Maverick Philosopher

Take 'fact.' For some, it is a matter of definition that a fact is a true proposition. But as I use the term, a fact is the truth-maker of a true proposition. Suppose you use 'fact' as interchangeable with 'true proposition.' Then I can accommodate you by distinguishing between facts-that and facts-of. Thus, the fact that Bill is blogging is made true by the fact of Bill's blogging. But we must sort out these definitional questions if we are to make any progress with the substantive issues. A substantive question would be: Are there facts? Obviously, we cannot make any headway with this until we agree on how we are using 'facts.'

The same holds no matter what the subject matter, and understanding this is a mark of an educated person. There is no point in debating whether Obama is a socialist until one has defined or at least explained 'socialist.' Would that the gasbags of contemporary punditry appreciated this simple point!

Returning to 'fact,' if you say that a fact is a true proposition, then I will ask you how you are using 'proposition.' Do you mean the sense of a context-free declarative sentence? Are propositions for you abstract objects? Are you Fregean when it comes to propositions? But now we need to get clear about 'abstract' and 'object.' Do you use 'object' and 'entity' interchangeably? Or can there be objects that are not entities and entities that are not objects? (An hallucinated pink rat might count as an object that is not an entity, and a being that has never been the accusative of any intellect might count as an entity that is not an object.) Someone who uses 'object' in such a way that there is no object without a (thinking) subject is not misusing the word: that is a traditional use. But equally, a person who uses 'object' to mean entity is not misusing it either. So the use of 'object' needs clarification.

'Object' is used in at least three ways, none of them wrong: (i) object = entity; (ii) object = intentional object = accusative of a mental act; (iii) object = particular. I just used 'particular.' But what is a particular? I would explain 'particular' by contrast to 'universal' and say that a particular is any item that is unrepeatable, while a universal is any item that is repeatable.

I just used the word 'item.' What do I mean by that? As I use it, 'item' is the most noncommittal of terms, the ultimate in terminological neutrality. It does not beg any questions or import any theories. An entity (from L. entitas, from ens, being) is anything that exists or has being, with 'existence' and 'being' being used interchangeably. 'Item,' however, is broader than 'entity' since an item may or may not exist. An item is anything one can think about or refer to in any way. Suppose a Meinongian distinguishes among existence, being, and Aussersein (extrabeing). Then 'item' is neutral with respect to that three-fold distinction. 'Item' commits me to nothing except self-identity. Cf. Latin idem. An item is an item. No item is self-diverse. Self-diversity is of course an item, but it is not self-diverse! Why is self-diversity an item? Because I just referred to it. Nothing is self-diverse, and nothing can be self-diverse, so this 'property' cannot be a property of anything. Yet we are now thinking about it and saying truth things about it: self-diversity is not self-diverse; it is what it is; it is not possibly instantiated; it is diverse from self-identity; etc.

But what about the Meinongian item, the self-diverse item? Is it self-diverse or not? This looks to be a puzzle for a Meinongian, but since I am not a Meinongian I don't have to solve it.

Returning to 'abstract' and its opposite, one might use 'abstract' and 'concrete' as follows: X is abstract (concrete) iff X is causally inert (causally active/passive). But I know of at least one name philosopher who uses 'abstract' interchangeably with 'nonspatiotemporal.' On this usage, God would be an abstract object, while on the first definition God would be concrete.

Note that an abstract entity on either of these two definitions can be a substance (another word with about ten meanings!), i.e., a being capable of independent existence. But 'abstract' is used by philosophers as diverse as Hegel and Keith Campbell (the Aussie trope theorist) to refer to non-independent objects. And indeed, their use is the classical, and etymologically correct, use.

I have merely scratched the surface of terminological fluidity in philosophy. I could write pages more (and you hope I won't). The main point is that, before 'cutting loose,' one must carefully define one's terms and reflect on how they cohere with one another.

The Unavoidability of Terminological Fluidity

The fact of terminological fluidity is undeniable. It is unfortunate in that it impedes understanding and communication. Time is consumed by mere terminological clarification. But nothing can or should be done about it. For the terminology we craft, and the distinctions we draw, may limit or enable or otherwise interfere with the claims we advance. Suppose there were a Central Terminology Authority (CTA) and it ruled that 'exist' shall mean: to be instantiated. It would follow from this terminological fiat that no individual can exist. For it is obvious that no individual can be instantiated: 'Socrates has instances' is nonsense. And yet it makes sense to speak of the existence of individuals. Or if the CTA were to rule that 'cause; is to be defined as a relation between events, this would rule out agent causation, which is the classical notion of causation.

Terminological fluidity must be tolerated in a discipline as open-ended as philosophy. Kierkegaard compares philosophizing without dogma to sewing without a knot at the end of one’s thread. His thought is that the reasoning process must be anchored in premises whose truth is beyond question; otherwise, one will never arrive at a fixed conclusion. This invites the rebuttal that to philosophize with dogma is not to philosophize at all. Philosophy is radical reflection: it cannot take anything for granted, as immune from examination. This is the very idea of philosophy. If so, then a fixed and unquestionable terminology is as anathema to the true philosopher as unquestionable premises.

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.

But although the problems are genuine, deep, perennial, and important, they also seem intractable. The evidence for this is inductive: study the problems, study the solutions, and then ask yourself in all intellectual honesty and putting aside all one's ideological desires whether even one of the problems has been definitively solved. Here is one thesis I am comfortable asserting:

T1. If philosophy can only be aporetics, then that is enough; it is still a worthwhile enterprise.

But ideally, philosophy is much more: a systematic theory in which all the problems are solved and the ultimate truth about man and the universe are made plain. Ideally, one gets to a position in which one can give truly satisfying answers to Kant's questions: What can I know? What ought I do? What can I hope for? What is man? And not just those questions. A satisfying anwer, of course, is not one that is emotionally attractive but one that satisfies the most rigorous intellectual demands.

Have I ever gone from nescio to scio by blogging? Many a time. I come to all sorts of conclusions that satisfy me, whether or not they satisfy anyone else. For example, in that long series of logic posts about the material conditional, logical form, validity, etc. I came to some new insights. In the recent posts on miracles I have come to appreciate the problem of miracles much better. That counts as knowledge, knowledge of the problem, of its depth, complexity, and ramifications. Coming to appreciate a distinction that one didn't appreciate before counts as knowledge. It may not be the knowledge that miracles are possible, but it is the knowledge of what is involved in the problem of miracles.

For a philosopher, the conversion of nescio into scio consists in large part in understanding just what the issues are and how they are interrelated; for example, how the problem of miracles is connected to the problem of laws, how the latter is tied to the problem of counterfactuals, and it to questions about modality, and so on.

But does any of this satisfy the needs of Weltanschauung, the need for a worldview, a set of guiding beliefs to which one can cling for doxastic security, the need for an ideology? Perhaps not, but philosophy exists to inquire into the sober truth, not to satisfy worldview needs. Worldviews are a dime a dozen. If a person's philosophical work were just the ex post facto rationalization of the religious beliefs he was brought up to hold, or the rationalization of the atheistic-humanistic beliefs he was brought up to hold, then this person's philosophical work would be worthless; it would not be philosophy at all.

2. Nowadays, of course, we don't mean by 'philosophy' rational inquiry as such, but a set of questions and problems that are left over after the special sciences, formal or empirical, hard or soft, have staked out their territories and developed methods appropriate to them. We could call this the residual concept of philosophy. This is philosophy in the narrow sense of the term, and it is what people have in mind when they question whether philosophy has made progress.

In philosophy residually or narrowly construed belong all the normative questions that the formal sciences and the sciences of empirical fact do not and cannot address. For example, political science — if we agree to call it 'science' --leaves untouched the sorts of normative questions that are raised in political philosophy. The fundamental problem of political philosophy concerns the source, if there is one, of the state's moral authority. This is clearly a legitimate question but not one that could be answered by a discipline that confined itself to an empirical study of existing states, their constitutions, etc. It is therefore a philosophical question in the narrow sense. And the same goes for the questions of ethics. Normative ethics and metaethics belong to philosophy in the residual or narrow sense because they treat of matters that fall outside the purview of anthropologists and sociologists. Aesthetics too is a normative inquiry and so belongs within philosophy narrowly construed. On some conceptions of logic, it also is a normative discipline and so would belong in philosophy.

Besides normative questions, there are questions of ontology or general metaphysics. Every special science seeks to know the properties of the objects in its domain, but without thematizing the nature of properties as such. The question of what properties are, however, is a legitimate question, along with a host of related questions: what is it for an individual to have a property? Are there different modes of property-possession? Is identity of properties sufficient for numerical identiy? And so on. These ontological questions belong in philosophy narrowly construed. Causation provides another example. Scientists ask what causes what, and they find out. But one can also ask the philosophical question as to what causation is. Knowing that X causes Y can be very useful. But unless I know what it is for one event to cause another, I do not fully understand what it means for X to cause Y.

There are also the questions of special metaphysics about God, the soul, and the world as a whole. These too belong in philosophy narrowly construed.

There is then quite a lot that is left over after the positive sciences have divided up reality for their epistemic conquest. What is left over is left over for philosophy, narrowly construed. But has any progress been made in philosophy so construed?

Progress has been made in that the problems are better understood than ever before. We have made progress in the understanding and formulation of the problems even though we have not solved even one of them in a definitive fashion acceptable to all able practitioners. Indeed the problems may in the end be intractable. But that is not to say that they are not genuine. They give every indication of being genuine pace Wittgenstein and his epigoni. I would add that knowledge of these problems is valuable in that is give us insight into the limits of our knowledge. Armed with this insight, we will be able to debunk epistemic pretense. Wisdom, as we learned from Socrates, consists in part in the knowledge of our ignorance.

I have given a twofold answer to the title question. Philosophy broadly construed as the pursuit of knowledge has made progress in that the sciences which were originally parts of philosophy have made progress. And philosophy narrowly construed has made progress in expositing and clarifying a large number of questions and problems that are left over after the special sciences have done their work.

Is there not then something wrongheaded about ridiculing philosophy for not making progress? In two clear senses it has made progress, and in the sense in which it has not, that merely reflects the difficulty of the residual questions and the limitations of the human intellect.

Disagreement does not of course prove the nonexistence of truth, but it does cast reasonable doubt on all claims to its possession. Philosophy aspires to sound, indeed incontrovertible, doctrine. But the quest for it has proven tough indeed. For all we know it may lie beyond our powers. Not that this gives us reason to abandon the quest. But it does give us reason to be modest and undogmatic.

Philosophy, then, is primarily an activity, a search, a quest. Somewhere deep in the bowels of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant remarks that "Philosophy cannot be taught, we can at most learn to philosophize." I agree. It cannot be taught because it does not exist as teachable doctrine.

How then should we do philosophy? Conversation face-to-face with the like-minded, intelligent, and sincere is useful but ephemeral and hard to arrange. Jetting off to conferences can be fun especially if the venue is exotic and the tab is picked up your department. But reading papers at conferences is pretty much a waste of time when it comes to actually doing productive philosophy. Can you follow a technical paper simply by listening to it? If you can you're smarter than me.

So we ought to consider the idea that philosophy in its purest form, its most productive form, is 'blogosophy,' philosophy pursued by weblog. And there is this in favor of it: blogging takes pressure off the journals. Working out my half-baked ideas here, I am less likely to submit material that is not yet ready for embalming in printer's ink.

Harris's reasoning is confused. The conclusion, Socrates is mortal, does not include the word 'therefore.' It no more includes that word than the consequent of 'If I am dreaming, then I am sleeping' includes the word 'then.' This is why, when I display a two-premised argument, I use the following format:

P1
P2
Therefore
C

This makes it clear that the relation between premises and conclusion lies between premises and conclusion and is not part of the premises or the conclusion. Once one grasps this simple point one sees that Harris's argument collapses: it is not the case that 'Socrates is mortal' is false, nor is 'therefore, Socrates is mortal' "implicitly false." What could that mean? Such talk rests on a confusion of truth/falsity with validity/invalidity.

Harris thinks that there must be an "essential connection," a connection at the level of meaning, between p and q if we are to be able to assert 'If p then q.' But this is just plain false.

Suppose I encounter a flat-earther who tries to convert me to his doctrine. I cut him off with 'If the earth is flat, then I'm the Pope!' There is obviously no relation of semantic entailment between the antecedent and the consequent in this example. They have 'nothing to do with each other.' But the sentence is obviously assertible -- it has a use and makes a move in a language-game -- and it has a clear sense which can be paraphrased as follows: 'It is no more the case that the earth is flat than that I am the Pope!' If the flat-earther is particularly dense, as one might expect such a lunatic (geotic?) to be, I might expand my enthymeme into an explicit argument of the form modus tollendo tollens:

If the earth is flat, then I am the Pope
I am not the Pope
Therefore
The earth is not flat.

The reasoning in this argument is perfectly clear and perfectly valid. The argument is sound in addition to being valid: its premises are true. Now no proposition can have a truth-value unless it is meaningful. It follows that the conditional is meaningful, pace Harris. I submit that this conditional is at once both a material conditional and a piece of ordinary language. Thus here we have an ordinary language example of a material conditional. So although the material conditional is a theoretical construct for logical purposes, it is exemplified in natural language.

Kant too, with his categorical imperative, was on the same path: in this respect, his reason became practical. There are questions in which man is not entitled to a decision about truth and untruth; all the highest questions, all the highest value problems, lie beyond human reason. To comprehend the limits of reason -- that alone is truly philosophy. (tr. Walter Kaufmann).

It is instantly clear to anyone who knows both Kant and Nietzsche that the quotation above, read and understood in the context in which it occurs, gives Kant's view of philosophy, not Nietzsche's. But the 'Wikiquote' misleadingly suggests that it is Nietzsche's view. Curiously, right before the quotation in question there is another quotation from Nietzsche in which he is giving his view of philosophy.

Near the top of the page we read:

" [Philosophy is a]n interpretation of the world in order to change it." — [[ Karl Marx]], Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (quoted by Jonathan Wolff)

Anyone who has bothered to read Karl Marx's very brief Theses on Feuerbach knows that this 'Wikiquote' does not accurately convey Marx's view of philosophy, nor is it a quotation from Marx. In the 11th thesis, Marx writes, Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kömmt drauf an, sie zu verändern. "The philosophers have variously interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it." Marx is not out to define 'philosophy' with his talk of changing the world; his aim is to oppose all hitherto existing philosophy.

Furthermore, the 'Wikiquote' is not a quotation from Jonathan Wolff either. Here is Wolff's SEP article; read section 2.4 Theses on Feuerbach. The Wikipedia author is obviously incompetent. Had he been competent, he would simply have provided the Marx quotation I just cited, and he would not have misrepresented a competent scholar as writing something he did not write.

The difference between the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Wikipedia philosophy entries is that SEP can be trusted: the authors are invited to contribute on the basis of their reputations by experts in the discipline, and the contributions are approved before they are allowed to appear. And of course no one but the authors and the editors can alter them once they do appear.

Can Philosophy Be Polemical?

Recently I was reading two very interesting posts made by Bill Vallicella over on his personal blog. One of them dealt with Paul Edwards' well-known critique of Heidegger, the other with David Stove. Anyone familiar with Edwards' essay or with virtually anything written by Stove knows that both writers are capable of being fiercely polemical - often to hilarious effect in the case of Stove, who was in my view one of the greatest stylists in recent philosophy. Bill argues with great elegance and cogency that Edwards' critique is worthless, whatever one thinks of Heidegger, both because it too uncritically assumes the truth of Russell's doctrine of existence-as-instantiation, and because of its needlessly polemical tone. He also argues that whatever interest and value Stove's work has, Stove was not really a philosopher at all, and that the polemical nature of his work kept him from seriously appreciating the nature and depth of philosophical problems. In general, Bill seems to hold that polemical arguments, while definitely having a place in other contexts (e.g. politics) ought for the most part to be kept out of philosophical debate.

I think there is obviously something right about this. Gratuitous personal insults, resorting to rhetorical flourishes in place of arguments, or presenting simplistic distortions of an opponent's views, are unacceptable in the context of professional philosophical discourse. Indeed, all of this should go without saying. At the same time, I'm not sure whether there sometimes isn't in fact a place in philosophical argument, if not for polemics, then at least for something very similar. (In fairness to Bill, let me note that I realize he was not necessarily presenting a general view about how philosophical argument ought to be conducted in either of the posts I referred to - what I say here is intended not as a criticism of anything Bill wrote, but rather as some reflections inspired by what he wrote.)

G. E. M. Anscombe famously held that there are some positions in ethics that are so odious that in many cases the proper way to respond to someone who holds them is, not to discuss his error with him, but rather to refuse to discuss it. Her example was someone who proposes, in all seriousness, to kill an innocent person for the sake of some allegedly greater good. In Anscombe's view, the person who makes such a proposal manifests a "corrupt mind," even if he is sincerely open to debating its merits; we might even say that his corruption is all the greater precisely because he sincerely wants to debate it. One way to understand the reasoning behind her view is in terms of the Aristotelian idea that moral understanding is more a matter of having the right sensibilities and dispositions than it is the having of a correct theoretical understanding. Indeed, it is on this view difficult for someone even to have a correct theoretical understanding in the first place if he does not to some extent already have the right traits of character. This seems to me an eminently conservative view to take, insofar as it reflects the insight that much of our knowledge is tacit rather than articulate, embodied in habit and tradition rather than in the explicitly formulated propositions of a philosophical theory. It is a paradigmatically anti-rationalistic conception of ethics (which, of course, does not mean that it is anti-reason).

Now Anscombe's claim, I think, is not that to debate the question of whether to kill an innocent man would be a waste of one's time insofar as one would almost certainly be arguing with an unreasonable person. It is rather that even to treat a proposal to commit such an act as a live option that is "on the table" and worthy of debate cannot fail to corrupt us morally by desensitizing us to wickedness and altering our intuitive sense of the boundaries of decent conduct. The point isn't that some debates cannot be won; the point is that some debates should never get started, and that if they ever do get started, the moral battle is already halfway lost.

Of course, sometimes we might have to engage in such debates anyway, at least to cut our moral losses and hopefully stem the tide of widespread moral corruption, if not to turn it back completely. If Anscombe is correct, though, then it is very difficult to see how a thorough and effective critique of the views of a philosopher who entertained an intrinsically immoral position of the sort Anscombe had in mind could fail to constitute, at least implicitly, a critique of that philosopher himself. To imply such a critique would not be to engage in a gratuitous personal attack on a philosophical opponent. It would rather be to give a straightforwardly objective description of the state of a person's moral character.

Suppose, then, that a philosopher proposes to debate the question of whether an adult ought to be allowed under certain circumstances to engage in sexual contact with a three year old child, or wants to discuss the "issue" of whether bestiality and necrophilia are always immoral. Suppose he even suggests with a straight face that there are some very good arguments in favor of these practices that we ought to take at least as seriously as any arguments that might be put forward against them. Does it suffice patiently to point out to such a philosopher that he has made several serious mistakes in argumentation? Surely not, at least if Anscombe is right. For to fail to see that "sex" with a three year old child, or with a corpse or a chicken, is simply and unarguably morally depraved, is not merely to make an intellectual mistake; it is of itself to be, to some extent, depraved in one's moral sensibilities. Similarly, if a National Socialist philosopher (if such a thing exists) tried earnestly to defend the view that the extermination of certain races is morally required of us, such a philosopher would surely already have exhibited a certain degree of moral depravity even by making such a suggestion, whether or not he could "defend" it with arguments and whether or not he ever acted in accordance with it. (Obviously he would be worthy of even greater moral condemnation if he were to act on it.)

Any philosopher who seriously proposed such things for discussion would manifest thereby a kind of moral blindness, an inability to perceive basic moral facts. Arguing with him might well be a waste of time, like arguing with a blind man who insists that colors do not exist, and who accuses you of dogmatism because you continue to believe in them yourself despite your inability to convince him. But the deeper point is that merely to argue with him, with as respectful and genteel a tone as one uses when arguing with one's accountant, would be inadvertently to reinforce his moral blindness, and even help spread it to others. For to fail to point out that the very act of putting forward for discussion such inherently indecent proposals is itself indecent would arguably make one complicit in lending credibility to the making of such proposals. It would constitute a failure to tell the whole philosophical story, and might even contribute to a general decrease in moral understanding.

Now, would this entail, in some cases and to some extent, the incorporation of a polemical element into one's philosophical argumentation? Arguably it would. At the very least it would seem to entail incorporating into one's argumentation a common aspect of polemics, namely personal criticism, or at least implied personal criticism, of one's opponent. Of course, this raises all sorts of questions and practical problems, both about matters of principle and about matters of prudence. It is one thing to critique an immoral point of view in the context of a society which is generally morally healthy; it is another thing altogether to try to critique it in the context of a society that has to a considerable extent gone to the dogs already. The latter situation clearly entails that a certain measure of tact would be well advised (though, on the other hand, it might also entail that polemical arguments are all the more required, in order to shake people out of a complacent decadence). Furthermore, there is an obvious difference between a sincere person who entertains an inherently immoral position merely because he is naïve, muddle-headed, or immature, and a cynic or demagogue who takes it because he is generally of a corrupt character. The former sort of person may be far less morally culpable for the defects in his moral understanding, and thus far less worthy of polemical criticism.

The extent to which one's critique of a philosopher's moral views entails criticism of the philosopher himself, and the manner of that criticism, will of course depend on the moral theory from which one is operating. A natural law theorist and a Kantian, say, might have significantly different views about what is beyond the pale and indicative of a "corrupt mind"; other moral theories would entail even more radically different sensibilities. Indeed, I think that the points I have been raising might account for the fierceness of the debates that often occur between even the most intelligent and well-meaning left-wing and right-wing philosophers, a fierceness one might at first think incompatible with the commitment of all philosophers to rational debate. Even the most rationalistic moral theorist surely recognizes deep down the truth of the Aristotelian insight that our moral sensibilities reflect our moral character as much as they reflect our intellect. Left-wing philosophers and right-wing philosophers will thus inevitably, to some extent anyway, regard each other with moral suspicion and even hostility. This is not necessarily a failure of rationality; it reflects the very nature of moral disagreement. To see someone as committed, even sincerely, to a view one regards as seriously immoral is inevitably to see him as to some extent morally, and not just intellectually, deficient.

Obviously, this makes fruitful debate all the more difficult to achieve. Charity, tact, and prudence are therefore called for even in the context of polemical criticism - indeed, especially in the context of polemical criticism.

1. Most if not all of the traditional problems of philosophy are genuine intellectual difficulties. They are not pseudo-problems engendered by a non-workaday use of language, by "language gone on holiday," or by the presumed flouting of some principle of cognitive significance. I do not deny that there are philosophical pseudo-problems. There may be a few (examples anyone?). What I deny is that the main problems of philosophy are pseudo-problems. Neither the logical positivists nor Wittgenstein and his epigoni have shown that the main problems of philosophy arise from linguistic confusion or any "bewitchment of the understanding by language." The main problems are not only genuine, but also natural as I explained in an earlierpost. They are not artifacts of the philosophy classroom, nor do they exist because some institution exists that serves the material interests of certain people. Philosophical problems would not exist if we did not exist, but it is false to say that they would not exist if professional philosophers did not exist. Philosophical problems and questions arise whenever and wherever thoughtful people reflect upon their experience. Here as elsewhere ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Children often discover philosophical problems long before 'philosophy' is in their vocabularies.

2. The problems, though genuine, are intractable, as I began to explain in a previous installment. Although many solutions are on offer, none of them work. For a solution to 'work,' it cannot be merely acceptable to the members of a certain coterie or school of thought. Within schools of thought, there is much that is agreed upon and 'settled.' Certain questions are deemed 'answered,' certain problems 'solved.' Progress is made. You may enjoy the Credo of the Canberra Planners. These Canberrans agree about much, the reality of properties and relations for example. The issue that divides nominalists and conceptualists, on the one hand, and realists on the other, is resolved within their enclave; but whether properties realistically construed are universals or particulars (tropes) remains a live issue on the Canberran 'research agenda.'

So there is a sense in which some genuine philosophical problems are solved: they are solved within schools of thought. But schools of thought come and go, and there is no lack of them. If we are serious, however, a 'solution' that is merely a solution for some group of people who hang around and reinforce one another is not a solution, full stop. A genuine solution to a problem cannot be merely school-immanent; it must be school-transcendent. It must solve the problem in such a way that competent practioners can be persuaded that it is a solution despite their school-affiliation.

It is difficult and perhaps impossible to prove that even one philosophical problem is absolutely intractable since it is always possible to claim that a solution has been achieved but has simply gone unrecognized. The inherent intractability of philosophical problems is, nevertheless, a reasonable hypothesis given that none of them have been solved to the satisfaction of all competent practioners. It is therefore worthwhile to attempt to work out a conception of what philosophy could be if this hypothesis were true.

3. There is philosophical knowledge on an aporetic approach to philosophy but it is negative in nature. Philosophical knowledge amounts to knowledge of the problems and their apparent intractability. Thus philosophical knowledge is negative or aporetic. One studies the problems and the various proposed 'solutions.' One learns to appreciate the genuineness, naturalness, intelligibility and apparent intractability of the problems.

4. But if philosophical understanding is negative and aporetic, an appreciation of puzzles that are real but intractable, what is the good of it? My fourth thesis is that it is good in that it conduces to intellectual humility, to an appreciation of our actual predicament in this life, which is one of profound ignorance concerning what would be most worth knowing if we could know it. The aporetic philosopher is a Socratic philosopher, one who knows what he knows and knows what he does not know. His is the docta ignorantia, the learned ignorance. The aporetic philosopher is a debunker of epistemic pretense. One sort of epistemic pretense is that of the positive scientists who, succumbing to the temptation to wax philosophical, overstep the bounds of their competence, proposing bogus solutions to philosophical problems, and making incoherent assertions. A good recent example would be Richard Dawkins with his nonsensical talk of "selfish genes." (Debunked by David Stove in "Genetic Calvinism or Demons and Dawkins" in Darwinian Fairytales, Ashgate, 1995, pp. 118-136)

2. The question Can one know anything with certainty? has an answer: One can know with certainty that one exists and that one's cogitata qua cogitata have the properties they appear to have. Or in Chisholm-speak (but not presupposing the truth of an adverbial theory of consciousness) one can know with certainty that one is being appeared to thus and so. This answer cannot be reasonably contested; ergo, there is at least one philosophical question that is tractable, i.e. answerable absolutely or definitively, and not merely relative to the assumptions and approach of some school of thought. In particular, it is not just Cartesians or neo-Cartesians that should be able to see that the answer is correct. But if some philosophical questions are tractable, it does not follow that some philosophical problems are, unless questions and problems are either the same or intertranslatable. I suspect they are not. I would like to see if I can show that there is one philosophical problem that cannot be expressed as a philosophical question, or one philosophical question that cannot be expressed as a philosophical problem.

3. Questions have answers while problems have solutions. (This is mere terminology: it does not imply that questions and problems are distinct.) The answer to a non-rhetorical question is a statement. The solution to a philosophical problem is typically a theory, not a mere statement. Without worrying about what exactly a philosophical theory is, beyond saying that it is some sort of explanatory structure, let me plunge on to my main point by saying that philosophical problems arise when putative data claims ('datanic' claims) conflict. As I once heard Chisholm say, "You are not philosophizing unless you have a puzzle." 'Puzzle' being insufficiently romantic for my Latin taste, and suggestive of something trivial, I prefer 'problem,' and sometimes 'aporie,' 'enigma,' 'riddle,' and even 'mystery.' Romanticism is good, within limits.

4. To illustrate what I mean by a philosophical problem, consider the following aporetic tetrad. Aporetic n-ads (dyads, triads, tetrads, pentads, etc.) have limbs. The limbs express datanic or near-datanic or at least very reasonable beliefs that strike us as true and worth upholding:

1. Every event is caused by prior events.
2. Every human action is an event.
3. Some human actions are free.
4. What is free is uncaused by prior events.

It is easy to see that the limbs of the above tetrad are mutually inconsistent: they cannot all be true. For (1) and (2), taken together, entail that Every human action is caused by prior events, while (3) and (4), taken together, entail that Some human actions are not caused by prior events. The italicized sentences are contradictories. Since a contradiction can be derived from the tetrad's limbs, the tetrad is inconsistent. And yet each of (1) through (4) has a strong claim on our intellectual assent. To save bytes, I won't dilate on why each has a strong claim on us. The reader can do this for himself. Note that by 'caused' I mean deterministically caused.

So we have a problem. Since the tetrad is inconsistent, the only way to solve the problem is by rejecting one of the limbs. (Well, not the only way: one could reject the Law of Noncontradiction. But such a drastic step should be put off as long as possible.)

5. For each rejection of a limb there is a corresponding theory, whether merely possible or extant. An indeterminist rejects (1) while a determinist rejects (3). To my knowledge, there is no extant theory corresponding to the rejection of (3). A compatibilist rejects (4).

6. It seems evident to me that the problem is genuine, natural, and intelligible as I have defined these terms in previous posts. Can the problem be expressed as a question? None of the following questions seem equivalent to the problem:

Are we free?
Is the will free?
Is there freedom of action?
Is there metaphysical freedom of action?
How is it possible to be free given the truth of causal determinism?

The last question on this list seems to come close to being equivalent to our problem. But to ask a question of the form How is it possible that p? presupposes that it is possible that p. Hence the last question on the list presupposes that it is possible that (1) and (3) are jointly true. But this is denied by the incompatiblist: he denies that free will and determinism are logically compatible. Since our problem (the aporetic tetrad above) does not beg the question against the incompatibilist, our problem cannot be expressed in terms of the last question on the list. So consider this question:

What is the best way to remove the inconsistency of (1)-(4)?

Is this question equivalent to our problem? The question presupposes that the inconsistency can be removed. But our problem does not presuppose this. So our problem is not equivalent to the question just framed. Why not this:

If there is a best way to remove the inconsistency of (1)-(4), what is that way?

A possible answer to this might be: Yes, there is a best way, and it is by rejecting (4). So it looks as if our problem can be expressed as a question.

7. But can every question be expressed as a problem? Consider our opening question, Can one know anything with certainty? I grant that this is a philosophical question and that it has a definitive answer. But I don't see how to express it as a problem. A problem is a set of inconsistent propositions each of which we have good reason to accept. The simplest philosophical problem is an aporetic dyad. But that requires two inconsistent propositions both of which we have good reason to accept. What would they be?

My tentative conclusion is that there are philosophical questions that are not equivalent to philosophical propblems. Hence questions and problems are not the same. Therefore, if some philosophical questions are tractable, it does not follow that some philosophical problems are tractable.

But I should think that something interesting does follow, or at least can be conjectured to be the case, if philosophical problems are intractable. (Problem P is intractable =df P cannot be solved.) I suggested as much in yesterday's installment, namely, that the problems are intractable because the problems arise from the structure of the discursive intellect as such, and because we cannot think outside of this structure. I won't pause to clarify this now. I will just say that IF the problems are intractable, THEN the explanation of this fact might be very interesting indeed.

But to explain why the problems are intractable presupposes that they are intractable. And the objection I hear coming from Spur is along the lines of: "The problems are intractable only if we adopt your stringent definition of 'solution'. But why should we adopt it?" It may help in answering this question to step back and raise the general question of high standards in philosophy. Philosophers traditionally have made very stringent demands and on the basis of these demands have argued for 'interesting' conclusions. So let's make a list of stringent requirements. In each case, one can ask why we should set the bar so high. And in each case the answer will be: because philosophy is a quest for the ultimate in knowledge, being, truth, etc.

1. Nothing counts as knowledge unless it is certain. I won't rehearse the connection of this requirement with various forms of skepticism, but I would argue that the wrong way to defeat skepticism is by abandoning this constraint on knowledge. See Why is Knowledge Important? and the posts chained to it. Sure, you can defeat the skeptic by 'dumbing down' your definition of knowledge, but then aren't you in effect conceding his point?

2. Nothing counts as fully real or existent unless it is permanent. Platonism. Impermanence argues (relative) unreality. In Buddhism it argues absence of 'selfhood.' (atta) But why demand that permanence set the standard for reality? The short answer is that philosophy by its very nature is a quest for the absolute, and the absolute cannot be transient and ephemeral.

3. Nothing counts as a self unless it is in full control of itself. See The 'Control Argument' for the Anatta Doctrine and the posts chained to it.

4. Nothing counts as a proof unless it is deductive.

5. Nothing counts as true unless it is absolutely true. There can be no such thing as relative or perspectival truth. See my various posts on alethic relativism, Nietzsche's perspectivism, etc.

6. Nothing counts as a divine and worship-worthy being unless it is necessarily existent. Anselm. But why set the bar so high? Why couldn't a contingent being be worthy of worship? Because it would not be "that than which no greater can be conceived." It would not be absolute, but dependent on conditions external to it. But why should philosophy aspire to the absolute? Because that's just what philosophy is!

7. Nothing matters unless it matters absolutely. This is connected with the nhilism question. Roughly, nihilism is the view that nothing finite matters, and there is only the finite. The nihilist presupposes that the only mattering that matters is absolute mattering. But so does the Platonist and the Christian: nothing finite ultimately matters; hence we should direct our spiritual gaze and aspiration to the infinite and eternal. But why should absolute mattering set the standard for all mattering? Short answer: because our hearts and minds are so constructed that they cannot rest until they rest in the Absolute.

8. No act counts as morally justified (has moral worth) unless the maxim of the action is universalizable. (Kant) Particularity, partiality, and onesidedness must be overcome in order to live a moral life. But why set so high a standard? Because the quest for the absolute in its moral dimension demands the overcoming of partiality: one must learn to view the other as one views oneself and oneself as one views the other.

9. No one counts as truly good unless he is good in thought, word, and deed. To be explicated tomorrow, perhaps. Now, to bed.

2. When is a problem solved? One suggestion is that a problem is solved when a correct solution has been found by some philosopher, whether or not he can convince his competent co-workers that his solution is correct. Suppose that a certain philosopher claims to have solved the free will problem via a form of compatibilism. But he can't convince van Inwagen that the problem has been solved. Then I say the problem has not been solved. For a problem to be solved, two conditions must be met: (i) the solution must be correct; (ii) the solution must be recognized as correct by all competent practioners who have studied the solution.

Consider a mathematical analogy. Until recently, the problem of proving Fermat's Last Theorem had not been solved. But Andrew Wiles has solved it according to the reports I have read. Now I can't verify that Wiles' proof is correct since I lack the requisite competence. But it seems clear that a necessary condition of Wiles' work's counting as a solution of the problem of proving the theorem is that his work be accepted by all competent specialists in his field who have studied his proof. In other words, it is not enough that Wiles' have hit upon the correct line of proof; he has to convince his co-workers that he has done so.

I should think that it is the same in philosophy. If a propblem were truly solved, it would be solved in such a way that the solution would be seen to be correct by all competent specialists. Otherwise, anyone could claim to have solved any problem. A hylomorphic dualist, for example, could simply announce that he has solved the mind-body problem, and then dismiss all dissenting voices as failures to appreciate the correctness of his solution.

3. When I say that the main problems of philosophy are genuine, I mean that they are not pseudo-problems engendered by misuse of ordinary language, pace Wittgenstein the Second and his epigoni. When I say that the problems are natural, I mean that they are not artifacts of the philosophy classroom. They are not byproducts of a process of institionalized teaching and learning, or any process of indoctrination, nor is there anything ideological about them in the Marxist sense. (I once heard an idiot Marxist at a doctoral defense argue that Plato's Forms were nothing but ideological posits in support of the Athenian ruling class.) Philosophy arises not from books and lectures but from the world. It arises when thinking people reflect upon the data of their experience and ask ever more fundamental questions. To my mind, G. E. Moore branded himself an inauthentic philosoopher when he made his remark to the effect that it was not the world that elicited his philosophizing but the puzzling things that people like Bradley said about it. As for intelligibility, the problems are at least as intelligible as the rest of what passes for intelligible in human life.

4. That the main problems haven't been solved does not entail that they cannot be solved. But if over centuries the best minds have made no headway with them, then that would seem to count as evidence of intractability, defeasible evidence to be sure, but evidence nonetheless. Why is the so-called problem of universals still debated, to take but one example? Why are there still realists and nominalists? It cannot be due to a lack of intelligence, intellectual honesty, or empirical information on one of the sides. There are first-class minds, well-informed and intellectually honest, on both sides of this and other issues.

5. When I say that the main problems are intractable, I mean that they are insoluble in principle, and not because of some contingent and remediable deficiency. It is not that we lack sufficient information or that we fail to think clearly about the information we have. We seem to have all the information we need to solve the problem of universals if it is indeed a genuine problem and one that can be solved. The same holds for the mind-body problem. Impressive advances in brain science since the time of Descartes have brought us no nearer a solution to the mind-body problem. And any additional information we acquire even up to the point of exhaustive information will not help. For what we lack is not information but understanding.

6. What is the ontological status of philosophical problems? Is their status properly described as ontological? Do the problems exist in themselves? I would say that they do not: a problem is a difficulty for us. A problem is a lack of understanding, and we are the ones who lack understanding. Just as there are no contradictions in reality, but only in our thinking about reality, there are no philosophical problems in reality, but only in our thinking about reality. To put it another way, philosophical problems are situated at the interface of mind and world. In a world without minds there would be no philosophical problems. Equally, if there could be minds that didn't experience anything as other than themselves then there wouldn't be any philosophical problems either. The world in itself is not problematic; the world is problematic to us. A problem is a lack of understanding, which presupposes a distinction between what is to be understood and and beings who desire to know and understand.

7. So philosophical problems do not exist an sich. On the other hand, they don't arise from some lack of factual information or a contingent failure to think clearly about the information we have. Knowing more and more about the physical world and its mechanisms won't help. The problems seem to have transcendental status in roughly Kant's sense: they are not out there is the world, but neither are they traceable to contingent defects in our psychology. The problems seem rooted in the structure of the discursive intellect as such. This would explain why the problems are intractable: one cannot 'throw off' the mind's discursive structure.

If this is right, then philosophical problems are signposts that indicate the limits of the discursive intellect, and in doing so, point beyond it.

MavPhil: My point was that 'self-identical' is meaningful despite the fact that there is nothing, actual or possible, of whatever category (individual, property, set, relation, function, operator . . .) to which it does not apply. From this I infer the falsity of the principle that a term is meaningful only if there are items to which it does not apply. You respond by pointing out that self-identity is just one among many properties -- which is of course correct. But note that 'self-identical' does apply to all these other properties. Thus the properties of being brown, of being anorexic, of being negatively-charged, of being Jewish if a logician, etc. are all of them self-identical. So these other propoerties do not form a contrast class. The fact that there are properties that are not identical to self-identity does not entail that there are properties that are not self-identical.

Rethinking the matter, it seems that what I said is correct: 'self-identity' applies to everything and yet it is meaningful; ergo, it is false that a term is meaningful only if there are items to which it does not apply.

Impermanent. I would claim that it is only necessary for it to be conceivable that something be permanent for the term to be meaningful, not that such a thing actually exist or even possibly exist. The contrast would be to an idea of permanence, not to actual permanence.

MavPhil: Actually, I would say something similar. It is enough that a permanent entity be conceivable -- where 'conceivable' does not mean the same as 'possible' -- for it to be meaningful that 'all is impermanent.' But that is a far cry from saying that there must be a permanent entity for 'all is impermanent' to be meaningful. Don't forget what the issue is. The issue is precisely whether or not the Contrast Principle -- If a term applies to everything, then is is meaningless -- is true. Self-evidently, this principle is false since it is meaningful to say that all is impermament whether or not there is anything permanent.

And note that if all is impermanent, then all ideas of permanence are impermanent. So ideas of permanence do not form a contrast class.

Now for "dream-like quality". This term applies to experiences, and a subjective quality of experiences at that. I think it is a good candidate for a term that would lose all meaning if it became applied to all and every experience we have. The whole point of it is that it applies to some experiences and not to others. Now, the fact that it means something--that some of our experiences have a dream-like quality and some don't, at least for most of us--doesn't lay to rest Descartes' original question, because we could have different kinds of dream-experiences. But that there is a qualitative difference between our perception of our waking experiences and our experiences when asleep and dreaming is, I think, the contrast picked out by "dream-like quality", and I think it the phrase does in fact derive its meaning from that contrast.

MavPhil: Now I would say you are begging the question against the proponent of the dream-argument. The argument raises the possibility that all experiences are nonveridical. This possibility cannot be ruled out of court by citing a failure of contrast any more than 'all is impermanent' can be ruled out in this way. If it is meaningful to say that all is impermanent -- which you concede above -- why is it not meaningful to say that every experience is nonveridical?

Also, you seem not to appreciate that there are dreams which do not have a dream-like quality -- which is the whole point. A nocturnal emission is clear proof that the lady you were making love to in your dreams did not have a dream-like quality, but was taken by you to to be as real as can be.

Whatever you think about the above--I'd like to ask you a question. Keeping in mind that I'm not a philosopher. You return again and again in your posts to the question of whether there's a reality "out there"--outside your head, rejecting one "proof" of such a reality after another. My question is, what would a proof look like that would satisfy? I don't understand how such a question is susceptible to proof--or to disproof, for that matter. So maybe I'm missing the whole point--but I'd be interested in what you have to say.

MavPhil: Since my head and my brain are in the external world, the question precisely put concerns the grounds for believing in a reality transcendent of consciousness. The question is not about proving an external world to one who doubts it -- for who really doubts it? The question concerns what reality must be like if it is to be knowable. There is an external world and we have knowledge of it. But how is this possible? What is knowledge? What is reality? These are the questions that one is attacking via these wild scenarios of brains in vats, evil demons, etc. I must beg off giving you a really good answer at the moment, since this whole series of posts is aimed at clarifying these questions, questions I suspect people like G. E. Moore -- brilliant and influential as he was -- do not appreciate.

It follows that a realist need not be committed to the existence of material individuals or of any concrete individuals. Suppose you believe that everything that exists is either a spiritual substance or a modification of such a substance. You will count as a realist if you hold that these substances exist in logical independence of human representations. Realism is thus consistent with the denial of materialism, the thesis that everything is a material individual or supervenient upon a material individual. But of course a materialist can be a realist, and it is probably true that most are. Frederick B. Fitch maintained (American Philosophical Quarterly 8, no.1 (January 1971): 99-103) the surprising thesis that the only realities are Platonistically construed propositions. That view too is consistent with realism as defined. So a realist needn't be committed to the existence of concrete individuals at all.

Realism as defined is an ontological thesis. As such, it is not to be confused with the semantic doctrine according to which truth consists in correspondence. No doubt correspondence theory entails realism, but not conversely; hence the doctrines are distinct. There is no reason why a realist could not be a coherence theorist.

Some maintain that conceptual relativity entails the falsity of realism. The constructivism of Robert Schwartz, lately discussed, is built on this notion. But what exactly is conceptual relativity? Roughly, the idea is that our systems of representations have an arbitrary and conventional character. We are free to classify things in different ways depending on our interests and purposes. A sentence that is true relative to one system of classification can be false relative to a different system. 'There are nine planets' is true relative to one system of astronomical classification, but false according to another.

Consider a simple world consisting of marbles A, B, and C. How many objects are there in this world? 'Three' sounds like a good answer, and it is a good answer relative to one system of counting. But 'seven' is another answer if one counts not only the marbles but all the mereological sums constructible from them. We then get: A, B, C, A + B, B + C, A + C, and A + B + C. How many objects there are depends on what counts as an object, and this rests on a conceptual decision about the use of 'object.' Both answers are correct, which implies that there is no one privileged counting scheme.

An anti-realist might now argue as follows. If realism is true, then there is a privileged counting scheme with respect to the simple world just described. But there cannot be a privileged counting scheme as we have just seen. Therefore, realism is false.

If this is the argument, it is a bad argument. For realism does not require that there be one and only one conceptual scheme for describing reality. It merely requires that what exists exists independently of our representations of it. If what exists can be described in incompatible ways, it follows that only one of them can be true. Why should one conclude, from the fact of incompatible descriptions, that there is no independent reality being described?

The solar system can be described as consisting of the sun plus eight planets or as the sun plus nine planets. These descriptions are incompatible. Some will conclude that there is no independently real solar system; what there are are two different versions (Goodman) or two different cognitive constructions (Schwartz). But one is not bound to infer this. One can say instead that one and the same independent reality is being described in two different ways.

Reality does not dictate how 'planet' is to be defined: we have definitional latitude. But it does not follow that there is no independent reality. Once we fix the sense of 'planet' then reality supplies an answer as to how many planets there are.

This post draws heavily on John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, 1995, Ch. 7.

This has a Nietzschean flavor: "There are no facts, only interpretations." There is no base level of fact that supplies the uninterpreted material of interpretation. The world is interpretation or cognitive construction 'all the way down.' There is no mind-independent reality.

But isn't Schwartz committed to saying that Reality is such that there is no mind-independent reality and no base level of privileged building blocks? Or is the Schwartzian scheme just another construction among other possible constructions? Does his thesis of thoroughgoing cognitive construction apply also to his thesis that all is construction? Is his conceptual relativism a relative (relativized) relativism, or is it an absolute relativism?

If the latter, then he would appear to fall into contradiction. If all is construction, then how can the structure of cognition be fixed and invariant? How can it be necessarily such that it involves a construing or constructing of something which itself is a construction with no base level of raw givens? How can that be the way things are if there is no Way Things Are?

If, on the other hand, Schwartzian constructivism is a relativized conceptual relativism, an optional way of looking at things that serves the interests and purposes of people of his latitudinarian sort but not the interests and purposes of the more hide-bound among us, then how can he budge us? What can he appeal to to get us to give up our deep-seated belief in one determinate Reality an sich?

I had no trouble at all constructing this little dilemma, but that takes away not one bit of its sting. Absolute relativism is self-contradictory, while relativized relativism is self-vitiating: it allows the opponent to proceed on his merry way secure in his belief that there is after all a Way Things Are independent of us and our schemes and dreams.

But how does Schwartz move from SOME to ALL? If some properties and facts are constructed by us, it doesn't follow that all are. It is obvious that the Big Dipper is a grouping we impose, a conceptual overlay. But we impose it on something, a set of stars. Are stars and planets conceptual overlays? This is not obvious. Overlays over what? Indeed, the opposite strikes many of us as obvious: stars and planets exist in themselves apart from us and our conceptual schemes. The Big Dipper grouping is a human artifact. But could a star or a planet be a human artifact? Of course, astronomers have some latitude in defining what exactly shall be meant by 'planet.' Depending on how exactly they define the term, there will be more or fewer planets. So it is plausible to say that whether there are nine planets or only eight depends in part on us and our purposes. But that there are planets and stars at all does not depend on us. Or at least that is the view we should accept as epistemically innocent until proven guilty.

Suppose astronomers agree to demote Pluto from planetary status. This simply amounts to a reclassification of something that exists however it is classified. I used to be a Large Mammal in the TTLB Ecosystem, but I have been demoted to Marauding Marsupial. But that has no bearing on my (or my blog's) existence or those properties it must have to exist at all. Same with Pluto. Pluto may not be a planet, but it is something, and not a bare (property-less) something, nor just anything at all. Pluto could not be reclassifed as a black hole. No doubt one could classify Pluto as a dwarf planet and then replace 'dwarf planet' with 'black hole.' But that would wreak havoc in astronomy since 'black hole' has an established use. It would also have no bearing on the nature of the thing renamed. One cannot change the nature of a thing by naming or renaming it. It just now occurs to me that 'black' in 'black hole' is an alienans adjective: there is nothing contradictory in the expression, 'A black hole is not a hole.' See similar observations anent 'dwarf planet' and Owen Gingerich's objections thereto.

Pluto is something ontologically definite despite our false beliefs about it and our wavering conceptual decisions with respect to it. It is not indefinitely conceptually malleable. We cannot reclassify it as a black hole or as the mereological sum of all the AIDS-infected human blood in Africa. It has a nature that constrains our lust for classification and reclassification. There may be no fact of the matter as to whether or not it is a planet, but there is a fact of the matter as to whether or not its atmosphere is 98% nitrogen. And the same goes for nitrogen's having an atomic number of 7 and an atomic weight of 14.007. If you say that chemical theory might have been different, that the Periodic Table might be revised, that nitrogen might be reclassified as a non-element, then I will reiterate my point about ontological definiteness. Whatever false beliefs we have about nitrogen, and whatever reversals of conceptual decisions we may enact, there is still a constraint on our theorizing. And any talk of false beliefs presupposes at least the possibility of true beliefs, which again brings us back to a mind-independent reality.

There is obviously a huge difference between saying that the Big Dipper depends on us (obviously true) and saying that the stars so organized depend on us (presumably false and in any case not established). Schwartz wants to obliterate this difference, and the question is: how can he pull it off? The onus probandi is clearly on him, as I am standing on the terra firma of common sense. Common sense says that it is lunacy to suppose that the luna, moon, is conjured into existence, or carved out of some amorphous substance, by our thought and speech, and so on for its parts and their parts, etc. The fact that 'planet' and 'star' can be defined in different ways does not not show that the existence of clear-cut cases of planets and stars is a matter of human projection.

Schwartz thinks he can get to his destination by raising worries about the boundaries of these objects, and how they are fixed. (157) It is no doubt true that planets and such have vague boundaries. Where does the earth and its atmosphere stop and outer space start? There is no well-defined boundary. But when you crash into the moon, you'll know it, even though the moon's boundaries are also vague. Schwartz apparently thinks that earth and moon are ontologically definite only relative to "the background stage-setting afforded by constructing theories and conceptions . . . ." (157)

I don't see it. When Galileo looked through his primitive telescope at the moon, he saw imperfections that we know to be craters caused by the impacts of meteors. But Church officials weren't buying it, and they refused to look. The 'knew' from their Aristotlean cosmology that the moon was perfect and 'quintessential,' composed of a fifth 'essence' or substance more noble than the sublunary kinds (air, earth, fire, and water.) Still, Galieo and his ecclesiastical opponents were referring to the same object, the moon, despite their wildly different background theories. The false beliefs of the Churchmen did not prevent them from successfully referring to the same chunk of reality as Galileo referred to. So why is it only relative to a background theory that we "can pick out definite parts of the heavens . . ."? (157) Is Schwartz presupposing a descriptivist approach to names? And if you, dear reader, are defending Schwartz, are you presupposing it as well?

To sum up. I don't see that Schwartz has provided any decent argument from Some properties are human constructs to All properties are human constructs. There may be no fact of the matter as to whether or not there are nine planets, since it depends on the exact definition of 'planet.' But is there no fact of the matter as to whether or not there is a difference between a planet and a black hole? Of course there is, and it doesn't matter how exactly one defines either of these terms.

2. He gives an argument that he says "rests on little more than the assumption that properties possessed or instantiated by different sets of objects are different properties." (152) This assumption is of course true. But what I will show is that it is impossible to extract Schwartz' constructivist thesis from this near-triviality.

The argument goes like this. Let Ps be the set of all stars, and "let P1 to Pn be all simple combinatorial sets of the stars." (152) Since each of these sets is different, "each may be identified or correlated with a different property." (152) Assume that there is a list indicating which stars are members of which sets. Suppose 'A' is the name of a star, and that we ask: Is A a member of the class of Big Dipper stars? We cannot answer this question merely by inspecting the list of stars and sets of stars, for there is no way of knowing which set is the Big Dipper set. Schwartz is willing to concede that which sets there are is a ready-made fact, one quite independent of us. But which of these sets is the extension of the property BIG DIPPER STAR is not a ready-made fact. We must make a cognitive contribution: we must organize the heavenly bodies into constellations and decide which of them constitute the Big Dipper. "Without this cognitive contribution, there is nothing to A being or not being, having or not having the property BIG DIPPER STAR." (153)

What Schwartz is saying is that we make a property by "determining which set on the list is or is associated with the property BIG DIPPER STAR." (153) Without our making there would be no such property. "Without our contribution, no set is the property, hence no star just is 'by nature' an instance of it." Given that we make properties, it follows that we make facts, for a fact (in the monadic case at least) is just a particular's instantiating a property. "In the ready-made world there are no determinate facts about to which constellation, if any, A belongs." (153)

3. You will have guessed by now that Schwartz wants his we-make-properties thesis to be true of all properties, not just artificial and gerrymandered ones like the property of being a Big Dipper star, properties which are plausibly viewed as projected or constructed by us. Schwartz wants his thesis to hold also for the property of being a star, and for "properties in general." (156) "Property making goes all the way down, or up, as the case may be." (156) The Schwartzian picture is this. In mind-independent reality there are individuals and sets of individuals. But there are no properties and there are no facts. For properties and facts to emerge, our cognitive contibution is required. We decide which sets are which properties.

I hope you will forgive me if I find this absurd. Here is a particularly repugnant passage:

Thus, [star] A may exist in the ready-made world, yet in natura rerum there are no inherent facts about the properties it has. It is no more a star than it is a Big Dipper star and belongs to a constellation. Of course, even in a world lacking determinate qualities A is a member of P23, Ps, and many more sets. (156)

This implies the absurdity that the world in itself is just a collection of bare particulars or property-less substrata. But if A has no properties, then it would seem to lack these properties as well: the properties of being an individual, of being self-identical, of belonging to some sets and not others, of existing, of being distinct from other individuals, of not being a property, of being capable of having properties, of being one among many, not to mention the property of being a member of P23. Why are these features not conceptual impositions or cognitive contributions of human beings? And if they are conceptual impositions, what are they imposed upon?

Here is a simple but powerful reason to reject this sort of wild-eyed constructivism. We are told that ALL properties are made by us. (It is trivial to maintain that some properties emerge from our selecting and classifying activities.) But if all properties are made by us, then that includes our properties, the properties we makers possess. Whether we are purely physical beings, or mental-physical composite beings, or transcendental egos -- whatever we are, as long as we are something, we have properties, and in virtue of some of these properties we are world-creators. It follows that we (individually? collectively?) make the properties in virtue of which we make anything. And this, I submit, is incoherent. The properties that constitute me a world-creator cannot be properties I myself create. Not even God could create the properties that constitute him God and creator. The divine nature (the conjunction of the divine attributes) is not itself and cannot be a divine creation. For if God created his own nature, what is logically prior (the nature in virture of which God is creator in the first place) would be logically posterior -- which is absurd. And surely what God can't do, I can't do, whether I work alone or with others, now, or 'after the Revolution.'

More tomorrow. But before closing, one more point. Above I quoted Schwartz as saying that his argument "rests on little more than the assumption that properties possessed or instantiated by different sets of objects are different properties." (152) Nothing controversial about this: properties with different extensions are different properties. (The converse, according to which properties with the same extensions are the same properties, is false.) But how, from the uncontroversial claim, do we get to Schwartzian constructivism? How do we get to the idea that properties are made by us? There is no way I can see to get to this wild-eyed thesis by squeezing the above near-triviality.

What is philosophy? I won't attempt a definition, but a mere characterization. Philosophy is not fundamentally a set of views but an activity, an activity whereby a questing individual, driven by a deep-seated need to know the truth, applies discursive reason to the data of life in an attempt to arrive at the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters. Briefly, philosophy is the pursuit of the ultimate truth by dialectical means, chiefly, reason and argument. Since the premises of arguments can derive from sensory observation, my characterization embraces both 'empiricists' and 'rationalists.'

Now if something like this characterization is correct, then I see no difficulty in classifying both Aquinas and Kant as philosophers. For both are engaged in an activity of inquiry directed at ultimate objects and ultimate questions using the faculty of reason.

I note that you lump Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas together and oppose them to Kant. You correctly conclude that philosophy as understood by Plato and Aquinas is impossible within the Kantian purview. But it is also true that philosophy as understood by Plato and Platonists is impossible within an Aristotelian framework. So I could pose a similar question to you: What is the nature of philosophy such that Plato and Aristotle can both be said to have done it?

I am suggesting that it is a mistake to attempt to define philosophy in terms of a list of conclusions or substantive theses. For Plato, we are essentially minds accidentally embodied; for Thomas the Aristotlean we are essentially both minds and bodies so that any immortality that accrues to us is not natural, as in Plato, but involves the intervention of a supernatural agent. This is an important substantive difference but it does not mean that Thomas is not a philosopher. Similarly, Kant's grappling with the question of how synthetic a priori judgments in mathematics, physics, and metaphysics (metaphysica specialis) are possible leads him to the view that a certain sort of metaphysics is impossible as knowledge, as Wissenschaft. I see no reason to banish Kant from the tribe of philosophers on the ground that his conclusions are unpalatable to old-time metaphysicians. For whatever their epistemic worth, he arrives at them philosophically, that is, by the use of unaided human reason.

Another point that needs to be made is that your opposition of Aquinas and Kant would be vigorously rejected by the school of thought known as Transcendental Thomism among whose luminaries are to be counted Joseph Marechal, Karl Rahner, and Emerich Coreth.

Consider Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light-years from earth. Schwartz’ just mentioned claim implies that this star is a product of a conceptual (not physical) making by human beings. We make it have the properties it has, and we make it exist. Schwartz writes, "Whether there are stars, and what they are like, are facts that can emerge only in our attempts to describe and organize our world." (435)

Read in one way, this sentence is trivially true; read in another way, it is clearly false. The plausibility of Schwartz’s conceptual idealism, I contend, rests on the conflation of these two readings. This is a very common pattern in philosophy. One makes an equivocal statement bearing in its bosom two senses, one that makes the statement appear clearly true, the other that makes it appear informative and substantial.

Reading 1: Whether there are stars, and what they are like, are facts that can BE KNOWN only in our attempts to describe the world and organize our thoughts about it.

Reading 2: Whether there are stars, and what they are like, are facts that can EXIST only in our attempts to describe the world and organize our thoughts about it.

Now (1) is clearly, indeed trivially, true. That Alpha Centauri exists, and that it is 4.3 light-years from earth, could not possibly be known unless there are beings who desire to know, and prosecute the requisite investigations. (2), however, is a stellar falsehood; or at least there is no reason to believe it.

One problem, of course, is the weasel word (fudge word?) ‘emerge.’ Being ambiguous, it can mean come to light, come to be known, but also, come to exist. Thus it seems the Schwartzian thesis is fueled by an equivocation.

A second problem is one I mentioned in the earlier post. A fact that is a true proposition. For example, ‘It is a fact that Chomsky teaches at MIT’ is equivalent in meaning to ‘It is a true proposition that Chomsky teaches at MIT.’ A proposition, however, is a representational entity: it represents something, in the typical case, something distinct from itself. Now propositions can be reasonably viewed as mental entities, entities that exist only ‘in’ minds, i.e., only as the accusatives of mental acts. So of course facts require minds if by ‘fact’ is meant ‘fact that.’ But there is another, more robust, notion of fact. Facts in this second sense are not propositional representations, or any kind of representation, but truth-makers of propositional representations. These are not facts that, but facts of. For example, the fact of Chomsky’s being a leftist. It is even clearer if we omit the ‘of’ which here functions as a mere device of apposition rather than as a genitive: the fact, Chomsky’s being a leftist. This concrete fact composed of Chomsky and the property of being a leftist is the truth-maker of ‘Chomsky is a leftist.’

So although it is reasonably held that facts that (i.e., true propositions) are mind-involving or mind-dependent, it does not follow that facts of (truth-making facts) are mind-involving.

More later.

My conjecture is that the current use of 'cash' and 'cash out' by philosophers is in large part due to Wilfrid Sellars' use of these expressions, although I don't have at my finger tips any specific passages in Sellars' writings. It is probable that Sellars was adapting William James' use of 'cash-value.' Describing the pragmatic method in "What Pragmatism Means," James writes, "You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience." (William James, Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth, ed. Ayer, Harvard University Press, 1981, pp. 31-32.)

A pragmatist is one who, being told that such-an-such an idea is true, wants to know "the truth's cash-value in experiential terms." (p. 169) According to James, "True ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot." (Ibid.)

If so, then to cash a concept is not merely to analyze it, but to analyze it into experiential terms. Thus Hume cashed out the concept of causation into such experiential terms as spatiotemporal contiguity, temporal succession, and constant conjunction. The sub-concept of necessary connection remained a 'check' that could not be cashed in experiential terms, and so was cashiered -- if you will allow me a pun. If we were simply analyzing the ordinary concept of causation, we would have to mention the sub-concept of necessary connection, that the cause necessitates the effect, bringing it into existence. By cashing out the concept of causation in experiential terms, however, what Hume was doing was replacing the ordinary concept of causation with one that satisfies empiricist strictures.

So although I wouldn't disagree that 'cash out' is used in the general sense of 'analyze,' I would suggest that it carries the more specific flavor of 'analyze into experiential terms.'