Tag Archives: Philosophy

A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy by Jonathan Israel

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Israel argues that the Enlightenment was composed of two separate tendencies, a Radical Enlightenment based on the philosophies of Spinoza and Bayle, and a Moderate Enlightenment, partly based on the philosophy of John Locke. The Radical Enlightenment was dedicated to ideals of equality, democracy and universal education. The thinkers of the Radical Enlightenment strongly favored reason and science over religion. They believed that current institutions, both political and religious, including all traces of monarchy and aristocracy, would and should be swept away in a worldwide cultural and political revolution, once the common people had become sufficiently educated.

Israel believes that it was the thinkers of the Radical Enlightenment, such as Diderot, d’Holbach and Thomas Paine, whose ideas gave rise to the revolutions of the late 18th century, in particular the French Revolution. He characterizes the thinkers of the Moderate Enlightenment, such as Rousseau and Kant, as being much more conservative and anti-democratic.

Although Israel’s thesis is convincing, and the book is informative, his prose is repetitious and convoluted. He insists on inserting French phrases that could just as well be translated and includes the same lists of names (Diderot, Helvetius and D’Holbach, for example) over and over again. A Revolution of the Mind is important but not a pleasure to read.  (11/11/10)

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)

Philosophy of Perception: A Contemporary Introduction by William Fish

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Fish provides an overview of several current philosophical theories of perception, including arguments for and against. The theories he considers are Sense Datum, Adverbial, Belief Acquisition, Intentional and Disjunctive theories. Except for the last chapter, the discussion is almost all concerned with vision, which seems short-sighted.

He distinguishes the theories by their respective responses to three propositions: the Common Factor principle (“Phenomenologically indiscriminable perceptions, hallucinations and illusions have an underlying mental state in common”), the Phenomenal principle (“If there sensibly appears to a subject to be something which possesses a particular sensible quality then there is something of which the subject is aware which does possess that quality”), and the Representational principle (“All visual experiences are representational”).

Fish tries to figure out whether the theories are better explanations of the phenomenological or epistemological aspects of perception. I found the Disjunctive theories most convincing, especially the one offered by Mark Johnston, but there wasn’t enough detail provided to form a conclusion.  (5/16/10)