[This is a guest post by Joel Katzav (University of Queensland)--ES]
Helen Huss Parkhurst (1887-1959) was an early twentieth-century, American philosopher. She completed her MA in 1913 and her PhD in 1917, both at Bryn Mawr college. Her MA supervisors were Grace and Theodore de Laguna. Theodore was also her PhD supervisor (Parkhurst 1917, p. 67). Parkhurst came to be known primarily for her work in aesthetics and wrote two books–Beauty: An Interpretation of Art and the Imaginative Life and Cathedral: A Gothic Pilgrimage–in this field. However, her early work was on various forms of realism. I focus here on her criticism of the realist view that meanings are atoms, her exploration of unrestricted composition, her exploration of concrete, modal realism and her view that what primarily matters in philosophy is the exercise of the imagination.
Parkhurst’s PhD is entitled ‘Recent logical realism’ and appraises logical realism. According to Parkhurst, it was Bertrand Russell who suggested the topic to her when she visited Cambridge on a fellowship in 1913-1914 (ibid., p. 67). As she understands logical realism, it includes, among other premises, the view that “all conceivable acts of judgment and conception” have non-physical correlates (ibid., p. 3) as well as the view that “the meanings expressed by propositions are separate entities, atomic in character” (ibid., p. 4). Parkhurst’s primary target is Alexius Meinong’s work, but she also discusses Edmund Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen in some detail.
In criticising logical realism, Parkhurst draws on the theory of fictions, influentially presented in Vaihinger's Philosophie des Als Ob, on pragmatism and on idealism. Her pragmatist inspired discussion suggests that, even if the pragmatist is wrong in supposing that the meaning of a judgment is constituted by its consequences for action, “its nature may perhaps be intelligibly ascertainable only by investigating the consequences” (ibid., p. 44). The problem is that, for the logical realist, meanings are atoms and thus implausibly supposed to be graspable independently of any of their consequences (ibid., pp. 40-44). Parkhurst’s idealist inspired discussion of meaning concludes that, contrary to the logical realist’s atomistic view of meaning,
when an individual mind is coerced in its recognition of "the meaning" denoted by its judgment, it is coerced not by a single, isolated, unified entity, but by an entire universe of interpenetrated, systematized meanings in use. 'The meaning' is then, as a unit, merely a convenient term about which to centre one's discourse. As a unit it is a fiction” (ibid., p. 47).
Parkhurst’s 1924 paper, ‘More Things in Heaven and Earth’ is an examination of a different kind of realism, one she calls ‘radical realism’. Radical realism is the view that “nothing thinkable depends for its being or its nature upon being thought, and that consequently what is to be looked for everywhere is a maximum reality rather than a minimum” (Parkhurst 1924, p. 534). As her starting point, Parkhurst assumes that a radical realist will accept that our world is one “in which matter, space, time, and consciousness are real in their totality and in their ultimate constituents, and together with all that they logically imply” (ibid., p. 534). Relations are real, as are the groups they, with their relata, form. Numbers too are real. She then aims to bring out two implications of these unremarkable, realist commitments. First, she argues that the radical realist’s starting point leads to accepting unrestricted composition, that is, that every plurality of objects comprises a group. According to Parkhurst, since radical realism recognises some groups, e.g., the collections of atoms that constitute physical objects, it should recognise all unions of objects as groups. For these various unions do not differ qua groups. She concludes that, from the radical realist perspective,
there is actually nothing which mischievous imagination can conjure and bind into inharmonious unions which has not already its place in the omnivorous universe! (ibid., p. 536).
Second, Parkhurst argues that the radical realist’s starting point leads to accepting the actuality of every conceivable pattern, including every conceivable pattern of musical notes and every conceivable pattern of words. One argument here is that the patterns that might be recognised on, and in, the physical objects posited by unremarkable realism–atoms, molecules and larger physical objects–must, according to radical realism, be there independently of being recognised. Chiselling brings out an already existing figure. Printing a chequered pattern on the wall brings out already existing patterns of surface areas. Drawing a line on a sheet of white paper makes visible an already existing track of paper. Another argument is that the radical realist recognises the word combinations we have deliberately produced as real but should also, since she thinks that these combinations are real independently of whether they were thought of by anyone, recognise that all conceivable word combinations are real:
what can still be said about the actuality of undiscovered combinations of words composing any one language group? It can be said, on the same principles that we have been using, that those combinations must already have been actual before they came to be thought of (ibid., p. 542).
According to radical realism, the actual world contains, in concrete form, representations of everything that might conceivably be represented by language and art.
Parkhurst’s 1917 discussion of logical realism is instructive about the philosophical environment that she was working in at the time. She presents the idea that the meaning of terms is fixed by their use as a familiar, idealist position. Indeed, the idealist view of meaning she presents is close to that of her teachers’ teacher, the idealist James E. Creighton (see, e.g., his An Introductory Logic), and both of her teachers are explicit that they are committed to the idea that meaning is fixed by use (see here for a discussion of Theodore’s view and Grace’s 1927 book Speech: Its Function and Development for her view). From this perspective, it is not entirely surprising that one of Parkhurst’s teachers, Theodore, thought that the misuse of natural language was why philosophers misguidedly tried to develop substantive theories of truth, identity, property possession and knowledge, and was the first to develop the deflationary view of truth (see here). Similarly, it is not entirely surprising to find her other teacher, Grace, developing a private language argument (see here) and a theory of speech according to which its primary function is the coordination of group behaviour (again, see Speech).
Parkhurst’s discussion of radical realism is of interest partly because of its novel exploration of realism, including the earliest explicit argument for unrestricted composition that I am aware of. Also interesting, however, is the attitude to philosophy that her discussion expresses. While Parkhurst’s PhD thesis is a sober, critical examination of positions, her paper is a humorous, imaginative exploration of a possible world. Her emphasis is not on evaluating radical realism, but on spelling it out in an entertaining way. She writes, reflecting on those who, like her, sometimes tire of disputation, that
[a]rtist-like, we would take canvas or chisel and attempt a portraiture of those ideas for the sheer pleasure in their piquancy. Confirmed controversialists may perhaps be loath to assume even for a moment this care-free, uncritical attitude toward epistemological and cosmological solemnities. For such the following reflections are not intended. Those only who share the mood of peaceful dalliance are hereby invited to participate in the present undertaking (Parkhurst 1924, p. 533).
Parkhurst’s emphasis on the imaginative, artist-like side of philosophy fits well with some of the key trends in American philosophy in the early decades of the twentieth century. While American academia is professionalising and specialising, many American philosophers, including Parkhurst, are worried about their inability to agree even about what philosophy is, never mind on a body of substantive philosophical theses (Parkhurst 1920). An emphasis on the imaginative side of philosophy was one reaction to the disagreements within philosophy.
References
Creighton, J. E. (1919) An Introductory Logic, 3rd edition. New York: The MacMillan Company.
De Laguna, G. A. (1927) Speech: Its Function and Development, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Parkhurst, H. H. (1917) Recent Logical Realism, Lancaster, PA: Press of the New Era Printing Company.
Parkhurst, H. H. (1920) “The twentieth annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association”, The Journal of Philosophy, 18(6): 152-160.
Parkhurst, H. H. (1924) “More Things in Heaven and Earth”, The Journal of Philosophy, 21(20): 533-543.
Some more nice work from Joel Katsov. Thank you. I knew about Pankhurst's two works in Aesthetics, but not the dissertation and its aftermath.
Posted by: Margaret Atherton | 04/22/2020 at 04:41 PM