Vol. XXII, May 2011

episteme An International Journal Of Undergraduate Philosophy ep•i•ste•me \ep' i ste' mé\ n. [Gk. epistém(é)]: knowledge; specif., intellectually certain knowledge

Volume XXII • May 2011 Denison University, Granville, Ohio

Episteme Volume XXII• May 2011 Episteme is published under the auspices of the Denison University Department of Philosophy in Granville, Ohio.

ISSN 1542-7072 Copyright© 2011 For copyright terms, please visit Episteme‘s online home.

Editors-in-Chief Kimbrey Havens Sean Walt Assistant Editor Melissa Cherry Editorial Board Moriah Ellenbogen Eric King Rob Moore Alex Walling Dillon Wilson Faculty Advisor Mark Moller

Episteme is published annually by a staff of undergraduate students at Denison University.

Please send all inquiries and submissions to: episteme@denison.edu

Statement of Purpose Episteme aims to recognize and encourage excellence in undergraduate philosophy. The journal offers students their first opportunity to publish philosophy, and it boasts examples of some of the best work currently being done in undergraduate philosophy programs around the world. It is our hope that Episteme will help stimulate philosophic dialogue and inquiry among students and faculty at colleges and universities.

The Editors consider papers written by undergraduate students in any area of philosophy. Throughout our history, we have published papers on a wide array of thinkers and topics, ranging from ancient to contemporary and including analytic, continental, and eastern. All submissions undergo a process of blind review and are evaluated according to the following criteria: quality of research, depth of philosophic inquiry, creativity, original insight, and clarity. Final selections are made by vote of the Editors and the editorial board.

Please see the Call for Papers at the back of the journal for information on submitting to our next volume.

Episteme An International Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy Volume XXII

May 2011

CONTENTS Statement of Purpose and Editorial Staff

4

Table of Contents

5

Editors Note

6

Spurious Soul: A Modern Critique of the Thomistic Soul Eric Chase, Seattle Pacific University

8

Three Criticisms of Schopenhauer and a Response from the Advaita Vedantins Brian York, Belmont University

21

Problems of Kierkegaard’s Poetics Thomas Gilbert, Northwestern University

38

Against Fodor Rafael Ventura, Brown University

54

Kantian Realism Jake Quilty-Dunn, Boston University

75

Call For Papers, Vol. XXIII (2012)

91

The Editors express sincere appreciation to the Provost‘s Office, the Denison Honors Program, Bridget Tyznik, and faculty advisor Mark Moller for their assistance in making the publication of this journal possible.

We extend special gratitude to the other Philosophy Department Faculty: Alexandra Bradner, Barbara Fultner, Tony Lisska, Jonathan Maskit, Ron Santoni and Steven Vogel for their support.

Editors Note The students behind Episteme have always worked hard to serve up a high caliber journal of undergraduate philosophy.

Though the students change on a year-by-year basis, the journal has maintained a remarkably consistent look and feel. Episteme consistently features Denison‘s red and white colors, a clean and easy-to-read style, and, of course, high quality scholarly entries covering a great variety of philosophical topics. These mainstays continue to be important to us.

Nevertheless, this year‘s volume, the twenty-second, inaugurates a new stage in the journal‘s life. For the first time ever, the complete archive of Episteme volumes has been made accessible in a digital format. Until now, the only way to read our journal has been to have in hand one of the 400 or so copies of a given volume. That was possible because of our efforts each year to send the latest copy of the journal to nearly all of the philosophy departments in the United States, and others elsewhere, too. And while we intend to continue printing and distributing Episteme to those institutions, we are excited to finally share Episteme with a wider audience in this more flexible digital format. Going forward, each new volume will enter our online archive.

We make this change in order to catch up with the advances of technology, to make Episteme even more attractive to potential submitters, and to ensure that the journal is available to all those who have an interest in reading it. Professional journals have been available online for years. Students have no-doubt been the greatest benefactors of such services. We believe that having access to high quality undergraduate work can also be helpful to students of philosophy—and not just undergraduates: we envision faculty being able to make use of these papers as a teaching tool, as well. Our archive of papers presents examples of solid, creative, and thought-provoking undergraduate work. No matter your relation to philosophy, you can learn from the ideas, the methods, and even the errors that grace our pages.

7

It is time to bring this explanatory introduction to a close. I appreciate having had the pleasure to edit or co-edit this journal for the past two years and to be the primary creator of our new online location. Before I leave-off, I want to emphasize that Episteme‘s mission continues to be the same. If you are an undergraduate philosophy student, I encourage you to submit a paper (or two) for us to consider including in next year‘s volume. Don‘t be too modest or afraid of the competitive nature of our review process.

To everyone: check out the twenty-two years of Episteme at http://denisonepisteme.wordpress.com/. You can also click on Episteme at the Philosophy Department‘s webpage. .

Sincerely, Sean Walt Co-Editor-in-chief Denison University, ‘11

8

Eric Chase

Spurious Soul: A Modern Critique of the Thomistic Soul Eric Chase

P

erpetual reevaluations of the mind-body relationship argued from religion leave empirically minded materialists with the dissatisfying truth that ―disproof‖ of soul existence is as elusive as dualists‘ postulations of ―proof,‖ because, of course, religious systems are founded upon faith. This is the case, according to philosopher of religion Stephan Davis, because ―[n]o thesis having to do with the presence or absence of a soul—or of a certain soul—is ever testable; there are no criteria for determining [a soul].‖1 This dichotomy results in a semantical problem (what does ―soul‖ mean?), leading to an epistemological problem (how can we know whether the soul truly exists and does it actually complete man in the realization of his form?), ultimating in an ontological problem (does the soul represent life-force and purpose, thereby instilling man with the requisite intelligence, spirituality, and reason to affirm said purpose?)—all of which are confounded by metaphysics. And if man employs reason in the pursuit of happiness, is the conception of the soul the determining factor in the attainment of said happiness? If so, does the soul not simply represent Eric Chase graduated in May of 2011 from Seattle Pacific University with majors in History and Sociology. He now plans to gear his efforts towards applying to graduate philosophy programs that are versed in the areas he wishes to pursue. His eventual goal at the graduate level is to explore the relationship between history and philosophy, namely, philosophy of history. Additional interests include the intellectual history of Marxian Theory and the proliferation of post-Marx Marxisms; the legacy and importance of the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory; and contemporary ‗Continental‘ Philosophy and its historical antecedents. His favorite philosophy quotation comes from Friedrich Nietzsche: ―A great truth wants to be criticized, not idolized.‖

Spurious Soul

9

an autonomously undeniable, though immaterial, life-force? In light of cognitive and neurological scientific advancements, along with linguistic and biological evolution, much of man‘s evolved brain functions account for many of the properties traditionally attributed to the immaterial soul. That said, this neither seems to deny man a spiritual capacity, nor deny him of his human-defining faculty of reason—deliberate actions taken to achieve happiness as judged through cost-benefit analyses. But Saint Thomas of Aquino deemed it necessary to define and mate the notions of spirituality and reason in man as leading to happiness. The problem with this line of thinking is that one of these capacities will always rely on the other for determining truth.

Historian of philosophy Richard E. Rubenstein says of this that ―Thomas had made a hash of things by conflating the[se] two realms‖ thus resulting in confluence: ―His system had mystified nature.‖2 The lasting result of Thomas Aquinas‘ relationship between reason and spirituality yields contemporary dualists across religious and cultural divides to hold to an almost innate and requisite notion of a soul to explain life, or imply something beyond us. But why is the presumed need to believe in an immaterial, otherworldly soul so firmly held—held irrationally by rational animals for a spiritual connectedness? I posit that the soul is not necessary for spiritual capacity in man, instead arguing that the soul merely serves as a conception presumed to be necessary for spirituality, and that the steadfastness to retain notions of the soul as representing answers to life questions is archaic and thought constraining. This disparity begs definitional assessment and philosophical inquiry into the conception of the soul.

For the purpose of this paper, interpretive and critical efforts will focus on the Thomistic soul and its influential longevity, due to the pains taken by Thomas Aquinas to define an immaterial conception as instilling the requisite life-giving properties of man, while simultaneously affirming Biblical interpretations of the soul. And although the Thomistic soul is Biblically-based, ―soul‖ has different meanings in the Old Testament as compared with the New Testament‘s treatment thereof. For example, the

10

Eric Chase

Hebrew word nephesh is used throughout the Old Testament to denote an individual life with a material body; nevertheless, nephesh is translated in contemporary terminology as ―soul.‖3 In contrast, the soul of the New Testament shows itself to be heavily influenced by the Hellenization of the Holy Land, representing something more akin to the Greek conception of an immaterial spirituality, which continues in eternal conscious existence after the human body passes away. Thomas sought to meld the various Biblical conceptions of the soul by employing an Aristotelian approach, thereby resulting in a systematic theological science concerning the soul, Christian or otherwise. The outcome of Thomas‘ efforts yields a hylomorphic interpretation of the soulbody relationship: the body and soul are necessarily related to one another as form and matter, resulting in one entity. The lingering effects of the Thomistic soul are neither fully materialist in scope (physicalist), nor dualist; rather, the Thomistic soul shares defining qualities of both theoretical platforms and serves as a median philosophy between the two, offered as definitive. An evaluation of Thomas‘ work on the subject will help flesh out this dichotomy.

The Thomistic soul is defined as being the subsistent and incorruptible – constant and unchanging—form of man. Through the realization of the soul-body relationship, the soul represents man‘s conscious and mental faculties, as well as the life-giving property necessary in making the body animate—alive. Thomas makes this clear when he says, ―the human soul is a spiritual substance; but inasmuch as it is touched upon by matter and shares its own actual being with matter, it is the form of the body.‖4 In line with this definition is the extrapolation that a body does not actually become a living being until the soul informs the body of its form, thereby ultimating in a living human being. Thomistic scholars Robert Pasnau and Christopher Shields say of this that ―a living body is that which is potentially alive. A form, or soul, is that whose presence makes it actually alive.‖5 Accordingly, Thomas premises that ―the soul is defined as the first principle of life in those things in our world which live; for which we call living things animate.‖6 The soul, there-

Spurious Soul

11

fore, is not inanimate but is an active informant to the body of the body‘s form. Regarding this, Thomistic authority Eleonore Stump holds that ―by ‗form‘ Thomas means an essentially configurational state.‖7 From this it follows that a human being is not identical with his requisite soul but requires it to realize his human form, and together they function as one. This is a fair interpretation of the soul-body relationship within Thomism because ―a human being is not a soul only but rather a composite of soul and body.‖8 The relational necessity of the soul to a non-living body, which results in a living human being, is not unique to man.

Animals too are defined by their souls, as outlined by Thomas‘ intellectual forebearer, Aristotle. In working within an Aristotelian framework, Thomas asserts that all life is realized in accordance with a hierarchical order of souls: vegetative appetitive rational. These functions provide life-defining characteristics to matter, thus informing matter of its liveliness through its form—actuating life in line with matter‘s natural inclinations.

Thomas articulates this in saying that ―[e]ach being comes to be a member of its species through its essential form. Now a human being is human insofar as he is rational. Therefore, a rational soul is the essential form of a human being.‖9 Both Aristotle and Thomas declare rational animals to be at the top of the hierarchical order of souls, and rightfully so, because they both assert that humans possess all the abilities of the lower faculties in addition to the faculty of reason. In accordance with the faculties of souls among living things, Thomas separates the rational animal (man) from non-human animals by stating that through reason man is afforded intelligence, cognition, linguistic faculties, spirituality, and morality.

Thomas concludes that ―man understands through the soul,‖ in that he relies on ―the principle of intellectual operation.‖10 It is through the soul‘s intellection and reasoning that man deliberates and acts over his dominion (Gen. 1.2628).

Another approach to the culmination of these phenomena is through actually assessing man‘s cognitive faculties, as opposed to inferring definitive proclamations through spirituality. Ac-

12

Eric Chase

cording to philosopher Paul Churchland, this cannot be stressed enough: ―To decide scientific questions by appeal to religious orthodoxy would therefore be to put social forces in place of empirical evidence.‖11 In the effort of empiricism, man‘s mental faculties are explored via psychology and the cognitive and neurological sciences. These scientific approaches attempt to understand the mind by mapping and exploring brain functions in accordance with actions, feelings, memories, and intelligibility.

According to psychologist Steven Pinker, ideas that hold that a soul is the defining factor of the mind and the mind‘s relationship to the body are brazenly problematic due to ―the overwhelming evidence that the mind is the activity of the brain.‖12 This line of thinking serves as the general foundation for many materialists, who thus look to the cognitive and neurological sciences as the starting point for answers pertaining to human functions and purpose. To a certain extent, though, Thomas recognizes this type of materialist interpretation of man‘s physiology, when he infers, concerning the mind-body question, that ―medical men assign a certain particular organ, namely, the middle part of the head: for it compares individual intentions, just as the intellectual reason compares universal intentions.‖13 But because he defines these attributes as appetitive powers of the soul, he constrains the mind-body question to terms of unwavering hylomorphic dualism. In rebutting this type of thinking, Churchland counters by arguing that ―[c]ompared to the rich resources and explanatory success of current materialism, dualism is less a theory of mind than it is an empty space waiting for a genuine theory of mind to be put in it,‖ and that ―what the neuroscientist can tell us about the brain, and what he can do with that knowledge, [discounts] what the dualist can tell us about spiritual substance, and what he can do with those assumptions.‖14 For Thomas, though, the starting point for questions about life and answers pertaining to human cognition is explained in the realization of the soul informing the body as instilled and defined by God; for Thomas states that ―while the souls of brutes are produced by some power of the body, the human soul is produced by God.‖15 Thomas likely arrived at this conclusion from

Spurious Soul

13

the second creation account in Genesis, which reads, ―the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and … man became a living being‖ (Gen. 2.7 NRSV).16 But is human life the culmination of soul (intellect) and body, thereby equating to the philosophically defensible notion that life is undeniably realized through the soul informing the body of the body‘s form? Pinker answers authoritatively by saying absolutely not: ―A spirit [soul] is stipulated to be exempt from one or more of the laws of biology (growing, aging, dying)‖ and thus ―[represents] hypotheses intended to explain certain data that stymie our everyday theories.‖17 From this it is apparent that the soul seems unable to comport with observable science, not merely for its immateriality but because it presumes to account for man‘s mental cognition and rationale. Why can life not be defined as ―life gives life,‖ deferring to evolution to account for diversity among living things? The Thomistic conception of the soul is shown to be antiquated, offering only a theologically-defined philosophy that adds little, if anything, beyond speculation to scientific inquiry into man‘s cognition. This results in Thomas‘ explication of the soul as relevant only in terms of classical literature of Medieval thought.

But if latitude is to be given to those whose ideas penetrate levels of academia, social stratification, religious divides, and culture and tradition, then the following philosophical postulation serves as an analogous counter-point to the Thomistic conception of the soul. Following the cynical assertion of John Lennon‘s that ―God is a concept / by which we measure / our pain,‖18 conceptually speaking, the notion ―God‖ represents ―good‖ when good is perceived to be in abundance. Conversely, the notion of a God assumes the role of straw man when evil is perceived to be in abundance; all the while the notion of a God never ceases to exist, and our experiences and perceptions of truth and happiness are defined by our interpretations of His nature—His nature, to be sure, as man defines it and instills in Him (i.e., God is created in the image of man). In like manner, then, the notion of the soul never ceases to exist. I should posit that the soul is an abstract concept—a conception—by which belief

14

Eric Chase

therein skirts seemingly unanswerable questions, while it simultaneously represents the answers to said questions, which thus defines and affirms belief in the soul with circular reasoning.

This is an issue for the empirically minded materialist because ―the status of the circular argument is only that of persuasion. It cannot be made logically or even probabilistically compelling for those who refuse to step into the circle,‖ according to physicist and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn.19 Consequently, these ―seemingly unanswerable questions‖ that result from the belief in the conception of the soul include: What is the meaning of life; Why is man deemed a rational animal and is he truly rational; To what ends does reason lead the inquisitive man to infer there to be an ordered purpose?—ad infinitum. But it has been consistently shown throughout history that man can neither answer these questions definitively nor unanimously (e.g., religion v. secularism, science v. tradition), and man has therefore continued to look to an ethereal spirituality that, through its philosophical prevalence and understandings, has assumed a defensible role of representing reality—the soul represents man; man is real; therefore the soul is real. Subsequently, the soul serves as via media between questions concerning man‘s place and purpose within the cosmological design, and the infinitude in which man has ascribed undeniable meaning and essence (i.e., a Providential God of Creation and/or a purpose-driven cosmos). And according to the Thomistic view of the soul, the soul acts as the spiritual conduit that not only allows these questions to be posed (intelligence), but also allocates a sense of connectedness to said purpose (spirituality). When man‘s intelligence and spirituality are used in conjunction with one another the result is the realization of the defining human faculty of ―rationality.‖ Thus, Thomas proclaims man to be a rational animal whose employment of reason and spirituality are innate and necessary in man‘s ultimate goal of happiness.

The question then becomes: Is happiness intrinsic? It seems plausible to say that humans define happiness in terms of context, time, and space; this would also cohere with the evolutionary account of man. Though this characterization does not seem

Spurious Soul

15

to cohere with the notion of ―happiness‖ as intrinsic, happiness possesses an intrinsic value. In this way, happiness is a virtue.

But in terms of specificity, contemporary definitions of personal happiness, assessed in context, results in extrinsic values as determining happiness—thereby defining the virtue of happiness.

In line with this rationale, Pinker says that ―happiness tracks the effects of resources on [man‘s] biological fitness‖ and that ―there are more things that make us unhappy than things that make us happy.‖20 Granting this, the soul conception serves the false pretence of guaranteeing, or at least defining, man‘s due happiness.

But through our evolved nature we must work towards happiness as we see fit and also as it is defined in the contemporary and temporal reality. This fact is not absent from the work of Thomas, but the question now becomes: How does the Thomistic soul account for man‘s pursuit of happiness in light of evolution?

This question complicates the mind-body problem to the point that I assert that the Thomistic soul cannot reconcile the apparent discord between a hylomorphic dualistic reality and man‘s undeniable evolution in an evolved world.

Accordingly, happiness is man‘s goal, though not for the impetus or ends of a soul. This is made clear by philosopher of science Karl Popper and neurophysiologist John Eccles in their assessment of the mind-body problem. They reason that to attribute answers of life and consciousness and the pursuit of happiness to an immaterial soul, ―gives rise to a whole new set of problems.‖ They go on to ask that if man is defined by his soul, ―[h]ow does my soul come to be in liaison with my brain [which] has an evolutionary origin?‖21 How, then, can an immaterial informant, which is subsistent and incorruptible, cohabitate with the material and mediate any life functions of the physically and mentally evolved human being? How can an un-evolved thing define oscillating definitions of happiness in an evolved world?

The following argument shows the notion of the Thomistic soul to be asymmetrical to man‘s evolved form: (i) Man realizes his human form by way of being informed by his subsistent, incorruptible soul. (ii) The observable human form shows man to possess the

16

Eric Chase

faculty of reason, or rather, what it means for man to be human. (iii) If man has evolved, it should be reasonable to deduce that man has evolved from his being informed by an already evolved soul. (iv) But the soul is subsistent and incorruptible, thereby inhibiting its own evolution and its ability to inform man of his evolved human form. (v) Yet man has evolved, and reasoning follows that the subsistent, incorruptible soul, which represents the explanation of man‘s form, cannot inform man of what it means to be human. (vi) Consequently, reason deems the soul unfit to serve the explanatory purpose of what it means for man to be human.

Thus, this argument renders the Thomistic soul, in its state of subsistence and incorruptibility, to be a false form of man, which, by definition, is unable to evolve. As such, the Thomistic soul is an unnecessary conception for man‘s definition of himself. This assertion is arrived at because, as stated, man has evolved. How, then, is the conception of the soul to reconcile this paradoxical disparity? Perhaps my argument has not allowed the soul its due autonomy, wrongly discrediting its essential, undeniable, otherworldly, and atemporal characteristics. What is clear, however, is that the question of soul existence and its conceptual relevance begs for a dualist counterargument. However, as long as the soul is defined in Thomistic terms—form and matter, subsistent and incorruptible, thereby equating to one—reconciliation seems to be an insurmountable task; if pursued, it would result in a soul of modern apologetics defined as a first principle and affirmed by faith.

It should be stated that the efforts exerted here are not to ―disprove‖ soul existence, for this is as impossible as ―proving‖ soul existence. Rather, what is of primary concern is that the notion of holding to traditions of the soul22 in place of what we can see, what we can prove, what we can know, can be regarded as inhibiting free thought concerned with answers beyond the noumenal soul. This is the case because the sciences of the rational man instill hopes of further explaining and understanding ourselves and our place in the universe, which complements phi-

Spurious Soul

17

losophical inquiry. But regardless of soul conceptions and beliefs therein, Saint Thomas of Aquino‘s man-defining teleological purpose of life‘s pursuit of happiness seems worthwhile. And yet, conceptually speaking, notions of a soul are not necessary for the defining and attainment of said happiness, and thus do not determine man‘s spirituality.

Our assessments of physical ―proofs‖ tell us more about our makeup, cognitive faculties, and experiences than does debating the metaphysics of the immaterial thing that is presumed to define a hylomorphic dualistic reality. The result of approaching that slippery slope is that the Thomistic soul is offered as authoritative: Thomas‘ presuppositions of the soul results in the defining of an assumed truth rather than verifying said truth to actually be. The epistemological problem that results from this fallacy, as arrived at by Rubenstein, is that the soul ―stands squarely on the boundary line between science … and religion.‖23 In turn, the soul defines that boundary line in terms of mitigation. That is, if science were to ever account for everything knowable about man and human experience, then the reasoning employed would have necessarily derived from the life-defining virtues of the soul. But how is it that we can affirm immateriality as defining materiality? Finally, the intellectual nature of the soul outlined

by Thomas Aquinas allows man his requisite reasoning abilities to contest, and even deny, the soul‘s very existence. If the explanatory nature of this premise is accepted, then the very thing that gives man his form is thereby proven by its own virtue to no longer serve as relevant for man‘s understanding of himself. The reasoning for identifying with materialism, versus belief in dualism, shows the soul to be an archaic conception, unfit to explain what it means for man to be human.

18

Eric Chase Notes

1 Stephan

T. Davis, ―Survival of Death,‖ in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, ed. Phillip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Malden: Blackwell, 1999), 557.

2 Richard E. Rubenstein, Aristotle’s Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages (Orlando: Harcourt, 2003) 252.

3 The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon.

4 Saint Thomas Aquinas, On Spiritual Creatures (De Spiritualibus Creaturis), trans., Mary C. Fitzpatrick and John J. Wellmuth (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1949), 33-34.

5 Robert Pasnau and Christopher Shields, ―The Human Soul and the Human Body‖ – chap. 6, of The Philosophy of Aquinas (Boulder: Westview Press, 2004), 157.

6 Saint Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, The Summa Contra Gentiles – Introduction to Saint Thomas Aquinas, trans. Anton C. Pegis (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1945), Q. 75. Art. 1 reply.

7 Eleonore Stump, ―Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism Without Reductionism,‖ in Faith and Philosophy 12 (October 1995), 505-31.

8 Summa, Q. 75. Art. 4 reply.

9 Saint Thomas Aquinas, Questions on the Soul (Quaestiones de Anima), QDA. 1 sc. 1.

10 Summa, Q. 75. Art. 2 reply.

11 Paul M. Churchland, Matter and Consciousness (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984), 15.

12 Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 64.

13 Summa, Q. 78. Art. 4 reply.

14 Churchland, 19.

15 Summa, Q. 75. Art. 6 reply.

16 Genesis 2.7 New Revised Standard Version.

17 Pinker, 556-557.

18 John Lennon, God, ―John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band,‖ 1970, Apple compact disc 782.42166 L5482J.

Eric Chase

19

Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed.

(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996), 94.

20 Pinker, 392.

21 Karl Raimund Popper and John C. Eccles, The Self and its Brain (New York: Routledge, 1977), 559-560.

22 i.e., Western understandings of the soul as influenced by the Thomistic definition, having theologically informed the propagation of modern Christianity, later secularized and traditionalized.

23 Rubenstein, 221.

19

20

Eric Chase Works Cited

Churchland, Paul M. Matter and Consciousness. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984.

Davis, Stephan T. ―Survival of Death,‖ in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion. Edited by Phillip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro. Malden: Blackwell, 1999.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed.

Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996.

Lennon, John. God, ―John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band,‖ 1970. Apple compact disc 782.42166 L5482J. Pasnau, Robert and Christopher Shields. ―The Human Soul and the Human Body‖ – chapter 6, of The Philosophy of Aquinas.

Boulder: Westview Press, 2004.

Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.

Popper, Karl Raimund and John C. Eccles. The Self and its Brain.

New York: Routledge, 1977.

Rubenstein, Richard E. Aristotle’s Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages. Orlando: Harcourt, 2003.

Stump, Eleonore. ―Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism Without Reductionism,‖ in Faith and Philosophy 12 (October 1995): 505-31.

Thomas of Aquino, Saint. On Spiritual Creatures (De Spiritualibus Creaturis). Translated by Mary C. Fitzpatrick and John J. Wellmuth. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1949.

Thomas of Aquino, Saint. Questions on the Soul (Quaestiones de Anima).

Thomas of Aquino, Saint. The Summa Theologica, The Summa Contra Gentiles – Introduction to Saint Thomas Aquinas. Translated

by Anton C. Pegis. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1945.

Three Criticisms of Schopenhauer

21

Three Criticisms of Schopenhauer and a Response from the Advaita Vedantins Brian York

J

udging by the amount of scholarly literature dedicated to each, Schopenhauer is considered less important than Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. The majority of secondary literature either focuses on his relation to a more prominent figure or criticizes his system for not being internally harmonious. In this paper I intend to examine three critiques of Schopenhauer‘s philosophy, each of which claims that his philosophy is not internally consistent. Throughout this paper I will refer to the three problems as the knowledge problem, the nihilism problem, and the incoherency problem. While examining these critiques, I will use Indic philosophy to help revive Schopenhauer‘s system. All three of these critiques are in some way related to Schopenhauer‘s aesthetic contemplation, and within Indic thought an analogue is found in meditation.

Throughout this paper, these two types of meditation will be used as a reference point.

Before addressing the knowledge problem, a preliminary note is needed. Indic philosophy is almost as diverse as the Brian D. York graduated from Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee in May of 2011. He earned a Bachelors degree with a major in philosophy and a minor in music, his principal instrument being the classical guitar. His future plans include taking some time off from school to practice philosophy in a less academic setting. Ultimately, he would like to get his PhD in philosophy, but to receive his livelihood by means other than teaching. Some of his biggest philosophical concerns are happiness, the foundations of culture and nobility, the human will, and nihilism. He admires this quotation from author John Steinbeck: ―Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live─for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died…[and] fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself.‖ -Grapes of Wrath

22

Brian York

western philosophical tradition. When I speak of Indic philosophy, I will be referring to the school known as Advaita Vedanta, or non-dualist Vedanta. Vedanta is one of the six orthodox schools in ancient Indic philosophy,1 and advaita is one of its sects.2 Among these schools there circulated a standard body of texts,3 some of which were more closely associated with one school than with others. For instance, a book like the Yoga Sutras was closely tied to the Yoga school, yet all of the schools used and developed a commentarial tradition on the text. Thus, when I speak of an Indic concept my point of view will be that of the non-dualist Vedantins. The tenets of this school will become clear throughout this paper, although it should be remembered that my goal here is not to elucidate the similarities or differences between Schopenhauer and Vedanta. The task at hand is to use Vedanta to help ward off the attacks made against Schopenhauer.

The first problem I call ―the knowledge problem.‖ Before I begin examining the problem, it will be useful to discuss Schopenhauer‘s view of knowledge. The groundwork for Schopenhauer‘s epistemology was laid by Kant. Thus for Schopenhauer, space and time are merely intuitions of the mind, while causality is one of the manifestations of the principle of sufficient reason.4 This principle states that any representation can be explained by reference to a separate or preceding representation, just as classical physics tells us. As a result of this, reason and all of its concepts are valid only in relation to experience, which necessarily takes place in space and time. Except for a special experience called ―aesthetic contemplation,‖ everything in the phenomenal world is guided by principle of sufficient reason, which for our purposes is simply causality. The principle of sufficient reason is completely deterministic. It holds necessarily and absolutely determines the way in which the world changes.

Aesthetic contemplation is an experience during which we gaze not just on an object, but upon its Form or Idea understood in the Platonic sense. Schopenhauer calls the Platonic Ideas the adequate objectification of the will.5 As such, they are the intermediary between the fluctuating world of sense-perception and

Three Criticisms of Schopenhauer

23

from the will by virtue of being differentiated from each other.

As a result of this, the objects of aesthetic contemplation are different from the objects of everyday sense-perception and require a different mode of epistemological access. Schopenhauer says, ―if the Ideas are to become [the] object of knowledge, this can happen only by abolishing individuality in the knowing subject.‖7 In other words, a corresponding change---—from individuated to non-individuated—must be found in both subject and object if the latter is to be known by the former.

Keeping that preface in mind, we can now state the knowledge problem: How can a human being, whose brain and perceptive faculties fall under the principle of sufficient reason, grasp the Platonic Forms, which do not fall under the principle of sufficient reason? While introducing the will as the thing-initself, Schopenhauer says, ―besides the will and the representation there is absolutely nothing known or conceivable to us.‖8 The Platonic Ideas lie in a vague area that is still representation, yet they lie closer to the will than sense-perception. In some way, then, there must be a continuum from the most concentrated and unwavering aesthetic experience of a Platonic Idea to the most etiological and causally focused awareness of a particular object. Perhaps, if we can find a correlating continuum of states from the side of the subject, we can dissolve the knowledge problem by saying that aesthetic contemplation lies on one extreme of the epistemological spectrum. Schopenhauer does indeed give us such a description. He says, ―our consciousness has two sides; in part it is consciousness of our own selves, which is will, and in part consciousness of other things.‖9 He also says that, ―apprehension of the Idea. . .springs only from a temporary preponderance of the intellect over the Will, or, physiologically considered, from a strong excitation of the brain‘s perceptive activity, without any excitation of inclinations or emotions.‖10 It should be kept in mind here that each person‘s body is simultaneously will and representation of will.11 We can now see the corresponding continuum from both the sides of object and subject. When we are contemplating a Platonic Form, our consciousness is focused exclusively on the object of perception and not on

24

Brian York

the object‘s relation to our will. When we are on the other side of the epistemological extreme we are focused on causality insofar as it will help us satisfy a desire. For instance, I can stare at a soda machine and look at it in two different ways. I can contemplate the properties of plasticity, electricity, and gravity in an attempt to understand the nature of the things I see, or I can focus on the causal mechanisms which will result in me obtaining a soda (feeding in a quarter, pushing the button, electrical pulses being sent to the mechanism which drops the soda out of the slot, etc). According to this explanation, de-individuated knowledge comes about when we reside on one extreme of the continuum.12 This answer does not seem completely satisfactory. First, the principle of sufficient reason does not lie on a continuum. It either applies or it does not. Secondly, the innermost nature of all things is will. Where intellect or knowledge appears, it appears as a servant to the will.13 Even when the intellect has a ―temporary preponderance‖ over the will, as is the case during aesthetic contemplation, the will is still there. It seems questionable to cite the brain‘s activity as the means by which we forget our will. By doing this, Schopenhauer seems to go against his earlier claim that the body is the will. He says, ―the act of the will and the action of the body are not two different states. . . but are one and the same thing. . . This applies to every movement of the body. . . [including] involuntary movement following on mere stimuli.‖14 The neurological processes that occur in the brain during perception are an example of ―involuntary movement following on mere stimuli.‖ It is unknown how a process falling under the control of the principle of sufficient reason could produce an experience that does not. Schopenhauer says that in humans, the intellect has the unique power to overthrow its master, the will,15 but he does not explain how this is possible.

If the continuum suggested earlier is accurate, then Schopenhauer seemingly cannot account for this phenomenon. Knowledge that falls outside of the principle of sufficient reason should not lie on the continuum; it should be a further leap past the most concentrated and non-causally focused concentration. Be-

Three Criticisms of Schopenhauer

25

cause knowledge arises out of the will, will-less knowledge seems impossible. For the object to remain while the will vanishes is inconceivable: it is as if one removes the premises and still expects the conclusion.

This problem rises not because contemplative experience is unbelievable, but because Schopenhauer‘s metaphysics do not logically allow for it. Within the Indic tradition, we see a practice nearly identical to aesthetic contemplation: meditation. These two activities are curiously similar. According to the Yoga Sutras, there are eight ―limbs‖ of yoga.16 Of these eight limbs or steps, the last four deal with varying stages of meditation. In ascending order, they are: disengagement of the senses, concentration, meditation, and absorption. These four states roughly correspond to the continuum we saw earlier, where one begins by viewing the world as a conglomeration of objects meant to please the senses. The stage in which we disengage the senses is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum where we try to stop desiring. Concentration and meditation may be seen as varying degrees of mental focus. Eventually, one views objects not as possible ways of satisfying the senses, but as objects upon which to meditate. The final stage of meditation, called absorption or Samadhi, is further split up into five subcategories. The first two seem to have direct overlap with aesthetic contemplation. According to the first traditional commentator of the Sutras, Vyasa, the first of these stages involves taking up an object with complete focus.17 Naturally, this would involve not letting one‘s self desire or want the object upon which one is meditating. The second stage, according to various commentators, is when we see the ―subtle elements‖ of the object previously meditated upon.

Within Indic physics, the subtle elements of all material things are called gunas. They are the three basic constituents of all material and mental bodies, and also have a quality associated with them. The three gunas—sattva, rajas, and tamas—are associated with the qualities of lucidity, activity, and heaviness. The differences in objects that we encounter in the world arise because of differing constituents and different ratios of the gunas. The natural disposition of objects to behave in a certain way arises from

26

Brian York

the gunal composition of the thing.

We have shown that there exists a parallel between the two types of contemplation. In Schopenhauer‘s version we see the inner nature of a thing as will; we notice the way in which all things move, desire, or tend to a certain behavior that is natural to its kind. Similarly, when contemplating the gunas or subtle elements of a thing, we are focusing on the three elements of material nature that are responsible for the natures and movements of all things. It is not at all a stretch of the imagination to equate these two contemplative states.18 The difference is that in the Indic tradition this is not the final stage of contemplation. According to some commentators of the Yoga Sutras,19 the third stage involves contemplating thoughts and the sense organs themselves, while the fourth stage has the most basic part of the mind as its object.20 The fifth and final stage is when the soul or atman becomes fully aware of itself.

The metaphysical differences between Schopenhauer and the Vedantins have now become evident. Schopenhauer says that the will, which has ―striving [as] its sole nature,‖ is the nature of all phenomena.21 The Vedantins claim that the core of every living being is an atman, which is variously identified as the ―ear of the ear; . . . the eye of the eye,‖22 or the ―unthought thinker; the unknown knower.‖23 In short, the atman is consciousness. All psychical activity, however, is a product of the three gunas, which together are called prakriti. But the atman may not be pure consciousness. In the Kena Upanishad we see a student ask his guru, ―Willed by whom does the directed mind go towards its object?‖24 The answer to this is the entity which is described as the ‗ear of the ear; . . . the eye of the eye.‘ Although the main power of this atman is consciousness, it is plausible to locate some sort of agency in the atman itself, as the Brahma Sutras do explicitly.25 It appears that we may have found a solution to Schopenhauer‘s knowledge problem. If Schopenhauer were to admit two things, he could solve the knowledge problem. First, if he were to admit that the fundamental part of a sentient being is the foundation of consciousness, he would be able to account for knowl-

Three Criticisms of Schopenhauer

27

edge. More specifically, he could account for de-individuated experience, because the knowing entity does not fall under the rule of the principle of sufficient reason. It is immaterial, and according to the Vedantins, it is the same in every conscious being.26 This gives the inner-most self an ontological status identical to the Platonic forms. It also still allows for normal perception. The brain and body still operate according to the principle of sufficient reason, and normal perception occurs when the atman is conscious of the brain‘s activity. Schopenhauer can also still maintain that all things, with the exception of the inner-most self, have will or striving as their essence, because this striving and will only manifests itself in the gunas, which are distinct from the atman. An entity that has the fundamental nature of receptivity does not will in the way Schopenhauer claims it does, but all of its gunally composed objects do. Schopenhauer can still maintain that the body is nothing but the will, because the atman is wholly different from the body. All willing and striving does arise from the body, but the body is not the same as our inner-most self. The second thing he must give up is the implicit claim that consciousness arises from the brain. Schopenhauer never talks about the nature of consciousness directly, but he counts it among the powers of the intellect, often using ‗consciousness‘ as a synonym for ‗perception‘ or ‗abstract awareness.‘27 If Schopenhauer were to admit that consciousness is different from intellect, he could still maintain that the entire world of representation has the nature of will. Since Schopenhauer is a transcendental idealist, he maintains that the intellect produces matter and, therefore, will.

The second problem is called ―the nihilism problem,‖ and it deals with the aim of ethics. Upon having an experience of aesthetic contemplation one sees that the innermost nature of all things is will, and then strives to silence it.28 In the concluding chapter of the World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer speaks of ―deliverance from a world whose whole existence presented itself to us as suffering.‖29 For Schopenhauer, the will is nothing but unsatisfied desire and suffering.30 Unfortunately, Schopenhauer also says that the ―human will is always directed

28

Brian York

to its own well-being, which in sum is comprehended under the concept happiness.‖31 If we are to stop suffering, then we must stop the search for happiness. This is a fundamental point in Schopenhauer‘s ethics. Schopenhauer uses the phrase ―denial of the will-to live,‖ or ―mortification of the will‖ to refer to this behavior.32 The problem is that by denying the will-to-live, one denies reality. To phrase this more strongly, one may say that Schopenhauer has as his goal the denial of what is most fundamental and real, in favor of nothingness.33 Although this is not a logical problem, it is intuitive that denying the foundations of reality is in someway mistaken, although Schopenhauer would claim that our intuitions merely support his theory of the will-tolive.

Foreseeing this objection, Schopenhauer says that the concept of nothingness is essentially relative and dependant on one‘s point of view. For instance, when doing arithmetic one can make a negative number positive by adding a second negative sign.

This reversal of qualities is possible only because negativity, and by extension the concept of nothingness, are relative concepts.

Because nothingness is a relative term, ―absolute nothingness‖ has no meaning. It is an incoherent concept. Human beings are phenomena of the Platonic Form ―human.‖ As such, we are the objectified will-to-live. From our point of view, denying the will ―appears . . . as a transition into empty nothingness.‖34 From a different point of view it would appear as the best of all possible transitions. According to Schopenhauer, this transition into nothingness is what superstitious dogmatists variously call ―ecstasy, rapture, illumination, union with God, and so on.‖35 The problem with this view is that there can be no other point of view than the one we have. The will is the sole existent. The only other fathomable point of view is that of non-existence, and that is by definition not a point of view. If the will is fundamental, as Schopenhauer claims, his ethics necessarily amount to a denial of reality, which always appears to us as something bad.

The Vedantin philosopher will also admit that ―[f]or one who has discrimination, everything is suffering.‖36 In this phrase, the word ―everything‖ means ―everything physical,‖ or ―everything

Three Criticisms of Schopenhauer

29

that is prakritic.‖37 The equivalent to ―prakriti‖ in Schopenhauer‘s thought is ―representation.‖ The difference is that representation is will (the cause of suffering). For the Vedantin, prakriti is the cause of suffering. It is either fundamentally separate from the atman, or connected with it in virtue of being derived from the same source.38 This is important, because the Vedantins will only admit that all of life is suffering, so long as it is viewed in a certain way. But they will deny that Brahman, the ultimate source of everything, is the cause of suffering. Rather, the cause is misidentifying our true selves with our bodies and minds, which is precisely what Schopenhauer does. It is the nature of prakriti to change, deteriorate, and eventually annihilate everything it brings forth.39 As Schopenhauer correctly points out, it is the will‘s essential nature to strive against and consume itself.40 Like the knowledge problem, Schopenhauer can still hold the belief that the body is the will, but he cannot maintain that the will is the most fundamental nature of our selves. If he were willing to admit that at our core was a conscious being, he could still maintain the transient and painful nature of all representation and not be accused of denying reality. From this new perspective, suffering arises from a misidentification of the body with the self, not from the inner-most nature of reality.41 The last problem arises not while looking at the goals of Schopenhauer‘s ethics, but while examining the feasibility of putting them into practice. I call this ―the incoherency problem,‖ and it relates to ―the nihilism problem‖ in that it is an attempt to carry out the actions learned from contemplation. The issue is whether it is possible to silence the will without willing in the process.42 In describing ethics and ethical living, Schopenhauer presents a three tiered account: the first and second are found in the essay On the basis of Morals, while the third is in the final chapter of The World as Will. The first stage of ethical action is negative, while the second is positive. In the negative account Schopenhauer describes the virtue of justice. Justice is that which ―steps before me, checking the inherent anti-moral powers in me, as a result of which I cause others to suffer, calling me to ‗stop!‘‖43 The second stage, which is positive, is called loving

30

Brian York

kindness. Schopenhauer says that loving kindness ―does not just restrain me from hurting another, but even impels me to help him.‖44 These virtues both arise out of compassion, which is the immediate identification of, and participation in, another‘s suffering.45 The third step is again negative, and one no longer acts out of compassion or virtue. In The World as Will, Schopenhauer says that when a person ―recognizes the true nature of things-inthemselves, and thus the whole, [he] is no longer susceptible [to] such consolation. . . The phenomenon by which this becomes manifest is the transition from virtue to asceticism.‖46 The ascetic is the human who ―ceases to will anything.‖47 At this point we may ask whether this view is logically consistent. Every action and movement of the body is an action of the will. This must be the case with the lack of action as well. To examine this more closely we may enquire into suicide, of which Schopenhauer often speaks.48 Generally, Schopenhauer is against suicide. He says that it is a misguided attempt to silence the will that ultimately fails. Suicide is a manifestation of the dissatisfaction with one‘s particular condition, and not with life itself.49 There is a special type of suicide, however, that is the utmost extreme of asceticism: starvation.50 All other suicides attempt to eliminate suffering by cutting life short. In this case however, the suffering is prolonged, and the will does not affirm itself by eliminating the pain involved in life. The difference between these two situations seems harder to distinguish than Schopenhauer supposes. If an action takes severe discipline or if the results are painful, then it is an act of the will to refrain from responding. It could not be otherwise. If it were, we might ask, what is causing you to not will? The will causes one to not will, or as Nietzsche puts it, to will nothingness. At this point, Schopenhauer might object that to cease acting is to cease willing: The body is the will, but only its movements are willed. You do not will yourself to stay motionless during a deep sleep, he might say. To this one could respond by pointing to pleasure and pain. It is true that our bodies can be at rest without it being willed. An ascetic‘s body, however, incurs great hardship and pain. According to Schopenhauer, ―it is called pain when it is

Three Criticisms of Schopenhauer

31

contrary to the will.‖51 It is our own will that prevents us from acting out against this pain. We can see this from the nature of will itself. When explaining the way in which the Forms take hold of matter, Schopenhauer states that higher and more complex Forms do not exterminate the lower, but appropriate them.

For example, the human Form appropriates crystallization in bone formation, electricity in the brain, and chemical separation in the stomach. He makes it clear that the higher are not epiphenomena reducible to the lower; but the higher, ―swallowing up all of them,‖ appropriate the lower, for ―variance with itself [is] essential to the will . . . each wishes to reveal its own Idea.‖52 The will‘s essential nature is to strive against itself, as Schopenhauer puts it, ―the will-to-live generally feasts on itself.‖53 Thus, we must admit that the inner struggle one feels as an ascetic is a perfect mirroring of the will‘s essential nature which was supposed to be eliminated through asceticism.

To solve this problem, one must remember a distinction that was suggested when examining the knowledge problem. According to the Brahma Sutras and the Kena Upanishad, the atman has some sort of agency. This agency must be sharply distinguished from want or desire. Although this issue has not been developed well within the Indic tradition,54 there are some problems with attributing agency purely to the mind. If the mind is the thing that works for liberation, then it is the thing liberated.

The atman was never deluded in the first place, and enlightenment has nothing to do with the atman. In this case the atman would be the eternally ―detached witness‖55 that passively watches the mind free itself of ignorance. A similar argument states that if the body had agency within it, the atman would again be stuck as a passive witness to a body which freed itself by its own agency.

If Schopenhauer were to accept that will lies in the body and in the material universe, but that the inner-most self retains some amount of agency, he would not have the incoherency problem.

If the self has agency, then self-denial is not the contradictory self -reflexivity it appears to be for Schopenhauer. Instead, it is a hierarchical ordering that is initiated by the inner-most self. In this

32

Brian York

situation Schopenhauer could retain his beliefs about the freedom of the will and the deterministic nature of the material world. The self, which has agency, is totally free to make decisions. All motives and influences, however, are bound up with the deterministically bound body. Only when a person has encountered certain ideas and experiences will that person be capable of choosing the path of philosophical enlightenment, or for that matter, any other path. This seems to be what we encounter in the world. It takes a certain disposition and set of experiences to embrace any particular life.

To conclude, I will summarize the solutions and amendments which I recommend Schopenhauer accept if he is to avoid the aforementioned problems. If Schopenhauer accepts the following propositions, he will not run into the problems he does: 1) The inner-most self has consciousness. 2) Consciousness is different, and more fundamental than, the intellect. 3) The self has a type of basic agency which is different from wants and desires.

By accepting these three propositions, Schopenhauer can maintain a whole host of his beliefs which include, but are not limited to: atheism, the priority of first hand experience in metaphysics, the painful and transient nature of the material world, the freedom of self, the determinacy of the world, the legitimacy and reality of aesthetic contemplation, and finally the mystical belief in the one-ness of all beings. It is my belief that with these changes, the essential characteristics of Schopenhauer‘s philosophy are still preserved. Among modern philosophers, Schopenhauer is the black sheep of the flock. His metaphysical system has more in common with the ancients than any does any other system from the modern period. As has been demonstrated, Schopenhauer can retain many of his essential beliefs even after these changes. Although this paper is not the place to do so, it seems appropriate that the next step for an admirer of Schopenhauer would be to look into Schopenhauer‘s influences. By doing this one could determine the specific beliefs and concepts which lead Schopenhauer into holding problematic doctrines.56 The natural place to look would be in Kant, whose books greatly influenced Schopenhauer‘s views on consciousness and intellect. By exam-

Three Criticisms of Schopenhauer

33

ining these three problems and suggesting further work to be done, I have hoped to contribute not only to the legitimacy of Schopenhauer as a philosopher; but also to the Vedanta tradition which, though quite similar to many western philosophies, is often not studied by western philosophers. Schopenhauer and the Vedantins both have many merits which are often overlooked. By conducting research into these two philosophical systems I am attempting to display the merits and spread awareness of both as relevant and important schools of thought.

Notes 1 The

other schools are Vaisesika, Nyaya, Yoga, Sankyha, and Mimamsa.

2 The two other competitive sects were dvaita (dualism), and vishishtadvaita (qualified non-dualism).

3 Some of the standard texts are the Vedas, the Upanishads, The Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras, the Brahma Sutras, as well as many others that are lesser known.

4 Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (LaSalle: Open Court, 1974) 52-57. While the manifestation spoken of here deals with changes in matter, the other three deal with true and false judgments, mathematics, and animal motivation. Human action is specifically determined by motivations and reasons, not physical causality.

5 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Volume 1 (Mineola: Dover, 1969) 178-181 6 Ibid., 127-130.

7 Ibid., 169.

8 Ibid., 105.

9 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Volume 2 (Mineola: Dover, 1969) 367.

34 10

Brian York

Ibid., 367.

11 Schopenhauer,

WWR Vol. 1, 99-103; ―The whole body must be nothing but my will become visible, must be my will itself.‖ 107.

12 Everyday awareness seems to lie somewhere between the two extremes, although nearer the side of the will than the intellect.

The absolute egoist would have the other extreme state of perception, because he would be interested in things only insofar as they did something for him.

13 Schopenhauer, WWR Vol. 1, 177.

14 Ibid., 100.

15 Ibid., 184-194; This is what the genius and the madman have in common, namely to perceive things apart from their cause, effects, or relations.

16 Patanjali, The Yoga Sutras, trans. Edwin F. Bryant (New York: North Point Press, 2009) II.29.

17 Patanjali, Yoga Sutras, I.17 18 Swami Vivekananda, who was a contemporary and friend of Schopenhauer, says ―when one struggles to take the elements out of time and space, and think them as they are, it is called Nirvitarka, [the second stage of Samadhi].‖ Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga (Kolkata: Advita Ashrama, 2007) 132. In this passage we see a stage of Samadhi described in explicitly Kantian/ Schopenhauerian terms, illustrating that they are analogous, if not identical.

19 Patanjali, Yoga Sutras, I.17. In particular, Vacaspati Misra.

20 Different commentators name different parts of the Citta as the most basic. Most of them agree that it is that most basic part which is meditated upon in this stage of Samadhi.

21 Schopenhauer, WWR Vol. 1, 308 22 Swami Gambhirananda, trans. Eight Upanishads Volume 1.

(Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, 2008) 42 23 Eliot Deutsch and Rohit Dalvi, editors. Essential Vedanta: A New Source Book of Advaita Vedanta. (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2004) 45 24 Gambhirananda, Eight Upanishads Vol. 1, 40 25 Swami Gambhirananda, trans. Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya of Sri Sankaracarya. (Kolkata: Avaita Ashrama, 2000) II.iii.33-39

Three Criticisms of Schopenhauer

35

The only reason we seem separated is because of Maya, or illusion, which often functions in a way similar to the principle of sufficient reason, the cause of individuality for Schopenhauer.

27 Schopenhauer, WWR Vol. 1. 119. Here Schopenhauer says that time and space are present in consciousness, showing that he uses ―consciousness‖ and ―intellect‖ interchangeably among other words.

28 Ibid., 397, ―complete resignation or holiness, always proceeds from that quieter of the will; and this is the knowledge of [the will].

29 Ibid., 409.

30 Ibid., 164, ―the will in itself … is an endless striving.‖ 196 ―All willing springs from lack, from deficiency, and thus from suffering.‖ 31 Arthur Schopenhauer, The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (Oxford: New York, 2010) 130.

32 Schopenhauer, WWR Vol. 1. 378-398. Both of these phrases are used and explained in this chapter.

33 Ibid., 411, ―Before us there is certainly left only nothing.‖ 34 Ibid., 409 35 Ibid., 410.

36 Patanjali, Yoga Sutras, II.15.

37 Prakriti is synonymous with the interaction or play of the gunas. The gunas are analogous to something like atoms, while prakriti is material nature in general.

38 The Vedantins maintain the oneness of all things. They will either say that prakriti is the lower nature of Brahman, as is the case in the Bhagavad-Gita, or they will say that prakriti is the power of Maya used by Brahman. In either case the relationship between atman and prakriti is fundamentally different from that of the individual will and the fundamental will.

39 Patanjali, Yoga Sutras, II.15.

40 Schopenhauer, WWR Vol. 1, 146-147.

41 It should be noted here that the method for fixing this mistaken identity is any one of the paths of yoga, which include raja, or meditation yoga; Karma, or action yoga; and Bhakti, or devotional yoga (which is not discussed in this paper).

26

36

Brian York

Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Maudemaire Clark and Alan J. Swensen (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998) 118, ―man would much rather will nothingness than not will...‖ 43 Schopenhauer, The Two Fundamental Problems, 217.

44 Ibid., 229.

45 Ibid., 212-213.

46 Schopenhauer, WWR Vol. 1. 380.

47 Schopenhauer, WWR Vol. 1. 380.

48 Ibid., 398-402; Schopenhauer, The Two Fundamental Problems, 142-142.

49 Schopenhauer, WWR Vol. 1. 398-399.

50 Ibid., 400-402.

51 Ibid., 101.

52 Ibid., 146-147.

53 Ibid., 147.

54 Patanjali, Yoga Sutras, 462-466.

55 Patanjali, Yoga Sutras. 466.

56 Mark Anderson, Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One (San Rafael: Sophia Perennis, 2009) 54-63; This is done from a Platonist perspective. This chapter deals largely with Schopenhauer and seeks to critique him from the point of view of Plotinus, in a similar manner that I have done in this paper. Although the point of reference is different, the spirit of the book Pure is one that is largely taken up here, and in that respect I am indebted to it.

42

Three Criticisms of Schopenhauer

37

Bibliography Anderson, Mark. Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One. San Rafael: Sophia Perennis, 2009.

Deutsch, Eliot, and Rohit Dalvi, ed. Essential Vedanta: A New Source Book of Advaita Vedanta. Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2004.

Gambhirananda, Swami, tr. Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya of Sri Sankaracarya. Kolkata: Avaita. Ashrama, 2000.

Gambhirananda, Swami, tr. Upanishads Volume 1. Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, 2008.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Maudemaire Clark and Alan J. Swensen. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998.

Patanjali, Yoga Sutras, tran. Edwin Bryant. New York: North Point Press, 2009.

Sargeant, Winthrop, trans. The Bhagavad Gita. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. LaSalle: Open Court, 1974.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics. Translated by David E. Cartwright and Edward E. Erdmann. Oxford: New York, 2010.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation, Volumes 1 and 2. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. Mineola: Dover, 1969.

Vivekananda, Swami. Meditation and its methods. Edited by Swami Chetanananda. Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1978.

Vivekananda, Swami. Raja Yoga. Kolkata: Advita Ashrama, 2007.

38

Thomas Gilbert

Problems of Kierkegaard’s Poetics Thomas Gilbert

T

hough Søren Kierkegaard‘s theology dissertation, On the Concept of Irony, represents the very beginning of his authorship, its substance displays a remarkable thematic uniformity with both the late pseudonymous works as well as his signed Edifying Discourses. In this work, Kierkegaard criticizes the German Romantics‘ extensive and sustained use of literary irony in order to define selfhood. This irony manifests itself especially in the writings of Schlegel and Fichte, whose characters are often unconstrained by conventional morality and manage to both subsume and lampoon its tenets within their far-reaching critiques of bourgeois society. Kierkegaard reveals his disgust with Schlegel‘s Lucinde in unusually personal language: It is not only the tame ducks and geese. . .that beat their wings and utter a terrifying cry when they hear the wild birds of love whistling by overhead.

No, it is every more deeply poetic person. . .[who] must endeavor to show that to live is something different from to dream.1 Thomas Gilbert is a senior at Northwestern University, majoring in philosophy and sociology. After graduation, he will live in Copenhagen for a year on a Fulbright grant, doing research on Kierkegaard's historical social context. Afterward, he plans to enroll in a graduate program in sociology, focusing on how specific historical social systems produce individuals with unique varieties of philosophical productivity. His interest in this topic stems from his general enthusiasm for early 19th century Continental philosophy, as well as a growing interest in the Cynics and Stoics of ancient Greece. The goal of his research is to establish a single macro-sociological theory that explains how and why philosophy has evolved over time. Although it is not from a work of philosophy, the quote that has most oriented him during his undergraduate career is "A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard," from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.

Problems of Kierkegaard’s Poetics

39

He further discusses at length the exact stylistic trait of Lucinde that he finds so offensive: Were it possible to imagine that the whole of Lucinde were merely a caprice. . .who then would be so ridiculous as not to laugh at it? But this is not the case. [Its] audacity. . .is so amiable and interesting that ethics, modesty, and decency, which at first glance have some attraction, seem rather insignificant entities by comparison.2 If we ignore the rhetorical irony Kierkegaard himself has weaved into his hermeneutic, we begin to sense the nature of his resentment: it is precisely because Lucinde is meant to be taken seriously that Kierkegaard denounces it as amoral. For Kierkegaard, the novel expresses an unholy conflation of ethics and Romantic aesthetics. The young philosopher wants these categories properly differentiated, as he explains in a key later passage: Poetry is a kind of reconciliation, though not the true reconciliation. . . Instead, it reconciles me with the given actuality by giving me another actuality, a higher and more perfect. . .it often becomes no reconciliation at all but rather animosity.

Only the religious, therefore, is capable of effecting the true reconciliation, for it renders actuality infinite for me.3 Furthermore: He who enjoys poetically, were he to enjoy the whole world, would still lack one enjoyment: he does not enjoy himself. To enjoy oneself is alone the true infinity.4 Though presenting a complicated metaphysical hierarchy, Kierkegaard repeatedly emphasizes that Romantic irony presents a false definition of selfhood: a superficial poeticization of the real world and its faults that can never truly free oneself from the

40

Thomas Gilbert

unbearably unsatisfactory world that irony lambastes. As we ourselves are agents within the world, our conception of self requires something more than the coy negativity at the heart of Lucinde. In this sense, Kierkegaard‘s take on Romantic irony grows directly out of his critique of all irony; it is a wonderful tool for dismantling the superficial institutions of society, but refuses to posit anything in return. It leaves one in a state of negative freedom, not able to be serious about oneself and to oneself.

However, Kierkegaard admits that Romantic irony—and by extension, to live aesthetically—remains necessary for one‘s personal development. First, it is a crucial tool in the quest to narrate one‘s own life, as one requires an ironic viewpoint to achieve enough self-distance to conceive of oneself in relation to other people. Positive self-reflection is thus a form of irony. We must devalue certain moments of our lives and lift up others as moments of profound realization or ―turning points.‖ In forming a relation to myself, ―myself‖ becomes clear to me. Second, even if this self-distance never transcends cold irony, it is necessary to pass through it in order to discover that very coldness, and its internal ethical contradictions relative to an opposite, lifeaffirming project. This discovery and subsequent redefinition of self represents the well-known Kierkegaardian ―spheres of being,‖ moving from mere citizen to an aesthete to the ethical and finally to the religious. I posit, however, that Kierkegaard‘s definitions of the aesthetic and the religious, as outlined in his future career as an author, perform so many of the same functions for one‘s identity that the author himself remained in profound intellectual confusion regarding their respective categories. I will trace this confusion through many years of his authorship and a brief discussion of relevant academic work.

Scholar K. Brian Söderquist has argued that Kierkegaard‘s conception of religious territory—especially as an answer to aesthetic irony—cannot even be publicly discussed because the debate itself has been moved outside of human categories. Describing Anti-Climacus‘ (the pseudonymous author of The Sickness Unto Death) analysis of the ―defiant poet,‖ Söderquist argues Kierkegaard ―points to inwardness as the solution to overcoming

Problems of Kierkegaard’s Poetics

41

the inclination to control self-interpretation . . .pointing to psychological territory.‖5 That is, Kierkegaard conceives of the religious as the answer to the aesthete‘s ethical problems; through an inexpressible inwardness grounded in God rather than mere ―egoism of words,‖ the pious man can maintain a joyful selfawareness without trying to express that awareness, which would automatically drive him into ironic reflection and mere poetic self-interpretation. However, I instead believe that Kierkegaard did in fact seek a path by which he could both embody and express this religious category—the authorship itself, which he hoped could both poetize religious truth while preserving his own incommunicable inwardness. Kierkegaard attempts this through the dialectical nature of his pseudonymous works and careful, obsessive experimentation with poeticizing his own identity. However, as we shall see, even this author-experiment fails to succeed.

Before analyzing several of Kierkegaard‘s pseudonymous works in turn, we will first examine his clearest statement of the author-experiment itself, his unpublished The Point of View for My Work as an Author. Speaking in his own name at the culmination of the entire authorship, Kierkegaard directly confronts the relationship between the aesthetic and religious within all of his works. As we cannot know how representative the pseudonyms are of his own beliefs, this late work is vital as a yardstick by which every earlier piece of writing can be judged to fail or succeed on Kierkegaard‘s own metric. Describing his project, Kierkegaard acknowledges almost immediately the central conflict among all of his pseudonyms: To live only in the unconditional—the human being cannot do this; he perishes like the fish that must live in the air. But on the other hand a human being cannot in the deeper sense live without relating himself to the unconditional; he perhaps goes on living, but spiritlessly.6 Just as in On the Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard argues that we must both accept ourselves as a coequal part of the material

42

Thomas Gilbert

world while also attaining to the unconditional; pure irony ignores the former entirely. Still, for Kierkegaard the human world remains a ―vortex‖ that provides an illusion of meaning and stability, while in fact it is simply ―sewing without fastening the end.‖7 One must relate oneself to something infinite, either through irony or a leap into Christianity, in order to complete the narrative tapestry that bare worldly existence is unable to provide. Yet for both the ironic and the Christian life, the exact balance between actuality and infinitude necessary to create a productive selfhood remains unclear. How much sewing is necessary before the cloth can, or must, be fastened? Or is this a purely individual, subjective decision, immune from Kierkegaard‘s attempt to define such a balance? And if so, is Kierkegaard‘s ‗not this/nor that‘ definition of selfhood anything more than a platitude? He never elaborates, and we are left to wonder if Kierkegaard merely chose to remain ‗joyfully silent‘ about the answer to his proffered riddle, or if he is as lost as the rest of us.

In the introduction to The Point of View that follows, Kierkegaard gives the reader the indication that even the nature of his authorial project, and not just the lifestyle it endorses, is incommunicable: It is self-evident that I cannot present completely an explanation of my work as an author, that is, with the purely personal inwardness in which I possess the explanation. In part it is because I cannot make my God-relationship public in this way, since it is neither more nor less than the universally human inwardness. . .which it would be a crime to suppress and a duty to stress. In part it is because I cannot wish to press upon anyone something that pertains solely to my private character, which of course for me contains much of the explanation of my author-character.8 We must note that Kierkegaard equates his relationship with God to ―universally human inwardness‖: a purely human category accessible even to the Greeks, who are criticized in The Sick-

Problems of Kierkegaard’s Poetics

43

ness Unto Death for lacking a sense of spiritual sin and are thus cursed to a state of unconscious despair. This is therefore an illuminating passage for its ambiguous depiction of ―inwardness‖ as something both separate from and strangely synonymous with the very idea of God. The authorship itself also resides inside Kierkegaard‘s ―private character‖ alone, and thus he cannot mediate our question about ―inwardness‖ because the medium in which it was expressed is a part of that same ―inwardness.‖ In poker terminology, we call this a ―tell.‖ If the author-character is essentially no different from his private character (which he refuses to narrate), then it is strikingly unclear to the reader exactly what the authorship is meant to be: either an astonishingly advanced dialectic whose pseudonymous twists and turns do somehow indirectly communicate the correct path to self-identity, or else an expurgated form of personal therapy which Kierkegaard feels un-obligated to unpack for public understanding. If the final goal of the authorship has been to balance a silent, reverent, inward infinity with the flamboyant and expressive demands of aesthetic living, then the answer to the riddle lies only in the works themselves. While The Point of View does address the identity-dilemma Kierkegaard claims to have answered in previous publications, he freely admits that the ―author-character‖ himself cannot perform the same service.

This unresolved tension continues within Part One of The Point of View. While Kierkegaard works hard to convince the reader that his pseudonymous work consistently presented an aesthetic viewpoint, he also claims he always was and remains a religious author. Near the beginning of his ―Explanation‖ he gives a wooden and confusing interpretation of this authorial intentionality: . . .qua human being I may be justified in making a declaration [on my authorship as a whole], and from the religious point of view it may be my duty to make a declaration. But this must not be confused with the authorship—qua author it does not help very much that I qua human being declare that I have intended this and that. But pre-

44

Thomas Gilbert sumably everyone will admit that if it can be shown that such and such a phenomenon cannot be explained in any other way, and that on the other hand it can in this way be explained at every point, or that this explanation fits at every point, then the correctness of this explanation is substantiated as clearly as the correctness of an explanation can ever be substantiated.9

In other words, Kierkegaard—unable to use the existing categories of human being or religious duty to express his work— announces the invention of a new, intermediary category: the author, which is the best category simply because, tautologically, it is the ―clearest‖ among all possible alternatives. It seems that, as long as Kierkegaard can justify his works ―at every point‖ as their true author, then even if only he can understand the true nature of his project, the project remains valid—and hence, presents a valid definition of selfhood. The Point of View, then, does lay out Kierkegaard‘s summation of his published thought and directly describes its goals; but the justification of those goals, as well as the edifying process of achieving them, can only be experienced through the indirect communication of the pseudonymous works. The Point of View thus accomplishes its intention, which is merely to conceptualize the authorship rather than arbitrate or even explicate the claims of specific works. Kierkegaard believed that to simply spell out the complex balance of selfhood—ironic vs. religious, actuality vs. infinitude—prevents the reader from forming a relation with each element of that balance and thus arriving at the answer. We must therefore turn to Kierkegaard‘s key pseudonymous works, each of which presents a different balance in the elements of selfhood. We can then see if each of them presents, at the very least, consistent definitions of philosophical terms and categories. For The Point of View‘s argument about the cohesive and unified shape of the authorship to remain plausible, this is the minimum requirement, because dialectic—as well as dialogue—cannot succeed if the different ―speakers‖ or works are not using the same language.

Problems of Kierkegaard’s Poetics

45

We begin with Either/Or, the first major pseudonymous work, containing no less than three distinct voices, one of which—―A‖/Johannes the Seducer—represents Kierkegaard‘s longest sustained and most incisive depiction of the aesthete in any of his publications. ―The Seducer‘s Diary‖ in specific reveals how Johannes plays with the categories of the aesthetic and the religious—and with much more success than Kierkegaard had with Regine Olsen, his relationship with whom is poetically reinterpreted within the Diary. Thus Johannes, rather than lying squarely in the aesthetic realm, actually occupies an ambiguous space between it and the religious as well as Kierkegaard himself; or at least, Johannes‘ knowledge of these categories is so great that he can poetize himself into any one of them at will.

Kierkegaard‘s analysis of the aesthetic qua Johannes, in fact, is so powerful that the author inadvertently begins to tear down his own project—to actually sanctify Johannes.

Our sense of Johannes‘ preternatural awareness of the religious comes from Victor Eremita, the textual editor of Either/Or, whose introduction to the Diary is a bit too praising of the Seducer‘s abilities. While clearly stating that Johannes suffers from a great ―sickness,‖ Eremita also contends that he was ―too strong‖ for reality and that he had ―too spiritual a nature to be a seducer in the usual sense.‖10 This hearkens us to the variegated formulas for despair presented by Anti-Climacus in The Sickness Unto Death, and if we wish to treat the works as a single dialectic (which The Point of View compels us to do), then we must assume that Victor is well past ―weak‖ despair and in an advanced state of defiance before God. But the rub here is Johannes‘ spirit: Eremita even repeats that ―he lived in far too spiritual a manner to be a seducer in the ordinary sense,‖ as if in awe of Johannes‘ abilities.11 Cordelia herself admits that Johannes is so spiritual that she feels ―annihilated as a woman‖ when in his presence.12 And Anti-Climacus, several years later, also states that the highest demand that can be made on man is simply that he becomes spirit.13 So it is not a good sign that the editor of the whole of Either/Or, half of which (Judge Vilhelm‘s contribution) is supposed to lie above or beyond the aesthetic in Kierkegaard‘s meta-

46

Thomas Gilbert

physics, is reduced to helpless wonder at how spiritual Johannes truly is.

I am assuming here, perhaps unfairly, that Victor Eremita is a double for Kierkegaard himself. Or perhaps in elevating Johannes as highly as possible, Kierkegaard is setting him up for the greatest possible fall. However, there is one more passage from Eremita‘s introduction that will verify our doubts about Johannes‘ specific place on the irony-religion spectrum. Eremita directly describes the despair of Johannes: It is not in external respects that he has led the others astray, but in ways that affect them inwardly. . .A person who goes astray inwardly has less room for maneuver; he soon finds he is going round in a circle from which he cannot escape.

This, on an even more terrible scale, I think, is how it will go with him. . . he is thus constantly seeking an exit and forever finding an entrance through which he returns into himself.14 In other words, Johannes runs the risk of losing himself in inward infinity—the very territory, as we have seen, that the ironist should be unable to access. We know from On the Concept of Irony that the Romantics exist in a state of external infinity while a meaningful depth-of-self remains impossible to achieve.

Rather, should Johannes slip into aesthetic despair, then all he would have access to is himself: he would be enjoying himself too much, and would be completely unable to escape the misanthropic games that he enjoys playing with himself and others.

Through his godlike command of seduction, Johannes not only ―fastens the end‖ of himself in infinitude but can sew backwards and forwards at will!

Again, strictly speaking, this is not a contradiction on Kierkegaard‘s part; Eremita himself offers a rather aesthetic definition of aesthetic despair, with metaphorical foxholes, lights behind half-open doors, and travelers who somehow find themselves back where they began. We can only speculate whether Eremita himself suffers from an inchoate aesthetic fixation, and it is thus

Problems of Kierkegaard’s Poetics

47

improper for us to count this categorical confusion as hard proof for the aesthete‘s access to inward infinity or Kierkegaard‘s personal confusion therein. But what does it say about the metaauthor himself that during his best opportunity to argue for Johannes‘ shortcomings—other than the stuffy logorrhea of Judge Vilhelm—the worst he can come up with is that Johannes might find himself locked inside the paradise accessible only to the religious? We must ask: what then is the difference?

But if Eremita, like Cordelia and even Judge Vilhelm, has been so seduced by Johannes that any criticism they have of him comes off as an aesthetic compliment, the same certainly cannot be said for Anti-Climacus, who is absolutely not an aesthete and openly proclaims in his introduction to The Sickness Unto Death that his essay is meant to be both rigorous and edifying (and not so strong in either category so as to disqualify the other). True, we are still reading a pseudonymous work, though we know from Kierkegaard‘s journals that he nearly used his own name to sign the text, deciding otherwise only because he felt AntiClimacus‘s understanding of Christianity is clearer than his own.

This authorial detail is especially important, because even AntiClimacus‘s account draws an awkward and blurred line between the aesthetic and the religious, so that Kierkegaard‘s position in the mess is not at all clear.

Our relevant passages immediately precede and follow the introduction of Part Two of The Sickness Unto Death, where AntiClimacus specifically singles out the poetic individual as existing in the highest form of despair—defiance—as well as sin. The last paragraph of Part One reads: [This despair] is, to describe it figuratively, as if a writer were to make a slip of the pen, and the error became conscious of itself as such. . .and as if this error wanted now to rebel against the author, out of hatred for him forbid him to correct it, and in manic defiance say to him: ‗No, I will not be erased, I will stand as a witness against you, a witness to the fact that you are a second-rate author.‘15

48

Thomas Gilbert

In context this ―author‖ is the god-like force that created the despairing individual, referred to in The Point of View as ―Governance‖ and elsewhere in the authorship simply as God: the agent that has determinately established an individual within the world and which has defined that individual‘s relation with others and himself. It is when this individual perceives that this ―given‖ relation is somehow deficient that he decides to retreat into the poetic and usurp power from the Establishing Force—to re-forge himself into how he should have been created. AntiClimacus thus reframes the poetic mindset as rebellion against the will of God. But there is another unintentional ―tell‖ hidden under the surface of this passage. While the aesthete is in rebellion with God, we cannot help but note the unstated communion that he and his Creator share, as dual creators fashioning the world the way each believes it is meant to be. The ―writer‖ here is God—or is it instead the poet, despairing not over himself as an inferior creation under God, but as a creator despairing over his own new creation—himself? If this second interpretation is indeed right, then it is not the rebellion against God which is salient; rather, it is only when the poet rebels against himself that true despair sets in.

And there is yet another level in which God is the one in despair, woefully observing the failure of his human creation to obey its calling in life. Therefore, the poet‘s victory is not to perfectly recreate himself and fix God‘s mistake—that will come later. The poet‘s success comes first when he forces God to blink; in this way, God will fall into despair before the poet himself succumbs upon realizing his own authorial shortcomings. The goal of the despairer is not just to author himself, or to refuse to admit that he is beholden to a creator, but actually to make God realize that the true despairer is He. Beneath the surface of this ostensibly simple anecdote comparing despair to the act of writing, we are actually watching an absurd, multi-tiered game of ―Chicken‖ in which God and the Poet are waiting to see who will despair first. What is therefore crucial for us is that God and the Poet are placed on equal terms; any sense of superior self-

Problems of Kierkegaard’s Poetics

49

conception is ruled out by this harsh and unforgiving dichotomy—presented, we must remember, through a metaphor about writing, authorship, and the ability of fabricated voices to revolt and claim victory over their creators. Kierkegaard himself admitted that Anti-Climacus was the one pseudonym that he wanted to be, and it would be entirely in Kierkegaard‘s character to engage in this vertiginous level of meta-authorial reflection.

Anti-Climacus offers a further complication with his continued dissection of the poet, early in Part Two: . . . the most dialectical border-line case between despair and sin, namely . . .a poet-existence inclined towards the religious. . . He loves God above everything, God who is the only comfort in his secret torment, and yet he loves the torment, he will not let go of it. . . he allows himself poetically to falsify God just a little. . . he wants to hold [his torment] at arm‘s length, but that means precisely keeping hold of it. . . His conflict is really this: Has he been called? Is the thorn in the flesh a sign that he is to be put to extraordinary use?. . .

Or is the thorn in the flesh what he must humble himself under in order to attain the universally human?16 We notice two slips here: one, the complete de-emphasis on the ethical sphere in Anti-Climacus‘s ontology; and two, the despairing ambiguity that Anti-Climacus himself is in regarding the exact root of the poet‘s ―conflict.‖ Other Kierkegaardian pseudonyms have explored the territory on the edge of the ethical before departing to the religious—a territory that does require a leap to faith in order to be navigable—but we have been given no indication that the poet can somehow catapult over the ethical to arrive at this point. Indeed, in an endnote to his translation of this passage, scholar Alastair Hannay argues that its disagreement with Kierkegaard‘s aesthetic-ethical-religious spheres owes to it being a ―clearly autobiographical‖ addition, and he quotes a passage from the Journals where Kierkegaard elaborates on the

50

Thomas Gilbert

poet‘s despair over God in relation to his own biography.17 Hannay is likely correct that Kierkegaard is drawing on personal emotional conflicts to enrich his philosophy, but once again the dialectic of the authorship—if taken as one uniform project—does not leave room for such ambiguities. The glaring absence of the ethical in Anti-Climacus‘ analysis, which is not rectified anywhere else in the text, is greatly damaging for the authorshipcoherence that The Point of View relies upon.

Anti-Climacus‘ own uncertainty about the poet‘s problems is even more jarring. Crucially, he does not argue that the poet should abandon his profession so that he can pursue God‘s plan for him. The poet is a poet, and must find a way to balance his aesthetic skills with complete dedication to the ultimate Author.

But just as in the example of Richard III repeated throughout the text, it is unclear if the poet is ―strong‖ enough to succeed in spite of his hunchback or instead achieve apotheosis by confessing the limitations of being all-too-human. Kierkegaard himself knows he has been authored as a poet, but he is unhealthily aware both of the poet‘s responsibility for his own authorship, as well as the requisite-yet-murky need to attribute his poetic successes to God‘s influence. In fact, this exact statement opens The Point of View: ―one thing absorbs me unconditionally. . . to express as honestly and as strongly as possible. . . how infinitely more Governance has done for me than I had ever expected.‖18 To have been authored in order to engage in a career whose substance is a miniature perversion of Governance itself is of course a paradox that all aesthetes must confront. However, the statement of this question without resolution sacrifices a communicable philosophical program in favor of expressing Kierkegaard‘s own specific neuroses.

I therefore conclude that the reliance of The Point of View on the argumentative persuasion of the pseudonymous authorship is unfounded, as the published pseudonymous works at the beginning and end of Kierkegaard‘s productivity present deeply muddled and radically different pictures of the relationship between the categories of the aesthetic and the religious. Kierkegaard‘s authorship does not display a coherent, positive defini-

Problems of Kierkegaard’s Poetics

51

tion of self-identity, however much his works share the same thematic fixations: living poetically, tragic love, and religious reconciliation. Yet these themes are salient for understanding what deep unity there is in Kierkegaard‘s writing, and I believe it is more likely a result of the biographical events and decisions in Kierkegaard‘s life, rather than a predetermined and fully consistent dialectical writing structure, which fueled his creative energy in producing the pseudonyms, torn as they are (and as he was) between aesthetic and religious approaches to emotional pain.

While it is beyond the scope of this paper to argue this claim, I believe Kierkegaard biographer Joakim Garff has accurately described the simultaneously subconscious and ubiquitous placement of biographical details in the authorship: . . . And even though Regine [Olsen, Kierkegaard‘s fiancée] is not named one single time in the whole of Kierkegaard‘s published works, she is intertwined with it like an erotic arabesque, full of longing, sometimes confronting the reader when one least expects it.19 To author oneself, however religiously, is ultimately indistinguishable from describing oneself, with all the requisite contradictions and unresolved psychology entailed in such a massive undertaking. And Kierkegaard, writing himself to death in pursuit of that ephemeral reconciliation between the poetic and religious modes of being, laid it all out for us to see. Here we see why, even as the authorship moved beyond the aesthetic and the ethical to the exclusively religious, the poet hangs on for dear life as the easy way out, the tempting reconciliation with the world that Kierkegaard so desperately craved. Our discovery, therefore, is not that his authorship is in any way confusing or lacking unto itself, but rather that the wonderful castles of Kierkegaard‘s thought often sagged under the weight of his highly personal, and tragic, interest in quickly resolving these problems of selfhood.

52

Thomas Gilbert Notes

1 Søren

Kierkegaard, On the Concept of Irony (henceforth, CI) trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985), 303.

2 Ibid, 306.

3 Ibid, 312.

4 Ibid, 313.

5 K. Brian Söderquist, "Telling Stories", Copenhagen, Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, 8.

6 Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of View for My Work as an Author (henceforth, POV) trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, Princeton UP, 1985), 20.

7 Ibid, 20.

8 Ibid, 25-6.

9 Ibid, 33.

10 Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or (henceforth, E/O) trans. Alastair Hannay (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985), 250.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid, 253.

13 Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death (henceforth, SUD) trans. Alastair Hannay (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985), 52.

14 E/O 251-2.

15 SUD 105.

16 Ibid, 109-10.

17 Ibid, note 52, 173-4.

18 POV 12.

19 Joakim Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005), 190.

Problems of Kierkegaard’s Poetics

53

Works Cited Garff, Joakim. Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography. Translated by Kir mmse, Bruce H. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005.

Kierkegaard, Søren. On the Concept of Irony (1841), Either/Or (1843), The Sickness Unto Death (1849), The Point of View for My Work as an Author (1859), and The Journals. Translated by Alastair Hannay, Howard V. Hong, and Edna H. Hong.

Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985.

Kirmmse, Bruce H. ―Poetry, History—and Kierkegaard‖. Un published.

Soderquist, K. Brian. ―Telling Stories‖. Unpublished.

54

Rafael Ventura

Against Fodor Rafael Ventura I. Introduction

S

ince Darwin introduced the notion of natural selection to account for speciation, a discomfort towards evolutionary theory has persisted. Over the past 150 years, the main focus of criticism has shifted from empirical concerns—e.g., how could natural selection account for the apparent design in nature?—to questions more conceptual in character. It thus became fashionable to inquire whether natural selection could be stated in a non-trivial or causally relevant manner. In a recent expression of this trend, Jerry Fodor has challenged the idea that predictive power could be ascribed to natural selection.1 Arguing that concepts revolving around natural selection cannot be subsumed under any lawful generalization, Fodor concludes that selection should at best be understood as a historical reconstruction of past selective events. Although Fodor distances himself from creationist fancies, and he does not dispute the blatant evidence for evolutionary change, he is unwilling to grant Darwinism the full prize: for Fodor, there can be no theory of natural selection per se because selection does not constitute a natural kind.

Rafael Ventura has long been fascinated by questions concerning the Life Sciences and Philosophy, which prompted him to pursue an undergraduate degree in Biology at the Universidade de São Paulo—the city where he was born. After a brief year of introductory courses there, he relocated to Germany and soon began his studies in Philosophy and Ancient History at the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin. He is now a visiting student at Brown University and currently planning to write his final thesis until the end of next spring. Upon completion of his degree, Rafael intends to apply for a Ph.D. program in Philosophy that will allow him to focus on questions pertaining to the Philosophy of Science and Biology.

Against Fodor

55

I don‘t think that Fodor‘s position can be sustained. Though it may at times be extremely hard to predict the future outcome of natural selection due to the numerous ecological intricacies involved, I want to argue that predictions in connection with selective phenomena are at least in principle possible. This will become clearer after the notion of fitness as a relational property is spelled out. Combined with this thesis, I want to reinforce a dispositional interpretation of fitness from which Fodor seems to unwillingly distance himself. On this view, the predictive force of natural selection lies not in forecasting the outcome of individual selective events, but rather in probabilistic assumptions bound up with populational thinking. Fodor‘s worries that selection might fail to refer to a natural kind will also vanish as soon as a one realizes that what is being selected for isn‘t simply an individual phenotypic trait, but a bundle of interacting trait types against a fixed environment. Natural selection will thus turn out to be more than a historical account of the causal chain of events leading to a given evolutionary configuration. By stressing these points, I hope to show that natural selection‘s original role as a predictive tool in evolutionary biology can be retained.

II. Fodor’s attempted coup against Darwinism i. Selection for and counterfactual conditionals Fodor‘s primary purpose in Against Darwinism is to checkmate the Darwinian model of speciation by means of natural selection. Whereas Fodor accepts ―the central Darwinist theses of the common origin and mutability of species‖,2 he is skeptical about natural selection‘s capability to account for evolutionary change. The core of his criticism is filled with grudges against the concept of selection itself: if evolution is to be equated with ―changes of the distribution of phenotypic traits in populations of organisms‖,3 one should expect the notion of selection for phenotypic traits to be elucidated. But that is precisely what evolutionary theory can provide, Fodor assures us. Drawing on examples from the philosophy of mind (in this case, the minds of frogs), Fodor invites us to think of intentional states as adapta-

56

Rafael Ventura

tions—that is, as the product of selective processes. If a frog‘s flycatching behavior is thought of as an adaptation, there seem to be good reasons to assume that this particular behavior was selected for catching flies. How far one is justified in isolating an individual trait as the sole substrate on which natural selection operates is a question to be pursued below. Suffice it at this point to say that there is for Fodor a strong connection between the development of an adaptive structure and the notion of selection for. Since mere selection cannot distinguish an intentional trait from other coextensive mental dispositions, Fodor‘s intuition is that to explain the appearance of a frog‘s fly-catching mechanism as a mechanism for snapping at flies one has to resort to the idea that there is something that is being selected for.

A less misleading example will more accurately illustrate the case. Imagine a population of fruit flies under the selective pressure of predators that have a higher chance of spotting them against the dark foliage if they are light-colored. Now suppose that the fly‘s genes encoding a dark body color also occasion an arrhythmic locomotive activity, so that ebony fruit flies also display a more chaotic, somewhat flamboyant behavior. In this case, the complicating question of what frogs are snapping at when they snap at flies is avoided,4 though Fodor‘s ―disjunction problem‖ still holds: ―[i]f you are selecting for Bs and Bs are Cs, it doesn‘t follow (it needn‘t be true) that you are selecting for Cs.‖ 5 Although it is clear that dark body color and arrhythmic locomotive activity will be jointly selected, it seems right to say that arrhythmic motion isn‘t what is being selected for. The rather pressing point Fodor is making here is that mere selection doesn‘t seem able to cope with coextensive traits. To account for body color in adaptive terms, the stronger notion of selection for body color (and not for arrhythmic behavior) has to be invoked.

Put this way, Fodor‘s argument can easily be read as what it is intended to be: a puzzle about counterfactual conditionals.

Since in counterfactual worlds the property of being ebony needn‘t coincide with arrhythmic locomotion (just like flies needn‘t be black dots in other possible worlds), it is reasonable to suggest that if ebony fruit flies didn‘t display arrhythmic locomotive ac-

Against Fodor

57

tivity, they would—in an environment where dark colors predominate—still be selected. Analogously, if any light-colored fruit flies happened to be defective in locomotive rhythm, they would presumably not be selected. ii. Laws of nature, ceteris paribus clauses and Fodor’s conclusion Trouble, however, sets in at this point. For how is the theory of natural selection to support such counterfactual conditionals?

Fodor adumbrates two possible ways to do so. One might first take Darwin‘s original analogy with artificial selection seriously and suppose that natural selection is operated by the hands of a mindful Nature. Like a pigeon fancier of Darwin‘s time, who ―adds [successive variations] up in a certain direction useful to him‖,6 natural selection could be thought of as an intentional system governed by Nature‘s whim: ―that what it selects for is whatever it has in mind in selecting.‖7 Counterfactuals could thus be formulated according to whatever is, as Fodor puts it, in the mind of Mother Nature. If Nature aims at selecting ebony fruit flies because of their body color and not because of their arrhythmic locomotion, then in a counterfactual world only those fruit flies that exhibit a dark color would be selected.

Clearly, Fodor doesn‘t entertain this possibility earnestly. In fact, as he points out, one of the main theoretical strengths of adaptationism is that it ―doesn‘t require the attributions of agency‖8 to mechanisms operating behind natural phenomena.

Moreover, if Nature voluntarily orchestrated selective processes, there would be the rather grave question (shamanic assurances to the contrary notwithstanding) of how to gain epistemic access into her mind. So the most natural way to go is to appeal to laws of selection.9 Fodor‘s ensuing attempt is to try to think of a law relating a certain phenotypic trait with selective advantage over another trait. That is, for such a nomic relation to hold there would have to be a trait F in virtue of which individuals carrying trait F compete successfully with individuals lacking F. In the case at hand, a law would be said to correlate ebony body color (F) with selective success (G) if ebony fruit flies are selected in virtue of their being ebony, such that: F → G.

58

Rafael Ventura

Fodor rejects this proposal. For him, when it comes to natural selection, such ―a generalization applies not to Fs per se, but only to Fs-in-such-and-such circumstances.‖10 This is what Fodor dubs the ―context-sensitivity‖ of a trait‘s fitness. There is strong evidence suggesting that for Fodor his notion of a trait‘s selective success and a trait‘s fitness are interchangeable terms. In fact, Fodor suspects that the concept of a trait‘s fitness isn‘t less problematic, ―since it‘s massively context sensitive whether a certain phenotypic trait is conducive to a creature‘s fitness.‖11 So what Fodor seems to be hinting at is the intrinsic relation existing between a trait‘s physical makeup and its environmental surroundings in yielding a fitness value. In fact, if a law of natural selection be expected to associate any given trait with a certain propensity to successfully compete with other traits, it would be absurd to reduce the range of such a law to a small set of fortuitous phenomena. Likewise, it would be extremely ad hoc to postulate a multitude of local laws to account for every individual case of selective success.

To make matters worse, Fodor emphasizes that the contextsensitivity at issue shouldn‘t be mistaken for a ceteris paribus clause. In the latter case, the general force of a law-like statement is ―obscured by the effects of unsystematic, interacting variables.‖12 There is, however, an underlying generalization believed to apply to all cases, other things being equal. To draw on a stock example, Newton‘s law of universal gravitation expresses the relation between the gravitational force (F), the gravitational constant (G) and two point masses (m1 and m2), F being inversely proportional to the squared distance (d2) between m1 and m2. A ceteris paribus clause ensures in this case that other variables are held constant, so that deviations to Newton‘s formula are to be justified in a case-by-case basis.

Thus, the general gist of Fodor‘s assault on Darwinists amounts to pinpointing the difficulties bound up with the context-sensitive nature of ―being a trait that is selected for‖. If selective success is indeed comparable to the notion of ―getting rich‖, as Fodor exhorts, there is no regular behavior to be captured by ―any nomological generalizations about which traits win compe-

Against Fodor

59

titions with which others.‖13 On Fodor‘s view, adaptationist research programs are consequently divested of any predictive power. Because there is for him no homogenous reality behind traits that are being selected for, evolutionary theory‘s conceptual apparatus can on Fodor‘s view be reduced to referenceempty sets: for Fodor, the term ―‗a trait that’s being selection for‘ pretty plausibly doesn‘t pick out a natural kind.‖14 All that is left for evolutionary biologists is the task of articulating causally relevant events that individually explain each adaptation, given that—unlike lawful generalizations—―historical narratives are about (causal) relations among [particular] events.‖15 That is to say, evolutionary theories are better understood as fact-gathering narratives that in nothing resemble the projective character of the broader scientific enterprise.

III. The case against Fodor i. Fitness’ context-sensitivity Immediate reactions triggered by Fodor‘s caustic remarks on natural selection tended to focus on the role played by laws in adaptationist explanations. Both Godfrey-Smith (2008) and Dennett (2008) partially acquiesce to Fodor‘s point and discourage the use of covering law models of explanation16 in evolutionary biology. Though less emphatically, Sober (2008) sometimes seems willing to accept less traditional models of explanation too.17 In what follows, I want to endorse the view that evolutionary theory‘s predictive power can only be regained if some kind or other of lawful generalization is allowed for in evolutionary thinking. But before showing how this can be done, some clarification is needed. First, Fodor isn‘t justified in shifting the whole explanatory burden onto the concept of selection for. Adaptations can and often are explained in terms of mere selection. That being said, Fodor‘s notion of context-sensitivity will be carefully examined. After it is shown that the context-dependence of a trait‘s fitness isn‘t as harmful as Fodor believes, I want to draw attention to an objectionable conceptual confusion that Fodor seems to partake in.

From the outset, Fodor commits himself to the idea that a

60

Rafael Ventura

phenotypic trait thought to have evolved as an adaptation has to be identified with a trait that was selected for.18 Since two coextensive traits will as a matter of fact be selected together, Fodor‘s complaint is that an evolutionary ―free rider‖ would hardly seem able to qualify as an adaptation. I think the point is moot. To explain the appearance of a given trait, both the phenomena of pleiotropy and gene linkage might have to be taken into account.19 Traits are often selected in bundles, be it either because they share a common genetic basis or because the genes encoding the relevant traits tend to be inherited together during meiosis. This is exemplified in the case of ebony fruit flies exhibiting anomalous locomotive activity. In explaining the prevalence of arrhythmic locomotion in a population of fruit flies, one might resort to the notion of selection of: locomotion-defective flies are frequently found in a certain type of environment because there is selection of fruit flies carrying the genes responsible for the expression of this trait. True, at times this will be only a partial explanation.

One may want to inquire why precisely these flies were selected and not others. A more fine-grained explanation could involve a causal account of why these particular genes and not others are being selectively favored.20 Depicting a more detailed causal network would then take us back to the question of what trait there is selective pressure for: in the hypothetic case sketched above, for ebony and not for locomotion-defective flies. But there is no reason to restrict adaptionist explanations solely to the latter kind.

Nevertheless, Fodor is right in insisting on selection for traits if we want to look into the causal roots of selective phenomena.

If Fodor has any hope of finding laws of selection, he is also right in resorting to the selection for traits for the following reason. It is generally assumed that properties (and not individual terms) are subject to lawful generalizations.21 There are, furthermore, strong arguments suggesting that organisms and species are better understood as historical entities—that is, not as types, but rather as tokens.22 So if individuals both at the organismic and specific levels are spatiotemporally contiguous entities, defined by a common historical origin, there is forcefully no natural law in which

Against Fodor

61

they could figure. Hence, for traits to be explained not as byproducts, but as genuine elements in the causal machinery of selective processes, biological entities will have to be decomposed into properties or sets of properties that are thought to causally interact, producing adaptive responses.

Crucial at this point is the question of what these phenotypic properties interact with. It is a mistake to suppose that an individual‘s trait interacts exclusively with other individuals‘ traits, as if a sum of phenotypic traits occurring in the same population could alone give rise to the property that Fodor loosely calls ―competing successfully with‖.23 Rather, in order to state what property competes successfully with what other property, one has to specify the environmental background against which selective competition is said to take place.24 It should be noted that ‗environment‘ is to be understood in this context in a broad sense, including both abiotic and biotic elements, but an organism‘s own genetic makeup as well.

Is this a premature surrender to Fodor‘s criticism on the context-sensitivity of a trait‘s fitness? To a certain extent, yes: as Fodor poignantly notices, ―the adaptivity of a trait depends on the ecology in which its bearer is embedded.‖25 However, this inference isn‘t an insurmountable obstacle. Of course, in each case the environmental variable will have to be held constant if any significant statement about a trait‘s survival and reproductive viability is to be made. But this doesn‘t prevent us from relating a change in the trait‘s overall frequency to a trait‘s relative fitness where natural selection is at work: the greater a trait‘s fitness, the higher the chances of its spreading throughout next generations.26 Indeed, this is the force behind Darwin‘s initial intuitions.

If resources aren‘t infinitely available, any heritable trait that favors an individual‘s survival or reproductive rate will tend to be preserved, reappearing in the next generations.27 For this correlation to obtain, nothing intrinsically content-bound about the correlation has to be assumed.

Complications are bound to arise if we expect—consistent with our previous assumption that the environmental background to a trait‘s relative fitness also comprises interspecific fac-

62

Rafael Ventura

tors—that natural selection will also affect the very environment in which it is operating. If natural selection occasions changes in a trait‘s representation in the overall population, and if a trait‘s relative frequency is part of the environmental settings to selective events, then a trait‘s relative fitness will be doomed to permanent fluctuation. These considerations are an exacerbation of Fodor‘s original concerns that ―which traits are adaptive for which phenotypes depends very much on the context.‖28 Yet, one needn‘t succumb to the conundrum. By splitting a spatialtemporally continuous environment into time-slices, Okasha (2008) rightfully maintains that one might still ideally refer to natural selection as ―an optimizing process relative to a given environmental state.‖29 Thus, even if only in relation to a circumscribed environmental state, a trait‘s fitness can be restored as a viable concept. If Okasha‘s proposal is taken seriously, then different traits could be assessed against transitory stages in an environment‘s development, in accordance to which different fitnesses will result.

Despite empirical difficulties associated with the enterprise just outlined, this is good evidence that predictive function can at least in principle be ascribed to a trait‘s fitness. That the same phenotypic constitution might acquire different fitnesses according to different environmental states or that, conversely, physically distinct traits might take on similar fitness values needn‘t disturb us. Pace Fodor, there is no reason to fear that ―‗is selected for‘ can‘t be a projectible predicate.‖30 Fodor worries that because a trait‘s fitness is a compound property of an individual‘s physique and the environmental setup it inhabits, nothing could be inferred from the observation that trait T1 is selected for in environment E1. After all, trait T1 might not be selected for in environment E2 and a distinct trait T2 might turn out to be equally or even fitter than T1 in environment E1. So fitness values might indeed seem to float free from physical constraints, giving the impression that they aren‘t projectible. But all that is required for fitness values to be grounded on a physical basis is, arguably, a minimal degree of consistency: if a given trait be said to correlate with a certain fitness value, it is desirable that the same physical

Against Fodor

63

configuration be consistently identified with the same fitness under the same environmental conditions.31 And I see no reason to suspect that the concept of fitness cannot meet this requirement.

To return to the example of fruit flies, we can assume that the ascription of a certain fitness value to ebony body color will remain constant as long as an environmental state is taken as a fixed point of reference. Hence, given an environmental framework of reference, the same physical constitution will bring about a constant second-order property, such as fitness is thought to be, and the same fitness value will correctly be projected into cases where trait and environment similarly correlate. ii. Fodor’s improbable move So far, I have been implicitly assuming the standard dispositional interpretation of fitness.32 Although Fodor is silent on this topic, some of the fundamental problems he wants to raise shall vanish as soon as a propensity reading of fitness is spelled out.

Fodor seems inattentive, for example, to the fact that the outcome of ―who wins a [trait] t1 versus [trait] t2 competition‖ isn‘t only ―massively context sensitive‖,33 it also has to be stated in probabilistic terms. No particular event of selective success could ever be taken as evidence that a given trait is being selected for.34 For similar reasons, I tend to disagree with Fodor‘s pessimism about the causal role played by individual trait types. Skeptical about the explanatory power of ―selection for‖, as opposed to Sober‘s (1984) notion of ―selection of‖, Fodor notes that ―strictly speaking, traits don‘t get selected at all; traits don‘t either win competitions or lose them.‖35 Fodor‘s alternative solution is to consider whole phenotypes as causally relevant for natural selection. But for Fodor that won‘t do: ―[u]nlike a scientist in a laboratory, natural selection can‘t control for confounding variables‖,36 so to credit any specific trait with partial causal significance turns out to be prima facie impossible. However, Fodor is wrong in assuming that what holds true for individual cases can also be predicated of phenotypic trait types obeying probabilistic rules. Moreover, the fact that Fodor is willing to grant scientists in a laboratory the tools necessary for the task is indicative that we are deal-

64

Rafael Ventura

ing (pace Fodor) with empirical, not conceptual intricacies.37 Related issues on the unit-of-selection problem support this diagnosis. To answer the question of whether causally relevant properties should be located at the particle or group level, there is no resource at the biologist‘s hand other than controlling for variables: if individual fitness affects the differential reproduction at species level, but not properties at the particle level, then it is reasonable to suggest a causal link between group properties and selection.38 Analogously, a similar model should be expected to work in a less complex scenario where concurring properties are thought of in connection with one another at the same hierarchical level.

The empirical complexities of evolutionary models tie in with a probabilistic reading of the concept of fitness for a further reason. Once it is granted that fitness is conceptually dependent solely on a trait‘s physical structure and the environmental background where it occurs, it is hard to see how a trait‘s fitness could ever be promptly measured on the basis of actual reproductive success. Rosenberg (1984) points out that if fitness values are defined by future rates of reproduction, there is no way to test the obtained result; but if fitness is defined by past reproductive rates, it would be plainly circular to use this concept in any explanatory move. So, it seems, the only viable solution to Rosenberg‘s dilemma is to opt, on pains of empirical vacuity, for the latter mode of measuring fitness. However, as Rosenberg recalls, this doesn‘t corrode the predictive utility of fitness. Since a trait‘s reproductive advantage is correctly thought of as a partially hereditary characteristic, a trait‘s fitness will be ―nomologically connected to the number of [reproductive] opportunities at previous and future generations.‖39 On the one hand, if fitness values are to perform any explanatory function, they cannot entirely forgo prognostic extrapolation; on the other hand, if fitness is to have a minimal amount of empirical relevance, it will have to partially rely on past reproductive rates.

Thus, ascribing a numeric value to a trait‘s fitness is an empirically tricky enterprise in which a certain degree of projective thinking has to be allowed.

Against Fodor

65

With this in mind, Fodor‘s conflation of the notions of ―a trait which wins competitions with others‖ and ―a trait‘s relative fitness‖, which might initially have seemed harmless, should strike us as forced.40 While the former term designates the unique outcome of a given selective process, the latter notion bears predictive relevance. Though past and future selective trends may generally be related, as I hinted above, there are no good grounds to unjustifiably blur the conceptual boundaries between the two terms. The example of dramatic results brought about by cataclysmic events brings this to the fore. Once environmental turmoil radically reorganizes the tension between selective pressures and adaptive responses, past reproductive and survival rates don‘t need to coincide with or ―nomologically connect to‖ present fitness values. What was once selected (say, increased body size)41 when predation was the main selective pressure at work may cease to be advantageous after the leading pressure shifts to harsh climatic conditions. That is, the fit between dinosaurs‘ average body size and the current selective scenario during the Mesozoic period may explain why reptilian clades— containing living beings like the ones selected—are overrepresented in fossil records of a geological era like that.42 In contrast, the fact that increased body size was reproductively successful at the same time period simply chronicles the outcome of a unique selective battle witnessed by the Earth‘s biosphere. That is, in the former case there is an ―ontological ascent‖ from particulars to trait types; in the latter case, trait tokens are descriptively inserted in a causally structured whole.

If this is right, Fodor‘s conclusion is only corroborated by his conflating the concepts of ―a trait which wins competitions with others‖ and ―a trait‘s relative fitness‖—concepts that should be kept apart. No selective prognostic can be based merely on what trait is being selected. In order to do that, one would also have to take into account a) that a trait is always selected relative to an environmental background and b) that a trait‘s fitness (although correlated to the rate at which the trait is being selected for) represents no more than a probable cause for a certain selective outcome. By doing so, one naturally shifts away from the idea

66

Rafael Ventura

that this particular trait is being or was selected for towards a more general inference: given similar conditions, similar physical structures will yield similar rates of relative survival and reproductive success. It is thus reasonable to project that, under predation and provided with abundant food supply, big mammals will display higher chances of survival and reproductive success than their smaller counterparts—just like reptiles did and like other beings under similar circumstances would.

There is, furthermore, no need to suppose that predictive power automatically entails a deterministic relationship believed to hold between phenotype, environment and actual reproductive success. Once a propensity reading of fitness is adopted, the predictive utility of evolutionary theory can be sustained even if one rejects, as it is desirable, a deterministic reading of selective processes. One way of doing this is to identify natural selection with the notion of a stochastic mechanism: abdicating from the unbiased certainty with which Newtonian mechanics is able to predict the motion of mass points, evolutionary theory is better understood as a theory that relies on probabilistic thinking. I bypass here the controversy over causal and probabilistic interpretations of natural selection. The point I want to make is that at some level or other probabilistic elements have to be assumed, which nonetheless doesn‘t hinder us in using the theory of natural selection predictively. There is plenty of room for predictions, if we assume a probabilistic interpretation of natural selection, because ―[t]he expected outcome is not generated by attending to the forces acting on the coins, but by taking into account the structure of the population being sampled.‖43 In this case, a trait‘s relative fitness represents a statistical property whose variation ―predicts and explains changes in relative frequencies.‖44 Likewise, a causal interpretation of natural selection ensures that ―evolutionary theory provides both source laws and consequence laws for the various forces it describes.‖45 On this reading, weighing the forces at work in a given selective arena provides a reliable description of the underlying causal network, which will in turn enable predictions to be made. Be it because natural selection ―is a mere consequence of a statistical property

Against Fodor

67

of a population – its variation in fitness‖,46 or because it ―operates when a critical environmental factor causes one trait to be selectively favored over another trait‖,47 in both cases Fodor‘s thesis that the context dependence of a trait‘s fitness undermines Darwinism‘s predictive power doesn‘t hold water.

IV. Conclusion In the foregoing pages I have sought to relativize Fodor‘s claim that the theory of evolution by natural selection has no predictive power, endorsing at most post hoc explanations. One main reason for Fodor drawing this conclusion lies on his mistaken understanding of the context-sensitivity of a trait‘s fitness. First, the fact that a trait‘s fitness is better described as a relational property does no harm to the regularity thought to obtain in its promoting survival and reproductive success. Because a trait‘s fitness is a value resulting from the interaction of both the constitution of its bearer and the environmental which it inhabits, it doesn‘t follow that trait types cannot be systematically allied with certain environments to yield constant fitness values. Although the same trait may indeed exhibit distinct fitnesses in different environments, there is no reason to suppose that a trait‘s fitness won‘t be constant under fixed conditions.

At this point, it is telling to notice Fodor‘s second unwarranted move: a trait that is selectively successful needn‘t be equated with the trait whose relative fitness peaks in a given environment, as Fodor seems to assume. Since a trait will prove reproductively favorable only in the long run, Fodor‘s insistence that the central explanatory notion in evolutionary theory is which trait ―successfully competes‖ with other traits cannot be taken seriously. A trait may in fact compete successfully with other traits depending on various factors, but there is still an important sense in which a partial causal role can be ascribed to trait types.

Thus, there is no reason to despoil selection of its predictive utility. Of course, how to measure the impact on a trait‘s fitness will be empirically challenging. Since the only measurable variables are past survival and reproductive rates, some degree of

68

Rafael Ventura

projective approximation will be required, if a trait‘s fitness is to be interpreted as a propensity to leave copies in next generations.

But empirical intricacies shouldn‘t prevent biologists from modeling approximate selective scenarios. By doing so, scientists inevitably engage in both predictive and explanatory activities. Although a minor objection to Fodor‘s position, it should moreover be reminded that ―selection for‖ isn‘t the only explanatory concept to be used in evolutionary thinking. As the case of neutral mutations, gene linkage and pleiotropy attest, the fixation of some traits can also be explained by chance events and by the selection of whole phenotypes.

Notes There seems to be no consent on what Fodor (2008) is trying to get at. While Dennett (2008) and Sober (2008) make much of Fodor‘s claim that ―the theory of natural selection can‘t explain the distribution of phenotypic traits in biological populations‖ (p.11), for Godfrey-Smith (2008) Fodor is dissatisfied with natural selection‘s apparent failure to accord to traditional covering law models. I tend here to side with the latter, although I think he does little justice to the fact that Fodor eventually concedes that historical explanations are ―often perfectly OK‖ (p.16).

2 Fodor (2008), p. 23.

3 Fodor (2008), p. 1.

4 Fodor‘s (2008) license to state his doubts about Darwinism in mental terms is backed by the presupposition that a ―mechanism 1

Against Fodor

69

that‘s selected for catching flies is not ipso facto a mechanism that‘s selected for catching ambient black nuisances‖ (p. 3). I sidestep these issues because they will prove irrelevant for the present discussion. Moreover, I do not see how, in Fodor‘s case, any accurate inference can be made about the mental content of a frog‘s fly-catching mechanism.

5 Fodor (2008), p. 4.

6 Darwin (2009), p. 30.

7 Fodor (2008), p. 6.

8 Fodor (2008), p. 7.

9 Noting that laws can support counterfactuals, Fodor (2008) suggests that ―that‘s what makes laws different from mere true empirical generalizations‖ (p. 8). Fodor is here implicitly drawing on Dretske (1977), the idea being that because laws hold between universals and not between individual terms, nomic relations ―go beyond the set of things in this world that exemplify these properties and have these magnitudes‖ (p. 266).

10 Fodor (2008), p. 9.

11 Fodor (2008), p. 9.

12 Fodor (2008), p. 9.

13 Fodor (2008), p. 10.

14 Fodor (2008), p. 11.

15 Fodor (2008), p. 15.

16 With an appeal for the use of models and mechanisms in scientific explanations, Godfrey-Smith (2008) concludes that ―there is no need for ‗laws of selection‘ in Fodor‘s sense, either as a basis for explanations or counterfactuals, so it does not matter that they do not exist‖ (p. 39). Less constructively, Dennett (2008) also criticizes Fodor‘s ―antique caricature of scientific practice, harking back to Hempel‖ (p. 27) as yet another expression of his selfwarranted ―license to dichotomize‖. But even if we adopt a view of scientific explanation based on models and mechanisms there seems to be no way of unconditionally avoiding law-like, regular behavior in explanations; cf. Machamer, Darden and Craver (2000) on mechanisms: ―A mechanism is a series of activities of entities that bring about the finish of termination conditions in a

70

Rafael Ventura

regular way. These regularities are non-accidental and support counterfactuals to the extent that they describe activities‖ (p. 7).

17 Notwithstanding his extensive work on the lawfulness of natural selection, Sober (2008) surprisingly attests that biologists ―don‘t usually use the word ‗law‘ to describe such generalizations as Fisher‘s. Rather, they call them ‗models‘‖ (p. 45).

18 This is, in fact, Fodor‘s (2008) first premise of his so-called ―putative argument‖ that culminates with the conclusion that ―the theory of natural selection can‘t explain the distribution of phenotypic traits in biological populations‖ (p. 11).

19 Sober (1984a), p. 101.

20 Sober (2008), p. 47.

21 Cf. Dretske‘s (1977) view of laws as a matter of ―ontological assent‖ (p. 263) already addressed above (p. 6, fn. 9).

22 That organisms and species are not types is pointed by Hull (1978): ―on the historical entity interpretation, similarity is a red herring. It is not the issue at all. What really matters is how many organisms are involved and how much the internal organization of the species involved is disrupted‖ (p. 348).

23 Fodor (2008), p. 8. The property in question was represented

by G in the reconstruction of Fodor‘s argument I offered above (p. 6).

24 Sober (2008), p. 45.

25 Fodor (2008), p. 9.

26 To keep Sober‘s (1984a) mechanical analogy, I assume for present purposes that no evolutionary forces other than natural selection are at work.

27 Darwin‘s (2009) original insight is well captured by the following passage: ―Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring‖ (p. 61). Darwin is fully aware that a trait‘s fitness can only be duly appreciated by inspection of ―its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature‖.

Against Fodor

71

Fodor (2008), p. 21.

Okasha (2008), p. 346. Along the same lines, commenting on the view of natural selection as a hill-climbing exercise in which fitness values always increase, Okasha concludes that ―natural selection does involve a kind of hill-climbing; it is just that the landscape is continually being re-configured as the population evolves‖ (p. 347).

30 Fodor (2008), p. 18.

31 This is Kim‘s (1984) ―consistency requirement‖ for weak supervenience, which, ―in essence, is the prescription ‗Treat like cases alike‘ in ethical contexts‖ (p. 62). Though not originally formulated to describe the biological concept of fitness, I follow Rosenberg (1984) in using Kim‘s terminological grid for this purpose.

32 Mills and Beatty (1979). For simplicity‘s sake, I may freely speak both of individuals‘ and of types‘ fitnesses as a disposition, though the simplification is not representative of the authors‘ true intentions. While doing so I keep in mind that ―a notion of fitness which refers to types […] is a derivative of individual fitness propensities‖ (p. 272).

33 Fodor (2008), p. 9. To reiterate: the context-sensitivity of a trait‘s fitness is unproblematic because it expresses an essentially relational property. Why its relational nature should render the concept of fitness unproblematic is clarified by Moore‘s (1960) observation that ―[a] relational property entails some quality in the term, though no quality in the term entails the relational property‖ (p. 309). That is, there is by definition no way of exhausting a relational property by inspecting one of its terms alone.

34 As Dennett (2008) remarks, ―Fodor‘s quaint view of causation leads him to ignore the power of effects that depend on probability – he views such phenomena as not properly causal at all‖ (p.

28).

35 Fodor (2008), p. 10.

36 Fodor (2008), p. 10.

37 More evidence that Fodor‘s (2008) arguments do not undermine the theoretical cogency of causal-statistical models can be 28 29

72

Rafael Ventura

adduced from his remark that ―the ‗method of differences‘ is to find out whether it‘s their being F that explains why Fs cause Gs or whether it‘s their having some other property that‘s confounded with their being F. One does this by examining situations in which, as far as one can tell, all the (relevant) ceteris paribus conditions are satisfied. Typically such situations don‘t occur outside the experimental laboratory‖, (p. 10, fn. 19, last emphasis added).

38 Elaborating on an example introduced by Eldredge and Gould, Okasha (2006) attributes the growth in body size among horses documented by fossil record to selective pressure acting on group properties: ―If larger horse species are fitter than smaller ones, that is, are more likely to survive and speciate, this could explain the trend in the absence of any within-species selection for large size‖ (p. 110).

39 Rosenberg (1984), p. 105.

40 To keep Fodor‘s (2008) example of dinosaurs, p. 10. See above p. 7.

41 Once again Fodor (2008) gives up hope of finding any lawful correlation between a trait and selective success since to explain why ―[s]mall mammals won their competition with large dinosaurs‖ (p. 17) more than one plausible (causal) story can be told.

Fodor‘s example is problematic because of the fragile epistemic access to geo- and cosmological events that took place millions of years ago. I assume for present purposes that non-avian dinosaurs were extinct due to a rapid change in climatic conditions.

42 This reading of fitness as a causal concept is endorsed by Sober (1984b): ―Fitness and selection are both causal concepts; they describe the causes of changes and not the fact that there has been differential productivity‖ (p. 204). An alternative to Sober‘s conception is presented below.

43 Walsh, Lewens and Ariew (2002), p. 454.

44 Walsh, Lewens and Ariew (2002), p. 462.

45 Sober (1984), p. 70.

46 Walsh, Lewens and Ariew (2002), p. 453.

47 Barros (2008), p. 316.

Against Fodor

73

Bibliography Barros, D. B. (2008): ―Natural Selection as a Mechanism.‖ In: Philosophy of Science, vol. 75, pp. 306–322.

Darwin (2009): The Annotated Origin (a Facsimile of the 1st Edition of ―The Origin of Species‖), ed. by Costa, James T. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: Belknap Press.

Dennett, D. (2008): ―Fun and Games in Fantasyland.‖ In: Mind and Language, vol. 23, n. 1, pp. 25–31.

Dretske, F. (1977): ―Laws of Nature.‖ In: Philosophy of Science, vol.

44, pp. 248–268.

Fodor, J. (2008): ―Against Darwinism.‖ In: Mind and Language, vol. 23, n. 1, pp. 1–24.

Godfrey-Smith, P. (2008): ―Explanation in Evolutionary Biology: Comments on Fodor.‖ In: Mind and Language, vol. 23, n. 1, pp. 32–41.

Hull, D. (1978): ―A Matter of Individuality.‖ In: Philosophy of Science, vol. 45, pp. 335–360.

Kim, J. (2002): ―Concepts of Supervenience.‖ In: Kim, J. (ed.): Supervenience. Burlington: Dartmouth, pp. 53–78.

Machamer, P.; Darden, L.; Craver, C. (2000): ―Thinking About Mechanisms.‖ In: Philosophy of Science, vol. 67, pp. 1–25.

Mills, B.; Beatty, J. (1979): ―The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness.‖ In: Philosophy of Science, vol. 46, pp. 263–286.

Moore, G. E. (1960): ―External and Internal Relations.‖ In: Moore, G. E.: Philosophical Studies. London, pp. 276–309.

Okasha, S. (2006): Evolution and the Levels of Selection. Oxford: Clarendon.

Okasha, S. (2008): ―Fisher's Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection - A Philosophical Analysis.‖ In: British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol. 59, pp. 319–351.

Rosenberg, A. (1984): ―The Supervenience of Biological Concepts.‖ In: Sober, E. (ed.): Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge, London, pp. 99–115.

Sober, E. (1981): ―Evolutionary Theory and the Ontological Status of Properties.‖ In: Philosophical Studies, vol. 40, pp. 147– 176.

74

Rafael Ventura

Sober, E. (2008): ―Fodor's Bubbe Meise Against Darwinism.‖ In: Mind and Language, vol. 23, n. 1, pp. 42–49.

Sober, E. (1984b): ―Holism, Individualism and the Units of Selection.‖ In: Sober, E. (ed.): Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge, London, pp. 184–209.

Sober, E. (1984a): The Nature of Selection. Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Walsh, D.; Lewens, T.; Ariew, A. (2002): ―The Trials of Life: Natural Selection and Random Drift.‖ In: Philosophy of Science, vol. 69, pp. 452–473.

Kantian Realism

75

Kantian Realism Jake Quilty-Dunn

K

ant's claims that the objects of perception are appearances, "mere representations," and that we can never perceive things in themselves, seem to mark him as some sort of indirect realist. On the other hand, the theory of perception outlined in the Critique of Pure Reason is much closer to direct realism. As I will try to show, there are two criteria for direct realism, one epistemological and one ontological, and Kant‘s theory strongly satisfies the former while partially satisfying the latter. Kant's transcendental idealism, under this view, necessarily makes him a sort of direct realist, or as he put it, "empirical" realist.1 Two useful extremes in the philosophy of perception are the positions taken by Thomas Reid and the school of Scottish Common Sense on one hand, and by David Hume and the school of British Empiricism on the other. I will argue that Kant‘s theory entails that we are directly, immediately aware of real external objects that, though they are the products of mental processes and therefore subject to "epistemic conditions,"2 do nonetheless occupy external space and are not simply mental entities. This theory matches the direct realism of Thomas Reid in important ways and eschews the skeptical phenomenalism of Hume, the idealism of Berkeley, and the indirect realism Jake Quilty-Dunn graduated in May 2011 with a degree in Philosophy at Boston University. He is starting a Ph.D. program in Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center in the fall. His main areas of philosophical interest are in the Philosophy of Mind, the Philosophy of Perception, the history of early modern philosophy, as well as Epistemology. The philosophical issue that Jake finds most puzzling and important is the way that human minds perceive and understand the world. His favorite philosophy quotation comes from John Locke‘s ―Some Thoughts Concerning Education‖ and reads: "The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it."

76

Jake Quilty-Dunn

of Locke (the last three of which rely on the notion that the true objects of perception and thought are mental entities or states called ―ideas‖ or ―perceptions‖). After outlining criteria in section I for a theory of direct realism, I will argue that Kant holds that we have direct perception of external objects that exist even when unperceived, and that his theory is remarkably similar to that of the most well-known direct realist in his lifetime, Thomas Reid. If these arguments succeed, then Kant should be regarded as some kind of direct realist.

I. First, it should be made clearer what is meant by ―direct realism,‖ and by the above distinction between epistemological and ontological realism. Epistemological realism is here taken to be the claim that the objects of perception are actually things like books and chairs, rather than images that resemble them or other mental intermediaries that indicate or imply them. Ontological realism is the claim that physical objects like books and chairs exist mind-independently. Direct realism is the conjunction of these two claims. Locke‘s representational realism would deny epistemological realism (instead claiming that we only perceive ideas in the mind) but affirm ontological realism. An idealist theory might affirm epistemological realism but deny ontological realism. Thomas Reid‘s direct realism would affirm both, and global skepticism would deny both. To figure out where Kant fits into all of this, we have to further distinguish two types of ontological realism—the type that says these objects and their properties exist even when they are not perceived, and the type that says these objects exist independently of any facts about our minds. The second type of ontological realism is what Kant means by ―transcendental realism.‖ Transcendental realism encompasses ontological realism, but goes further by excluding mental facts altogether. Kant, I argue, would affirm both epistemological realism and ontological realism, on the stipulation that ontological realism is not taken to mean transcendental realism.

This distinction between ontological and transcendental realism would not have been necessary before Kant‘s argument that

Kantian Realism

77

our forms of intuition and understanding shape the empirical world. To say that a thing owes its existence to the fact that it conforms to our forms of intuition, and not whether it is in fact perceived, is the novel thesis that I will try to show Kant put forth in the Critique of Pure Reason. If this is an accurate reading of his theory, then extending the definition of ontological realism to exclude this thesis would be in part to redefine ontological realism as ―not what Kant believed.‖ It is more instructive to look at what the term would mean in the context of pre-Kantian philosophy, and see where he seems to fit in.

Before the Critique of Pure Reason, the preeminent alternatives to ontological realism were Berkeley‘s immaterialism and Hume‘s mitigated skepticism. Berkeley and Hume attacked the alleged independent existence of unperceived substances and the continued existence of an object even when it is not perceived— in other words, the elements of Locke‘s philosophy that made Locke an indirect realist rather than a mere idealist. If ontological realism is taken to be merely the claim that empirical objects exist with all their properties when unperceived, then Kant may in fact be an ontological realist. Given his desire to justify science and his commitment to ―empirical realism,‖ his theory probably does not entail that the Andromeda galaxy is not there when nobody is looking at the sky. Rather, for Kant, the Andromeda galaxy exists in virtue of its conformity to human forms of intuition and understanding. This means that although humans and their forms must exist in order for the Andromeda galaxy to exist, it does not, I argue, exist at time t in virtue of its being directly perceived by some human at t (as an empirical idealist might say).

The claim that he really was an ontological realist, however, has to be evaluated by looking at the text. In any case, we can distinguish between two kinds of direct realism: strong direct realism, the conjunction of epistemological and transcendental realism; and weak direct realism, the conjunction of epistemological and ontological realism. If Kant is both an ontological and epistemological realist, then he is a weak direct realist. What remains to be shown is what kind of realist he actually is.

78

Jake Quilty-Dunn

II. The second of Kant‘s Postulates of Empirical Thought in General is that ―that which is bound up with the material conditions of experience, that is, with sensation, is actual.‖3 This postulate could be seen as worryingly close to a denial of ontological realism. Once we examine what he means by it, however, it is clear that it is transcendental realism, rather than ontological realism, that is excluded by it.

The postulate bearing on the knowledge of things as actual does not, indeed, demand immediate perception (and, therefore, sensation of which we are conscious) of the object whose existence is to be known. What we do, however, require is the connection of the object with some actual perception, in accordance with the analogies of experience, which define all real connection in an experience in general.4 The fact that a thing is actual does not depend on whether it is being perceived. This is a straightforward affirmation of ontological realism and a denial of Berkeley‘s motto, esse est percipi. It is necessary that there be some perception that leads us to suppose that the object exists—―the connection of the object with some actual perception‖—but this is only to say that we must have some empirical justification for an empirical claim. The analogies alluded to are important here, and they are as follows: first, that substance is permanent amid changes;5 second, that every event adheres to the law of causality;6 and third, that substances in space stand in ―thoroughgoing reciprocity‖7 or ―mutual interaction.‖8 To say that our ascription of actuality to an unperceived object must be connected to an actual perception in accordance with these analogies, therefore, is to say that we must (in principle) be able to infer its actuality from the causal connections of interacting substances, and that this inference must at some point be based on an actual perception. In other words, we do not actually have to perceive a thing in order to know that it exists, we

Kantian Realism

79

merely have to perceive something that implies its existence according to basic laws, ―the principles of...empirical connection.‖9 Kant gives the example of the perceived behavior of iron filings suggesting the existence of a ―magnetic matter pervading all bodies, although the constitution of our organs cuts us off from all immediate perception of this medium.‖10 Kant affirms the actuality of unperceived forces based on their being implied by previous perceptions; Berkeley, on the other hand, denies that such things (gravity, for instance) exist, because they are imperceptible by nature.11 Furthermore, Kant says that it must be admitted, ―that there may be inhabitants in the moon, although no one has ever perceived them.‖12 It appears definitive that for Kant, an object‘s existence in the empirical world does not depend on its being actually perceived—that is, that Kant is an ontological realist. If Kant was an epistemological realist as well as an ontological one (i.e., a weak direct realist); then we should expect his theory to have important aspects in common with wellknown direct realist theories, which brings us to Thomas Reid.

III. Kant's theory of perception, insofar as perception is to be defined, is essentially identical to Reid's. Kant says in the BDeduction that perceptions are simply "representations accompanied by sensation."13 Kant defines "representation" as the genus of mental acts under which sensations, concepts, and intuitions are classified.14 Since in the relevant cases intuition implies sensation, it would be redundant to say that intuition and sensation are necessary for perception.15 Furthermore, intuition must be synthesized under concepts in order to yield a perceptible representation (more on this later); so it must be conception, rather than intuition, that combines with sensation to constitute perception. I therefore take representation in this context to mean the conception of a thing, and so perception of x is, for Kant, the representation or conception of x coupled with and initiated by a present sensation. Reid often refers to "that conception and belief of the external object, which we call perception.‖16 There seems to be a difference here, namely that Reid puts belief in the role

80

Jake Quilty-Dunn

that sensation fills for Kant. However, it can be shown that Reid's account of perception also reduces to conception and sensation.

There are, for Reid, three necessary elements of perception of x: the conception of x, the belief in the present existence of x, and the condition that said belief is immediate and non-inferential. It is clear for Reid that mere conception of x does not entail the belief in the existence of x. He and Kant are in complete agreement on this point: "In the mere concept of a thing no mark of its existence is to be found."17 Reid's "faculty" of conception is not employed solely about things which have existence. I can conceive a winged horse or a centaur, as easily and as distinctly as I can conceive a man whom I have seen. Nor does this distinct conception incline my judgment in the least to the belief, that a winged horse or a centaur ever existed.18 The belief in the legitimacy of the conception (i.e., the existence of the thing conceived) cannot, therefore, come from the concept itself, but must find its origin elsewhere. Reid also says that "we perceive no object, unless some impression is made upon the organs of sense."19 Since perception is defined above as the combination of conception and belief, and since sensation of x is the only other necessary condition for perception of x, and finally since belief cannot come from conception, then belief in x's existence must come from sensation. We see as a result that Reid's theory holds that perception is the combination of conception and sensation. This definition is identical to Kant's. Therefore, at least in terms of what is meant by the word perception, there is no daylight between Kant and Reid.

Kant argues in the Analytic of Concepts that concepts are necessary for all perceptual experience. This conclusion is due to several assumptions on Kant‘s part, chief of which is the idea that experience is a kind of judgment or knowledge, specifically of the empirical kind.20 The necessary conditions for judgments in general should therefore be part of the conditions for experience as well. According to Kant, ―all judgments are functions of unity among our representations.‖21 Allison explains that for

Kantian Realism

81

Kant, the ―unification of representations in a judgment, which provides a determinate content for thought, occurs by bringing these representations under a concept.‖22 When we make a judgment of the form ―A is B,‖ we do not simply consider A and consider B, we synthesize the two concepts into a unified judgment.

According to Kant, this synthetic unity can only be achieved by means of concepts, which function as the necessary rules according to which such synthesis proceeds.23 Furthermore, ―the same function which gives unity to the various representations in a judgment also gives unity to the mere synthesis of various representations in an intuition.‖24 Acts of conception are therefore necessary to unify the synthetic judgments of perception and relate them to an object. For Reid, conception is also necessary for the judgments (i.e., beliefs) that constitute perception: ―there can be no belief without conception.‖25 This congruence is a significant point of overlap. We can imagine a spectrum of perceptual theory with Reid and his twopart theory (i.e., sensation and conception) at one end and Hume and Berkeley with their sensory-input-only theory at the other.

Reid believes that sensation alone presents us with no objects, and that acts of conception are required to give us an external object rather than mere blind feeling, as sensation ―has no object distinct from itself.‖26 Kant falls squarely with Reid in his account of the necessary and sufficient elements of perception.

Kant, like Reid, has no need for the veil of perception, because, unlike Reid, he believes that the transcendental ideality of space and time eliminates certain problems that are posed by the assumption that things in themselves exist spatiotemporally independently of our epistemic conditions. Kant believes, in fact, that one must choose between empirical realism and transcendental realism.

Kant writes that Berkeleyan or empirical "idealism is unavoidable, if space be interpreted as a property that must belong to things in themselves."27 When space is said to have ―objective reality,‖ we are confronted with absurdity, ―in that two infinite things, which are not substances, nor...inhering in substances, must yet have existence...and moreover must continue to exist,

82

Jake Quilty-Dunn

even although all existing things be removed[.]‖28 Thus, Kant argues, if we ascribe transcendental reality to space and time, the concept of matter becomes absurd, and ―we cannot blame the good Berkeley for degrading bodies to mere illusion.‖29 This ―degrading [of] bodies to mere illusion‖ is empirical idealism in a nutshell. Kant contrasts his own theory with Berkeley‘s, and claims that, ―I am not saying that bodies merely seem to be outside me...[and it] would be my own fault, if out of that which I ought to reckon as appearance, I made mere illusion.‖30 Later on, Kant says that it would be ―unjust‖ to call his theory empirical idealism, ―which, while it admits the genuine reality of space, denies the existence of the extended beings in it.‖31 Transcendental idealism, ―on the contrary, admits the reality of the objects of outer intuition…[f]or since space is a form of that intuition which we entitle outer, and since without objects in space there would be no empirical representation whatsoever, we can and must regard the extended beings in it as real.‖32 Thus it is false to say that Kant thinks that outer existence is a ―mere illusion,‖ because insofar as things are empirical objects, they really do have the spatiotemporal qualities they seem to have.

A possible objection to this direct realist reading of the "conception plus sensation" definition could be that all this tells us is that these concepts are what we perceive, and sensation merely gives us an especially lifelike version of the concept. This account would shift Kant's position closer to Hume‘s. Kant's concepts and the schemata that underlie them, however, are not images (as this objection suggests), but rules of thought.

No image could ever be adequate to the concept of a triangle in general. It would never attain that universality of the concept which renders it valid of all triangles, whether right-angled, obtuse-angled, or acute-angled...

The concept 'dog' signifies a rule[.]33 Concepts are not the typical objects of perception or of thought because they partially constitute the acts of both perception and thought (though in philosophical contexts we may think about concepts). The categories "think objects in general, without re-

Kantian Realism

83

gard to the special mode (the sensibility) in which they may be given[.]"34 It is not the concepts that are intuited through sensibility, but the objects that they think. The objects that the concepts are about are directly "given" in perception; again, Kant shares Reid's view.

IV. This similarity between Reid and Kant comes in part from their denials of the continuum of vivacity between impressions and ideas. While this terminology is undeniably Humean, the same doctrine goes back to Locke and appears in nearly identical form in Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge, along with the principle that mental ideas are copied from ideas of sense that are "imprinted" on the body.35 This notion of conception being a faded or enervated form of sensation is summarily rejected by Reid and Kant, who view the two as separate faculties that yield different information and must be combined in perception. Both thinkers saw a clear break where the so-called British Empiricists saw a continuum. This distinction between sensation and conception, and the doctrine that both faculties are necessary for perception, is one of Kant's great breakthroughs in philosophy; yet the similarity of Reid's and Kant's accounts of perception outlined above shows that Reid had already made a more rudimentary version of this logical distinction (and yet necessary coupling) while Kant was still in his "pre-Critical" period.36 Another spectrum we might call to mind is that between the empiricist, who in Kant's view wants to reduce knowledge and concepts to sensory experience, and the rationalist, who (again in Kant's view) wants to elevate sensory experience to the level of concepts and the intellect. Kant clearly views the history of philosophy in this way and famously describes Leibniz, the consummate rationalist, as having "intellectualised appearances, just as Locke, according to his system of noogony...sensualised all concepts of the understanding, i.e. interpreted them as nothing more than empirical or abstracted concepts of reflection."37 On this spectrum, Reid and Kant again occupy proximate positions, though this time they are in the middle rather than at one end.

84

Jake Quilty-Dunn

Kant's "middle path" in the theory of knowledge, namely that an innate intellectual organization (rationalism) combines with contingent sensory experience (empiricism) to produce knowledge, has already been chipped at, if not completely "cut," by Reid.

Reid denies Hume's claim that any concept must have a corresponding impression which resembles it; for the sensations you get from the hardness and extension of an object are as different from those qualities themselves "as pain is to the point of a sword."38 In other words, according to Reid, it is false to claim from the constant conjunction of (for example) the sensation of hardness with the primary quality of hardness that there is an equivalence or resemblance between that quality and our sensation of it. Reid points out (following Berkeley) that there is no way that a feeling can resemble a quality such as hardness, and therefore that the concept of hardness is not simply abstracted from the sensation, but rather that our minds are constituted in such a way that we understand (noninferentially) that the sensation of hardness comes about because of the primary quality.39 Concepts, under Reid's system, are only given to us through sense experience, but we could not have them if we were not born fluent in the language of nature, to use his analogy.40 The sensation functions as a sign of the quality. Just as the word "hardness" leads to the conception of the quality of hardness, the sensation we experience when we touch a hard thing naturally suggests to us the quality of hardness in the felt object.41 The concept of hardness, therefore, doesn't enter the mind until it holds the corresponding but non-resembling sensation; your mind reads this natural sign, and this causes your perception (conception and belief) of hardness as a primary quality of the object.42 Kant‘s pure concepts, on the other hand, are in the understanding prior to all experience.43 Nevertheless, Reid and Kant are more similar to each other on this issue than either is to Locke or to Leibniz because Reid and Kant hold that the natural organization of the mind combined with sensory experience is what allows us to consciously possess concepts and to perceive objects through the application of those concepts.

Kantian Realism

85

V. Comparisons with Reid aside, a central reason for my assertion that Kant is an epistemological realist is that Kant does not say that perception of x entails that we perceive any intermediating entities, insofar as x is an empirically real object. The ―Refutation of Idealism‖ is a short but extremely important section added to the CPR in the second edition. Kant sought to refute the idea that we are first conscious of our own inner states and then must infer the existence of outer objects. The fault of Berkeley, Descartes, et al., is that they ―assumed that the only immediate experience is inner experience, and that from it we can only infer outer things.‖44 If he were an indirect realist, however, he would defend this idea. He argues that we do not perceive our representations and then refer them to an object, but that we directly perceive the outer objects: ―Thus perception of this permanent is possible only through a thing outside me and not through the mere representation of a thing outside me.‖45 The representation is not some inner mediating mental entity like a Lockean/Cartesian idea, but rather it is the state of referral of sensation to the outer object, the intentional act by which we are presented immediately with such outer objects. The concept of ―referral‖ comes from the Transcendental Aesthetic, where Kant argues for the ideality of space by saying that it must be presupposed ―in order that certain sensations be referred to something outside me.‖46 Representation, then, is precisely this referral of the sensation to the outer object, and it is not the act or inner state of referring (i.e., the representation) that is the object of our perception, but rather the external object to which the sensation is referred—in other words, ―outer experience is really immediate.‖47 Self-consciousness of the Cartesian sort is in fact mediated by outer perception, not the other way around (as indirect realism might have it), and the ―determination of my existence in time is possible only through the existence of actual things which I perceive outside me.‖48 The claims that ―outer experience is really immediate‖— when ―outer experience‖ means experience of outer objects with rich spatial qualities such as being ―outside me‖ and ―outside

86

Jake Quilty-Dunn

and alongside [other objects]‖—and that objects are ―actual things which I perceive outside me‖ are unambiguous expressions of epistemological realism. Kant‘s theory of perception thus fulfills our criteria for weak direct realism in that the objects of perception are ―outer‖ in a rich, three-dimensional sense, and in that these objects are ―permanent,‖ as they persist, independently, even when not perceived. As he claims that we immediately and non-inferentially perceive actual objects in space, it is fair to call him a weak direct realist. Furthermore, we might expect that a weak direct realist would share salient features of his theory of perception with the theories of other direct realists, and the discussion of Thomas Reid, perhaps the predominant (strong) direct realist in early modern philosophy, shows this to be the case. While Kant famously asserts that we have no knowledge of things in themselves—a position that would likely get Reid's teeth grinding—this is only so far as they are nonspatiotemporal noumena, the unknowable unconditioned. Once our mental forms of perception have synthesized a sensible object, we indeed have direct access to it, though the synthesis itself is a ―blind…function of the soul…of which we are scarcely ever conscious.‖49 Despite the hiddenness of the means by which we represent objects, the process yields an object of which we are directly aware. ―All outer perception...yields immediate proof of something real in space, or rather is the real itself. In this sense empirical realism is beyond question.‖50 Sensible objects are themselves "mere representations," but they are three-dimensional and ―outside me,‖51 and we have direct epistemological access to them. As Allison notes, Kant's use of the term representation in this context has led to the "standard picture" that his transcendental idealism results in some form of empirical idealism or representationalism.52 According to Kant, perception is nothing but conception and sensation, and there is no intermingling "idea," as Locke would have us believe. In other words, we do not see a tree by means of seeing something else; we directly perceive a tree, through our conception of "a tree" accompanied by a visual "sensation" that indicates to us that this conception is of a presently existing object. For Kant, the objects

Kantian Realism

87

of perception are empirically real outer objects, and owe their existence not to the fact that a person is looking at them at a particular time, but rather to the fact that they conform to our forms of intuition and therefore could possibly be the object of a person‘s experience. In contrast to the idealist who asserts that objects exist only insofar as they are perceived, Kant‘s theory entails that objects exist insofar as they are objects capable of being perceived, or as he puts it, ―objects of possible experience.‖53 And this capability, which constitutes their status as "mere representations," refers not to any mental entities of perception, but to the way we perceive external objects, and therefore to the epistemic conditions (i.e., forms of intuition and understanding) that distinguish Kant's transcendental idealism from the "dogmatic idealism of Berkeley" and the "problematic idealism of Descartes."54 In the end, empirical objects, as spatiotemporal and categorized phenomena, are "given" directly to us through intuition. It appears that the appeal of viewing Kantian phenomena through an idealist notion of "representations," though seductive, is superficial and inconsistent with how Kant describes the process of perception. The outer objects themselves, not the representations or conceptions of them, are given to us in experience. It is clear from the above that Kant and Reid share fundamental views on epistemology and perception. If the structural similarities between Reid and Kant really exist and have the significance I‘ve attached to them; if this account of the direct "givenness" and permanence of empirical objects is accepted as an accurate reading of the text; and if my definitions of and distinctions between different kinds of realism are correct, then it must be accepted that Kant was a weak direct realist.

88

Jake Quilty-Dunn Notes

1 CPR,

A28/B44 term is taken from Allison 1983.

3 CPR, A218/B266 4 CPR, A225/B272 5 CPR, B224 6 CPR, B232 7 CPR, B256 2 This

8 CPR,

A211

9 CPR,

A225/B273 CPR, A226/B273 11 The denial of gravity is found in the first of the Three Dialogues.

Berkeley, 29 12 CPR, A493/B521 13 CPR, B147 14 CPR, A320/B376 15 Pure intuition might qualify as a case of intuition without sensation, but that exception is not relevant here, where the issue is empirical perception.

16 EIP, 212 17 CPR, A225/B272 18 EIP, 267 19 EIP, 36. See also: IHM, 44 20 CPR, B147: ―empirical knowledge…is what we entitle experience.‖ B166: ―But empirical knowledge is experience.‖ 21 CPR, A69/B93 22 Allison, 116 23 CPR, A105-6 24 CPR, A79/B105 25 EIP, 172 26 EIP, 133 27 CPR, B274 28 CPR, B70-1 29 CPR, B71 30 CPR, B69 31 CPR, A491/B519 10

Kantian Realism

89

CPR, A491-2/B520 CPR, A141/B180 34 CPR, A254/B310 35 The relevant passage is found in Sec. 33 of Berkeley‘s Principles.

Berkeley, 37 36 I have so far only quoted from Reid's EIP, which was published in 1785, after the first edition of Kant‘s CPR (which was published in 1781), but the point about sensory impressions and the concepts we gain from them being different entities entirely (and thus not simply more or less forceful versions of each other) is argued strongly and repeatedly in Reid's 1764 IHM (especially in Ch. 5, "Of Touch") and is central to the critique of empiricist idea doctrine in that work.

37 CPR, A271/B327 38 IHM, 60 39 Ibid.

40 IHM, 59, 85 41 IHM, 57-8 42 IHM, 64-5 43 CPR, A65-6/B90 44 CPR, B276 45 CPR, B275 46 CPR, A23/B38 47 CPR, B276 48 CPR, B275-6 49 CPR, A78/B1-3 50 CPR, A375 51 CPR, A23/B38 52 Allison, 26-27 53 CPR, B148 54 CPR, A226/B274 32 33

90

Jake Quilty-Dunn Works Cited

Allison, Henry. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

Berkeley, George. Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues. H. Robinson, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. N.K. Smith, tr. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Abbreviated as CPR. Reid, Thomas. Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. 6th ed. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Company, 1855. Abbreviated as EIP. Reid, Thomas. Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. D. Brookes, ed. University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. Abbreviated as IHM.

Episteme Denison University’s Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy announces the scheduled publication of Volume XXIII, May 2012

CALL FOR PAPERS Episteme is a student-run journal that aims to recognize and encourage excellence in undergraduate philosophy by providing examples of some of the best work currently being done in undergraduate philosophy programs. Episteme is published under the auspices of Denison University‘s Department of Philosophy. *Beginning in 2011, the journal is being published at http:// denisonepisteme.wordpress.com too, using a Creative Commons license.

Episteme will consider papers written by undergraduate students in any area of philosophy. Papers are evaluated according to the following criteria: quality of research, depth of philosophic inquiry, creativity, original insight and clarity.

Submissions to be considered for the twenty-third volume (May 2012) should adhere to the following stipulations: 1. Be a maximum of 5,000 words, a minimum of 2,000 words.

2. Combine research and original insight.

3. Include a cover sheet that provides the following information: author‘s name, mailing address (current and permanent), email address, telephone number, college or university name, title of submission and word count.

4. Include a works cited page in the Chicago Manual of Style format.

Please use endnotes rather than footnotes.

5. To allow for a blind review process, the author‘s name should not appear on the submission itself.

6. Submissions should be sent electronically, formatted for Microsoft Word.

Please send papers and cover sheets to episteme@denison.edu.

Rolling submissions accepted. Submissions to be considered for May 2012 publication must be received by midnight, Sunday, November 13, 2011.

Questions should be submitted to the Editors (episteme@denison.edu)