Independent Properties & Ceteris Paribus Clauses

 

It can be said that a commitment to ceteris paribus clauses is also a commitment to “independent properties” or entities.

One way to argue for that would to be in terms of essences or natural kinds (which capture the essence) in regards to properties or things/objects/entities. Thus, even if peripheral aspects of entity/property X change (or peripheral stuff changes X), if “all things remaining equal”, then the essence of X will remain the same.

There are indeed what some people call “causal islands”: abstract objects such as numbers, propositions, etc. (If you accept such things.) In addition, if an object or a property has an essence, then that object will retain its essence “all other things remaining equal”. In other words, in this language, essences are indeed causal islands. They must also be independent. Indeed you can say that essences are also abstractions (if not exactly abstract objects).

Again, in the causal flux, object/property X will keep its essence.

Does the belief in the aforementioned “self-subsistent” (as it were) entities (or properties) involve an automatic philosophical commitment to (or assumption of) the phrase “all other things being equal”? That is, that property or entity X would have exactly this nature regardless of all else?

It can be said that if you change one thing, then you change everything else too. (As various kinds of monist have argued.) Or, less dramatically, if you change one thing, then you must automatically change other things.

For example, if President Obama had an extra finger, then there would also be many other differences too. Even if President Obama had an extra molecule, many other things would be different. For one, that extra molecule would automatically affect other molecules. And that means that one tiny change (a different molecule) would bring about many other changes.

This means that X is dependent on other things. X will also affect other things.

Finally, surely saying that “X is an independent property” can't mean that X could exist without anything else. Although it can be said that X could exist without some of the things it now coexists with.

(Does all the above work against the various monistic theories - and theories of interdependence - in which no entity or property can ever have a nature apart from – all? - other things?)

Does Philosophy Impinge on Scientific Theory?

 

There can certainly be philosophical objections to scientific theories. Indeed there have been very many such objections over the years.

However, putting it that way may be to unduly separate science from philosophy in the first place. That is, the idea that firstly there's a scientific theory and then the philosophical objections follow. What if the scientific theories contain many philosophical assumptions or components from the very beginning? (I believe that they do.)

This isn't to say that science has never had an impact on what philosophers have argued or that scientific findings haven't made philosophical views untenable. They have. Though that simply means that those philosophical views were wrong; not that science always has the last word on matters (as such).

Some philosophers have argued that the final arbiter must always be science, not philosophy; though that itself would require a philosophical backup and argumentation. (This is the position of “naturalist philosophers” such as Quine, etc.)

Here again it can be said that philosophy and science don't move in non-contiguous parallel lines.

Analytic Philosophy & Argument

It's a mistake to conflate positions within analytic philosophy with the attitude that most analytic philosophers have to (doing) philosophy itself.

It's not really necessary for all analytic philosophers to explictly accept, say, that “beliefs require justification”, “adding ad-hoc hypotheses to an idea is bad”, or “that philosophers must have knowledge of logical fallacies” - even if most of them do!

What makes analytic philosophy superior to other traditions (in my view) is very simple (i.e., not very sexy): the commitment to argumentation. I suppose that this is broadly related to the idea that “beliefs require justification”; though that's a particular position within epistemology (at least as it's expressed above).

All statements about analytic philosophy and other traditions will of course involve generalisations. You can't escape that. All I can do is give examples of what I mean.

I've read a bit of Continental philosophy. Most of it doesn't seem to take argument very seriously at all. In that sense it becomes more like literature, poetry or political rhetoric than philosophy. Indeed some philosophers (such as Jacques Derrida) have made this point themselves.

For example, I read an article by Jean Baudrillard which is really just one long list of statements (rather than a piece of augmentation). All those statements are also expressed in an extremely poetic manner. It can be said, however, that arguments (or chains of reasoning) might have led up to those statements; though they aren't contained in the text itself. (This is also true, at least to some extent, of Wittgenstein's Tractatus.)

Thus, again, I would say that argumentation (as well as little rhetoric) sums up analytic philosophy. Not a commitment to specific positions within philosophy.

The Statements of Post-Structuralist (Etc.) Philosophy are Taken to be True

 

The philosophers who fall under the labels 'post-structuralist', 'post-modernist', 'structuralist', etc. (e.g., Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, Lyotard, etc.) are, in fact, pseudo-relativists, pseudo-historicists, pseudo-subjectivists, etc. because they take most of what they say to be true. If they didn't do so, then they'd be subject to what philosophers call “self-referential paradoxes”.

 

Basically, their relativisms, historicisms, subjectivisms, etc. are rhetorical moves intended to score various points against the traditions, political systems and philosophies they're trying to destroy. Nonetheless, they believe that what they say is true – absolutely.

 

They believe, for example, that equality and fairness are non-relative moral values. And their other political and philosophical views about racism, capitalism, Das System, imperialism, sexism, etc. are take to be true (i.e., non-relative). The pretentious prose and talk about “the deconstruction of the logos” is basically a lot of philosophical fluff hiding the underlying philosophical, political and moral beliefs and statements which they're very strongly defending and which they take to be true.

What is a(n Analytic) Philosopher?

Julian Baggini offers us psychological reasons and accounts to explain what a good philosopher should be like. He writes:

“Firstly, a good philosopher should not get so attached to our theory that we find ourselves committed to it and no longer subjecting it to rational scrutiny.” 

We can even say that such theoretical open-mindedness is essential for a good philosopher. It is, after all, the case that many people often fiercely commit themselves to their own theories and truths and rarely, if ever, subject them to any kind of critical scrutiny.

Not only that: I think that Bertrand Russell once said that for very many people it's often the case that most of their theories and beliefs are acquired relatively early in life and thereafter become objects of irrational faith. In other words, too many people stick to their old beliefs for basically the emotional reasons of epistemic security and metaphysical comfort.

For example, the belief, for example, that ‘X is a good thing’ makes the subject both epistemically secure and in a state of emotional and cognitive equilibrium that would only be shaken if he or she began to genuinely question the epistemic and political validity and truth of their now entrenched belief.

Moreover, many people simply go out of their way to back up and nurture their old beliefs with more arguments and data. They do this while systematically ignoring or automatically rejecting any arguments or data that clearly shakes the cognitive and emotional equilibrium which is largely constituted by old and rigidly-held beliefs and theories. Sometimes it's simply too emotionally and cognitively disadvantageous to sincerely take on board arguments which may unsettle or even refute one’s otherwise cherished and static beliefs and theories.

In terms of the subject’s own mind: he or she will think it wise to keep the status quo. It's simply too much cognitive effort and emotional reassessment that frighten people away from self-scrutiny. So many times when we confront the beliefs of others it's often the case that one’s adversary doesn't genuinely listen to one’s counterarguments by either simply turning away or drowning out such counterarguments with the noise of their own arguments.

For example, very few people make a political or philosophical volte-face as a result of face-to-face argumentation. And that also true in the case of hours of face-to-face discussion. What often happens is that if there's any kind of volte-face or Damascene conversion, it's likely to occur when the subject is on his own or when he's free from the cognitive rigour and emotional flux of much face-to-face discussion. In a state of emotional equilibrium, the subject’s cognitive skills can more readily tackle the previously discussed counterarguments.

That's why such self-scrutiny "requires courage". It's not nice to jettison one’s old beliefs if they've provided emotional comfort and security.

Similarly, not many people can be bothered with the amount of cognitive activity required to question and then possibly jettison one’s long-held and cherished beliefs. One’s philosophical, ethical and political principles, after all, are so complicated in essence that a strong challenge to them would require a lot of cognitive energy. And that level of intellectual engagement is rarely possible for many people outside professional politics and philosophy departments.

It can even be said that it's not the theories and beliefs that the philosopher upholds and critically defends which are of importance to being a good philosopher: it's the ability to reason well about any subject, belief or theory. It's also the logic of clear thinking (in any domain) that's of importance, not the fact that the philosopher can offer us powerful theories about reality or all-encompassing philosophical systems. Indeed it can even be said that many hard-headed analytic philosophers (especially post-grad students) don’t really have philosophical theories at all. Instead they take their prime purpose to be the analysis of theories, beliefs and problems, not the creation of them.

Interestingly enough, this was Wittgenstein’s position on the role of philosophy in the 1920s and beyond. He believed that philosophy “should leave everything as it is”. More specifically, a philosopher shouldn't even come up with his own propositions: he should simply describe and analyse the propositions of science, logic and mathematics.

Moreover, Wittgenstein believed that the only propositions that one can accept are those of science, logic and maths. Thus, by definition, philosophy couldn't come up with its own genuine propositions. All propositions were either world-directed (or scientific) or essentially tautological or analytic (as in logic and maths).

Clearly, then, analysis and description was of paramount importance to Wittgenstein during this and his later period. The idea of philosophical theories, for example, disgusted him, as did philosophical propositions earlier. Only in science can there be genuine theories. Philosophical theories, on the other hand, are but examples of "meaningless metaphysics".

This deflationary attitude towards philosophy was passed on to “linguistic philosophers” like J.L. Austin and others and also, earlier, to other schools of philosophy such as logical positivism. However, even though logical positivism and linguistic philosophy are dead, and since the 1960s metaphysics has begun to thrive again, this deflationary attitude to philosophy as a whole is still (to a large extent) upheld by nearly all analytic philosophers – even by arch-metaphysicians such as Saul Kripke.