Digressions&Impressions

On the Polemics against Religious Philosophy in Analytic Philosophy

The views which have been noticed thus far attempt to limit the scope of scientific methods on the basis of considerations that are at least nominally scientific in character. The criticisms of science to which attention must next be directed do not even pretend to adduce scientific grounds for their claims, and are frankly based upon explicit theological and metaphysical commitments for which no experimental evidence is invoked. The chief burden of their complaints is that science offers no ‘'ultimate explanation” for the facts of existence; and their chief recommendation is the cultivation of “ontological wisdom” as the sole method for making “ultimately intelligible” both the order of the cosmos and the nature of the good life.

Some citations from recent writers will exhibit more clearly than would a paraphrase the unique mixture of pontifical dogmatism, oracular wisdom, and condescending obscurantism which seems to be the indispensible [sic] intellectual apparatus of this school of criticism. Ernest Nagel (1943) "Malicious Philosophies of Science" reprinted in Sovereign Reason, 37.

One of the sad spectacles of our age is to see otherwise mild-mannered and virtue-seeking religious philosophers cheer on the at times intemperate polemics of, say, Anscombe, Geach, and Plantinga. To say that it not to deny their philosophical contributions and skill in many contexts. And since I am not a stranger to polemics (and willing to grant I make fewer contributions to philosophy), even ill-tempered ones on the role of religion in philosophy, I am not casting stones that couldn't be thrown harder at me! 

It took me a long time to recognize that the championing of philosopher-brawlers (which is still endemic in wider analytic philosophy despite moves toward niceness), and the not infrequent closing of factional ranks, was itself a reflection of the sense of beleaguered-ness. And the reason I found it so hard to enter into that mind-set is that it seemed so self-evident to me that in the wider culture, Stateside, Christianity was by no means going extinct. But in riper age, I have come to recognize that behind all the aggressive political bluster, Christianity today exhibits all the signs of a world-historical implosion in the wealthier parts of the world. (That's compatible with phenomenal growth of Christianity elsewhere on the Planet.)* If I were Hegelian, I would say that the recent joyous flowering of analytic Christian, metaphysics is a sign of this! 

But I am not Hegelian. One oddity, however, is that if one goes over the classics of analytic philosophy, there is little explicit engagement with the status of theology and the role of religion in philosophy. Even Russell, who clearly was no friend of organized religion, claims, in a surprising moment of candor (not the least for the willingness to admit to an esoteric/exoteric distinction), that were he "speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God." ("Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic? A Plea For Tolerance In The Face Of New Dogmas," 1947.)

And while I do not deny that verificationism undoubtedly also had an anti-Christian element to it, it was, as philosophical doctrines go, short-lived. Even so, it may well have reflected a broader climate that was very slow to disappear. One telling data-point for this thought, and to get a sense of that philosophical climate, it is notable that Gödel never published his ontological proof even after safely ensconced at the Institute for Advanced Studies. 

Okay, with that in place, I return (recall) to Nagel's "malicious philosophies of science." (See also, this post on the role of its companion piece, "Recent Philosophies of Science," in the displacement of dialectical materialism.) The role of 'malicious' in the title of the paper, gives a sense of its tenor. 

Nagel's paper itself has many virtues. He shows that many philosophical discussions -- which are still familiar -- about the purported gulf between mind and world; or how to make the qualitative nature of experience compatible with the purportedly mathematical character of modern science; or  the ways in which mechanistic (and/or deterministic) and physicalist science are taken to be incompatible with an orientation toward (emergentist) life or mind, all tend to rest on impoverished conceptions of the nature of science and the practice of experimentation in which much of science is rooted. 

But, it is notable, in the quoted passage above, that Nagel simply assumes that "experimental evidence" is required to ground or justify "explicit theological and metaphysical commitments." And while one can grant Nagel that science itself need not offer "ultimate explanation" for the "facts of existence" -- and, perhaps, in his day wisely does not try to do so [modern cosmology is frequently not so self-limiting] --, it follows straightforwardly from the undeniable possibility that experimental evidence may not settle all philosophical questions.+

The previous paragraph is not to excuse pontifical dogmatism or oracular wisdom. It's Thursday, and I carry my analytic membership proudly today. Nagel goes on to quote a number of eminent neo-Thomists (Gilson, Maritain and, although no neo-Thomists, Whitehead). I have to admit I do not find what they say especially puzzling or obscure. (But you may disagree.) What these positions have in common is a demand for (i) forms of explanation that go beyond efficient causes; (ii) an ultimate ground for existence beyond experience; (iii) and some connection between (i-ii) that conforms to cannons of intelligibility and a PSR.

The more interesting point I wish to make is that when Nagel shows, correctly, that science itself often goes beyond efficient causation, and even offers answers to 'why' questions, he himself notes that these (tentative) scientific answers are not themselves based on direct experiment: "in science the answer to the question "why" is...always a theory, from which the specific fact at issue may be deduced when suitable initial conditions are introduced." (SR: 29) And Nagel grants that these initial conditions are going to be arbitrary or brute in some sense on so at odds with (iii). (In addition, the theory may well go beyond the experimental evidence that helped generate and confirm it.)

That Nagel recognizes the significance of (iii) is itself made clear when he insists that the appeal to causa sui is itself "mystery." (SR 30) And while I have some sympathy with Nagel's point -- which echoes, in a curious reversal, Clarke's Newtonian response to Spinoza -- that there is something unsatisfactory, especially to those familiar with science's ability to explain surprising difference makers in the world, about the fact that "no matter what the world were like, no matter what the course of events might be, the same Ultimate Cause is offered an "explanation,"" (SR 30) it is a mistake to charge this 'explanation' with mystery. That something is relatively bad at explaining particulars does not make it oracular or mysterious. 

I do not mean here to re-litigate Nagel's polemics. But it is easier to understand that in an intellectual milieu dominated by ideas like, and presumably influenced by, Nagel's a certain kind of counter-polemic may have been welcome. 

Now, so far I have done little to make the animus behind Nagel's position intelligible. But there is no mystery there. Nagel fundamentally objects to two ideas: first, that "only one conception of spiritual excellence is valid." (SR 33) And Nagel clearly believes, not without reason, that his targets promote such (ahh) spiritual monism. And, second, he rejects the dogmatism about such spiritual monism ground in a kind of intellectual hierarchy. The second point is more implied (but see what he says about Maritain).

For, Nagel the two ideas he rejects have no standing because they are not "based upon objective measures of well-being." (SR 33) And such measures must, according to Nagel be ground in careful experimental practice. To be sure it is in virtue of his commitment to this that he lets the reader grasp that shares with the neo-Thomists a rejection of the utilitarian tendency toward eugenics (SR 32). So, unlike many friends of science and experimental practice, Nagel does not deny that science is implicated in many contemporary problems. But he believes that a kind of anti-scientism, "rejects the one instrument from which a resolution of these difficulties may reasonably be expected." (SR 33)**

Of course, even somebody sympathetic to Nagel, like myself, may note that he has no experimental (or historical/conceptual) ground to suppose there is just "one instrument" that can offer such a resolution. He smuggles a lot into what is 'reasonable' to expect. 

Let me wrap up. So while Nagel's heart is in the right place -- after all in line with (recall) his pluralism, he is defending the diversity of spiritual excellence! --, Nagel's argument goes off the rails because he thinks that the neo-Thomists (and other fellow travelers" unfairly take advantage of the fact that in "“in the midst of actual and impending disaster” and in “period of social crisis, when rational methods of inquiry supply no immediate solution for pressing problems” people are to listen to those that disparage or stress the limitations of the sciences. (SR: 18; see also “the mounting economic and political tensions of our age,” further down the page). That is to say Nagel echoes the epicurean and Humean polemic against superstition that it takes advantage of fear. But we don't need to be Yoda, to recognize that countering polemic with polemic is no path to wisdom.

 

 

 

Ón Callard's Aspiration (I)

On an aspirational account of self-creation, the creator does not determine, choose or shape the created self; rather, she looks up to, imitates and seeks to become the created self. The source of normativity lies at the end of the process, rather than at the beginning.(p.13)....

skeptics may worry that an account such as mine succumbs to the basic error Nietzsche is describing: in positing the normatively prior self as temporally posterior, I am presenting a teleological account of (a species of) self-directed agency. Is such teleology naturalistically suspect—does it rest on some notion of backwards causation, or causeless effects? I argue that these suspicions are themselves predicated on a conceptual error: a confusion between two kinds of grounding relation...

The primary task...is that of giving an account of how one set of norms—the norms governing S1—is related to another set of norms—the norms governing S2. ... If we want to know whether those very desires and representations succeed or fail, we must assess them with reference to the as-yet nonexistent S2.
In aspiration, it is the created self who, through the creator’s imperfect but gradually improving understanding of her, makes intelligible the path the person’s life takes. Aspiration is that form of agency in which one acts upon oneself to create a self with substantively new values. One does this by allowing oneself to be guided by the very self one is bringing into being.--Agnes Callard Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming, (p. 182-3)

I read Callard's Aspiration with a reading group at Chapman. The members of it (let me know if you want to be named) are to be blamed for my mistakes.:)* On my interpretation, aspiring in Callard's sense is a species of acting under Knightian uncertainty (which goes unmentioned in the book) closely analogous to L.A. Paul's transformative experience (which is discussed carefully; recall here and here). I agree with Callard that aspiring is a real phenomenon, and that it invites further reflection. In a series of posts, I want to diagnose at least three conceptual issues (and make aspirational, baby steps toward resolving them). 

First, the distinctive proleptic normativity of an aspirational action cannot be grounded in the prior intentions of the agent. For, some (of a Kantian bent) this is just bat-shit crazy. But I think normativity can be ungrounded in such intentions.  As Callard notes the agent that grounds the normativity is a future self. That is to say, to explain the problem of aspirational normativity one must solve (a) the teleological way such a (b) posited future self can ground the normativity of proleptic actions toward it. Once (a) and (b) are solved, one can make progress on the problem of aspirational normativity. I take these in turn, in reverse order. 

Second, accounting for the normatively grounding, posited aspirational self is more difficult than it may seem at first. For, on Callard's account -- and I endorse this feature -- genuine aspiring can fail and some purported aspiring can turn out to be wrongheaded. In the first case (of failed aspiration) the posited aspirational self (who is supposed to ground the normativity of one's proleptic reasons toward it) never materializes. Whatever the identity of this imagined self, there is a sense in which it is merely an ideal version of a possible you.  In the second sense (the wrongheaded aspiration) the posited self could never be you. So, how can counterfactual selves -- one tangentially related to your identity, the other unrelated to you -- ground the normativity of your activity?

In fact, the problem also is generated in circumstances where the aspiration was warranted and turned out a success (by whatever criteria internal to aspirational tasks). For, even if we leave aside questions of teleology, wne may well wonder how successful aspiration can ground one's present action when the future (post aspirational completed) self is in-non-trivial ways a different identity from the present, aspiring self. It still looks as if a counterfactual identity distinct from one's identity is grounding the normativity of your agency. So, to put the problem starkly, aspirational created selves are, in non-trivial ways, counterfactual selves with which one shares (prospectively) only partial identity.  (As Callard notes repeatedly, one cannot claim identity with this future self because prospectively one has little ground for such identity claiming.) While teleology is part of the problem, the real problem is how counterfactual or created selves can proleptically generate normativity to agents that are, in non-trivial ways, (partial) strangers. Let's call this the problem of counterfactual strangers.

Third, I do not mean to suggest that teleology is no problem at all. As Callard puts it, "it is the end that provides the normative standards for assessing what comes before it" (209); and the end is unknown, unknowable to the agent until the end is reached.  In fact, working through Callard's book in the company of decision theorists, it is notable how much of the standard machinery of rational choice agency presupposes a kind of billiard ball model of agency in which efficient causes of push and pull (beliefs, credences, intentions, expectations, etc.) do all the work. The question is how can one insert proleptic reasons, which are distinctly teleological into a standard  decision-theoretic picture that plays by naturalistic rules. Let's call this the problem of teleology. Luckily, I know how to make progress on the problem of teleology because (recall here and here) I just read the ms of David Haig's brilliant book, From Darwin to Derrida: Selfish Genes, Social Selves, and the Meanings of Life which vindicates a naturalistic version of echt-teleology.

I don't think any of the problems I have identified are truly articulated in Aspiration. But I think Callard has identified, or (to do justice of her treatment of Plato) recovered, a genuine feature of our existence. And that she has offered us enough of a mountain to climb, to make it worth it to reach higher vistas.  

Stay tuned.

On Translation, in Analytic Philosophy

One of the the peculiarities of the analytic tradition is that if you say, "I am interested in translation in analytic philosophy," people are more likely to talk about Quine (or Davidson) rather than about the peculiar fact that many of the works of early analytic philosophy are the product of translation. As Glock suggests,* with an amusing anecdote about Quine, the Polish logicians became known, first, in German. Leaving aside those writing in English, those that were not translated into German were often forgotten unless they were later translated into English.

As an aside, this historical oblivion happened, in fact, to quite a number of the female members of the Lvov-Warsaw School (where Twardowski had quite a few such students) many of whom only published in Polish. It is somewhat depressing, for example, that outside Poland, Kokoszyńska, who did publish at least one paper in German, is now primarily known as a bathroom distraction in G.A. Cohen's famous impersonation of Tarski's lecture on the error in Leśniewski's theorem. I am not claiming that lack of translation is the only source of historical oblivion; analytic philosophy's relationship to its own past is a complex one.

But, of course, now that English is The Frankish (lingua franca) of analytic philosophy (and scientific culture more generally) some of our classic texts are primarily known in translation. I was surprised to learn recently, for example, not only that anybody (Hacker & Schulte) tried to improve on the Anscombe's influential translation (of the Investigations), but that, in fact, it had been turned into a fourth edition. I had missed the intervening editions. One wonders if this (4th ed) is a nice case of truth in advertising -- a revised translation changes the book substantially and so should count as a new edition -- or better understood as a marketing gimmick (given that Wittgenstein's text presumably has been left alone; the book is not advertised as a 'critical edition,' after all). Because I don't co-inhabit space with Wittgenstein  scholars these days, I am unsure to what degree debates over  Ogden/Ramsey vs Pears/McGuinness (still) exist (see here for useful site).

I am, in fact, unsure who generated the best known sentence in the history of analytic philosophy, the Swiftian sounding "The Nothing Noths." I leave aside here the tricky question to what degree the sentence is merely mentioned or used and abused by analytic philosophy. I had always assumed that "The Nothing Noths" was produced by Arthur Pap in his translation of  Carnap's treatment of Heidegger, Das Nichts nichtet. Pap (ultimately a student of Ernest Nagel), whose influence on the shaping of analytic philosophy's self-image tends to get ignored, did a bad job on the title -- there is a real distinction between overcoming metaphysics (a straightforward and philosophically resonant translation of Carnap's title) and eliminating it, which gives analytic philosophy a more militarist sensibility [even if somebody may argue that the difference is merely symbolic (one ought to take symbols seriously)]. But, in fact, unless I am missing something, Pap's translation does not contain "The Nothing Noths," but rather the far more ugly "The Nothing Nothings." The earliest source I can find (on Google, that is) is Peter Achinstein's (1985)) The Nature of Explanation (where Heidegger is mentioned, but Carnap not!); but (with all due respect to Achinstein who was quite influential in those days), I suspect it was given wide currency by David Lewis in 1988, and then finds its way into the literature on Carnap and Heidegger! (But maybe Ayer is the source).

Despite The Nothing Noths, in general Carnap was not blessed in his translators. I don't think George's Logical Structure of the World really conveys the meaning of Der Logische Aufbau der Welt. (When I first heard the title of the book in English, I thought it was a book in the philosophy of physics.) The Logical Construction of the World would have better conveyed both the agency and progressivity involved (not to mention the resonances with  Kantianism).

To the best of my knowledge, little attention is paid to the quality of translations of early analytic philosophy (for my own earlier musings on translation more generally recall here, here, here, and here). The relevant comparison class is the focus on, and heated controversies over, the translations of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Descartes, and perhaps Spinoza. This is a bit surprising if one takes Quine's once influential ideas about translation (and holism) seriously. But not so surprising not just because 'we're all realists now,' but also (i) because we really don't introduce our students into analytic philosophy by way of study of our canonical texts--we are a progressive enterprise and our students deserve to be introduced to the  topic by way of contemporary works on the cutting edge (or text-books). (This was less true when there was still an active cult of Wittgenstein.) I think that's pretty much the whole truth. But there is also an ironic fact, that when we do assign the early analytics to  undergrads, the English versions have become canonical, no?***

 

On Being a Constrained Human

Disabled people are constrained and limited by their bodies....The simple act is that, disabled or non-disabled, we are all limited and constrained by our bodies. To have a body that is any particular wa is to have a body that is limited and constrained in some respects an in comparison to other kinds of bodies. That's just part of what it is  to have a body. Some of us are male, some of us are female. Some of us are tall, some of us are short. Some of us are flexible, some of us are stiff. Some of us are stocky, some of us are willowy. There are all sorts of ways that bodies can be. And each way a body can be comes with some limitations and constraints.

We all adapt our preferences due in part to the limitations of our bodies---that's an utterly ordinary thing to do. Elizabeth Barnes (2016) The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability, 132 (emphasis in original).

The quoted passage appears in a very interesting and critical discussion of a species of status quo bias to be found in views of adaptive preferences popular among many professional philosophers. I shall turn to this status quo bias some other time. But in reading this passage (and the chapters that followed it), I had what I take to be an ohhh, I should change my idea about what it's like to be human moment. Let me explain.

At the core of Barnes's book is the idea that all human bodies face constraints.+ (One may, in fact, say that to be without constraints is to be godlike; and humans are not god(s), etc.) In particular, it is part of the nature of what it is to be a human body that all human bodies are in a position of not being able to do some X; with X being something other human bodies can do (or could be/have or can instantiate), and X being really important to some humans.* It is a fairly common conceptual and maybe even phenomenological mistake to think of disability in terms of constraint, but to ignore simultaneously the existence of constraints in the context of (complex) experiences that arise from having other types of bodies (even though those bodies by necessity include all kinds of constraints).**

Notice that Barnes's core idea does not rely on heavy duty metaphysics and is compatible with all kinds of natural philosophies. But it does cause problems for views that think of disability in terms of defects or special imperfections of the sort embraced by some Thomists, Christians, and (somewhat uncharacteristically, but often quite intensely) Utilitarians. I don't mean to suggest all Thomists, Christians, and Utilitarians must embrace the 'disability = defective human being' view; after all, one way to understand Barnes's core idea is to recognize in it a version of Augustinianism in which we are all defective (due to the Fall, desire, etc.). (Of course, the idea is not exclusively Augustinian; the idea of human limits is intrinsic to much Greek tragedy, the Hebrew Bible, etc.)

At The University of Chicago, I had been exposed to a heavy dose of so-called (Pittsburgh based) Wittgenstein-heavy Aristotelianism and Analytical Thomism (inspired by work of Anscombe, Geach, and Foot). While the interest in that tradition is not, I think, primarily to label some forms of life defective (or disabled) [on the contrary, it is really about articulating the conditions of flourishing and virtue], I did encounter the idea there that some ways of being human are evidently defective. Because we live in a culture that celebrates images of young and fit bodies, it is hard to resist the ableism.

While appeal to Darwinism blocks some of the perfectionist strains (although leaves it difficult to say what 'life' or 'flourishing' is), even within Darwinism it is fairly natural to talk about normal (or proper) species functioning and once you allow function-talk there is plenty of space to slide into thinking that some members of a species are less fit, less able to survive, malfunctioning, etc. (After all, Platonic Eugenics was not banished by Darwinism, but rather with nods to 'fitness' made more 'scientific' within it!) While, of course, within Darwinism it is not allowed to make deviations from the 'normal' normative, it is a recurring temptation (and I lacked tools to block it). As Barnes writes (in the Preface):

It's easy to confuse the view from normal with the view from nowhere. And it's uniquely the minority voices which we single out as biased or lacking objectivity.

Maybe it's because I was reading Barnes's book while sick in bed during my official holiday, but the idea that my life is limited and constrained by my body finally grabbed hold of me. (This is a distinct feeling from recognizing one's mortality [recall].) It's not that I am not in awe of my wife, who climbs mountains and heli-skis, but I don't think of my inability to climb Mont Blanc as a limitation; I just don't think about it. Most of my needs for recognition are oriented toward qualities associated with my mind [and officially I am no substance dualist!], and most of my demands on myself are oriented toward my ability to care for others and how I cope with and accommodate their limitations (some other time I'll discuss how this connects to fatherhood, which involves a lot of facilitating a child's bodily constraints). It's not that my life is without constraints: I notice the absence of  time (and sometimes money) regularly.

But I also became this person. Looking back, I recall that I was a competitive tennis-player as a teenager. At some point I must have recognized without much willingness to confront it that I would not become a college varsity player (let alone a pro). What's key here is that we do not ordinarily understand, I think, our own flourishing and way-of-being as determined by such constraints unless someone else (society, etc.) confronts us with our bodily limitations (e.g., in advertisements and popular culture; or other people's lack of attraction to us). After all, we all adapt our preferences due in part to the limitations of our bodies---that's an utterly ordinary thing to do. 

Anscombe's Two Mistakes

Returning to my example of the intrinsically unjust: if a procedure is one of judicially punishing a man for what he is clearly understood not to have done, there can be absolutely no argument about the description of this as unjust. No circumstances, and no expected consequences, which do not modify the description of the procedure as one of judicially punishing a man for what he is known not to have done can modify the description of it as unjust. Someone who attempted to dispute this would only be pretending not to know what "unjust" means: for this is a paradigm case of injustice.

And here we see the superiority or the term "unjust" over the terms "morally right" and "morally wrong." For in the context of English moral philosophy since Sidgwick it appears legitimate to discuss whether it might be "morally right" in some circumstances to adopt that procedure; but it cannot be argued that that the procedure would in any circumstances be just.--Anscombe, "Modern Moral Philosophy" [1958)], reprinted here.

But an innocent man, though of more than ordinary constancy, is often, not only shocked, but most severely mortified by the serious, though false, imputation of a crime; especially when that imputation happens unfortunately to be supported by some circumstances which give it an air of probability....An innocent man, brought to the scaffold by the false imputation of an infamous or odious crime, suffers the most cruel misfortune which it is possible for innocence to suffer.--Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

For the second time in three years, a rich, fascinating public lecture by Julia Driver, (this time) 'The Case Against Consequentialism: Anscombe, Foot, and Murdoch,' has inspired some musings in me (recall). In what follows in these Digressions, I do not comment on Driver's thesis and argument, but once her paper has appeared in print I will do so. Here I explore features of the quoted passage above from Anscombe featured in Driver's essay, which made me return to "Modern Moral Philosophy" (MMP), that are orthogonal to Driver's argument.

Anscombe's MMP is, despite its scholarly popularity, not Anscombe at her most subtle; yet it is a polemical masterpiece. This is not to deny it is a very important statement; I always relish her contempt for the "provinciality of mind" among the "English" (Sidgwick and his followers), although she mistakenly believes that Sidgwick did not know what he was doing when he excluded non-trivial features of the "Hebrew-Christian ethic;" for while she is right to note that in Sidgwick the important things in him occur in asides and footnotes and small bits of argument which are not concerned with his grand classification of the "methods of ethics," she fails to recognize that these asides also exhibit Sidgwick's stance on philosophical prudence which are a feature not a bug of his (what came to be known as) Government house utilitarianism. 

MMP has an apparent accessibility, which -- in addition to the care-free pot-shots at previous, (once) canonical thinkers --, undoubtedly helps sustain its popularity. Her readings of others lack -- to invoke a Christian virtue that has, perhaps unwisely, been adopted by generations of scholars -- charity and, thereby, she can exhibit an-oft subtle point, while simultaneously scoring points that many students of philosophy might think they could have made too (e.g. "Kant introduces the idea of “legislating for oneself,” which is as absurd as if in these days, when majority votes command great respect, one were to call each reflective decision a man made a vote resulting in a majority, which as a matter of proportion is overwhelming, for it is always 1-0.")

Anyway, in the quoted passage at the top of this post, Anscombe makes two connected mistakes (which are, at bottom, the same),* one not too subtle and the other more so. First, in the passage she tacitly presupposes that in the philosophy of law or political philosophy, legal positivism is ruled out. It is, hence, no surprise that a few lines before, she heaps scorn on "a rule of law by which something is "deemed" to be the case which is admittedly not the case as a matter of fact." But Anscombe has not earned this position; to show that legal positivism or legal proceduralism has immoral consequences is not a decisive argument against it. (To be clear: she is critical of positions that allow the execution of innocents under certain circumstances.) For, not only does all human law have immoral consequences (to assume otherwise would be to assume the conditions under which human law wouldn't be necessary), but it also begs the question to assume that moral authority trumps political and legal authority when they come into conflict. When they do, this opens up, to echo Anscombe (discussing Hume) "very deep and important problems" that are only easily resolved by analytical philosophers who -- to historicize++ -- have a tendency to take the very existence of political order for granted; the political intermingles with all  philosophical inquiries of axiological importance (recall Isaiah Berlin's criticism of analytical philosophy). I return to this below.

Second, Anscombe is mistaken in making her position turn on terminological superiority. For one can describe the case she labels as a paradigmatic instance of 'intrinsic justice' (and agree that it is paradigmatically so) without using "injustice" at all and without sounding like one is using euphemisms. As an example of this, I quoted the relevant passage in Adam Smith above. He very carefully avoids describing the case of a "judicial condemnation of the innocent" as an instance of injustice while still managing to convey the moral gravity of the situation ("suffers the most cruel misfortune which it is possible for innocence to suffer") and without giving in to the temptation of calling such situations "morally right." That is, Smith recognize that the institution of justice can do genuine, severe harms, but that one should be cautious about calling these instances of "intrinsic injustice."** That is, she is wrong to think that "someone who attempted to dispute this would only be pretending not to know what "unjust" means;" rather than arguing it, I showed it. Of course, from the vantage point of the innocent person it is proper to call it an instance of "injustice:" As Smith goes on to write "The innocent man, on the contrary, over and above the uneasiness which this fear may occasion, is tormented by his own indignation at the injustice which has been done to him."*** The humane spectator understands this indignation and, if she is wise, too, would not try to argue otherwise.

The true point Anscombe wishes to make, that is, that the kind of moral philosophy associated with Sidgwick and his followers can easily become, and was, complicit in the (procedurally licensed) evils and harms, large and small, of the technocratic state is surely right (see, especially, her last paragraph).+ She can say that (and I would agree) without accusing the other side of not knowing how words are used or whose (paradigm-relative) terminology is superior. But making that charge stick would have forced her to explore the relationship between her moral certitudes and her paradigmatic exemplars that sustain them and a form of life that takes the (forgive my scholasticism) the nature(s) and existence of the all-too-human-political-legal-order seriously. Of course, she has explored some of these issues elsewhere and a polemic is often not the right place for generosity. +++

 

 

On Teaching (and Meeting Former Students)

I do not blog as much about my teaching experiences in relation to their significance in my life (but see here), in part, because I want to protect the privacy and, more subtly, the intimacy of my experiences with my students (recall). But the main reason I tend to avoid it is that I am alert to some of the romanticizing dangers inherent to the self-actualization (or self-fashioning) of these Digressions; I find teaching a difficult craft, and it is tempting to craft an image of how I prefer to see myself as a teacher. While authenticity is overrated, such an image would merely reveal my desires and insecurities.

Yesterday evening I was a solitary walker in Ghent, debating internally to catch a bite at a place with free wifi, so I could write yesterday’s post and get to bed early, or go to a place with better and more slowly served food. I was mildly concerned about a guest-speaker, who had to cancel a talk due to illness. I stopped in front of an Indian place with an excellent buffet; they had no wifi, but I could be done fairly quickly while not sacrificing quality. Yet, I hesitated; through the window I saw an empty restaurant except for a familiar face talking animatedly with her table-partner. I knew if I went in I would have to make some small talk. At first, I thought it was a fellow coffee-aficionado from Amsterdam who had moved to Ghent, but as I decided to step into the place, I realized it was a former student who greeted me with great enthusiasm and warmth, including (as Dutch adults greet each other) three pecks on my astonished cheeks, immediately invited me to join them for dinner, and launched into a narrative of her exciting projects as a street-artist, magazine editor, play-wright, and cultivator of poets and other noble souls. I was introduced to part of the magazine's editorial team, and was enthusiastically inducted into their secret plans to transform Dutch letters and aesthetics (and, in turn, I revealed some of the trade secrets I have learned from Nabokov); the evening left me little spare time for my daily Digression.

My first taste of academic teaching occurred when I was asked to lead a section of Professor Eichenberg’s ‘Introduction to International Relations’ at my Alma Mater a year after graduation.  After a few weeks I realized I wanted to do this with the rest of my life. Now, ‘Ike’ was a very gifted teacher—he had an amazing capacity to remember students’ names and faces, and could make a capacity filled, giant lecture hall seem like an intimate seminar. He was also very smooth; when I brought my dad to the lecture during my first semester of college, he called on me by name (to my dad’s delight and my astonishment) and made sure to have himself introduced to my dad after class.

Yet, as I started to develop my inchoate, personal ‘philosophy of education’ in graduate school – my head filled with reflections on many noble, but contradictory exemplars (in addition to the portraits of Socrates and Thoreau, the stories about Anscombe and Wittgenstein, as well as my teachers of flesh-and-blood ) --, I grew suspicious of teachers that want to be loved and adored by their students. I rejected, especially, the professors that loved to hear themselves talk (an occupational hazard) to rapt, admiring audiences. Our calling as educators should not be about full-filling our own needs even if we, thereby, meet some of the revealed preferences of our students, I decided, and thereby exhibiting the Protestant roots of my Dutch childhood.

To be clear, then, as now, I do not reject the image of ‘professor as performance-artist.’ I forget who taught me this (if you are reading this: sorry!), but all great philosophical teaching is about taking some features of one’s character, magnifying and using them to generate interactions that serve one’s varied (and variable) pedagogical aims (which may also include generating space for surprise, of course), but which, for me, always includes the idea that if teaching fills any of the teacher’s needs then it should be in virtue of learning from my students (recall my remarks above about dangers of self-fashioning). One reason I am so fruitfully frustrated and fascinated by Seneca's style of teaching in his Letters, is that he seems not very interested in learning from his official protégé.

After a professional decade in the class-room, I know I am not uniformly loved by my students; the evaluations are always polarized with a group of students always strongly disliking my class-room persona. (I am against using evaluations in promotions/pay, but I find them very informative in lots of ways.) While I would behave differently if I could have stayed at Wesleyan – where teachers often really are in loco parentis --, these days if I socialize with students at all then only after I have turned in my grades.

Former students keep in touch with unsolicited letters and, more recently facebook updates: some of the more academically interested of these have become, or are struggling to be, professional academics in turn. Quite a few of my undergraduate teachers were -- and continue to be -- mentors (recall), and I very much enjoy passing on, when possible, the good karma (or is it dharma?), comradery, and the joys of shared intellectual inquiry to the youngsters.

But I am more touched when former students give me their, as it were, postmortem perspective years later and, thereby, reveal that they were inspired by their interactions with my class-room persona and, by that mysterious creative alchemy, transform these into unanticipated sparks that help animate their activities. While it may be a necessary act of vain self-deception, I tell myself that this is what my calling is about.

On Harms done to Philosophers and the World by Philosophy (Or, On Going to the Gym)

If you are studying philosophy, it is well." For this is just what "being well" means.  Without philosophy the mind is sickly, and the body, too, though it may be very powerful, is strong only as that of a madman or a lunatic [furiosi aut frenetici] is strong.  This, then, is the sort of health you should primarily cultivate; the other kind of health comes second, and will involve little effort, if you wish to be well physically.  It is indeed foolish [stulta], my dear Lucilius, and very unsuitable to a literary man [et minime conveniens  litterato viro], to work hard over developing the muscles and broadening the shoulders and strengthening the lungs.  For although your heavy feeding produce good results and your sinews grow solid, you can never be a match, either in strength or in weight, for a first-class bull....Drinking and sweating, - it's the life of a dyspeptic!--Seneca Letter 15.

Most professional philosophers instinctly recoil at the idea that philosophy is about nurturing the soul or generates psychic well-being. On airplanes we often disabuse our travel companions of the  idea that we have anything to do with the 'philosophy and self-help' sections in the bookstore. We don't emendate minds. This is not just a consequence of our professional orientation;  David Hume, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein make a compelling case that philosophy is unhealthy and itself requiring a cure. In fact, it's  not impossible -- this is a historical hypothesis -- that once philosophers were convinced by the idea that philosophy is itself unhealthy, they were all too eager to recast themselves as scientific philosopher or professional academics facilitating public utility in a variety of ways; this stance facilitates what I will call 'a worldly orientation' (as opposed to emendation of the mind) for philosophy with a number of characteristic (methodological) skills. 

But professionalization of philosophers may, in fact, make things worse: it is very likely that the way we are trained, cultivates intellectual reflexes that are, if not immoral, then often deeply inappropriate in lots of circumstances. (Recall Ruth Chang's articulation of such phenomena.) The potential and real harm here isn't just suffered by individual philosophers, the victims of a variety of individual abuses committed by philosophers, and the quality of professional philosophy because of the patterns of exclusion generated by these; it may also infiltrate the activities of our worldly orientation. If we assume that arguments ought to compel we are unable to be sensitive, even receptive to the feelings and sensitivities of our interlocutors; an argument can be a learning device, but it can also be a way to prevent being receptive. So, while here I accept that there is a contrast between our present worldly orientation and psychic emendation, it is not impossible they could be made to harmonize. 

Behind every eminent Philosophical Woman, Stands a Man?

Peter Geach, who has died aged 97, was a formidable logician and happened to be married to one of the 20th century’s leading English-language philosophers, Elizabeth Anscombe.

In a way this meant he was overshadowed. He did, though, have a strong philosophical life of his own, and without the thousands of hours of discussion that Elizabeth Anscombe had with him, her philosophy would not have attained the eminence it did.--The Telegraph

The quoted passage above are the first lines of an unsigned obituary of Peter Geach. It makes a remarkable claim: that his presence was decisive in her achievements. It's possible to read it as a sociological point: Geach was needed for Anscombe's status in the profession. But the more likely intended reading is that talking to him made her a much better philosopher. It's offered without evidence. Even if Anscombe says something as much somewhere, the counterfactual is hard to evaluate.* In addition, the obituary also offers an unflattering comparison between Geach and Anscombe: "Unlike the dense, unsignposted [sic] prose of Anscombe, Geach’s style was a pleasure to read." It does not occur to the author that, perhaps, on the whole, Anscombe was struggling to make genuinely original points on unwieldy topics, while Geach was working with a lot more self-imposed constraints.

In a curious lack of symmetry, the obituary does not assign Anscombe any responsibility for Geach's eminence or achievements. I am not an expert on the thought of either, but if one claims that Geach is a "honorary founder of the philosophical school that called itself “analytical Thomism,”" why not mention Anscombe at all? So, it's quite possible, of course, that Geach improved her philosophy, but we can't rule out the possibility that either his ideas sometimes made hers worse or that his presence was a net-zero in her philosopher career (etc.) Perhaps, one day there will be careful dispassionate scholarship on the issue.