Maverick Philosopher

I am not interested in discussions of this kind to change anyone's beliefs or their faith. My sole purpose is to examine from a philosophical point of view various positions on any matter whatsoever. Now, many people have a deep psychological need to have a faith that guides their life. They, the people around them, and society at large may be better off due to the faith of these people. I respect that and would never attempt to change that by any means whatsoever including philosophical reflection.

Now, if you are among these people, then there are two possibilities. Either you feel sufficiently confident in your beliefs so as to be able to reflect upon their meaning, structure, and consequences or you are not confident enough. If it is the former, then when you enter a philosophical examination of these beliefs etc., you should be able to address your opponents' views by first understanding their arguments; then evaluating their merit; and then directly responding to the points they make. You may or may not have an adequate response immediately to this or that point. Suppose you don't. It would be a mistake to think that just because you cannot come up with an immediate response that is satisfactory then that means your beliefs are unwarranted. Nothing is further from the truth. Instead, such a situation affords you the opportunity to challenge yourself further to see how such a response might be given and to familiarize yourself more intimately with your beliefs and that which they are about. Thus, these discussions offer you the opportunity to have a deeper understanding of that which you believe.

On the other hand, if you do not feel sufficiently confident about your beliefs, or if these discussions give you a sense of vulnerability, or if you feel as if you must defend every point by any means possible come what may, then you will not be able to engage in discussions of these sort on their own merits, for you will be driven by a furious need to defend that which you believe at all costs. Under such circumstances, these discussions benefit neither you nor your conversational partners.

P.S. The same holds for those who are theists, atheists, agnostics, Budhists, or whatever.

I will now interpret and expand upon Peter's statement in the following theses. Peter can tell us whether or not he agrees with my interpretation and expansion.

T1. The primary purpose of the philosophy of religion is neither to debunk nor defend religion. Its main aim is neither dismissive in the manner of Dawkins, Dennett, and Co., nor is it apologetic or ancillary in the sense of the Medieval Philosophia ancilla theologiae, "Philosophy is the handmaiden of theology." The central task of the philosophy of religion is to understand religious beliefs, practices, and posits (God, Brahman, etc.) and everthing connected with these beliefs, practices, and posits.

T2. People have doxastic security needs just as they have physical, psychological, and economic security needs. A stable system of beliefs gives order, cohesion, and overall purpose to the various activities that make up one's life. It doesn't matter whether one is a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Communist, a disciple of Ayn Rand, or anything else. Belief systems are life-enhancing. This is why people 'bristle' when they think someone is 'attacking' their belief system. Since philosophy is not well understood, many people view philosophical examination of a belief system they hold as an 'attack' upon it, and as an attack upon them. For it is human nature to identify with one's cherished beliefs, and to perceive one's very identity as wrapped up in them.

T3. From the point of view of philosophy, however, it is a mistake to identify oneself with a particular set of beliefs, especially when the particular set is opposed by other particular sets each with its fervent and sometimes bloodthirsty adherents. The philosopher — and I am speaking of an ideal type here, one that Socrates Jones down the hall may have perfectly exemplified only twice in his long career — identifies with the ultimate truth. Thus he is not a dogmatist, neither a dogmatic affirmer nor a dogmatic denier. He is also not a skeptic if a skeptic is one who practices epoche, or doxastic suspension, with respect to every belief that transcends mundane matters. The philosopher is rather a tentative affirmer who is open to ongoing examination of his beliefs and who refuses to identify himself with any system of beliefs short of the ultimate system — which may forever remain an unattained ideal.

In fact, the true philosopher is open to the examination of such metaphilosophical propositions as I have just sketched. Not even these does he hold dogmatically. It follows that he does not identify with being a philosopher in such a way as to preclude the possibility that some day he may abandon the philosophical life by submitting to the crucifixion of the intellect, or by making money and 'enjoying the good life.' (But will he be able to refrain from asking what it is to enjoy the good life?) A truly examined life is a life in which the examination of life is itself examined.

T4. Philosophy is not ideology. As I explain here, an ideology is a system of beliefs, or a collection of ideas, that is primarily oriented toward action and not primarily toward truth. That is how I use 'ideology.' There is nothing pejorative in my use. You are free to use it in some other way, but then you must tell us how you are using it. Philosophy is not ideology since it is primarily oriented toward the knowledge of truth. Religion, however, as a system of beliefs, is a species of ideology since it is primarily oriented toward action. Religion is predicated upon human spiritual neediness, the wretchedness endemic to our condition, and has as its aim our salvation from this indigence and wretchedness. Thus religious beliefs and practices aim at salvific action, salvific transformation from the state of spiritual wretchedness to one of spiritual well-being. Religion is like medicine or the medical arts. The medical arts are predicated upon actual and possible physical debility and aim to cure and prevent physical debility as far as possible. The aim in both cases is in achieving a cure, a transition from sickness to health (whether spiritual or physcal), not in understanding for its own sake.

What holds for philosophy holds for philosophy of religion: it is not primarily about action. So if a philosopher points out the apparent conflict between a Biblical statement and a deliverance of reason or a deliverance of morality, his primary aim is to understand the conflict, the problems it poses, and the various solutions available. His primary aim is not to destroy Bible-based faith or 'apologize' for it. (This word in the sense of 'apologetics' or the 'apology' of Socrates.)

For an adherent of a religion to understand a philosophy-of-religion discussion requires that he be able to calmly contemplate his doxastic commitments as if they were the commitments of someone else. But this is very difficult! Religion, like politics, inflames people's passions. It does so because it is extremely difficult for people to inhibit the natuiral tendency to identify themselves with the life-guiding and life-enhancing and meaning-bestowing beliefs they happen to hold. (Attack a Muslim's beliefs and he will take you to be attacking his very identity; don't be surprised if he feels himself to be under existential threat.) But he who cannot calmly distance himself from his own beliefs cannot philosophize. One of the virtues of the philosopher -- again, I am speaking of an ideal type -- is the ability to examine his own most cherished beliefs, and in all consistency I would apply that also to all the beliefs that constitute his Existenz ans a philosopher.

Dummett goes on to remark that one can work in the "analytical tradition" without belonging to the analytical school of thought. He cites the example of Gareth Evans, whose posthumous Varieties of Reference is based on a rejection of the "twin axioms" inasmuch as Evans holds that "language can be explained only in terms of antecedently given notions of different types of thought...." (Ibid.) Dummett:

On my characterisation, therefore, Evans was no longer an analytical philosopher. He was, indeed, squarely within the analytical tradition: the three pillars on which his book rests are Russell, Moore, and Frege. Yet is it only as belonging to this tradition – as adopting a certain philosophical style and as appealing to certain writers rather than to certain others – that he remains a member of the analytical school. (Ibid. pp. 4-5)

If there is an analytic school, then Dummett is probably right that it, and its sub-schools (logical positivism, ordinary language philosophy, and so on) rest on the ‘linguistic turn.’ But one can work in the analytic tradition without being an analytic scholastic, i.e., without belonging to the analytic school. To work in the analytic tradition is in part to adopt a certain style: one strives to be clear, precise, and rigorous. One is sensitive to language and how it can lead and mislead our thinking. For example, one does not encourage and exploit the rich ambiguity of natural languge, the way a poet or a contemporary French philosopher might, but seeks to regiment it. One argues, rather than asserts, and one argues explicitly even to the point of pedantry (numbering premises and conclusions, specifying rules of inference, etc.). One focuses on problems and theses rather than persons and texts. If an analytic philosopher writes about a text from the history of philosophy, he will attempt to reconstruct the arguments and show their relevance to contemporary concerns. One narrows one’s focus to well-defined issues. One does not bring up half-dozen ill-defined themes in one paragraph. Nor does one name-drop. For an example of these two chief French sins, see here.

What I have just said goes part of the way toward defining the analytic procedure in philosophy, the analytic style. Dummett also mentions "appealing to certain writers rather than certain others." But I see no reason why this should be part of the analytic style or procedure. There was an issue of the Monist a while back on Analytical Thomism. Is the title of that issue an oxymoron? It would be absurd to argue that no philosopher can be procedurally analytic if he writes about the ideas and arguments of a philosopher who is not on the short list with Frege, Russell, Moore, and a few others.

I’ll end with a couple of anecdotes. In 1993, I met a Continental philosopher who identified analytic philosophy with logical positivism. Well, some philosophers, like many Democrats, cannot stop living in the past. Another Continental philosopher, a former colleague, thought that analytic philosophers just "analyze propositions" as opposed to dealing with reality. Both misunderstandings are too obvious to merit refutation.

. . . grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth — this indifference to how things really are — that I regard as of the essence of bullshit." (emphasis added)

Exactly right. The bullshitter is one who 'doesn't give a shit' about the truth value of what he is saying. He doesn't care how things stand with reality. The liar, by contrast, must care: he must know (or at least attempt to know) how things are if he is to have any chance of deceiving his audience. Think of it this way: the bullshitter doesn't care whether he gets things right or gets them wrong; the liar cares to get them right so he can deceive you about them.

Now philosophers, the genuine ones anyway, not those who merely fill their bellies from it, care deeply about "how things really are." Only a bullshitter could call philosophy bullshit.

Of course, philosophy's not being bullshit does not render it 'epistemically in the clear,' to cop a phrase Roderick Chisholm uses in another connection. There are other objections one can make to philosophy. We shall review some of them in due course.

1. The Aesthetic Response. The aesthete responds to ideas subjectively. Examples of aesthetic responses:

• I can't relate to what you are saying.

• I like what you are saying.

• There is nothing new in that idea.

• That's not what I was brought up to believe.

• Many would find what you are saying offensive.

An exchange between Ann Coulter and Donny Deutsch is a recent example. Coulter said in effect that according to Christian doctrine, Judaism needs to be perfected, and Deutsch responded by labelling Coulter's statement "hateful."

Instead of responding to the objective content of Coulter's remark, which can in no way be construed as hateful since it merely records a fact about Christian doctrine, Deutsch reported on the feelings elicited in him by Coulter's statement. His response was subjective, and to that extent 'aesthetic.'

Aestheticism manifests itself in one's fixating on the idea's expression, whether the fact of its being expressed, or the form in which it is expressed, while ignoring its content. The aesthete is typically concerned less with what is said than how it is said or why it is said. The aesthete is not concerned with whether the idea is true or false, nor is he concerned to inquire into its exact meaning. He 'knows' what is being said, and bypassing the question of its truth or falsity, attends to whether he finds it congenial, 'empowering,' offensive, 'creative,' 'original,' attractive, 'what people are saying,' and the like.

2. The Ethical Response. To approach an idea ethically is to treat it with the respect it deserves, as embodying a truth-claim. This is precisely what the aesthete does not do. He doesn't ask, 'Is it true?' Fundamentally unserious, he doesn't care whether it is true. This is what makes him an aesthete. He cares how it strikes him, how it makes him feel; not whether it comports well with reality. Reality? That's just another idea for the aesthete to play with. And play with it he does. 'Reality's an illusion,' he quips and thinks himself clever as he heads for the blogosphere.

Just as it is unethical, as Kant insisted, to treat human beings as mere means, rather than as ends in themselves, it is arguably a violation of the ethics of belief to ignore an idea's truth-claim and reality-reference and to treat it as a mere means to one's enjoyment or the opposite.

To explore the cartography of the mind is one of the delights of the life of the mind. Ideas are fascinating in their wild diversity, in their logical interconnection, in their historical development. But to study them for their own sake as mere cultural facts is to remain on the level of the uncommitted and immature, much like the young person who samples the wide variety offered by the opposite sex without committing himself to one person. His concern is not to find the right person (or a right person) in order t commit himself to her; his concern is to find any person who flatters him, is a source of pleasure, would make a useful social appendage, etc.

The'ethical' adventurer among ideas seeks the true ones in order to commit himself to them. The 'aesthete' remains a mere sampler at the smorgasbord of intellectual delights. Among the delights he finds, of course, are ethical doctrines which he enjoys in their wild diversity, logical interconnection, and historical development — but without doing anything so rash as to choose one and live in accordance with it.

3. The Philosophical Response. You will have guessed that this must be the highest and best response, and indeed it it is. The 'ethicist' seeks truth and commits himself to the truth he thinks he has found. That is good as far as it goes. It is surely better than the modus vivendi of the 'playboy of ideas,' the intellectual aesthete. The philosopher, like the 'ethicist'(ethete?), seeks truth, but unlike the 'ethicist' he is wary of premature commitment, well aware that, though it is good to commit oneself to what one takes to be the truth, one must be sure that it really is the truth. It is better, perhaps, to make no commitments than to make the wrong commitments. (Think of all the brilliant and morally outstanding young people in the 20th century who wasted all or parts of their lives on the pernicious illusions of Communism. It would arguably have been better had they remained ordinary livers of the private life.)

To prosecute the inquiry into truth, the philosopher must inquire into what the idea in question means. The philosopher questions the very meaning of ideas, which involves him in a set of questions logically prior to the question of the idea's truth or falsity. The philosopher practises a certain ascesis, a certain detachment. He detaches himself from the idea's aesthetic features (the elegance of its expression, the feelings it evokes, the 'neighborhood' it resides in and all such extraneous matters) but he also detaches himself, provisionally, from the question of the idea's truth, not because he is not interested in the truth but precisely because he is interested in the truth in excelsis and not in what is merely taken to be truth. For before he can tackle the question of truth of an idea, the philosopher must understand what the idea means. His question is not primarily whether what is being said is true, but: what is being said? One might schematize the matter as follows:

• Intellectual Aesthete: Is the idea pleasing, 'empowering,' interesting, etc.?

• Intellectual 'ethicist': Is the idea true, and thus worthy of my commitment?

• Philosopher: Is the idea meaningful, and what does it mean?

To illustrate, suppose the idea is that 'Pleasure is the good.' The aesthete asks himself whether he likes this idea. His concern is with how he feels in the presence of this idea, not with either its objective content or it truth-value. The 'ethicist' would know whether it is true that the good is pleasure. The philosopher, however, realizes that it is pointless to debate whether the good is pleasure without preliminary clarification of what is meant by 'good' and by 'pleasure.' And similarly through a vast range of issues. It makes no sense to debate whether waterboarding is torture without a preliminary, detailed, inquiry into what torture is. Absent such preliminary inquiry one may be treated to the idiotic spectacle of two politicians in debate, neither willing to endorse torture as a tool of interrogation, frightened of the very word, and yet one of them committed to it by others of his assertions, but neither of them having any clear idea of what they are talking about.

The ordinary person has no patience with any of this, thinking that he knows quite well what he means by the words he bandies about, words like 'democracy,' and 'justice,' and 'religion.' That is why he needs philosophy which, in its Socratic essence, is an exposure of the ignorance hiding behind pretended knowledge.

The retorsive argument might proceed as follows. For Zeno to convey his Parmenidean thoughts to us he must wag his tongue and draw diagrams in the Eleatic sand. Does he thereby prove the actuality and thus the possibility of motion and fall into performative inconsistency? The answer depends on how we understand the purport of the Zenonian argumentation.

A. If Zeno's arguments are taken to show that motion conceived in a certain way does not exist, then the wagging of the tongue, etc. is 'consistent' with the proposition that motion conceived in that way does not exist, and the retorsive argument fails. For example, suppose one maintains that for a particle P to be in motion (relative to a reference-frame) is for P to occupy continuum-many different positions at continuum-many different times (relative to that reference-frame). This popular 'At-At' theory of motion requires the denseness of physical time and physical space. Now if it turns out that motion so conceived does not exist, it may still be the case that motion conceived in some other way does exist, and that Zeno's tongue-wagging and diagram-drawing is motion under that competing conception. The competing conception might, for example, deny the denseness of space or of time, or both.

B. If Zeno's arguments are taken to show that motion no matter how it is conceived does not exist, is a mere illusion bare of all reality, then the retorsive argument appears to refute him. For then the moving of his tongue is 'inconsistent' with the truth of 'Nothing moves.' By moving his tongue, pulling his beard, flaring his nostrils, adjusting his toga, and pounding the lectern, he demonstrates the empirical reality of motion, a reality that is prior to, and neutral in respect of, all conceptions of this reality.

Although the retorsive argument works against a Zeno so interpreted, this interpretation is uncharitable in the extreme. Read charitably, Zeno is not claiming that motion and plurality are mere subjective illusions, but rather that they are something like Leibnizian well-founded phenomena (phaenomena bene fundata) or intersubjectively valid Kantian Erscheinungen. They are not mere illusions, but they are not ultimately real either.

C. If Zeno's arguments are taken to show that motion and plurality are intersubjectively valid appearances, but not ultimately real, then they are being taken to show that motion conceived in a certain way, as belonging to ultimate reality, does not exist. This view of motion seems 'consistent' with the motions required to convey Zenonian argument.

My verdict, then, is that retortion does not refute a Zeno charitably interpreted.

1. There are no assertions.

Clearly, (1) cannot be asserted if it is true. For if anyone were to assert (1), his act of asserting it would falsify it. The performance of anyone who asserts (1) 'contradicts' the content of (1). We therefore speak of performative inconsistency. There is a 'contradiction' between the speech act of asserting and the content asserted. (I use sneer quotes here because performative inconsistency is not the same as logical consistency: the former is a relation between a speech act (which is not a proposition) and a proposition whereas the latter is a relation between a proposition and a proposition.) But does this performative inconsistency show that the negation of (1), namely,

~1. There are assertions

is true? (~1) is of course true. But can it be objectively established as true by retortion, i.e., by the 'retort' made to anyone who asserts (1) that the asserting of (1) is inconsistent with (1)'s truth? Does the undeniability of (~1) establish it as objectively true?

Not as far as I can see. If by 'objectively true' we mean true whether or not any subjects exist, then it seems that (~1) is true only if there are subjects who make assertions. In this case, then, undeniability does not entail objective truth. It is also quite clear that undeniability does not entail necessary truth. (~1) is contingently true: true in some, but not all, possible worlds.

Now let's consider a juicier example, the Law of Non-Contradiction which, in its property version, can be put like this:

LNC. (F)(x)~(Fx & ~Fx)

which is to say: for any property F-ness, and any object x, it is not the case that x is F and x is not F. For example, nothing is both red and non-red.

This is subject to the usual three qualifications: an object cannot be F and not F (i) at the same time, (ii) in the same respect, and (iii) in the same sense. Thus a ball could be both red and non-red at different times, or red and non-red in respect of different hemispheres, or in different senses: Jack can be both red and non-red at the same time if 'red' in its first occurrence refers to a color, and in its second occurrence to a political affiliation.

Now Aristotle was quite clear that first principles like (LNC) are non-demonstrable. They are so basic that they cannot be proven. Since a proof cannot be circular, (LNC) cannot be derived from itself or from any logically equivalent proposition. To use (LNC) to prove (LNC) would be to beg the question. It is also clear that no proof can have infinitely many inferential steps. So what justifies (LNC)? Is it perhaps unjustifiable, a dogmatic posit? Is it a groundless assumption?

One might just announce that (LNC) is self-evident, that it is self-justifying, that it 'glows by its own epistemic light.' But then how respond to someone like Heraclitus who sincerely maintains that it is not self-evident?

In Metaphysics Gamma, 3, 4, Aristotle can be read as using retortion, or proof by refutation, to establish (LNC). Since he cannot, on pain of begging the question, resort to a direct proof in the case of this most fundamental of all principles, "the surest principle of all," (1005b10) he must try to show that anyone who denies (LNC) falls into performative inconsistency. As I read Aristotle, the key idea is that (LNC) is " a principle one must have to understand anything whatever. . . ." (1005b15) It is a principle that governs all understanding, all definite and determinate speech.

As such, (LNC) seems to function as a semantic constraint: one cannot mean anything definite or make any definite judgment unless one abides by, and thus presupposes, the principle that no subject of discourse both has and does not have a property at the same time and in the same respect. To counter the (LNC)-denier, Aristotle simply demands that the man say something, that he express the same idea to himself and to another, "for this much is necessary if there is to be any proposition (legein, dicere) at all." (1006a20) If the (LNC)-denier says nothing, then "he is no better than a plant" (1006a15) and one can ignore him. But if he says anything definite at all, then he makes use of (LNC). For suppose he asserts 'The arrow is at rest.' He thereby commits himself to 'It is not the case that the arrow is not at rest.' If he asserts both 'The arrow is at rest' and 'The arrow is not at rest,' then, far from making two assertions, he does not even make one. He expresses no definite thought since he violates a principle observance of which is necessary for making sense.

The idea here is that he who asserts something contradictory asserts nothing at all: a necessary condition of their being a definite thought, a definite proposition, is that (LNC) be satisfied. The retortion might be spelled out as follows. The denier states

2. (LNC) is false.

But in making this definite statement, a statement that opposes what the (LNC)-affirmer states, the (LNC) denier commits himself to

3. It is not the case that (LNC) is not false.

But the commitment to (3) is tantamount to an acceptance of (LNC). So the denier's performance -- his stating of (2) -- 'contradicts' the content of (2).

But what exactly does the retortion show? Does it show that (LNC) is true of reality, or does it show merely that it is true of thought-contents? Is it an ontological principle or is it merely a law of thought, a principle that governs how we must think if we are to make sense to ourselves and others? Is it an ontological principle or merely a transcendental one?

I am not clear about this, or about the value of retortion as a philosophical procedure. Which is why I blog on.

This leaves option (3), the recourse to dogmatism. This might take the form of simply announcing that P1 and P2, or some other propositions from which we can derive P1 and P2, are self-evident, that we know them to be true directly, by intuition, by their immediate psychological impact as it were, and not by inference. What is self-evident to one, however, may not be self-evident to another, and so the appeal to self-evidence is unsatisfactory. Suppose, for example, that someone announces that it is self-evident that every event has a cause. This may well be true, and it may be self-evident to the person in question; but it is surely not self-evident 'in itself.' I cannot conceive of an uncaused effect, but I can conceive of an uncaused event. This autobiographical remark destroys for me the epistemic value of annunciations of self-evidence insofar as these are supposed to have some 'synthetic import.' It is indeed self-evident and self-evident in itself that there cannot be an effect without a cause; but that is an analytic proposition. This needs development, but I want to get on to the topic of retortion.

Retortion may be a way of avoiding the horns of the Münchhausen Trilemma. The terms 'retortion' and 'retorsion' are used by Transcendental Thomists but the procedure is employed by Thomists and non-Thomists alike. What we need is a method of establishing fundamental premises ('first principles') without infinite regress, circularity, or dogmatism. Retortion is the procedure whereby one establishes a thesis by uncovering a performative inconsistency in anyone who attempts to deny it. It is something like an ad hominem tu quoque except that the homo in question is everyman. To illustrate, suppose someone states that

1. No statement is negative.

Anyone who states or asserts (1) is involved in a performative inconsistency. For in the very act of making the negative statement that no statement is negative, the person produces a negative statement, thereby contradicting his claim that no statement is negative. His performance 'contradicts' the content of his assertion. It cannot be true both that the content of the assertion is true and that the assertion is made. The content, if true, is unassertible. More generally, it is unaffirmable in thought or in overt speech. By uncovering this performative inconsistency, we presumably establish by retortion the negation of (1), namely

~1. Some statements are negative.

Note that the inconsistency in this example is not a formal-logical inconsistency. (1) is not logically self-contradictory. Consider a possible world in which there are no language-users and hence no statements. In that world of no statements, no statements are negative. Since it is possible that no statement be negative, as a consequence of the possibility of there being no statements at all, (1) is not formally self-contradictory. That is, (1) is possibly true, though not possibly stated (asserted) to be true. Compare (1) with

2. No proposition is negative.

I am using 'proposition' in such a way that a proposition need not be stated or asserted, or even propounded. An unstated statement is a contradiction in terms; an unstated proposition is not. A proposition as I am now using the term is something like a Fregean Gedanke: the sense (Sinn) of a context-free declarative sentence, an indicative sentence from which all indexical and quasi-indexical elements have been removed and replaced by non-indexical counterparts. Fregean propositions exist in themselves whether or not minds exist.

Now, since (2) is negative, it is easy to see that if (2) is true, then (2) is false. But if (2) is false, then of course (2) is false. Therefore, (2) is necessarily false. (2), then, is self-refuting in and of itself quite apart from the performance (speech act of assertion, say) of a rational agent. Whereas (1) is possibly true, (2) is not possibly true.

In both cases we have something that could be called self-refutation. The difference is that in (1) a person refutes the content of his assertion by the act of asserting it. In (2), the content refutes itself by being necessarily false.

But have we really established by retortion that some statements are negative? Have we proven this to be the case in itself? Or have we proven merely that affirming the negation -- No statements are negative -- is impossible for us? How can we show that Reality in itself is governed by what we must affirm and what we cannot deny?

Let us consider a second example. Suppose someone claims that

3. All memory reports are deceptive.

This is subject to the retort that one who asserts (3) must rely on memory, and so must presuppose the reliability of the faculty whose reliability he questions by asserting (3). For if anyone is to be in a position to affirm (3), he must remember that on some occasions he has misremembered. He must remember and remember correctly that some of his memories were merely apparent. It seems obvious, then, that the truth of (3) is inconsistent with its being affirmed. If true, it is unaffirmable as true. Some one who accepts retortion as a legitimate philosophical procedure will then conclude to the truth of

~3. Some memory reports are nondeceptive.

This is plausible. But I am not entirely satisfied. More later.

A deflationist is one who denies that there is any property of truth, or at least, any property of truth robust enough to support a substantive traditional-type inquiry into its nature. Truth is either not a property, or it is a rather 'thin' property about which nothing very interesting can be said. An example of an interesting theory would be one that identifies truth with some epistemic/doxastic property such as rational acceptability, or rational acceptability at the ideal limit of inquiry, or with a relation of coherence among beliefs, or with a relation of correspondence to facts, or with what is conducive to our flourishing (the Jamesian good by way of belief), or with that which enhances the feeling of power, or with what God decides, etc. For the classically-inclined, truth is a deep topic; for the deflationist it is very thin beer.

The deflationist, then, is denying that truth has a unitary and substantial nature into which it would make sense to inquire. There is no Truth with a capital 'T.' Does it follow that the deflationist is committed to relativism about truth? Must he say that there is no such thing as objective correctness?

It seems not. For although the deflationist denies Truth, he need not deny truths. There are truths galore on the views of prominent deflationists; it is just that they have nothing nonlinguistic in common in virtue of which they are true. The deflationist tendency is to say that there is no more to Truth than is captured in such equivalences as:

Sentence 'S' (in language L) is true iff S

and

The proposition that p is true iff p.

One version of deflationism is Quine's disquotationalism according to which the function of the truth-predicate is to remove the quotation marks from a quoted sentence. Thus "'Snow is white' is true" says exactly what 'Snow is white' says, namely, that snow is white. And "'Grass is green' is true" says exactly what 'Grass is green' says, namely, that grass is green. And so on. There is nothing common to these sentence in virtue of which they are true. 'True' is just a device of disquotation; it does not pick out a genuine property.

It is easy to see that there is nothing here that is inconsistent with the absolutness of snow's being white or of grass's being green, etc. What's more, deflationary theories of truth would seem to rule out alethic relativism. Suppose a Nietzschean maintains that truth is the property of being power-enhancing, a property of those beliefs that enhance the power of the one who holds them. Deflationism rules out this substantive theory of truth along with every other substantive theory of truth. For if deflationism is true, then Truth has no nature; it is in a sense nothing at all. As such, it cannot be identified with the property of being power-enhancing.

This looks to be a general result. For truth to be relative, it would have to be identified with some relative property such as acceptability or rational acceptability, or rational acceptability by some ideally situated cognizers, or whatever. But such an identification could be made only if truth has a nature. On deflationism, however, truth lacks a nature. So truth on deflationism is nonrelative. Indeed, this seems to be a consequence of the above equivalence schemata. For the schemata imply that every proposition or its negation is true simpliciter, which rules out any proposition or its negation's being true-for-X, for some relativizing factor X.

Can anyone take seriously a philosopher who writes like this? He begins by defining a position that, by his own admission, no one holds so that he can then maintain, vacuously, that he is not an occupant of that position. How's that for fancy footwork?

In his fourth sentence he speaks of "grounds" being "less algorithmic than had been thought." Since an algorithm is a decision procedure, it is less than clear how grounds could be more or less algorithmic. But that's a quibble. The main problem is his confusion of relativists with fallibilists. I readily concede that with respect to all sorts of opinions there are no algorithms for deciding their truth. (Who said there were?) But that is consistent with holding that the true opinions are true absolutely.

What Rorty calls the real issue is indeed a real issue. Is the only support conversational or is there some other kind? But it it clear that one who maintains that the only support for our culture, purposes, intuitions, beliefs, is conversational is a kind of relativist. For he is saying that there is no ground of our beliefs, purposes, etc. except our agreement with one another. But our agreement now is different from our agreement then; and their agreement is different from our agreement. Agreement is a local affair, and time-bound to boot. What the Muslim Brotherhood will let you get away with saying is different from what Rorty and the boys will let you get away with saying. Their warranted assertibles are different from Rorty's. So if truth is warranted assertibility, truth is relative.

Rorty's position seems to have a pernicious and illiberal consequence. Suppose a member of al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood or any such group swots up Rorty's writings and becomes convinced that truth is just warranted assertibility (Dewey) and the good by way of belief (James), and that there is no transcendent truth, and no transcultural Reason whereby transcendent truth can be discerned. Then wouldn't this Islamo-headchopper be fully justified in decapitating Rorty and the boys for the greater glory of Allah? What more justification could he have? He has the agreement of his co-ideologues that exterminating Jews and Crusaders is the path to the door of the 72 black-eyed virgins. He has all the conversational support he needs.

Not believing in transcendent truth or universal Reason, our Rortian headchopper has no reason at all to see in his infidel opponent anything that unites them across the barriers of language and culture. Why should the Rortian Islamist respect the infidel?

What Rorty's relativism does is remove a reason, perhaps the only reason, for one person to respect another when the Other is radically different culturally. That reason is Reason, common, universal Reason of the sort that Kant and indeed the whole rationalist tradition believed in. It is because you, like me are a rational being that I have a reason to respect your personhood despite our differences.

Once God and Reason are dismissed, is there any basis left for respect for persons? We shall have to return to this question.

I argued earlier that absolutism does not entail dogmatism. But it is also the case that relativism is no guarantee of nondogmatism. A relativist about truth and rationality can be just as dogmatic and fanatic as any absolutist.

So again I ask: What is liberal about Rorty's position? A genuine liberalism must appeal to transcultural Reason, something Rorty denies. What keeps his position from collapsing into a bad conservatism, a hidebound traditionalism that takes its guidance from some book like the Qu'ran? That is not what Rorty wants, of course, but does he have a principled means of avoiding it?

I find something right about this passage. In many ways I am an Enlightenment man and a classical liberal. I thrill to Kant's sapere aude! (dare to know) as he invokes it in What is Enlightenment? I am for freedom of expression and open inquiry. I am against indices librorum prohibitorum whether of the Catholic or the Commie variety. I say about myself what Kant said about himself: Ich bin aus Neigung ein Forscher, "I am by inclination an inquirer." As a philosopher, I maintain that nothing is immune from being hauled before the tribunal of reason for interrogation, and that includes the idea that nothing is immune from being hauled before the tribunal of reason for interrogation. So there is a sense in which, in the life of the mind, anything goes, or almost anything.

But what is the point of freedom of expression, unrestrained dialog, and openminded inquiry? Rorty tells us above that openmindedness should be fostered for its own sake. That is a silly thing to say. It would be as silly as if one were to say that a firm adherence to one's convictions, whatever they happen to be, should be fostered for its own sake.

We are openminded not for the sake of being openminded, but because it has instrumental value in the pursuit of truth. Openness of mind and freedom of inquiry are means, not ends. The end is truth. But for Rorty there is no such thing as truth. "A liberal society is one which is content to call 'true' whatever the upshot of such encounters turns out to be." This amounts to saying that there is no truth. For it is easy to see that the "upshot" of a "free and open encounter" in one society may well be different from the "upshot" of such an encounter in another society. The truth, however, is not the sort of thing that can be different for different societies or different epochs or different social classes.

That is just the way truth is. Truth is absolute by its very nature. You cannot say that there is truth and then go on to identify it with some such property as warranted assertibility or rational acceptability or what your colleagues will let you get away with saying. Warranted assertibility is different at different times and places; truth is not. Water is an element was warrantedly assertible by the ancients Greeks; water is HO was warrantedly assertible in the days of Dalton. But neither of these propositions is warrantedly assertible now. If truth were warranted assertibility, one would have to conclude that water has changed it chemical composition — which is absurd.

The PoMo types sneer at this sort of refutation because it is so easy. But this is just a case where simplex sigillum veri. And if Rorty and Co. can't deal with a simple objection, how will they deal with a hard one? Besides, sneering is not refuting.

G.E. Moore's Open Question style of objection suggests itself. You may insist that pleasure is the good, but the question remains open: Is pleasure the good? Similarly, you may posit that truth is warranted assertibility, but it remains an open question whether truth is warranted assertibility. The denial that truth is warranted assertibility is neither a logical contradiction nor an analytic incoherence like 'Bachelors are female.'

Furthermore, there is no contradiction in the idea of truths (true propositions) that are assertible but not warrantedly assertible. The following proposition is assertible: 500 feet below my house there is a piece of rock that has the same shape and weight as Paris Hilton. This might well be true, and it is assertible; but it it not warrantedly assertible. And as I already pointed out, what is warrantedly assertible need not be true. Dalton had warrant for asserting that water is HO, but what he had warrant for asserting was in fact not true.

There are truths that are not warrantedly assertible, and there are warranted assertibles that are not true. So truth cannot be identical to warranted assertibility. Now I would have no objection if Rorty were simply to drop the word 'true.' But that is not what he does, as witness the above passage. He wants it both ways at once. He wants to forward philosophical theses, but without really doing that. He wants to substitute rhetoric for argument but without quite giving up argument. So he ends up giving shoddy arguments, as I hope to show in later posts.

There is also the following consideration, that may be worth developing. It is warrantedly assertible that truth is NOT warrantedly assertible. The warrant is the reasons I have been giving. Therefore, if truth is warranted assertibility, then it is true that truth is not warranted assertibility.

I will say more about Rorty and truth in a subsequent post, but I will end this entry by asking what is particularly liberal about Rorty's view. "A liberal society is one which is content to call 'true' whatever the upshot of such [free and open] encounters turns out to be." But if liberalism is not tied to some notion of Enlightenment, if it does not aim at a displacing of errors, and an arriving at truth, a transcending of partial perspectives and limited horizons, then it is none too clear how Rorty's liberalism differs from a bad conservatism of the sort supported by Wittgenstein's vision of incommensurable language games/forms of life.

If the members of the Muslim Brotherhood decide via "free and open encounters" that the destruction of the Little Satan and the Great Satan are jobs One and Two respectively, then that strike me as none too liberal; but it seems consistent with a pseudo-liberalism of Rortian stripe.

I maintain that truth, by its very nature, cannot be relative to anything, whether individuals, groups of individuals, social classes, historical epochs, biological species, or any other index. To illustrate, consider the proposition P, Global warming is anthropogenic. I don't deny that one can say things like 'P is true for most liberals but false for most conservatives.' One can talk that way and no harm need come of it; but only if it is a loose way of saying that P is believed by liberals but not believed by conservatives. This, however, does not entail relativism; it is consistent with truth's being nonrelative. Indeed, someone who believes that P, believes that P is true, and indeed believes that P is nonrelatively true.

What is objectionable is the notion that there is such a property as relative truth, that the predicate 'true-for-X' picks out some property distinct from the property picked out by 'believed-by-X.' There is no such property as relative truth. There is just truth. Truth is absolute. There is no possibility of truth coming in two kinds, relative and absolute. In the phrase 'relative truth,' 'relative' is an alienans adjective: it functions like 'artificial' is 'artificial leather' and not like 'deciduous' in 'deciduous tree.' Artificial leather is not leather; relative truth is not truth.

More arguments can be given, but suppose you are convinced that truth is nonrelative. My main point is that it does not follow that one who maintains this must also maintain that he is in possession of the truth. For example, I maintain that the proposition P, Global warming is anthropogenic, if true is nonrelatively true, and indeed essentially nonrelatively true. But I am not thereby maintaining that I know that P is true. To maintain that a proposition, if true, cannot be relatively true but must be absolutely (nonrelatively) true, is not to maintain that the proposition in question is known to be true.

Suppose we define a dogmatist as someone who, with respect to the class C of reasonably controvertible propositions, or some proper subset S thereof, maintains that he knows with certainty that the members of C or the members of S are all of them true. An example of a reasonably controvertible proposition is the proposition that God exists. It is reasonable to maintain that God exists, but also reasonable to maintain that God does not exist. (Some atheists are unreasonable people, but not qua atheists.) This is because one can give good, though not compelling, arguments for both the affirmation and the negation. A nondenumerable infinity of propositions that are not reasonably controvertible can be culled from mathematics, not to mention other disciplines.

Having provided a rough, working definition of 'dogmatist,' I now attempt the same for 'fallibilist.' I suggest that a fallibilist is the opposite of a dogmatist. Suppose we agree on the identity of the class C of reasonably controvertible propositions. (Yes, I admit that this is a big 'if.') We can then say that a fallibilist is one who adopts the correct epistemic attitude to the members of C, or the members of C that he is aware of: he does not claim to be certain about what is intrinsically uncertain. He admits that he can be wrong about the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the exact causes of global warming, and so on. He admits that he can be wrong, he admits his fallibility, but without falling into alethic relativism.

My main point, then, is that one can reject relativism about truth without embracing dogmatism. One can be both an absolutist and a fallibilist. Being a fallibilist does not entail being a relativist.

Thus there are four possible positions one can occupy:

1. Nonrelativist dogmatism
2. Relativist fallibilism
3. Nonrelativist fallibilism
4. Relativist dogmatism.

Certain paleoconservatives exemplify (1). Not only do they maintain that truth is absolute, they also maintain that they are in possession of it with respect to items that are reasonably controvertible. If the Pope believes in Papal Infallibility then he would be one of these paleocons. I suppose most relativists exemplify (2), but I fear that many relativists exemplify (4). There are liberals, for example, who are relativists but are surprisingly dogmatic about questions of race and sex and religion. This would be a good topic for a separate entry. My position is (3). I am a nonrelativist about truth but also a fallibilist. I recommend this position to you.

I seek the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters -- and it would make no sense to seek it if it were relative -- but I love truth so much that I want to be sure that I have the genuine article: I fear confusing mere convictions with truths. There is some insight in the Nietzschean adage that "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." But see Nietzsche on Conviction.

I do seriously toy with the idea that the best way to do philosophy is by weblog, but I don't think that doing philosophy in this way is more likely to bring us to firm results than other ways of doing philosophy. Incontrovertible results are very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. In an earlier post I explain that there are two senses in which philosophy makes progress; but there is also a sense in which it does not make progress: it does not solve its core problems. The best and the brightest have been at this game for millenia and what consensus has been achieved?

I would argue that the problems are genuine and go deep: they are not mere artifacts of contingent choices of vocabulary, to allude to a rather silly thesis of the late Richard Rorty. For example, Descartes did not 'invent' the mind-body problem by making some unfortunate conceptual choices. Nor can the problems be alleviated by any sort of linguistic therapy, pace Wittgenstein and his epigoni. They are genuine, deep, perennial, and important. Or rather, what is important is that we wrestle with them if for no other reason than to experience the limits of our understanding. Someone who understands the mind-body problem, for example, in its full problematicity, will not be tempted by materialist pseudo-solutions.

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