Tag Archives: Philosophy

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

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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

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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

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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)

Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt

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Journalist and former philosophy grad student Jim Holt sets out to answer that long-standing philosophical/scientific question: Why is there something rather than nothing? 

His principal method is to interview a number of well-known philosophers (Adolph Grunbaum, Richard Swinburne, John Leslie and Derek Parfit) and scientists (David Deutsch, Andre Linde, Alex Vilenkin, Steven Weinberg and Roger Penrose). He also talks to John Updike, who is surprisingly knowledgeable about both science and philosophy.

Nowadays, when people ask why the world exists they are generally asking why the Big Bang occurred. Unfortunately, nobody knows. The most common answers are that there was some kind of random quantum event that made it happen or that God made it happen. Some people think that our universe is just a small part of reality and that somehow the existence of a vast, possibly infinite, collection of other universes explains why ours is here and/or why ours is the way it is. The philosopher John Leslie thinks that our universe might exist because it’s good.

As soon as a particular cause or reason for our universe to exist is suggested, it is natural to ask why that cause or reason is the explanation, rather than some other cause or reason. Why are the laws of quantum mechanics in effect? Where did God come from? This is why the answer provided by a Buddhist monk at the very end of the book is my personal favorite: “As a Buddhist, he says, he believes that the universe had no beginning….The Buddhist doctrine of a beginning-less universe makes the most metaphysical sense”.

Perhaps the reality that exists (the super-universe, whatever ultimately caused the Big Bang) has always existed and always will. It simply is. It never came into existence, so no cause, reason or explanation is necessary or possible. Perhaps it’s cyclical. Perhaps it’s not. But it’s eternal, with no beginning or end.

This book is worth reading, but not as good as it might have been. Mr. Holt writes well and seems to accurately present the ideas of the thinkers he interviews. But his own thoughts on the subject, and other subjects, such as consciousness and death, aren’t especially interesting or profound. In particular, his attempt to prove the existence of an infinite yet mediocre universe is completely unconvincing. His travel writing — where he stayed, what he ate, his strolls through Oxford and Paris — is also a bit much. He doesn’t just bump into a philosophy professor at a local grocery store; it’s a “gourmet” grocery store. He has excellent taste in food and drink as well.  (9/8/12)

Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by David J. Chalmers, et al.

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Metametaphysics is the study of metaphysics. It deals with these questions: how metaphysics is done, how it should be done, and whether it is worth doing at all. The particular branch of metaphysics that is the principal subject of this book is ontology, the philosophical study of being or existence.

Metaphysicians who do ontology argue about what things are fundamental or real or exist: for example, in what sense do tables and chairs exist? do numbers exist in the same sense? are collections of things like your-house-and-your-left-ear just as real as your house or your left ear? Or, for example, is a statue made of marble one thing (a statue made of marble) or two things (a statue and some marble)? Some philosophers argue that ontological questions are pointless or merely verbal. Some philosophers disagree. This book has sixteen recent essays that are intended to explain what ontology is, how it should be done, and whether it should be done at all. 

My favorite essay in the book was “Answerable and Unanswerable Questions” by Amie L. Thomasson. Professor Thomasson argues that many metaphysical or ontological questions cannot be answered. For example, they presume that there are reasonable criteria for deciding whether numbers or propositions are things in some supposed neutral or generic sense of “thing” that can be applied to numbers and propositions just as well as it can be applied to dogs, tables or elementary particles.

She correctly points out that it makes no sense to ask whether something is a thing unless we already know what kind of thing it is supposed to be. We should all agree that numbers exist, since we can all identify numbers, such as the number 3. But we cannot say whether the number 3 is a thing in some more general sense, since there are no agreed-upon criteria for identifying things in that more general or neutral sense.

It seems that the only interesting ontological questions are whether it is more coherent or consistent or helpful to categorize various things as existing or real or fundamental. There is a lot of agreement about what exists, but not about which words should be used to say what exists.  (6/25/12)