The Black Book

The Metaphysical Society Journal of Philosophy 2012/2013

Edited by: James Nugent Cathal Ó Domhnalláin Design and Layout by: Bishoy Abdou

ISSN 2013-5012

© The Metaphysical Society

PREFACE The Black Book is a collection of philosophy papers written by Trinity undergraduate students involved with TCD’s Metaphysical Society (The Metafizz). It signifies the revival of a previous held societal tradition, of an annual philosophical publication, that has sadly been lost in recent years.

The book consists of four chapters, with each individually looking at specific areas of Philosophy. Chapter 1 investigates platonic philosophy, specifically the importance of Thrasymachus within The Republic, and the explainability of Plato’s forms. Chapter 2 examines the interplay of God, religion, and secularism in relation to moral philosophy. Chapter 3 then probes into questions of personal identity, and the possibility of an afterlife that falls under the banner of existentialism.

Chapter 4 concludes this volume by inspecting the field of analytic philosophy, explicitly truth theory, and the meaning of Wittgenstein’s opening sections of The Philosophical Investigations.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Black Book would not have become a reality had it not been for the work of many people in, and outside of, our college community. The Metafizz would like to especially thank all those who have contributed content for the book, Cathal Ó Domhnalláin for his editing time, Bishoy Abdou for his great layout and design editing, Brunswick Press for their printing work, and everyone at Trinity Publications for making this a reality for everyone in our society this year. Your time and dedication to this publication to help the promotion of philosophy in Trinity is strongly appreciated by all of us working on the Metafizz committee.

Printed by Brunswick Press www.brunswickpress.ie

CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 1.1

“Predication and Plato’s Forms - From Essence to Difference”,

by Dean McHugh (JF Philosophy and English)

1.2

“Thrasymachus is Important to Plato’s Republic – But Why?”,

by Erling Vaaler (SF PPES)

PAGE 1 10

CHAPTER 2: MORAL PHILOSOPHY 2.1

“Christianity is a Humanism” by Hermann Koerner (SF PPES)

21

2.2

“On Philip Kitcher’s Challenges for Secularism”

by Marcus Hunt (SS Philosophy and Political Science)

25

CHAPTER 3: EXISTENTIALISM 3.1

“Some Perspectives on the Problem of Self ”

by James Nugent (SS PPES)

35

3.2

“Semblances of the Afterlife: Connections between Price’s “Sur vival and the Idea of Another World” and the Bardo as depicted in The Tibetan Book of the Dead” by Lia Duggan (JS Philosophy and Classics)

42

CHAPTER 4: ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY 4.1

“Truth and Reality: A comparative analysis of correspondence and utility theory” by Marc Morgan (SS Philosophy and Economics)

51

4.2

57

“Is Augustine’s description of language, in Wittgenstein’s Philo sophica Investigations, a philosophical account?” by Timothy Coughlan (SS PPES)

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

André Gide

THE BLACK BOOK

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato�

A.N Whitehead

CHAPTER 1: PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY Predication and Plato’s Forms - From Essence to Difference

By Dean McHugh What does it mean to say “Socrates is just?”, or for that matter, “X is F?” where X is a real object and F is an ideal one. The concern of this essay is whether the forms can be explained while maintaining their status as Forms. This essay uses developments against the Third Man Argument in an attempt to explain the meaning of a Form, that is, how a Form is to be explained. Section I of this essay seeks to outline the distinction between types of predication while section II attempts to show that the Form participating in itself does not suitably explain the Forms. Section III examines the ways in which predication must be used in arguments regarding the Forms, and section IV examines the implications of explanation through relation to other Forms, concluding that to seek explanation of the Forms results in aporia and their untenability as autonomous essences.

I. Two Types of Predication In combating the Third Man Argument, Francis Pelletier and Edward Zalta draw on an important distinction first made by Constance Meinwald regarding predication of the Forms.1 Pelletier and Zalta define that pros ta alla predication, or predicationPTA, “Holds when x is any object (perceptible object or Form) and F is a property which x exemplifies or instantiates in the traditional sense”.

This predication is termed as x ‘participating in’ or ‘instantiating’ F.2 To take one of Meinwald’s examples of predication pros ta alla: “Aristides is just”.3 Aristides participates in the form of the Just (or just-ness or justice). Justness is not sufficient for Aristides to be Aristides, but rather a characteristic Aristides possesses in virtue of his being just, he is not essentially just. This point is elucidated in 1 This distinction was outlined by R. E. Allen in terms of ‘derivative’ and ‘primary designation’, whereby “In derivative designation, to say of something that it is F is to say that it is casually dependent upon the F”. Whereas, “when ‘F’ is used in primary designation, it is a synonym of ‘the F Itself ’ and ‘F-ness’; therefore, with primary designation to say that F-ness is F is to state an identity.”

Meinwald, Plato’s Parmenides (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 75, footnote 18. Allen’s distinction is further clarified and applied to predication by the work of Frede and Meinwald. Meinwald traces the distinction of two types of predication to Frede’s “Prädikation und Existenzaussage”, and further describes this distinction from Plato’s language, namely through the difference between predications pros ta alla (PTA), and predication pros heauto (PH). Pelletier and Zalta derive their terminology from Meinwald.

2 Plato’s own language is far from consistent in this regard. Dancy highlights the origins of this confusion in Plato’s language. In the Lysis alone, Plato refers to particulars being-present-to (παρεῖναί), being-added-to (προσγίγνεσθαι), being in (εἶυαι ἐν or ἐνεῖναι) and partaking of or sharing of (μετέχειν) the universals. R. M. Dancy, “Explaining: presence, participation; the Lysis”, Plato’s Introduction of Forms (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 2004), p. 186.

2

THE BLACK BOOK

Phaedo 102b-c:

Surely the real reason why Simmias is bigger is not because he is Sim mias but because of the height which he incidentally possesses.

According to Pelletier and Zalta, pros heauto predication, or ‘predicationPH’, “holds when x is a Form and F is a property which is, in some sense, part of the nature of that Form.”4 To use another of Meinwald’s examples, “The just is virtuous” is a predicationPH. Virtue (or virtuous-ness or the Virtuous) is a necessary characteristic for Justice. Without Virtue, Justice would not be Justice, thereby indicating that Virtue is essential to Justice.

II. Explanation through Self-predication The problem of the Third Man argument arises from the acceptance of selfpredicationPTA, that F-ness itself participates in F. Parmenides 132a indicates that because Largeness is large in virtue of participating in itself, the Form must necessarily be considered alongside its participants, thus the One-over-Many principle must be repeatedly applied and an infinite regress ensues.

Alexander Nehamas uses the following statement from Phaedo 110c4-8 to prove Plato’s acceptance of self-predication:

If anything is beautiful other than the beautiful itself, it is because it participates in that beautiful; and I mean this for everything.5

However, Phaedo 110c4-8 does not designate that beauty (‘the beautiful itself ’), is beautiful in terms of predicationPTA. Phaedo 110c4-8 is indicative of predicationPTA given the necessity of participation for particulars to be called beautiful.

As Phaedo 102b explains,

The reason why other things are called after the forms is that they par ticipate in the forms.

So anything that is beautiful necessarily participates in beauty. Yet Parmenides specifically refers to beautiful things “other than the beautiful itself ”, thereby showing that his statement should not be taken to include the particulars among the universal. Phaedo 110c4-8 stresses that the beautiful (the form of beauty) does not participate in itself by specifically excluding the form of beauty from its participants. Moreover, consider Republic 476c8-d3:

The man whose thought recognises a beauty in itself, and is able to dis 3 F. Pelletier and E. Zalta, “How to Say Goodbye to the Third Man”, Noȗs 34, no. 2 (Jun. 2000): 167.

4 “How to Say Goodbye to the Third Man”, Noȗs 34, no. 2 (Jun. 2000): p. 167.

5 Alexander Nehamas, “Self-Predication and Plato’s Theory of Forms”, p. 93.

Predication and Plato’s Forms - From Essence to Difference

3

tinguish that self-beautiful and the things that participate in it, and neither supposes the participants to be it nor it the participants – is his life, in your opinion, a waking or a dream state?

He is very much awake.

Therefore we cannot consider self-predication as exclusively self-predicationPTA.6 Nevertheless this passage from the Phaedo does indicate (if rather obscurely) that the beautiful is beautiful. In light of this we must attempt to construct a new interpretation of what ‘the beautiful is beautiful’, or ‘F-ness is F’ means by examining the argument for self-predicationPH.

An acceptance of self-predicationPH of “F-ness is F” would imply that there is an intrinsic link from F-ness to F, that F is somehow implied in the F itself. Phaedo102b above determines a semantic link of eponymy between the Forms and particulars.7 Pelletier and Zalta define this link or “Hook” in terms of encoding, whereby in predicationPH, taking x as a property, “x encodes F“, and furthermore that “The properties that ideal objects encode, unlike the properties that they exemplify, are the ones by which they are individuated.”8 This approach of encoding can be applied to Protagoras 331b3-7:

I should say on my own behalf that justice is holy and holiness just, and on your behalf, if you would allow me, I should make the same reply, that justice is either the same thing as holiness or very like it, and that justice unquestionably resembles holiness and holiness justice.

Here Socrates proposes that because justice is resemblant of holiness, or to adopt Pelletier and Zalta’s terminology, because justice encodes holiness Socrates considers that justice is holiness. In this context, justice is holiness by way of predicationPH. Meinwald’s distinction is crucial in rejecting that self-predication necessarily means self-predicationPTA. We may reject the interpretation that in Protagoras 331b3-7, justice is holiness by way of predicationPTA, in other words that justice participates in holiness, which may result from this passage without an understanding of the distinction between prediactionPTA and predicationPH.

What are the implications of rejecting self-precidationPTA on the 6 It should be noted that Protagoras 330c3-e2 is not specific in its designation of what is meant by ‘justice is just’ and ‘holiness is holy’. It seems so obvious as to require no explanation.

7 According to Bestor, “We assume that if a word ‘f ’ requires some sort of hook to the world to make it meaningful, and if that hook is provided by its being the proper name of a special Form, then it must apply to the sensibles it applies to in some other way – or else the only meaning hook would already have been provided. Moreover, we assume that this ‘other way’ must be indirect, of a secondorder, and must somehow derive from the primary naming way.” Thomas Bestor, “Plato’s Semantics and Plato’s Parmenides”, Phronesis 25, no. 1 (1980): p. 41.

8 Pelletier and Zalta, “How to Say Goodbye to the Third Man”, p. 175.

9 Jacques Derrida, “Structure Sign and Play”, in Writing and Difference, (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 352.

4

THE BLACK BOOK

grounds of the Third Man Argument? Jacques Derrida indirectly considers the implications of such a conceptual framework that denies self-predicationPTA:

The centre is at the centre of the totality, and yet, since the centre does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality), the totality has its centre elsewhere. The centre is not the centre. The concept of a centred structure—although it represents coherence itself, the condition of the epistēmē as philosophy or science—is contradictorily coherent.”9

If we interpret the Form as the one ‘centre’ and the many as the ‘totality’, then for Derrida, Forms that do not partake in the particular must remain unexplained to remain coherent or true. In a discipline that views truth as justification or meaning, this is unsuprisingly unsettling.10 Nevertheless, Derrida appears to suggest embracing the paradox that a Form must remain unexplained to remain coherent.

Though Pelletier and Zalta may have explained the Third Man argument away, the Forms remain unexplained. All we have proved so far is that statements such as “Socrates is just because he participates in justice which encodes justness” do not result in an infinite regress. This is most likely because we have been working a superficial level of explanation with the tautology: “x is F because x participates in F-ness which encodes F.” III. Using Predication to Develop Valid Arguments for Forms To delve deeper into explaining the forms let us now apply our knowledge of the distinct types of predication. The following arguments explain what types of predication can be used in statements linking form to particular. To consider a classic syllogism drawn on by Pelletier and Zalta:

1.

All men are mortal.

(PredicationPTA)

Socrates is a man.

(PredicationPTA) _________________ _____________ Socrates is mortal. (PredicationPTA) Now to convert this argument into one regarding the Forms:

2.

Man-ness encodes mortality.

(PredicationPH) Socrates is a man. (PredicationPTA) _________________ _____________ Socrates is mortal. (PredicationPTA) 10 Though the distinction between justification and meaning may well be arbitrary, as both can be taken implying one and the same thing. “Meaning is to be explained in terms of what is taken as justifying an utterance.” Michael Dummett, Truth and Other Enigmas (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 452.

Predication and Plato’s Forms - From Essence to Difference

5

The argument remains valid. The change, however is that we have distanced the argument from a contingency on all real men in existence (who may only be considered mortal by way of induction) and instead used the supposed eternal and unchanging Form of man-ness, thus resulting in a change from induction to deduction and predicationPTA to predicationPH.11

To examine using predicationPTA in statements regarding the Forms and particulars, consider the following argument:

3.

Man-ness is incorporeal.

(PredicationPTA) Socrates is a man. (PredicationPTA) _________________ _____________ Socrates is incorporeal. (PredicationPTA) Here the invalidity of the argument stems from the confusion of formal ideality with particular reality. It follows from this argument that the way in which the Forms participate in each other is fundamentally different from the way in which particulars participate in the Forms.

This question of predicationPTA regarding the Forms is considered by Cherniss, who posits the rule that “Whatever is F in the first sense cannot be F in the second”.12 For Cherniss, if a Form encodes a property it cannot instantiate that same property. Vlastos addresses this in relation to the “Categoreal properties of the forms: Immutability, Intelligibility, Incorporeality”.13 Cherniss argues that the Form of Unity must encode unity while simultaneously participating in it, and that if self-predicationPTA is possible, then self-particiaptionPTA is possible in all cases. Vlastos denies this by assuming that the Form itself can be F without participating in the F, his reasoning being that Plato no where addresses whether self-predication necessarily implies self-participation, thus Plato does not commit himself, as Cherniss thought, to absolute division of a Form either encoding a property or participating in that property. Vlastos resorts to “The fact that F-ness is F unexplained”.14

It seems illogical to apply predicationPH to real objects. Consider the statement “Socrates encodes justice.” It would have to follow that Socrates is necessarily and essentially just.15 For this to be tenable the uniqueness principle—that each form encodes but one property—would need to be overruled, as would ontological dependence of the particular on the Forms outlined in Phaedo 101c3-4: 11 This argument broaches the problem how we come to know the properties of the Forms in the first instance, if not primarily through observance of real objects and inferences; a question raised in Parmenides 134 yet outside the scope of this essay.

12 As highlighted in Gregory Vlastos, “ ‘Self-Predication’ in Plato’s Later Period”, The Philosophical Review 78, no. 1 (Jan. 1969): p. 75. 13 & 14 Ibid Ibid., p. 76.

Ibid., p. 78.

6

THE BLACK BOOK

You would loudly proclaim that know of no other way in which any given object can come into existence except by participation in the real ity peculiar to its appropriate universal.

Taking all of the above arguments into account, we can conclude that arguments regarding particulars and the forms must follow the following certain pattern.

Taking X is a real object and F-ness and F’-ness as ideal objects,

4.

F-ness encodes F’-ness.

(PredicationPH) X is an F. (PredicationPTA) _________________ _____________ X is F’. (PredicationPTA) In other words, from this pattern it is observable that real objects (X) participate in an ideal object (F) which encodes other distinct ideal objects (F’), resulting in the participation of the real object in the encoded ideal objects.

IV. The Encoding Approach: from Essence to Difference The process of encoding illuminates a controversial point regarding the Forms; that they are understood only in virtue of their encoding other Forms. Is it sufficient to say that “It is by beauty that beautiful things are beautiful”, as Phaedo 100d supposes? The predicationPH approach to explanation would propose rather “It is by what beauty encodes that beautiful things are beautiful.” This problem of a Form’s contingency on others was apparent to Plato, considered in Parmenides 133c-d:

Those forms which are what they are with reference to one another have their being in such references among themselves, not with reference to those likenesses, or whatever we are to call them, in our world, which we

15 Here Socrates is merely an example for a real object. It could be argued, however, that in these arguments Socrates does reperesent a Form given that Socrates is not a real object to us but rather an ideal we construct from Plato’s works.

16 A point also stressed at Phaedo 103e.

17 Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, Perry Meisel and Haun Saussy (eds.), translated by Wade Baskin, (New York: Columbia Universirty Press, 2011).

18 Jacques Derrida, “Différance”, in A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, Peggy Kamuf (ed.)

(Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991): p. 64.

19 Jacques Derrida, “Différance”, p. 63.

20 Differential meaning gives reconsideration to the question of Plato’s method of inquiry. In the context of the Protagoras, rather than asking the ‘Tí esti’ (‘What is it?’) question initially, the answer must come from an accumulation of ‘Poteron ... e‘ (‘Whether or not...’) questions. This claim would seem to turn the Principle of the Priority of Definition for Knowledge on its head, as it results in the assertion that knowing what is and what isn’t encoded in F is the only way of knowing the definition of F. Cf. Vasilis Politis, “What do the arguments in the Protagoras amount to?”, Phronesis 57, (2012): 209 - 239.

Predication and Plato’s Forms - From Essence to Difference

7

possess and so come to be called by their several names.

So the Forms are understood only in their differences and similarities to other Forms.16 This extract resonates with Saussure’s theory of differential meaning, that a term can only be understood in relation to others.17 Although this theory was first and formost a linguistic one, if we are to follow the linguistic turn, the fate of language parallels the fate of philosophy. The extension of differential meaning to all thought is taken up by Derrida in that, “What Saussure has written about language can be extended to signs in general”.18 Derrida recognises the presence of differential meaning in thought by way of his neologism ‘différance’, the process whereby meaning is not essential but constructed from the difference and deferrance of signs (or for our purposes Forms) onto other signs in a mutually supporting coherentist framework.19 To reassess the argument of the Protagoras in this way, the meaning of virtue is deferred onto its similarity with knowledge as both are teachable. This, however, only seeks to bring us further from explaining virtue per se.20 Moreover, in Structure, Sign and Play, Derrida indirectly addresses the encoding approach as

A series of substitutions of centre for centre, as a linked chain of de terminations of the centre. Successively, and in a regulated fashion, the centre receives different forms or names. The history of metaphysics, ike the history of the West, is the history of these metaphors and me tonymies. […] It could be shown that all the names related to fundamentals, or to the centre have always designated an invariable presence—eidos, archē, telos, energia, ousia”. 21

It is no accident that Derrida specifically mentions ‘eidos’ and ‘ousia’ (‘idea’ and ‘essence’ respectively), terms used by Plato in referring to the Forms. Evidently, Derrida’s concept of the ‘centre’ is equatable with Plato’s concept of the Form.

From this we may conclude that on Derrida’s account the encoding approach reveals différance, “That which threatens [...] the presence of the thing itself in its essence”, thus threatening the very idea of Forms as ousia.

Given that the meaning of each Form is attributed by its relation to all 21 Derrida, Structure, Sign, and Play, p. 353.

22 Derrida addresses the implausibiliy of such a centre in terms of the absent ‘transcendental signified’. Cf. Structure, Sign and Play, esp. p. 354.

23 René Descartes, “Second Meditation”, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, (Cambridge: Cmabridge University Press, 1984), p. 16.

24 Francis Grabowski III, Plato, Metaphysics and the Forms, p. 107.

25 Their fustration could be understood as Plato representing the dilemma of the Forms as only coherent if unexplained. If the Forms cannot be explained, they run contrary to the principle of metaphysics that the nature of reality can be found and articulated, expounded for example by Socrates at Euthyphro 6c-d, that because Euthyphro cannot explain what piety is, he cannot deem whether or not actions are pious. Thus non-explaination seems to stand outside of metaphysics, indicating that the Forms are paradoxical, of which the only viable action is to jettison metaphysics, or avoid them.

8

THE BLACK BOOK

other Forms, is a stable metaphysical structure of Forms possible? Are the Forms immutable, or as Socrates asks at Euthyphro 5d, “Is not the holy always one and the same thing in every action”? Surely if one Form remains unchanging then it must follow that all others derive their stability from such a centre.22 Similarly, Descartes hoped for “One firm and unmoveable point” on which to build an entire epistemology, yet hope for such stability is lost at Parmenides133d:23

These things in our world which bear the same names as the forms are related among themselves, not to the forms, and all the names of that sort that they bear have reference to one another, not the the forms.

Here Parmenides posits a wedge between ideal and real objects, describing the “Great ontological gap between ordinary particulars and the forms” as insurmountable.24 This is a metaphysical precedent to the post-structuralist conception that the signifier is constantly ‘floating free’ of and escaping the signified it is supposed to represent. On Parmenides’ account, whether Socrates is just cannot be answered by answering whether or not Socrates participates in Justice (in virtue of participating in what Justice encodes), but by answering whether or not Socrates is similar to other just things. Thus knowledge of real objects is subject to différance just as much as the Forms. Furthermore, by accepting the lack of relation between real and ideal objects, the One-over-Many princple becomes void, as it becomes impossible to deduce a Form from objects that get their particular existence from each other irrelevant of ideal object.

In attempting to explain the Forms time and time again we encounter aporia. To believe that the Form is explained by being a perfect instantiation of its property is to encounter the Third Man. To explain the Form in virtue of its relation to the property it encodes is to simply prove a tautology and nothing more.

To judge that the Forms accumulate their meaning in relation to other forms is to reject their autonomy as essences. In short, to believe in the Forms is to be ignorant of their meaning; to ask for their explanation is to encounter their insurmountable problems. In digging for a metaphysical centre of knowledge we are confronted with groundlessness. On this account the recurring aporetic ending of Socrates’ search for definitions, the interlocutors’ frustration and hasty escape seem unsuprising.25 The threat at Parmenides 135c that in taking their advice, “We will destroy the significance of all discourse”, seems a little more bareable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1)

2)

3)

Allen, R. E. “Participation and Predication in Plato’s Middle Dialogues.” The Philosophical Review 69, no. 2 (Apr., 1960): 147 - 164.

Bestor, Thomas W. “Plato’s Semantics and Plato’s Parmenides”. In Phronesis 25, no. 1. (1980): 38 - 75.

Dancy, R. M. “Explaining: presence, participation; the Lysis”. In Plato’s Introduc tion of Forms. 186 - 206. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Predication and Plato’s Forms - From Essence to Difference

9

4) Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign, and Play”. In Writing and Difference, edited

and translation by Alan Bass, 351-370. London: Routledge, 2001.- “Différance”.

In A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf,

1991. 59-79.

5) Descartes, Réné. “Second Meditation”. In The Philosophical Writings of

Descartes, Vol II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 16-23.

6) Frede, Michael. “Prädikation und Existenzaussage”, Hypomnemata 18, Göttigen:

Vandnhoeck und Ruprecht, 1967.

7) Grabowski, Francis A. III. Plato, Metaphysics and the Forms. New York: Con

tinuum, 2008.

8) Malcolm, John. “Semantics and Self-Predication in Plato”. Phronesis 26, no. 3

(1981): 286 - 294.

9) Meinwald, Constance. Plato’s Parmenides. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991.

10) Nehamas, Alexander. “Self-Predication and Plato’s Theory of Forms”. American

Philosophical Quarterly 16, no. 2 (Apr. 1979): 93 - 103.

11) Pelletier, Francis Jeffry and Edward N. Zalta. “How to Say Goodbye to the Third

Man”. Noȗs 34, no. 2 (Jun. 2000): 165 - 202.

12) Plato. “Parmenides”. In Collected Dialogues, edited by Edith Hamilton and

Huntington Cairns, 920 - 956. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1961.

Thrasymachus is important to Plato’s Republic – But why?

By Erling Vaaler Many prominent commentators on Thrasymachus – the well-known interlocutor in book I of Plato’s Republic—such as Kerferd, Reeve, Hourani, and Barney primarily concern themselves with giving Thrasymachus’ moral psychology a label—natural right theory, legalism and the like—and take this to be the route in gauging this central character’s importance. Moral psychology is a practical yet impatient misnomer, and the aim of previous commentators is, in fairness, more properly said to have been to ‘determine Thrasymachus’ own thoughts on the matter of justice’. This common habit of “psychological labelling” I shall argue is insufficient. For instance, Kerferd rightly highlights that Thrasymachus’ argument is central to the Republic as a whole, but by attempting to rephrase and cajole Thrasymachus’ arguments into those of a sturdy and coherent “doctrine” (c.f. Kerferd, 1947) he fails to show, as those that repeated his attempt after him, how Thrasymachus’ argument is of highest importance and rather inquires into the unknowable, i.e. which feelings Thrasymachus himself had about justice. The attempts thus far to understand why Socrates—eight books after Thrasymachus was silenced—presents him as the primary challenger to his political system has remained, for this reason, quite infirm (and often dubious). We therefore remain puzzled as to why Socrates says in the end of book IX, “and we say this with the purpose he is not harmed by [slavery to a Ruler who himself is ruled by a divine element], which was Thrasymachus’ view, [but the opposite, that it benefits him]” (590d).1

I will throughout my assessment refer to, and argue for, that justice has a connotation, throughout the Republic in general, but in book I in particular, of being concerned with ‘correct measures’ or, rather, ‘proportional excellence’.

It is a functional demystification of the notion of justice, and is not to be taken as a definition as such. It will here be referred to by the neologism ‘justness’. This interpretation we return to several times, and it is alluded to in the text at several instances, until this idea of correct measures defeats Thrasymachus at the end of his argument with Socrates (in the concluding passages of Republic’s book I). I will argue that only with this notion of justice at hand (and conjunct with a close reading of Republic’s book I) does it become apparent how Thrasymachus’ argument really is valuable to the dialogue. My argument is therefore, as we shall see, really two-fold. The first prong is that of Thrasymachus’ moral psychology not being an avenue that is of primary concern, but rather his arguments as such.

Second, I also aim to show how the switch in the argument between Socrates and Thrasymachus – towards the soul – at 349b, exposes Plato’s notion of ‘just1 Chr. Rowe’s translation (2012, Penguin) is used throughout.

Thrasymachus is important to Plato’s Republic – But why?

11

ness’ (suggested above) and that said notion is at the core of Plato’s ideal political system as a whole. The exposition linking Thrasymachean tyranny to this opposing political ideal ‘justness’ is useful for three reasons. For one, it shows that Thrasymachus’ argument puts its finger on something concrete outside of the untraceable psychology of Thrasymachus himself, which, second, supports what has been claimed above, viz. that his moral psychology does not in fact inform a query into what makes his contribution to the dialogue important and then third, by revealing where the primary challenger to the Republic confronts Plato, it is, conversely, likely to understand something more about Plato’s notion of justice— ‘justness’.

Thrasymachus

An observant reader of ancient philosophy knows that such a notion of justice as introduced above, ‘right measures’, is a reoccurring notion not only in Plato, but indeed central to for instance Aristotle, who held that something is or is not right, that an expertise’s ergon (such as just rule) is a ‘natural limit’ or proper function (Politics 1280a; Nicomachean Ethics Viii), e.g. just distributions are correct proportions as in a nose (Politics, 1309b). Barney points to this, “the autonomy of excellence… is imposing its own end – a given measure” and mentions further, “c.f. Aristotle’s ‘theory of the mean’” (2003, p. 64). Hegel draws the same conclusions in his Philosophy of Right (p. 10), namely that Plato’s theory of justice was more contingent upon the time period in which he lived than what it relied upon in the ‘march of intellect’.

The Hellenistic virtue of ‘justness’ has, of course, no direct relation to litigation and law. This is apparent after Thrasymachus voices his first and most well-known argument, “justice is nothing than what is in the interests of the stronger” (338c). At 343a, Socrates – after having made the objection that true ruling must be in the interest of the subject it looks over – says, ‘it was clear to see Thrasymachus’ account had been stood on its head – of what exactly is just’.

Without a sense of justice as having an implication much more fundamental than merely ruling and law, what Socrates says here, and so early on, would make little sense. Furthermore, ‘justness’ is also alluded to in Socrates first reaction to Thrasymachus’ argument, viz. the joke about Polydamas at 338d1 – that it is “just to eat beef ”.

In Thrasymachus’ second argument (343b) he upholds as generally unrefuted his initial account of justice at 338c (Hourani, p. 116; cont: Reeve, 2008, p.

92). He says that despite harming and enslaving his subjects, and not being a true Ruler (Ruler will from here on refer to Socrates’ notion of an expert ruler who— as Socrates spent the intermediary pages to argue for—rules in the interests of his subjects), the tyrant is still stronger and more masterful because he gets as much as he wants. It is essential to note that Thrasymachus remains focused on the tyrant who is ‘stronger’, and despite acknowledging that this is not Ruling as such,

12

THE BLACK BOOK

refuses to accept that that means his non-Ruler (but rather ‘stronger tyrant’) is not the happiest of all.

Thrasymachus claims that it is because the tyrant profits on a grand scale that he is most happy (344c), Socrates is not persuaded by the alleged profit of tyranny “even if one gives it free rein in doing what it wants” (345a5). After a longer passage, which follows in the same vein of objection as those Socrates presented between Thrasymachus’ first (338c) and second account (343b), we return to the same questioning, where Glaucon and Socrates both state that they think a man of justice is happier than others, and “profits more than anybody” (347b-c). This question is to be the central issue in the succeeding books of the Republic. The paper now turns to this crucial last segment of Socrates’ encounter with Thrasymachus (349b–) and what his arguments for the virtue of justness when present in the soul are.

Soul

As mentioned, at this stage comes a complete shift in the argument, (Annas, p. 50). The dialogue turns inward, and concerns itself with the justice of the soul, and it is here Thrasymachus admits defeat. At 349b we come to the “outdoing argument”, at 350c Thrasymachus agrees “it is the just person that’s been revealed to us as good and wise, and the unjust as the one who’s ignorant and bad” (350c9-10). Again, it is instrumental to point out how little more these lines mean and how vague this admission of defeat is, if we do not know what sort of ‘just person’ Socrates talks of.

The “out-doing” argument is in broad strokes a) what one is one resembles and b) he who is intelligent is good. An expert is knowledgeable of his craft and is therefore executes it intelligently—i.e., with justness—and thereby, from his expertise he is good. The notion of ‘justness’ is overtly expressed through the words of Socrates—e.g. by the manner in which he argues for a practical finality and natural limit in the just tuning of a lyre (349e), and how he subsequently equates goodness or excellence of the soul to the proportionality and natural justness of such a tuned lyre. The virtue of the natural limit, this ‘justness’, is argued for explicitly as the ergon of human excellence.

Reeve (2008, p. 86), Kerferd (1947, p. 27), Nicholson (1974, p. 210) and Barney (2003, in Santas (ed.), p. 56) all attempt to characterize Thrasymachus’ personal thoughts on justice. This remains an unanswered question by necessity. It is noteworthy that Plato scholars—presumably aware that at the heart of Socrates’ interlocutors’ attempts at definitions lays invariably either contradiction or hubris—still toil to identify how Thrasymachus’ arguments can be made into a coherent doctrine. Particularly so when one considers that both Glaucon and Adeimantus suggest that Thrasymachus’ do not fathom how his argument is a sockdolager— i.e., they point out that Thrasymachus’ argumentation for the happiness of a tyrant reaches much deeper into the politico-philosophical system Socrates espouses than what Thrasymachus himself is able to appreciate. This

Thrasymachus is important to Plato’s Republic – But why?

13

thesis is also supported by his silence for what is practically the remainder of the Republic after his defeat in book I.

Thrasymachus has, with his tyrant, challenged a core notion. Yet the challenge is not a function of his moral psychology or his ‘personal beliefs about the origins of justice’, but rather it is his very argument as it stands on its own— irrespective of what the silenced and dumbfounded Thrasymachus might personally make of what he has said—that challenges Plato. That is to say, that which is stated in the Republic as Thrasymachus’ words presents a challenge to Plato’s rule, without Thrasymachus himself realising this said challenge. Glaucon, the interlocutor who in the next book of the Republic takes over Thrasymachus’ argument, says Thrasymachus let himself be “charmed” to give in to Socrates as he did. Adeimenatus, who agrees with these remarks, says: “however justice benefits us, a rich tyrant can bribe any man and sacrifice the most to any god – so all will side with the tyrant anyway” (366e). He talks here about the tyrant that Thrasymachus first introduced 28 Stephanus pages earlier (338c): the ‘Thrasymachean tyrant’.

So what is it that is so important about the ‘Thrasymachean tyrant’ introduced in 338c? In the shared opinion of Glaucon and Adeimantus, Thrasymachus gives up too early in challenging Socrates’ theory that justness in the soul equates to the best life. Thrasymachus has “come over all gentle with [Socrates]” (353a) and has agreed to Socrates’ view that a man with justice in his soul (psuche) lives well, yet Adeimantus and Glaucon still see “potential” for the Thrasymachean tyrant.

This is what Adeimantus highlights—above—when he continues (in book II) to further question Socrates on the ‘Thrasymachean tyrant’ (the man who throughout all his life is loved like a paragon of justice, yet as a matter of fact is—behind the scenes—a terrible and scheming tyrant): “how is it”, Adeimantus asks, “that the life of the ‘Thrasymachean tyrant’ can be lesser than that of a poor sod – who is nothing, except a man with justness in his soul?”

Thrasymachus suddenly lets himself be silenced at 350c, but Glaucon and Adeimantus does not think Socrates has convincingly and thoroughly refuted his arguments after Thrasymachus gives in. What I am trying to expose is that when Thrasyamchus gives in, he does not himself properly understand the extent of the challenge he has posed to Plato’s system/Socrates. And therefore, the current stagnant scholarly discourse quibbling over his moral psychology misses the mark. He does not himself see the power of his argument, so attempting to structure his personal feelings about his irresolute angry outbursts will only obscure what is already difficult to assess: the key counter-argument to justness in the soul that Thrasymachus’ short and ambiguous outbursts are stated at 590d to pose.

Reeve, for instance, expounds on several forms of justice, several forms

14

THE BLACK BOOK

of happiness, Schopenhauer and Kant (2008, pt. VI) etc. Reeve’s paper shuns any synthesis of the points in the dialogue that are explicitly referring back to each other. What is that fundamental structure Thrasymachus has challenged (as given in 590d)? To answer what it is about Plato’s politico-philosophical system Thrasymachus has challenged, one must look to Plato’s system, and not dilute and confuse the query with pompous anecdotes. On my reading, spotting this fundamental Thrasymachean challenge starts with the short passage about the tuning of a lyre. Suddenly, right here, at the mention of natural correctness—“the right measures of a tuned lyre”—the obstinate Thrasymachus lets himself convince.

This should offer any reader of Plato at least some guidance as to its vital importance.

It is however to Reeves credit that this shift links up with the rest of Thrasymachus’ argument very seamlessly, and a novice reader is excused on this point alone. However, Thrasymachus is at this point very suddenly acknowledging that his argument is faulty. I early on identified a specific notion of justice, a view substantiated by some remarks other recognized readers of Plato have made, and a view supported through the comprehensive reading here attempted.

This notion of justice as exactitude (‘justness’) is illuminated through the course of the argument. When Socrates says Thrasymachus is the main challenger to his Republic as ‘the best state’, it seems he must be challenging this central notion of justness upon which the state’s alleged goodness rests.

A Deeper Challenge

The dialogue is rapid and eloquent, and the turn at 348c3 is so smooth, that the shift from stronger/ruler to arguments about the soul at 349b is at first brush easily missed. Barney argues that after this shift, Thrasymachus ‘fails to see that Socrates is referring to a traditional notion of justice’ – is that feasible? Surely, the Thrasymachus we know is much more shrewd than that. Even if this notion of ‘justness’ was accepted among learned men in Athens—or even if a vague idea of this limited measures/proportional excellence was a general sentiment among Plato and the students of him and Socrates—it is not merely a ‘common conception of morality’, as Barney suggests. Barney’s stance is that at the moment this shift occurs Thrasymachus lets what to her only seems like a reference to some dogmatic notion of justice defeat him. It is, on my reading, wholly inconsistent with the apt figure Thrasymachus so far has cut, that he now so suddenly should let an unknown notion of justice defeat the argument of which he is so proud. I think, rather, Thrasymachus’ aptness and shrewdness tells us that this is an implausible view. Indeed, justness, which he knows he has up until now been challenging, has at this point silenced his rant. Exactly how this notion of ‘justness’ is good when in the soul, remains however, largely unexplained – which, upon further pressure from Adeimantus and Glaucon, becomes the main objection Socrates faces in book II. Anyway, after Thrasymachus is silenced, two more arguments follow, largely in the same vein, before book I is concluded. Thrasy-

Thrasymachus is important to Plato’s Republic – But why?

15

machus agrees to the open points Socrates makes about ‘justice’ (which is how it appears in the English translation) in his “out-doing argument” (349b–)—and this happens so seamlessly—because, crucially, it is the notion of justness that lies behind it, and furthermore, justness is the ‘justice’ they have referred to all along.

Thrasymachus has let himself be silenced not because he fears convention (he does not: 348e8), as Barney suggests, but rather because the image of Justice in the soul that has left him dumbfounded

Socrates and Thrasymachus conclude, in the final argument of book I, that justice is good and injustice is its opposite (350c9). Even if Thrasymachus’ two initial accounts of justice (338c; 343b) are so open-ended that they, when isolated, can be taken to refer to many different notions of justice (e.g. legalism and natural right theory), like Reeve holds (2008, p. 92), it seems, on the contrary, the only plausible alternative that Thrasymachus’ eventual agreement to Socrates’ argument can only mean he has a relatively clear idea of justness. The reason for this is that he so explicitly agrees to the greatness of the rewards in the soul it brings about—which seems implausible had he not known what he agreed to.

First, we infer that Thrasymachus either knows, or has come to see, that Socrates is concerned with this concept of ‘justness’. Second, from his agreement, we must consider it plausible this is the point of contact between Thrasymachus’ ‘stronger tyrant’ and Socrates’ just Ruler (just Ruler is, of course, to Plato redundant). Are these two temporary conclusions right we draw a further inference about the passage (349b–): it is here, the point where Thrasymachus ‘gives in’, viz. at 350c, that Glaucon and Adeimantus pick up on in book II. For Adeimantus and Glaucon eloquently and much more thoroughly pick up on the case for Thrasymachean tyrant—yet it is still not obvious where they see Socrates’ response to Thrasymachus wanting. If this is the point Glaucon and Adeimantus brings us back to in book II, it becomes clear that this is where Thrasymachus’ argument, as it were, contests the goodness of Plato’s ‘justness’, despite it being brushed over here in book I. The sensitive linchpin of the alleged goodness of Plato’s republic seems to be the justness ideal, and particularly Plato’s reliance on it in the justification for the internal divisions of the state, and indeed, by extension, the legitimacy of the philosopher as sovereign.

Justness

This notion of ‘justness’ clearly seems to lay hidden in-between the exchanges throughout the Republic. Questions may, however, be raised as to whether this ‘justness’ is—in lack of a better word—dogmatic (since tradition, as such, is a form of dogma). Throughout the Republic ‘justness’ is treated as an essential feature of human excellence, which is attained by justness of soul and body. Hegel was possibly right, that Plato was, at a time of social disintegration, attempting to reinvigorate and strengthen an ancient conception of justice by then on its way out. This seems not to align well with the intriguing wealth and

16

THE BLACK BOOK

depth of Plato’s work, yet; on the other hand, this was, in fact, the conservative idea of justice. What entails our modern idea of Justice? As J. S. Mill says, ‘…the common notions of the present time on moral and mental subjects are as incapable of supporting the Socratic cross-examination as those of his own age’ (1867, p. 511). The word ‘conservative’ is a good example of how the meaning of a word is through time and misuse diffused. Like ‘conservative’, maybe justice once had a tangible underlying idea (c.f. justness?), and was not a deformity riddled with and hobbled by vague connotations. ‘Conservative’ is, overall, a well-sounding word, and was likely a noble undertaking in a time of societal upheaval – for instance in ancient Athens. Contained in Plato’s Republic are illusive structures that guide and educate Adeimantus and Glaucon, the patient and philosophical duo.

Esoteric ideas couched in exchanges that do not seize to complement one another and assemble into an increasingly holistic philosophical and political idea.

Whether this idea that Plato attempts to portray (or conserve) is “dogmatic” sadly cannot be elaborated on here. However, in closing, it shall be addressed how Thrasymachus’ argument brings out the notion of justice Plato wishes to conserve, and thereby, at the least, support the objections to contemporary scholarly habit as regards Thrasymachus’ importance that this paper initially forwarded.

Profit

Provided one accepts that much of the wealth in Plato’s writings is not overt but ‘esoteric’ (as L. Strauss puts it in his Persecution and the Art of Writing), what makes it so that the notion developed – that of ‘justness’ – can begin to explain that hidden notion? Thrasymachus’ peremptory argument goes “justice is nothing than what is in the interests of the stronger”. He does not agree to there being any practical or physical reason for why a man should practice justness as opposed to limitless tyranny. An antagonism is already present; limits versus limitlessness. Socrates’ initial objections to such tyranny’s lack in excellence of Ruling fail because nowhere does Socrates’ argument precisely express how subjecting oneself to the opposite of no constraints (the opposite of tyranny, i.e. the limits of a life dictated by justness) will further our human goodness as such.

Rather, this limit seems only to increase the profits of everyone else, while he who practices it has smaller economic gains and lives, all in all, in frugal moderation.

Thrasymachus’ self-aggrandizing tyrant seems to remain more ‘masterful’, undermining the grandeur of justness – but only up until that limitlessness is applied to the soul. ‘The soul of the limitless tyrant’ and ‘the soul that is just’ are juxtaposed in the arguments raised when the dialogue turns thither. These arguments reinterpret the smug idea Thrasymachus has of profit and also clearly brings out the appreciation Plato has for this ‘justness’, the correct and self-imposing limits of nature and excellence.

After Thrasymachus has received some help from Glaucon and Adeimantus the question is refined into whether a tyrant can purchase all he wants on earth (goods, but also honours, a good reputation etc) and bribe the gods to give

Thrasymachus is important to Plato’s Republic – But why?

17

him everything in heaven (366e), and therefore enjoy all that which a truly just man enjoys, yet remain, in reality, a terrible tyrant.

Plato spends the later books to argue profit is in Thrasymachus’ argument fundamentally misunderstood. Only what engenders human goodness is to him profitable. Just like we saw that the virtue of justness has for Plato nothing to do with litigation and law, we see that his conception of profit has nothing to do with economic surplus – therefore, the ambiguous remarks about profit at 347e67. But even if their profits are incommensurable, tyranny and justness themselves are complimentary – they are opposites: limit and restraint versus limitlessness and unrestraint.

Thrasymachus challenges—because of this opposition—Plato’s system, which holds as the highest form a city that is ruled by justness. The rest of the Republic is a direct response to and necessary vindication of justness’ profit to the individual. This is key to understanding Thrasymachus’ unparalleled importance.

Plato’s political system arises as a direct counter-argument to Thrasymachus’ limitless tyrant. Thrasymachus’ argument, when amended by Glaucon and Adeimantus to encompass all the powers a complete tyrant has, shows the tyrant in no way lacking in earthly profit by “virtue” of his limitless nature. What Socrates is therefore forced to show is that limits are the starting point of all human goodness. The initial clash of the tyrannical soul versus that of the justly ruled one (where Thrasymachus prematurely lets himself convince (349b)) is a big moment for Plato’s politico-philosophical theory. It is that fork in the road where Thrasymachus’ gives in, but should have kept going—it is where he should have kept going because it is where he challenges Plato’s Republic, and exposes its theoretical linchpin, viz. that of ‘justness’. It is not his moral psychology, but rather his argument’s initially skilful portrayal of a limitless tyrant he should be noted for.

Coming back to the line that appears in the closing stages of the Republic, which was alluded to in the beginning: “and we say this with the purpose he is not harmed by [slavery to a Ruler who himself is ruled by a divine element], which was Thrasymachus’ view, but because we suppose it better for everyone to be under divine and wise rule” (590d), it is now apparent why Socrates feels he is all along responding to Thrasymachus. And accordingly, to rise to such a fundamental challenge, it takes Socrates nine books to show that the thing Thrasymachus’ tyrant wants the most, real profit, is that one thing he will never have.

BIBLIORAPHY 1) 2)

3) 4)

Annas, 1981, An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford: Clarendon.

Barney, “Socrates’ Refutation of Thrasymachus”, The Blackwell Guide to Plato’s Republic. Ed. Santos. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006 Hegel, 1942, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Trans. T. M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon.

Hourani, 1962, “Thrasymachus’ Definition of Justice in Plato’s “Republic”, Phro

18

5)

6)

7)

8)

9)

THE BLACK BOOK nesis, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 110-120 Kerferd, 1947, “The doctrine of Thrasymachus in Plato’s ‘Republic’”, Durham University Journal, Vol. 9, pp. 19 – 27 Mill, 1867, Dissertations and Discussions, reprinted chiefly from the Edinburgh and Westminster reviews, Vol II, London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer Nicholson, 1974, “Unraveling Thrasymachus’ Arguments in “The Republic””, Phronesis, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 210-232 Reeve, 2008, “Glaucon’s Challenge and Thrasymacheanism” in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. XXXIV. Oxford: Oxford UP. Reeve, 2006 [1988], Philosopher-kings: The Argument of Plato’s Republic. Indi anapolis: Hackett.

“Fear is the mother of morality” Friedrich Nietzsche

CHAPTER 2: MORAL PHILOSOPHY Christianity is a Humanism

By Hermann Koerner “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted.” This line attributed to Fyodor Dostoyevsky shows a central dilemma of moral philosophy: how can any system of morality be said to be objectively valid if we cannot ground it in something absolute, something above mere contingency and cultural relativity?

In his essay Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre writes:

“The existentialist [...] finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it.”

It is especially important to note the dismissal of any possibility of establishing a set of objective a priori values.

Of course the easiest way to avoid this dilemma is to accept the existence of God as a divine lawgiver that hands down His commandments and prescribes a set of eternal values to us. But this is not what I am going to do. Instead, I want to point out an inherent difficulty that all systems of morality face: if we take serious the notion of human freedom, (which we agree seems to be important for moral behaviour) then a system of objective moral values seems incompatible with human dignity, since it turns man into an object of the system. Whether the laws that govern the system are perceived to stem from God or from a priori reasoning does not make a difference. The law stands above human reality. It doesn’t matter whether it is divine or derived from some materialistic conception of the universe, it still deprives us from our subjective reality. The appeal to something objective that is external to myself as an excuse for my behaviour is the denial of the responsibility for my actions, which comes with human freedom. The system itself is immoral, that is, inhuman.

And any other objective realm that we appeal to as the ground for our choice is nothing more than an “Ersatzgott”, a substitute for God. Rather than empowering us to true moral behaviour this conception of morality and of God denies that we have to make fundamental choices ourselves. In an inversion of Dostoyevsky’s quote Slavoj Žižek argues: “If God (thus conceived) does exist, then everything will be permitted.”

22

THE BLACK BOOK

Sartre compares the moral choice with a work of art:

“that being understood, does anyone reproach an artist, when he paints a picture, for not following rules established a priori. Does one ever

ask what is the picture that he ought to paint? [...] As everyone knows, there are no aesthetic values a priori, but there are values which will appear in due course in the coherence of the picture, in the relation between the will to create and the finished work.”

Like art, morality has to be viewed as a ‘creative situation’. Mere analysis of reality does not make you a good moral actor. That is precisely the difference between a music critic and a musician: the critic can analyse what the musician has done, but this does not automatically make him an equally good musician. You might even be facetious and argue that there is a reason for him being a critic rather than an artist. The implication of human freedom is that the future, and thus every action, is not a mere continuation of the historical process. To frame it in Hegel’s terms: the future is in some sense beyond the totality of things, evaluated from the present standpoint.

The argument presented by Sartre thus attacks the conception of God as the ‘God of Dogma’: God as the ‘substantial other’, the ‘transcendental absolute’. It is the same conception of God that Marx criticises as a mere extension of what he calls the superstructure of the system. The moral system, thus understood, is not a mere transparent reflection of the culture of a given society, but has to be seen as the system replicating and conserving itself into the future. What I will argue in what follows, is that at the core of Christianity, as I understand it, there is a radically different conception of both God and true morality.

It is noteworthy that in one passage of his essay, Sartre explicitly refers to God as “God the Father”. He talks of the Commandments that God prescribes to His people, the “values prescribed as eternal”. Now it is not the most controversial objection to point out that Christianity does not exhaust itself in the Ten Commandments. Nevertheless, it seems necessary to reflect on what I think is the revolutionary development that occured within Christianity.

Hegel, in the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’, characterises this development in the following way: it is the movement from ‘Absolute Being as substance’ to ‘Absolute Being as subject’. God is seen as achieving self-consciousness through humanity.

This movement occurs in two steps: first by encountering God in the shape of a human being. This incarnation of the divine, however, is still something other, an individual Self rather than universal Self. In the second step, the divine gives up its immediate incarnation to live on in the form of Holy Spirit. The divine is seen as living within the spiritual community, and God is no longer a merely transcendental Absolute. In Hegel’s words, “The world is indeed implicitly reconciled with

Christianity is a Humanism

23

the divine Being; and regarding the divine Being it is known, of course, that it recognizes the object as no longer alienated from it but as identical with it in its love.”

With this development, at the same time, a new notion of morality is to be found: not as a system of beliefs, and, as I will argue, deeply critical of and opposed to any kind of systematisation. Jesus approaches people that have, by the standard of their system, sinned. He deals with those who are pushed to the periphery by the system and in doing so enrages the religious and political elite. The morality that He proposes goes beyond any set of rules. It is well worth to quote a part from the bible that, for me, is at the core of Christian morality:

“To love [God] with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

This is more than just a hollow phrase: think about what this really implies.

My contention here is that Jesus offers us an extremely radical, new form of morality. The Golden Rule is not meant to govern every aspect of human life, since it fully embraces the contingency and freedom of human life. In Hegelian terms, it is the movement from the ‘knowing subject’ as an individual finite person set over against the external world to the perspective of Geist, which is the perspective of love. What makes the development radical is that it is not merely a change of dogma, but a change of perspective: from the perspective of understanding there may be no morality, nothing, as Sartre puts it, up in the intelligible Heaven.

From the perspective of love, that is, from a human perspective, every action has a moral dimension. Morality, from this perspective, requires the thought of God as universal, unconditional love. This, of course, is a conception of God that is quite different from the one usually used in this kind of argument. It is nevertheless a conception that is alive within the Christian tradition. St. John writes “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” The corresponding notion of morality I would like to propose is best summed up in the following quote from St. Augustine: “Love God and do what you want.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1) King James Bible. Accessed at http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk.elib.tcd.ie/toc.do?actio

n=new&divLevel=0&mapping=toc&area=Prose&id=Z000765501&forward=to cMarc&DurUrl=Yes 2) Peter C. Hodgson: Hegel and Christian Theology : A Reading of the Lectures on

the Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

3) Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialism and Humanism. Translation by Philip Mairet.

24

4)

THE BLACK BOOK London : Eyre Methuen, 1973.

Robert Stern: Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hegel and the Phenomenol ogy of Spirit. London: Routledge, 2002.

On Philip Kitcher’s Challenges for Secularism

By Marcus Hunt This essay, through an examination of the arguments presented by Kitcher in Challenges for Secularism, will argue for the thesis that secular humanist alternatives to religion cannot adequately fulfil either the sociological or psychological needs that religion provides. First, I will show that it is only the particular ethical values exclusive to religion that allow it to fulfil its sociological functions, as identified by Kitcher, rather than some feature imitable by a secular alternative.

Second, I will discuss the psychological needs that religion satisfies as identified

by Kitcher; the provision of meaning to life and a quelling of the fear of death, and show that the secular alternative he proffers is deficient in relation to the religious point of view.

Kitcher identifies two sociological functions that religion plays and suggests that both can be supplanted by a secular alternative. First, he observes that religion plays some role in ameliorating social and economic injustices, noting both the “charity and material support provided by religious organizations”1 and that “Religious communities have often played an important role in bringing the powerless together”.2 Second, he observes that a religious community provides a context with a “sense of belonging and of being together with others, of sharing problems”3 in which personal difficulties and misfortunes can be eased. Kitcher makes the claim that the first sociological function of religion can be supplanted or made obsolescent through the enactment of various social welfare measures protecting against the “major calamities of human existence, reducing the threat of sudden unemployment and penury, providing health care”.4 In regards to the second sociological function of religion, Kitcher claims it can be made obsolescent by secular communal social groups that provide the same “systems of support”5 as religious community, and as examples he mentions, strangely to my mind, “the neighbourhood pub or the piazza”.6 I would argue that the sociological function of religion is irreplaceable because religion’s ability to fulfil this function is highly dependent on the moral values exclusive to religion. In regards to the first identified sociological function of religion, it is clear that the desire to ameliorate social and economic injustice is itself value driven. Historically the two main secular attempts at replacing the religious value-system have been Utilitarianism and the idea of individual rights.

Utilitarianism has been rightly criticised for, amongst other things, not taking 1 Kitcher, CfS p.17 2 Ibid. p.18 3 Ibid. p.19 4 Ibid. p.17 5 Kitcher, LWD, p.164 6 Ibid. p.163

26

THE BLACK BOOK

“seriously the distinction between persons”7 in its attempt to create an overall better state of affairs, by allowing for a person to be treated unjustly in the interests of the overall utility of society. On the other hand the belief in rights does in many respects accurately mimic and reproduce the value system of religion, specifically the Christian religion from which it is acknowledged to descend.

However, having become detached from the religious and metaphysical worldview that spawned the idea of human rights has become problematic in two ways.

The first is theoretical. A secular philosopher may rightly be puzzled as to what sort of things human rights are and how their existence as morally imperative entities – rather than contingent social constructs - might possibly be grounded.

Indeed some of the most prominent philosophers in the rights tradition do not attempt to “present a precise theory of the moral basis of individual rights”8, but simply take them as a given. The second is psychological or motivational. If the broader public supports the idea of rights without their being grounded in the minds of that public in a wider belief system there is the likelihood that – like all rules and principles that have no definite enforcer or justification – enthusiasm for them will wax and wane as they happen to coincide or conflict with particular parochial ethnic, class, and gender interests. Rather I think the sociological function of religion is adequately fulfilled only when grounded in belief in “the immense dignity …[of]… the human person”9 and the equality of all human persons. The upshot of our discussion so far is that it seems that such a belief is only adequately grounded in a larger worldview not found in secular beliefs, but to be found in most religions and especially Christianity. Analogously, in regards to the second sociological function identified by Kitcher, the same values and appropriate grounding must also be present for a fully satisfying community life that will in all circumstances be motivated to cherish and support all its members – and indeed non-members.

Next Kitcher provides an explanation un-akin to either Utilitarianism or a belief in individual rights, which I find to be flawed, of how the ethical values key to the sociological function of religion can be established in a secular context. Kitcher argues for his position in two parts; first, negatively, by arguing “that attempts at a religious foundation for ethics fail completely”10 and second, positively, by showing ‘‘how ethical practice, and judgments that certain things are worthwhile, can be understood in a thoroughly naturalistic fashion”.11 First then Kitcher argues against a religious foundation for ethics by presenting us with a version of Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma. The Euthyphro dilemma offers us the choice that either the good is determinable aside from God’s decree or that the good is determined by God’s decree. Clearly then, if we seize the first horn of the dilemma, God is not necessary for knowledge of the good. If we seize the second horn of the dilemma however Kitcher, departing from orthodox use of the Euthyphro dilemma, suggests that this does not show that knowledge of the good 7 Rawls, p.27 8 Nozick, xiv 9 Hart xi

On Philip Kitcher’s Challenges for Secularism

27

depends on God but is rendered worthless due to its arbitrary nature. Rather he draws the same conclusion as one would from an acceptance of the first horn of the dilemma. From our continued capacity to either assent or defer to God’s decree Kitcher observes that we have our own capacity to make value judgements and determine the good aside from the content of Gods decree; “Deference thus depends on a capacity to recognise the source of the commands as good, and that requires just that ability to assess the deity, independently of his pronouncements”.12 I agree with this part of Kitcher’s conclusion from his discussion so far; that human beings have a capacity, independent from God’s decree or revelation, of knowing the good. However, I do not think that it follows from this that practicing the good can be said to be independent of God or religion. By this I mean, in the same manner as Kant, that whilst what is good is determinable by any rational creature, God remains a necessary practical postulate of morality. Summarising Kant I argue thus: reason demands of us the realization of the summum bonum, which includes both happiness and moral conduct. However, we often find that the demands of moral conduct are contradictory to our own happiness. In accordance with Kant’s dictum, ‘ought implies can’, rationality could not demand something of us which is in principle impossible to attain. The demands of happiness and of moral conduct must be reconciled. The existence of God, and his rewarding our moral conduct with happiness in an afterlife, is therefore a practical postulate of morality, without which moral conduct is discouraged; “it is morally necessary to assume the existence of God”.13 As mentioned earlier the secularised notion of individual rights may be viewed as an attempt to maintain the values of religion whilst dispensing with the theology and metaphysics. But it can be seen from our discussion here that such an enterprise leaves the maintenance of moral values unprotected from the vicissitudes of other conflicting goals.

In the second, positive, part of his argument against religious values Kitcher attempts to create a naturalistic account of ethics. Kitcher sketches a view of ethical systems as forms “of social technology”14 that regulate social life. Historically these different “’experiments of living’ (in Mill’s famous phrase)…have been in cultural competition with one another”.15 Over time these experiments in living change and develop; sometimes in an identifiably positive way in “episodes of what seem like ethical advance: slavery is repudiated, women are given greater opportunities”.16 I have two criticisms to make of Kitcher’s argument here; first that his account has disturbing moral consequences and secondly that any account of its kind must rightly be thought to lack normativity. First then, I find that it both undercuts our ability to criticise immoral practices and engenders an uncritical futureworship. Whilst Kitcher condemns slavery and describes its abolition as seeming 10 Kitcher, CfS p.23 11 Ibid. p.23 12 Ibid. p.25

28

THE BLACK BOOK

like ethical advance he cannot, within the confines of his theory, have legitimate reason to condemn it absolutely. He states the results of the cultural competition between different moral systems are not “steps towards some final ethical system”.17 That is to say no one of them is intrinsically better than, or an objective progression upon, the previous. Rather than progress per se Kitcher simply believes that “the ethical practices of today are the remote descendants of earlier efforts that were successful in this competition”.18 His view here might succinctly be expressed as ‘might is right’ or called Social Darwinism; the ethical system we have is ethical simply by virtue of the fact that it has survived historically. But it is surely conceivable that an objectively superior ethical system might have, due to some unfortunate contingency, been lost in the historical process and been replaced by an objectively inferior ethical system. If such a notion makes sense, it is a disproof of Kitcher’s position. The only moral guidance that Kitcher’s account of ethics might be thought to yield is ‘futurism’, i.e. the idea that we ought to adopt the ethical system which is about to gain the ascendancy in struggle of the various systems. Such a position seems so arbitrary as to be self-evidently deficient.

However, secondly, I would suggest that Kitcher’s account cannot properly be said to provide moral guidance since it commits the naturalistic fallacy. His account is meta-ethical in that it gives an account of what ethics is as a sociological phenomenon and of the different ethical systems that have historically been practiced. However from an ‘is’ one cannot derive an ‘ought’; from a fact one cannot derive a value. Hence Kitcher’s sketch of a scientific and historical account of ethical practice, even if it were perfectly accurate (which I do not believe it is), cannot provide us with ethical imperatives. Hence Kitcher’s account can be taken either as a crude and unjustifiable version of ‘futurism’ or else is entirely non-normative; it cannot tell us which ethical system to adopt. However normativity is precisely what was required in our discussion of the importance of ethical values in the sociological function of religion.

Having shown that Kitcher’s arguments for a secular replacement for religion are insufficient in regards to its sociological function, let us proceed to his arguments that concern religion’s psychological function. First he argues that a secular belief system can allow for as much meaning in human life as a religious one and second that a secular belief system in fact allows for more meaning in life than a religious one.

In relation to the first claim, Kitcher asserts that meaning is introduced to life simply through “the human practice of valuation”19 and that therefore human life can be made meaningful regardless of one’s worldview with regard to religion. I would claim against this that the narratives and valuations of human 13 Kant 14 Kitcher, CfS, p.28 15 Ibid. p.27 16 Ibid. p.28 17 Ibid. p.28 18 Ibid. p.28

On Philip Kitcher’s Challenges for Secularism

29

beings that are acknowledged to be merely the invented products of the human practice of valuation do not fully satisfy our desire for meaning in life. If we are self-conscious of the fact that our valuations and meanings are in some sense our own inventions, they lose their force. Such a sense of arbitrariness is reduced somewhat if our valuations and meanings are not individual inventions but are formed within the context of social endeavours or “in service to other people, in sustaining a family or a community”.20 However, even the communal-social context does not eliminate this sense of arbitrariness altogether, it seems that “a role in some larger enterprise cannot confer significance unless that enterprise is itself significant”21 – if the meanings and valuations of one’s community are ultimately only conventional, they too are stripped of much of their significance. It seems therefore that the only full satisfying sense of meaning in life must emanate from, or be grounded in, meanings that are not of arbitrary human invention; they must be metaphysical and religious.

Kitcher argues against the religious conception of meaning in human life by identifying it with our participation in a cosmic historical process and the making of a “permanent imprint on the universe”22 and then by claiming that the transience of our activity makes it no less important or meaningful than if its effects were permanent. His view, that the transience or otherwise of our activity is not of decisive importance, is correct. However, his claim that the religious conception of meaning is bound to the idea of making a permanent imprint on the universe seems like an inaccurate portrait of the religious conception of meaning and, though I do not wish to seem impertinent, I have to say I am somewhat bemused as to where he drew such an impression of the religious conception of meaning from.

Second, clinging as he does to the view that men are capable, and singularly capable, of constructing their own meanings in life, Kitcher is led to the conclusion that the religious worldview actually drains life of meaning. Since man has a capacity for creating meaning, Kitcher argues, the “imposition of a particular role upon us”23 by God would be “a denial of what is most important, namely our capacity for choice for ourselves”.24 The believer, according to Kitcher, “resolves to abdicate autonomy in order to serve what the autonomous assessment has already recognised as good”.25 Kitcher’s assessment of the state of willing the good, or following God, as being one in which autonomy is abdicated is simply wrong, since one remains constantly open to the possibility of not willing the good or altering one’s conception of it. Schopenhauer beautifully expresses this point: “If he is resolved to be a saint, he must kill himself so far as he is a being that enjoys 19 Ibid. p.31 20 Ibid. p.35 21 Nagel p.721 22 Kitcher, CfS, p.34 23 Ibid. p.31 24 Ibid. p.31 25 Ibid. p.33 26 Schopenhauer, The Art of Controversy, p.61

30

THE BLACK BOOK

and is given over to pleasure; for such he remains as long as he lives. It is not once for all that he must kill himself: he must keep on doing it all his life”.26 Moreover, I would argue that Kitcher’s argument here is founded on a false notion of what imbues human life with satisfying meaning. Kitcher seems to fall into the assumption, described by Hart, “that the proper end of the will might simply be willing as such”.27 I would suggest to the contrary of Kitcher that the role of the will – and the site of the creation of genuine and satiating meaning in human life – is not simply to will without regard to the content of what one wills, but rather to will what is good. To freely will for ourselves only what God wills for us is therefore not a denial of what is most important, and does not drain our lives of meaning.

Next I will examine the question of whether a secular worldview can meet the psychological need of quelling the fear of death. Kitcher’s argument here is that a secular worldview is better equipped to deal with man’s fear of death than a religious worldview. His argument rests on two claims, both of which I will show are false. First, he claims that what people fear is not death per se but that rather that there is an “anxiety that death will damage the value we aim to create with our life”28, that death will halt the completion of the projects and aspirations that we harbour. Secondly he claims that it is a secular worldview, rather than a religious worldview, that is best able to ameliorate this anxiety since it “is committed to the attempt to decrease the frequency with which people’s aspirations are frustrated and broken”29 through practical activity, rather than a religious worldview which merely offers a promise of “some nebulous hope for the future”.30 In response to the first assumption, I argue that, whilst the halting of our projects and aspirations that death brings is indeed horrific, the fear of death is not solely or even primarily rested in this horror. To show that it is not solely rested in this horror, one may entertain the thought experiment that you must choose to be granted either a long extent of life on the condition that the aspirations and projects you harbour be removed or radically altered or choose to be granted death immediately. Whilst the former state of being would clearly be inferior to living for a long time with your current projects and aspirations, it would also be manifestly preferable to non-existence in most cases, unless the new projects and aspirations were gravely defective in some moral or other sense. For instance, I would prefer to live out my current project of becoming a philosopher, but if it came to it I would choose to be swept up in the project of becoming a farmer or, heaven forgive me, a politician as opposed to choosing death. As further evidence against the contention that the fear of death is primarily about the termination of projects and aspirations I may point to the example of individuals of great age, great youth or superlative indolence and apathy who, whilst having no great projects or aspirations to fear the termination of, continue to flee from death.

27 Hart, p.227 28 Kitcher, CfS, p.37 29 Ibid. p.39 30 Ibid. p.39

On Philip Kitcher’s Challenges for Secularism

31

I make to Kitcher the counter-suggestion, which I believe to be more consistent with the facts, emanating from a Schopenhauerian point of view – and perhaps too a Darwinian one – that the “violent craving for existence”31 that we experience is not connected to any particular project or aspirations for our life but is a primitive and ceaseless urge to continue to exist. If I am correct that the fear of death results not merely from the fear of the frustration of one’s projects, but from the desire for existence per se, then the promise of eternal life which religion offers is not as insufficient as Kitcher suggests. Rather it is precisely the promise – whether the promise will be kept or not is another matter – which if believed in, quells the fear of death.

Against the second assumption of Kitcher’s argument I may say that, whilst secular humanism surely does attempt to limit the extent to which life’s projects and aspirations are destroyed or frustrated, Kitcher is entirely wrong to suggest that this attempt is exclusive to secular humanism. Rather the attempt he describes is present in all humanism, whether secular or religious. Moreover, I suggest – as follows from my discussion of the secular ethical systems - that only a religious humanism is capable of seriously committing to the project of ameliorating the suffering of all human beings.

In conclusion then, I have shown that secular humanism cannot adequately replace religion for three reasons. First, because it fails to provide the ethical system and concomitant worldview and motivations necessary for religion’s sociological function. Second, because it, in regards to religions psychological function, fails to provide meaning to life in the way that religion does and third because it cannot quell the fear of death in the way that religion does.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1) Hart DB (2009), Atheist Delusions, Yale University Press 2) Kant I (1788), Critique of Practical Reason, accessed at http://philosophy. eserver.org/kant/critique-of-practical-reaso.txt 3) Kitcher P (2011) Challenges for Secularism in The Joy of Secularism (Ed. Levine

GL) & (2009), Living with Darwin, Oxford University Press 4) Nagel T (1971), The Absurd in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 68 No. 20, pp.716-727 5) Nozick R (1974), Anarchy, State and Utopia, Blackwell Publishing 6) Rawls J (1971), A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press 7) Schopenhauer A (1893), Immortality: A Dialogue in Studies in Pessimism, 8) 8) London,Sonnenschein & Co & (2005), The Art of Controversy, The Pennsylva

nia State University

31 Schopenhauer, Immortality: A Dialogue

32

THE BLACK BOOK

“From wonder into wonder existence opens” Lao Tzu

CHAPTER 3: EXISTENTIALISM Some Perspectives on the Problem of Self

By James Nugent A self is defined in the Oxford English dictionary as “the essential being of a person that distinguishes them from others”.1 This paper seeks to show the deficiency of this classification by looking at different perspectives on the notion within Philosophy. Following an investigation into these philosophical outlooks, it is hoped that the reader will realise, that what they are themselves, is far more complicated than standard accounts like those espoused by dictionaries and the like suggest.

The Psychological Continuity View “X’s body is fatally injured, as are the brains of x’s two brothers. X’s brain is divided, and each half is successfully transplanted into the body of one of x’s brothers.

Each of the resulting people believes he is x, seems to remember living x’s life, has x’s character, and is in every other way psychologically continuous with x”2 In this thought experiment, a person’s psychological continuance is integral to their selfhood. The body is of little importance as each of x’s brothers believe they are x after the operation. Parfit argues that the accepted notion of identity as “a one-one relation” (that is x is x and nothing else) makes little sense in light of the results of the above procedure. It can be the case that x=x at a certain point of time but that it can also be y, and z at a later stage (x=x at t1, x=y at t2, and x=z at t3). Parfit contends, on the basis of this logic, that the language of identity must be given up in place of the idea of psychological continuity. Essentially, x is a moment in the continuum it itself actually is, but it is an impossibility to establish an identity as the continuum is fluid while the label ‘x’ is static. John Locke in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding can be seen to agree with such a view: “whatever any substance has thought or done which I cannot recollect and by my consciousness make my own thought and action, it will no longer belong to me”.3 Locke here suggests continuity (primarily memory) is essentially what a self is. If a person is not able to recount a memory then it is not part of that person’s self.

Effectively, for philosophers like Parfit and Locke, what matters for a person to be a self is the idea of continuity and not a static identity. Persons are more like rivers than puddles for both philosophers.

1 http://english.oxforddictionaries.com/search?q=self&contentVersion=WORLD 2 (Parfit, 1984, pg 254) – my use of x.

3 (Nidditch, 1975, pg 345)

36

THE BLACK BOOK

Some readers may interject here and say that such a medical procedure like the one Parfit is utilising is impossible and therefore Parfit’s argument is flawed.

However, philosophically sophisticated neurologists have provided detailed accounts of how they could occur.4 The results of split brain commissurotomy and callosotomy also lend weight to the plausibility of a scenario like that detailed

by Parfit. As for Locke, an obvious objection is that our self is more than our memories. This writer would agree with this sort of hostility towards the Lockean account of self but would contest that the idea you have of yourself necessarily contains memory and like Locke I see memory as a continuum, not something static. Thus, trying to construct a static identity account of self runs into the same difficulties with Locke, as it does with Parfit, owing to the fact it has to explain how a continuum could possibly be consistent within a static identity claim.

The Extended Self Opinion The extended self thesis (EST) says that mental states can extend beyond a person’s skin. A story is put forward by Clark and Chalmers about Otto who is a pathologically forgetful man.5 In order to account for his memory deficiency, Otto makes use of a notebook that contains information for what he must do in any scenario where he finds his memory failing him. The notebook is literally “a repository of his beliefs”.6 Clark and Chalmers argue that “the information in Otto’s notebook “is a central part of his identity as a cognitive agent” and that Otto is “best regarded as an extended system, a coupling of biological organism and external resources”. 7 Instead of thinking of a self just as a psychological continuity, something contained within an organism (be it x=x, x=y, or x=z at a point in time t), this theory allows x to be a whole host of other environmental objects at any time t as well. If we let Otto be j and Otto’s notebook be q then j=j and also j=q at the same time. This can be written (j = q & j). The EST is compatible with the Psychological Continuity View. For instance, if we let x = Otto and q his notebook, then following an operation like the one documented by Parfit above, (x = x & q, x = y & q, and x = z & q at a point in time t). Again, some readers may contest that this is all a bit farfetched and such a notebook like Otto’s is a fantastical idea. My response to this is to doubt that such people have ever kept a record of their day to day life. In a personal diary, memories can be stored that will more than likely be forgotten by the brain otherwise. Are these memories in the diary a part of you or are they just a diary? Think Tom Riddle and horcruxes or Ryan Gosling reading Rachel McAdams memoirs to her in a nursing home.

4 (Sherman, 1997, pg 30-96) 5 (Clark & Chalmers, 1998, pg 7-19) 6 (Olson , 2011, pg 1) 7 (Clark & Chalmers, 1998, pg 10)

Some Perspectives on the Problem of Self

37

Quick Recap and Further Clarification Thus far, the two perspectives looked at should pose a concern to any theory of self that wants a static identity referent. How is the Oxford English dictionary definition holding up so far? To remind you, a self is defined by the dictionary as “the essential being of a person that distinguishes them from others”.8 Well, is ‘the essential being of a person’ static (x=x and nothing else) or fluid like those suggested by the Psychological Continuity perspective and the EST. It should be apparent that the dictionary definition supplies no answer. We are still in the dark. If I am x, am I always x or can I be y, z, y & q, and z & q at another time like the fluid orientated views above imply. In respect to where we are now, the phrase ‘the essential being of a person’ is semantically defunct.

The View from Nowhere Standpoint René Descartes famously concluded in his Meditations on First Philosophy: “I convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, (and) no bodies. Did I therefore not also convince myself that I did not exist either? No: certainly I did exist, if I convinced myself of something.

- But there is some deceiver or other, supremely powerful and cunning, who is deliberately deceiving me all the time. – Beyond doubt then, I also exist, if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me all he likes, but he will never bring it about that I should be nothing as long as I think I am something. So that, having weighed all these considerations sufficiently and more than sufficiently, I can finally decide that this proposition, ‘I am, I exist’, whenever it is uttered by me, or conceived in the mind, is necessarily true”.9 The ‘I’ Descartes talks about here, is something he feels, something he is willing to ground his epistemological inquiries on. Where is this ‘I’ located? Is it in the brain? If so, where exactly in the brain is it situated? Is it every part of our body bar our left foot per chance? Alfred Duhrssen in his 1956 paper The Self and the Body elucidates the enormous difficulty in locating a self in a body when he states, “there is something which is always there, which I can never see, not because it is behind my back but because it can never become an object of consciousness. Nevertheless it is something, it is there, in the world, (and) it is my self... a hole that I can never fill”.10 This sounds a lot like Kierkegaard’s suggested location for a transcendental self as “a mathematical point which does not exist”.11 All of the above, since this paper introduced Descartes, seems wholly paradoxical! Descartes concludes he is an ‘I’ but fails to adequately address where 8 http://english.oxforddictionaries.com/search?q=self&contentVersion=WORLD 9 (Moriarty, pg 18, 2008) 10 (Duhrssen, 1956, pg 31) 11 (Swenson & Lowrie, 1941, pg 176)

38

THE BLACK BOOK

this ‘I’ is located. His suggestion of the pineal gland may sound absurd to most, but why should we be confident about any other particular part of our body? As for Duhrssen and Kierkegaard, they are openly suggesting a paradox – we are a thing outside time and space that allows us to view and influence time and space (the world). Well, how do the two interact properly then? Why do they ever come together? That is, how does this disembodied, non-spatial, non-temporal ‘I’ affect and come to feel situated in a body (us), which is spatial and temporal? There is a major interaction problem afoot. Philosophers that hold this View from Nowhere position have to make a cube fit into a like-sized circular hole – something whose possible success, this writer is very dubious about.

Quick Recap and Further Clarification II Think back a minute to where we were before we examined The View from Nowhere standpoint. We have established that the notion of static identity is very tricky. It is very hard to know x=x owing to the sheer difficulty posed by change over time. It may be that x=y at some time, or z, or y & q, or z & q, and so on. The two fluid-like perspectives above showed the enormous difficulties time places on any accounts of self that want to provide a static identity explanation. The fluid-like views had an answer though: the ‘I’ is a continuum. Sure, there may be a mild philosophical squabble between Psychological Continuity adherents and proponents of the EST but they are compatible with one another. The View from Nowhere Standpoint should hopefully elicit in the reader some doubt about the explanatory power of these perspectives. By all means, we can be a continuum in time but where exactly are we in space? I suppose, people will vehemently say we are our brain (the thinking part). However, are we not our heart too since there are blood vessels in the brain or our lungs since they provide oxygen that allows the brain to function? I would like to propose an answer to this difficult location question by suggesting each one of us is our own vital organs. We may lose a limb (like a foot or a leg) but we don’t lose who we are since we don’t die. If you lose a vital organ you are no longer alive. The self is dead. As a result of this, we are now at a point where we can say: a self is all that is vital for a given organism to live and function (who refers to itself by a name, considers itself an ‘I’) extended in time and (if we allow for the EST) sometimes in other objects bar its own body in space.

The No-Self Outlook “The no-self theory is not a theory about the self at all. It is rather a rejection of all such theories as inherently untenable”.12 12 (Giles, 1993, pg 175) 13 Ibid, pg 177) 14 (Hanfling, 1972. Pg 44) 15 In (Sorabji , 2006, pg 41)

Some Perspectives on the Problem of Self

39

The most famous no-self philosopher is David Hume. In a section entitled Of Personal Identity, in his great, A Treatise of Human Nature, he concludes that we are “never aware of any constant invariable impression that could answer to the name of self ”.13 He also notes that when he enters “most intimately into what (he) calls (him)self, (he) always stumble(s) on some particular perception or other , of heat or cold, light or shade , love or hatred, pain or pleasure. (He) never can attach (him) self at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception”.14 Hume is not alone in denying the existence of a self. In, On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche denies the notion of a self pretty emphatically: “There is no ‘being’ behind doing, effecting, becoming. ‘The doer’ is merely a fiction added to the deed – the deed is everything... Our entire science still lies under the misleading influence of language and has not disposed of that little changeling, the ‘subject’”.15 Seneca in his Letters provides this powerful statement wholly compatible with the pessimistic outlooks of both Hume and Nietzsche on the ontological status of the self: “None of us is the same in old age as he was in youth. None of us is the same tomorrow morning as he was the day before. Our bodies are carried away like rivers. Whatever you see races along with time: nothing that we see stays still. I too, while saying things change, am changed myself. That is what Heraclitus says: ‘we do, and we do not, step down into the same river twice’. The name of the river stays the same; the water has passed. This is more obvious in a river than in a person, but we too are carried past in a race no less swift...I am amazed at our madness: we love the most fleeting thing so much, the body, and we fear we are going to die some time, when every moment is the death of our previous state. Will you stop fearing that that will some time happen which happens every day”.16 The crux of the No-Self Outlooks position is essentially an extension of the great pre-Socratic philosopher Zeno’s logic – every point in time is infinitely divisible, therefore when you try to isolate a self (a static identity), you can’t because you are always a new identity (x=x, at t1 but t1 is infinitely divisible, therefore x=x at infinitely divisible t (x=x at t ∞ (where ∞ = infinity))). Owing to this conclusion, philosophers like Hume, Nietzsche, and Seneca have concluded x ≠ x, as x is necessarily a part of infinitely divisible time t, therefore x must also be infinitely divisible (x = x ∞ if t = t ∞). The essential idea, in other words, is you cannot find a static identity point in time as both the point and time can be divided ad infinitum.

Quick Recap and Further Clarification III At the last recapitulation part of this paper, it was suggested that a self is all that 16 Ibid, pg18

40

THE BLACK BOOK

is vital for a given organism to live and function (who refers to itself by a name, considers itself an ‘I’) extended in time and (if we allow for the EST) sometimes in other objects bar its own body in space. The No-Self outlook poses difficulty to this conclusion. The self that is defined just above can be (at least theoretically) divisible in time and space. How do we accurately locate ‘all that is vital for an organism to live and function’ and where exactly is it ‘extended in time and (if we allow for the EST) sometimes in space’ when any attempt to locate a point of reference is impossible as the point is always divisible? Set theory helps answer the problems posed here. We can conceptualise an infinite amount of points in a set. Mathematicians are a great help for allowing a person to conceive of this.

For instance, Cantor’s theorem shows that given a set A, its power set P(A) is strictly larger in terms of infinite size. What is philosophically interesting about this theorem is that you can contain an infinite magnitude via a power set. If this can be achieved, I feel safe to say a self is all that is vital for a given organism to live and function (who refers to itself by a name, considers itself an ‘I’) extended in time and (if we allow for the EST) sometimes in other objects bar its own body in space.

Conclusion This paper set out to show the reader that what they are themselves is far more complicated than standard accounts like those espoused by dictionaries and the like suggest. The Oxford English dictionary definition was shown to be semantically defunct with only a little philosophical inquiry. The self is not “the essential being of a person that distinguishes them from others”.17 That statement is vacuous and tells you nothing. On the evidence of this paper, it would seem more apt to call a self, all that is vital for a given organism to live and function (who refers to itself by a name, considers itself an ‘I’) extended in time and (if we allow for the EST) sometimes in other objects bar its own body in space.18 BIBLIOGRAPHY 1)

2)

3)

Chalmers, David & Clark, Andy, “The Extended Mind”, Published in Analysis 58:10-23, 1998 Duhrssen, Alfred, “The Self and the Body”, Published in The Review of Meta physics, Vol. 10, No.1, 1956 Giles, James, “The No-Self Theory: Hume, Buddhism, and Personal Identity”,

17 http://english.oxforddictionaries.com/search?q=self&contentVersion=WORLD 18 There are still major questions regarding origins and differences between selves omitted from this paper, as it sadly lacks the time and space to philosophically probe into them. I suggest readers who are interested in these problems to look at Complexity Theory, specifically the work of George Herbert Mead and Daniel Dennett, if they want some possible answers to questions relating to both the origins of self and differences between them.

Some Perspectives on the Problem of Self

4)

5)

6)

7) 8) 9)

10)

11)

41

Published in Philosophy East and West, Vol.43, No.2, 1993 Hanfling, Oswald, “Fundamental Problems in Philosophy”, The Open University Press, 1972 Moriarty, Michael (translation), “René Descartes, Meditations on First Philoso phy”, Oxford University Press, 2008 Nidditch, Peter (edition), “John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Under standing”, Oxford University Press, 1975 Olson, Eric T, “The Extended Self ”, Published in Minds and Machines, 21, 2011 Parfit, Derek, “Reasons and Persons” Oxford Clarendon Press, 1984 Sherman, David, “Recovery from Brain Death: a Neurologist’s Apologia” Lina cre Quarterly, 64, pg 30-96 Sorabji, Richard, “Self, Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death”, Clarendon Press Oxford, 2006 Swenson, David. F & Lowrie, Walter (translation), “Concluding Unscientific Postscipt by Søren Kierkegaard” Princeton University Press, 1941

Semblances of the Afterlife: Connections between Price’s “Survival and the Idea of Another World” and the Bardo as depicted in The Tibetan Book of the Dead

By Lia Duggan H.H Price’s essay Survival and the Idea of Another World engages with the idea of “survival” after death in a unique way. He wishes to argue that the Survival Hypothesis is not incoherent, as opposers would uphold, because we can conceive of experiences had after death, which, through links with our experiences before death manage to retain personal identity in such a way that the possibility of “survival” is no longer absurd or meaningless. Price wishes us to consider his conception of this other world as a coherent possibility1 and in this way defend against those who argue against survival on the grounds that “the very idea of Survival is a muddled or absurd one” (Price, 1965, p.2). The coherence of this idea is all that Price is advocating and for the purposes of this essay I will accept this premise and not challenge it. In his essay Price outlines the proposed structure of Another World in which these after-death experiences take place. He presents an account of what experiences we could posit the survivor, or indeed the deceased, might have. The intention of this essay is to look at Price’s account in conjunction with the conception of continued existence after death in Tibetan Buddhism. The accounts of what the deceased will experience on their journey through the Bardo, as presented in the Tibetan Book of the Dead,2 will be the focus of my inquiry. In this essay, I will argue that the dream-like image world which Price proposes, closely parallels the Bardo in many ways, outlined below.

An argument could be made that these parallels lend plausibility to Price’s idea of the next world3 although my focus will simply be on similarities and contrasts between the two views.

I will first outline briefly Price’s depiction of the next world. I will explore in what ways one could be said to experience it and how much of the experiential discourse maps onto the typical experience of the Bardo. However, before looking at parallels, I will set the parameters of what I mean by the term Bardo. Correlating the experiences of the deceased in each of the worlds, we will see that not only are the experiences themselves similar but the causality driving the experiences is essentially the same. This leads to the ironic conclusion that, in either conception 1 It should be understood that Price sets about placing his essay in the context of the Survival Hypothesis and its meaning, rather than its truth or falsity. Price explicitly states that he is not concerned with “any evaluation of the alleged evidence for survival” (Price, 1965, p.1). I will adopt this approach for the most part, not taking the TBD as evidence but as a type of religious doctrine.

2 The Tibetan Book of the Dead; The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo, trans. F. Fermantile and Chögyam Trungpa, Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston MA.,1975. Herafter TBD. 3 I will use the terms “next world” and “another world” interchangeably, as (Price, 1965, p.4).

Semblances of the Afterlife

43

of survival after death, what is of highest consideration is still what happens in this life.

Price proposes that we conceive of the next world “as a kind of dream-world... a world of mental images” (Price, 1965, p.4). He suggests this in response to the question about how we can have an experience without a physical body. The issue is that once you are dead you have no sense-perceptions with which to interact with the world (the physical world or any other world for that matter). Price addresses this by pointing out that we do manage to have experiences without physically-bound sense-perceptions, for example while we are sleeping. In this state we do not use our sense faculties to relate directly to the dream-world.

Instead we use imaging and create an image world.4 In a similar way, Price proposes that, in a disembodied (non-physical) state, visual and tactual images from our mind, as well as perhaps auditory and smell images combine to form fairly convincing objects in the dream-world, ones which we can relate to and, crucially, have experiences of relating to.5 Similarly, our sensations may not be physical but we could also posit image-sensations. These further contribute to the possibility of non-physical, disembodied experiences, i.e. the possibilities of experiences after death.

The Bardo has many and varied conceptions within Buddhism. There are various different Bardo states, of which only one will be relevant for exploration in this essay: the Bardo of Becoming. However, it is important to understand the context of this Bardo in relation to the wider Buddhist view of the cycle of life and death.

Bardo means “gap” (TBD: p.1) or “period of time between two events.”6 Right now we are in the Bardo of Life, the period of time between the moment we were conceived and the moment we meet with an irreversible cause of death. At that point we enter the Bardo of Dying. This is followed by the Bardo of Dharmata, a state in which an advanced practitioner of the Dharma will encounter various peaceful and wrathful deities in various forms, and recognise their true nature as projections of the mind. This Bardo is difficult for a non-meditator to comprehend and thus they faint for the duration of this Bardo, emerging into the Bardo of Becoming in a mental body (BGB: p.168). This Bardo lasts until entering the womb of the next life and is a period when you recognise your death and begin to search for new rebirth. In this Bardo, it is the state you are in, and the experiences that go with being in this state, that closely mirror many of the (ideas) described

by Price in his Next World, ideas which I will explore in the next section of the 4 Price creates the distinction between imaginary and imagy, (imagining and imaging) emphasising that mental images are actual real entities and are not imaginary qua “entertaining propositions without believing them” (Price, 1965, p.5).

5 Price characterises the image-objects as those “about which we employ our thoughts and towards which we have desires and emotions” (Price, 1965, p.4). This is what I have in mind when I use the words relate to, though Price’s description is not exhaustive.

6 Chökyi Nyima, The Bardo Guidebook, ed. Marcia Schmidt, trans. Erik Pema Kunsang, Rangung Yeshe Publications, Hong Kong, 1991. Herafter BGB. (p.21)

44

THE BLACK BOOK

essay. Note, when I refer to the Bardo henceforth, it will be in reference to the Bardo of Becoming.

The Bardo Guidebook, similar to Price in his essay, uses the analogy of a dreamworld when describing the experiences within the Bardo. For example, we are told that “The body we have at this time is an illusory body, the same body we feel we possess while dreaming: an imagined body” (BGB: p.13). Price would contend the use of imagined here (see footnote4 above) but I think it can be understood that the same type of image-body is being referred to. The Tibetan Book of the Dead, similarly refers to a “mental body of unconscious tendencies” (TBD: p.69). Price’s reference to a “psychical” body 7 mirrors the TBD’s expression; both appear to be referring to the congenital idea of our body, the thing with which we identify our experience, the outlet or medium of our experience but not merely in the physical sense. This body is one way in which we might feel our personalidentity has been preserved. The TBD states that “You have a body like your former one of flesh and blood because of your memories of it” (TBD: p.72). These memories are essentially the images which your psychical body is comprised of, the unconscious tendencies that allow for your continued experience after death.

These memories/images are so compelling that your image-body may feel experientially identical to the physical body you had in life. This prompts Price to joke that “recently dead people would find it difficult to realise that they were dead” (Price, 1965, p.7). This in fact is the experience of most people who emerge in the Bardo of Becoming after their death.8 It is said that the deceased, upon seeing their family, will struggle to communicate with them, will feel as though they are being ignored since they are no longer served food or acknowledged in 7 Note that for Price, a “psychical body” is made up of “visual images resembling the body which one had in this present world” (Price, 1965, p.7).

8 How can I claim to know the experience someone has had in the Bardo since, while in the Bardo, they are dead? The conception of life after death has been set out mainly in reference to the scriptures in the Tibetan Book of the dead. However, much of what is believed happens after death, can be bolstered, if you will, by evidence of a different form. This evidence is precisely the kind which Price has decided not to implicate in his argument. The reason being that it is difficult to ground in scientific fact and this leads to stark disbelievers avoiding the “evidence” all together. I am speaking, not just of mediums but more closely about accounts of people who have died and come back to life, or simply had near death experiences. These people are in the unique position to potentially have experiences in line with those of people who have died and relay those experiences back to us. Tibetans even have a term for people who have died, experienced the Bardo and come back to life. They are called Delogs and, although their experiences vary, on average the Delog spends between a couple of days to a week dead before returning to life and recounting their experiences of the Bardo. For various reasons, I have decided not to focus on these accounts in this essay, however as mentioned above they are largely in line with the description given in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. One source of Delogue experiences is Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth, a Tibetan Buddhist Guidebook, by Tulku Thonlup, ed.

H. Talbott, Shambhala, Boston MA., 2005.

9 There are other indications which are also said to help recognise that your experience now is one of a dead person’s, e.g. look to see if you have a shadow or walk on sand and look for footprints (BGB: p.13)

Semblances of the Afterlife

45

other ways. Eventually, you will recognise that you are dead. 9 However, initially your image-body, and experience while adjusting to it, is so reminiscent of life (because it is made up of unconscious tendencies and memories created during that life) that you will think yourself still alive.

A further indication of your death is recognised by both Price and the TBD who indicate that you will become aware of something similar to instantaneous travel within your dream-world. For Price, in the image world wishes tend to fulfil themselves in a way which is not possible in this physical world. We might wish to be somewhere and will instantly find that we are imaging and experiencing this new place without any need to physically travel there (Price, 1965, p.8). Similarly, wish-fulfilment or intentionality of the mind takes on this free-flowing form in the TBD. It states that “without hindrance you can perform everything you think of and there is no action you cannot do” (TBD: p.74). This is particularly relevant with respect to travelling in the same way Price explains it, one passage claiming that while in the Bardo of Becoming, searching for your new rebirth, “you can circle the four continents and Mount Meru in an instant, and arrive anywhere you want instantaneously as soon as you think of it” (TBD: p.74). This is all made possible because you are no longer restricted by your physical body.

An analogy could be made here to the type of travel which is possible in lucid dreaming. When one becomes aware that they are no longer restricted by the physical body of ordinary life, flight and instant travel are attainable within the dream. This, Price would say, is due to the different “causal laws” (Price, 1965, p.7) pertaining in the dream-world, laws which are similarly different from physical laws in both the dream world and the next world, hence the analogy of the two. Tibetan Buddhists also see this analogy and train in dream yoga in order to become familiar with a world that behaves in a way similar to the world after death. This training also helps with the initial recognition of one’s death.10 The powerful shift in the abilities of one’s mind is clear through the possibility of instantaneous travel, however it reaches far past this spectacular parlour trick. The Bardo Guidebook explains; “At present our consciousness... is encased 10 “In dream yoga and the practice of illusory body, we try to get used to this idea, ‘this is just a dream. Everything is illusory and dream-like. I am already dead. Nothing is real. All these appearances I perceive are unreal and insubstantial.’ To have this habit imprinted in our mind makes it much easier when we actually are dead to recognise that fact” (BGB: p.158).

11 “In ordinary experience the mind always fixates on the attributes of the sense objects that appear through the five senses. But here, since that kind of dualistic experience is absent, our innate wakefulness is experienced directly. Within the state of having recognised our nature, we reach enlightenment, described as self-occurring self-liberation” (BGB: p.118). This is also one of the reasons why the practice of Liberation Through Hearing (reading aloud from the Tibetan Book of the Dead) is understood to be such an important practice and preparation for death. The book itself states that “Even if it has been heard like this only once and the meaning not understood, in the Bardo state the mind becomes nine times more clear, so then it will be remembered with not even a single word forgotten” (TBD: p.71).

46

THE BLACK BOOK

in a physical body. When imprisoned in a material body the mind is not really free. But in the Bardo states of Dharmata and Becoming the mind and body are separate until we enter the womb of the next life. During this time the mind is ungrounded and unfettered by an encasement; thus it is easy to recognise, train and attain stability in those two Bardos” (BGB: p.157). The separation from our physical body could be seen to lay constraints on the type of perception which we are capable of, for example we no longer possess sense-perception and only images of sense-perception. But rather than hinder our experience, the Buddhist view is that this opens us up to non-dual, direct experience of the innate nature of our mind. This recognition is the key to liberation.11 In Price’s response to comments by J. R. Smythies at the end of his essay, he makes reference to Bergson’s theory of memory, which suggests that “the function of the brain is primarily an inhibitory one” (Price, 1965, p.32). This supports the possibility that we potentially have a store of memories which we do not have access to in life (while our brain is functioning normally and restricting them for biological purposes) and that after death “we are freed from these biological exigencies and the whole of our past is open to our recollection, presumably in the form of mental imagery” (Price, 1965, p.32). This seems to be in line with the above extract of the TBD, however more curious is the suggestion that “the image world would possess its own manner of existence. This (i.e. our awareness of it) is normally kept inhibited by the brain...” (Price, 1965, p.32). This is one way in which the possibility of another world is made more substantial; by possessing a manner of its own existence the Next World appears to have objective existence, which the deceased have subjective experience of. I will return to this point below, however Price’s response to the suggestion that our brain inhibits our awareness of this Next World is that the inhibition is not absolute but a matter of degrees. He suggests that the “span of our consciousness can be very considerably increased by repetition and voluntary effort... by the meditative practices which religious people in all ages have recommended” (Price, 1965, p.33). This is similar to the training advocated in Buddhism. Though the end is not exactly recognition of the next world (as it is for Price) but of reality itself, the means is similarly training to develop insight and understanding into the nature of our mind, through meditation practice, training in meditative techniques, all of which requires repetition and voluntary effort.

In order to address objections that an image world would be merely subjective, Price introduces the idea of telepathy and telepathic communication. Similar to our other mind functions, it is conceivable to Price that our potential telepathic 12 The realm of Gods is one of the Six realms into which you can take rebirth, the other realms are the Demi-God , the Human , the Animal, the Hungry Ghost and the Hell realm.

13 “Set of more or less settled and permanent desires, with corresponding emotional dispositions, expressing themselves in a more or less predictable pattern of thoughts, feelings and actions” (Price, 1965, p.21)

Semblances of the Afterlife

47

capabilities are similarly restrained by our biologically-restricted physical form, “Once the pressures of biological need is removed, we might expect that telepathy would occur continually, and manifest itself in consciousness by modifying and adding to the images which one experiences” (Price, 1965, p.16). Thus, Price upholds that the Next World is not strictly objective, it is mind-dependent, since its form is dependent on mental entities. However, these mental entities need not strictly all come from the same source; it need not be the product of a single mind only. Thus we could call it an inter-subjective world. Price further suggests that “it is likely that there would be many next worlds, a different one for each group of like-minded personalities” (Price, 1965, p.16). Although Price fails to give a precise account or definition of “like-minded,” we find a similar concept presented in the TBD, which explains that “Those who are going to be born with the same nature (in the same realm) will see one another in the Bardo state, so those who are going to be born as gods see each other” (TBD: p.74).12 This gives a definition to like-minded, those whose nature’s are similar, who will tend towards a next life in a certain realm, will be able to communicate with each other.

Further, we will assume that it is telepathic communication that takes place, since both beings will be psychical entities. This communication is different in nature because, as we have already seen, the deceased are not able to communicate with the living any more.

Price understands that what drives the Next World would be the memories and desires of our lifetime. Similarly, the habitual tendencies which we have acquired and cultivated during our lifetime will dictate much of what we experience in the Bardo. These mental patterns also dictate what will happen to us in the next life after our time in the Bardo. Various negative emotions will send us wandering towards different realms of rebirth. This appears to be somewhat in contrast to Price’s view that the next world would be primarily wish-fulfilling and dictated by the desires from our life. However, Price is quick to clarify that there would still be an objectivity to one’s experiences because “a man’s character is ‘objective’; objective in the sense that he has it whether he likes it or not” (Price, 1965, p.22).

According to this picture “it would be these permanent and habitual desires which would determine the nature of the world in which a person has to live” (Price, 1965, p.22). This is exactly what we are told in the TBD, our habitual thought patterns, the types of desires that we have cultivated, dictate our experience after we die. The difference between the two views is that in Buddhism these desires dictate further into the next life of your rebirth, while for Price they constitute the Next World, which you will experience perpetually. In order to alter your “character”13 and thereby your experiences after death Price suggests that you must allow the desire for a change in your character to occur again and again (Price, 1965, p.21). In effect, Price is suggesting that you alter your habitual tendencies in this life to effect the next one. This essentially is what Buddhists believe, the tendencies which we should alter are the ego-clinging dualist thoughts

48

THE BLACK BOOK

which create a solid me. This “character” which we create for ourselves, plagues us for the continuation of our existence, driving us from life to life. But altering our view, or our habitual tendencies, has the potential to liberate us.

Ultimately, the Next World and the Bardo appear to contain many similar experiences for those who “survive” death. One will enter a dream-world, with an image-body they recognise as their own. This image world is created from the images and memories in our own mind and dictated by our habitual desires and thoughts. The causal laws of this world are different to the physical ones which pertain in this world, allowing us to traverse through physical objects and across great distances instantly. Our communication, in a telepathic form, will be restricted to those who have “like-minded personalities” (or similar Karma) to us. Much of this is possible because the physical and biological restrictions of our live body are removed at death. Thus, with death comes the potential for our consciousness to have experiences beyond this life, allowing us to “survive” and exist in the next one. This existence is determined and restricted by the patterns we create in this life and ultimately, whether we live perpetually in the Next World, or travel through the Bardo to our next life, if we survive death, our mentality and intentions in this life are key to what happens next.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1)

2)

3)

4)

Price, H. H., Survival and the Idea of ‘Another World.’ Brain and Mind. Ed. JR Smythies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead; The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo, trans. F. Fermantile and Chögyam Trungpa, Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston MA.,1975. Herafter TBD. Chökyi Nyima, The Bardo Guidebook, ed. Marcia Schmidt, trans. Erik Pema Kunsang, Rangung Yeshe Publications, Hong Kong, 1991. Herafter BGB. Tulku Thonlup, Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth, a Tibetan Buddhist Guidebook, ed. H. Talbott, Shambhala, Boston MA., 2005.

“Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language�

Ludwig Wittgenstein

CHAPTER 4: ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY Truth and Reality: A comparative analysis of correspondence and utility theory

By Marc Morgan This essay seeks to examine what has been considered for some time as the “most intuitive” theory of truth (Engel, 2002: 14), correspondence theory, in relation to the pragmatic theory of truth, as sketched by William James. Going beyond correspondence theory, James’ pragmatic account of truth sought to offer an extended improvement in “…accounting for subject matters and occurrences of truth that the other theories have neglected or failed” (Thayer, 1975: xxx). With this in mind, I would like to focus on how much more precise the pragmatic theory of truth actually is in capturing the reality about truth, in comparison to correspondence theory - as portrayed by Bertrand Russell. Does James’ theory expound on any new undiscovered territory as regards truth, as he set out to achieve? If so how valuable is this new territory to the debate on truth? This essay will explore these questions before judging which of the two theories is the most accurate on the basis of consistency, scope of explanation, and affiliation with scientific discovery.1 Section 2 of the essay will give a general exposition of the two theories of truth; sections 3, 4 and 5 will evaluate the theories by revealing the origin of truth, some potential problems and the nature of truth within science; and finally section 6 will conclude.

Correspondence vs Utility: Russell vs James Let us begin with a brief sketch of the theories themselves. Russell’s theory of correspondence builds on three axioms, which Russell believes must provide the initiation point for any theory of truth. Firstly, for truth to exist, we must know of its opposite – falsehood. Secondly, “truth must be a property of beliefs”.

An absence of belief would mean an absence of falsehood since a world solely comprised of facts would admit of no falsities. And thirdly, beliefs depend on mind independent entities, so things lying outside the beliefs themselves (Russell, 2002: 70). These points seem reasonable, particularly if one positively evaluates impartial judgment on issues about truth. In this sense Russell is a realist, believing in the power of a mind independent reality. It is Russell’s view that this reality should have the ultimate say on whether something is true or not. Therefore correspondence theorists like Russell hold that truth is “dependent upon the relation 1 It should be noted that in my analysis I will devote exclusive attention to truth regarding epistemological facts.

52

THE BLACK BOOK

of beliefs to outside things” (ibid: 71), correspondence occurring at the point of relation between the mind and multiple external objects. More precisely, what must correspond in the relation between the mind and the several object terms is the structural order of these terms in the belief with their actual structure in reality (ibid: 73).

“The agreement of ideas with reality” is widely accepted as the foundation for comprehending of truth, as put by William James in Pragmatism (James, 1975: 96). Falsity, therefore, is the disagreement of ideas with reality (ibid). So far there is little to distinguish Russell and James’ respective conceptions of truth. Where both thinkers diverge on the subject is in their notions of ‘agreement’ and ‘reality’.

Russell, as expressed above, believes agreement to lie in a direct correspondence between the mind’s beliefs of certain events and the events as they are ordered in nature - a mind independent reality. For pragmatists like James truth is something “…made true by events of verification and validation” (Ibid: 97). What makes these events verifiable is the fact that they “signify certain practical consequences” (ibid). Therefore the agreement of a belief with reality is determined by the usefulness of reality to our belief. Under this conception of truth, reality can be seen to be completely mind-dependent. What this immediately implies is that like Russell, James believes that ideas depend on minds for their existence, but contrary to Russell these same ideas also depend on minds for their truth.

The Origin of Truth: Correspondence With The Facts At this point it would be right to ask how much of an improvement James’ theory is over the more intuitive-sounding correspondence theory. It is important to note prior to indulging into this assessment that the pragmatic conception of truth is established upon a corresponding notion itself - that of belief corresponding to subject-dependent circumstance, rather than to a subject-independent reality as Russell professes. The question is how far pragmatism detaches itself from correspondence theory and how viable this detachment is.

An appropriate place to begin is in what pragmatists like James mean by calling a thing true. As outlined above, James thinks that this has to do with the thing’s practicality to the believer; its usefulness being what ultimately guides truth. But are we here not straight away faced with a dilemma over origin? Is something useful because it is true or is it true because it is useful? According to James, “both these phrases mean exactly the same thing, namely that here is an idea that gets fulfilled and that can be verified” (James, 1975: 98). But again is this idea fulfilled because it is verifiable or is it verifiable due to it being fulfilled? The danger of circularity seems inescapable. James, it appears, requires a distortion to the way in which truth actually relates to the mind for the pragmatic theory to hold. Taking James’ thought process step by step this becomes apparent: The determination of verification lies in usefulness. If then one asks what determines this usefulness, the pragmatic answer can only be the satisfaction or beneficial application that the belief has for the believer. And what in turn determines this

Truth and Reality

53

satisfaction? For James there is mind-dependent circumstance, which is constantly changing. Moreover there is the intrinsic nature of things creating the circumstances in the first place, something James also admits to, being “an epistemological realist” (James, 1978: 272). Therefore following this logic, James thinks that the way things really are somehow relates to his hopes and desires. Another way of stating this is that the facts correspond with James’ expectations and beliefs.

We can now return to the initial question of where truth has its origin. Correspondence, as we have discovered through James’ own thought process, is ultimately sourced from the intrinsic nature of things, which then impacts on human sentiments and value judgments. But this is just resorting fully to Russell’s correspondence theory - truth depending on mind-independent facts. James notes: In the realm of truth-processes, facts come independently and determine our beliefs provisionally. But these beliefs make us act, and as fast as they do so, they bring into sight or into existence new facts which re-determine the beliefs accordingly. (James, 1975: 108) The very theory James is purported to want to distance himself from he is, in fact, implicitly embracing. According to the line of reasoning just provided it can be claimed, on behalf of James and utility theory, that X is useful because it is true and true because it corresponds to reality. This lack of consistency poses major worries for the pragmatist picture of truth if its central objective is indeed to distance itself from any correspondence theory of truth.

Problems With Language And Correspondence Correspondence theory would appear to be infallible as against pragmatism, on the basis of James’ circular reasoning. But this is too naïve a thought. Correspondence theory is itself not without its complications. J.L Austin’s paper ‘Truth’, for example, makes one appreciate the difficulty of our mind’s correspondence with a truth that originates from mind-independent facts. Can minds attain absolute truth given that a belief simply acts as “a picture, a copy, a replica, a photograph…” which are means, as Austin points out, that increase the accuracy of our beliefs but never reach the truth? (Austin, 1970: 126) The problem here seems to lie in the limits of language. Can our language be used to describe mind independent facts? This consideration is important as it will ultimately have a bearing on the accuracy of Russell’s correspondence theory as well as with James’ utility theory, given the latter’s heavy reliance of the former, as we have seen.

Wittgenstein nicely frames this problem when he states that “the limit of language is shown by its being impossible to describe the fact which corresponds to a sentence without simply repeating the sentence” (Wittgenstein, 1999: 110).

These arguments are compelling and difficult to counter especially when arguing from a side which so heavily relies on a smooth comparison between propo-

54

THE BLACK BOOK

sitional statements and reality. If reality is viewed through a Kantian eye, for example, then it seems almost impossible to measure a statement’s truth against a ‘noumena’ whose true nature can never be known to human subjects. Russell is indeed aware of this gap in his theory, saying that if truth is the correspondence of thought with something outside thought then “thought can never know when truth has been attained” (Russell, 2002: 70). But Russell fails to offer a convincing reply, implying that this is the only way truth claims can operate (ibid: 71).

Where does this leave correspondence theory? The answer is not in a much desired environment. The problem of circularity can be ascribed with ease to it on the basis of the difficulties raised. Statements, in our everyday language, originate from reality, i.e. the facts. But claiming that statements correspond with the facts is a tautology since statements are derived from these very facts, as Wittgenstein illustrates. Therefore correspondence theory will always ‘work’, making it impossible to be falsified. So when one reads Russell’s argument that “the hypothesis that pragmatism is erroneous is not allowed to enter for the pragmatic competition…” (Russell in Olin ed. 1992: 198), this criticism may be equally leveled on his own theory.

While Russell’s theory is deflationary in responding to the complications raised by philosophers of language it is in the pragmatic theory that a viable answer can be found: if it is satisfactory for one to believe in a mind-independent reality then its existence is true. This, it seems to me, is the only way for the human mind to get anywhere close to the ‘noumenal’ realm. Under the present means of science ‘the unknown’ is ultimately a matter of faith. However, this is not to say that the pragmatic theory of truth has been completely vindicated, especially when one dwells upon its role in scientific discovery.

Truth Within Science Many believe the pragmatic method to be the most valuable in forming and deforming scientific hypotheses. Russell even comments that pragmatism is the method for dealing with “scientific questions…” (Russell, Ibid) but here caution is needed. Although Russell thinks that for any hypothesis to be true it “should work” (Ibid: 204), what he means by ‘working’ “…is not the general agreeableness of their results, but the conformity of these results with observed phenomena” (ibid). In effect, Russell is employing the pragmatic framework but using ‘correspondence’ ingredients. This view of scientific hypothesizing has been confirmed by the evidence provided by the history of science, where numerous empirically robust theories of the past become falsified in subsequent generations. And what determined these changes were the very ingredients provided by Russell’s correspondence theory.

To take one example, the wave theory of light became universally accepted after the French physicist Auguste Fresnel “formulated a mathematical version of the theory...and used it to predict some surprising new optical phenomena” (Okasha, 2002: 65) Modern physics now tells us that this theory is not true, that

Truth and Reality

55

light does not travel in wave like patterns in “an invisible medium called ether” because modern scientists have found no evidence for the existence of this medium (ibid). This case provides a clear example of the history of science informing us that certain (previously successful) theories do not end up being true on Russell’s criteria that the theories do not correspond with the facts.

Examples that show certain theories to be pragmatic at one stage in time but not at others should prompt one to ask whether it is the scientist’s change of taste or the fact that theories no longer relate to the facts, which leads to their being rejected. History has repeatedly shown it to be the latter. Thus, James’ theory is not wholly consistent with history and generally offers weak explanations into why scientific theories alter so much and in such a short space of time. Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) lays further claims on the success of Russell’s correspondence theory when it speaks of ‘paradigm shifts’ in scientific theory building. What guides scientists in altering their theories, according to Kuhn, is not a change of attitude but rather an appreciation of evidence for the facts.

Conclusion What this essay has conveyed is that truth will always rely on a correspondence between statements and the reality these statements seek to express. Truth-claims about epistemological facts cannot ignore correspondence theory, as expressed by Bertrand Russell. William James’ pragmatic conception of truth sought to offer a new alternative. But only in matters where humans are completely blindfolded from the facts like in relation to the noumenal world is James’ pragmatism of any value. For the discovery of truth in other areas, namely in the ‘phenomenal’ world, pragmatism is no more than correspondence theory in disguise. At the source of judging truth on the basis of utility, there must lay a set of beliefs corresponding to the facts. In James’ conception these beliefs are very selective, given the determination of personal satisfaction. But this impartiality goes completely astray within natural science, possibly the most successful truth enterprise yet devised.

In as much as correspondence theory suffers from the limits of language, it redeems itself through its scope for explaining epistemological facts with such remarkable consistency. The history of science, being an important framework for the history of human thought and for truth clearly points towards correspondence theory over pragmatism as being the more accurate of the two.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1) 2)

Russell, B. The Problems of Philosophy, 2002, Oxford University Press Russell, B. ‘William James’ Conception of Truth’ in Olin, D. (ed.) William James: Pragmatism in Focus, 1992, Routledge

56

THE BLACK BOOK

3) James, W. Pragmatism, 1975, Harvard University Press 4) James, W. The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to Pragmatism, 1978, Harvard Uni

versity Press 5) Thayer, H.S. Introduction to James, W. Pragmatism, 1978, Harvard University Press 6) Austin, J.L. ‘Truth’, Philosophical Papers, 1970, Oxford University Press 7) Engel, P. Truth: Central Problems of Philosophy, 2002, McGill-Queen’s Univer

sity Press 8) Wittgenstein, L. ‘Culture and Value’ in Blackburn, S. & Simmons, K. (ed.) Truth,

1999, Oxford University Press 9) Okasha, S. The Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction, 2002, Oxford

University Press 10) Kuhn, T. Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1996, University of Chicago Press

Is Augustine’s description of language, in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, a philosophical account?

By Timothy Coughlan The journey to philosophical conceptions of meaning is by the abstraction of language from its ordinary home (PI 116). Augustine’s description gives us a clear view of this journey– especially once we have a sense of the themes explored in the investigations – but it does not itself constitute philosophical thinking ready to be criticised. While Augustine’s description only considers names, these names are not seen as the basis of meaning where ‘the meaning is correlated with the word’ and is ‘the object for which the word stands’ (PI 1). This conclusion comes from observing clear distinctions between Augustine’s description and the ‘particular picture’ of language that his words seem to give the author. Moreover, an examination of the language-games of the shopkeeper and the builders illuminates the idea that Augustine’s description is merely a starting point to examine basic functioning in the teaching and using of language. It is not meant as a paradigm for criticism throughout the book and even the notion of the description as a proto-theory is an over-statement. There are certain aspects of the description that could invite philosophical theorising – the focus on names, and the apparent inner language of the child – yet it does not itself constitute a philosophical theory of language.

‘When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved to wards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shewn by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to under stand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires.’ (Augustine, Confessions, 1. 8.)

This is a very accurate account of how children learn simple language. Viewed in isolation, that is all it is. The most critical statement that can be made of the description is that it says ‘words can stand for things’. The problem arises if we take this statement out of its local isolation and take ‘naming’ as picking out ‘isolatable phenomenon whose character can be given independent of any surrounding structure’. Though Goldfarb’s contention that Augustine’s description is

58

THE BLACK BOOK

given to shock us is an exaggeration, his basic point holds true.1 The description is there to allow Wittgenstein the opportunity to explore the abstraction of the relations between words and things from their normal context. There is nothing wrong or philosophically meaningful about a word relating to an object. Yet the posting of even a banal relationship, as given by Augustine, can lay the ground for abstracting this relationship from its ordinary use, and for ‘giving the wordthing connection a special place underlying the use of language, as the essential item in the explanation of understanding’.2 Wittgenstein himself explores the word-thing relation when he says of ostensive training that it ‘establishes an association between the word and the thing’, and that it is ‘an important part of training, because it is so with human beings’ (PI 6). Here we have agreement by Wittgenstein on the two main propositions contained in Augustine’s description: (1) children learn their first words by being directed toward things, and (2) such words are associated with things. An agreement that is justified by research which finds babies who follow the gaze of their parents are able to learn words faster: “This is a fascinating connection between the social and linguistic world and suggests that language acquisition is supported by preverbal social interaction.”3 It is also supported by most of the research on early language learning which states that ‘nouns (referring to people, animals, and objects) must be learned first before children can begin to develop words to express relations, properties, and other meanings’.4 The claims of such researchers do not constitute a philosophical theory.

How then, are we to reconcile the immediate comments following Augustine’s description?

These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language name objects—sentences are combinations of such names - - In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word.

It is the object for which the word stands. (PI 1)

From the start of Augustine’s description to the end of this segment, we see three distinct phases. The first is Augustine’s description, which we have explained. The second is the tentative reception of a particular picture of the essence of language, where words name objects and combine to make sentences. This first change of thought is separated by Wittgenstein’s change of language from Latin to German.

This shows the change to be not a natural progression of an idea, but a change in 1 Goldfarb, p.272.

2 Ibid.

3 http://www.washington.edu/news/2005/11/09/when-it-comes-to-babies-learning-language-the- Weyes-have-it/.

4 Tardif et al, ‘Baby’s First 10 Words’, Developmental Psychology, 2008, Vol. 44, No. 4.

Is Augustine’s description of language, in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, a philosophical account?

59

the way we talk about things. The change in language demonstrates a shift away from the first language-game. The idea that the description gives us this picture is also qualified by Wittgenstein’s caveat of ‘it seems to me’, which Stern highlights as indicating hesitance.5 The picture of language is a clear change as it suggests the only role of words in language is to name objects, and that sentences are only combinations of such words. This is a shift from Augustine who only speaks of the first words children learn – nearly always nouns. On an isolated reading, to give the description the status of a ‘particular picture of the essence of language’ is more than a stretch.

Here we have sight of the first abstraction Wittgenstein engages in. Where Augustine says a child’s first words establish an association between the word and some object, Wittgenstein invites us to generalise and say instead that all words represent such an association. Moreover that language is constructed from combinations of such associations. The last phase introduces the idea that ‘Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands’. This is clearly separated by a double dash. Though Stern says this represents a change of speaker, we need only say it represents a change in idea – for that is what Wittgenstein tells us it is! Here we see the telling abstraction where the association between object and name is concreted as the underlying basis for meaning in language.

Taken on their own, the first two phases I have outlined do not necessarily follow into the next. It requires the activity of abstraction. The goal of the Investigations is to show us how this leads us to nonsense.6 By seeing this we might be able to avoid the mistakes of philosophy by knowing the source of those mistakes and halting before we embark on the journey in the first place. If it were not possible to avoid such abstraction, and Augustine’s description did contain philosophical theory, then Wittgenstein’s goal of the Investigations was redundant from the outset. Yet this cannot be the case if ‘everything lies open to view’ (PI 126). Even if it is the case that we cannot stop doing philosophy whenever we want, this would surely be because of the automatic human tendency to abstract things from their context. It would not condemn Augustine’s description as philosophical; only that it, and other banal statements, cannot be saved from the urge of other minds for universalisation. As Fogelin says, ‘for the most part the work is not a criticism of the results of philosophy, but an interrogation into its source’.7 Wittgenstein wants to be able to say that what we have, even in the first section, is a progression from a simple ordinary statement to a philosophical theory. This can be seen as a microcosm for much of the rest of the book. The beginning of the Investigations reflects the investigative nature of the journey from the ordi5 Stern, p76.

6 Ibid, p.74.

7 Ibid, p.83.

60

THE BLACK BOOK

nary to the philosophical. In just the first half of the first section we can observe the multiplicity of ideas and voices that Cavell, Von Savigny, and Stern allude to.8 Instead of seeing in Augustine ‘the tendency to take central a case and derive a general model from it’, Wittgenstein himself engages in this act to elucidate the manner in which the everyday is transformed into the philosophical.9 McGinn states that Augustine’s holds an impoverished idea of learning language as a system of meaningful signs, thus making it philosophical and a target for Wittgenstein.10 Nowhere does Wittgenstein say that words or sounds cannot stand for things and nowhere does Augustine treat meaning as naming, as McGinn suggests.11 Wittgenstein only says that such association is not the basis of meaning, instead it is our use of those words that give them meaning. Augustine does not contradict this as he does not infer that names by themselves carry meaning.

There is nothing wrong with having words that stand for things. Many commentators seem to think Wittgenstein’s theory of use contains only use. They are completely disparaging about the word-thing association, as if it did not exist – as if there were no words or things in the world and only people ‘using’ silently and with no attention toward objects. Words and things can have an association, yet this association is informed by the use of those things in their given context. To take this association out of its particular utilitarian and anthropocentric context is the part that should worry us – not the association itself.

As Luntley says, part of what constitutes understanding a word for Augustine requires a training in which words are used in their proper places in different sentences’.12 Augustine has a conception of language which Luntley defines as ‘transparent ordinary use’, as opposed to one which entails ostensive definition.13 Though infants learn through ostensive training, which Wittgenstein asserts as distinct from ostensive definition (PI 6), the words they learn have meaning by the use made of them by the elders as ‘meaning takes place in a nexus of activities... expressed by “the natural language of all peoples”. 14 This is reiterated in PI 244 where Wittgenstein talks of how infants can be taught how words can relate to sensations.15 This is questioned by Wittgenstein’s remarks where he likens Augustine’s description of language learning to learning a foreign language: ‘And now, I think, we can say: Augustine describes the learning of human language as if the child came into a strange country and did not understand the language’ (PI 32). This ‘postulation of a spiritual mechanism of thinking for the production and the understanding of speech is... the leading theme in PI’.16 Picardi, like McGinn, misses the key point that the Philosophical Investigations is just that; an investigation. It is not the criticism of some position 8 Ibid, p.75.

9 McGinn, p.39.

10 McGinn, p.59.

11 Luntley (2003), p.67.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid. p.68.

14 Luntley (2010), p.39.

Is Augustine’s description of language, in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, a philosophical account?

61

but an investigation into the variety of ways we are led away from the ordinary.

With this in mind, the format of PI 32 is similar to the way Wittgenstein moves into the second phase described in PI 1. Wittgenstein makes a tentative statement about Augustine’s description only to highlight the short-comings of ostensive definition. It has already been made clear in PI 6 that ostensive definition is not present in Augustine’s description. Here we should keep in mind Von Savigny’s questions of ‘Who speaks? Where is it going? Where does that belong?’17 To call PI 32 a ‘telling criticism’ of Augustine is missing the point of the whole text.18 The shopkeeper’s language-game, introduced at PI 1, has been seen as a critique of the Augustinian picture in that it shows that words are differentiated by their use – that there is nothing left to say about the meaning of the word ‘five’ once we see how it has been used.19 Baker and Hacker state that questions about meaning are fundamental in the Augustinian picture. Yet, as should be evident, this is only the case once we abstract away from the context Augustine is describing. Baker and Hacker take the first half of the section as explicating one view which the shopkeeper language-game refutes. As has been shown, there are three distinct views in that section and they only fit together if one abstracts Augustine’s description from its original context. Without this abstraction, and viewed in isolation, each segment is incompatible with the next. To state that shopkeeper’s language-game is a criticism of Augustine is to miss crucial nuances in the opening section. Looking at the bare words of Augustine it cannot be said that he invites the questions of meaning that Wittgenstein’s proposed idea does, the meanings are already there for Augustine in the use made of the words by his elders.20 The builder’s language-game is one ‘for which the description given by Augustine is correct’. Certainly this is true of Augustine’s actual description but not of all the properties that are apparently assigned to the Augustinian picture. We can say that ‘words name objects’ in the builder’s language as this is confirmed in PI 7, where Wittgenstein also says this process of ostensive training is a language-game by which children learn their native language. Here he is in agreement with Augustine. Can we say of the language-game of PI 2 that ‘sentences are a combination of names’? Clearly not, as there are no sentences. Can we say that the meaning of ‘slab!’ is the object for which the word stands? Clearly not, as Wittgenstein says so: ‘ the kind of ‘referring’ this is, that is to say the use of these words for the rest, is already known’ (PI 10).21 This further refutes Baker and Hacker’s suggestion that Augustine’s description invites questions of meaning. In using the words 15 Ibid, p.40.

16 Picardi, p.10.

17 Stern, p.75.

18 Picardi, p.9.

19 Baker and Hacker, p.62.

20 Luntley (2008), p.69.

62

THE BLACK BOOK

to complete the construction, the builders have an understanding of the different words. This understanding does not come about through the knowledge of the correlation of a word and an object, but through use. It is worth reiterating that this is ‘a language for which the description given by Augustine is correct’ (PI 2).

Of course if we are to take what Augustine says about the first stages of language learning (which concerns ostensive training) and apply it to the whole of our language, we will run into problems – we should remember the abstraction that leads from the first phase to the second in PI 1. Wittgenstein asserts this in PI 3 where he says that we can consider Augustine’s system of communication appropriate for this narrow region. Augustine does not try to expand his definition thus making it incorrect. He talks only of the game of ostensive training which Wittgenstein himself validates as a game elsewhere in the text (PI 6). The journey to philosophy comes when we abstract from Augustine’s ordinary use, and Wittgenstein does this himself to uncover the ‘bumps’ of philosophy which make us see the value of the discovery of such nonsense (PI 119). Of course we can charge Augustine with over-simplification of language, but he only appears to be describing one part of it – trying to use Augustine’s description to go beyond the context of his words leads to the nonsense of philosophy. Yet his language-game makes sense on its own terms. The same is true of taking any form of language out of its normal use and applying it universally.22 But it is only by engaging in philosophy that we can see how we’ve gone wrong.

Concluding, Augustine presents us with standard description of what Wittgenstein calls ostensive training. It concerns how infants learn of the association between words and things by the use made of those words by their elders accompanied by the ‘natural language of all people’. In the opening sections Wittgenstein uses this description as a starting point to show how abstraction from context leads to nonsense. The three phases of the first half of the opening section are particularly important here as we are immediately introduced to the problems at hand. Augustine is not used as focal point of criticism but rather as an ordinary starting point from which the path to philosophy is in clear view. McGinn says that Augustine is picked instead of Russell or Frege because of he represents the universality of temptation.23 This is wrong. He is picked because his account presents us with an ordinary picture of how infants learn to talk. While remaining in the realm of the ordinary, the manner of abstraction from its normal context makes clear the path to philosophy. Therefore it is precisely because it is in itself non-philosophical that Wittgenstein uses it. We are shown that how and why we proceed along this path is important, not necessarily what results from it.24 21 Luntley (2010), p.42.

22 Stern, p.13.

23 McGinn, p.37.

24 Cavell, p.276.

Is Augustine’s description of language, in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, a philosophical account?

63

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

6) 7)

8)

9)

Ahmed, Arif (ed.), Wittgenstein’s ‘Philosophical Investigations’ : a critical guide, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Baker G.P. and Hacker P.M.S., An analytical commentary on the Philosophical Investigations. Vol.1, Wittgenstein: understanding and meaning, Blackwell,1980.

Cavell, Stanley; in Sluga, H. and Stern, D. G. (eds.), The Cambridge companion to Wittgenstein, Cambridge University Press, 1996 Goldfarb, Warren D., “I Want You to Bring Me a Slab: Remarks on the Opening Sections of the “Philosophical Investigations”, Synthese, Vol. 56, No. 3, 1983, 265-282.

Lugg, Andrew, “A Sort of Prologue: Philosophical Investigations §§1–7”, Philo sophical Investigations, 36:1, 2013, 20-36.

Luntley, Michael, “Wittgenstein: meaning and judgement”, Blackwell, 2003.

McGinn, Marie, Routledge philosophy guidebook to Wittgenstein and the Philosophical investigations, Routledge, 1997.

Picardi, Eva, “Concepts and Primitive Language-Games”, In David K. Levy & Edoardo Zamuner (eds.), Wittgenstein’s Enduring Arguments, Routledge, 2008.

Stern, David G., “Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: an Introduction”, Cambridge University Press, 2004.

TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN