Category Archives: Philosophy

Philosophers and the One Right Answer

Posted on by

A very bright guy named Richard Marshall interviews academic philosophers at a site called 3 A.M. Magazine (as of his latest interview, Mr. Marshall is still “biding his time”).

This is from an interview with Thom Brooks of Durham University:

“Hegel’s Science of Logic reveals a fascinating insight into the philosophy of punishment. He writes that punishment should not be considered as either retribution, deterrence or rehabilitation. Instead, punishment is grounded in retribution – those punished must deserve it and cannot be innocent – but retribution is only one part of a larger view. Punishment is not retributivist, preventative or rehabilitative, but rather all three in one. Three in one. Why would we expect to find anything different in Hegel than this anyway?”

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/in-search-of-global-justice/

With all due respect to Hegel (one of the most influential yet incomprehensible philosophers ever), is it really a fascinating insight to note that punishment is justifiable for different reasons? Philosophers are too often prone to seek a single justification or analysis for some phenomenon. Philosophical arguments can sometimes remind you of that beer commercial (“Tastes great! No, less filling!”). 

The entry on “Punishment” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides an example of this tendency:

“The practice of punishment must be justified by reference either to forward-looking or to backward-looking considerations [or both?].

If the former prevail, then the theory is consequentialist and probably some version of utilitarianism, according to which the point of the practice of punishment is to increase overall net social welfare by reducing (ideally, preventing) crime.

If the latter prevail, the theory is deontological; on this approach, punishment is seen either as a good in itself or as a practice required by justice, thus making a direct claim on our allegiance. A deontological justification of punishment is likely to be a retributive justification.

Or, as a third alternative, the justification of the practice may be found in some hybrid combination of these two independent alternatives. Recent attempts to avoid this duality in favor of a completely different approach [such as saying that neither theory captures the whole truth?] have yet to meet with much success…”

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/punishment/

Practically speaking, meeting with “success” in this case means being found convincing by other academic philosophers. It might be that recent attempts to avoid this duality haven’t been successful because most philosophers interested in punishment (and ethics in general) are committed to an either/or solution, finding the single right answer. There is relatively little to be gained, professionally speaking, by pointing out that both sides of a traditional argument reflect part of the truth.

What sometimes happens in philosophical argument (aka “combat”) is that philosopher A offers his theory and philosopher B suggests a counterexample. Philosopher B then offers her theory and philosopher A suggests a counterexample. Philosopher C then concludes that neither theory is successful. An alternative approach would be to agree that the counterexamples show that neither theory captures the whole truth, although they each capture some of the truth. Then everyone could pack up and go have a drink (or a slice of pie).

Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics by D. M. Armstrong

Posted on by

D. M. Armstrong is one of the leading philosophers of the past 50 years. He is an Australian mostly known for his writings on metaphysics. This is a short, well-written, relatively easy to understand summary of his metaphysical system.

Armstrong is a materialist or physicalist, who believes that nothing exists except space-time and its contents. He further holds that the world is made up of contingent states of affairs (or facts) and that states of affairs are made up of particulars and universals (e.g. protons and their mass). Laws of nature concern relations between types of states of affairs. 

Universals are only identifiable through empirical means. They only exist if they are exemplified or instantiated. This means that a given number exists if and only if there is a group of particulars that instantiates that number. The number 2 exists, for example, since Mars has 2 moons. Numbers that are not exemplified in this way are mere possibilia. On this basis, however, all but the very largest numbers exist, since any particulars may comprise a group, for example, the group consisting of my desk and the planet Mars instantiates the number 2 (this is called a “mereological sum”).

Armstrong discusses the existence of mind in his final chapter. He endorses an identity theory of mind — mental events and processes are identical to physical events and processes in the brain. He also endorses an identity theory of perception, but wasn’t quite clear to me what he meant by this. Armstrong admits that his theory of the mind faces three particular problems: the existence of consciousness (by which he means “our unmediated access to (some) of our own mental processes”), qualia (secondary qualities like color and taste) and intentionality (how thought and language are “about” something that might not exist). 

Armstrong is more troubled about qualia and intentionality than consciousness. I’m more troubled by qualia than consciousness or intentionality. If the redness of an apple isn’t actually part of the apple, and there’s nothing red inside our heads either, where is the redness at anyway? Armstrong considers his blue mouse pad: “Perception presents us with the blueness as an objective property of something in the world and I think we should accept this, accept that the blue colour is in the world qualifying the pad… I want to identify the colour surface with what the physicists tell us is going on there”. Maybe that’s true, but I’m not convinced.  (3/30/13)

History Man: The Life of R. G. Collingwood by Fred Inglis

Posted on by

History Man is the biography of R. G. Collingwood, a 20th century English philosopher best known for his work on the philosophy of history and aesthetics. Collingwood has been called “the best known neglected thinker of our time”. Although he was Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, he stood apart from the main flow of 20th century Anglo-American philosophy. For example, he criticized some academic philosophers for engaging in philosophical parlor games instead of dealing with real-world issues, such as the rise of fascism in Europe. 

In addition to teaching philosophy for many years, Collingwood did historical and archaeological research, especially on the history of Roman Britain. He emphasized the importance of a contextual approach to philosophy in which earlier thinkers are understood to be answering questions of their own time, not necessarily the same questions that current philosophers are interested in. 

Collingwood deserves to have his biography written, since he lead a more active life than most academic philosophers. Unfortunately, he died after a series of strokes at the age of 53. History Man does a decent job of telling Collingwood’s story, but is relatively weak as an explanation of his philosophy. The author is a professor of cultural studies, not a philosopher. The book is marred by some idiosyncratic syntax that requires occasional re-reading, but enlivened by the author’s cultural and political observations.  (3/26/13)

Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry by Bernard Williams

Posted on by

In Descartes, the greatly respected English philosopher Bernard Williams explains and evaluates Rene Descartes’s epistemological project: his attempt to identify what he can know for certain.

As is well-known, Descartes begins by doubting as much as possible. He cannot doubt his own existence, however, since he is certain that he is thinking about the problem at hand (cogito, ergo sum). What is less well-known is that Descartes makes crucial use of much more questionable propositions in his pursuit of certainty. In particular, he relies on the propositions that God exists and that God would not allow him to be mistaken or deceived about “clear and distinct” ideas.

It is hard to read this book without concluding that modern philosophy would have been better served if someone other than Descartes had been its “father”. Certainty was not a reasonable goal. Invoking God’s benevolence was illogical. And starting with “I think” seems to have made modern philosophy too solipsistic. Perhaps “we live” would have been a more helpful starting point.  (11/20/12)

Grand Theories and Everyday Beliefs: Science, Philosophy and Their Histories by Wallace Matson

Posted on by

Professor Matson (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at UC Berkeley) doesn’t just describe the histories of science and philosophy in this book. He also describes the history of life on earth, all in terms of the evolution of belief. Simple organisms react to their environment in genetically-determined ways. Complex organisms form beliefs, new ways of coping with their environments. The most complex organisms, living in groups, create languages, allowing them to form beliefs about the past, present and future, and about what does not exist. 

Matson argues that all beliefs are ways of coping with the world. He divides beliefs into the low and the high. Low beliefs are those that have “rubbed up against the world”. They can be put to an empirical test and found to be accurate or not. Arithmetic and logic are made up of low beliefs, as are cooking and carpentry. Once we possess language, we can use our imagination to form high beliefs. They concern matters that cannot be tested or that we do not have the tools to test. Religion and morality tend to be high beliefs. They cannot be tested, although they have their purpose (edification). People living in groups need morality in order to live together. They don’t need religion, however, which came later in our evolution.

According to Matson, Thales shouldn’t be known for claiming that everything is made of water. Thales of Miletus (on the coast of Ionia, now Turkey) invented science by propounding three central ideas:

 “1. Monism, Unity, Reductionism: ‘The All is One’, that is, at bottom there is only one kind of reality, in terms of which everything can be (ideally) explained.

2. Naturalism, Immanence: No basic distinction between what a thing is and what it does. Processes manifest the essential internal energies of things.

3. Rationalism, Logos, Necessitarianism, Sufficient Reason: There are no “brute” facts; everything is either self-explanatory or explainable in terms of other things; and explanation has as its ultimate aim the showing of how and why things ‘couldn’t be otherwise’.”

Some science is theoretical: high beliefs that are “tethered” to low beliefs as part of a comprehensive theory. The theory of the Big Bang, for example, is tethered to low beliefs, not logically implied by observations, but suggested by the work of radio astronomers. On the other hand, Matson argues that “theories … invoking creative gods, final causes, ‘logical possibility’, and the like, are untethered, free-floating in the heaven of pure imagination”.

Matson credits Parmenides (another Ionian) with inventing philosophy, which Matson describes very generally as talk about what it is to be reasonable. His two favorite early modern philosophers are Hobbes and Spinoza, both of whom Matson believes subscribed to the scientific approach outlined above. Matson holds that Descartes took a wrong turn by focusing on his perceptions or ideas. Not only rationalists like Leibniz but empiricists like Locke, Berkeley and Hume are part of the same misguided tradition, a tradition that gave rise to pseudo-problems dealing with the existence of the external world, other minds and causation.

Matson also argues that the idea of logical possibility is a holdover from medieval philosophy. He believes that it was the idea of an Omnipotent Creator/Legislator who could make anything non-contradictory happen that gave rise to the idea that the world is contingent, that it might have been any other way than it is. In his words: “The contention here is not that the phrase ‘logical possibility’ denotes nothing; it is that what it designates is, non-internally-contradictoriness, is not a species of possibility, any more than a teddy bear is a species of bear”.

I’m having trouble understanding Matson’s point regarding logical possibility not being real possibility. Couldn’t gravity be a more or less powerful force in another world? Adjustments might be needed in other aspects of the world to allow for gravity to be different, but that seems logically possible, even if it isn’t physically possible in our world. It seems as though Matson’s objections to the idea of an Omnipotent Creator/Legislator have colored his opinion of logical possibility. Aside from that, I found very little to argue with in this extremely interesting book.

PS — A review of the book by two philosophers at the University of Colorado: 

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/32152-grand-theories-and-everyday-beliefs-science-philosophy-and-their-histories/  (11/8/12)