Author Archives: Larry Franz

Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey by Roger Scruton

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In 31 chapters, Scruton provides a wide-ranging but relatively detailed account of Western philosophy since Descartes.  He seems to have read everything important in the philosophical literature. His account is enlivened by fairly frequent humor and sarcasm. Scruton’s treatment of positions he disagrees with seems even-handed until the last few chapters, when his language becomes obscure and his political conservatism becomes more apparent. The book concludes with an informative 98-page study guide.  (10/27/10)

Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind by Wilfrid Sellars

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This is actually a long essay, which I read in a collection of essays by Sellars called Science, Perception and Reality. But the essay has been published separately as a book, with an introduction by Richard Rorty and study notes by Robert Brandom, and since I’ve read that introduction and those notes, I’m listing Sellars’s essay as a book.

More to the point, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” is an attack on what Sellars calls the “Myth of the Given”, his term for the view that our knowledge of the world is based on basic or foundational beliefs, and that we derive such basic beliefs from what is “given” to us by sense perception. In particular, Sellars focuses on the philosophical theory that our fundamental knowledge of the world is knowledge of sense data.  Sense data are thought to be the particular impressions that we are aware of when we perceive the world. According to this theory, when I perceive a red apple, for example, I actually experience a red expanse of color, which may or may not represent an actual physical object. Philosophers who accept the sense data theory believe that our knowledge of the world rests on the foundation provided by such sense data.

Sellars criticizes this view in various ways, for example, by arguing that language about how something appears to us (like the language of sense data) is logically dependent on language about how things actually are (like the language of physical objects). Sellars also argues that the sense data theory fudges the clear distinction between non-cognitive impressions (sentience) and cognitive beliefs (sapience) — beliefs belong to the “space of reasons” and sense impressions don’t. In sum, “one could not have observational knowledge of any fact unless one knew many other things (i.e. had the relevant concepts) as well”.  In Brandom’s words, “one can’t think until one has learned to speak”, and one can’t speak until there is a community of speakers engaged in the social practice of speech (which includes giving and asking for reasons).

The last part of the essay is devoted to his own myth, which is supposed to explain how human beings came to talk about sense impressions in an intersubjective way, as theoretical entities. I didn’t find Sellars’s arguments or explanations convincing enough to rid me of the urge to take sense data or foundationalism seriously. But this is a difficult work that seems to deserve detailed study.  (10/13/10)

The Structure of Empirical Knowledge by Laurence BonJour

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BonJour presents a coherence theory of justification for empirical knowledge. What justifies our empirical beliefs is their coherence with our other beliefs, which is more than mere consistency between beliefs. Coherence involves various relations, including inferential and explanatory relations. Explaining justification in terms of coherence is also different from offering a coherence theory of truth, which he rejects in favor of the correspondence theory. BonJour also strongly argues in favor of an internalist view of justification as opposed to an externalist view.

He argues that foundationalist theories cannot explain empirical justification, which leaves coherence theories as the best alternative. However, by insisting that a coherence theory has to allow for observational input (the “Observation Requirement”), he ends up with a theory that seems almost as foundationalist as coherentist. He recognizes this fact and concedes that a “pure” coherence theory will not work. In fact, in later years, BonJour abandoned the coherence theory of justification he defended in this book. (10/10/10)

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, translated by R. Pevear and L. Volokhonsky

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With an occasional break, it took me five months to finish the 800 pages of “Anna Karenina”, which more accurately might have been called “Anna Karenina and a Guy Named Levin”. Anna leaves her husband and son for the love of the dashing Count Vronsky. She comes to a very bad end. Levin is a philosophical, unsophisticated landowner who marries Kitty. She turned down Levin’s first proposal because she was in love with Vronsky. 

At the end of the novel, without any relation to Anna’s suicide, Levin decides that he has found some meaning in life after one of his workers tells him that some people remember God and live for the soul, while others are self-centered and greedy. He concludes that the good cannot be discovered through reason, because it is unreasonable. We learn what is good as little children and, in order to be happy, we need to accept what we were taught, without thinking too much, since “the good is outside the chain of cause and effect”. The church teaches “the main thing – faith in God, and the good, as the sole purpose of man”.

In the final two pages, Levin asks himself how to resolve the fact that millions of non-Christians have different religious beliefs than he does. He quickly decides that he doesn’t have the right or even the ability to resolve such a question. He concludes by observing that his life “has the unquestionable meaning of the good which is in my power to put into it”.

Tolstoy writes some very interesting passages of internal monologue, presenting what the different characters are thinking about their current situations or the conversations they’re having.  Overall, however, the novel is plodding. In addition, Anna’s and Levin’s stories might as well be in two different novels (they only meet in one chapter).

One reason the novel moves so slowly is that Tolstoy often goes off on uninteresting tangents, during which he presents some aspect of Russian society or culture, which must have been of more interest to his contemporaries. Anna, for example, disappears for long stretches, while Levin muses about such topics as Russian farming practices.

I probably should have expected not to enjoy “Anna Karenina” very much, because when I read “War and Peace”, I enjoyed the war and was often bored by the peace. There is no war in “Anna Karenina”, except in Anna’s and Levin’s souls. That may be one justification for telling their stories in the same novel, and makes some of the novel worth reading, but not enough of it.  (9/6/10)