher who takes the bet is probably doing the gene pool a favour, but suppose that he does indeed dent the pavement—what then? What has the other fellow shown? That the trainee Reeve has to fall? No, since we already noted that the divers of the past weren't enough for that; all he has is one more case to add to the stockpile that wasn't enough to begin with regardless of how many unfortunate people litter the street below. So by demanding that the consistent philosopher jumps if he doubts the inductive arguments that Hume wrote of he in fact shows only two things: one, that he didn't understand the problem at all; and two, that there are some dumb and flightless philosophers in our world.

Steven: I see your point, Lex, but what kind of idiot really worries about this kind of thing? Aside from philosopher superheroes, I mean. (Anna is struggling to pay attention now.)

Trystyn: That's a good point, and one that's been made before. Sure, we can't justify an assertion about always falling, but who's going to bet against it? It seems unreasonable to assume otherwise, so Hume's problem is not something to lose sleep over.

Steven: Right. (He begins to focus his attention on the girl again.)

Trystyn: Not so fast, Errol. Suppose I offer a theory that everyone will fall until tomorrow at noon when the bastard son of superman flies off into the sunset. You, on the contrary, say everyone will fall. Which is the more reasonable theory? Unfortunately for both of us, all the facts collected to date about plummeting people supports both theories equally well. Yours may seem more reasonable but the evidence collected applies to both our ideas just the same. That, my friend, is a far more difficult problem, but not as important as pretty girls, I'll wager. (He looks at Anna but she doesn't notice.)

Anna: If you'll excuse me for a moment, I'm must have a word with her... (She leaves in the direction of the girl.)

Steven: I think she likes you, you know. (He winks.)

Trystyn: I think I'm thirsty, Cilla.

Curtain. Fin.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:48:38 +0000 53fde96fcc4b4ce72d7739202324cd49 4. Logic http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/4-logic-r21 Paul Newall (2004)

Logic comes up often in philosophical discourse and even more frequently in informal discussions, typically involving a claim that "logic says x". Logic, however, is the study of reasoning and so (as we’ll see) doesn’t really say anything in and of itself. In another sense, a logic (as opposed to logic in general) is a set of rules governing such reasoning. (This is why we have words like biology, for instance, and others with similar endings.) Both understandings have an historical importance to philosophy that continues today.

Making an Argument

Suppose we take an example of an argument:

[INDENT]Of course Hugo can fly - after all, he has wings.[/INDENT]

Although this may read as an offhand remark, we can cut it into pieces to expose the underlying argument. Set out in stages, it would be:

[INDENT]1. Hugo has wings.
2. Therefore, Hugo can fly.[/INDENT]

There is something missing, though: another line making explicit how we get from 1 to 2. Thus:

[INDENT]1. Hugo has wings.
2. Critters with wings can fly.
3. Therefore, Hugo can fly.[/INDENT]

This is the form of the argument. Notice that the conclusion in 3 is derived, as it were, from the information in 1 and 2. We call these the premises, being the statements from which we obtain the conclusion. We can therefore rewrite our argument in a standard form (one which we’ll use later in our series):

[INDENT]P1: Hugo has wings;
P2: Critters with wings can fly;
C: Therefore, Hugo can fly.[/INDENT]

The important thing to notice about this argument is the obvious one: it is ridiculous. We know that not every critter with wings can fly and we would presumably be doubtful that Hugo has a working pair at all, unless he is on his way to a fancy dress party or some other occasion for flapping. It fails to convince us, but nevertheless there is something about its structure that seems harder to dismiss.

To take account of this, we say that an argument is valid if the conclusion follows from the premises. An airborne Hugo does follow from P1 and P2 (regardless of whether we accept them or not), so our example is valid. To draw attention to the other aspect, however, we say that an argument is sound if it is valid and its premises are true. If not, we say it is unsound. In a subsequent entry in our series we’ll consider truth, but for now we can just say that P1 is false (Hugo does not have (functioning) wings) and so is P2 (not all winged critters can fly), so our argument is valid but unsound.

Bad arguments

Later in our series we’ll look in depth at those arguments known as fallacies. These are reasoning gone wrong somewhere (although not always, as we’ll see), where the premises and conclusion(s) may seem plausible but where one or more mistakes have crept in (deliberately or otherwise). These errors are common enough that we can study them systematically.

Generalising

If we look again at the argument above, we can note that it would stay almost the same if we spoke of someone else. Likewise, it would work for any pair like "wings = flight". We can generalise it completely by removing most of the content as follows:

[INDENT]P1: A has property B;
P2: Anything with property B has property C;
C: Therefore, A has property C.[/INDENT]

Here "A" stands for "Hugo", "B" is "wings" and "C" is "flight". Going a step further, we could have:

[INDENT]P1: B;
P2: B implies C;
C: Therefore C.[/INDENT]

This time "B" is shorthand for the subject of the argument (Hugo) having the property B. This increasing level of generalisation is perhaps something that scares people off logic, but instead we just need to teach ourselves to read in a different way (as discussed previously).

Some other terminology to learn for use in philosophy occurs in our argument, which is alluded to above. Take P1:

  • Hugo has wings.

Here "Hugo" is the subject of this statement; that is, it tells us something about Hugo. The other information provides this detail; that is, the remark "has wings" (or "is a winged creature"). This property of Hugo (being a winged creature) is called the predicate. We term the combination of the two a proposition. We can take P2 as another example:

  • Critters with wings can fly.

This is a proposition with "critters with wings" as its subject and "flight" as its predicate. Similar arguments can be split up in the same way.

Quantifiers

In modern times, the study of logic changed significantly with the invention by Gottlob Frege (whom we’ll cover later) of the logical quantifiers. There are two: the existential quantifier, ∃, meaning "there exists"; and the universal quantifier, ∀, meaning "for all". These are also employed extensively by mathematicians and, as before, are merely new terminology to simplify and, more importantly, clarify propositions.

By way of an example, take a proposition like the following:

  • All men are mortal.

If we let M stand for the property of being mortal, we can write this as

  • ∀(x) Mx

Translated into so-called "everyday speech", this says that for all x (the "∀x" part) we can say x is mortal (the "Mx" part). Here x is used in the same way as in algebra, to stand in for something (in this case, men). If we wanted to instead say that there exists at least one man who is mortal, we would write

  • (∃x) Mx

The combination of these two quantifiers can clear up uncertainty in how we are supposed to read a proposition. Suppose we now take the following example:

  • Every wedded woman is married to a man.

We understand this as saying that being married for a woman means having a man as her husband (or a piece of paper noting as much, some suggest), but are we thinking of a particular man for a particular woman, as we would expect, or one man for all the women? After all, the latter sense would work for our proposition: one specific man (luckily or unluckily, depending perhaps on his perspective) could be married to all the women we call wedded. In this event, the proposition would still work. Which is it?

If we write the two possibilities using the quantifiers, the difference becomes plain. Let x be a woman, y a man, and M now the property of being married. In the first instance, we would have

  • (∀x)(∃y) Mxy

This says that for each individual woman there exists a man such that x is married to y. On the other hand:

  • (∃y)(∀x) Mxy

The order is different here, so now it says that there exists a man for all women such that x is married to y. By altering the ordering in our use of quantifiers we have changed the meaning, so we can employ either to explain which possibility we intend to speak about.

Depending on how deeply we wanted to delve, we could pick out more shades of meaning and hence use additional letters and quantifiers to make the proposition unambiguous. Nevertheless, the principle remains the same: we use these logical symbols to clarify, not to confuse and, like any other language, they take time to understand.

Deduction and Induction

Another point to make about our argument is that it is deductive; that is, from the information we are given (the premises) we deduce the conclusion - after the fashion of Sherlock Holmes, almost. The alternative to a deductive argument is an inductive one, leading to the famous problem of induction (which we’ll cover soon). An inductive argument is often called ampliative because it goes beyond (or amplifies) the information contained in the premises. Consider the following example:

[INDENT]P1: Hugo has wings;
P2: Every critter with wings we have seen can fly;
C: Therefore, Hugo can fly.[/INDENT]

This replaces our old P2 with a new version, according to which every instance thus far of a creature with wings was also a creature that can fly. Notice, however, that the conclusion this time does not follow from the premises unless we also assume something else:

[INDENT]P3: We have seen all the critters there are.[/INDENT]

This additional premise rescues the situation because P2 and P3 together are the equivalent of our old P2. Nevertheless, the argument in the form we had does not say that we have examined all the creatures there are and thus does not justify the conclusion as it stands. We have to assume something extra (P3) and make an inductive step from the particular facts we have about critters to a general statement (the conclusion). We’ll return to the problems for reasoning that induction appears to lead to later in our series.

Unpacking Arguments

It’s rare to find an argument as explicit as the one we’ve been looking at. Typically we have to unpack the informal form we find it in, drawing out the premises and conclusion(s). In this section we’ll take an example and see how the process unfolds.

Suppose someone said the following:

[INDENT]It’s my business what I do in my own home, not the government’s.[/INDENT]

We can try to take this claim apart to see how we might argue for or against it. To begin with, the implication seems to be that the government has no right to create legislation which impacts on our private lives. Thus:

[INDENT]P1: The public and private spheres of life are separate;
P2: What goes on in our homes is private;
C: Therefore, the government has no right to create legislation affecting what goes on in our homes in private.[/INDENT]

This gets at what was said but not in enough detail. The argument as it stands is invalid, because the conclusion does not follow from the premises; after all, it goes from a statement about the separation of public and private (which we could assume to be accurate for now) to an assertion regarding the lack of a right. We could add another premise to account for this:

[INDENT]P1: The public and private spheres of life are separate;
P2: The government may only legislate on public areas of life;
P3: What goes on in our homes is private;
C: Therefore, the government has no right to create legislation affecting what goes on in our homes in private.[/INDENT]

The argument now reads more plausibly but there remain some difficulties. We still go from a statement of what the government can or cannot do to the assertion that it lacks a right, so it seems our initial formulation was flawed here. We could alter the argument without it losing any force by changing the conclusion to "the government may not...", which leaves the sense unaltered but avoids this problematic issues of rights (something we consider later in our series). The resulting argument appears to be valid: P1 ensures that there is no overlap between public and private, which might have allowed the government some leeway; P2 tells us what the government may do; and P3 states that the home lies within the private sphere. It follows, then, that the government may not act upon the private sphere.

Now that we have a valid argument, we need to ask if it is sound. As we learned above, that means asking if the premises are true or not. Here we run aground very quickly. To start with P1, that there is no overlap between public and private is not clear at all and it is easy to think of situations that would fall into both (for example, if we were to assault someone in the privacy of our own home it would still be assault, for which public legislation exists; or if we smoke at home, should we be permitted to harm others with the smoke?). For P2, where and when the government may legislate is a function of the type of government we have. In particular, the prohibition from law-making in a specific area would have come from a government in the first place, so it seems reasonable to suppose that this could be changed or lifted. Lastly, we might agree that some or most of what occurs in our homes in private without conceding that every possible circumstance would fall under that rubric.

Our argument is thus valid but unsound. We would need to expand on it considerably to provide sub-arguments for our premises, which is beyond the scope of this introduction. Even so, we can see that this more formal approach has the effect of breaking a claim into smaller pieces, rendering it easier to investigate and evaluate. As before, the purpose of so doing is to clarify what has been said, not to confuse or complicate.

Laws of Logic

We rarely have to travel far in philosophical territory to hear talk of the "laws of logic", often accompanied by a suggestion that rejecting them is tantamount to insanity. They are not really so scary, however, nor inescapable. Traditionally there were three:

  • The Law of Identity
  • The Law of the Excluded Middle
  • The Law of Non-contradiction

The first says "A if and only if A"; or "Hugo has wings" if and only if "Hugo has wings". The second gives us "either A or not-A" (i.e. the negation of A), which means that either A holds or it does not, these being the only options. A proposition like "Hugo has wings" would therefore have to be either true or false, rather than an alternative (such as "undecided"). The last states "not A and not-A", which is just to say we cannot have A and not-A at the same time. In our example, that would mean "Hugo has wings" and "Hugo does not have wings" not both holding simultaneously.

These so-called laws have been challenged in relatively recent times. Intuitionists rejected the Law of the Excluded Middle (the most famous being Luitzen Brouwer, a Dutch mathematician who rewrote a host of mathematical proofs to remove reliance on it). A simpler example is the three-valued logic of von Neumann which allows for another possibility in addition to "true" or "false" when discussing a proposition: undecided (or undecidable). This is helpful when considering a proposition like "there is no A in the universe", for some A. We could easily show this to be false if we find a single instance of A somewhere, but to prove it true would require checking the entire universe at the same time (after all, we could look in one place and move on, only for an A to appear). It would seem to make sense to call a proposition like this undecidable.

The law of non-contradiction is discarded by dialethic logic (from di and alethic, meaning "two truths"), or dialetheism. The idea that we should challenge the convention that a proposition is either true or false (but not both) has a long history in philosophy. A more recent motivation came from sentences like "this statement is false". We’ll come back to this later in our series but we can examine it for a moment. If it is true that "this sentence is false", then it must be false; and, likewise, if it is false that "this sentence is false" then it must instead be true. This is the so-called liar paradox. Although we’ll return to some alternative analyses of it, one way to avoid the paradox is to accept that some propositions can be both true and false, violating the law of non-contradiction.

Lest it be thought that this example may indeed be a difficulty for philosophers but dialetheism does not really impact on the rest of us, consider a point on a doorframe. Is the point inside or outside the room adjacent? Since the door is the boundary between inside and out, we could meaningfully insist that the point is both. A proposition like "the point is outside the room" could then be both true and false, and this would apply similarly to a person stood in the doorway. Situations like this one involving boundaries are studied by dialetheists today.

There are many other possibilities and logics, with some people arguing that all the laws above should be rejected or else others added. As a result of these and other factors, there is no longer much insistence within philosophy on the laws of logic.

Logic and Philosophy

The value of logic in philosophy (or philosophical logic, to be more accurate) is thus quite plain: we can use it to take arguments apart and study their structure in more detail than a cursory glance would otherwise allow. We can also take a more formal approach to reasoning, which will be of great benefit to us as we proceed.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:46:49 +0000 07563a3fe3bbe7e3ba84431ad9d055af 3. Metaphysics 1 http://www.galilean-library.org/site/index.php/page/index.html/_/essays/introducingphilosophy/3-metaphysics-1-r20 Paul Newall (2004)

In the first instalment of our series we described metaphysics as the study of reality. In this article, we'll expand on these remarks and consider some of the ideas offered by philosophers in the past and today. Before then, however, we'll look at the origin of the term and what it means in more detail.

Metaphysics takes its name from the work of Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher, and literally means "after the physics"; legend has it that the Alexandrian librarians christened the writings thus because they followed his Physical Treaties. Since then metaphysics has come to be split into two sub-fields:

Ontology is the study of existence. It asks what there is, what it means to exist and what kind of things there are. These questions are important because we have all (probably) experienced occasions when we were sure something was there but found out later that it was just a dream, a trick of the eye or an over-active imagination. In short, things aren't always what they seem to be, so it makes sense to ask what reality really is.

Cosmology is the study of the nature of the universe (or cosmos, as the name suggests). It asks questions about what is possible, such as time travel and parallel or alternate universes. These ideas are of interest because we may be able to find some reasons why a suggestion from science fiction will or won't work before we spend our time studying the practicalities of flux capacitors.

Some historical perspectives:

Just as we saw in the first article in our series, there has been a good deal of controversy over the years with regard to metaphysics and its importance. When Aristotle was talking of reality he said that if there were no other thing making up our universe beyond what we often call the natural then natural science would be able to study it and hence be what he called the "first philosophy", or "first science". On the other hand, if there is something else, above and beyond nature, then its study must come before natural science.

What kinds of things could we mean by this "something else"? An obvious answer is of course God, but other philosophers have proposed ideas other than theological ones. Dualists, for example, suspect that the universe may be composed of two substances: mind and matter (and hence dual). Descartes was a famous philosopher who made this claim. Monists, conversely, suggested that in fact there is only one substance making up things (and hence mono). Berkeley, for instance, insisted that there were only ideas, whereas materialists consider that everything is composed of matter in some way. In both cases, the two substances of the Dualists are reduced to one.

Another issue to look at is the existence of things like numbers or symphonies. Is mathematics, say, invented or discovered? We sometimes want to say the latter because it seems that mathematics just had to be the way it is, but if that's the case then did it already exist as it is? We can also consider, as Popper did, the difference between the different things we might want to say exist: a symphony, for example, can only come about if it was written, stored in some form and played by an orchestra; nevertheless, it doesn't seem accurate to say that it is the score and the musicians. What can we say about the existence of such things and what can we remark about the way they are?

Once we've thought about what exists we can move on to asking questions about it. Can we separate substance from property? In other words, can we distinguish between that something is and what we can say about it? If so, what properties does matter have? By posing this problem long before our modern scientific approach could help them, some of the Greek philosophers were able to come up with the early atomic theory; Lucretius suggested that atoms made up our universe and proceeded to wonder what this meant for further investigation and whether he could explain what was already seen using his idea. Berkeley, for his part, tried to explain how it was that some things appeared to be solidly real if they were ultimately only composed of ideas in some way.

Other questions arose from Dualist ideas: if mind and matter are separate, how does the one influence the other? If there is really only one substance, how is it that our minds appear often to be distinct from our bodies? Perhaps there are different ways of thinking about our minds and our bodies that employ different concepts and hence lead to a confusion?

Another concept analysed by metaphysics was causality, the idea that every event has a cause. Is it possible to justify this except to say that so far we know of no exception? Aristotle looked into the problem and it is still considered today.

Some philosophers were hostile to metaphysics. Hume famously declared:

Quote

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.


To be fair to him, though, we should note that he had his own ideas about how we might decide what was worth considering and what wasn't, and some of the writing around in his day was obtuse enough to make his remark quite accurate.

The idea that only information gained from mathematics or the sciences was of any value was taken up by the group of philosophers centred in the Austrian capital and called the Vienna Circle. Some of their ideas would become known as positivism and suggested that metaphysical speculation would, along with theology and superstition, be replaced by positive scientific understanding. The rejection was especially strong in Comte and the early Carnap, who could find no use for it at all except to hold back the advance of science. Wittgenstein, too, had little time for metaphysics throughout the better part of his writings

Kant also argued that metaphysics could not help us, but for different reasons. He used the term to mean our attempts to study what lay beyond the natural or apparent world and suggested that even though this realm may exist, we can say nothing about what transcends our abilities.

In recent times the rise of scientism - the idea that only science can tell us anything about the universe - has led to a decline in metaphysics in some opinions and the use of the word in a negative sense; "more metaphysical clap-trap, Hugo" is a popular refrain in my locale, for example.

Why study metaphysics?

If metaphysics is out of fashion for many people, why should we waste our time looking into it? Well, some philosophers think that metaphysical choices or assumptions come before anything else we do. Suppose, for instance, we agree that the natural world is "all there is" and proceed to use science to find things out. If science is subsequently successful, is it because there really is only the natural world, or for some other reason? Can we justify our assumption in the first place or only later on by pointing to its success?

Many of the interesting areas in modern philosophy that we'll come on to later in the series are very much concerned with metaphysics, like the problem of realism or the philosophy of mathematics and mind. Generally speaking metaphysics is involved in questions where many avenues of philosophy meet, such as talking about truth or cognitive abilities. Before we even ask these things, though, are we not presuming that other people exist to answer them? If so, we are using ideas about what there is and what it's like - metaphysics. Later in our series we'll return to metaphysics again for a further discussion.


Dialogue the Second

The Scene: Our three friends have adjourned to a local café to continue their musings. Trystyn has let the word "metaphysics" slip and Steven smells blood.

Steven: So what's this metahooha anyway? (He sips a cappuccino.)

Trystyn: (Indicating the coffee...) Savage.

Anna: I thought it was to do with what there is in the world...

Trystyn: Right. It was a part of philosophy that looked at what there is and what it might be like.

Steven: (He splutters his drink in comical fashion...) Whoa! Hold your horses, professor—I think you just talked through your hat.

Anna: Was?

Trystyn: Yeah - in the old days they made classical divisions between areas of philosophy but these days there's a lot of crossing over going on and metaphysical ideas are in use or under study everywhere.

Steven: (Wagging his finger...) If I may... I don't think we can overlook the fact that you just allowed your philosophicatoring to overstep its bounds, my dear fellow.

Trystyn: (Bows ornately.)

Anna: How do you mean?

Steven: I already allowed that philosophy was different from science and had a few things going for it - not many, mind you (he winks) - but this metafoolishness is plain nonsense. Science studies what there is and what it's like, whether it be physics or anything else.

Trystyn: I agree.

Steven: Um... you do?

Anna: I think he's going to say that it uses metaphysical assumptions, like anything else. I mean, don't you have to presume that the world exists, is orderly - and so on - before you can start experimenting and working with theories?

Steven: Science works—that's all I need to know.

Trystyn: (Nodding...) I'll have to point you out to my friends Joel and Simon. (He smiles.) Let's consider a problem that'll shed some light on this point: suppose we're trying to figure out why this sugar falls if I drop it. (He takes a spoonful of sugar and slowly pours it onto the table.) You say that a force of some kind is causing it to do so and after thinking about it some more we find that it seems like a plausible idea. We could even do some tests and find out that things happen in accordance with this.

Now: can we say that the force we guessed at must really exist, or only that "sugar falls when you drop it" seems to work and is probably a good theory? In the first case we're saying something about what there is, but in the second we're just talking about what works so far.

Some philosophers are trying to figure out if these two ways of thinking (and others) are really so different and what their consequences could be. No amount of science, though, can help us decide.

Anna: So the results of science can be used to investigate metaphysical ideas?

Trystyn: Yes. Different scientists have different views on what they assume before they start their studies.

Steven: I must be missing something here because I don't see why I should care about all this. (He dips his finger in the sugar.)

Trystyn: You don't have to, but I think it's an interesting question.

Anna: If you don't care it's like you've given up trying to find out about the way things really are in favour of just looking for what will work. I can't understand why you'd do that. (She shrugs.)

Steven: Maybe I think that what works and what's real are the same thing?

Trystyn: Perhaps you're right, but how are you going to explain it without referring to what you assume there is and how it will influence what science can say about it?

(There is a pause.)

Think of it another way. Suppose I tell you to go and investigate the science behind time travel - what would you do?

Steven: I don't believe in it, I'm afraid.

Anna: Exactly.

Trystyn: (He smiles.) Right. Before we even get to working out how we'll go back in time and telling ourselves to bet on a bodybuilder being elected to govern, we ask if the prospect itself makes sense. Why spend all that time (he winks) and effort on an idea if it's impossible in the first place? Instead, we think of the metaphysics: are there reasons why time travel can or can't be done, besides the practical ones? For example, we could think of all the difficult situations Marty McFly got into and ask what they would really result in before we need to go looking for a DeLorean. If it turns out that the thing just can't be done then metaphysics will have saved the scientist a lot of work.

Steven: I guess i see your point, but don't we do that anyway?

Trystyn: Sure, but no-one said you had to just do metaphysics. In fact, do you fancy another cappuccino?

Steven: Hell yes.

Trystyn and Anna: Savage.

Curtain. Fin.]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:41:35 +0000 cf67355a3333e6e143439161adc2d82e