Philosophy & Other First Things
Philosophy and the end of the road
Ultimately, in any field of inquiry the road eventually runs out. That is to say, questions are generated that cannot be answered from inside that discipline itself. Here are two examples:
In these (and countless other similar) examples the second questions are the truly hard ones. This is not to denigrate in any way the first questions nor the disciplines that answer them. It's simply that (attempted) answers to the second ones are almost always controversial. Indeed, they are rarely "settled" like the first ones usually can be. They are in fact philosophical questions. They are the ones that arise once you reach the end of the road. From this perspective philosophy is the ultimate intellectual discipline. Seen from a different angle, philosophy is the absolutely foundational intellectual discipline: It comes before all others in the "order of knowing." Consequently, any practitioner who wants to understand the intellectual context of his particular discipline must possess at least a basic grasp of philosophy. Again, this is not to denigrate other disciplines nor to be an intellectual elitist. It's just the nature of the case. (2)
Ultimately, in any field of inquiry the road eventually runs out. That is to say, questions are generated that cannot be answered from inside that discipline itself. Here are two examples:
- Every year many millions of people are made ill by malaria; many of these die. Suppose that there are only two conceivable ways to eliminate it and that both are actually possible: Kill all mosquitoes or develop a vaccine to immunize against it. A number of disciplines are obviously relevant here -- e.g. environmental science, biology, biochemistry, the medical sciences, economics, political science, and statistics. These disciplines can answer many questions: What would be the knock-on effects to the rest of the environment if Culiseta longiareolata were eradicated? What are the biological and biochemical processes through which the parasite that causes malaria is introduced into and persists within human populations via mosquitoes? How would a vaccine work in terms of biochemistry? What would be its impact in terms of health to the average person? What would be the corresponding economic impact? How much would it cost to implement either of these two solutions? What other worthy endeavors (e.g. providing safe drinking water) might have to be foregone as a result? How might governments implement such policies? So far, so valuable. But these disciplines cannot, on their own terms, answer further interesting and important questions: What obligations do humans have toward the environment? Is it morally acceptable to eliminate an entire species of animal? How do we know that the malarial parasite (in fact, a protozoan) exists when no one has ever seen one with their naked eye? What does it mean to say that mosquitoes cause malaria? What does it mean to say that the mosquito - human - mosquito cycle is the best explanation for the persistence of malaria in a population? Is there any such thing as the "average person"? What is the relationship of a person's health to his overall well-being? In what does such "being well" consist? What are the relevant ethical considerations when it comes to weighing costs versus benefits of the eradication of malaria relative to some other worthwhile goal? What is the proper role of the state in all of this? Would it be morally acceptable to force someone to be vaccinated?
- The New Testament says that at Jesus' baptism "heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: 'You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.'" (1) Again, a number of disciplines are directly relevant to understanding this text -- e.g., linguistics, archaeology, biblical studies, history, literary theory, theology (biblical, historical, systematic), and the physics of sound and flight. And these disciplines can (at least attempt to) answer many questions: What is a faithful translation of the original Greek text? What Old Testament passages are background to this? What was the significance of baptism in Second Temple Judaism? What is the best overall understanding of what the text is saying, with sensitivity to context, genre, and the overarching narrative of Luke's gospel? What are its implications to the Christian understanding of God? How has the Church understood Christ's "Sonship" throughout the centuries? What are the physics of flight and of sound transmission? Again, so far, so valuable. But these disciplines run out of road when it comes to the following questions: What is the nature of history? What is the nature of language? In what does "meaning" consist? How can human language be used to refer to a transcendent God? What is the nature of divine Sonship? What is the nature of the Christian God? How are Sonship and Triunity to be explicated? How is the "contact" between the spiritual and the physical, spoken of in the text, to be understood?
In these (and countless other similar) examples the second questions are the truly hard ones. This is not to denigrate in any way the first questions nor the disciplines that answer them. It's simply that (attempted) answers to the second ones are almost always controversial. Indeed, they are rarely "settled" like the first ones usually can be. They are in fact philosophical questions. They are the ones that arise once you reach the end of the road. From this perspective philosophy is the ultimate intellectual discipline. Seen from a different angle, philosophy is the absolutely foundational intellectual discipline: It comes before all others in the "order of knowing." Consequently, any practitioner who wants to understand the intellectual context of his particular discipline must possess at least a basic grasp of philosophy. Again, this is not to denigrate other disciplines nor to be an intellectual elitist. It's just the nature of the case. (2)
What is philosophy?
The above answers this question indirectly. What about a direct answer to the question "What is philosophy?" Suggested answers to this are myriad. (3) Here is one by A.C. Grayling that is as good as any:
The above answers this question indirectly. What about a direct answer to the question "What is philosophy?" Suggested answers to this are myriad. (3) Here is one by A.C. Grayling that is as good as any:
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One can describe philosophy as the attempt to make clear, and if possible to answer, a range of fundamental and puzzling questions which arise when, in a general and inclusive way, we try to understand ourselves and the universe we inhabit. Among many other things these questions concern existence and reality, knowledge and belief, reason and reasoning, truth, meaning, and value both ethical and aesthetic. The questions themselves are of the form: what is reality? What kinds of things ultimately exist? What is knowledge, and how do we come by it? How can we be sure that our claims to knowledge are not in some systematic way mistaken? What are the canons of correct reasoning? What is morally the right way to live and act, and why? (4)
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What are its principal divisions?
Grayling's questions can be grouped into four distinct categories, those having to do with:
Grayling's questions can be grouped into four distinct categories, those having to do with:
- Logic -- the study of valid reasoning. Historically, logic has developed hand-in-glove with philosophy. Yet, strictly speaking, it is distinct from philosophy inasmuch as it is a necessary prerequisite for doing philosophy and also because it is intimately bound up with other disciplines such as mathematics. Indeed, logic is the sine qua non for any endeavor -- formal or informal, highbrow or lowbrow -- in which there is a desire to make intellectual progress in a way that is legitimate. (5)
- Metaphysics -- the study of what is ultimately real. A good description is this: "[T]he philosophical investigation of the nature, constitution, and structure of reality. [Metaphysics] is broader in scope than science ... since one of its traditional concerns is the existence of non-physical entities, e.g., God. It is also more fundamental, since it investigates questions that science does not address but the answers to which it [that is, science] presupposes." (6) Thus, metaphysics distinguishes between the World and the Universe. The latter includes both the denizens of everyday life -- rocks, trees, skies, seas -- as well as the exotica of physics, from quarks to black holes. On the other hand, the World subsumes the Universe. It includes in addition all non-physical things, including (perhaps): numbers and sets, universals (a special kind of property), propositions, states of affairs, events, "possible worlds," minds / souls, and God. Metaphysics studies these things. (7) It also studies what we might call the "metaphysical framework" for physical things and phenomena. It thus asks such questions as these: In virtue of what is a concrete particular thing such (that is, concrete and particular)? What is the relationship between the properties such a thing has and the thing itself? Are some such properties "essential" to a thing and if so how so? What marks some collections of matter as special (e.g., the molecules that comprise a frog) while other such collections (e.g., of rocks) are just heaps of similar things which possess no underlying unity? What does it mean that a thing is located in space and endures through time? What is the nature of time? Of space? How are the ultimate constituents of physical stuff -- ultimate particles and / or fields -- to be understood? What is the nature of causation? Of possibility? Of free agency? How should the interrelatedness of all things be understood? Finally, metaphysics studies such fundamental, conceptual questions as: What is the nature of identity? (That is, what does it mean that: a thing is what it is and is not anything else.) In what does the individuation of an individual thing consist? How should existence itself -- that is, the existence of a concrete particular thing - be understood? Likewise, for the essence of such a thing? Above all, what does it mean to be? That is, what does the verb 'to be' entail? (8) (9)
- Epistemology -- the study of what it means to have non-accidentally true beliefs. It is thus the theory of justification (the non-accidental piece) and knowledge (belief that is true and that is held with justification). Epistemology thus begins from the fundamental idea that having a piece of knowledge requires more than just having a belief that is true. Making a lucky guess that a true proposition is true doesn't count as knowing that proposition. You must have reasons which "back up" why you hold that belief; that is, you must be able (at least in principle) to explain why holding that belief is reasonable. (10) Epistemologists have identified five basic sources of belief (and hence of knowledge): Perception through the five senses gives us knowledge of the external world. Memory serves as a "storehouse" of things we've learned in the past, from which we can draw in the present. Introspection is "inner sight." When we introspect we "look" inside our psyche and observe our own stream of consciousness (doing this, as it were, while afloat.) Reason gives us such knowledge as: If Sam is taller than Suzy and Suzy is taller than Jim, then Sam is taller than Jim. Such "truths of reason" are conceptual / logical truths. They find their grounding not in the physical world but in reason per se. Finally, testimony provides knowledge of the world at one remove -- that is, through the witness of others who themselves have direct access to a slice of it. Epistemologists investigate how knowledge (and justification) can grow from such basic sources. This happens through the combination (usually) of several basic sources of knowledge and then the extension or growth of that "seed" through processes of inference (e.g., deductive and inductive reasoning). Epistemologists ask then how the resulting "tree," which consists of many interrelated pieces of knowledge, is structured. Is its defining feature that of holism, of being internally consistent and coherent? Or is it that of rootedness, of being founded upon the "rock" of primary sources? Finally, epistemologists spend much of their effort in applying epistemology to various domains of study. They thus ask: In what does scientific knowledge consist? Is it possible to have moral knowledge? Religious knowledge? If so, in what would these consist? (11)
- Axiology -- the study of value or worth. Value theory (axiology) has to do "with the nature of value and with what kinds of things have value." When people ask questions about meaning, they are talking about value: "What's the purpose of / in life? Am I living a worthwhile life?" When they wonder about how to live and what to do, both as a person and in relationship to others, they are talking about value: "What should my priorities be? How should I treat my neighbors, my co-workers, my family?" And when they seek out or acknowledge beautiful or pleasant things, they are engaging with value: "This fabulous handbag matches my ensemble perfectly!" "He carries himself like a true gentleman." "York Minster Cathedral is an architectural triumph." Value is thus where philosophy intersects with daily life most directly. Of the many kinds of value, two important sorts studied by philosophers are the ethical and the aesthetic. Ethical values -- right and wrong, duty or obligation, virtue and vice -- are the subject of ethics or moral philosophy. Ethics is the philosophical study of morality. It includes the following: An investigation of goodness. That is, what ends ought we to pursue? What does a good life involve? What kinds of things are intrinsically good? An investigation of right action. That is, what principles of right and wrong should govern our actions? The application of ethics to particular domains such as engineering or medicine. Metaethics, the study of the character and basis of our ethical beliefs. Moral psychology, that part of human psychology relevant to the study of goodness and right action. And, finally, the metaphysics of moral responsibility; that is, the interplay between human agency and moral accountability. Turning to aesthetic values -- beauty and ugliness, harmony and disorder -- these pertain to the discipline of aesthetics. Aesthetics studies both art and our experience of art, as well as our experience of the natural environment. (12)
What are other disciplines within philosophy?
In addition to the central disciplines of philosophy – metaphysics, epistemology, axiology – there are a number of sub-disciplines within it. These second-order disciplines turn the tools and methods of philosophy to particular domains of interest. They both examine questions relevant to such a domain, as well as relate those questions to the core philosophical concerns about reality, knowledge, and value. Here are some of the more significant: (13)
There are other established “philosophies of,” including those of history, art, literature, education, and the environment. Whenever philosophical questions begin to be asked within a new domain of human inquiry or practice (e.g., computing or neuroscience or genetics) a new sub-discipline of philosophy is often in the offing.
In addition to the central disciplines of philosophy – metaphysics, epistemology, axiology – there are a number of sub-disciplines within it. These second-order disciplines turn the tools and methods of philosophy to particular domains of interest. They both examine questions relevant to such a domain, as well as relate those questions to the core philosophical concerns about reality, knowledge, and value. Here are some of the more significant: (13)
- Philosophy of logic examines "the scope and nature of logic."
- Philosophy of language is "[the] philosophical study of natural language and its workings, particularly of linguistic meaning and the use of language."
- Philosophy of mathematics is "the study of ontological and epistemological problems raised by the content and practice of mathematics."
- Philosophy of science is "the branch of philosophy that is centered on a critical examination of the sciences: their methods and their results." It includes the philosophies of physics, biology, and the social sciences.
- Philosophy of mind is "the branch of philosophy that includes the philosophy of psychology, philosophical psychology, and the area of metaphysics concerned with the nature of mental phenomena and how they fit into the causal structure of reality."
- Philosophical anthropology is "[the] philosophical inquiry concerning human nature, often starting with the question of what generally characterizes human beings in contrast to other kinds of creatures and things."
- Philosophy of action is "the study of the ontological structure of human action, the process by which it originates, and the ways in which it is explained."
- Philosophy of religion is "the subfield of philosophy devoted to the study of religious phenomena."
- Philosophical theology examines specific religious or theological questions, for example, the Christian doctrine of the Triunity of God.
- Political philosophy is "the study of the nature and justification of coercive institutions."
- Philosophy of law, or general jurisprudence, is “the study of conceptual and theoretical problems concerning the nature of law as such, or common to any legal system.”
- Historical philosophy studies past philosophers, philosophies, and schools of thought. It is more than bare history, however. It seeks a genuine dialogue with the past. Even contemporary, cutting-edge philosophy often situates itself in relation to past philosophy. This concern with the past stands in contradistinction to such disciplines as science. Philosophy really is a conversation across the centuries.
- Metaphilosophy is "the theory of the nature of philosophy, especially its goals, methods, and fundamental assumptions.” It is what happens when the tools, methods, and characteristic questions of philosophy are turned on the discipline of philosophy itself.
There are other established “philosophies of,” including those of history, art, literature, education, and the environment. Whenever philosophical questions begin to be asked within a new domain of human inquiry or practice (e.g., computing or neuroscience or genetics) a new sub-discipline of philosophy is often in the offing.
How does philosophy compare and contrast with other human endeavors? (14)
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Activity:
Religion or General Culture Deductive Science (Logic / Math) Empirical Science |
Similarities to philosophy:
Focuses on ultimate reality – or at least a suitable stand-in. Seeks to account for both empirical and non-empirical data. Provides crucial assumptions undergirding value, i.e., ethics, social mores, etc. Exemplars of rational inquiry par excellence. (Ex. the historical influence of geometrical reasoning on philosophy.) Pure (i.e. non-instrumental) rational reflection on data. Concerned with at least one aspect of reality, i.e., the physical universe. |
Dissimilarities to philosophy:
Rational reflection on, and justification of, beliefs are not the primary emphases – though they may be important secondary ones. Concerned solely with coherence; that is, with the strictly deductive implications resulting from logical / mathematical operations on arbitrary axioms or postulates. There is no intrinsic connection to reality, physical or otherwise. Devoid of all value except for logical ones. Methodologically constrained to account only for empirical data. Methodologically constrained to provide physical explanations only. Only indirect implications for value and praxis. That is, it can assist in drawing implications for value assumptions, but it can never generate these assumptions. (Ex. of beginning-and-end-of-life issues.) |
Finally, does philosophy ever make progress? (15)
Philosophers have been at work for at least 2,500 years, and yet they have been unable to reach consensus on even seemingly straightforward questions. That is, they’ve been unable to establish an uncontroversial body of philosophical information. Why is this so, when other disciplines, such as physical science, have no such problem? Can philosophy actually make headway or does it merely perpetually debate inherently undecidable questions? Isn't philosophy just mere opinion and interpretation -- best pursued over beer late at night? Here are some responses:
Philosophers have been at work for at least 2,500 years, and yet they have been unable to reach consensus on even seemingly straightforward questions. That is, they’ve been unable to establish an uncontroversial body of philosophical information. Why is this so, when other disciplines, such as physical science, have no such problem? Can philosophy actually make headway or does it merely perpetually debate inherently undecidable questions? Isn't philosophy just mere opinion and interpretation -- best pursued over beer late at night? Here are some responses:
- The questions investigated by philosophy are, in their own way, more complex than those posed (say) by the physical sciences. The stubbornness of these questions is not an excuse for ignoring them or for consigning them to the realm of mere opinion. Such a response betrays a certain intellectual laziness. Moreover, the alleged consensus in physical theories ignores significant differences in interpretation (e.g., quantum mechanics).
- It is not the nature of philosophy – as it is for other disciplines – to generate information per se. Philosophy is not, essentially, an empirical or deductive discipline, and so does not have the aim of producing a body of uncontroversial facts. Indeed, one mark of a genuinely philosophical question just is that it cannot be settled by straightforward appeal to empirical or logical facts.
- Philosophy does in fact make progress, as evidenced by changes in philosophical consensus: (i) Some questions transition from a going concern to one no longer of interest. For example, the search by the Greeks for the arche, or fundamental material principle of all things, is no longer of any interest to philosophers. (ii) There are genuine philosophical discoveries, i.e. fundamentally new insights into old problems. Examples are the so-called Gettier problem in epistemology and Frankfurt-style counterexample in the free will debate. (iii) There are often major conceptual refinements. That is, even though some debates are as intractable now as ever, the actual terms of the debate are much more precise. For example, the terms of the mind-body problem are considerably sharper than they were at the time of Descartes. Moreover, good philosophy always results in a clearer understanding of the questions at issue, the terms of the debate. This is essential for intellectual progress in any sphere. (iv) There can be impacts of philosophically relevant discoveries in other domains. Thus, modern mathematics (e.g. infinity, set theory) and modern physics (e.g. quantum mechanics) provided impetus for philosophically fruitful investigations. (v) There are historical cases in which a philosophical discipline transitioned to a scientific discipline. Historically, when a discipline progresses to a point where it is tractable to purely empirical methods or when it becomes interesting purely for its own sake, it ceases to be a part of philosophy and becomes a part of science. Examples are psychology and logic, respectively.
- Finally, even if philosophical inquiry does not lend itself to demonstrative certainty, this does not reduce such inquiry to "mere opinion." It is a fallacy to maintain that any assertion lacking the quality of a full-blown demonstrative proof (as in math or science) is simply mere opinion or interpretation. Assertions possess various degrees of justification; some are better (i.e., more rational) than others. Indeed, most of the interesting – and most rational -- assertions in life are ones incapable of "proof" (e.g., the love of a spouse or child). It may be the case that some questions are inherently undecidable. Perhaps there are fundamental limitations inherent to human inquiry arising from our cognitive capabilities. Again, though, this does not absolve us from the responsibility to seek answers, nor does it mean that all putative answers are equal.
Footnotes:
(1) Luke 3:21,22 (NIV).
(2) Those who hold to a complete naturalism would reject this primacy of philosophy over all other intellectual disciplines. They would maintain that "acceptable methods of justification and explanation are continuous, in some sense, with those in science." I think this is quite wrong, as would most philosophers. (It's a form of positivism, I think.) Still, even if, for the sake of argument, we were to assume a naturalist methodology to be correct, the questions and problems investigated by philosophers, as well as the tools and methods employed by them, would still be just as relevant -- unless the naturalist were to completely beg the question for a naturalistic metaphysics. If you want to proceed as a philosopher would yet call yourself a scientist, there's nothing stopping you. But it seems to me an injustice to both philosophy and science qua disciplines to do so. (The quotation is from the entry "naturalism" from The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, second edition. The CDP is the best single-volume reference work on philosophy that I know of.)
(3) What philosophy as a discipline is and what philosophers do are almost always genuine mysteries to people. Someone once told me, in all seriousness, that the "aphorisms" of Yogi Berra were philosophy. I should have told him that he (my interlocutor, not Mr. Berra) "made too many wrong mistakes." A common stereotype is that philosophers are "thinkers of deep thoughts" or "contemplators of the cosmos" or some such notion. (Perhaps they do their thinking and contemplating while smoking a pipe or sitting under a tree.) Many academics within the "hard" disciplines -- e.g. mathematics and the natural sciences -- are just as ignorant as regular folks. There is a tendency in some quarters to mock philosophy as not being a serious endeavor. I shall have more to say about these things in a later essay. Suffice it to say that these are all manifestations of profound ignorance.
(4) A.C. Grayling, Wittgenstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 13. The "definition" in Wikipedia is a typical one: "Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument." The original meaning of the Greek word for 'philosophy' was "love of wisdom."
(5) Logic is such a vast field. I shall endeavor to describe its basic contours in another essay.
(6) From the entry "metaphysics" in the CDP. An excellent introduction to metaphysics is by Michael Loux: Metaphysics: a contemporary introduction, third edition (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy) (New York: Routledge, 2006). Peter van Inwagen's Metaphysics, fourth edition (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2015) is also very good. Significantly, Van Inwagen argues that the Western tradition has held, more or less consistently (though there are notable exceptions), to a common core conception of reality, what he calls the Common Western Metaphysic. (Arguably, the Common Western Metaphysic is the common currency of all pre-analytic, nonreflective thought -- West or East.) It consists in three assumptions: Individuality -- the idea that the world contains many individual things (particulars) which are separate and distinct from each other. Externality -- the thesis that there are things that exist independently of the mind. That is, there is an external world. Reality is not exhausted by mental objects. Objectivity -- the thesis that there is such a thing as objective truth. Thus, our beliefs and assertions are either true or false. Moreover, the existence and features of the World are, by and large, independent of our beliefs and assertions. (Van Inwagen treats these things in the first four chapters of his book.)
(7) This task of metaphysics -- determining the basic divisions of existing things -- has been termed category theory. (Each category is thus an ultimate class of being. Together, they are the highest genera of entities in the World.) It has been a staple of metaphysics since the pre-Socratic philosophers. Aristotle famously postulated ten such Categories; these dominated discussion into the Early Modern period. (Aristotle's Categories have most often been interpreted in an ontological sense, as in category theory. There are, however, other ways of understanding them, namely having to do with either types of predicate or ways to predicate. See the discussion in chapter two of The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle.) That there are so very many things that exist beyond what our five senses can tell is a truth both sublime and exhilarating. (Unless the thesis of materialism is correct, the view that all existing things (with the possible exception of numbers and sets) are material, that only matter (in myriad concatenations) exists.)
(8) Other notes on metaphysics: (i) It is commonly assumed that the original meaning of 'metaphysics' was something like "above or beyond physics" -- the way we typically use the prefix 'meta-'. Turns out that the name is an historical accident. Aristotle’s Metaphysics was so named by a later editor simply because it was "what comes after the Physics." (See Notes 1, 2, and 3 on pp. 203-204 of Van Inwagen’s Metaphysics.) (ii) The classic definition of metaphysics -- going back to Aristotle -- is the study of being qua being. ('Qua' is a Latin word that means (in this usage) "as, as being, taken / seen / considered as.") Jonathan Barnes (a leading Aristotle scholar, writing in the third chapter of The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle) argues that the verb 'be' in this context has the sense of "to exist." He claims that in the Metaphysics (for example, at Gamma 1, 1003a 21-25) Aristotle's Greek, which has traditionally been translated as "being qua being," really should be rendered as "beings qua being." So (he argues) the traditional interpretation is both "false and misleading": It is misleading because 'being' in the first occurrence implies that it is an abstract noun; i.e. “we are going to study being or existence per se.” It is false because the Greek for 'being' is properly translated as "beings, items which exist." Putting all of this together (and following Barnes), I conclude that for Aristotle (at least in this passage) metaphysics is the science that has as its domain all existing things and which takes as its focus the characteristics that hold of those things just in virtue of the fact that they exist. What are these characteristics? Classically, they are the so-called transcendentals: unity, truth, goodness, and beauty. (Cf. "transcendentals" in the CDP.) In more contemporary terms, the "fundamental, conceptual questions" of metaphysics (noted in the body above) concern these characteristics. (iii) There are at least three other descriptions of metaphysics in Aristotle's Metaphysics: Book Alpha characterizes metaphysics as the study of the causes or explanations of things (A 2, 982b8). Book Epsilon understands it as essentially theology, the science which takes as its subject divine objects (Epsilon 1, 1026a29-31). And Book Zeta characterizes it as the science that studies substance (Zeta 1, 1028b2-4).
(9) Some have argued that phenomenology ought to count as a full-fledged division of philosophy, where "[t]he discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of 'phenomena': appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view..." (From "phenomenology" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an excellent, free, online reference. Retrieved on or before 11/22/14.) I disagree. The topics / questions noted in the quotation can all be easily classified within metaphysics, epistemology, or value theory. There is of course a fundamental distinction between how a things appears and what it really is. (The so-called appearance / reality distinction.) But even an appearance is a thing of some sort, even if only a mental image. Moreover, teasing out, in a given case, what is mere appearance from what is fact falls mainly to epistemology (with help from sub-disciplines such as philosophy of mind). Nevertheless, the methods and results of phenomenological study are both valuable and insightful. Phenomenology basically amounts to taking as a serious topic of study our interior life. The entry in CDP is good. The father of modern phenomenology is the German philosopher Edmund Husserl.
(10) Notes on epistemology: (i) 'Episteme' is the Greek for "knowledge." (ii) Robert Audi's Epistemology: a contemporary introduction to the theory of knowledge (New York: Routledge, 1998) is an excellent introduction. I rely heavily on Audi's overall presentation of the discipline here. (The entry "epistemology" in CDP is a good, quick, first read.) (iii) Use of the notion justification is an oversimplification. Epistemologists understand justification proper to be a particular way of non-accidentally holding a true belief, namely, one characterized by possession of reasons able to be articulated. Justification proper is an intellectual or rational notion. But there is another way of non-accidentally holding a true belief, namely, one characterized by possession of reliable belief-forming processes. This analogue of justification proper is usually called reliability. Reliability is a process or mechanistic notion. Thus, e.g., my non-accidentally holding the true belief that the sky is blue is the result of stable physical processes that reliably produce that factual belief in me. Some philosophers (e.g., Plantinga) group both justification and reliability under the larger concept of warrant. Audi captures the essential idea the best: "[K]nowledge is true belief based in the right way on the right kind of ground." (p. 322) (These considerations on the conditions that must be satisfied before a true belief counts as knowledge fall under what epistemologists call the analysis of knowledge.)
(11) Skepticism is the view that we have little to no actual knowledge and / or justification. It comes in various kinds, as well as in varying degrees, from moderate to extreme. It is well-nigh impossible to escape radical skepticism, once its premises are granted. ("Prove to me that you're not a 'brain in a vat'." "Are you certain that you're not embedded in 'The Matrix'?" "How can you be sure there's not an 'evil demon' systematically deceiving you?") Like the Romans in Carthage, only rubble and salt remain. What is often missed, though, is that such skeptical premises are not themselves self-evident. Why should I be required to "prove," to be "certain," or to be "sure" that I'm not in a radically skeptical scenario like those posed just above? Indeed, what do the notions of proof, certainty, or being sure amount to in this context? What is to say that I don't have simple, particular instances of justification / knowledge? It certainly seems that I do. I've come to see skepticism -- that bane of undergraduate philosophy students -- as a kind of touchstone against which arguments in epistemology can be tested, rather than a threat per se. The possibility that knowledge in a given area (say, religion) may be limited to non-existent keeps me both honest and humble when I try to establish that there is. (See the chapter on skepticism in Audi for a good treatment.)
(12) Notes on axiology: (i) It should be noted that 'value' here has a different sense than it does in either "a moral value" or "value for money." So-called moral values concern ethical principles; a pecuniary "value" is I suppose a notion of equivalence, i.e., the thing purchased is "equivalent" to the money with which it is purchased. That these two kinds of "value" are related to the philosophical sort is, I take it, obvious. (ii) The quotation in the second sentence comes from "value theory" in CDP. Beyond this entry, my discussion here relies heavily on the entries: "aesthetics," "ethics," "morality," among others. (iii) The ethical and the aesthetic do not of course delimit all possible kinds of value. Philosophers are concerned too with epistemic values, such as justification, i.e., there is intrinsic worth in having a justified (rather than a blindly lucky) belief. (Subsumed within justification (because they contribute to it) are values like logical validity, coherence, fittingness, being explanatory, among others.) There are also other kinds of value beyond the narrowly philosophical ones of ethical, aesthetic, and epistemic. For instance, the kinds of value appropriate to religion (God deserves worship due to his intrinsic worth); science (the heliocentric theory trumps the geocentric one due to its possessing greater theoretical simplicity); law (justice is no respecter of persons); not to mention a fundamental, baseline kind of value -- that toward truth. Still, one could make a case that all kinds of value come down ultimately to the three ancient ones: goodness, truth, and beauty. (iv) Ethics is the study of morality. Most people have a rough-and-ready idea of what morality is. Still, the CDP definition is helpful: "[Morality is] an informal public system applying to all rational persons, governing behavior that affects others, having the lessening of evil or harm as its goal, and including what are commonly known as the moral rules, moral ideals, and moral virtues." On the other hand, this definition of morality -- focusing mostly on others and our behavior with respect to them -- misses the personal aspect of morality, i.e., what it means for me to be a good person, to have a good life. (v) Aesthetic values turn up much farther afield than art or nature: Mathematics and science prize the values of simplicity and elegance, which are just types of beauty.
(13) All quotations in the following are from the relevant entries in the CDP.
(14) Adapted from Van Inwagen, pp. 6-8, ibid.
(15) This section relies on material from Van Inwagen, ibid. pp. 9-13.
Minor revisions 9/11/18. Original 11/22/14.
Photos are from the Japanese Gardens in Portland, OR, January 2018.
(1) Luke 3:21,22 (NIV).
(2) Those who hold to a complete naturalism would reject this primacy of philosophy over all other intellectual disciplines. They would maintain that "acceptable methods of justification and explanation are continuous, in some sense, with those in science." I think this is quite wrong, as would most philosophers. (It's a form of positivism, I think.) Still, even if, for the sake of argument, we were to assume a naturalist methodology to be correct, the questions and problems investigated by philosophers, as well as the tools and methods employed by them, would still be just as relevant -- unless the naturalist were to completely beg the question for a naturalistic metaphysics. If you want to proceed as a philosopher would yet call yourself a scientist, there's nothing stopping you. But it seems to me an injustice to both philosophy and science qua disciplines to do so. (The quotation is from the entry "naturalism" from The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, second edition. The CDP is the best single-volume reference work on philosophy that I know of.)
(3) What philosophy as a discipline is and what philosophers do are almost always genuine mysteries to people. Someone once told me, in all seriousness, that the "aphorisms" of Yogi Berra were philosophy. I should have told him that he (my interlocutor, not Mr. Berra) "made too many wrong mistakes." A common stereotype is that philosophers are "thinkers of deep thoughts" or "contemplators of the cosmos" or some such notion. (Perhaps they do their thinking and contemplating while smoking a pipe or sitting under a tree.) Many academics within the "hard" disciplines -- e.g. mathematics and the natural sciences -- are just as ignorant as regular folks. There is a tendency in some quarters to mock philosophy as not being a serious endeavor. I shall have more to say about these things in a later essay. Suffice it to say that these are all manifestations of profound ignorance.
(4) A.C. Grayling, Wittgenstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 13. The "definition" in Wikipedia is a typical one: "Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument." The original meaning of the Greek word for 'philosophy' was "love of wisdom."
(5) Logic is such a vast field. I shall endeavor to describe its basic contours in another essay.
(6) From the entry "metaphysics" in the CDP. An excellent introduction to metaphysics is by Michael Loux: Metaphysics: a contemporary introduction, third edition (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy) (New York: Routledge, 2006). Peter van Inwagen's Metaphysics, fourth edition (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2015) is also very good. Significantly, Van Inwagen argues that the Western tradition has held, more or less consistently (though there are notable exceptions), to a common core conception of reality, what he calls the Common Western Metaphysic. (Arguably, the Common Western Metaphysic is the common currency of all pre-analytic, nonreflective thought -- West or East.) It consists in three assumptions: Individuality -- the idea that the world contains many individual things (particulars) which are separate and distinct from each other. Externality -- the thesis that there are things that exist independently of the mind. That is, there is an external world. Reality is not exhausted by mental objects. Objectivity -- the thesis that there is such a thing as objective truth. Thus, our beliefs and assertions are either true or false. Moreover, the existence and features of the World are, by and large, independent of our beliefs and assertions. (Van Inwagen treats these things in the first four chapters of his book.)
(7) This task of metaphysics -- determining the basic divisions of existing things -- has been termed category theory. (Each category is thus an ultimate class of being. Together, they are the highest genera of entities in the World.) It has been a staple of metaphysics since the pre-Socratic philosophers. Aristotle famously postulated ten such Categories; these dominated discussion into the Early Modern period. (Aristotle's Categories have most often been interpreted in an ontological sense, as in category theory. There are, however, other ways of understanding them, namely having to do with either types of predicate or ways to predicate. See the discussion in chapter two of The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle.) That there are so very many things that exist beyond what our five senses can tell is a truth both sublime and exhilarating. (Unless the thesis of materialism is correct, the view that all existing things (with the possible exception of numbers and sets) are material, that only matter (in myriad concatenations) exists.)
(8) Other notes on metaphysics: (i) It is commonly assumed that the original meaning of 'metaphysics' was something like "above or beyond physics" -- the way we typically use the prefix 'meta-'. Turns out that the name is an historical accident. Aristotle’s Metaphysics was so named by a later editor simply because it was "what comes after the Physics." (See Notes 1, 2, and 3 on pp. 203-204 of Van Inwagen’s Metaphysics.) (ii) The classic definition of metaphysics -- going back to Aristotle -- is the study of being qua being. ('Qua' is a Latin word that means (in this usage) "as, as being, taken / seen / considered as.") Jonathan Barnes (a leading Aristotle scholar, writing in the third chapter of The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle) argues that the verb 'be' in this context has the sense of "to exist." He claims that in the Metaphysics (for example, at Gamma 1, 1003a 21-25) Aristotle's Greek, which has traditionally been translated as "being qua being," really should be rendered as "beings qua being." So (he argues) the traditional interpretation is both "false and misleading": It is misleading because 'being' in the first occurrence implies that it is an abstract noun; i.e. “we are going to study being or existence per se.” It is false because the Greek for 'being' is properly translated as "beings, items which exist." Putting all of this together (and following Barnes), I conclude that for Aristotle (at least in this passage) metaphysics is the science that has as its domain all existing things and which takes as its focus the characteristics that hold of those things just in virtue of the fact that they exist. What are these characteristics? Classically, they are the so-called transcendentals: unity, truth, goodness, and beauty. (Cf. "transcendentals" in the CDP.) In more contemporary terms, the "fundamental, conceptual questions" of metaphysics (noted in the body above) concern these characteristics. (iii) There are at least three other descriptions of metaphysics in Aristotle's Metaphysics: Book Alpha characterizes metaphysics as the study of the causes or explanations of things (A 2, 982b8). Book Epsilon understands it as essentially theology, the science which takes as its subject divine objects (Epsilon 1, 1026a29-31). And Book Zeta characterizes it as the science that studies substance (Zeta 1, 1028b2-4).
(9) Some have argued that phenomenology ought to count as a full-fledged division of philosophy, where "[t]he discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of 'phenomena': appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view..." (From "phenomenology" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an excellent, free, online reference. Retrieved on or before 11/22/14.) I disagree. The topics / questions noted in the quotation can all be easily classified within metaphysics, epistemology, or value theory. There is of course a fundamental distinction between how a things appears and what it really is. (The so-called appearance / reality distinction.) But even an appearance is a thing of some sort, even if only a mental image. Moreover, teasing out, in a given case, what is mere appearance from what is fact falls mainly to epistemology (with help from sub-disciplines such as philosophy of mind). Nevertheless, the methods and results of phenomenological study are both valuable and insightful. Phenomenology basically amounts to taking as a serious topic of study our interior life. The entry in CDP is good. The father of modern phenomenology is the German philosopher Edmund Husserl.
(10) Notes on epistemology: (i) 'Episteme' is the Greek for "knowledge." (ii) Robert Audi's Epistemology: a contemporary introduction to the theory of knowledge (New York: Routledge, 1998) is an excellent introduction. I rely heavily on Audi's overall presentation of the discipline here. (The entry "epistemology" in CDP is a good, quick, first read.) (iii) Use of the notion justification is an oversimplification. Epistemologists understand justification proper to be a particular way of non-accidentally holding a true belief, namely, one characterized by possession of reasons able to be articulated. Justification proper is an intellectual or rational notion. But there is another way of non-accidentally holding a true belief, namely, one characterized by possession of reliable belief-forming processes. This analogue of justification proper is usually called reliability. Reliability is a process or mechanistic notion. Thus, e.g., my non-accidentally holding the true belief that the sky is blue is the result of stable physical processes that reliably produce that factual belief in me. Some philosophers (e.g., Plantinga) group both justification and reliability under the larger concept of warrant. Audi captures the essential idea the best: "[K]nowledge is true belief based in the right way on the right kind of ground." (p. 322) (These considerations on the conditions that must be satisfied before a true belief counts as knowledge fall under what epistemologists call the analysis of knowledge.)
(11) Skepticism is the view that we have little to no actual knowledge and / or justification. It comes in various kinds, as well as in varying degrees, from moderate to extreme. It is well-nigh impossible to escape radical skepticism, once its premises are granted. ("Prove to me that you're not a 'brain in a vat'." "Are you certain that you're not embedded in 'The Matrix'?" "How can you be sure there's not an 'evil demon' systematically deceiving you?") Like the Romans in Carthage, only rubble and salt remain. What is often missed, though, is that such skeptical premises are not themselves self-evident. Why should I be required to "prove," to be "certain," or to be "sure" that I'm not in a radically skeptical scenario like those posed just above? Indeed, what do the notions of proof, certainty, or being sure amount to in this context? What is to say that I don't have simple, particular instances of justification / knowledge? It certainly seems that I do. I've come to see skepticism -- that bane of undergraduate philosophy students -- as a kind of touchstone against which arguments in epistemology can be tested, rather than a threat per se. The possibility that knowledge in a given area (say, religion) may be limited to non-existent keeps me both honest and humble when I try to establish that there is. (See the chapter on skepticism in Audi for a good treatment.)
(12) Notes on axiology: (i) It should be noted that 'value' here has a different sense than it does in either "a moral value" or "value for money." So-called moral values concern ethical principles; a pecuniary "value" is I suppose a notion of equivalence, i.e., the thing purchased is "equivalent" to the money with which it is purchased. That these two kinds of "value" are related to the philosophical sort is, I take it, obvious. (ii) The quotation in the second sentence comes from "value theory" in CDP. Beyond this entry, my discussion here relies heavily on the entries: "aesthetics," "ethics," "morality," among others. (iii) The ethical and the aesthetic do not of course delimit all possible kinds of value. Philosophers are concerned too with epistemic values, such as justification, i.e., there is intrinsic worth in having a justified (rather than a blindly lucky) belief. (Subsumed within justification (because they contribute to it) are values like logical validity, coherence, fittingness, being explanatory, among others.) There are also other kinds of value beyond the narrowly philosophical ones of ethical, aesthetic, and epistemic. For instance, the kinds of value appropriate to religion (God deserves worship due to his intrinsic worth); science (the heliocentric theory trumps the geocentric one due to its possessing greater theoretical simplicity); law (justice is no respecter of persons); not to mention a fundamental, baseline kind of value -- that toward truth. Still, one could make a case that all kinds of value come down ultimately to the three ancient ones: goodness, truth, and beauty. (iv) Ethics is the study of morality. Most people have a rough-and-ready idea of what morality is. Still, the CDP definition is helpful: "[Morality is] an informal public system applying to all rational persons, governing behavior that affects others, having the lessening of evil or harm as its goal, and including what are commonly known as the moral rules, moral ideals, and moral virtues." On the other hand, this definition of morality -- focusing mostly on others and our behavior with respect to them -- misses the personal aspect of morality, i.e., what it means for me to be a good person, to have a good life. (v) Aesthetic values turn up much farther afield than art or nature: Mathematics and science prize the values of simplicity and elegance, which are just types of beauty.
(13) All quotations in the following are from the relevant entries in the CDP.
(14) Adapted from Van Inwagen, pp. 6-8, ibid.
(15) This section relies on material from Van Inwagen, ibid. pp. 9-13.
Minor revisions 9/11/18. Original 11/22/14.
Photos are from the Japanese Gardens in Portland, OR, January 2018.