The problem of qualitative change is how an object that has a particular property at one time can be numerically identical with an object that does not have that property at a different time without violating the principle of the indiscernability of identicals.[1] (This is distinct from the problem of mereological change: can object that has particular parts at one time be likewise identical with different parts at a different time?) There would be a very significant philosophical conclusion should we be unable to solve this, namely that we cannot make literally correct statements of the form ‘the banana changed from green to yellow’. Of course it is a very open possibility that all such statements are indeed false and that their efficacy is just that of a convenient shorthand where the fiction of persisting entities is used to make sense of a world whose constituents are in constant flux.[2]

The question of whether objects have temporal parts is not one that can be answered with any credibility here, since there are so many open metaphysical questions prior to it that must inform and shape our approach. An analysis of change depends, not only on one’s theories of identity and individuation, but also on “one’s theory of objects, one’s theory of time and one’s theory of properties.”[3] The aim of this essay therefore is merely to describe some of the considerations against temporal parts theory as a solution to the problem of change. It shall be claimed that while objects could consist of temporal parts, by its very nature that theory cannot explain the phenomena of qualitative change.

Pedurantism is based upon a four-dimensional object ontology, the fourth dimension being time. It holds thatfour-dimensional objects are bounded in four dimensions just as three-dimensional objects are bounded in three dimensions. In order to be extended along the fourth dimension such objects cannot be wholly present in a single moment.[4] It also holds that four-dimensional objects may be divided into temporal parts,just as three-dimensional objects may be divided into spatial parts.

So for Perdurantism all objects are in fact scattered objects. An object’s persistence is the continuation of its series of ‘time-slices’ across the temporal dimension, and it is these parts that are thepossessors of properties, rather than objects as wholes. Two consequences of this are first, that the theory depends upon a rough analogy between space and time in order to make sense of the idea of temporal parts. And second, that Perdurantism stands opposed to endurance theories of persistence. This is because Endurantism has a three-dimensional object ontology whereby persisting objects are wholly-present at every moment of time that they exist, and it is such wholes that are the possessors of properties. So while the endurantist can say that the champagne glass exists in at 2012 just as it existed at 2011, the perdurantist must describe the parts of the glass in a time indexed way- the glass exists from 2011 to 2012.[5]

The first question for Perdurantism then, is why would we think that there are temporally-scattered objects? There are theories that can support the existence of temporal parts, such as relativity in physics and determinism in metaphysics- and of course the B theory of time.[6] But there is no decisive reason for believing they exist, nor do the theories we have make them make them an adequate explanation of change. What then is the supposed advantage of this counter-intuitive theory? According to Mark Heller, Perdurantism solves the problem of change because the parts that possess contradictory properties are numerically distinct and therefore the principle of the indiscernability of identicals remains intact. But to argue in this way is merely to assume that objects over time are numerically distinct parts, when we could equally assume that they are identical and that we are using the principle incorrectly.[7] Indeed, as David Oderberg points out, the principle was always meant to refer to a number of entities at the same time.[8]

The second issue is how we are to understand the notion of a temporal part, seeing as no-one could directly experience one. Here Perdurantism faces a dilemma because it cannot stretch the analogy with spatial parts too far, but as it loosens it we lose what grasp we have on the notion. If the relationship between temporal parts and four-dimensional objects is the same as that between spatial parts and three-dimensional objects, then the theory faces the problem that its parts are only defined in terms of the objects they belong to, which is again to assume that, rather than to explain how, objects persist over time.[9]

Yet Heller himself admits that there are significant disanalogies between space and time, the most important of which is that time has a single direction.[10] Passing ‘through’ time is only ever the process of what was future becoming what is past. We have no experience of anything else, nor any explanation of why phenomena present themselves to us this way if the tensed aspect is illusory. If we as persons are four-dimensional worm-like objects why did we not develop in such a way as to perceive all of our spatial states ‘at once’ like the Tralfamadorians of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five? For four-dimensionalism to be plausible, there should at least be a hypothesis enjoined to it that makes sense of these problems. All of this only detracts from our understanding of what temporal parts are; the notion therefore appears vague and contrived.

Another substantial issue is that Perdurantism’s ‘solution’ to the problem of change is in effect to insist that the problem is insolvable (of course this is a completely respectable response, so long as it is not misrepresented as a solution). On this understanding, because it is the parts and not the objects that possess intrinsic properties, qualitative change only ever takes place in a derivative, illusory sense.[11]

Related to this is the issue that Perdurantism may rest upon a category mistake. For the perdurantist all objects are ‘changing’ all of the time, whether or not their properties are. This means that objects are involved in events throughout their existence. Indeed it seems to say that objects are just events, which is extensionally equivalent with the view of process philosophers that our concept of substance (i.e. some thing which persists) is derivative of that of process/event. But as Brian Lombard points out, this cannot be true if “the very idea of an event is the idea of a change in some physical object.”[12] Jonathan Lowe calls this the category “mistake of treating persisting objects as if they were processes.”[13] Even so, process philosophy is a very underdeveloped research area and might not prove to be such a mistake after all. But until such time as a more coherent formulation of the doctrine can be given, or that we have a much better case for a four-dimensional ontology, the theory will remain too counter-intuitive to be accepted.

Oderberg claims that Perdurantism is not a theory of change but a theory of replacement of one thing by another, different thing.[14] He explains this is with the following illustration. For the perdurantist a four-dimensional worm-like object can be green at the far end and red at the near end (presumably this is the ‘textbook example’ of the ripening tomato). But there is no change from green to red since the respective sections of the worm are static and always retain those colour properties. Remaining partially green and partially red can hardly be equated with change, since nothing was wholly green nor is anything now wholly red.[15] This is because change is an inherently dynamic concept. As we saw above, time is very different from space in that it manifests such dynamism. The primary form of such dynamism is the motion that we experience in us and all around us. All qualitative change that we experience takes place through the vehicle of motion. And the processes of motion, by definition requires not only a spatial field but also the dynamics of temporality which temporal parts cannot possess.[16]

Another related dilemma for Perdurantism concerns the size of the most fundamental temporal parts. Katherine Hawley raises the common-sense objection, how“can instantaneous stages instantiate the properties and satisfy the predicates we associate with ordinary objects?”[17] Moreover, how such entities, given that they have zero duration, be sorts of things that could enter into relations with one another?Heller agrees with David Lewis that temporal parts each have a temporal duration. They abruptly begin to exist and cease to exist. Because they are so transient they cannot ‘do’ all of the things that people can do -far from it- any macroscopic event at all has to be composed of many stages.[18] But if the stages are not ultimately instantaneous but have a certain duration, how is it that time can pass within them? Since, as we have just seen, the passing of time is something essentially non-spatial which happens to spatial things, how can the endurantist understand time passing within temporal parts, modelled as they are upon spatial parts? Here we have the decisive point against Perdurantism: that the parts themselves cannot be capable of change, or else they would be subject to the same problem that is allegedly solved by their existence, which leads into a vicious regress.[19]

Having now dismissed Perdurantism, an alternative account should be proposed (only a brief sketch of which can be given here). Although this account is based on a three-dimensional object ontology, it is not endurantist because it shares with Perdurantism the denial that objects change with respect to their intrinsic properties. Rather than being a solution to the problem of change it is an alternative dissolution- in a broadly Wittgensteinian sense. This approach comes from Michael Jubien who recognises, as Hawley does, that “the root cause of these problems is the inflexible nature of the identity relation… it is the insistence on identity between objects wholly present at different times which gives rise to the problem of change”.[20] The account does not deny that objects are wholly present at different times. Instead it denies that the relation that holds between them before and after a change is one of numerical identity.

The only reason we call an object which undergoes a change the same object is that the majority of its original features remain unchanged. So shouldn’t we be more concerned with the persistence of particular properties rather than with objects? We are misled by our everyday reference to ‘the’ object at t₁ and ‘the’ object at t₂ into thinking that they are strictly identical, but there ultimately is not an adequate philosophical explanation for how that can be. When we perceive qualitative change the object at t₁ and at t₂ are two different objects- its identity does not survive the change, but they still have features in common. In addition, new properties are instantiated only as the old object ceases to be and a new object comes into existence. According to Jubien, the relation that holds between the two such objects is one of ‘relevant similarity’ rather than identity. For Jubien, there is a particular form of this relation for what we ordinarily term ‘persisting objects’ (but aren’t really), namely the ‘same-o-as’ relation (where ‘o‘ is the type of object).[21]

Although objects typically persist through time, nothing actually endures a change in its intrinsic properties. Although we are not able to identify matter when it is independent of form, we have no reason to suppose that the constituent matter of the object at t₁ is destroyed and/or replaced with new matter in the object at t₂. So the matter probably survives qualitative change in a loose sense, and the new object usually instantiates some of the same properties as before (some properties will be essential to the object’s identity as an object of a particular type).

To sum up, we have identified numerous problems with Perdurantism, only one of which is shared by my interpretation of Jubien’s account, namely that its ‘solution’ to the problem of change is in effect to insist that the problem is insolvable- an object does not retain its identity through qualitative change. The problems with Perdurantism include the following: attempting to use it as a theory to explain qualitative change leads into a vicious regress (there would have to be temporal parts of temporal parts ad infinitum); the notion of temporal parts is overly vague and contrived; it is extensionally equivalent with the (probably) incoherent doctrine of process philosophy; it is unlikely anything of brief enough duration to function as a temporal part could instantiate the necessary properties or bear the necessary relations; and there aren’t even any good arguments for believing that objects could be divided up into temporal parts. Given that Jubien’s account has at least as much explanatory scope and power as Perdurantism, and that the latter has all these additional problems, on standard philosophical grounds the former theory is to be preferred. In conclusion therefore, at least insofar as the problem of change, we have no reason to believe that material objects possess temporal parts. Whether such entities will be more decisively suggested by the progress of science and by research on process theories remains open for the philosophers of the future.

Bibliography

Hawley, Katherine, [2002], ‘Selections from How Things Persist‘, In: Haslanger, S. & Kurtz, R. M. (eds.), Persistence: Contemporary Readings, (2006), Cambridge (MA), Bradford Books, pp. 119-33

Heller, Mark, [1990], ‘Temporal Parts of Four-Dimensional Objects’, From The Ontology of Physical Objects, Cambridge University Press, Ch. 1; Reprinted in: Metaphysics: An Anthology, (1999), Kim, Jaegwon, & Sosa, Ernest (eds.), Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 312-26

Jubien, Michael, (1997), Contemporary Metaphysics, Oxford, Blackwell

Lowe, E. J., (2002), A Survey of Metaphysics, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Kim, Jaegwon, & Sosa, Ernest (eds.), (1991), The Blackwell Companion To Metaphysics, Oxford, Blackwell

Oderberg, David, S. (2004), ‘Temporal Parts and the Possibility of Change’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 69, (3), pp. 686-708

References

[1] Lowe, (2002), p. 41; the principle that for two things to be identical they must be alike in all their properties.

[2] This is the general position taken in the tradition of Process Philosophy, of which the most notable representatives are Heraclitus and Whitehead.

[3] Smith, Quentin, ‘Change’, In: Kim & Sosa, (1991), p. 84

[4] Heller, [1990], p. 314; cf. Lowe, (2002), p. 49

[5] Heller, [1990], p. 314, p. 314

[6] The B theory of time states that tensed statements cannot be true because time does not ‘flow’. It is often said this is supported by the theory of relativity because that involves conceiving of time as a static, extra dimension of space.

[7] Oderberg, (2004), p.690; cf. Lowe, (2002), p. 42

[8] Oderberg, (2004), p.691

[9] Lowe, (2002), p. 54

[10] Heller, [1990], p. 314

[11] Lowe, (2002), p. 46

[12]Lombard, L. B., ‘Event Theory’, In: Kim & Sosa (eds.), (1991), p. 142

[13] Lowe, (2002), pp. 52-3

[14] Oderberg, (2004), p. 702

[15] Oderberg, (2004),p. 706

[16] Oderberg, (2004), pp.707-8

[17] Hawley, [2002], p. 124

[18] Heller, [1990], p. 312

[19] Lowe, (2002), pp. 46 & 52

[20] Hawley, [2002], pp. 120-1

[21] Jubien, (1997), p. 74

The central claim in the positivist approach to the place of morality is that the law draws its authority from the legitimacy of the law-making body and that this has nothing to do with morality. So long as certain conditions (varying between philosophers) are fulfilled, such as that the laws this body makes are generally respected, that they are made known for citizens to learn if they wish, and that the specific law was passed according to the correct procedures in that system, it qualifies as an authoritative law. Another way of putting this is that it is the form of the law, solely those factors that are extrinsic to that law itself which determine its authority.

This contrasts with the Natural Law position that the authority of a particular law is dependent not only upon this form but upon the content also.[1] This is why natural lawyers claim that a law prohibits or instructs something in a way that offends grossly against the moral order apprehensible to the human conscience it should be struck down. This defining debate of jurisprudence is much more than a problem of correct terminology; it will be said by the natural lawyer that what the positivist accepts as ‘law’ is in many cases merely legislation, but the real disagreement is whether legislation can be authoritative when separated from morality.

In the following it will be argued that while the positivist critique makes sense of important practical features of the law, a comprehensive analysis must recognise that the rational demands of the Law are prior to the contingencies of any human legal system. The contemporary Natural Law position espoused by John Finnis is followed, and it is shown that he effectively rebuts two key arguments made in favour of the separability of law and morality.

The first thing that needs to be made clear is that for the purposes of this essay it will be assumed that a form of moral realism is true. This is for three reasons: since the Holocaust positivists have largely stopped appealing to moral scepticism for justification and now their central claim tends to be the logical separability of law and morality; forms of moral realism are very defensible today and there is significant enough agreement about the fundamental values of morality for us to assess law-making in moral terms; and it is well outside the scope of the essay to assess the plausibility of moral theories.

The chief reason why natural lawyers insist that the body of the law is necessarily moral is that articulated by Lon Fuller (though he is not representative of the tradition): the law is conceived of as an inherently purposive institution. Statements of law cannot be value free because they exist for normative reasons.[2] The historical reason why there are, and the rational legitimisation of, human legal systems is the existence of a law that exists independently of human institutions. This Law is based upon intrinsic goods and valuable practices which society must respect. A legal system is a necessity because it enables a human community to regulate the pursuit of this common good to all. In legal disputes, appeals to equity and the ‘spirit of the law’ are therefore appeals to this higher law from which that particular legal system derives its authority.

Under this Natural Law understanding, the community –through equal access to the faculty of reason– rises to legitimise the legal system, whereas for the positivist, legal authority is enforced from the government down onto the people. While in both cases the role of the law is heteronymous –acting upon people from outside– the positivist understanding is more susceptible to illiberal abuse by a government. This means that Positivism has practical weaknesses compared to Natural Law: it lacks a systematic drive to improve the standard of justice in the law and is unable to defend individuals against inequitable decisions that appear legally sound.

Positivist theories commonly accept Jeremy Bentham’s distinction between descriptive and normative jurisprudence, and that Natural Law is incorrect to focus so much on the latter- how the law should be. A common line of positivist argument is then to insist that these two areas be kept separate, that the former is adequate to the task of jurisprudence, and that morality has no place in it. This reduction of the law to a purely social phenomenon has been called the social thesis.

Joseph Raz defends what he calls the ‘strong’ variant of the social thesis: that legal validity is derived only from value-neutral social facts.[3] The ‘weak’ variant which he says is defended by ‘soft’ positivists such as H. L. A. Hart, does claim that legal validity is derived solely from social facts but concedes that in every functioning legal system at least some content will be dependent on matters of value. Raz says that this goes too far and threatens the coherence of Positivism. Yet he does allow that agents’ intentions which are based upon moral considerations are judicially relevant, since they remain reasons for their actions.[4]

Raz explains how the strong social thesis works in terms of what he calls the sources thesis. In this he claims that there is one necessary and sufficient condition for legal validity of a law, a source which he calls the ‘social condition’. This is a social fact that determines the content and existence from the legislation and all the necessary interpretative materials without moral argument (but not without moral feelings etc on the part of the drafters).[5]

Raz provides a two-pronged argument for this, which can be presented as a cumulative case in terms of inference to best explanation. Put thus, the claim is that Raz’s sources thesis has the best combination of explanatory scope and power of any hypothesis for explaining the given data of legal validity. The first part is that the thesis explains and systematises three sets of distinctions: that between good decisions according to the legal system and those according to an ethic; that between applying and creating (or ‘discovering’) the law; and that between settled and unsettled law.[6] It is the specifically legal skills of judges which are used in the former category of each of the pairs, so if we accept these distinctions, this carries the implication that morality is extrinsic to the law.[7]

Secondly, not only does the thesis explain these distinctions but it also captures a crucial insight into the nature of the law that is missed by Natural Law explanations. In a democratic state all citizens have the opportunity to change the law via elections, so as they are responsible for justifying the law, it would be wrong of them to excuse their non-conformity by challenging that justification. Indeed, it is a crucial characteristic of the law that each citizen is equally bound to its publically ascertainable standards, and it is likely to cause wide practical problems (perhaps even anarchy) if this function is disregarded.[8]

This second point is neither as important, nor as credible as the first. Even if there were a true democracy it would not mean that anyone would have to agree completely with the outcome, indeed, there is nothing about a democracy that implies that it is unsusceptible to human error. But it is obvious that in most cases there is not a true democracy and minority concerns are likely to be left aside. Moreover, it is such concerns that natural lawyers often point to when illustrating the necessity of moral principles, particularly rights, to legal validity, so it is disingenuous of Raz to preclude these cases.

Even so, his first point here does present a good case that when moral ideas or feelings are involved in the creating of a statute or legal a precedent (as is common where a decision is made on a previously unregulated dispute), the principles involved do not thereby become part of the body of the law. Since those ideas or feelings are not employed in the function of legal argument, they are accidental rather than essential features of the way the law develops. And given the observations made here about the actual functioning of legal systems, it does seem a simpler explanation of why laws are in fact valid than to insist that they need underpinning from a natural order.

There is, however, a much bigger problem with this claim, and this is how there can be a value-free jurisprudence when it is based upon social facts pertaining to human agency, which is a phenomenon to which value-judgements are inherently tied. Moreover, the suggestion that the law ought to be value neutral is itself a moral position (albeit an incoherent one). The only choice we have in this matter is which conceptions of the good will be employed in the law. The attempt to expurgate conceptions of the good will only mean that one ends up sneaking in through the back door, which is far worse than having a particular conception of the good explicitly employed in the law, since at least that one would be subject to rational moral debate, and democratically agreed. And ultimately, legal decisions could not be justified in value neutral terms because the validity of the law has clear and objective normative consequences- we ought to obey it.

Yet Raz does have a substantial response to this charge, he says that “Since one may know what the law is without knowing if it is justified, there must be a possibility of making legal statements not involving commitment to its justification.”[9] To show this he employs the concept of ‘statements from a point of view’, which have become known as detached legal statements. Such statements capture valid legal conduct in an expressionistic sense, i.e. they do not attempt to describe people’s beliefs, attitudes or actions (even those directed upon the law). Insofar as they are acting in their professional capacity, the speaker is not committed to such normative beliefs.[10]

Raz describes what these statements achieve with the example of an omnivore giving advice to a vegetarian about what the latter has reason to avoid doing (or in this case ‘eating’). Although the omnivore does not himself believe that there is a reason for the vegetarian not to eat the thing, it makes perfect sense for him to speak to the latter about what they have reason not to do from their own point of view.[11] And in lieu of this, it seems that Raz’s first argument for separability is a robust one.

Raz’s second argument takes a reductio ad absurdum form and makes a stronger claim still- that it would be impossible for morality to be a necessary condition for the identification of what is lawful. He points out that if it were, not only would proper laws backed by the legitimate authority but deemed immoral have to be recognised as unauthoritative, but morally sound rules originating from ancillary institutions (identical in form to the legal institution but without its authority to be positing laws) would be indistinguishable from law proper. This illustrates that it is social facts about the legal system- namely that the laws it identifies are recognised as such, and not any independent moral judgement which determines the authority of the law.[12]

This argument is delicate and difficult to summarise. It seems bizarre to think, given the difference in the intent of those drafting the different rules, that it’s logically necessary to recognise the rules of related organisations as law. But his point is unrelated to the issue of intent; the only thing we are using to distinguish those institutions is that the true legal one does have legally validating social conditions for its rules. But because this argument hinges upon Raz’s concept of the social condition, if the sources thesis fails then so too does this.

Finnis’ rendering of Natural Law theory aims to clarify what he perceives as a widespread misrepresentation of it in the positivist tradition. Although it can only be touched on briefly here, his theory is simple enough to show why Raz’s detached legal statements do not work and the why his arguments clearly do not defeat the need for a normative understanding of the law.

Finnis says that the problem with Raz’s ‘statements from a point of view’ is that it fails to differentiate between significantly different types of points of view. Raz accepts that any kind of law properly speaking is one that the agent internally recognises as obligatory as an at least presumptively moral ideal. Because this is the most fundamental point of view from which the law can be analysed, it is this viewpoint that should be central to our description of the validity of law.

Taking this central viewpoint against that of Raz, Finnis then refines the ‘presumably moral understanding’ of obligation into one of practical reasonableness- ‘practical reason’ being the human faculty which is prior to deciding the content of moral norms.[13] It can then be seen that within the currently central viewpoint of the agent is the even more central viewpoint of the practically reasonable agent in the situation of being obligated by the law.[14] Now “the theorist cannot identify the central case of the practical viewpoint which he uses to identify the central case of his subject-matter, unless he decides what the requirements of practical reasonableness really are, in relation to this whole aspect of human affairs and concerns.”[15]

That is to say that the attempt made by Raz to escape the need for value judgements by focusing on a particular case in which legal statements are made, collapses in on itself to necessitate the presence of value judgements in the law. This is because the most central viewpoint from which the law is described itself requires normative conclusions to be made on the basis of practical reasonableness. In Finnis’ theory, these are basic principles of practical reasonableness based upon universally intrinsic goods for human beings that are aimed at the realisation and protection of the common good.

Does this mean that laws which aren’t strictly moral are not to be respected? Even if it did, despite that it would cause practical problems, it is begging the question against Natural Law to assume that such rules would be lawful- it is no reason why the position should be wrong. Finnis, however, explains that the true role of this Natural Law (his principles) is to evaluate human laws, not to describe or explain them.[16] Thus, while positivists allege that natural lawyers do not accept that law, described in the peripheral sense of human legal systems, is in fact law, this is not so. When natural lawyers speak of law they most often mean this in the focal sense of the word, which denotes this evaluative rather than descriptive function.

How then do natural lawyers approach the moral justification of the law? In cases where grievances arise which question the equitability (or moral acceptability otherwise) of an area of the law (in the peripheral meaning), Law (in the focal meaning) is considered in the abstract, as an ideal against which actual legal systems are measured.[17] It is only when a law that prohibits or instructs something which offends grossly against the moral order apprehensible to the universal human conscience, and/or where the effects of compliance would be worse than those of non-compliance, that natural lawyers claim it shouldn’t be complied with. In most cases the appropriate course of action is to push for a change in the law through the normal democratic means.

In conclusion, Finnis’ restatement of the Natural Law demonstrates that positivist critique of the claim that law and morality are inseparable fails through both misunderstanding the function of Natural Law theories, and the basic universality of practical reason. On this basis it is more reasonable than not to claim that Natural Law better explains both pragmatic features of legal systems and the relationship between descriptive and evaluative concepts within them.

Bibliography

Davies, Howard & Holdcroft, David, (1991), Jurisprudence: Texts and Commentary, London, Butterworths

Finnis, John, (1980), Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Raz, Joseph, (1975), Practical Reason and Norms, Hutchinson & Co

Raz, Joseph, (1979), The Authority of Law, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Tebbit, Mark, (2005), Philosophy of Law: An Introduction, 2^nd Edition, Abingdon (UK), Routledge

References

I will begin by delineating the core tenants of skepticism, specifically exploring the aim and ends of quietude, before discussing the dilemmas and consequence of these tenants, such as the charge of apraxia brought against skepticism. I will then argue that the skeptical approach ultimately tames progress by providing a regulatory methodology that corrects for stipulative errors of judgment, but does not directly contribute to progress due to its inherent inability to assert any original facticities of value. To conclude, I will take the position that the skeptical approach (though not explicitly stated by the skeptics themselves) is vital in the development of a critical consciousness, that its methodology and tropes provide an analytical framework and methods of deconstruction and reduction that render dogmatic facts, semantics and values as subjective instruments, rather than true facts.

Skepticism can be roughly summarized as a non-committal mental attitude resulting from the rejection of all judgments of appearances by way of a meticulous method of reasoning yielded by the employment of modes, otherwise considered to be a tool-box of tropes. (Ch.I.8) The Pyrrhonists refer to skepticism as an ability to reach a state of suspension or equipolence of judgment, which they characterize as ataraxia, the quietude or tranquility of the soul, regarding the probabilities of assertions. (Ch.I.10) They hold that knowledge gained by way of appearances and judgment always defers to some a priori or alternative criteria for judgment and thus can be refuted using a variety of critical modes or rhetorical tropes to expose errors in judgment. (Ch.I.14) The criteria in question is always threefold, involving the agent, the instrument, and the “according to what” or presentation of objects. (Ch. I.21)

In the first place, there is no universal plenum of agency which is common to all; in this way each man possesses a subjective perspective. Thus we encounter a perspectivism or subjectivity of judgment which explains the relativity of appearances. In the second place, there is no systematic treatment or instrument which does not rely on sense or intellect. What is illusory or apprehensible cannot be decided by either sense or intellect or both since the only criterion for judging require sense, the very criterion in question. The skeptics argue that sense is variable to taste and is therefore an inadequate measure of perception alone. (Ch. II. 50) On the other hand, employing intellect to ascertain judgments is equally fruitless since there is no way to apprehend its existence.(Ch. II. 57) Furthermore, even if the intellect were granted to be apprehensible, there is a diversity of opinion regarding how to judge according to it; this provides no standard for deciding among intellects and which should be preferred.(Ch. II. 58) Conjoining sense and intellect, the skeptics show that all judgments rely on one of these two and that is impossible to judge by both without relying on one or the other asserted either hypothetically or through circular reasoning.(Ch. II. 63) Thirdly, there is no way to decide according to which presentation objects should be judged since all presentations are the result of impressions derived from the external world of which we have no access; this is because the intellect receives presentations by way of the senses and the senses by way of their own subjective ‘affections’. (Ch. II. 70-75) In this way no answer could sufficiently address questions of external realities and values, therefore they eschewed speculation altogether. (DT 42-4) By appealing to external appearances for justification, they establish an inductive framework for approaching problems that relies on the association of phenomenon to establish probabilities. In many ways their approach parallels much of Hume’s intuitions and serves as the foundation for modern science.

While the skeptics disavow dogmatism—truth claims and necessary values—they are not relativistic or solipsistic, nor do they reject the possible existence of truth. They recognize that just because truth cannot be known does not infer its nonexistence. Their approach is much more pragmatic. The skeptics want acknowledge the turgidity of the subjective perspective and the conceptual structure contained within which distorts appearances. They want to save appearances by stripping them down, exposing all biases, and reveal the confounding accounts and inconsistences given the probability of any given account. They seek to reconcile the subjective deficiencies of judgment and experience and, moreover, the schism that separates the mind from the world in a way that allows one to live as ‘accurately’ as possible, probabilistically speaking. This requires challenging loaded concepts and non-evident assertions put forth by others.

In this way the skeptic’s offensive target is all reasoning and dogmatism. Every assertion can be justified by some form of logic, but the skeptics exploit not only the logical structure of logic, but the very premises or propositions which that structure relies on for support. The various tropes they employ expose the frailty of inductive inference by rendering the implicit assumptions embedded within the context of a given assertion. In his book In Defense of Truth, Goodman outlines how the skeptics arrived at their various tropes or modes, which they vehemently maintained were not criterion for truth and are equally refutably, but merely procedures for exposing fallacious assumptions. Goodman illustrates this point by referencing the debate between epistemologists and logicians regarding conclusions possessing embedded premises, or general truths being composed of particular truths. (DT 29-34) This redundancy, as Aristotle once declared, leads to absurdity. The Stoics and Skeptics together seemed to agree on many of the same basic approaches for these problems in logic but, whereas the stoics would posit postulations of their schemata that could be applied to assertions, the skeptics refrained from the idea of giving themselves to any fixed criterion of truth. The skeptics believed that every method or mode or schemata was not safe from scrutiny and could be subjected to the same blind reasoning as any other, and thus they were faced with the famed modal tri-lemma that exposed the circularity, infinite regress or hypothetical dogmatism of any given argument. The viability of formal logics lie in its usefulness as a tool to be employed within a diversity of contexts given a diversity of assumptions. (DT 39) The concern many have when they encounter the sentiments of skepticism is that there is not a clear criteria for how to live, no virtues or principles to really speak of: only the state of quietude and ephetic equipollence with all things. For the skeptics, there is no ‘art of living’, for that would presume the consideration of valuations, and moreover that these virtues are apprehensible.(Ch. XXV.239-51)

There is nothing necessarily true to speak of, nothing that really demands attention for the skeptic, (saving their end of course, quietude) for being disposed on such matters would lead to perturbedness. The closest they arrive is when they answer the question of whether skepticism has a doctrine rule, to which they reply that they do in fact have such a rule, which may come as a surprise. They define it very precisely, and precariously, as a procedure which, conforming to appearance, follows a ‘certain line of reasoning’ that indicates how to live rightly, in a non-virtuous sense, and tends to enable one to suspend thought. (Ch. I. 17) They appeal not to any assertions of their own, but to externalities, such as evident appearances, the social artifacts contained within cultural context, and a vague notion of ‘instinctive feelings’ which they empower to override all other asserted opinions.(Ch.I.17) In this reply they place heavy emphasis on the role of appearances as a guiding rule given how much their teachings repudiate any ‘given account’ made of assertions regarding reality.(Ch. I. 19-20) Their criterion of the four fold life appeals to appearances quite heavily, relying on the guidance of nature, adherence to laws and customs, constraint of the passions#, and instruction in the arts. (Ch.XI. 23-4) The first two are oriented towards the external world, whereas the last two, pertaining to the passions and arts, are oriented internally, requiring self-conscious control or radical, adhoc creativity and imagination.

The dilemma with the skepticism, however, is that they use language and rhetoric to posit their entire philosophy, never criticizing whether the premises and formulas they employ are otiose, notions such as doubt, suspense, the non-evident, quietude, modes and others. Do these occur in degrees? How is one to evaluate progress? Can we say that one skeptic is better than another; or that one is further along in quietude than another? How are they to gauge understanding? How do they assemble an outline for skepticism without prioritizing some notions over others? Any assumption, be it moral valuations or factual assertions, are an indelible feature of mind functioning as a reflexive organ which perceives just as much as he sees. Escaping this is a moot endeavor which the skeptics failed to fully appreciate when considering the pains made to explicitly state their ends and aims. They argue against the sophisms directed at the skeptic expressions by claiming that they make no absolute assertion respecting their absolute truth, that their expressions are held to the same standard of doubt, and that they simply appeal to custom or linguistic convention when speaking so that any attack on their expression is an attack on all, but this seems like evasive rhetoric.(Ch. I. 207-210)

While skeptics wish to avoid resolving questions of value, one cannot help but notice how paradoxical this endeavor appears. Why? Values are assumptions that serve as the basis for ethical or right action maintained by individuals. They form a hierarchy of priorities that guide and justify actions, with principle values being the foundation upon which other values and measures of integrity are based. Values are normative and relative, rooted in culture and convention, as well as empirical and absolute, existing on behalf of sheer physical and physiological necessity. Martha Nussbaum’s essay Skeptic Purgatives circumscribes the prerogatives of skepticism, as well as their logical denouement, pointing out the implicit assumptions and values embedded within skeptical thought, specifically the significance of quietude. (SP 544-8) How can skeptics reject judgments of the intellect and the non-apprehensible, yet maintain ends and values such as quietude?

One reply may involve their conception of belief. Contrary to Academic belief, skeptical belief is not a visceral phenomenon but rather a charitable one that follows without strong impulse or inclination or, as they say, “a yielding devoid of consent”. In this way there is no valuation or emotional disposition that sways the affections into disturbance. (Ch. I.227-35) Yet they speak of ‘instinctive feelings’ as a guide to the good life, while in the next breath speak of the ‘constraint of passions’. The skeptics strive to avoid dogmatism and never assent to the non-evident objects of inquiry, but what use are evident objects if we make no appraisal of their worth; think nothing of them? What is our priority or basis for action? Are skeptical tenants self-refuting? The skeptics might reply that by conforming to nature we react to what lies evidently before us, appealing here to absolute values, those for physical and physiological necessity, for principled justification of action. On the other hand, however, they speak equally on the importance of comporting with societal customs. To what extent does a skeptic abide by social convention and tradition for conduct? Skeptics insist on taking a very commonsense approach to such matters, but this does not parse out easily in practical daily living.(PS 523-5)

Speaking on progress, given the skeptic’s tenants—their fourfold, ends, and modes or tropes—what is achieved? Regarding their aim or end, the skeptics defer to ataraxia or quietism, a state of tranquility that appears to be the natural corollary of their aporetic philosophy. This seems by most accounts to lead to apraxia, the lack of action, comparable with the notion ‘analysis paralysis’. (Ch.I.7) Here they fall under scrutiny for their passivity towards life for their lack of assertion, which many equate to a lack of purpose.# How would the consequence of such a philosophy play out? I conjecture that it would resemble a society devoid of collaboration, devoid of collective projects, so to speak, such as buildings or informatics that necessarily take form under the guiding super-vision of a leader or a posited systematic super-structure. To begin, the very notion of improvement would suppose a non-evident value. Furthermore, prescribing and agreeing on a single vision or structure, let alone an imagined or abstract vision of things yet-to-be, would be problematic if not impossible given the skeptics adherence to evident apperceptions. For the skeptic, progressing toward achievement appears to be synonymous with their end ataraxia. But, as Hegel shows, this end is egocentric, involving only the self-conscious, and manifests through the negation of doubt alone.(PS 121-3) This is hardly a starting point for progressing humanity as a species.
To conclude, while the skeptic’s arsenal of tropes and methods of inquiry provide excellent strategies for analyzing and deconstructing the world, their philosophy is merely a self-reflective enterprise. There is no boldness, no otherness, and no priority of relationship with the world. As a result of this lack of assertion it fails to preserve itself in the face of society’s domination, eventually yielding to the dogmatic cult of culture. If there is anything of value within the skeptical enterprise, it is embodied in a critical pragmatism exercising a praxis of skeptical reflection coupled with dogmatic action. We must learn to, as Henri Bergson said, “Think like a man of action, and act like a man of thought.”

Bibliography

Empiricus, S., & Bury, R. G. (1990). Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Goodman, L. (2001). In Defense of Truth. Amherst, NY. Humanity Books.

Nussbaum, M. (1991). Skeptic Purgatives: Therapeutic Arguments in Ancient Skepticism. Journal History Philosophy. 521-557.

Hegel, G.F,. (1977). Phenomenology of Spirit. NYC, NY: Oxford University Press.

Is Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean A Plausible Guide To Moral Goodness?

Introduction

Aristotle’s (384 BC – 322 BC) doctrine of the mean has a privileged place in one of the grand moral traditions, that of virtue ethics. Virtue ethics retains a widespread influence today, particularly via its thirteenth century formulation by St. Thomas Aquinas, which remains at the core of the moral teaching of the Catholic Church, and via its twentieth century reunion with the secular mainstream of moral philosophy through the work of several Catholic scholars, particularly Alasdair MacIntyre.[1] This essay endorses virtue ethics and argues that the doctrine of the mean is a plausible guide to moral goodness, but is not by itself adequate as a guide to all-things-considered moral rightness.

Aristotle’s ethic is rooted in ancient Greek eudaimonic theory, a tradition shared with his predecessors Socrates and Plato. Aristotle’s moral theory radically departed from theirs in being rooted in material well-being and principles of ‘common sense’ rather than the abstract.[2] He also radically disagreed with the Platonic Socrates’ view that no one does bad knowingly. Aristotle asserted that human nature was essentially rational and we have free will. He saw it as a matter-of-fact, common sense intuition we are conscious of our reasoning and thus, both aware and responsible for the acts we choose. He was keen to admit, however, that people do make mistakes in their moral reasoning and that they become more inclined towards good (or evil) with the appropriate practice.[3]

Eudiamonia

The doctrine of the mean proceeds from two teleological arguments that establish the theoretical framework of Aristotle’s moral theory: the regress argument for eudaimonia and the function argument for virtue. The Nicomachean Ethics begins with the argument that all actions must ultimately be directed towards a single end, lest we invite infinite regress.[4] This single end is eudaimonia (often translated as ‘happiness’ but more literally ‘prospering’). By contrast to all lower ends such as pleasure, honour, and intelligence, eudaimonia is sought only for itself and is self-sufficient and complete.[5] Whilst eudaimonia is something to be pursued and that can be attained, it is not a mere ‘end-goal’, but is a dynamic status which accompanies good acts.[6] It must be developed over time and maintained, such that the status can be ascribed to a life as a whole, as summed up by Aristotle’s famous aphorism: “one swallow does not make a summer”.[7]

It is worth noting that in Book X of the Ethics Aristotle affirms the superiority of contemplation over virtue as a means for attaining eudaimonia. This is firstly because it is a self-sufficient activity, rather than a process with a natural termination point, such as the doing of a favour for a friend. And secondly, because we should live according our faculty of rationality (responsible of course for contemplation), especially because it is our highest and therefore most perfect state- it distinguishes us from other animals and likens us to God.[8]

The function argument in Book I establishes that eudaimonia is achieved, in so far as man is a social being, via arête (literally ‘excellence,’ but translated as ‘virtue’). It can be summarised as follows: all good things function well, the proper function of man is that which is distinctive to him, i.e. reasoning [9] and the best function of man qua man is therefore rational activity of the soul in accordance with virtue (excellence of character).[10]

Virtue

According to Aristotle, virtue is a not a feeling, nor a mere capacity, but a settled disposition to react to the passions[11] in a way conducive to the agent functioning well qua human being. Virtuous actions shouldbe pleasurable in themselves, because if we really believe in acting in a certain way we should enjoy doing so.[12] It is therefore most important for us to develop a like and a dislike for the right things[13] and such attitudes will be engrained via practice.[14] Thus the good is not found in rejecting inclination, as in Kant, but in following a correctly nurtured inclination.[15] For Aristotle it is not of key importance that we follow our duty, as it is for Kant, but rather how we live. Virtue ethics also has the advantage over consequentialist theories that it offers an account of what it would it is like to be an agent following the theory.[16]

An ethic of virtue is therefore focused on improving the morality of the agent’s character rather than that of their particular acts.[17] It sees acts as “rich symbols of the person we are choosing to become… we as beings of depth… create ourselves.”[18] Virtuous activities have more permanence that all other activities, “because it is in them that the truly happy most fully and continuously spend their lives”.[19] Being virtuous is a way of engaging in something, an ethically learned demeanour which interfaces with our actions to provide the existential quality of eudaimonia.[20]

Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of virtue: intellectual virtues which belong to the rational part of the soul, and moral virtues which belong to the irrational part, but can nonetheless be subordinated to reason.[21] While Aristotle acknowledged many virtues, he did subscribe to thesis of there being four cardinal virtues, a thesis which was popular in his contemporary society, had been acknowledged by Plato[22] and was subsequently upheld by Aquinas[23] and the Catholic Church.[24] These are as follows: justice, which consists in the will to give to others what they are entitled to, courage, which ensures firmness in the difficulties faced in the pursuit of good, temperance, which moderates desires by subordinating them to reason, and most important, prudence, (phronesis), the intellectual virtue of practical reason[25] by which we discern the good and the means of achieving it.[26] For Aquinas, prudence is far removed from rational self-interest and he agrees with Aristotle that ethical virtue is fully developed only when combined with it.[27]

Phronesis and the Doctrine of the Mean

For Aristotle we come to know the virtues via the practice of ‘the doctrine of the mean’ and our doing so is itself reliant upon the virtue of phronesis. The doctrine explains the nature of virtue as the act which is located at a mean between the vices of excess and deficiency that are encountered with every particular kind of feeling or action. He gave the example of the virtue courage lying between the vices of rashness and cowardice.[28] This triadic structure of vice – virtue – vice applies to all moral (as opposed to intellectual) virtues. The mean is not necessarily to be found near midway between its extremes;[29] moreover, it is relative to specific contexts, i.e. to individuals[30] and circumstances.[31] A purely quantitative reading of the doctrine would therefore be incorrect; Aristotle warns “ten pounds of food may be too much and two too little; it does not follow that six is the right amount for everybody.”[32]As such the mean should not be equated with moderation so much with the act that is most appropriate to the particular situation.[33]

Aristotle emphasises that virtues, like trades, are practical skills in which experience leads us to become more proficient at avoiding excess and deficiency.[34] Indeed, we are often only able to establish the mean by experimental trial and error.[35] Once we are adept at hitting the mean we will do likewise in relevantly similar situations, and therefore the doctrine is not particularist, that is, there are general rules to be obeyed. Aquinas accepted Aristotle’s conception of the mean, stressing the primacy of prudence in seeking all moral virtues.[36] Whilst acquaintance with the vices as extremes will assist us in our aim for the mean[37], the wider implication of the doctrine is that only through the application of reason to experience may we come to know the right acts.

Aristotle also advises that we avoid most that vice which is more opposed to the virtue in question, such that it is easier for us to hit the mean. But we must still beware the vice nearer the virtue for it is then all the easier for us to get trapped in, especially if it is that which we take greater pleasure in.[38] The notion of there being two vices is employed to prevent us from replacing one form of vice with another, for example, moving to asceticism as a rejection of hedonism; this is how Aristotle supports his moderate position on the pursuit of pleasure.

Contemporary Philosophy

Elizabeth Anscombe claimed that contemporary moral philosophy had become unintelligible due to its dependence on abstract terms and that we should refrain from such an approach until it has a more adequate grounding, such as psychological evidence.[39] Alasdair MacIntyre responded with the claim that ethics had lost its grounding because it is focused on actions rather than people; it has lost one of its key dimensions, concern for the development of moral character.[40] He admits that a great obstacle to virtue ethics exists in that modern society has inherited an incoherent collection of virtues from multiple sources.[41] His position is that meaning can be restored to morality when an individual identifies with and belongs to a moral tradition or community that promotes a narrative order for their life.[42] These communities depend on the functioning of particular practices, purposive activities embodied in institutions, for example the practice of ‘professional medicine’. These can only exist if injuries are blamed and successes praised, and thus standards come to be set in the form of virtues.[43] MacIntyre believes that this model can be generalised over all morally relevant areas of life, and such that virtue ethics is the way forward in moral philosophy. He also highlights that the interrelatedness of the virtues aids us in finding the mean because a particular act will be associated with several different virtues, and we are therefore provided with a number of individual criteria by which to assess the quality of that act.[44]

Objections and Replies

Perhaps the most popular objection to the doctrine of the mean is that the triadic structure is wrong. Virtues and vices seem to naturally come in pairs, with the virtue lies on one side of a dividing-line against vice, rather than at a mean. There would then be degrees of virtue and vice on each side. Indeed we are capable of thinking of many examples that fit this model more plausibly than the triadic, by negligently overlooking them the doctrine appears irrelevant in such cases. Take the example of fidelity, this is the opposite of the vice of infidelity and is hard to break down into excess, deficiency and mean. The same can be said of compassion/cruelty. Aristotle’s answer to these cases would be to fit them in a triad even if it is not the most natural way of characterising them. Despite it not being necessary for his ethic that everything fits neatly into a triad it does help that they can, albeit awkward in some cases. In our example, the vice of excess could be the stubborn refusal to accept that infidelity is ever right. The triadic structure can also be defended by appeal to an exclusive definition of the right, only the best acts (or equivalents) are right, rather than there being degrees of right. Thus it could be claimed that the triadic structure is needed as a result of accepting this exclusiveness within an ethical system which relies on habituation, for it is clearly possible to develop habits that are too strong as well as those that are too weak, and in so doing surpass the sole right that is required.

Such an open procedure, however, seems too vague to be useful, and it is from this viewpoint that Rosalind Hursthouse questions whether anything illuminating is added by calling it a doctrine. She claims it is not only a platitude to say that we must aim between extremes, but it is self-evident and as such communicates no meaning above the obvious. Therefore the doctrine of the mean in so far as consists of this (rather than a theory of reason and habituation of moral behaviour) is irrelevant.[45] This is plausible, but then how much does the doctrine rely on the triadic definition which gives it its name? As previously stated, while Aristotle values avoidance of extremes as the cardinal guideline, the core of his theory is that experience in accordance with reason is the ultimate decision making procedure. We might then shift to assessing whether his theory is as pragmatic as he would have claimed.

The apparent subjectivity of the doctrine has often been seen as a consideration against virtue ethics, and especially against its claim to be pragmatic. This regards theory’s supposed susceptibility to manipulation, that it produces no firm guide to action (i.e. rules), instead allowing agents to justify actions on the basis of their desires and habits.[46] Against this objection, the clarification is first required that the mean varies between individuals in a way that is objective and external to their desires. The mean can vary between people, but this is because of significant moral differences in their situations, not that they have different desires. Second, the leeway that exists in our pursuit virtues is a positive thing because it promotes both an optimistic view of the human person as a responsible agent,[47] and because the freedom of individuals to pursue the good life for them, coheres with the pluralist ideal of liberalism.

The non-absolutism (i.e. lack of absolute rules) of the theory is also often criticised on the grounds that the doctrine has no adequate response to actions we intuitively want to label right or wrong. Here it must be emphasised that Aristotle intends the idea of virtue to supplement rather than replace moral rules.[48] Although he held that ethics cannot be reduced to simply a system of rules,[49] he insists that there are acts which are wrong in any circumstance, including adultery, theft and murder. This is because these terms are vicious by definition.[50] Further, the mean itself admits of neither excess nor deficiency, there is neither an excess nor a deficiency of a mean.[51] Aquinas held similar views, in his interpretation neither rules nor virtues were preferred, indeed they were held to be interdefined, with virtues seen as expressions of internalised rules.[52]

Yet Aristotle’s theory still does not produce a prescriptive code of conduct, and consequently it can therefore be argued that it is of no help to someone experiencing a moral crisis.[53] True, seeking the mean is not an effective guide to the correct act, especially with the variety of circumstances, objects and people. But this conclusion lacks relevance for “[i]t should be clear that neither the thesis that virtues lie between extremes nor the thesis that the good person aims at what is intermediate is intended as a procedure for making decisions.”[54] Indeed, Aristotle recognises this problem expressly.[55] But, a virtuous person will know how to act in a crisis for they will have fostered a disposition to react to such crises in an appropriate way, owing to both their learning of practical wisdom and experimental trial and error.[56]

Further objections to the theory can be drawn from evolutionary psychology. This suggests that dispositions towards particular moral acts will be influenced by the agent’s inherited genetic make-up, which thereby weakens the role of personal responsibility. There is also evidence to suggest that moral behaviour is based not in reason, but in emotional responses, just as in David Hume’s sentiment-based theory of ethics, which is otherwise strongly related to the virtue tradition.[57] But due to its focus on character development an ethic of virtue allows more room for a developed psychology of morals. Aristotle argues himself that the cultivation of virtues will prevent psychological pressures to do wrong.[58] Psychological experiments such as that of Milgram’s electric shocks and Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, have demonstrated that under the influence of authority people are more prone to act against what they think is right.[59] Of course those possessing virtue are vulnerable to the affects of psychological pressures; it is for this reason that Aristotle makes it clear that the enforcement of punitive legal system is required even in the best of societies.[60] But this highlights the importance of habituation with the doctrine of the mean, under this theory agents willdo the right action because they are disposed to it, not simply that they are told what to do as in deontological and consequentialist theories.[61] It is therefore, to adapt Aristotelian terms, far more an ethic of actuality and not of potentiality than is any other moral theory.

Conclusion

Overall then, the doctrine of the mean is general framework for goodness. This framework can then be filled in with the virtues of the individual or a community and as MacIntyre highlights this is as relevant to today’s society as it was to the radically different world of ancient Greece in which it was developed. The doctrine –defined as the part of the theory that selects moral virtues– can be taken either as the simple (and problematic) generalisation of the triadic structure to all categories of action within the moral sphere, or at a more general level where it is a common sense principle of acting upon experience and reason to achieve eudaimonia. We may not like the doctrine of the mean in itself or as a term, but this latter interpretation, of basing the good on our development of reason via experience, is particularly appealing. Yet it remains misleading to seen the doctrine as a typical normative ethical system. In conclusion therefore, the doctrine of the mean is a plausible guide to moral goodness, and indeed such an account of the development of moral character is a necessary dimension to, but not alone sufficient for, any realistic ethical system. The theory is apt to cohere with the rest of a broader approach we take because virtue requires that we respect rights, follow duties and take account of consequences, and an approach that embraces and further elaborates each of these dimensions is required for both for a truly plausible moral philosophy and for an informative guide to moral action.

Bibliography

Anscombe, Elizabeth, (1958), ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, Philosophy, 33, (124)

Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, Thomson, J. A. K. (trans.), [1953], (2004), 4th Edition, London, Penguin Books Ltd.

Bowie, Robert A., (2001), Ethical Studies, Cheltenham, Nelson Thornes Ltd.

Doris, John & Stich, Stephen, (2006),‘Moral Psychology: Empirical Approaches’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

Finnis, John, (2005),‘Aquinas’ Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Zalta, Edward N. (ed.)

Hursthouse, Rosalind, (2006), ‘The Central Doctrine of the Mean’, In The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Kraut, Richard (ed.), Oxford, Blackwell Publishers Ltd., pp. 96-115

Kraut, Richard, (2001), ‘Aristotle’s Ethics’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Zalta, Edward N. (ed.)

MacIntyre, Alasdair, [1981], (2003), After Virtue, 2nd Edition, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA, The University of Notre Dame Press

O’ Connell, Timothy E., (1978), Principles For A Catholic Morality, New York, The Seabury Press

Pence, Greg, [1991], (1993), ‘Virtue Theory’, In A Companion To Ethics, Singer, Peter (ed.), Oxford, Blackwell Publishers Ltd., pp.249-257

Popkin, Richard H. & Stroll, Avrum, (1993), Philosophy Made Simple, Oxford, Butterfield-Heinemann Ltd.

Porter, Jean, (2001), ‘Virtue Ethics’, In The Cambridge Companion To Christian Ethics, Gill, Robin (ed.), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 96-109

Ross, William David, [1923], (1995), Aristotle, London, Routeledge

The United States Catholic Conference, (1994), The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Washington D.C., Liberia Editrice Vaticana

References

[1] Pence, [1991], pp. 250-1

[2] Popkin & Stroll, (1993), p.10

[3] Popkin & Stroll, (1993) p.10

[4] Aristotle, 1094a, 5-20

[5] Aristotle,1097b, 15-20

[6] Popkin & Stroll, (1993), p.9

[7] Aristotle, 1098a, 20

[8] Aristotle, 1178a, 20 – 9a, 30

[9] Aristotle, 1097b, 22 – 1098a, 20

[10] Aristotle,1098a, 17

[11] Aristotle,1105b, 26-7

[12] Aristotle,1099a, 20

[13] Aristotle,1172a, 20

[14] Bowie, (2001), pp.112-5

[15] MacIntyre, (1981), p. 149

[16] Pence, [1991], p. 250

[17] Bowie, (2001), pp.112-5

[18] O’ Connell, (1978), p. 65

[19] Aristotle, 1100b, 15

[20] Popkin & Stroll, (1993), p.9

[21] Kraut, (2001), p. 7

[22] Ross, (1995), p. 215

[23] Finnis, (2005),p. 21

[24] The Catechism of the Catholic Church, pp. 443-5

[25] Kraut, (2001), p. 8

[26] Ross, (1995), p. 223

[27] Finnis, (2005),p. 21. Cf. Aristotle, 1144b, 10-25

[28] Aristotle, 1104a, 10-25

[29] Aristotle,1106a, 28- b, 7

[30] Popkin & Stroll, (1993), p. 10- For they have different requirements and Aristotle acknowledges a pluralism of correct ways of living.

[31] Aristotle, 1106b 21-23

[32] Ross, (1995), p. 202

[33] Porter, (2001), p.98

[34] Kraut, (2001), p. 9

[35] Popkin & Stroll, (1993), p. 10

[36] Finnis, (2005),p. 20

[37] Ross, (1995), p. 202

[38] Aristotle, 1108b, 30 – 1109b, 27 cited in Ross, (1995), p. 205

[39] Pence, [1991], p. 251. Cf. Anscombe, (1958)

[40] Bowie, (2001), pp.116-9

[41] MacIntyre, (1981), pp. 10-1

[42] MacIntyre, (1981),p. 144

[43] MacIntyre, (1981), pp. 188-91

[44] MacIntyre, (1981),p. 155

[45] Hursthouse, (2006), pp. 105-14

[46] Bowie, (2001), pp. 116-9

[47] Bowie, (2001), pp. 116-9

[48] MacIntyre, (1981), p. 151-2

[49] Kraut, (2001), p. 12

[50] Aristotle, 1107a,10-20

[51] Aristotle, 1107a, 10-25; Ross, (1995), p. 204

[52] Finnis, (2005),p. 23

[53] Bowie, [2001], pp. 116-9

[54] Kraut, (2001), p. 11

[55] Aristotle, 1138b, 18-32

[56] Popkin & Stroll, (1993), p. 10

[57] Porter, (2001), p. 104

[58] Kraut, (2001), p. 8

[59] Doris & Stephen, (2006), p. 13

[60] Kraut, (2001), p. 8

[61] Pence, [1991], p. 256

Does Plato Provide A Good Argument For the Immortality of the Soul?

Plato (423 – 347 BC) provides several arguments for his claim that the soul is immortal, and for various reasons none of these are convincing. Their fundamental flaw is that the existence of a kind of soul to which the arguments apply is presupposed. Most of the arguments are found in his Socratic dialogue Phaedo (of which the Recollection Argument is also found in the Meno, but I do not cover that version here) and a further important one is found in the last book of The Republic (another Socratic dialogue).

I will evaluate each argument in order, but first it will be useful to make some clarifications. By immortality we mean that the soul, an immaterial entity distinct from the body, will survive separation from the body at death and is indestructible. But what does Plato mean by soul? In many contexts the Greek word is closer to our notion of ‘life’ than ‘soul’; it effectively denotes mental phenomena.[1]

There are four arguments for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo, namely the Cyclical Argument, the Recollection Argument, the Affinity Argument, then after a a period of reflection on the previous two arguments, the Final Argument. The Cyclical Argument takes the following form: All things come to be from their opposite and because the opposite of life is death, life must therefore come from death. Plato says this must be the case or else everything would end up dead. Thus, the souls of the dead must exist prior to their reincarnation.[2] One criticism of this argument is that death is contrary to life, but it is not its contradictory opposite; whilst it is impossible for something to be both dead and alive it is possible for something to be neither dead nor alive, e.g. a stone. If life arises out of such non-life rather than death, a pre-existent soul is not needed and life will eventually revert to non-life (a specific kind of non-life called death). The assumption Plato makes that if life did not come from death everything would end up dead is a strange one, because this conflicts with his own views about philosophical wisdom disrupting the cycle of life and death, should not everyone end up a philosopher?[3]

The Recollection Argument runs as follows: we have knowledge that we have not been taught (e.g. we can come to knowledge of mathematical truths through the use of our reason alone), because we have never learnt this we must have known it before we were born and therefore the soul must have pre-existed our birth.[4] This argument has several problems, firstly it would only demonstrate the prior existence of the reasoning part of the soul, not of its desires and emotions which are important to Plato’s conception of the afterlife.[5]

The argument also confuses a priori knowledge with the innate knowledge (knowledge we were born with). The belief in innate knowledge was successfully critiqued by John Locke in the 17^th Century. Locke’s attack on the doctrine was two-pronged: firstly, the traditional backing of ‘universal assent’ given to the theory does not exist and if it did it would not be sufficient to prove innateness, but only universal favour. Secondly, there are a great many people who are ignorant of the propositions purported to be innate, and some will go their whole life without ever thinking about these topics. If people truly knew them innately then surely they would be aware of them from birth, and they would not need to be awakened by the use of reason.[6] A priori knowledge only appears to be innate because itis gained independent of empirical evidence, and because of this it makes no reference to the time at which it was acquired, thus accounting for the mistaken conclusion that we are born with it.

The Affinity Argument is more subtle, it says that the soul, by contrast to the body, is invisible, immaterial and indivisible and because of this, Plato reasons, it is likely to be indissoluble and deathless.[7] Crucially, the reasoning part of the soul is applicable to this argument because it resembles the forms and the gods, on the grounds that it is rational and has the natural tendency to rule.[8] But because this argument works on the basis of an analogy and is thus an inductive rather than a deductive inference, it would not have been seen as reliable within Plato’s epistemological system.[9]

In the period of reflection[10] the interlocutor Simmias lays his materialist objection against the Affinity Argument: that the soul’s relation to the body resembles more a harmony played on an instrument than it does an instrument of ruling the body, and that when the strings of the instrument are broken, the harmony ceases to be.[11] No flaws in the Cyclical Argument are elaborated in the dialogue, and because it isn’t again mentioned we can reasonably infer that it is deemed unsuccessful. It is raised that the Recollection Argument has an insufficient conclusion, only proving –at best– the prior existence of the soul rather than its immortality[12] (an objection that applies equally to the Cyclical Argument) and there is no reason why this cycle must continue forever and not end at the destruction of the soul at some point.[13]

The Final Argument in Phaedo says that the soul can satisfactorily be called the cause of life, itself participating in the form of life[14], and therefore cannot admit death.[15] This does not follow, because although the soul may be the source of life and cannot therefore exist and be dead, it may cease to exist. Further, part of Plato’s definition of cause is that it be both necessary and sufficient for all of its effects which is problematic because it would follow that everything that is alive i.e. plants as well as humans, must have rational souls, which is implausible and does not cohere with the rest of his theory.[16]

We now move on to the argument for immortality from Book X of TheRepublic. The first premise is: that which can destroy each thing, if anything can, is the bad associated with it. Bad things associated with the soul include: ignorance, injustice, licentiousness, and cowardice, which collectively come under the term ‘vice’. Vice is the specific bad thing associated with the soul, but because it never directly results in the death of a particular soul, the soul must be immortal.[17] Somewhat hesitantly, this is regarded as a valid argument, and because it has the right conclusion (that the soul is immortal) it is more plausible than any of the arguments from Phaedo. We do, however, have good reason to think that it contains at least one false premise and some presupposition, such that the argument is certainly not sound.

Firstly, there seems to be an awkward presupposition, namely that everything has only one bad thing, especially when we are told that vice is the specific bad thing associated with the soul. Why should this be? Wood provides us with a counter-example, because it can be destroyed by both rot and fire. The argument also assumes that something cannot be destroyed by something connected with it being destroyed (i.e. the soul via its connection, dependence on the body). Alternatively, the soul might be destroyed by the evil of the body, which could plausibly cohere with the antipathy towards the body in Plato’s system. The fatal flaw, however, is one that affects the Phaedo arguments also: that the premises are false or at least inadequate because they presuppose that there exists a spiritual soul. Unless this can be proved there is no reason why that which Plato calls the soul should not be identical in some way with the body and therefore susceptible to destruction along with it, and Plato nowhere even attempts to prove the existence of the soul as he conceives of it.

So what is the ‘soul’ really like? A popular contemporary theory is that of Richard Dawkins. His physicalist theory is based on genetics and sees the person, including the mind, as a construct based on replicating genetic information. Dawkins’ theory also supports a form of immortality: genes together with memory-based replicators of non-genetic information (e.g. science and culture) which he calls ‘memes’ allow post-mortem survival through children and the continued importance of our work and creations.[18] But perhaps there is potential for immortality within a theory closer to that of Plato.

Metaphysical monists such as the Ancient Greek Eleatic school argued for immortality owing to our indestructible reality during the period of time at which we do exist, which when viewed from the perspective of eternity means that we always exist. These thoughts were more clearly exemplified in the views of the 17th century philosopher Spinoza[19] and by Einstein in defence of the B-Theory [Tenseless Theory] of time. Of course it follows that if no point in time is any more real than any other, everything that exists at each point in time will remain in existence there. Although Plato was not a monist he could have made use of similar ideas.

While Plato was probably sincere in his arguments, he would have realised that if they had failed, his theory of the forms would necessitate a kind of immortality. This is that “the soul… shares in the eternal being of the forms. … [W]e can regard the most important part of ourselves as indestructible… because it has no content save the eternal objects that it contemplates. By identifying myself with eternal truths I know myself, that self at least, is immortal.”[20] This notion retains at least some plausibility for anyone who subscribes to Realism about universals.

Overall, although the Republic Argument is the strongest due to its validity and correct conclusion, it is not at all plausible. Superficially, it appears contrived and it is ultimately insufficient, as are all of the arguments, because of the presupposed existence of the soul. The Republic Argument is certainly the most plausible argument when we believe in the soul, and as such it would have been apt to hold the most weight in the West until the existence of an immaterial soul began to be questioned on a wide scale.[21] All the other arguments are weaker still: whilst the Affinity Argument is perhaps the most plausible superficially, because of its straightforwardness, it is far from conclusive. The Cyclical and Recollection arguments, although stronger, are fundamentally flawed due their irrelevant conclusions. The Final Argument in Phaedo, despite convincing Socrates’ interlocutors, is invalid. In conclusion, none of Plato’s arguments are good enough to prove the immortality of the soul, but whilst it seems that his conception of the soul was deeply flawed, it is at least considerably more plausible that there is a sense in which something important of us is immortal.

Bibliography

Annas, Julia, (1981), An Introduction To Plato’s Republic, 1st Edition, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Bostock, David, (1999), ‘The Soul and Immortality In Plato’s Phaedo’, In Fine, Gail (ed.), Oxford Readings In Philosophy: Plato Vol. II, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Clarke, S. R. L, (1994), ‘Ancient Philosophy’, In Kenny, Anthony (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Western Philosophy, New York, Oxford University Press

Dawkins, Richard, [1976], (1989), The Selfish Gene, 2^nd Edition, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Levine, Michael, (2008), ‘Pantheism’,The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(Fall 2008 Edition), Zalta, Edward N. (ed.)

Locke, John, [1689], An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Nidditch, P. H. (ed.), (1975), Oxford, Clarendon

Plato, Phaedo, Grube, G. M. A. (trans.), (1981), Five Dialogues, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company Inc.

Plato, The Republic, Lee, Desmond (trans.), [1955], (2003), 2^nd Edition, St. Ives, Penguin Group

References

[1] Annas, (1981), p.123

[2] Plato, Phaedo, 69e-72d; on reincarnation see the excellent short story, ‘The Egg‘

[3] Bostock, (1999), p. 422

[4] Plato, Phaedo, 72e-77d

[5] Bostock, (1999), p. 422

[6] Locke, [1689], pp. 48-50

[7] Plato, Phaedo, 78b-80b

[8] Bostock, (1999), p. 422

[9] Bostock, (1999), p. 422

[10] Plato, Phaedo, 84c-95e

[11] Plato, Phaedo, 85e-86d

[12] Plato, Phaedo, 87a

[13] Plato, Phaedo, 88a

[14] Plato’s theory of the forms is elaborated in books VI and VII of The Republic

[15] Plato, Phaedo, 95e-106e

[16] Bostock, (1999), p. 424

[17] Plato, The Republic, 608d-611a

[18] Dawkins, [1976], pp. 189-201 – For more on this theory see also his books: The Extended Phenotype and River Out of Eden

[19] Levine, (2008), p.17

[20] Clarke, (1994), p.27

[21] In the last year I’ve read a great but rather populist defence of the soul, More Than Matter by Keith Ward.

This ‘problem of other minds’ is very similar to the radical (and highly general) sceptical hypothesis of solipsism, the view that my mind is the only thing that exists. Because of this, the two terms are used equivalently below, along with the expression ‘different minds’ to denote the more general issue of ‘minds significantly different to how we ordinarily believe them to be, possibly without consciousness.’

I will begin by considering some conventional responses to the problem in the philosophy of mind. But I ultimately contend that because the problem of other minds is a fundamentally epistemological issue, [1] its character is such that it cannot be adequately resolved by any theory of the nature of the mind, but requires an epistemological solution. A contextualist theory of justification (as articulated by Michael Williams) is thus elaborated in order to provide (without requiring us to refute Wittgenstein’s insights) the best solution that we have.

First we shall consider the ‘solution’ from analogy in its classical rendering by John Stuart Mill. Mill accepted the Cartesian view that we are aware of our own minds via direct acquaintance with them, but because we have no such acquaintance with the minds of others[2] –but only their (presumably corresponding) behaviour– if we are to be justified in believing that others have a mental life like our own we must make a generalising inference from our case to theirs:

I conclude that other human beings have feelings like me, because, first, they have bodies like me, which I know, in my own case to be the antecedent condition of feelings; and because, secondly, they exhibit the acts and other outward signs, which in my own case I know to be caused by feelings.[3]

Mill maintains of his generalisation that “in doing so I conform to the legitimate rules of experimental enquiry.”[4] This is highly questionable, as Ludwig Wittgenstein points out: “If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word ‘pain’ means – must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?”[5] This point is decisive in refuting Mill’s argument from analogy for it is clearly the case that the ‘legitimate rules of experimental enquiry’ do not allow for a conclusion of this strength and scope (as it predicates this of an entire numerous species) to be inferred from the observation of just one case.

Wittgenstein had initially shown sympathy to the intentions of solipsism; he neither contested nor accepted the thesis, but in his distinctive style, clarified the issue. He claimed that there was truth in the notion that the world is my world, because the limit of intelligibility is boundary of the world, and this limit is set by my language, which I alone fully understand.[6] He maintained that this truth could only be shown, never said; that is to say that it could be indirectly implied, but not be meaningfully expressed. Wittgenstein qualifies of this way of understanding solipsism saying that its implications are consistent with a direct realist understanding of reality because, while our metaphysical self is ‘the self of solipsism’, it remains the case that there is an external reality which corresponds to our experiences.[7]

Wittgenstein later dealt with the problem of other minds more directly. In his Philosophical Investigations he used the example of pain to illustrate his notion of different minds: I can know that others are in pain because they exhibit learned pain behaviour on the same basis that I do, but I cannot know that they feel pain to anything like a comparable extent.8 To even make the assertion that we might know how others feel pain lacks coherence because the notion of pain cannot be divorced from the concept of conscious sensation.[9] To imagine the pain of another we need to imagine a “pain which I do not feel on the model of a pain I do feel.”[10]

He claimed that whenever we define an ‘inner state’ such as pain we have not truly identified anything, because this is contingent on the reliability of our memory which is not independently justified.11 He says that such a definition is like “a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it is not part of the mechanism.”12 The preceding ‘ascribability’ and ‘idle wheel’ arguments support Wittgenstein’s claim that mental states such as pains can only be known via public behaviour; John Cottingham summarises this claim as follows:

In order to have meaning in our language, terms for mental states must be employed on the basis of public criteria, or rules for their correct application; and if this is so, then it cannot be right that expressions such as ‘I am in pain’ get their meaning from referring to a private event accessible only to the subject.[13]

It can be plausibly asserted that Wittgenstein’s conclusion is a behaviourist one.[14] He does not strictly reduce mental states to dispositions to behave in particular ways, but does contend that we can have no knowledge of our own mental experiences. Moreover, a behaviourist solution could not be adequate because it could not preclude the existence of mental states distinct from behavioural tendencies.[15] Such a solution would be too quick and equivocates the standard concept of mental properties to one that identifies them with behaviour.

Furthermore, Wittgenstein’s move has implications even more radical than solipsism: we do not even have reliable experience of our own mental life and therefore a fortiori, nor do we have it of those of others- since we wouldn’t be sure what it is to have a mind. But we are sure of what it feels like to have a mind thus by modus tollens, behaviour can’t be necessary to pain itself, but only to the common usage that we give to the term ‘pain’ in our language games. Therefore e can’t be more certain of the sensations of others than we can of our own, and therefore scepticism stands. So while Wittgenstein’s arguments are fairly plausible there is a desire to mitigate the forms of scepticism they leave open.

The possibility of a more adequate solution springing from physicalism may seem promising because there strong intuition in our scientific world-view that minds are supervenient (subject to a one-way relationship of causal dependency) on brains. It looks like physicalism would resolve the problem of other minds, and if integrated with property dualism would also provide us with a means to predicate qualia to others’ minds. But physicalism does not, and could not solve the problem of other minds because it only provides an explanation of how others have minds (i.e. because their minds are dependent upon part of their physical bodies), and not a justificatory reason for believing that others have minds.

This is because physicalism is a hypothesis and we do not yet have all that much evidence for correlation between physical states and mental states, let alone proof with which to verify the hypothesis. Whichever theory of the metaphysics of mind we hold we cannot negate the possibility of others not having minds, and therefore to make progress we require an epistemological justification. We can now see that approaching the problem with mainstream theories of the metaphysics of mind is fundamentally flawed due to the epistemological character of the solipsist hypothesis, this is such that an epistemological justification is required. I turn now to consider the possibility of such a justification.

Contextualism is a theory of epistemological justification in which the conditions for attributing knowledge are relative to context; they have circumstantial variation.[16] A similar sentiment is evident in the early Wittgenstein’s contention that what truth there is to solipsism cannot be meaningfully expressed. Contextualism addresses the concern that we need to somehow separate the radical sceptical scenarios such as solipsism from the demands of everyday knowledge, finding a way to deny that the possibility of such scenarios needs to be completely ruled out in order for knowledge to be possible.[17] Contextualists maintain both that such everyday knowledge (e.g. perceptual knowledge) is justified and that we cannot rule out the possibility of sceptical scenarios being true; the crucial point is that these possibilities are considered in different contexts. Within an appropriate context our default entitlements to knowledge are liable to be challenged, whereas in other, inappropriate contexts, questioning them will prove such a question to be irrelevant or even senseless, [18] as Williams illustrates:

To be intelligible at all –and not just to be reasonable – questioning may need a lot of stage-setting…. this is true of the sceptic’s attempt to call into question our most ordinary and obvious judgements about the world around us.[19]

Thus, there is a sense in which radical theses such as solipsism are incoherent. This is because in order for us to think through the stages of their argument, to understand them, we have to accept rather than challenge their premises and/or ‘stage-setting criteria.’ Our acceptance of these can be construed as inconsistent, if not with their form of scepticism, then with a similar program of hyperbolic doubt that yields the same result.

Furthermore, the absurdity of the possibility of solipsism is such that the metaphysical framework required for it to be the case (e.g. a god willing to create universe in which the only sentience among a large population of similarly intelligent beings is mine), is not only more unlikely than it being the case that others do have similar minds, but so much so that it [solipsism] is untenable for the sceptic. For the sceptical position is surely of the greatest sensitivity to such a ludicrous hypothesis.

This is an example of exercising what Williams calls ‘intelligibility constraints’ on challenges to our knowledge, which is one method of contextualism. This has much overlap with methodological factors, those concerning the logic of inquiry. These are constraints on what we can question without undermining beliefs necessary for the particular inquiry at hand, for wider procedures, and for our lives more generally.[20]

This leads on to the consideration of economic factors: possible defeaters for our knowledge claims must be rational; they must have a value construable in a cost-benefit analysis, a reason why they might obtain. Solipsism, however, works not on reasons, but on possibility. “If a challenger implies that we might be making a mistake, we are entitled to ask how. If the challenger has nothing to say… then no real challenge has been entered.”[21]

By upholding contextualism we can therefore perceive that the possibility of solipsism is irrelevant due to: its unintelligibility, its lack of value to the debate (as a thesis that we have no reason to adopt). This is just as well, because for practical reasons even if solipsism were still true we would still have to act the same, not simply because we could not be certain of its truth, but because we are part of a system of interactions with others in which we have particular needs and concerns and these would not be satisfied if we behaved otherwise. We could not, for example, behave as if we were the only sentient being, not just because we almost certainly are not, but because people behave in a sentient manner and we could not live treating them as if they did not. The potential truth of solipsism is out of context, indeed, irrelevant, so long as we are integrated into this system of interactions and the responses that result from our actions with it. These are just the sort of considerations that would otherwise incline us towards a physicalist solution, and very similar to the conclusions that Wittgenstein comes as a result of his view of the embedding of linguistic meaning in practice. But unlike the those solutions contextualism gives us a solid reason with which we can support our conviction.

In summary, the argument from an analogy is quite implausible as a solution, even if it is the method by which we imagine the mental lives of others most of the time. Wittgenstein’s considerations, as their influence shows, are highly valuable, but cannot solve the problem with the necessary scope. This can, however, be achieved by the contextualist theory of justified knowledge, which allows us to mitigate the relevance of scenarios such as solipsism as possible defeaters to our standard knowledge. Yet it must be remembered that we have focused on minds significantly different to how we ordinarily believe them to be, and as Wittgenstein demonstrates so effectively in his idle wheel argument, there is much potential for variance between the mental experiences of individuals. Thus, even if we do not have any reason to think that such variances would be radical- for others to have mental lives unrecognisable to our own, they may well vary enough to account for some of the mistakes we make when trying to understand others. The pessimist may be forgiven for saying that every human being is born alone and dies alone, for we each do this alongside each other, in both mind and body.

Bibliography

Conee, Earl & Cohen, Stewart, ‘Is Knowledge Contextual?’, In Contemporary Debates In Epistemology, Steup and Sosa (eds.), (2005), Oxford, Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Maslin, K. T., [2001], (2007), An Introduction To the Philosophy of Mind, 2nd Edition, Cambridge, Polity Press

Mill, John Stuart, [1865], ‘An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy,’ In Western Philosophy: An Anthology, Cottingham, John (ed.), (1996), Oxford, Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Williams, Michael, (2001), Problems of Knowledge, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, [1922], (2001), Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, McGuiness, B. F., & Pears, D. F. (trans.), 3rd Edition, Abingdon (UK), Routledge

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, [1953], (2001), Philosophical Investigations, Anscombe, G. E. M. (trans.), 3rd Edition, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Notes

1 Maslin, (2007), p. 215

2 Cottingham (ed.), (1996), p. 165

3 Mill, [1865], p. 167

4 Mill, [1865], p. 167

5 Wittgenstein, [1953], §293

6 Wittgenstein, [1922], 5.6 – 5.62

7 Wittgenstein, [1922], 5.64

8 Wittgenstein, [1953], §246

9 Wittgenstein, [1953], §246

10 Wittgenstein, [1953], §302

11 Wittgenstein, [1953], §258

12 Wittgenstein, [1953], §271

13 Cottingham (ed.), (1996), p. 165. Cf. Wittgenstein, [1953], §§246, 293, & 303

14 Maslin, [2001], p. 234

15 Maslin, [2001], p. 217

16 Williams, (2001), p. 159

17 Conee & Cohen, (2005), p. 59

18 Williams, (2001), p. 159

19 Williams, (2001), p. 160

20 Williams, (2001), p. 160

21 Williams, (2001), p. 169

A Wassily Kandinsky painting.

Another essay I wrote back in 2008.

Must perception involve the conceptualisation of what is perceived?

‘Perception’ is commonly used to denote the acquisition of knowledge of an external object where the subject’s level of awareness is such that conceptualisation of that object is required. But there is dispute as to whether or not perceptual states include access to pre-conceptual components, that is, whether or not we can have perceptual knowledge of an object without conceptualising it.

Answers to this question fall into two broad traditions, those that view perception as a two-stage process, comprising at first non-conceptual and then conceptual components (both of which we can be aware), and conceptualist models in which we can never experience pre-conceptual components. In this essay two such theses, represented in the accounts of Reid–Dretske and Kant–Strawson [1] respectively, will be contrasted and it will be suggested that there are good cases for both, but the latter is somewhat more plausible, particularly in its view of human understanding.

Both theories agree that there are perceptual experiences and that they are datable episodes culminating a physical process (involving sense organs) from which we gain perceptual knowledge. There is widespread agreement that perceptual experiences have an intentional content (representing the world as being in a particular way) and a phenomenal character (subjective qualities), but much disagreement as to the nature of the content and character.[2] Do we ever experience distinctly non-conceptual content or are we only ever aware of a conceptualised mixture?

The tradition of non-conceptualism begins roughly with the two-stage theory of the direct realist Thomas Reid in the 18th century. Perception consists of sensing and the perceptual thought associated with it. Sensing usually creates a corresponding belief in the agent concerning the qualities of the sensed objects. This belief is part of the judging process which is a distinct act from sensing.[3]

In his interpretation, the contemporary philosopher Fred Dretske emphasises the importance of distinguishing between seeing objects and seeing facts.[4] In the former case, ‘sensory perception’, the information dealt with by the subject is non-conceptual, and in the latter ‘cognitive perception’, it has been conceptualised. Dretske departs from Reid in that whilst he acknowledges these two components as distinct, they needn’t be two separate acts; sense perception of objects may be sequentially prior to cognitive perception but the two are often simultaneous.[5]

Dretske claims that the non-conceptual content of perceptual experiences has a phenomenal character to it, meaning that it directly impacts upon the subject.[6] This content is defined as informational content that does not require the possession of concepts to comprehend it. The criterion for it being a perception is that the information is provided to the cognitive system for calibration and (potential) use in the control of behaviour; this need not involve conceptualisation, or at least not in a linguistic way.[7]

Barry Maund describes another way in which a perceptual experience can have non-conceptual content, that is, when the representation of the object sensed is itself non-conceptual. It signifies the presence of an object, (for example a segment of music alerts us to the presence of a particular arrangement of sound waves) rather than alerting us to the particular properties of the object or its relation to other objects, which would require concepts. He finds this way more plausible because it analyses the phenomenological character of perceptual experience in terms of intrinsic, introspective qualities of experience which is more readily supported by direct evidence than Dretske’s analysis in terms of informational content.[8]

So what makes this theory so appealing? It is intuitively plausible (indeed, it’s likely the default position before we subject the issue to analysis), and it often feels like we are aware of sensory stimulation quite distinctly from any understanding of it. Some such instances are when we experience unusual events or other phenomena when there is a gap between sensing them and knowing what they are. Paul Moser claims that some of these cases will be marked by ‘direct attention attraction,’ this is when we experience shock and/or another response not requiring conceptualisation to events such as an unseen door slamming.[9] Compelling though this argument is, the conceptualist is not convinced that this is evidence of non-conceptual perception.

Conceptualism rejects not only the idea of a non-conceptual stage to perception, but also that our perceptual experiences ever have non-conceptual content. Although we may make more explicit judgements after the original act of perception, perception is always a form of judgement to begin with, [10] as Peter Strawson describes:

“The character of our perceptual experience itself, of our sense experience itself, is thoroughly conditioned by the judgements about the objective world which we are disposed to make when we have this experience; it is, so to speak, thoroughly permeated –saturated, one might say– with the concepts employed in such judgements.”[11]

This is because perception is a biological function which relies upon the processes of receiving and arranging information and conceptualists argue that these processes are best explained by the perceptual system interpreting the information via the medium of concepts. In the higher levels of perception these concepts will correspond to our own human language, but this needn’t be the case for the whole system. Indeed, we needn’t be aware of processing taking place.[12] Conceptualists deny a fortiori that simple sensation can be expressed in the way that non-conceptualists claim it is perceived, nor can it be expressed in simple aesthetic terms; our descriptions of experience at any point in time must be expressed in terms of the concepts of judgement we are naturally disposed towards and constrained to.[13]

Contemporary conceptualism is a radicalisation of Kant’s thesis that perception is a combination of both sensing an object and thinking about it (he held that the processes cooperated, but not that they are inexorably intertwined). Famously he states: “Without sensibility, no object would be given to us, and without understanding none would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind.”[14] In the tradition since Kant the two faculties have not been seen as two components of one integrated act (which Dretske maintains), but as merged from the outset: sensory experiences have no non-conceptual content.[15]

Maund proposes his own hybrid model of a complex sensory and conceptual perceptual experience. In this single act we experience what are distinct sensory and conceptual components but because they are simultaneous and are directed at the same objects we are aware of them only as concept-saturated, whilst they containing some purely sensory content which affects us indirectly.[16] This may in the future provide us with a more viable form of non-conceptualism, but because Maund only mentions it briefly and provides no argument for it, it cannot be properly analysed here. That is not to say that it implausible, indeed, it may be more plausible than Dretske’s position, but the move from simultaneous sensation and conceptualisation to the unconscious efficacy of non-conceptual content is contentious. One might reasonably claim that either this amounts, by extension, to conceptualism, or it is near identical to Dretske’s view but expressed in different language, more sympathetic to conceptualism.

Naturally, there are some substantial objections to conceptualism. One criticism that appears devastating is the possibility for perception without awareness. If we perceive something without noticing it, it is very unlikely to have been conceptualised into human language, and still more unlikely to have been conceptualised in any form, on the basis that concepts are properties that are ascribed by the agent when making a judgement (albeit often passively).[17]

A good case for subliminal perception, based on a study by the psychologist Alberts Libet in 1967, is described here:

“Whereas the receipt and onward transmission of sensory information, initiated by external stimuli, depends upon the classical sensory pathways linking peripheral receptors with their cortical projections, awareness of this sensory traffic –perceptual experience– relies upon sufficient contribution from the ascending fibres of the reticular activating system…. If the reticular system is blocked by surgery or drugs, the arrival of sensory information at the cortex still occurs but the owner of the cortex remains oblivious to the fact!”[18]

Studies by N. F. Dixon (1971 and 1981) have shown that the mind can respond to the meaning of words presented to it in sleep or in other unconscious states, and whilst conscious but below the threshold volume for awareness.[19] An example much closer to our own experiences is attention deficit and change blindness. This is when people clearly see things in front of them but without noticing them (often when something of relative unimportance changes while they are not looking), yet in experiments are able to get the majority of a set of questions right about it by guessing, thus indicating subconscious retention of perceptual information without awareness of receiving it in the first instance.[20]

Whilst we should then accept subliminal perception as real, the most one could hope it proves contrary to conceptualism is that not all perception is conceptualised at a ‘higher’ linguistic level. Even then it seems to only apply to a minority of cases where people are not mentally normal or are otherwise mistaken. But there is also no reason why we should have to adopt a non-conceptualist notion of perceptual judgements in this analysis, if instead we understand conceptualisation to be a process there at the start of perception, one that is largely passive –as suggested above– it needn’t be conscious and so non-conceptual perception has not been proven.

Dretske could then object to this on the grounds that it presumes there is an active perceptual processing system, one that can conceptualise the information received without awareness. For him, the information of the object sensed is sufficiently rich to produce non-conceptual content in perceptual experiences, such that the perceptual processing system acts mainly as a conduit towards higher cognitive processes once this has been achieved; the system is either passive or contributes a minimal amount of inferential reasoning. The problem with this claim is that the constructivist approach, that which promotes active perceptual processing, remains popular, so more evidence is required before a decision can be made as to which is more plausible.[21]

A much better objection to conceptualism is one based on the notion of perceptual learning; Dretske claims that because our ability to recognise certain objects develops as children, this can be seen as evidence that “Sensory perception of objects normally comes before the cognitive perception”.[22] The non-conceptualised sensory information must be the starting-point in early infancy and later still be there underneath conceptual perception. This appears sound, but again there is no reason why infants should not be endowed with faculties of conceptual perception of at least a basic non-linguistic kind, that they are not aware of. Furthermore, Elizabeth Spelke, a psychologist, believes that via a detailed experimental examination of the issue she has produced evidence that infants are innately endowed with a basic concept of objects.[23]

Spelke believes “that the dividing line between perception and thought cannot be determined by introspection. Nor can it be drawn in terms of impenetrability [autonomous in the sense of not being affected by other thoughts or knowledge], learning, passivity, directness or simplicity.” Pure perception results in a simple specification of the layout of what we see without any distinct spatial or temporal boundaries (these are later applied as concepts).[24]

We experience the external world as a layout of physical bodies which endure over time, but this need not be the case in early infancy. Indeed, many have postulated that perception of objects is a learnt skill rather than an innate capacity.[25]

Somehow our visual systems manage to divide up the continuous stream of experience into neatly bounded objects, even when only partly visible.[26] The Gestalt school of psychology challenges this view, positing an unlearned disposition for the perceptual system to organise experience into maximally simple and regular units. This, of course, applies to infants; indeed James and Eleanor Gibson in the 1970s suggested such a system would be highly beneficial- perhaps necessary -for the development of object discernment in infants. But according to Spelke’s observations the Gestalt approach does not provide an adequate explanation, nor does any other traditional model.[27]

This is due to an assumption they share that objects are perceived rather than conceived. She says there is evidence for a central mechanism which organises the surface layout of the perceived area.[28] It seems that the apprehension of objects is a cognitive act brought about by this mechanism, which occurs as soon as the sensory data is collected.

There is evidence that young infants understand “the principle that objects move on spatiotemporally continuous paths.” Studies have shown children recognise the difference between a single moving object which is obscured at a point during its motion and cases where two objects were used rather the one continuous object.[29] “The properties of unity, boundedness, substance, and spatiotemporal continuity appear jointly to constitute an initial object concept.” This central concept then becomes richer as we develop into adulthood.[30]

At the core of her claims is that:

Infants would seem to appreciate two fundamental object properties: substance and spatiotemporal continuity, before they can search for objects that are hidden and even before they can reach for objects that are visible. Prior to the development of most object-directed actions, infants are endowed with mechanisms that carry them beyond the immediately perceivable world.[31]

To conclude, a very good case can be made in favour of Dretske’s interpretation, his revision of non-conceptualism with the claim that the sensing and thinking need not be separate acts makes the theory more plausible because this coheres more with the phenomenological evidence. The most convincing argument for it is probably that on the basis of direct attention attraction, but this is by no means conclusive. Maund’s suggestion of a different kind of non-conceptual content is not much more plausible and as such does little to affect the debate. The conceptualist approach of Kant and Strawson remains slightly more plausible; once we understand its central notion –of all perceptual experience being saturated in concepts– this is a much more plausible theory on an intuitional basis, and is also underpinned by the phenomenology of our perceptual experiences, with which it is largely coherent. But it is Spelke’s work which is decisive, if her evidence is sound from an early age all perception takes place via the two merged faculties. This is not to say that the notion of a distinctly non-conceptual perception is not appealing, indeed this could well take place in subliminal perception. But (especially in regard to the active/passive perceptual processing debate), we will have to wait for more conclusive psychological evidence before we can properly commit ourselves to either position. Overall, it appears more likely that perception must involve conceptualisation than not.

Bibliography

Bergmann, Michael, ‘A Dilemma For Internalism’, In Knowledge and Reality, Crisp, Davis, and Vanderlaan (eds.), (2006), Springer; URL: http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~bergmann/dilemma.htm

Dixon, N. F., ‘Subliminal Perception’, In The Oxford Companion To the Mind, Gregory (Ed.), (1987), Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 753

Dretske, Fred, [1990], ‘Seeing, Believing and Knowing,’ In Perception, Schwartz, Robert, (ed.), (2004), Oxford, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., pp. 268-286

Dretske, Fred, ‘Perception Without Awareness’, In Perceptual Experience, Gendler, T. S. & Hawthorne, J., (eds.), (2006), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 147-180

Kant, Immanuel, (2003), [1781], Critique of Pure Reason, Meiklejohn, J. M. D., (trans.), Mineola (N.Y.), Dover

Maund, Barry, (2003), Perception, Chesham (UK), Acumen Publishing

Schwartz, Robert, (2004), ‘Introduction To Part IV’, In Perception, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., pp. 263-7

Spelke, Elizabeth, [1988], ‘Where Perceiving Ends and Thinking Begins: The Apprehension of Objects In Infancy,’ In Perception, Schwartz, Robert, (ed.), (2004), Oxford, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., pp. 321-336

Strawson, Peter, (1992), Analysis and Metaphysics, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Notes

1 This follows the typology of Maund, (2003)

2 Maund, (2003), p. 58

3 Maund, (2003), pp. 58-9

4 Dretske, [1990], pp. 269-70

5 Dretske, [1990], pp. 271-2

6 Maund, (2003), p. 153

7 Maund, (2003), p. 156

8 Maund, (2003), p. 163

9 Bergmann, (2006), p. 29 (footnotes 30 and 31)

10 Maund, (2003), p. 63

11 Strawson, (1992), p.62

12 Maund, (2003), p. 63

13 Maund, (2003), p. 63

14 Kant, [1781], p. 45

15 Maund, (2003), p. 63, with special reference to John McDowell’s theory of conceptualism.

16 Maund, (2003), p. 65

17 Dretske, (2006), p. 147

18 Dixon, (1987), p. 753

19 Dixon, (1987), p. 753

20 Dretske, (2006), pp. 159-67

21 Dretske, [1990], pp. 280-1

22 Dretske, [1990], p. 283

23 Schwartz, (2004), p. 266

24 Schwartz, (2004), p. 266

25 Spelke, [1988], p. 321

26 Spelke, [1988], p. 321

27 Spelke, [1988], p. 322

28 Spelke, [1988], p. 323

29 Spelke, [1988], p. 326

30 Spelke, [1988], p. 330

31 Spelke, [1988], p. 329

This is an essay I wrote back in 2008. I evaluate the ‘standard analysis’ of the conditions for knowledge in the light of Gettier’s counter-examples. I cover three possible solutions: 1) redefining the conditions of knowledge (I follow especially Nozick’s conditional theory as advocated by Dancy, 1985), 2) explaining away Gettier’s refutation (particularly following Fogelin, as elaborated in Williams, 2001), and 3) radical scepticism. These positions each have merits in their own ways, but it is the conditional theory that is most plausible and as a result the elaboration of the standard analysis found in the question above should be rejected.

The standard analysis of knowledge is so called because it was the most popular from at least the time of Plato [1] until the mid 20th century. It is also called the tripartite account because it is composed of three conditions, purported to each be necessary, and to collectively be sufficient to ascribe a belief state as one of knowledge, namely: belief, truth and justification.[2] It can plainly be seen that these conditions (or an equivalent in the case of justification) are necessary because they each exclude a particular fatal deficiency in the construction of knowledge, respectively: ignorance, error and opinion.[3] In the tradition inherited from Plato there is a strong qualitative distinction between knowledge and mere opinion. We do not know something if we believe it for no reason and it turns out to be true. Such ‘right opinion’ has equal utility to knowledge, but it is characterised as ephemeral because it is necessary for it to be ‘tied down’ so we can be certain it is right.[4] Some contemporary theorists, including Fogelin, however, do not think that knowledge needs to be so stable.[5]

In an article published in 1963, Gettier put forward possible scenarios in which people have justified true beliefs that do not meet our intuitions for knowledge, thus refuting the tripartite account.[6] One of his counter-examples runs as follows: two other people are in my office and I am justified on the basis of much evidence to believe that the first owns a Ford car; unbeknown to me they no longer do. I am equally ignorant of the fact that the second person owns one. I believe truly and justifiably that someone in my office owns a Ford car, but I do not know someone does, and therefore justified true belief cannot be sufficient for knowledge.[7] This provokes a response of scrutinising Gettier’s argument or altering the analysis, perhaps adding new conditions. There is also the possibility of scepticism, for whilst we have a capacity for justifying our beliefs, it may be we are not able to meet the extra conditions that turn justified true belief into knowledge.[8]

First I will consider constructive responses which aim to alter the analysis to escape the ‘Gettier problem.’ Two important attempts prior to the conditional theory were that of indefeasibility and the causal theory. The indefeasibility approach holds that the Gettier problems arise because there exist truths which would have destroyed the agent’s justification had they been aware of them. Thus, we add the criterion that the justification for the belief is indefeasible (not liable to be destroyed by further truths).[9] This, however, is too strong a requirement because it requires us to know a great many other truths. Moreover, there are often truths which, taken in isolation, are enough to defeat our justification in cases of true belief, so it has the consequence that our range of knowledge would be dramatically reduced. In attempting to solve this problem the theory collapses into the alternative criterion that our justification would not be defeated by the sum of all truth, which effectively amounts to its refutation because we cannot be required to know all truth before we can have justified belief.[10]

Goldman’s causal theory comprises the criterion ‘s knows that p if and only if the fact that p is causally connected in an appropriate way with s’s believing that p.’ [11] This is initially very plausible because it excludes true beliefs which are justified by coincidence, but it does suffer from major difficulties. First, facts are true propositions which reflect the world rather than affect it; events alone, not facts can stand in causal relations. Furthermore, establishing universal truths is a much bigger problem; there does not appear to be any causal link between the fact that all men are mortal and my belief that all men are mortal, for example. Instead it is known by examples from which the generalisation is inferred. Ultimately, while we may be able to form a view of facts in which they cause knowledge, this theory is not viable due to its failure to account for universal truths.[12]

The conditional theory of Nozick has a strategy of confirmation similar to the casual theory; it is general enough to encompass a casual relationship, but subtle enough to avoid the problems associated with the causal relations of facts. The theory replaces the third (justification) criterion with: ‘If p were not true, s would not believe that p’. This leaves the problem of how to prove that something isn’t knowledge if, in a slightly different circumstance it remains true but a no longer believes it (if it is possible for p to be true without a believing it, s’s reason for belief isn’t sufficiently dependent on its truth). For this reason the forth criterion is added: ‘If it were the case that p (in changed circumstances), it would be the case that s would still believe that p.’ These criteria are subjunctive conditionals, they test the reliability of the justification against counterfactual conditions.[13] For a belief to be knowledge it must therefore be particularly sensitive to the truth of the proposition believed; when it is true, s believes it; when it is false, s does not believe it. Nozick calls this property ‘truth-tracking’.[14] The objections to this theory are similar to that of the indefeasibility approach- that it is too abstract and demanding. But it is a very plausible solution and its high standards provide us with knowledge that remains stable.

I turn now to a major competitor to the conditional theory, Fogelin’s conception of unstable knowledge. Fogelin does not take the Gettier problems as having refuted the tripartite account, but to have shown its justification criterion is too vague. The criterion can be interpreted in two ways: personal entitlement to believe a proposition and adequate grounds for the proposition itself being justified. The former way, ‘epistemic responsibility,’ we ascribe when a standard of behaviour is met, that belief is responsibly formed and held. The latter way is more objective and outcome-orientated, we ascribe it when epistemic procedure reliably establishes a truth. Epistemic responsibility is fundamental because it is subjective and more practical than the ‘god’s eye view’ demanded by adequate grounding.[15]

A feature of the Gettier examples is that they require us to imagine having extra evidence not accessible to the agent, meaning that we are aware not only of their epistemic responsibility but of the grounding of their belief also, whereas they only have sufficient amounts of one of these to warrant the label ‘justified’.[16] For Fogelin this is the key to the problem raised by Gettier, and he proposes new criteria for the analysis accordingly, such that both types are necessary: “s knows that p, if and only if s justifiably came to believe that p on grounds that establish the truth of p.” [17 ]

Superficially, the condition of ‘grounds that establish the truth of’ may sound too much like the unworkable demands of indefeasibility, but there is an important difference owing to Fogelin’s conception of knowledge. He argues that to claim the right to be sure and to admit fallibility is not inherently contradictory. Focusing on the epistemic responsibility element of justification rather than on adequate grounds inclines us towards fallibilism. If we accept fallibilism then we are liable to accept, as does Fogelin, the ‘instability of knowledge’ (a further departure from the conception of knowledge in Plato).[18]

In the common interpretation, only the stable, final ‘truth of the matter’ can be associated with knowledge, but this is not coherent with our actual practice of knowledge where being able to perceive the end truth is not workable, as indefeasibility has taught us. Rather, knowledge varies with the addition of new information, thus, he argues, this conception of instable knowledge is more plausible than the other views.[19]

Having encountered the contrasting views of Nozick and Fogelin it can be seen that our choice of theory depends upon the strength of criteria for knowledge we hold; in contrast to both these views sceptics argue that in the absence of a wholly sound analysis of empirical knowledge we must fall back on deductively-reached knowledge because this is all that we can have certainty of. The identification of knowledge with certainty is intuitive today as it was when held by Plato, but it conflicts with another strong intuition, that we can claim ‘a right to be sure’ about things in the world (Ayer’s expression).[20] This has led philosophers since Plato to move to a fallibilist conception of knowledge, in which the possibility of error admits, but the criteria for knowledge are stringent.

In Fogelin’s analysis we have looser criteria for knowledge which are closer to the tripartite account than that of Nozick. Fogelin’s theory may cohere with our mental experience of inductive justification being contextually sensitive, that is, varying with the addition of new information, but what is important is coherence with our experience of knowing. As Plato emphasised, a belief must be stable in order for us to have confidence in its truth. But because right belief is just as useful, we should not hesitate to call right belief knowledge when we can be sufficiently sure of its truth. Unlike the conditional theory, the instability revision of the tripartite account does not provide this sufficiency because it is possible to misplace our justification, while a belief that tracks the truth will always result in knowledge.[21]

Overall, the tripartite account is flawed because it is too ambitious, which is probably result of its historical link with infallibilists such as Plato. Whilst scepticism is a viable alternative, it is neither as intuitively plausible nor as readily utilisable as a knowledge based on the conditional theory. The proxy knowledge it yields must be distanced from knowledge in the traditional sense because it is fallible, and consequently it is not fitting to call it true knowledge. But it is stronger than the fragile ‘knowledge’ of Fogelin, which amounts to little more than belief because the ‘knowledge’ it gives does not assure lasting stability. Because the conditional theory is much more demanding it gives us the right to be sure, but in line with human fallibility, admits the possibility of error. In conclusion, the conditional theory, although imperfect, is the most plausible response available to the Gettier problems. This is such that the tripartite account remains necessary at a general level, but we must reject it insofar as it lacks the more specific form of justification -the truth tracking criteria- because it too is necessary and completes the joint sufficiency of the criteria. 

Notes

1 See Plato, Theaetetus, 201c-210d & Meno, 98a: “For true opinions, as long as they remain, are a fine thing and all they do is good, but they are not willing to remain long, and they escape from a man’s mind, and are not worth much until one ties them down by [giving] an account of the reason why. … That is why knowledge is prized higher than correct opinion, and knowledge differs from correct opinion in being tied down.”

2 Dancy, 1985, p. 23

3 Williams, 2001, p. 16

4 Plato, Meno, 97a – 98c

5 Williams, 2001, p. 52

6 Dancy, 1985, p. 25. See also Gettier (1963).

7 Nozick, 1981, p. 173

8 Williams, 1999, p. 142

9 See Swain, 1974.

10 Dancy, 1985, pp. 29-31

11 See Goldman, 1967.

12 Dancy, 1885, pp. 33-4

13 Ibid, pp. 37-8

14 Nozick, 1981, p. 178

15 Williams, 2001, pp. 21-5

16 Ibid, pp. 51-2

17 Fogelin, 1994, p. 94

18 Williams, 2001, pp. 54-5

19 Ibid, p. 55

20 Ibid, p. 17

21 And here by ‘truth’ I mean that which currently appears true by reliable inductive methods.

Bibliography

Dancy, Jonathan, (1985), Introduction To Contemporary Epistemology, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Fogelin, Robert, (1994), Pyrrhonian Reflection On Knowledge and Justification, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Gettier, Edmund, (1963), ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’, Analysis, 23, pp. 121-3

Goldman, Alvin, (1967), ‘A Causal Theory of Knowing’, Journal of Philosophy, 64, pp. 355-72

Nozick, Robert, (1981), Philosophical Explanations, New York, Oxford University Press

Plato, Meno, In Five Dialogues, Grube, G. M. A. (trans.), (1981), Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company Inc., pp. 85-6

Plato, Theaetetus, Jowett, Benjamin, (trans.) (1871)

Swain, M., (1974), ‘Epistemic Defeasibility’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 11, pp. 15-25

Williams, Michael, (1999), ‘Fogelin’s Neo-Pyrrhonism’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 7, (2), pp. 141–158

Williams, Michael, (2001), Problems of Knowledge, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Critique of Arguments for Vegetarianism

Surely there’s nothing actually wrong with eating meat is there? Yes some people prefer not to because of sensibilities concerning animal suffering, but they just can’t separate the idea of animals being cute and fluffy with the idea of meat just being what humans eat. But are there any reasonable arguments against being omnivorous?

Well let’s first get the really obvious things out of the way:

• Just because most people think something is right doesn’t mean it is- think of the slave trade era.

• Just because something has traditionally always been done doesn’t mean it’s right- think of womens’ oppression.

• Just because we find it very difficult to do something doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do- think of keeping your temper with a irritating friend or with a misbehaving child, owning up to a misdeed, or of staying loyal to a long term partner.

• Just because animals are of a different species to us that doesn’t mean that their suffering doesn’t matter- we wouldn’t accept aliens being cruel to us, even if they were significantly cleverer.

Secondly, we have the classical argument for vegetarianism. This says that: 1) the suffering of conscious beings including animals is bad; 2) slaughtering animals deprives them of pleasure and causes them suffering; and renders the conclusion that we cannot slaughter animals for food because it prevents us from promoting pleasure as much as possible.

The flaw with this argument is that just because an animal’s pain is bad for them it does not follow that we should promote their pleasure as much as possible. Nor does it that we should promote any pleasure as much as possible. The only way we get to this conclusion is if we are assuming the truth of a utilitarian ethic. But I do not know any plausible argument for why taking on that kind of methodology is the appropriate response to the phenomena of pleasure.[i] So the classical argument isn’t going to decisively convert us to vegetarianism, and especially not people with more traditionalistic views as they tend to reject utilitarian ethics.

Many people are aware of the above argument, it has been popular since the 19th century. But what not so many people know is that there are other arguments, ones that do not depend on utilitarianism. Most of these arguments appeal instead to the notion of ‘animal rights’, which has become popular in recent decades. The reason we don’t hurt or kill other humans, the proponent of this argument says, is that they have a right to fair treatment, and a right to life (and that may well be one reason why we don’t do so). But, they continue, humans are just animals and are not really all that different from much less intelligent animals such as pigs, cows and sheep. So if humans have rights these other animals must have the same, or similar rights and therefore we have a duty not to kill them.

The first problem I have with this argument is that I have some doubt that there are such things in reality as ‘rights’ in the sense in which I am very confident that there are values or goods.[ii] It seems to me that rights are social constructs, artifacts of particular legal systems which may come and go. Even if I could be convinced that it was more likely than not that there are objective rights I don’t think they are a useful concept to deploy in this debate. This is because they are a very vague notion, especially if based on a loose analogy between humans and animals. And if we do not even agree what it is in virtue of that both animals and humans possess rights it seems unlikely that we mean the same thing by ‘animal rights’ as we do by ‘human rights’.

Furthermore, there are clear and significant differences between humans and other animals, which only a narrow reductionism based solely on biology would obscure. These differences are all around us in society, language, culture and the arts. While of course I accept evolution by natural selection, in my view to lower humans to the level of animals doesn’t extend our rights to animals, but removes them from us. I thereby conclude that this second argument is insufficient also.

Yet there is a third kind of argument which is even less well known. This is based neither on utilitarianism nor on rights, and runs as follows (please pay close attention). We all agree that suffering we have the means to prevent is a bad thing, even if it is unintended. And even if that suffering is caused in the course of bringing about a good. For example, we’d all condemn the behaviour of a sloppy surgeon who causes unnecessary levels of pain to his patients- even if this treatment was potentially life saving. So if we apply these simple intuitions to the case at hand we see that we have a duty not to slaughter animals, *if* we have an alternative which is not particularly impractical. And if that is so, slaughtering animals is cruel not only if we do it with sadistic intentions but even if we do it ‘sympathetically’ with merely with food in mind.[iii]

The benefit of meat eating (nutritionally and aesthetically) is not only unnecessary, but trivial in comparison to the large amount of suffering it causes in conscious creatures, be it in rearing them or slaughtering them. Note for example that all bulls used in farming are castrated without anaesthetic, cows are kept constantly pregnant (but their calves slaughtered upon birth) to produce milk, and many animals are forced to look on at other members of their species are slaughtered before it comes to their turn.

Statistics on the USA show that vegetarians have on average 40% lower cancer rates, much lower still heart disease rates and live six years longer. So it is extremely unlikely that it is less healthy than meat eating. Moreover, all nutritionists -even those backed by conservative groups likely to be influenced by the farming industry- agree that humans can get sufficient nutrition without meat.[iv]

In addition, plant-based food production can yield up to ten times as much protein per acre than meat production.[v] Because protein is the most important source of nutrition, this means that the food supply would be dramatically improved by society moving towards vegetarianism. While we already have more than enough food to solve world hunger if we would but distribute it more equitably, having more food can only help the potential for those starving  to get more of what they need. So this is also a social justice issue. Moreover, the arable land in poor countries is often bought up by large business who use it to grow plants for feeding animals for export to rich countries, while the people who actually live in that country have an inadequate food supply.

So I bring the first half of this piece to a close by concluding that in the light our new information that we do in fact have an alternative which is not particularly impractical, my argument does indeed prove that we have a duty not to eat meat. By extension we as consumers should avoid supporting meat-production, boycotting businesses that are heavily based upon it if we can.

Theology

Feel free to skip my brief theological detour. Perhaps you are a Jew, a Muslim or a Christian. If so you might well protest that there must be something wrong with my reasoning because if I am correct vegetarianism is obligatory, and in consequence the Mosaic Law, the Qur’an and the person of Jesus Christ would each be flawed in not having said this- and that you could not accept. Well to begin with there are a lot of ethical problems that aren’t adequately dealt with in those sources, and it would only be if they had positively encouraged meat-eating as absolutely right, that is, as right in all circumstances, that the correctness of my argument would show them to be flawed. But this is not the case with any of them. We already know they are incomplete guides, but that doesn’t mean that they are flawed in a substantial way. Also, note that my argument in no way depends upon animals having souls.

‘But hang on’, you might say if you are a Christian, ‘any immoral act is a sin, because although it need not be immoral becauseit is directly offensive to God, God still asks perfection of us (Mt 5:48) and to fall short of this is to sin. And this means that either meat-eating is morally permissible after all, or Christianity is false because as Jesus ate meat [vi] and therefore was not sinless.’

This, however, is a confusion of the implications of my argument- the context has greatly changed since the times of these Semitic sources of  morality. While morality itself never changes, the precise situations that we are feeding into it for answers do tend to change along with society. So I am not defending cultural relativism but pointing out that context is key. If you were in front of a court, charged for storming into a Synagogue and throwing over tables, ‘Jesus did it’ wouldn’t be much of a defence would it?

This is pertinent because my argument for the immorality of meat-eating wasn’t absolute, but was conditional upon there being an alternative that was easily available. Vegetarianism wasn’t obligatory in the ancient Middle East because with their social arrangements and technology it would have been simply impractical to feed everyone sufficiently with plant-based foods. Moreover, this was not a world that was not on the brink of environmental catastrophe.

The Environment

I suppose you think that this all sounds quite reasonable but you are not going to dramatically change your behaviour for the sake of some animals. Fine. Do it for the sake of your fellow homo sapiens then. Another thing many people are completely unaware of is that greenhouse gasses produced by farming (particularly the methane from the animals’ flatulence) are actually doing more to bring on catastrophic climate change than pollution from air travel is. Governments who only ever talk about targets for lower emissions from other industries are to blame for this ignorance.

Furthermore, Bruce Friedrich of PETA points out: “It requires exponentially more resources to eat animal products, because most of what we feed to farmed animals is required [just] to keep them alive, and much of the rest is turned into bones and other bits we don’t eat; only a fraction of those crops is turned into meat, milk or eggs… which is vastly wasteful compared with eating the crops directly.”[vii] It is also enormously wasteful in ways relating to climate change. Eating animal-based foods “requires many extra stages of polluting and energy-intensive production” not needed for plant-based foods, particularly involving transportation.[viii]

Moreover, if we grew plants in the place of livestock, even if they are plants that animals would have eaten but humans cannot, that land would act as a carbon sink, therefore alleviating climate change.[ix] According to a 2006 UN environmental report “eating meat contributes to ‘problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity’.”[x] And “the farmed animal industry is ‘one of the… most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global’.”[xi] As John Vidal says, this same UN report “calculated that the combined climate change emissions of animals bred for their meat were about 18% of the global total- more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.”[xii]

As with animals, I have serious doubts that the environment actually has rights, but that does not mean it isn’t a very serious issue. Whatever the variable by which human activity increases global temperature, we are at a point where it is crucial that we do whatever we can do to lower the output of that equation to save as many human lives as we can. The global energy crisis has already prompted corporate-government sponsored genocides of native Canadians (if that sounds absurdly sensationalist, consider the legal definition of genocide which does not require mass-murder). And the environmental refugees we are already seeing in several parts of the developing world (their homelands and ways of life having been destroyed by unstable climate change) are only the very first of billions. Legislating for lower CO2 emissions is a vital component of our response but switching to plant-based foods is both more practical and more effective.

So at this juncture I point out to Christians that although the book of Genesis says that God gave mankind dominion over all animal life, which has always been interpreted so as to include permission to eat animals, God there also institutes a moral principle of stewardship for His creation. The corollary of this is that where our purported license to eat meat conflicts with our duty to protect the environment, the moral requirement must trump mere permission.

You may have realised by now that this article was in fact an argument for veganism, rather than vegetarianism. And just as I should call that spade a spade, we should all follow the argument where it leads. Yes there is a reasonable argument against being omnivorous, but what really makes it a decisive argument in favour of vegetarianism (and perhaps veganism) is the environmental aspect. Whatever you think of animals we always have a duty to protect human life, especially if it easily within our power to do so, and this requires we change our diet.

I respect that you may not yet be ready to go cold turkey on turkey, let alone to jump in the deep end that is veganism- of course I am very far from completing such a transition myself. But my point is you should do as I say, not as I do. Or to put it much better: do as reason says, not as those who reason do. At the very least you should seriously think about giving up beef right away as that is the most environmentally degradating of all meats. Remember that even if relatively few people become vegetarian for this reason it would still make a tangible difference to those who will suffer from climate change in the future. That impact, however negligible, is still doing good and we have a duty to choose doing good over bad. We should also avoid hypocrisy, we should keep our consciences clear by at least doing what we would have done had everyone else done their part too, and hopefully showing them that it’s not that difficult that will persuade others to follow. Ultimately, eating meat every day isn’t normal. Eating meat at all isn’t a necessary part of human life. It is a lifestyle choice, and as I have shown it is a life threatening one- it will cost human lives.

Yet this environmental question is only secondary. Even if animal farming caused no environmental damage at all I would think my central argument sound enough to require vegetarianism. I just put it in there to educate about the environmental science and to show that even if you are sceptical about my argument, it is still more reasonable than not to be vegetarian.

“If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty.” – Sir Paul McCartney

Notes

i See this short article: http://www.intellectum.org/articles/issues/intellectum6/en/ITL06p005015_Why%20I%20am%20not%20a%20consequentialist_David%20S%20%20Oderberg.pdf

ii Of course none of these are meant to be physical things but abstract objects which certain phenomena cause to be instantiated in the minds of subjects who are conscious of them.

iii An example of this type of argument can be found in Prof. David Detmer’s ‘A Vegetarian’s Beef with Atkins’ (2005)

iv Detmer, David, (2005), ‘A Vegetarian’s Beef with Atkins’

v Detmer, David, (2005), ‘A Vegetarian’s Beef with Atkins’

vi Of course we do not know whether or not Jesus ate meat (other than fish which wasn’t within the scope of my argument anyway). The founder of everyone’s favourite cult, the Hare Krishnas, had a famous conversation with a Catholic priest whom he criticised for not being a vegetarian like Jesus was. The priest responded that the Swami was not entitled to assume that Jesus was a vegetarian, because there was no evidence for that. To which the obvious reply is that in the absence of evidence, neither was the priest entitled to assume that Jesus wasn’t a vegetarian.

vii Friedrich, Bruce, in: ‘Is Being Vegan the Only Green Option?’, New Internationalist, January/February 2011, p. 34

viii Friedrich, Bruce, in: ‘Is Being Vegan the Only Green Option?’, New Internationalist, January/February 2011, p. 34

ix Friedrich, Bruce, in: ‘Is Being Vegan the Only Green Option?’, New Internationalist, January/February 2011, p. 35

x Friedrich, Bruce, in: ‘Is Being Vegan the Only Green Option?’, New Internationalist, January/February 2011, p. 34; Quoting from: ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’, available here: http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM

xi Friedrich, Bruce, in: ‘Is Being Vegan the Only Green Option?’, New Internationalist, January/February 2011, p. 34; Quoting from: ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’, available here: http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM

xii Vidal, John, (2010), ’10 Ways Vegetarianism Can Help Save the Planet’, The Observer, http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/18/vegetarianism-save-planet-environment , citing ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’, available here: http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM

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If you liked that you should like this other article of mine.

What are the fields of eudaimonology and soteriology in philosophy? Here I will attempt an original overview of an answer. I happen to be very interested in each of them individually but in this short piece I hope to give some indication of how they are similar to, and how they interact with, one another.

If the eudaimonic tradition from ancient philosophy is focused upon the highest good or best way of life for humankind then eudaimonology is the study of those things that determine what that way of life is like. Indeed, this is the most familiar use of the term ‘philosophy’- what one’s way of life is focused on.

Soteriology has a more conventional definition: the study of salvation, that is, of making people safe or secure. This involves being absolutely free from stress, anxiety and guilt, and in theistic traditions, being loved and valued for who you are. As such it is the field that separates of theology from other branches of philosophy. I regard this as the necessary and sufficient condition for something being theological, because while ‘relying on the authority of a sacred text’ is often touted as a necessary condition, there are many scholars and texts that recognisably do theology without doing this.

The most important substantial (rather than formal) difference between ethics in the eudaimonic tradition and in the analytic tradition is that the former sees morality as intrinsically bound-up with the meaning of life and happiness. [1] This is a ‘thick’ concept of ethics, in contrast with the thin concept whereby it deals solely with what acts we should or shouldn’t do and why. This kind of joined-up thinking will be more difficult but it will also be more comprehensive and useful to society. [2] Indeed, another characteristic of eudaimonic thought is emphasis upon civic duty and participation in politics. This encourages us to see political philosophy as part of ethics rather than a separate field.

Eudaimonology looks at morality, meaning, and happiness together to elucidate them through discovering their proper relation, with a view to improving people’s lives. Here we have a significant formal difference with analytic philosophers, that the eudaimonologist is a sage who is actively seeking to spread her insights about human life to benefit others. Soteriology shares this prescriptive attitude, and rightly so: if you have reason to believe that you can teach people things to improve themselves that is reason enough to do so. I don’t mean to suggest that most analytic ethicists aren’t concerned citizens and moral people, but rather that they don’t believe that their knowledge of the subject translates into an expertise for helping others. [3]

I think that this is most unfortunate. It is true that philosophers cannot be reliably taken to be more moral than other people, and that morality is not something theoretical but something practical, but moral knowledge is real knowledge and it is knowledge that philosophers tend to have a lot more of than other people. This tendency in philosophy is likely a lingering effect of the now discredited fact-value dichotomy. [4]

Some parallels can be made with soteriology. Like eudaimonology it deals with human life and human value at a very general level. As this makes for a more holistic picture, soteriology too deals with more than one kind of question. In the thin sense of the term, soteriology is just the study of how one can attain salvation, what one can do to be ‘saved’. But in a thicker sense it is also the study of what the nature of salvation is, why we might need to be saved, and by extension the nature of ultimate reality and mankind’s relation to it. As such it seems that soteriology includes eudaimonology within it, but expands into further spiritual and metaphysical exploration.

But lest the two fields merge into one homogenous blob, I’ll bring out the main difference I can think of: while eudaimonology puts a very strong emphasis upon temporality, soteriology is inclined towards the atemporal. The emphasis upon temporality in the eudaimonic tradition takes the form of analysing morality, happiness and meaningfulness as phenomena that take long periods of time to come to fruition, requiring experience, training, and learning from mistakes. So the types of value and well-being eudaimonology studies are down to Earth ones that humans experience in their day to day lives, and which are the subject of change. I mean things like respect, duty, fidelity, and friendship.

Whereas the types of value and well-being that are involved in soteriology are more abstract and are directed atemporally, for example, a cosmic sense of justice or love. One does not (or at least should not) aim to be ‘saved’ in one particular moment and then the next. One aims to undergo a radical transformation of self-transcendence which unlike one’s moral standing does not depend upon when and where someone is in their life journey, which is not affected by the changing course of one’s life, and which makes sense as one is connected to something much larger and greater than the time and space we inhabit. The deep spiritual experience of safety, bliss, peace, or love that one can have a in a moment is importantly disconnected from that moment and directed towards something wholly other.

Soeriology is intertwined with eudaimonistic thought because of the rich religious heritage of philosophical thought. Those with a broadly traditional view of philosophy are therefore naturally drawn towards soteriological issues from eudaimonological ones. I conclude that while soteriology contains eudaimonology within it, eudaimonology also naturally leads into soteriology. Thus there is no absolute distinction between the two.

Notes

1) Where classical utilitarianism defined goodness in terms of happiness this was a contingent identity claim. It is an example of  ethicists choosing to talk about happiness, but my point is that it is a choice rather than a necessity; within analytic ethics it is entirely reasonable and acceptable for morality to be discussed in isolation from happiness. Obvious examples of this are Kantianism and Intuitionism.

2) In linking views on various issues together, rather than treating them as specialisms eudaimonology resembles the academic discipline called Human Sciences.

3) In recent years there have been quite a few analytic philosophers who have done eudaimonistic work, the names that spring to mind are: Philipa Foot, Mary Midgley, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel and John Cottingham. But these are, as it were, exceptions that prove the rule. These writers have in the main been quite reluctant to use their field to call the masses to a better way of life.

4) Of course facts and values are different things, but they are not mutually exclusive as it was standard to hold for most of the history of analytic philosophy. For example, that ‘Hitler was a bad man’ is a value proposition doesn’t stop it from being an objectively true proposition, that is, a fact.

I will begin by briefly summarizing Hume’s primary claims regarding his empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism and illustrate his emphasis on each of these in an effort to show that his philosophy is consistent and equally supports all three. I will ultimately conclude that his account of naturalism is the least developed of the three. This paper will then examine the methods and their accuracy that he employs in developing each of these.

Hume begins in Section I by providing a framework of two types of philosophical thinking which he calls the “easy and obvious” philosophy and “accurate and abstract” philosophy. He characterizes the “easy and obvious” philosophy as pertaining to moral reasoning dealing with applied action and practical matters related to every day life. It is an ethical enterprise relying on sentiments, vice and virtue, appealing to the commonsense of daily life and right and good living. In contrast, the accurate and abstract philosophy is rooted in abstract reasoning and reflection where particular instances are generalized through inference. The problem that Hume saw with accurate and abstract thinking was that it is conclusions could rarely be applied to practical every day matters. The upside that Hume saw was that accurate and abstract thinking honed the ability to reason accurately when applied to practical matters.

After establishing this framework between the “easy and obvious” philosophy and “accurate and abstract” philosophy, Hume establishes another dichotomy in Section IV between “matters of fact” and “relations of ideas”. By “matters of fact” Hume refers to the a posteriori knowledge induced by experience at a given time through the impressions made by the sensible qualities of bodies. These sensible qualities are ascertained by abstract reasoning as we identify a bodies color, extension, solidity, and the like. Hume contends that matters of fact are neither true nor false, but only probable since no proposition regarding a matter of fact can produce a contradiction since a negation of a fact may always exist. “Relations of ideas” are those analytical propositions that are necessarily true by definition, such as those found in geometry and algebra. These propositions can be said to be demonstrably true or false based on a contradiction of the truths of necessary definitions.

Hume says that while the mind is capable of producing inferences, it is impossible to reason the cause and effect of matters of fact without experience. Any effect we observe is bound to a cause that is only discoverable through observation. Hume shows that, despite the efforts of great thinkers throughout history, no one has been able to discover a secret power or ultimate cause within substance that shows a necessary connexion between its cause and effect. The corollary of his reasoning is that, since we cannot reason about the effects of matters of fact without experiencing their causes, any metaphysical speculation cannot be rationally justified and pursued. Instead, Hume says the appearance of cause and effect is the result of the mind conjoining associated phenomena, so that cause and effect is more correlative of similar outward impressions based on custom and habit rather than the result of some inward necessary connexion. However, the custom and habit that we rely on to reason the cause and effect of matters of fact utilizes an inductive method which must suppose a principle where the past resembles the future. Because all matters of fact are subject to the possibility of change, and since there can be no necessary cause for any effect to be certain of, the inductive method yields knowledge claims in terms of probability rather than the certainty of true and false.

In developing his empiricism Hume is primarily concerned with showing that reason alone is insufficient for determining knowledge claims about the world. According to him, all reasoning of cause and effect is a result of the principles of connexion, which conjoin the associated phenomena of bodies by similar resemblance, contiguity and causation, rather some inherent secret power that produces necessary connection. His main contention is that the limits of human understanding about the natural world are constrained by experience, that our knowledge about “matters of fact” is dependent and bound by perceived sensations. Reason that infers matters of fact without experience of their causes leads to obscure and unworkable conclusions. He argues that a priori assumptions of pure reason are superfluous and arbitrary since there is nothing within nature that makes them and their inferences necessarily true. The primary aim of fruitful inquiry, then, is to root matters of fact in experience through a scientific method of experimentation and observation in order to produce a consistency which may yield principles and laws.

Throughout the Enquiry Hume applied a skeptical approach that differed from his predecessors. Instead of characterizing his type of inquiry as skeptical, he preferred to see himself as being philosophically curious, so as to not to fully overextend merit of skeptical thinking. This characterization reflects his motives throughout the Enquiry as being primarily pragmatic and concerned with keeping his philosophy relevant and applicable. As such, Hume utilized skepticism as a means of uncovering the limits of human reasoning by doubting how it is we arrive at knowledge. He understood the merits of skeptical doubt, but also saw its shortfalls. His aim was to progress understanding and knowledge without giving too much weight to man’s ability to form conclusions based on reason alone.

In Section XII Hume identified two kinds of skepticism, namely antecedent and consequent skepticism, and further distinguishes as each possessing a moderate and extreme form. The skepticism demonstrated by Descartes, which Hume calls extreme antecedent skepticism, subjects all sensations and judgments to universal doubt in order to first derive some a priori, foundational principles. The corollary of this skepticism, according to Hume, is that there is no first principle which is inescapable from doubt. He further contends that, even in the event that a principle was discovered, any conclusions that follow would not be immune to doubt. Furthermore, this extreme form leaves the mind with no firm conviction or direction on any subject. An inherent problem with antecedent skepticism is its use of reason to establish existence, as demonstrated by Descartes I think, therefore I am. This fails Hume’s standards because reason alone can not make existence claims by instantiating “matters of fact” through inference. Matters of fact are derived through by experience alone. Hume praises the moderate form of this antecedent skepticism which seeks to establish first principles by progressing incrementally. This moderate form continually calls into question the employed methods of reasoning by uncovering prejudices and shedding biases and inaccurate opinions in order to preserve impartiality.

Throughout the Enquiry Hume employs consequent skepticism to question customary conclusions and judgments and the ways in which they are ascertained. He argues that perceptions are the primary guide to experiencing an external world and that it is through our perceptions, which by natural instinct yield forceful and lively impressions of the sensible qualities of objects, that we suppose an external reality independent of the mind. In this way we justify our belief in an external world through experience. The problem with this reasoning is that, though we assume the reliability of the perceptions to render accurate representations, perceptions are prone to change with experience and subject to error. Hume claims that, while experience provides justification for belief in an external world, experience alone cannot allow us to transcend perceptions. This leads Hume to conclude that belief in an external world is ultimately irrational and unjustified.

Hume shows that utilizing the extreme form of consequent skepticism leads one to doubt the reliability of our senses to such a degree that one could not conceive the extensional and solidity qualities composing a body. In addition one would not be able to conceive causation since all rationally justified conclusions depend on observation. If this were the case we could not form any judgments about matter whatsoever and ultimately lead to complete inaction. While useful in excessive theorizing, this Pyrrhonist skepticism produces no fruitful conclusions for useful action and right thought. The natural instincts of man, and even of animals as Hume points out, do not allow us to apply this skeptical reasoning, and any doubts we may have are quickly amended as a matter of practicality and commonsense. As a result, Hume prefers a moderate consequent skepticism, or mitigated skepticism, which seeks to recognize and balance dogmatic and obstinate beliefs by subjecting them to counterpoising arguments and contrary methods. This moderate form allows for proper moral reasoning that recognizes the limitation of certain enquiries and appreciates the narrow capacity of human understanding. In this way Hume balances his task of developing an easy and obvious philosophy that is both accurate and exact by utilizing doubt to clarify and revise methods of belief for accuracy and exactness.

Because Hume placed so much emphasis on experience to render knowledge and doubt to make ensure impartial accuracy, he left little room for a fully developed account of his naturalism. Unobserved phenomena held little merit for Hume and speculations that could not be readily tested were pushed aside. His philosophy fully appreciates the reality that perceptions are inexact and fallible representations of external bodies, at best, that will never admit a definite and satisfactory accuracy about their nature and existence. As such, Hume doesn’t make absolute instantiations about the existence and nature of a material world outside what can be perceived. For Hume all we can do is subject our senses to experience and continually revise the way we organize how these senses are perceived by calling conventional methods and habits into scrutiny.

Hume’s empiricism and skepticism seem to be weightier and better supported when compared to his naturalism. His undertaking to devise a new philosophy grounded in experience was a matter of practicality. He wanted to put an end to what he considered fruitless metaphysical speculation that lead to obscurity. His philosophy emphasized the role of the cognition that is incapable of discovering anything about the necessity of nature. Nature does not exist without a mind to perceive it, and any speculation is an empty attempt to get at its objective independent truth. Laws and principles, he said, were a matter of habituation and custom alone, the conditioned expectations of cause and effect gained only after experience. For Hume, cause and effect is a matter of the mind associating two perceived phenomenon occurring in conjunction that lead us to believe in a necessary relationship. As a result, the mind’s ability to reason and ascertain natural knowledge is bound by experience rendered from habits of perception.

Hume is realistic in how he characterizes the limits of human understanding. He sees that while skepticism is a useful tool, it has limits. Since he is concerned with developing an easy and obvious philosophy that is accurate and exact, he concedes that, while it is impossible to know absolutely for certain that an external world exists independent of our perceptions, such a philosophy is untenable for progressing human understanding. Using a moderate consequent skepticism, he outlines what we can know realistically, namely matters of fact and their causes derived from experience, and delineates the limits of our methods for ascertaining these matters of fact, namely our ability to perceive the impressions which appear to our cognition. Since experience renders all matters of fact, Hume shows that the impetus for developing understanding is activity, whereby action quells doubt through applied observation and experimentation. Hume sees that the accurate and abstract philosophy is beneficial for refining inquiry and producing doubts by reflective scrutiny.

Hume’s views are thoroughly consistent and coherent through the Enquiry. In his formulation he allows for a philosophy that is unhampered with endless skeptical speculation common throughout metaphysical inquiry. His emphasis on naturalism and experience as the starting point for understanding and knowledge, and his dubiousness in our ability to accurately render relationships such as cause and effect within our experience, creates a very practical philosophy that is tenable even by today’s standards.

Thomas Kuhn states that he is “concerned with the dynamic process by which scientific knowledge is acquired rather than with the logical structure of the products of scientific research.” The aim for Kuhn is to identify and clarify the means in which theories are selected. Kuhn’s contention against Popper is that his use of univocal rhetoric is applied ambiguously to scientific descriptions and situations that Kuhn identifies as real contextual discrepancies. The central dilemma in the essay revolves around seriously mistaken generalizations committed by Sir Karl Popper.

Kuhn begins by presenting areas where Popper and he are in near identical agreement. He states “both of us reject the view that sciences progress by accretion; both emphasize instead the revolutionary process by which one theory is rejected and replaced by an incompatible one; and both deeply underscored the role played in this process by the older theory’s occasional failure to meet challenges proposed by logic, experiment, or observation.”  Kuhn continues on to highlight areas of mutual opposition that he shares with Sir Karl. “We both emphasize, for example, the intimate and inevitable entanglement of scientific observation with theory; we are correspondingly skeptical of efforts to produce any neutral observation language; and we both insist that scientists may properly aim to invent theories that explain observed phenomena and that do so in terms of real objects, whatever the latter phrase may mean.”

While Kuhn and Sir Karl Popper appeal to the same data and generally agree on most responses, there is a difference in gestalt that separates the two philosophers.  According to Kuhn, when making general locutionary descriptions Sir Karl Popper’s rhetoric indicates “symptomatic…contextual differences that…careful literal expression hides”. Kuhn’s intention is to bring the ambiguity to light and show where these differences expose major flaws in Sir Karl Popper’s position.

Kuhn points to an excerpt from Sir Karl Popper’s essay Logic of Scientific Discovery whereby Sir Karl writes, “A scientists, whether theorist of experimenter, puts forward statements, or systems of statements, and tests them step by step. In the field of empirical sciences, more particularly, he constructs hypotheses, or systems of theories, and tests them against experience by observation and experiment.”According to Kuhn, this statement raises three problems. Kuhn insists that Popper is ambiguous with the words “statements” or “theories” being systematically tested as a result of a “historically mistaken” generalization . In addition, Kuhn points out, the statement fails to account for demarcation characteristics of scientific practices that differentiate the sciences from non sciences.

The first problem Kuhn sees is that scientists conduct one type of testing to connect all “statements” or “hypothesis” to individual research dilemmas with the current theory’s body of knowledge. In this way Kuhn uses the words “puzzle solving” to refer to the process by which science practitioners posit “statements” or “hypotheses” and conduct tests in accordance to guidelines appropriated by a current theory. When an individual fails to progress the puzzle solving and inconsistencies arise in testing, Kuhn notes that the individual is castigated rather than the entire corpus of the current operating theory. Kuhn proposes that normal science operates its puzzle solving enterprise out of a paradigm in which a current theory prevails. As such, any normal science research inherently premises the laws or rules within the current theory of operation. This is a result of the internal presuppositions contained within a current theory which allow them to function as puzzle solving enterprises. Whereas an individual’s aim is to find a solution to a puzzle, it is the current theory which provides the ruling guidelines for carrying this out. This ensures that a puzzle solution is effectively guaranteed. In the event that a conclusion is challenged and fails testing, it is the individual science practitioner rather than the current theory that is criticized.

The second problem Kuhn addresses in the way in Sir Karl defines scientific growth as being achieved through the “revolutionary overthrow of an accepted theory and its replacement by a better one” rather than through accretion.  For Sir Karl, testing is necessary for exploring and pressing the bounds of a current theory until a “maximum strain” or tipping point achieves a crisis whereby a revolutionary episode occurs. Kuhn explains that such extraordinary occurrences are rare and that episodic crisis’s need not arise for revolutionary science to occur. Kuhn cites examples in which these revolutions are a result of previous crisis’s within the field or of existing competing theories gaining notable credibility in their puzzle solving enterprise.

Kuhn ends by suggesting that Sir Karl has inflated the role of normal science to encompass the “revolutionary parts” of science. That is, Sir Karl has incorrectly assigned normal science to include all the functions otherwise stipulated by revolutionary science. The ‘uninteresting’ role of normal science, as Kuhn describes it, is to identify points and develop practices of testing. Additionally, normal science cultivates the profession of scientists according to the conventional practices of the current theory. As a result, it is normal science rather than “extraordinary science” which fulfills the role of demarcation from non-science. Popper fails to identify the significant relationship between normal science and revolutionary science, and how the former inevitably lays ground for the latter.

Kuhn makes keen distinctions regarding the rhetorical language employed by Sir Karl. Popper’s use of a univocal language poses a difficulty when his philosophy is confronted by relativist thinkers such as Kuhn. While Sir Karl’s rhetoric certainly seems to be appropriately indicative of the black and white view he maintains for achieving scientific knowledge through strict criteria of falsification, he fails to account for the role that enculturation plays in humanities scientific agenda. In addition, such univocal approaches limit the scope and nature in which the inquiry of scientific activity can be addressed and force inaccurate generalizations.

Kuhn respectfully acknowledges the merits of Sir Karl’s criteria as necessary once a puzzle solving tradition has been established. However, Kuhn goes one step further and incorporates the role of socialization in establishing and maintaining these traditions. As a result, Popper’s language and philosophy becomes less clear and less effective in responding to Kuhn’s criticisms. The significance of Kuhn’s insights points to a lacunae otherwise obscured by Popper’s ambiguous language. This invites the expansion of discourse regarding theory choice and how science can proactively facilitate revolutions.

One contention I want to argue as a counter point to Kuhn is the potential possibility of a reduction in objectivity. Whereas Popper’s attention is turned more objective epistemic claims, Kuhn’s attention seems hinged more on the sociological and psychological features dictating scientific activity. While I am apt to agree that these components play a tremendous role, I am curious if this emphasis reduces science as pure objective knowledge to mere social contrivances. Acknowledging various incentive correlations between monetary investment and scientific discovery among individuals and institutions, what can we say about the value of these scientific discoveries? I am inclined to say that the scientific knowledge gleaned from these puzzle solving enterprises still maintain a respectable level of objective epistemic value. It is possible that the preservation of this value requires a determinate context in order to maintain its original utility.

Additionally, if a scientific puzzle solving enterprise eventually comes to an abrupt halt, either due to the exhaustion of possible puzzle solving combinations or physical limitations within observable phenomenon, what epistemic value does the scientific field maintain? Is it abandoned in favor of puzzle solving pursuits that simply tickle-our-fancy as creatures of curiosity? or can it retain value as an outdated yet pragmatic paradigm despite having no more puzzles? For example, what if the scientific advancement of physics allowed for a paradigm shift that consolidated chemical reactions into complex physical-atomic reactions, and rendered our previous understanding of chemistry obsolete? So long as there were no additional puzzles to solve within that paradigm, Kuhn, it would seem, would likely rule out chemistry as a science.

While Kuhn’s philosophy is much more comprehensive for explaining the various environmental, social and epistemic questions of science, objective epistemic truth seems to be too easily reducible to these factors. Popper’s philosophy seems to preserve a more stolid account of objective knowledge despite excellent criticisms by Kuhn and other’s.

References
Kuhn, Thomas (1977). The Essential Tension. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

So, tonight’s post will cover things I learned on the weekend also.

• Hancock Library opens at 1pm on Saturdays, or, Avatar is a quite good show.
• The popularity of the Lemma is something I would never have expected to skyrocket so.
• A large Snickers bar, a Golden Rough, a pack of 4 AAA batteries, and three Bic pens costs about $14 at the local IGA, or, I should never shop while bored/hungry.
• Philosophy essays are not actually all that much fun. Hence blogging instead of essaying.
• My philosophy essay is due on Wednesday.
• Brideshead Revisited is even sadder 4th time around. Oh Sebastian, why must you be so perfect and tragic??

It’s very late and I’m emotionally drained from our chemistry exam (which was all sorts of bad), so a brief haiku, and then to bed.

Mind-Body Problem,
I can’t think of an answer,
Which is ironic.

I guess.

It seems like morality is based in reason insofar as intelligence allows us to understand the chain of causality; how our actions affect others directly or indirectly. Awareness of our effect on those around us, and consequently on the world at large causes us to feel various emotions regarding our actions. Our emotional drives cause us to feel sympathy for those who are harmed, and regret for those time when we have harmed others.

Inversely, in the same bundle package, we feel jealousy, aggression, and resentment. Our increased intelligence through biological and cultural evolution has set the stage for our emotional selves. I have always seen that in the trend of humanity, hatred and our advancing intellect create a a recipe for disaster. In modern times, we have the capacity to ruin a greater number of lives in a smaller amount of time with lesser effort than ever before.

The only thing we can rely on is the hope that our emotions will also respond to the knowledge of the weight of our actions. Unlike a less cognitively capable creature, we are supremely aware of what it feels like to get hurt, and we can relate that experience to the experience of others. We know we can cause that same pain in another being. This is the rational groundwork for ethics. The rest must be the realm of the emotional. We feel pain and feel sympathy for those who are hurt the most, and are driven to stop the harm.

Therefor, it’s a good balance of self-awareness through rationality and natural emotional drive that gives us a conception of morality. The two are not so separate as we think.

(freefoto.com)

The Big View – A website whose mission statement reads “if life is a journey, then philosophy is like a compass.” It is about “philosophy in the widest sense,” presenting overviews of a few philosophical topics: pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, Buddhism, the consequences of space time, an introduction to the philosophy of mind, and a copy of the Tao Te Ching. Also features a “past life calculator” and several essays on various topics. This site is in an aesthetically pleasing grayscale with intuitive navigation and lovely images. It has received over a million hits since October 1999 (last updated March 2008).

Pangloss Wisdom – A quote generator for your favorite optimist or Candide fan. Example: “Journalism is merely history’s first draft,” Geoffrey C. Ward.

The Cynic’s Sanctuary – The website for the author of The Cynic’s Dictionary which offers “disgruntled definitions.” This is not for the traditional Greek cynics but for those who present negative views in order to make the world a better place. The Sanctuary includes 714 things to be cynical about, a public list and message board for visitors to contribute their own cynicism, a Cynic’s Hall of Fame (includes Aesop and Jesus), and a quiz for one to know definitively whether or not they’re a cynic. If anything the site is worth looking at for the “What is Cynicism?” page which presents the following re-tooled view of a cynic:

Cynicism, after all, springs not from cruelty or viciousness, but from … a fatal love of virtue. If we were mere realists, we’d have no need for cynicism; the world would never disappoint us because we’d expect so little of it. But the best cynics are still idealists under their scarred hides. We wanted the world to be a better place, and we can’t shrug off the disappointment when it lets us down. Our cynicism gives us the painful power to behold life shorn of its sustaining illusions. … If we were activists, we’d do something constructive about our discontentment. But we’re smart enough to know that we won’t prevail…. So we retaliate with our special brand of wounded wit. If we can’t defeat our oppressors, at least we can mock them in good fellowship. That’s about as much justice as a cynic can expect.