This post tentatively expounds, in outline, an aporetic conception of philosophy, one whose focus is on aporiai, problems, rather than on positive theses. I would like philosophy to be more than aporetics, but I am not sure it can be more. I will first state my four theses, and then say something in explanation of them. There can be no question of proving them, and in this venue I will be able only to begin to sketch a case for them.
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)
Taking the thin end of the wedge, do you agree that in certain areas of philosophy there are incredibly close connections between linguistic or logical problems, and apparently metaphysical ones? I'm thinking particularly of the connection between Aristotle's Metaphysics (esp. book Z) which is, er, about Metaphysics, and his Categories, which is included in the Organon, or logical works. The peculiar relation between predicate and subject, and what he says about the subject being in some sense not predicable, because it is fundamental, is at the heart of his metaphysics, i.e. his quest for what ultimately exists. Yet this relation seems equally to apply to the (obviously linguistic) feature that proper names are not common nouns or adjectives. We can't say 'another Aristotle' as we can 'another philosopher'.
Mill also was of the view that metaphysics is really a load of hogwash that confuses purely semantic relations with real or 'metaphysical' ones. " metaphysics is a 'fertile field of delusion propagated by language'.". We tend to think of linguistic philosophy as being twentieth century. But it all began long before that.
I like your outline/sketch very much. But I'm pretty obviously biased, since I think the most important task of philosophy is the framing of questions. Of course, there are some questions that are the products of misunderstanding and linguistic confusions, but removing the misunderstanding and confusion serves primarily (I think) to bring the "real" questions -- and thus the contours of our ignorance -- into clearer focus.
I asked my father where land's end was. He replied 'In Cornwall'.
1. I agree that there is a close connection between logico-linguistic problems and metaphysical ones. You're right: strictly speaking, 'Frege is a second Aristotle' is nonsense. There can be only one Aristotle. This is reflected in the linguistic fact that proper names are not predicable. But I'm not sure what Mill has to do with this, or what exactly you are saying about metaphysics being hogwash.
2. According to G. Bergmann, Brentano was the first linguistic philosopher.
3. One problem that troubled me as a child, long before I knew the word 'philosophy,' was why actions we classify as good are good rather than evil. What makes good actions good? Why should we prefer them? Another thought that perplexed the hell out of me was the thought of pure nothingness. I approached this theologically. Suppose that God never created anything, and then suppose there's no God: just nothing at all. I tried to conceive this, and it induced a strange giddiness. I was maybe 8 years old or younger.
4. One reason I could never take Moore very seriously is that he confessed that it was not the world, but the texts of philosophers, that got him philosophizing. No wonder he ended up with a miserable common-sensism. He's also boring as hell, though essential reading, I'll admit.
Can you give a clear example of a pseudo-problem?
Henry,
Money raises interesting phil. questions. What makes a C-note money, for example, has nothing to do with its physical properties. Nor is its value intrinsic to it -- which is why one cannot increase the wealth of a society by printing more lean green. Still, if you counterfeited a pile of C-notes and distributed them to indigentes, that would materially benefit them.
When speaking of "products of misunderstanding and linguistic confusions," I wasn't thinking of the semi-technical notion of psuedo-problems, but of more mundane things like mistaking contraries for contradictories or running afoul of the use/mention distinction. Problems that arise from such sources aren't very perplexing, except in practical terms, and tend to be resolved pretty quickly by philosophers.
I now see what you mean, and I agree.
On the Mill, you will have to follow the link I provided to a passage from Mill where he carefully shows how the essential/accidental problem involves a confusion about language. And at the end, he says that metaphysics is a field of delusion propagated by language. So he predates Brentano. Remember also Brentano got a lot from Mill.
Further back, Hobbes argues that metaphysics is linguistic confusion. Specifically he sees metaphysics is a Latin subject, and argues that if you translate the Latin into its plain English equivalent, you get obvious nonsense. So does he count as the first analytic philosoper, I wonder.
Should we have a competition to find the most boring philosopher?
Another related question: does anyone read philosophy books through? Thomas Reid made a famous admission, in a book about Aristotle's logic, that he had never read Aristotle's logical works in their entirety, because of the 'dryness' of their subject matter (i.e. they are boring, as indeed they really are). He was terribly criticised for this. But, in mitigation, the bits he did read, he clearly read very carefully, and his comments on the logical works are among the most insightful I have read.
Frege also criticises reviewers for not finding the time to read his work carefully. So, in general, who admits to not reading philosophical works through?
One admirable trait of Moore is that he tries to be perfectly clear, which is why he is he is so apparently verbose although, as you point out, he is not really verbose. To do philosophy well one has to be patient; Moore is good training in the virtue of patience.
1. (As long as I can remember.) I noticed that as one backs up from a cloud (or the cloud goes skidding toward the horizon) one sees more and more of the side. This prompted me to wonder whether, if one could back up along a flat plane infinitely, one could catch a glimpse of the very top, supposing for the sake of the illustration that the cloud were replaced by a cube. (I suspected not but wanted to know how one's angle of view could continuously and monotonically change without going over to the top.)
2. (Around second or third grade.) We had an old Ford Falcon and I remember having to give the door a heave to get it to close. Push too softly and it would bounce back at you; push hard enough and it would slam shut. I wondered whether those two conditions guaranteed that there was some degree of force with which I could push the door that would leave it just balanced between coming back at me and going all the way. Much practice convinced me that I was never going to find the magic intermediate push by trial and error. But the existence claim intrigued me, and I knew that my failure to find it in practice was not strong evidence against it.
3. (Some time in my early teens, while riding back from the library on a warm summer day with a backpack full of books.) Take a dictionary, open it anywhere, and pick a boldfaced word. This entry will have a definition that is given in terms of other words. Look up each of those other words; they have their own definitions, given in words. For each word in each of those definitions, repeat the process. After a few iterations, one is practically guaranteed to come upon a word being used in a definition that was previously defined. What does this show? I decided that (a) it is an inevitable and fairly innocuous consequence of the fact that the number of words in English is finite, but (b) it also shows that a dictionary is semantically useful only to someone who knows in some independent fashion what at least some of the words mean. (Looking back, I'm amused by the parallel between this one and Searle's Chinese Room argument, which I had certainly never heard of.)
These interesting reports shown how child is father to the man. As for #3, there is not only a parallel with the Chinese Room, but also with Saussure and Derrida. I hope you don't find that too disturbing, given your aversion to Continental philosophy!
I am sure you have had the somewhat related experience of temporary aphasia as when you stare at a word, focussng on its visual or aural properties to the point where it loses meaning.
You write:Ah well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
But here's a challenge for you. The first philosophy book that I ever read (all the way through, I think) was something that would be classified, broadly, as in the Continental tradition -- and I enjoyed it! Can you guess which book that was? (Hint: the author wasn't on your list of those who set your pulse racing when you were 21, though it was published around that time (assuming you were born around 1950). But it seems plausible to me that you've read the book, and if you did, I suspect you enjoyed it too.)
2. Disallowing comments from a particular person, or deleting an offensive, off-topic, or otherwise substandard comment, has nothing to do with censorship. People who think otherwise confuse censorship with lack of sponsorship. I am under an obligation not to interfere with anyone's exercise of legitimate free speech rights. But I am not under any obligation to aid and abet anyone's exercise of free speech rights, legitimate or illegitimate.
3. The Comments area is not an open forum for anyone to say anything about any topic. As the name implies, it is primarily for commenting on the author(s)' posts. But to comment on them, one must have read them. And if I have spent three hours on a post, a reader will not understand it in thirty seconds. Secondarily, the Comments area is to facilitate civil discussion between and among commenters as long as the discussion remains on-topic.
4. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.