Philosophical Questions About Philosophy

Philosophy can be defined or described in accordance with how it has been practiced in the Western tradition. Alternatively, the word 'philosophy' can be defined simply in terms of dictionary definitions or even according to its etymology.

The latter approach isn't very helpful. At least not from a metaphilosophical perspective. Similarly, saying that philosophy, for example, was simply the “study of all examples of knowledge” (at least for some ancient Greeks) isn't going to get us very far either. For a start, it simply begs the question: What is knowledge?

And neither does etymology help us. Namely, philo = love; phia = wisdom. One problem with taking the etymology of the word 'philosophy' seriously (as Martin Heidegger did) is that it seems to be the case that philosophy should be all about the self – or about the “lover of wisdom”. In other words, “how to live well”, “how to live the good life”, “how to be fulfilled and happy", etc. Clearly all this has only been a small aspect of Western philosophy; and, perhaps, a big aspect of various religions. It can even be classed as self-centered. (In certain strands of existentialism, it's mainly about living a sincere life – sincere to one's genuine self.)

Here questions abound. Why should philosophy be all about how to live one's life? Why should I live the good life rather than the bad life?

Some have explicitly said that “philosophy is committed to self-knowledge”. There's some truth in this in that Socrates famously said “know thyself”. Though was that really about the self or was it more about the self's relation to knowledge about the world/reality generally? In other words, if one knows oneself (therefore one also knows where one's going wrong – intellectually), then one will have a better philosophical grip on the world or reality.

We can also answer the question “What is philosophy?” by asking a similar questions about the sub-branches of philosophy. For example, we can ask: What is metaphysics? Here too we can become all etymological and say that the Greek word meta-physika literally means "what comes after physics". That's not very helpful either. (What's meant by “after” or “meta”?) So let's forget dictionary or etymological definitions and go with the following.

According to Wikipedia, metaphysics is “the study of existence, causation, God, logic, forms and other abstract objects”. So why isn't metaphysics the study of cups or cats? Can one study "existence" in the abstract? The point here is that we can't help but be metaphilosophical (or simply philosophical) in pursuit of an answer to the question “What is metaphysics?”.

What is Philosophy?

Every statement on what philosophy is - or what it should be - will elicit the question: Why do you believe that philosophy is x? The philosophical opponent can easily tell the original philosopher his own view on what he thinks philosophy is - or what he thinks it should be. If that occurs (which it often does), then what happens next? How is the what-is-philosophy question settled when rival views are on the market place? Surely the opposing positions on philosophy will be debated; though I doubt that the debate will be settled. And I also doubt that they can be settled by taking various metaphilosophical positions on the what-is-philosophy question.

Let's take a couple of examples.

One philosopher can say that philosophy is about “finding the fundamental nature of everything”. Why should a philosopher do that? And doesn't this stance on philosophy simply assume that there is a fundamental nature of things taken individually or a fundamental nature of “everything”? What if there are no such fundamentals? And, even if there are, why should a philosopher see them as important? (Though classing something as “fundamental” sort of gives the game away.)

Alternatively, a philosopher may say that philosophy is about (or should be about) intellectual unification. Specifically, unifying the insights from other disciplines; particularly science and philosophy itself. Another philosopher may say that such a position is impossible. He may also dd that science itself is a discipline which simply doesn't require philosophy. (Many scientists - particularly biologists - have said this.) Indeed such a philosopher may say that philosophy itself should incorporate science and its findings. Thus - from such a place - it would be very difficult to take a useful (or genuine) metaphilosophical position on science.

The Question: “What is Philosophy?”

Some of statements and arguments from philosophers on the nature of philosophy seem well-trodden. That is, they're simply of the traditional “What is philosophy?” variety.

For example, a philosopher can say that “philosophy doesn't rely on faith or revelation”. Instead it relies on “reason” or on (in 21st century pretentious terms) “cognitive criticality”. Nonetheless, such a position of faithlessness or lack of revelation doesn't automatically make philosophy a science either. Some philosophers might have said that there's no need to rely on observations or experiments in philosophy. A contemporary philosopher, on the other hand, may say that sometimes philosophers indulge in thought experiments (as the the Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford, Timothy Williamson, does in his The Philosophy of Philosophy) which are very like the thought experiments engaged in by scientists (Williamson cites Galileo). Nonetheless, they're still not physical experiments as they're commonly understood in science. In addition, observations may be said to be prerequisites for just about any kind of philosophy. And technically it can also be said that observations (or at least “a posteriori reasoning”) can defeat seemingly a priori claims or statements.

Bertrand Russell on Philosophy

Bertrand Russell seems to have believed that when it comes to the definition of the word 'philosophy' (or to a description of the practice of philosophy), one can't help but be metaphilosophical. (Of course Russell never used the word 'metaphilosophy'; or even the words 'the philosophy of philosophy'.) In his The Wisdom of the West, Russell wrote:

“Definitions may be given in this way of any field where a body of definite knowledge exists. But philosophy cannot be so defined. Any definition is controversial and already embodies a philosophic attitude. The only way to find out what philosophy is, is to do philosophy."

Surely it can said that a definition of the word 'science' won't be equally as problematic as the word 'philosophy'. In addition, one will need to take a philosophical stance on what science is (if not on the word 'science' itself). Similarly, would all scientists agree on such a definition? Thus it can't be the case that simply because the word 'philosophy' is about philosophy that all definitions will be more problematic (or controversial) than definitions (or descriptions) of science.

So let's rewrite a bit of Russell's quote. Thus:

The only way to find out what science is, is to do science. (Or at least see how science is done.)

So it can be said that this controversy (or problem) is also the case with the definitions of many other words. That's unless one simply stipulates: This is how this dictionary defines the word x.

Despite saying all that, the analytic approach to philosophy, for example, certainly “embodies a philosophic attitude” and that attitude is “controversial”. The same can be said of deconstruction, phenomenology, structuralism, etc. - i.e., virtually any way of doing philosophy. Of course one would now need to distinguish positions within philosophy from positions on philosophy itself.

It's hard to grasp Russell's final sentence in the quote above. (Namely: “The only way to find out what philosophy is, is to do philosophy.") Surely there can't be such a case of (as it were) a priori philosophising. Firstly, a student of philosophy must read the books of certain philosophers and only then can he write about the things they too have written about. He may even adopt the prose style of those philosophers. Later he'll probably make a self-conscious attempt to write a certain kind of philosophy in a certain kind of way. In no way will he simply discover his own voice the first few times he writes philosophy. If he didn't do all that, then isn't it likely that he'd be doing stream-of-consciousness expressionism rather than philosophy? Unless, again, he's literally writing genuine philosophy from an a priori position; which, surely, is almost impossible. Sure, in order to “find out” if one can do philosophy one will need to “do philosophy”. And then one will discover which approach one likes. However, an original position can't come about simply as a result of doing philosophy from nowhere.

Finally, we must conclude that the question “What is philosophy?” is itself philosophical in nature. Or at least we need to indulge in philosophy in order to discover an answer to that question.

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Kitty Ferguson's *The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion and the Search for God*

Many scientists will have a snooty attitude towards a book called The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion and the Search for God. Indeed a subset of them will also have a snooty attitude towards all popular science books.

Such scientists may assume two things:

i) That the author, Kitty Ferguson, doesn't really know her science.

ii) That the science bits are really just sneaky preludes to the God and religion bits.

I should know about this, i) and ii) are what I thought... before I actually read Ferguson's book!

These scientists (if I'm not misrepresenting them) would be wrong on both counts. Kitty Ferguson really does know her science. And, secondly, the science she know isn't cheaply  shoehorned into some kind of rationalised theism or into a defence of religion generally

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Kitty Ferguson expresses a degree of scepticism towards both the God of the Scientists (to rewrite the well-known phrase “the God of the philosophers”) and the God of the Theologians. And it's here where Ferguson clarifies the title of her book: The Fire in the Equations.

Ferguson firstly notes Steven Hawking's position:

“If the Mind of God is only a euphemism for the sum of all the laws of physics, then God is not beyond the reach of science.”

Ferguson then allows Steven Hawking to express the limits to this God of the Scientists. Hawking writes:

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?”

The author offers a possible answer to Hawking's question by saying that the it “might be that the equations are the fire”.

However, Ferguson deftly sees the problem with both these positions. Firstly, she has a problem with Hawking when he said that that he “use[s] the term God as the embodiment of the laws of physics”. Surely this can't be the case. Could this really be the same God as the one worshiped and known by billions of people throughout the ages? So let's take Ferguson's response to that possibility:

“If one interprets God as 'the embodiment of the laws of physics', does that mean one believes 'God' is accessible only to physicists?”

Alternatively, could Hawking “be suggesting that the laws have a life or creative force of their own?”. In other words, is it that the “equations are the fire”?

And Ferguson spots another problem with God the Mathematician when she writes:

“If mathematical consistency is more powerful than God (if God has no choice but to conform to mathematical consistency), then God isn't really God. Mathematical consistency is God.”

Thus it may be the case that, ultimately, Ferguson strikes some kind of middle ground between the God of the Physicists and the God of the Theologians. In other words, she suggests a kind of pluralism: a happy acceptance of Wittgensteinian “language games”. Thus:

“Science and religion are, for them [the pluralists], two different descriptions which together give us a fuller understanding than either description alone could provide.”

However, there is indeed a stark possible alternative to this. Namely:

“If the descriptions are mutually exclusive, then that is disturbing.”

But it's not only scientists who can be (as it were) exclusivists, so too can religious people. Ferguson writes:

“Others who believe in God deem this [Wittgensteinian?] approach unsatisfactory, saying that God, in their experience, insists on occupying a front-line position in all descriptions, all conceptual schemes, all experimental situations. This God is a presence, not merely a way of thinking about or describing the universe.”

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As stated in the introduction, Kitty Ferguson does know her stuff. On almost every page there are magnificent explanations of various scientific subjects – from quantum mechanics to black holes to worm holes. There are also insights into various scientific issues. In other words, this isn't only a popular science book: it's also jam-packed with Ferguson's own very illuminating takes on physics and cosmology.

In any case, four chapters of this eight-chapter book hardly mention God or religion. And when they do, it's often only tangentially. Thus the book is indeed very roughly split into two halves; though this split is neither absolute nor is it made explicit in the introduction. Indeed even in a chapter called 'The Elusive Mind of God', both God and religion are only tackled tangentially. Here, as with three other chapters, science is primary and many pages don't mention God at all. One can even say that there's a certain sense in which the second part of the book isn't a conclusion to the first part. In many respects it flows seamlessly from the first part even though religion and God are discussed much more in the second section. It may even be the case that those who're only interested in science could skip the second part. However, I strongly suspect that Ferguson herself would see this as defeating the object of her book (or at least one of the objects of her book).

As obliquely stated in the introduction, Kitty Ferguson is just as sceptical (or simply critical) of the science which leads people towards God (as it were) as she is towards the science which leads people in the opposite direction.

Having said that, it can be mischievously be said that Kitty Ferguson puts her own position into the mouth of a Standard journalist who was writing in 1882 after the death of Charles Darwin. On page 1, Ferguson quotes the aforesaid journalist stating the following:

“True Christians can accept the main scientific facts of Evolution just as they do of Astronomy and Geology, without any prejudice to more ancient and cherished beliefs.”

Ferguson then quotes a sermon which was given at St Paul's Cathedral by a Canon H.P. Liddon. The canon congratulated Charles Darwin on “the patience and care with which he observed and registered minute single facts”. Yet Ferguson doesn't let the canon have it all his own way either. Later on in the book, Ferguson quotes the science historian, John Hedley Brooke, stating the following:

“The trouble with such accounts [of Darwin's methods] is that they can trivialize the logic of discovery. They assume that the 'facts' were somehow there, waiting at the Galapagos for Darwin to process. Darwin himself knew better than that.”

And it's not only canons who are given a hard time. Great scientists are too. For example, Ferguson has this to say on Steven Hawking:

“In April of 1980 Hawking had the audacity to suggest we had come so far that before the end of the twentieth century we might find the theory that would explain everything that is happening, has happened or ever will happen in the universe. Eight years later he wrote that after we have that theory in hand we might just go on (not scientists alone, but all humanity) to know the mind of God. Which calls to memory an ironic piece of history trivia. In the late 1890s Prussia closed its patent office on the grounds that all possible inventions had been invented. It wasn't long afterwards that Albert Einstein, in a Swiss patent office, began toying with ideas which would revolutionize science.”

And, later, Ferguson deflates science itself in the following manner:

“... science doesn't make any claim to have discovered the ultimate truth about anything.... [Scientists] don't speak of 'the verdict of science', but of 'the standard model'... They speak of 'approximate theories'.... They speak of 'effective theories', which means that something we can work with for the present while knowing it isn't absolutely and unequivocally correct.”

This statement on science is fine because (on the whole) scientists would happily accept it. In that sense, my use of the word “deflates science” isn't quite right simply because the transitional nature of science is something in its favour. Interestingly enough, Tolstoy (among many others) saw this as a very bad thing. He wrote (in his What is Religion?) these ridiculously rhetorical words (not quoted by Ferguson) in 1902:

“What we call science today is merely a haphazard collection of disconnected scraps of knowledge, most of them useless, and many of which, instead of giving absolute truth provide the most bizarre delusions, presented as truth one day and refuted the next.”

Ferguson even offers us a Kuhnian sociological and psychological account of science when she tells us that in science

“individual preference, cultural conditions, religious and anti-religious belief, political and economic interests, our value system, the spirit-of-the-time, the current fads of science”

also need to be acknowledged or taken into account. Ferguson pursues this theme later when she discusses the academic milieu of science. She comments on the phrase the “tyranny of old men” and warns of those on

“university committees, government committees, grant committees, editorial boards, and corporate boards, who determine whose theories and proposals are taken seriously, whose paper gets published, whose theory is tested”.

In his book (not quoted by Ferguson), The Trouble With Physics, the physicist Lee Smolin roughly concurs with Ferguson when he says that

“[p]eople with impressive technical skills and no ideas are chosen over people with ideas of their own partly because there is simply no way to rank young people who think for themselves. The system is set up not just to do normal science but to ensure that normal science is what is done... I've heard many colleague say they are on what is a trendy in order to get tenure, after which they will do what they really want.”

However, as with Ferguson's words on science's transitional nature, scientists should also be happy with this acknowledgement of psychological and sociological factors within science. The problem is that many scientists most certainly aren't happy with it! They speak of “Kuhnian relativism” or “mob psychology”. Yet they should also realise that such negative quirks and political biases are – at least in principle – usually ironed out. That's primarily because, as Bertrand Russell put it, science is essentially a communal activity which has a “community spirit”. Thus, even though these negative things occur, on the whole they won't reign supreme in the world of science. This is Russell (not quoted by Ferguson) in full:

“A body of individually probable opinions, if they are mutually coherent, become more probable than any one of them would be individually. It is in this way that many scientific hypotheses acquire their probability. They first fit into a coherent system of probable opinions, and thus become more probable than they would be in isolation.”

But Ferguson is sceptical here too. She asks us two questions:

i) “Will science, as an instrument for learning about reality, prove strong enough to overcome all the glitches and stumbling blocks, the fads and false leads, the good but mistaken intentions, the arrogance and the assumptions, the din of many voices urging us down one path or another?"

ii) "Is it correct to believe that eventually the truth will out?”

So of course what Russell says happens in science isn't always foolproof. Then again, it's far better than nothing. Nonetheless, Ferguson's philosophical questions about both science and the practice of science are, as ever, very powerful.

Simple Problems with the Law of Excluded Middle?

To state the Law of Excluded Middle in formal terms:

For any proposition, either that proposition is true or its negation is true.

Indeed the Latin has it that the law states tertium non datur: "no third [possibility] is given"...

One point to note is that the LEM can be seen as either a semantic or an ontological principle – or, indeed, as both. However, philosophers and logicians have tended to stress either one or the other, not both. (This may seem odd because LEM is often expressed in propositional terms and uses the symbol p.)

The Law of Excluded Middle is semantic in the sense that any statement of it is true by virtue of meanings of the words which express it. That is, according to their semantics. However, as various philosophers have put it, the LEM is also “true of the world itself”. (Others have said is that it's “true of thought itself”.) That can mean that even if the statement

Boris Johnson is either mortal or not mortal.

were never uttered or expressed, then it would still be the case that Boris Johnson is either mortal or not mortal. That is:

i) If no one had ever expressed P (which they might not have done until now), or even if we didn't have a notion of mortality,

ii) then it would still be the case that P is either true or false.

Aristotle himself made this point in his Metaphysics. Thus:

“It is impossible, then, that 'being a man' should mean precisely 'not being a man', if 'man' not only signifies something about one subject but also has one significance... And it will not be possible to be and not to be the same thing, except in virtue of an ambiguity, just as if one whom we call 'man', and others were to call 'not-man'; but the point in question is not this, whether the same thing can at the same time be and not be a man in name, but whether it can be in fact.”

Aristotle summed up this inelegant passage much more simply when he stated that "it will not be possible to be and not to be the same thing".

In propositional logic, this can be expressed as ¬(p ∧ ¬p). (Note that the Law of Excluded Middle isn't the same as the Principle of Bivalence, which states that a proposition p is either true or false.) That logical statement just made (i.e., ¬(p ∧ ¬p)) includes the symbol p, which means it's about a proposition. Thus ¬(p ∧ ¬p) is a propositional version of the ontological LEM. This means that the LEM can also be written in this way: ¬(A ∧ ¬A); in which A symbolises something non-semantic or non-propositional.

It can be said that the statement “Boris Johnson is either mortal or not mortal” also includes hidden premises (such as “Boris Johnson is a human being”, “All human beings are mortal”, “Mortal beings die”, etc.). Alternatively, as W.V.O Quine might have said, we need to know the specific definitions of the words contained in the statement in order for it to work as an example of the Law of Excluded Middle. Having said that, the symbol p can also be seen as an autonym (i.e., self-referential). That is, as a symbol with no specific content (as also with the variables x and y).

Examples

Take the statement:

He's either in the room or he's not in the room.

Isn't that an instance of the Law of Excluded Middle? However, suppose this man is half in and half out of the room.

If this man is only half in the room, then he’s still in the room. The Law of Excluded Middle (or its statement) doesn't stipulate how much of his body needs to be in the room. It simply states that he's either in the room or he isn’t. This doesn’t stop him from being half out of the room either. The LEM would only be non-applicable if no part of this man were in the room. Thus saying

He's in the room and he's not in the room.

isn't the same as saying

He's half in and he's half out of the room.

In the first statement there's a conjunctive part of the whole statement which states that the man isn't in the room at all. And in the second part, there's a conjunctive claim that he’s half in the room. So they aren't actually the same. The LEM would only be contradicted if the man were half in the room and, at the very same time, he weren't half in the room. (Alternatively, if half of the man were in the room and yet the whole of him were outside the room.) It's these formulations which are self-contradictory.

The same goes for this statement:

The ball is either black or it's not black.

Someone may now say:

What if the ball is half black?

The same argument holds. In the second statement above, we wouldn't be referring to the entire ball: only to the black part of the ball (or to the non-black part). In that case, the LEM isn't about the whole ball. So if we take the black part of the ball, then it's either black or it's not black. If someone now says, “This part isn't black - it's white”, then it's not black. So in both cases it's either black or it's not black, as the LEM states.

Again, if you want to talk about a black-and-white stick (rather than an all-black stick), then the LEM can easily accommodate it. The statement would then be:

The stick is black and white or the stick isn't black and white.

So we're talking about a particular stick which happens to be both black and white. Now someone may reply:

Well, in fact the stick also has little flecks of grey on it.

So be it. Now we can reply with this:

The stick is either black and white with little grey flecks on it or it's not black and white with little grey flecks on it.

Thus we need to specify which object or part of an object the statement refers to. The original claim about something being black was exclusively about the colour black, not about a black-and-white stick. To contradict it, one is essentially saying that black is not black, which is a denial of the Law of Identity (i.e., A = A). The LEM is derived from - and dependent upon - the Law of Identity.

Graham Priest's Integral Atom

Here's another case which is highlighted by the logician and philosopher Graham Priest.

Priest cites (in his 'Logicians Setting Together Contradictories') the example of radioactive decay. He asks us the following question:

“[S]uppose that a radioactive atom instantaneously and spontaneously decays. At the instant of decay, is the atom integral or is it not?”

Now for the traditional logic of this situation. Priest continues:

“In both of these cases, and others like them, the law of excluded middle tells us that it is one or the other.”

Yet couldn't the atom be neither integral nor non-integral when it instantaneously and spontaneously decays? (Priest talks of either/or or “one or the other”; not neither/nor.) Or, alternatively, at that point in time it may not be an atom at all.

This appears to be a temporal problem which must surely incorporate definitions - or philosophical accounts - of the concepts [instantaneously] and [spontaneously]. Nonetheless, if they define time instants which don't exist (i.e., the period from t to t¹ doesn't exist), then Priest may have a point. However, can an atom - or anything else - “decay” (or do anything) in a timespan which doesn't actually exist? How can decay - or anything else - occur if there's no time in which it can occur?

So what of Priest's own logical conclusion when it comes to atomic decay? He claims that the aforementioned atom

“at the point of decay is both integral and non-integral”.

This isn't allowed – Priest says - if the Law of Excluded Middle has its way. The Law of Excluded Middle tells us that the said atom must be either integral or non-integral; not “both integral and non-integral”.

Gottlob Frege: Numbers as Properties of Concepts

Firstly, let’s think in terms of predication – that most basic of logical procedures and an important element of nearly all traditional ontology.

Take this Frege-like statement:

Rihanna is one and Radiohead is three.

In terms of ontology, Gottlob Frege didn't think that numbers are properties of objects (i.e., objects like Rihanna and Radiohead). That is, we can't predicate “unity” or “oneness” of Rihanna in the way we can predicate “sexiness” of her. In terms of its grammatical form, that's mainly because the sentence above is a conjunctive identity statement. That is:

Rihanna = 1 & Radiohead = 3

According to extensional logic, it follows from this that if “Rihanna is one”, then “Beyoncé is one”. And if “Beyoncé is one”, then we can also write “Beyoncé = 1”, as before. However, according to the extensional principle of substitutivity, we now have:

Rihanna and Beyoncé are one.

or

Rihanna & Beyoncé = 1

That is, the proper names have the same reference – viz., the number 1.

Frege (after Kant) argues that this argument is also true of the predicate “exist” (or “exists”). This too can't be a predicate (or property) of a concrete object. We can say:

This man exists.

However, we "really mean" (or we must mean):

The concept [man] is instantiated.

In other words, the concept [man] has at least one instance. (Or, alternatively, there is at least one instance of the concept [man].) So if the predicate “exists” can only be applied to concepts (not to objects), then we can say that "existence" is “a predicate of predicates”. That is, a predicate of concepts, not of objects. We can also say that the predicate “exists” is a meta-predicate (or a meta-concept); which, unlike lower-order predicates, only applies to concepts. (Just as a meta-truths apply to truths about facts/observations/etc., but which aren't themselves about facts/observations/etc. - they're only linguistic expressions.)

More importantly for Frege, numbers are predicated of concepts. This is the case because, for example, the number 5 is the [class of all five-membered classes]. So, as before, we have a concept [5] which is applied to other concepts. This means that the number 5 is a meta-predicate; just like the predicate expression “exists”.

What about this statement? –

There are four politicians.

The Fregean “logical form” of that perfectly grammatical expression is:

The concept [politician] is instantiated four times.

That is, the predicate expression “politician” is used of four objects – i.e., four politicians. Again, in terms of logic, the concept [politician] itself is really predicated, not the actual concrete politicians. In consequence, only the concept [politician] is predicated with the concept or concept-number 4.

Does it now follow that in 4 isn't really a concept at all: it's a logical abstract object? Frege himself famously writes:

The concept [horse] is not a concept.

That seemingly paradoxical statement can be explained in the sense that in certain statements (including the one above) the concept itself is predicated, not the extension of the predicate (or concept). If that’s the case, it becomes the subject-term of the statement. Consequently, it must therefore be an object, not a concept (or a predicate). Hence the prima facie paradoxical nature of Frege’s statement about the concept [horse].

We can now say:

The concept [4] is not a concept.

The number 4 is (as it were) turned into an object: i.e., a non-spatiotemporal abstract object. Can we do the same with the predicate expression “exists”? That is, can we write the following? –

The concept [exists] is not a concept.

Is the “property” existence really an actual object – a thing of some kind? I don’t think that Frege did think of existence in the same way as he thought of a number. However, all the Fregean arguments seem equally applicable to the predicate expression “exists”; not just to the “four” in “There are four politicians’. And if Frege did think that existence isn't a genuine object like the number 4, then how did he argue for such a distinction?

Simon Blackburn on Philosophy

On Formalising Philosophy

Simon Blackburn comments on the formalising tendencies which began the tradition of analytic philosophy. He traces it back to Frege. This means, among other things, that the frequent arguments against “traditional metaphysics” certainly didn’t begin with the logical positivists. It began with Frege and no doubt existed even before that (as with Francisco Suárez and his repudiation of Aristotle). As Blackburn explains it:

“Many philosophers thought that they were on the verge of replacing ‘old-fashioned woolly metaphysics' with a rigorous, formalised philosophy that had as its core a logically perfect language, shorn of the vagaries or ordinary discourse. Once we had translated philosophical problems from ordinary language into this purified language of logic, the solutions to philosophical issues would follow as surely as night follows day. That optimism only lasted until roughly the Second World War.”

It's strange, then, that the “ordinary language philosophers” thought more or less the same thing as the philosophical formalists. Only this time the solution to “woolly metaphysics” was going back to ordinary language. That is, not only away from what the metaphysicians has said (or the way they put it), but also away from the formalisers (as epitomised by Frege, Russell and the early Wittgenstein). The ordinary language philosophers wanted to translate arcane metaphysics into ordinary language and in so doing sort out its problems or show them up to be of the metaphysicians’ own making (i.e., “pseudo problems”).

On the Mind-Language-World Triangle

Blackburn offers three approaches which philosophers since Hume have seen as been of primary importance to the whole of philosophy:

“You might say the first thing to do s to understand ourselves, as Hume does, for example; you might say the first thing you’ve got to do then is understand our language, and so do the philosophy of language; or you might think, no, what you’ve got to do is settle the nature of the world, the things that surround us and after that our own nature and the nature of language will fall out. That in a sense is the scientific approach – the rest is stamp collecting.”

So why not all these approaches at the same time? Or why not work with all three and see how they interact with each other (even if only at the peripheries)? Why the obsessive need to create a hierarchy (or pyramidical system) with one discipline at the bottom and all the rest on top of it?

It's also interesting that previous notions of First Philosophy aren't included in Blackburn’s list. Thus ontology was First Philosophy for Aristotle and others. Epistemology was First Philosophy for Descartes. Psychology (or “human nature”) was First Philosophy for Hume. The philosophy of language (in its logical guise) was First Philosophy for Frege. The scientific nature (or description) of the world was First Philosophy for the logical positivists and arguably for Quine and others. And from the 1960s onward, the philosophy of mind has more or less become First Philosophy for many philosophers - superseding or simply incorporating the philosophy of language.

One may conclude from all this that we should completely suspect the very idea of a First Philosophy and simply accept the interconnections between the philosophical disciplines. And it's one step on from this rejection of First Philosophy to take an “interdisciplinary approach” to philosophy and incorporate linguistics, computer science, cognitive science and other disciplines into its purview. This in itself can be seen as an acknowledgement of “philosophical holism” in whatever form it may take.

In summary, then, we have a “triangle” which includes psychology (or ourselves), the philosophy of language and the world itself. We needn't take any of these as being primary or fundamental.

On Philosophical Prose

Simon Blackburn has little time for those philosophers who glory in the complexity of their disciple or just in their own philosophical writings. He says that he thinks philosophy's “difficulties we compounded by a certain pride in its difficulty”. It's ironic, then, that some of the great philosophers were also good writers. Blackburn cites Russell, Ryle and Austin. I would also cite Plato, Hume, Quine, Putnam, Searle and particularly various American analytic philosophers - as opposed to English ones. (It's often the case that as the English philosophers are to American philosophers, so Continental philosophers are to English philosophers.)

Bad writing, technicality and sheer pretentiousness, however, shouldn't imply that all work on the minutia of philosophy should be shunned or limited. Of course not. Some papers are bound to be complex. Not necessarily because of the subject’s difficulty; but just because the issues and problems will be technical in nature and therefore have a high number of unknown technical terms. Indeed some technical terms will be needed and others may well be gratuitous – it depends on the philosopher concerned.

Blackburn makes some other interesting points about philosophical prose – at least in its bad guise. He quotes John Searle stating: “If you can’t say it clearly you don’t understand it yourself.”

So all the times I thought critically of myself for not understanding a particular philosopher’s prose, perhaps all along he didn’t understand his own prose; or, more importantly, he didn't understand the philosophical ideas he was trying – badly – to express. I assumed my own cognitive limitations or the damned complexity of the subject. However, perhaps all along it was just a case of the philosopher concerned being a bloody poor writer – regardless of the complexity of his ideas. Either that or he might well have been just plain pretentious! Certainly philosophers like this don’t follow the Quintilian dictum (as quoted by Blackburn): “Do not write so that you can be understood, but so that you cannot be misunderstood.”

Of course, literally speaking, if one writes “so that you cannot be misunderstood”, then one must also be writing “so that you can be understood” – the two approaches go together. However, Bernard Williams (also quoted by Blackburn) offered the obvious riposte to this “impossible ideal”:

“Williams snapped at that and said it was 'an impossible ideal. You can always be misunderstood', and of course he’s right. But I think the point of Quintilian’s remark isn’t 'write so as to avoid any possible misunderstanding’ but to remember that it’s difficult and that it’s your job to make it as easy as you can.”

It's interesting to note here that Williams’ impossible-ideal argument can also be used in favour of the idea that there will always be someone in one’s own culture - no matter how rational - who'll misinterpret at least something you write or say. Indeed perhaps everyone who reads or listens to you will misinterpret you in some small or large way. The idea of a perfect communication of a complete and perfect meaning to a perfect interpreter seems to be a ridiculous ideal. It seems to be almost – or even literally – impossible and for so many reasons. So you'll always be “misunderstood” by someone in some way. Indeed each person will misunderstand you in some way - whether that way is large or small. All we have left, as writers or philosophers, is to realise that “it’s [our] job to make it as easy as [we] can”. We can't be expected to do more than this. We can't guarantee the perfect communication of our ideas or the perfect understanding of our ideas by other people (as anyone who uses social media already knows). And even if we allow this slack, perhaps, in the end, it simply doesn't matter that much because communication doesn't require either determinate meanings or determinate interpretations. We seem to manage quite well in most situations without perfect languages and other philosophical ideals. It's only certain philosophers who get hot under the collar about the possibility (or actuality) of the problems of meaning or translation. You can't (to use Derrida's term) “mathematicise” meaning or interpretation/understanding. We now know, after all, that formalised or artificial languages have many severe limitations and we can even say that natural languages are far more expressive and pragmatically efficacious than even the sum of their alternatives.

On the Importance of Philosophy

Blackburn comments on the importance of philosophy and places it within the wider context of Western culture as a whole. He says:

“The high ground has got to be just that it’s one of the world’s great literatures. If you’re ignorant of Aristotle, Hume and Wittgenstein it’s like being ignorant of Shakespeare, Jane Austen or George Eliot and this ought to be regarded as shameful in the same way as ignorance of great literature would be.”

Not many would think of any philosopher’s work being great literature even if it's philosophically great. However, it's often difficult to disentangle the two - especially in the case of a philosopher like Plato. This is also the case if one accepts Jacques Derrida’s idea that there's no difference in kind between philosophy and literature: only a difference in degree. (I suppose this will partly depend on the philosopher we're talking about.)

For example, this would be easy to argue in the case of Plato (again). However, could we really see the work of Rudolf Carnap in the same way? We can also say that just as Shakespeare, Austin and Eliot have shaped the world, so too have Blackburn's philosophical examples – namely, Aristotle, Hume and Wittgenstein. I would add many other philosophers to the list of philosophers who've shaped Western culture: Plato, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, J.S. Mill and so on. However, I’m not sure if I would regard it as “shameful” if people hadn't read the philosophers on Blackburn’s list. I've never read much Montaigne or Plotinus and I've never read certain other well-known philosophers. (I suspect that Blackburn hasn't either.) However, if one hasn't ready any of these, then perhaps that is shameful and indeed quite remarkable.

Apart from (some) philosophy being “great literature”, Blackburn cites “pragmatic grounds” as to why philosophy is of vital importance – and has always been of vital importance. He writes:

“A much more interesting, pragmatic ground is that I really do think that unless people have some tools for reflecting on the language they use they’re apt to be behaving unselfconsciously, and unreflective behaviour is often behaviour that’s at the mercy of forces which we don’t understand. So I think that realising the state of your language is a very important device for realising he state of your culture at this time in history, and in politics.”

This isn't just a strong suggestion to study language in the philosophy-of-language sense: it's also a suggestion to study and critically analyse the words and concepts we use every day to see how they shape what it is we think; as well as the way they shape how we actually experience the world.

For a start, people will soon come to realise how our words and concepts not only reflect world and culture; but also determine or shape them. When we realise that, we can't help but reflect on the words and concepts we use and how we apply them. If we don’t do this, as Blackburn puts it, we'll be “at the mercy of forces which we don’t understand”.

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*) All the quotes in this piece are taken from the book, What Philosophers Think. In this book Julian Baggini and Jeremy Stangroom interview various philosophers and scientists.