Rationalism in the 17th Century

What, exactly, was so wrong with reason in the post-Enlightenment era?

It can easily be forgotten (especially by postmodernists) that rationalism was - among other things - a rejection of both tradition and authority. However, perhaps it was indeed the case that many rationalists merely wanted to replace such examples of power and authority with their own power and authority. In that case, rationalists would run the new authorities and the new traditions in a rationalist manner.

But both Descartes and Kant later believed that the mind had been held in tutelage by philosophical tradition and religious authority. That’s why Descartes retreated to the silence and loneliness of his private room to analyse his private mind. He wanted to clear his mind of the fluff and nonsense that emanated from the philosophical tradition and the various secular and religious authorities. He wanted to discover the a priori nature of the mind as it is in itself. As it was before it was encumbered with useless information and unsound philosophical theories. He asked himself this:

What is the mind like, and what can it do, when it is stripped bare of all these external excrescences?

Had the/his mind been led up numerous wrong paths simply because it put its faith in tradition and authority? How would it work, what would it think, and how would it reason if it were not only free of tradition and authority; but also free of the lies that the external world tells it?

So if the philosopher truly “stands alone intellectually”, what prizes would he find that hadn't been found before? Not only that: in such a state of philosophical, and perhaps social, isolation, perhaps the individualistic philosopher could discover the true workings of reason. And only after such a discovery could he make “proper use” of reason.

Here were possible solutions to all those Scholastic perennial philosophical problems and also answers to all those unsolved questions. The solution, in part, was to “overcome the tradition” and start afresh. To begin with utterly new foundations that were themselves the result of the purification of the mind of its weighty - though ultimately useless/ pointless - baggage.

Though why should the mind or reason be perfectly attuned to getting such pure and unadulterated knowledge?

Why should the ability to acquire knowledge be presumed to be built into our brains and minds?

Perhaps we don’t need knowledge of this epistemological variety in order to survive. Perhaps we have permanently hard-wired limitations to what we can truly know. Perhaps the essentials of the mind-brain were not built for context-free knowledge; but for survival and the propagation of the human species.

The world’s “true nature” may be forever beyond us. Or perhaps we're wrong to think in terms of the world’s “true nature” in the first place. The world may have many natures each cognised by different human beings in different ways and by different species in different ways. The “cognitive All” may only be available to God himself. And even then it may make little sense to think in such terms.

And wasn’t all this why Descartes’ own mind attempted to effectively play God way back in the 17th century? To Descartes and other rationalists, our reason is essentially God within us. It was His gift to us. We should, therefore, use it wisely and correctly. And, according to Descartes, the way to do that was to dispense with tradition and authority when it comes to philosophising – that is, to the utilisation of reason.

So through reason we contacted God and His works. Or, in certain extreme cases of rationalism, we become God (or at least gods). The pure a priori workings of reason and the mind were necessary and fundamental. The contents of mind or reason, on the other hand, was purely contingent and in many respects quite arbitrary. What we truly need is what God gave us at birth. Not what the world thought fit to give us throughout our lives.

Like Plato and the Platonists, we were going back to the beginning – to arché. Or, in the colloquial, we must get back to the basics of the mind or reason. That is, what is always there and always has been there within the mind; despite its tempestuous relations with the external world.

Keith Donnellan on Causal Reference

This essay is mainly about Keith Donnellan’s paper ‘Speaking of Nothing’, and its defence of a causal theory of reference.

The American philosopher Keith Donnellan (who died in 2015) believed that the statement

“Santa Claus will come tonight.”

isn’t actually a genuine proposition.

Keith Donnellan

In his paper ‘Speaking of Nothing’ (1974), Donnellan asked the following question:

“[C]an one even speak and be understood when using a singular expression with no referent?”

However, Donnellan did accept this paraphrase:

“According to the legend, Santa Claus will come tonight.”

Donnellan deemed that statement to be true.

So, according to the legend, Santa will come on that night. However, the legend doesn’t also say, “Santa Claus doesn’t actually exist [or he does exist]”.

At an intuitive level, it’s hard to see what Donnellan’s problem was.

The legend itself doesn’t really have any position on Santa’s actual existence…

But so what?

Why does that make a kid’s statement (i.e., “Santa Claus will come tonight.”) not understandable? Indeed, why does it make it non-propositional? Why impose ontological rectitude onto meaning, and the very acceptance of a proposition qua proposition?

What is the connection here?

Isn’t it only the belief that a non-existent is an existent that’s at fault here? However, does that render this statement itself non-propositional?

So readers should focus again on Donnellan’s idea that the sentence “Santa will not come tonight” isn’t a proposition.

Why?

According to Donnellan, a proper name (in this case, “Santa Clause” or “Santa”) must have one of two things:

(1) It must be causally connected to its referent. 
(2) It must have “descriptive content”.

It seems that Donnellan believed that the name “Santa” has neither. That is, if that scare-quoted “name” has no “historical connection” to its referent (which it can’t have because Santa never existed), then the proposition “Santa will come tonight” can’t be a proposition. And it can’t be a proposition because of the problematic proper name.

Yet isn’t it simply a stipulation (or even a diktat) to argue that “Santa will come tonight” isn’t a proposition?…

In logic, however, all propositions must be either true or false.

Philosophical Realism?

The thing which seemed to be motivating Keith Donnellan was his attempt to save philosophical realism. In other words, if we can have a causal theory of reference which evidently excludes names like “Santa”, then we can distinguish real propositions like “Brad Pitt will come tonight” from “Zeus is angry with us”.

[The statement about Brad Pitt is a future contingent, which is also problematic — if for different reasons.]

There’s another realist move in this game.

Donnellan — and many other philosophers (such as Saul Kripke) — argued that proper names shouldn’t rely on being tied to “descriptive content”. They believed that this would give individual minds (as it were) too much power, and direct causal reference less power.

Associating descriptive content with proper names has also been deemed to be idealist by some philosophers. (“Subjective” is a better term than “idealist” in this context.) A causal connection to Brad Pitt (or the “Brad Pitt” relation to Brad Pitt) is concrete. “The rubbish [or great] actor in Hollywood” is subjective, or at least dependent on an individual mind (or on individual minds in the plural). Similarly, the definite description that I’ve personally tied to the name “Santa” may be very different to the one you’ve personally tied to that name.

So what would secure us an identity of reference here when it comes to the names “Santa” and “Brad Pitt”?

Donnellan’s causal theory of reference (which excludes Santa) is the realist’s way of avoiding not just idealism (or, better, subjectivity), but also relativism.

Conventions, conceptual schemes, identifying descriptions, etc. were also deemed to be “subjective” by Donnellan. Causal processes, on the other hand, impose themselves on us. In other words, they tie us firmly to the world.

Bertrand Russell, God and Sherlock Holmes

Bertrand Russell

To finish, let’s now agree with Keith Donnellan’s rejection of Bertrand Russell’s view on this matter.

Donnellan argued that the statement

“God does not exist.”

isn’t an abbreviation for Russell’s

“There is no entity such that…”

So why does “failure of a complex reference simply make a proposition false”?

What is a failure of reference?

For example, can’t we refer to something non-spatiotemporal?

Indeed is, say, Santa or Sherlock Holmes really a non-spatiotemporal entity at all?

Perhaps we can say that Santa or Holmes exists in minds, on the page, in letters, on the screen, in pictures, etc. All these are spatiotemporal things.

However, aren’t these examples simply representations of Santa and Holmes?

That would be the case if he were something other than Santa’s or Holmes’s representations.

In any case, in the works of Conan Doyle, Holmes is meant to be… Holmes: he isn’t a representation of Holmes.

So reference needn’t be to something that’s spatiotemporal in the strict sense of Holmes being made of flesh and blood…

We refer to numbers after all.

We refer to the number 2. The number 2 isn’t concrete. It isn’t (on most readings) spatiotemporal .

So is a negative statement like “John is not here” a reference to something spatiotemporal?

Well, in one sense, yes.

Part of the referent is the space not filled by John. In addition, even though John is not there, John himself is still a spatiotemporal entity.

What about the non-spatiotemporal nature of historical facts?

Can we simply say here that at on point historical events were spatiotemporal? So historical facts are parasitical on these past spatiotemporal events.

Peter Strawson on Statements About God

P.F. Strawson

Now take Peter Strawson’s position.

According to Strawson, the statement

“God is in heaven.”

is neither true nor false, because Strawson deemed the statement

“There exists something which is God.”

to be false.

Thus, the statement “God is in heaven” must be neither true nor false because there’s no God to be in heaven… or to be anywhere else. Of course, the statement “There exists something which is God” is making a claim about existence, not about the whereabouts of an existent.

Thus, according to Strawson’s atheistic ontology, the sentence “God is in heaven” is plainly suspect. How can it be true that “God is in heaven” when (it is supposed that) there is no God? Yet how can it be false that “God is in Heaven” for exactly the same reason?

On this picture, then, the subject, God, doesn’t exist. Thus, the predicate phrase, “is in Heaven”, can be neither true nor false of the subject term.

Yet perhaps we can still say that the statement “God is in heaven” is false without indulging in (or adding) existence-claims. If it’s false that there is God (and heaven), then it’s also false that God is in heaven. Thus, the whole statement is false. Or, rather, you can say it’s false (or true) because of one’s prior position on God’s existence. However, you shouldn’t thereby deny its status as a proposition.

If we do deny the propositional status of “God is in heaven”, then perhaps we can also call that sentence meaningless! Indeed, roughly speaking, this was the position of some logical positivists in the 1930s and 1940s. [See my ‘The Logical Positivists’ Use of the Word “Meaningless”: A Retrospective’.]

Yet we can’t allow this for the simple reason that the statement “God is in heaven” isn’t meaningless! It may well be philosophically problematic. However, the statement clearly isn’t without meaning.

Robert R. Provine's Neo-Behaviourism?

This short essay isn’t really about laughing. It’s about behaviourist explanations of all sorts of different human actions. It’s just that Robert R. Provine is an expert on laughing and he chose that phenomenon to concentrate on.

Is Spontaneous Laugher an Argument for Behaviourism?

Robert R. Provine

Neurobiologist and professor of psychology Robert R. Provine argues — no doubt correctly - that laughing isn’t under our control. However, he concludes that our explanations for why we laugh are “usually wrong”. He even describes them as “confabulations”. Or as “honest but flawed attempts to explain one’s actions”.

That seems to be a false conclusion.

Surely if someone says something funny, and I laugh at it, then even if my laughter is automatic (i.e., not under my consciousness control), then it still doesn’t follow from this that my saying that his joke caused me to laugh is false. Why can’t my automatic response be explained as a reaction to the joke - even if it is automatic?

Is Provine’s position a resurrection of radical behaviourism?

Again, Provine may be correct to argue that “subjects incorrectly presume that laughing is a choice under conscious control”. Sure. However, why does that also mean that saying that I laughed because “she did something funny” (Provine’s example) is a “confabulation”? The laugher was automatic; yet still a response to this person saying something funny.

So because laughing is automatic, Provine concludes that we can’t give a true reason for our laughing. Does that simply mean that we don’t know the unconscious neurobiology (Provine’s other expertise), brain mechanisms, etc. which subserve our laughing (more of which in a moment)?

One other reason Provine gives for this is that when people are asked “to laugh on command, most subjects couldn’t do so”. We can accept that possibility too. Nonetheless, why does it follow from this that our giving a reason for laughing is a confabulation? The joke made us laugh; yet the laughing wasn’t under our control. So?

Neo-Behaviourism?

All this boils down to Provine emphasising unconscious (brain) mechanisms.

Perhaps Provine isn’t a behaviourist. So he’s no doubt correct to argue that “we vastly overestimate the amount of time we are aware of our actions”. However, none of that should lead us to accept his thesis that our reasons for laughing are false. That simply doesn’t follow.

Now it can be provisionally accepted that Provine isn’t an old-style behaviourist (or, alternatively, a denier of consciousness) because he happily limits his position to the following claim:

“The argument is not that we lack consciousness but that we overestimate the conscious control of behaviour.”

Yet perhaps the old-style behaviourists (or some of them) just alluded to might have put the situation that way too. They too might have said this:

Consciousness exists, sure; it’s just that it’s not needed in science precisely because we overestimate the conscious control of behaviour.

In other words, when we explain our behaviour (as in the laughing example), we don’t really know what we’re talking about. Only an observer, a third person or a scientist (like Provine) can know the real sources (or causes) of our behaviour.

Consciousness lies.

Then again, if Provine were to say that “consciousness lies”, then that would be a tacit acceptance that consciousness exists. That, therefore, is a step beyond what some old-style behaviourists might have accepted…

Provine also fleshes out his position by offering a classical position on scientific theories.

Provine claims that his own theory (i.e., we don’t know what causes us to laugh or what causes us to do many of the things we do because they’re out of our “conscious control”) “makes the fewest assumptions”. And, as scientists often tell us, simplicity is a virtue in science (see here).

The complex theory, on the other hand, is an example of what Provine calls the “philosopher’s disease” of

“the inappropriate attribution of rational, conscious control over process that may be irrational and unconscious”.

Well well! Provine clearly hasn’t read many 20th and 21st century philosophers. However, he might well have read many pre-20th century philosophers. Yet even in that case, it’s still a generalisation.

For example, I’ve mentioned scientific behaviourism and that some philosophers of the first half of the 20th century were the fiercest adherents of various forms of behaviourism: from Ludwig Wittgenstein (at least at one point in his career) and Gilbert Ryle to the logical positivists. Indeed many philosophers of the second half of the 20th century were behaviourists too. Not only that: even when they weren’t (strictly speaking) behaviourists, some philosophers strongly played down consciousness. Indeed other philosophers rejected it entirely! So, being a psychologist and neuroscientist, Provine clearly hasn’t had the time to read much — or indeed any — 20th and 21st century philosophy.

Provine carries on with his neo-behaviourist theme (if that’s what it is) by arguing that the

“complex social order of bees, ants, and termites documents what can be achieved with little if any conscious control”.

Yes indeed! That said, it depends on what Provine wants his readers to conclude from this (i.e., that laughter doesn’t need “any conscious control”). What about other aspects of what we do take to be conscious action? Are we confabulating about them too? It can be supposed that it will depend on examples. And because in this piece Provine only gives the example of laughing (which he has studied in much detail), it’s hard to extrapolate from that. Then again, it can be argued that he still makes mistakes in logical reasoning even if his scientific data is perfectly correct.

Crude Anti-Introspectivism

Another of Provine’s arguments — or scientific claims — is that a

“neurological process that governs human behaviour [is] inaccessible to introspection”.

Provine also makes the obvious point that “we are not conscious of our state of unconsciousness”. Here again there’s a logical mistake being made by Provine.

Of course we don’t have introspective access to neuronal (or brain) processes. Yet it doesn’t follow from that that we don’t have introspective awareness of our actions. That’s like saying that because we aren’t fully aware of the internal mechanisms of a coke machine, then we can’t know that when we put money in and press the correct buttons, a coke can will be delivered.

We don’t need to know all — or perhaps even any — of the internal mechanisms of a coke machine. Similarly with our own brains. Nonetheless, when we put money in a coke machine, then we know what usually happens. Similarly, when we decide to do something: we can be in control of what we do regardless of our ignorance of the brain mechanisms which subserve such conscious actions.

All this also partly depends on what exactly Provine means by the word “introspection”. How strongly does he take that word? This is asked because introspection was an important aspect of old-style philosophy of mind in the 19th and 18th centuries and before. Nonetheless, philosophers are much more careful nowadays when they use that word.

Indeed in the first of the 20th century Martin Heidegger and Gilbert Ryle made a distinction between “knowing how” and “knowing that”. The latter requires conscious linguistic expression; whereas it’s argued that the former simply requires “skill”. Regardless of the intricacies of this distinction, both knowing how and knowing that require conscious awareness.

When you hammer with a hammer (Heidegger’s own well-known example) you need to be aware of the hammer even if you aren’t expressing (vocally or sub-vocally) sentences about that hammering. Now is that hammering the same as Provine’s spontaneous laughing? Surely not. There’s nothing spontaneous about picking up a hammer to hammer in a nail and even to carry on hammering. It’s not (in Heidegger’s words) “intellectualist”. But it’s not the equivalent of a spontaneous laugh either. You can’t control laughing. Clearly you can and must control your hammering.

Of course much of this — at least partly — depends on any further examples (i.e., other than the laughing) which Robert R. Provine has in mind when he advances his (what I take to be) neo-behaviourist position.

Reference

This piece is a response to the book What We Believe but Cannot Prove, pages 147 to 149.

[I can be found on Twitter here.]

Natural Kinds & Essences

 
We can ask a simple question about scientific theories. We accept


All ravens are black.


though not


Non-black things are non-ravens.


Why?


They are, after all, logically equivalent.


When we ‘count’ all non-black things and all non-ravens, what are we left with? We are left with black ravens. Thus we arrive back at ‘All ravens are black’. That is why they are equivalent. If something, or anything, is a non-black thing, it can’t be a raven. If anything is a non-raven, then, well, it can’t be a raven. A blue bird is not a raven. A banana (a non-raven) is not a raven.


J.S. Mill believed that the world contains (natural) kinds. We don't compose these kinds. They are there in the world. They are mind-independent. It seems to go against Mill’s empiricism to talk about mind-independence. Perhaps he wouldn’t have used the term ‘mind-independence’ in this context. Perhaps instead he would have talked about his "permanent possibility of sensation" in that if we were to observe a natural kind like a raven, we would observe x, y and z.


What binds a kind together? Its ‘common nature’.


Ravens and other species aren't the only natural kinds. Gold and water are also natural kinds. Though perhaps we should say that H2 O is a natural kind; if ‘water’ refers only to secondary properties or Locke’s ‘nominal essences’. Yes, "we do not create the kind water simply by our classifications" (192). However, we only get to water via our classifications. And if we only get to water via our classifications, then perhaps, in a sense, we do create that natural kind in that we only know it via our classifications and only observe it through our classifications.


Firstly, the ‘nominal essences’ of diamonds. We "pick out diamonds by means of their hardness and transparency" (192). Scientists have no time for these properties. They are not only ‘interest-relative’; but mind- and sense-dependent too. Science discovers what real essences are. Does that automatically mean that such properties will not be ‘interest-relative’ and ‘sense-dependent’? Not according to many philosophers; not least those of whom deny essence altogether.


What is the real essence of diamonds? It is carbon, the very same thing as charcoal.


How can we flesh out this essence of diamonds? By saying that the fact that diamonds are essentially carbon "is another instance of an a posteriori necessary truth" (192) It is necessary that diamonds are carbon. Alternatively, they are carbon at every possible at which they exist. The result of this is that a diamond could lose its "hardness, sheen and transparency – without ceasing to be what it is" (192). Perhaps a diamond wouldn't loose its essence if it lost these contingent’ properties; though but would it still be ‘what it is’? It depends on what it is. And if diamonds are only their essences, then this conclusion follows by definition. Could we still have a diamond without its sheen, transparency, hardness, etc., or would we just have a lump of charcoal? Certainly no layperson would recognise it as a diamond. Why is the layperson’s view of what a diamond is irrelevant? Why are sheen, hardness and transparency irrelevant? Is a lump of charcoal really a lump of diamond?


Natural kinds have become very fashionable in the last, say, fifty years (after a long time of anti-essentialism). Why was this so?


Firstly, "it suggests that science looks for necessary connections" (192). Does this mean necessary connections between natural kinds? Does it mean that that necessary connections between natural kinds are themselves natural kinds? Or does it mean that there are necessary connections between the properties which constitute natural kinds?


Is it really the case that "it is the task of science to discover’ these necessary connections"?


Essences increase the possibility of objectivity in science if we have both natural kinds and necessary connections. In addition, the interest in natural kinds and necessary connections helped "detach it from our observations and attach it to an objective order" (192). Is science really detached from our observations? We know that observations aren’t everything; though surely they account for something – perhaps for much!

Sortal Identity

 
You can't make any judgements about identity, or even self-identity, unless one uses a sortal concept. When someone asks: 


"Is Jack the same as John?"


We must reply:


"The same what? The same banister?" No? The same man? The same person? Yes. The same official? Perhaps not."


Formally, a can be the same F as b; though not the same G. For example, according to Christian doctrine, Christ is the same substance as God the Father; though not the same person. This is not unlike, then, the substance monism of Spinoza. In that case, the substance would be God, and a mode of that substance would be Christ.


This takes us to Leibniz’s law.


This doctrine can be seen to violate this law and transitivity. 


Is everything true of Christ, also true of God?


For example, God Himself was not crucified on the cross. And Christ didn't have the property omniscience (he had the property, after all, of being a man). If Christ is the same substance as God, then if Christ was crucified, then God was crucified.


David Wiggins had his own take on Peter Geach’s thesis:


"Whenever a is the same as b, there must be a sortal concept, under which a and b both fall, which defines their conditions of identity." (147)


So under which sortal concept do both Christ and God fall? Substance? Is substance a sortal concept?


If Gordon Brown is both the Prime Minister and the husband of Mrs Brown, then both the Prime Minister and the husband of Mrs Brown fall under the concept person – they are both the same person.


Is person a sortal concept?


In the case of Gordon Brown, we have an abundance of sortal concepts under which he could fall (if he’s not careful): man, human being, animal, person, biped, earth-dweller, non-raven, etc. Are all these sortal concepts? Well, you can ‘count’ with all these concepts. You can count human beings and persons. You can even count, in theory, all non-ravens.


The non-raven sortal, if it is a sortal, doesn’t make much sense for the reasons given in Hempel’s paradox. However, we can ask which of these sortals is ‘basic’. Perhaps the most inclusive is the most basic. In that case, more things are human beings than are men. Women are not men. But, then, more things are animals than are human beings. Moreover, more things are non-ravens than are animals! Would that mean that Gordon Brown's being a non-raven is more basic or fundamental than his being an animal or a human being? How would we decide such an issue other than by saying that non-raven is a bogus sortal concept because of its infinite application?


Perhaps Aristotle has the solution.


In his ‘theory of being’ he attempted to find "the ultimate constituents of reality". The things which we "must identify if we are to identify anything" (147). Thus we surely don't require the concept [non-raven].


Isn’t the concept [thing], or [object], necessary in order to identify anything – or any thing? Isn't that a circular conclusion?


We don’t need the concept [animal] to identify anything at all. We don’t even need it to identify animals. We can identify animals as objects or things.


What concept, or constituent of reality, is basic or fundamental? Peter Strawson and Donald Davidson, for example, have said that things, objects or persons are fundamental (as well as 'events') – or ‘medium-sized dry objects’. This was an argument against ontological reductionism which cited particulars like sense-data as the fundamental constituents of reality. Or, on a metaphysical reading, simples or atoms as the fundamentals.


What about the sortals we can apply to ‘artificial kinds’? What about the sortal term ‘table’, as applied to tables?


Is table a the same table as table b?


S argues that table "sorts things relative to a human interest, and touches only superficially on the nature of things" (147). We can ask, here, why are human interests ‘superficial’ at all? They aren't superficial to, well, humans! Yes, human beings create tables for specific purposes. Does that make tables superficial? Again, not to us.


Even natural kinds can be seen ‘relative to human interests’.


For example, horses can be seen as good racers or nice pets. Is the sortal term ‘horse’ really that different? If one believes in God, then didn’t God create horses, at least through evolution? Aren’t horses relative to God’s ‘interests’? S describes the difference between ‘table’ and ‘horse’ thus:


"A horse’s history is determined by the laws of equine nature, and without
reference to human interests." (147)


Are science’s classifications unrelated to the interests of scientists and other human beings? Many philosophers argue that they are.


Our classifications can be wrong.


What about the laws of equine nature: are they relative to the interests of scientists? Perhaps not. Though we might have also have got the laws of equine nature wrong. Even if we have got them right, does that automatically mean that the ways in which these laws are determined, described, measured, classified and tested aren't relative to the interests of horse-scientists?


In any case, when we let George the horse fall under the sortal ‘horse’, we also "avail ourselves of a real criterion of identity; we also say what George fundamentally is" (147). Now we know how to identify George as George and as a horse. How does the sortal ‘horse’ in and of itself give us a criterion of identity? It's just a word or a concept. In order to flesh the concept out we would require descriptive information which would bring on board with it other sortal concepts. Though the word ‘horse’ itself wouldn't be a criterion of identity because it only tells us that a horse is a horse. It doesn’t tell us what a horse is. It doesn’t tell us why George is a horse. And so on. When we say that George is a horse, we are saying that this particular horse in front of us is, well, a horse.